The True Impact of OnPoint NYC’s Holistic Services
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OnPoint NYC’s holistic services provide many benefits to our participants and continue the legacy of the harm reduction movement. These services operate at our East Harlem and Washington Heights centers, as well as in the community, and provide free-of-charge alternative medicine techniques such as ear acupuncture, accupressure, reiki, sound therapy, and more.
In a discussion with Juan Cortez, Holistic Services Manager, we asked him to share the methodology behind these holistic techniques, his personal motivation for the work, and why it’s so important to offer these practices to those in our communities.
As Juan explains, people often come to OnPoint NYC having been negatively impacted by our country’s drug laws, and often feel a variety of emotions as a result. He says:
"So let's say somebody has some type of childhood trauma, and because of limited resources, that was never addressed. So that led them to use substances to self-medicate. Because of the laws, they were put in jail. So there's this self-loathing, there's the stigma, the shame. Society says when you come out of jail, we want you to walk a straight line, get a job, stop committing crimes, and be this pillar of society [but] we're not going to give you that chance because you did drugs, you went to jail, and you got a record.
When they come through the door, they come with all these emotions like, "I just got out of jail. I've been using all drugs all my life to medicate my pain. How am I going to get a job? How am I going to get to my medical appointments and all the things I need to do? And also they're angry. They're angry at themselves because the world has told them they're a failure. And they're angry at the world because it’s not giving them a chance…It's very scary to have to change your life and to not have had those resources.”
At OnPoint NYC, Juan works with those who carry these experiences and helps provide an antidote to this anxiety, fear, and uncertainty. He is a practitioner in ear acupuncture, which centers on 5 pressure points - the shenmen, sympathetic, kidney, lung, and liver - that each addresses the mental and physical pain that our participants typically carry due to these experiences:
“The first point is called the shenman - that addresses physical and also emotional pain, and it's called the spirit gate. It helps to reduce anxiety.” Then there's what we call the sympathetic point. That's for trauma. The kidney is fear. The lung point is for grief [losing your coping mechanisms is a form of loss], and the liver point is for anger. Those five points address all those emotions without saying a word.”
There’s a communal aspect to the treatment as well - as Juan shares, participants are in the room with others.
“The philosophy is: we're doing this together… now we're healing together as a community. So when people come out of here feeling better based on their situation, that's a beautiful thing.”
And while ear acupuncture is a tool that may not work or be desired by everyone, there is still a space for them in OnPoint NYC’s spa-like holistic services space - participants can relax, listen to music, or participate in other services such as sound therapy, massage, and more. The tangible benefits of these services can take many forms.
"Success, to me, is somebody walking through the door,” Juan shares.
“But with the support of coming here, added with the other support services that we have, people have moved on to getting apartments, to getting jobs, to really achieving the goals that they want to achieve. We have people here that are in ‘recovery’ that have been coming for holistic services close to 30 years for maintenance… and participants with the goal to manage or stabilize their drug use.”
Juan is an example of these services’ success - his passion for his work is rooted in lived experience, and he credits holistic services as a catalyst for his personal transformation:
“I am one of those people who came from the street as a participant here over 25 years ago, and I've been working here 19 years. I went from trying to figure out where I was going to get $20 for a bag of dope, to [working at OnPoint NYC and] trying to figure out how to increase our programming and reach more people.
Harm reduction was a major part of me being able to change my life….and once I found that this was available to me, I took full advantage of it and fell in love with it. It was part of what helped save my life. I've seen the results.”
Learn more about Holistic Services and get an overview of its activist roots by reading our previous blog post:
OnPoint NYC’s Holistic Services: Healing, Education, and Power