more on Sustainable Health Care

Transition Mar Vista held a sustainable health care event on Saturday the 20th of March.

After the TMV event, Anneke Campbell, one of the TMV event organizers, wrote:

We invited people involved in the health care field, practitioners of alternative healing modalities and health care advocates, among them acupuncturists, ayurvedic, yoga practitioners, and homeopaths.

We started with people presenting to each other the connection to health care of each person in the room and also what gave people joy in their lives. After introductions, we brainstormed, speaking out loud our burning questions, passionate issues, great ideas.

Looking at all of our input, we decided that there were three main areas to discuss:

• The health care paradigm shift
• Education
• Direct care or treatment

These three breakout sessions met for an hour and 10 minutes and then presented their work to the group as a whole.

After this presentation, those people attending the last part of Saturday's program listed the following priorities:

• A monthly educational/support program at the yoga center where people with health issues can come together to learn from each other and find support.
• Monthly cultural health event - where we would invite diverse and indigenous folks to share their healing practices.
• Mapping our community health resources - creating a directory of practitioners
• Assessment of local needs and determining strategies to meet them.
• Upscaling existing solutions - providing greater access to alternative healing modalities to more people locally.
• Mobile health clinic
• Creating healing circles
• Story/telling: Recording healing stories and getting them out there - distribution
• A program that would nominate neighbors with good gardens and restaurants serving local and healthy foods and reward them with a rating system.
  

These next steps were agreed upon:

1. Those participants who want to continue in the group will familiarize themselves with the Transition Town movement. This could mean checking out Rob Hopkins book, or or coming to our April 17th event at the Sivananda Yoga center, in which we will show the 50 minute documentary "The Power of Community" and explain the principles of the Transition Town movement and hold a discussion.

2. A followup health care meeting was scheduled for Sunday May 16th in the afternoon, to reassess our priorities, narrow and refine goals and begin to discuss strategies.

We also discussed making sure that our meetings have a healing energy in themselves, (in the nature of a healing circle) so that we are being the change we want to see.

• You can connect with Transition Mar Vista and their Sustainable Health Care project here.
• The Transition Los Angeles City Hub coordinates communication between the many budding Transition Initiatives and mullers throughout the greater Los Angeles area.
• March issue of L.A. Yoga Magazine was about sustainable health care, and featured a front page, content-rich article with resources by Anneke Campbell