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Free Alternative Veterans Health Clinic

By Johanna (Hans) Buwalda and Mary Kay Ryan

On March 8, in the presence of veterans, body workers, acupuncturists, energy workers, and all other supporters of this new clinic, founders Mary Kay Ryan and Barb Schmidt cut the ribbon and officially opened the Alternative Medicine Project for Veterans in Chicago. The clinic is located at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine at 3646 N. Broadway and will be open every Sunday from 1-4PM. Hours will expand as the clinic sees more veterans. The clinic will be offering free acupuncture, bodywork, and energy work to veterans, their relatives, loved ones, and those who care for them.

Why this clinic?

Mateo Munoz

Many veterans have all kinds of physical and mental health complaints and are interested in trying alternatives to the, often, multiple medications that are often offered by their doctors. Some veterans find that Asian and Native American ideas and methods of healing make sense to them and helpful in their efforts to find relief.

Mary Kay, an acupuncturist and one of the founders of the clinic, relates how it got started. She and a friend went to the screening of Body of War a film by Phil Donahue about veteran Tomas Young who was shot in Iraq and paralyzed from the chest down. Throughout the film she and her friend kept on thinking: "We could have been of help to Tomas and people like him." After the screening, Mary Kay went to the IVAW table and asked who she should talk to about providing acupuncture and bodywork to veterans. She was told to go "talk to Hans Buwalda, she takes care of anything we need regarding mental health." Mary Kay contacted Hans the next day and met with her a short time afterwards. A few weeks later, she ran into Ray Parrish, VVAW's veteran counselor, and approached him with the idea of a free veterans clinic. Again, she was immediately asked if she knew Hans Buwalda. Luckily she did. Hans, Ray and Mary Kay then met to discuss the idea of a free veterans clinic in Chicago. In the meantime, Hans had been receiving questions about alternative medicine options from the veterans with whom she was working so Hans, Ray and Mary Kay quickly decided that a project to offer alternative medicine for veterans was a good idea that should be pursued.

All services are free because all providers donate their time and the Pacific College for Oriental Medicine is currently donating the use of the space. The clinic is raising money through donations and fundraising. Veterans and others eligible to utilize the services can also donate if they wish to do so, but they do not have to. People in the Chicago community have been very generous with preliminary donations and the project will be actively seeking larger donations and grants over the next few months.

About 70 percent of the volunteers are veterans themselves. All the volunteers are highly trained in various healing modalities including: both Asian and Western styles of bodywork, Reiki, acupuncture both Nada-style ear-acupuncture and full-body acupuncture. In addition, the clinic offers traditional kinds of spirit healing used extensively by Native Americans and other cultural groups in the world for healing warriors after their return home from battle. The clinic also has volunteers who offer writing groups, art therapy and peer counseling for veterans who would like to explore these avenues for their healing. Referrals to other providers are available.

Since there are a lot of wonderful goodhearted people out there who wish to help veterans but in reality do not know what they are getting into, volunteers for this clinic had to go through a rigorous selection process. They had to attend a full day training on veteran issues and health care, they had to complete an application that included a statement about why they wanted to volunteer at this clinic and what skills they thought they might bring to the work. After all that, they had to go through an interview process with the project founders as well.

In addition, the project has a veteran advisory committee composed completely of veterans. This advisory committee helps outreach and gives input about how to best serve the veterans who come to the clinic. Many veterans and their family members feel stress. Stress is not something that is just in the mind, but it also settles in the body. For example, people who feel stressed may experience headaches or pain in the muscles of their necks and shoulders. In addition many veterans have been injured in a variety of ways during their military service. Both acupuncture and various kinds of bodywork such as massage can be helpful to alleviate stress that settles in the body and address the many physical ailments that veterans and/or their family members experience. Acupuncture has been used for many centuries to address every kind of human ailment and therefore will have many things it can offer to help with the physical and stress related problems faced by veterans and their families. In addition, the clinic will offer ear acupuncture which has shown to be helpful to people struggling with stress, trauma, drug addiction and alcohol abuse.

Reiki, Chinese Qi Gong (both energetic healing touch systems) and meditation can be useful in treating stress-related diseases. Those include most of the diseases that plague our current society, from heart disease and diabetes to fibromyalgia and cancer. Why do all these diseases respond to a reduction of stress? Because the human immune system and all the organs and cells in our body react to stress as an assault that reduces our abilities to process food, to fight against viruses and disease, to sleep and to heal. As the film Body of War shows, living with a veteran injured by war can significantly affect the lives of those who live and care for that veteran. However, a veteran doesn't have to be quite as dramatically injured as Tomas Young is for family members lives to be altered by their loved ones experiences in the military. Stress, Depression, PTSD, TBI, Military Sexual Trauma (MST), adjusting back to life as a civilian, being apart for long periods of time, and other problems can also affect family members' lives. In addition, it just makes good sense to take care of those who are taking care of veterans so that everyone can benefit together. Therefore, family members including partners, spouses, children, parents, siblings or others who feel they could benefit from this clinic's services because they have a veteran in their life, are welcome.

Please come and visit!

Want to get treatment, learn more or just come and check things out?

Feel free and visit every Sunday from 1-4PM or call (708) 383-2730 or e-mail the project at ampv.chicago@yahoo.com

Mary Kay Ryan has practiced Chinese medicine for 27 years and has 20 years experience in creating free public health clinics that offer alternative medicine options. She has written 3 books on Chinese medicine and has taught in Ireland, England and the United States. She has worked with various survivors of severe trauma including AIDS patients, victims of domestic abuse and rape survivors. Barb Schmidt has been practicing Chinese medicine for 9 years in Chicago. She has taught at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine for the past 5 years and has worked in the Chicago area with survivors of torture. She also comes from a military family.

Johanna (Hans) Buwalda is a mental health provider with 20 years experience working with war survivors in the Netherlands, the Philippines and the US and currently has a private practice in Chicago. She volunteers her time with IVAW supporting veterans. She also helps out with medical discharges based on mental health problems, discharge upgrades, AWOL situations, and others. She serves as a consulting provider with the Alternative Medicine Project. If you like to learn more about her and/or if you like to contact her, please visit storiesandart.com.