Heart & Hands, a Third Space and Community Acupuncture, a Third Culture

A place that isn’t at home nor is it at work, but another place. Some place in between that is also regularly frequented, where some folks will work, while some folks will hang out in leisure. A fixed location that is neither of the aforementioned places.

In sociology, the Third place (or space) refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home (“first place”) and the workplace (“second place”). Examples of third places include churches, cafes, bars, clubs, community centres, public libraries, gyms, bookstores, makerspaces, stoops, parks, theaters, and opera houses, among others. In his book The Great Good Place (1989), Ray Oldenburg argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement and establishing feelings of a sense of place.

Within a Third space is a Third culture.
A culture that has absorbed aspects of our working and social lives into something familiar to both, but also distinctly unique.

Based on this description, Heart & Hands / 2612 Quadra St is also a Third space and my practice of Community Acupuncture is also an expression of my Third culture. As Asian diaspora, 1st gen Hong Konger, Chinese-Canadian, I have an entirely different lived experience from my parents and my culture of origin. I’m neither fully Chinese, nor fully integrated or have been accepted by dominant, white Canadian culture, I am another secret, more complex 3rd thing. Through the process of navigating my ethnic-cultural identity, I have used Community Acupuncture as a bridge between my culture of origin, the culture of where I presently inhabit and a tangible means of sharing my Third culture with my surrounding community.

This past summer, in the thick of renos, while painting, patching and building the new Quadra Village space, I noticed a distinct difference being in Quadra Village hearing many other languages (rather than English) floating through our clinic door when curious passersby would peek in. And when moving through the neighbourhood, I am delighted by wonderful variety (for Victoria’s standards) of ethnic cuisines. That as a WoC, it felt like a sigh of relief to be back in a diverse neighborhood much like my childhood growing up in Toronto and Southern Ontario, where it is a respite from the onslaught of microaggressions and othering many of us BIPOC experience moving through the world.

Heart & Hands in many diverse ways also models a different way of community care as an expression of a Third space – that North American society is one of “ME”, whereas, many Asian societies are instead a collective culture of “WE”.

Here are a few examples of how as a Third space+culture we RESIST and CHALLENGE the individualist mindset and socioeconomic inequality, while encouraging collective thinking:

It is the constantly evolving synergy of these organic elements that make our little Third space unique, welcoming and supportive. We believe that Community Acupuncture is a tool for social change, a way to honor the ancestral roots of barefoot medicine, a cultural bridge between modern and traditional, a thriving example of mutual aid, community care and economic justice in action as well as an innovative approach that makes acupuncture accessible and inclusive for many.

Heart & Hands contains the multitudes of Third culture attributes and actions that support and cultivate collective thinking and social change. And as a physical Third space, it provides respite, eases physical-emotional-spiritual suffering, decreases social isolation, supports intentional rest and is something larger than ourselves.

Heart & Hands is not quite one thing or the other, but an indescribable alchemy of something else: that secret, more complex 3rd thing…

~Christina Hoi Man Chan, R.Ac. Owner/Operator