Ellen Vincent @ Philadelphia Community Acupuncture

I used to have a complicated relationship with naps, and with rest in general. I was raised middle class and went to public school. The big idea was to get good grades, get into a good college like Harvard, and then live a life of comfort and security. Activism was not high on the list of priorities in my family. I bet a lot of people who ended up going to acupuncture school have a similar story. After all, until the relatively recent CAN revolution, a career as an acupuncturist was overwhelmingly hyped and perceived as a comfortable life where you get to help some people, so the schools tend to attract people who are looking for that, which means a lot of middle class people.

I am also an only child, raised by a single working mother who didn't have a lot of attention for me at the end of the day. Let's put it this way: I watched a lot of television in between the getting good grades and making plans for Harvard one day. Good Times, the Love Boat, Laverne and Shirley, General Hospital. Good times on the couch with the television, but no real substitute for good company or a good nap. I am sure my mom could have used a good nap.

I still have that pull today. I recently moved my television to the basement so I didn't have to have daily battles about it with my four year old daughter (the only child of a single working mom), but it calls me from there. Watch me, bring me back, sit your butt on the couch, it says, and live the life of your dreams. Comfort and security could be yours, finally.

This is not what I really want.

What I really want is to change the way things are in the world. With no training, how to begin? For starters, I am going to claim some comfort, but not from the couch, not from the TV. I am going to claim the comfort of a good nap -- and we all know, it's better with needles. Our clinic t-shirts' slogan on the back is "naptime for grownups." I am not going to claim this comfort just for myself. I am going to claim it for the entire working class.

Thinking about naps, I remembered a book called "Take a Nap - Change your life," by Sara Mednick. The first pages talk about how people used to nap daily, it was part of a natural biphasic sleep pattern. "So how did we lose this progeny? We can start by blaming the clock. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, mechanical timepieces replaced the sundial and water clock. The day, having previously been regarded as a series of experiences, could now be reduced to the passage of measurable units: seconds, minutes, and hours. Workers began getting paid by the hour instead of by the job, and it didn't take long for the "Time is money" mantra to become the de facto law of the land. Sleep, especially during the day, began to be perceived as a waste of time.

Not true, as we know.

Now, I am all for naps. Long, uninterrupted naps, with needles in and other people all around. In warm, darkened rooms, cozy rooms. In recliners, with blankets. I see what these kinds of naps can do for people. Four days a week, every week, I see it. And on another day or two if I am lucky, I get to be one of those people.

I live in a pretty unique place, I think, this West Philly neighborhood. Everywhere you look there are activists working hard to change the world. You don't necessarily know who they are, but you know that they are there. There is a lot that I would like to do to change the way things are in the world. The Working Class Acupuncture t-shirt slogan is "Acupuncture Can Change the World." That is a pretty big statement to make. Changing the world, one nap at a time? More like twenty naps at a time, multiplied by all the community clinics out there.

I don't feel like I have done enough, yet, to identify as another kind of activist. But, I feel really comfortable claiming the identity of a naptime activist. In doing so, I would like to say this to any acupuncturist who uses that clock as a timer, to any acupuncturist who puts the needles in and wakes their patients up 10 or 20 or 30 minutes later because they have another patient coming in for that table: Stop it.

In another blog, I wrote about a patient of mine who went to another acupuncturist for a treatment and was woken up and kicked out, the way it usually happens in typical acupuncture settings. To her, more than having to pay all that extra money, this was the worst part of that experience. So set up your practice so that you don't have to do this. Have more space. Have recliners that people can sleep comfortably in. Learn to work more quickly. Talk less. There are books on this subject. Read them. Join the revolution.
Let the people nap.

This post originally appeared on www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org