Seva Healing

For me, this endeavor began in Thailand in 2007 where I worked with the ethnic minority Burmese refugees known as the Karen, Karenni and Shan. Traveling to remote jungle villages, border refugee camps, orphanages and IDP communities, I provided acupuncture treatments to hundreds of people that have little, if any, regular medical care. I also ran a number of trainings for doctors, nurses and medics who are able to provide intermittent care to some of these groups on an ongoing basis. These trainings are set up to teach simple but effective techniques for using acupuncture to treat many of the diseases endemic to people living in such difficult conditions. My philosophy for leading these trainings is that of the old proverb – Give someone a fish, he has one meal..Teach someone to fish and he can eat for a lifetime.

I continued this relief work on a yearly basis, returning to ethnic Burmese villages and refugee camps within Thailand and in 2011 was able to extend this work to a Resistance Army Base and refugee camp located inside the Burmese border. I have had the privilege of working during this time with, among others, Partners Relief and Development, an NGO dedicated to aiding the children and communities impacted by the war in Burma and the Free Burma Rangers who provide courageous medical, tactical, and humanitarian assistance to people trapped in the war zones of Burma. (link to article Overview: The Situation in Burma). 

In 2009, I extended this work to Africa when I was invited to accompany members of the relief organization Hope Arising in their ongoing work in Dera, Ethiopia. Dera is a deeply impoverished community of 58,000 people whose nearest natural water source was 20 miles away and a 5 mile walk to the closest water delivery point. Children were not able to attend school because they had wait in line for water. Parents spent more time in search of water than working at their jobs. Mothers were unable to bathe their children who, because of this and other factors, often fell sick. Their local clinic spent most of their time and very limited resources treating diseases directly resulting from inadequate sanitary conditions and a lack of potable water.

I was asked to provide acupuncture treatment clinics to the community as well as run acupuncture trainings for a number of nurses working in Dera’s medical clinic. When the townspeople heard of the upcoming treatments, more than 450 people signed up at which point they had to close the list for lack of time and space to treat more. People sat outside in the heat for hours on end waiting for their turn. The clinic and trainings were very successful as I was able to treat many patients personally as well as supervise eight clinic nurses while they practiced giving acupuncture treatments on many more.

Seva Healing is a labor of love and the way I choose to give service to my community at large. As with most acts of seva, I believe that, in the end, I receive more than I give because, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”