In Madness Radio’s “Borderlands Acupuncture,” Will Hall joins Crossroads and the Rahrami tribe to explore how local healers in northern Mexico use acupuncture and community care to recover from violence and reclaim mental health.

Just before COVID-19 hit the Americas, the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement joined farmers and community healers in Nicaragua to explore solidarity and self-reliance in healthcare across Central America.

Crossroads Acupuncture is more than a Las Cruces clinic — it’s the hub of an international project bringing acupuncture to underserved communities. Culturs Magazine profiles the teachers and healers at the heart of the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement.

The story of how Crossroads was founded through solidarity with women in Cd. Juárez, bringing acupuncture and hope to some of the darkest corners of the “murder capital of the world.”

In a valley emptied by war and displacement, Barefoot Acupuncture helps the remaining few heal, rebuild, and rediscover community amid the silence left behind.

After the 2019 Walmart shooting in El Paso, Las Cruces’ local NPR station featured Crossroads’ disaster-relief clinics offering free ear-acupuncture for survivors and first responders.

Free ear acupuncture clinics are offered throughout the southern New Mexico region, through Crossroads Acupuncture’s acudetox training program. One of the programs that year in year out offers free addictions recovery, as well as harm reduction care, is Amador Health Center (formerly known as St. Luke’s Health Clinic). Damien Willis of the Las Cruces Sun News featured this innovative program back in 2016.

RISE will be offering acudetox within jails in Carrizozo and Truth or Consequences and in collaboration with local drug courts and Indian Health Services serving RISE clients.

Cassie McClure and Neighbors Magazine sat down with us to learn more about our clinic in Las Cruces, NM, our acudetox training program and our global Barefoot Acupuncture Movement, which works in addictions, disaster relief, and humanitarian aid and development. The article can be read in the July 2021 issue, and is available to read for free on lascruces.com.

Who can call themself an “acupuncturist?” The answer is a tricky one, at least in North America.

At the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement, I have found that this question is best answered, discussed and debated with a historical lens, which is the angle that Bob Quinn, a Doctor of Oriental Medicine and professor in the field, took in in his most recent “quintissentials” blog: The Return of the Barefoot Doctor.

Las Cruces can’t claim to be the global hub of many worldwide movements, but Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare, doing business as Barefoot Acupuncture Movement (BAM) aims to change that. The nonprofit is run by Executive Director Dr. Ryan Bemis.

Crossroads Acupuncture has been voted Best Acupuncturist in the Mesilla Valley in 2021 by the Las Cruces Bulletin!

Our central clinic in Las Cruces is currently located at Families and Youth, INC at 1320 S. Solano. Appointments are available by calling 575-312-6569.

Wheeler’s book about Southern New Mexico, Acid West, which was included on Oprah’s Summer Reading List, includes a chapter “A Million Tiny Daggers” that features Crossroads’ work providing acupuncture for underserved communities in the border region.

On Jan. 1, 2014, Crossroads will ring in the New Year, close it's clinic as a for-profit, and the new non-profit organization will re-open as Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare, a non­profit, al­lowing them to further their goal of providing affordable health ser­vices to, truly, everyone.

Acupuncture is a portable medicine. In the 1960’s the barefoot doctors in China took Chinese medicine into the countryside. Over the years acupuncturist’s response to natural disasters has show us that acupuncture can be practiced in makeshift shelters or tents. It also has a place in refugee camps, churches of impoverished communities and rural villages. In this conversation acupuncturist and activist Ryan Bemis talks about how acupuncture and liberation theology go together and can help to relieve a lot of suffering.

Whether it’s using acupuncture to relieve pain, seek behavioral health solutions or provide a venue to promote artists, Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare is about serving people.

Featuring a new Medicare program, Crossroads Acupuncture has moved back to Downtown Las Cruces across from the plaza. The 501c3 nonprofit organization also has new programs within the jail system, migrant shelters in Juarez, Mexico as well as the new La Vida Project of Families and Youth Innovations, also in in downtown Las Cruces.

Acupuncture is becoming more accessible—one ear at a time.

Ear acupuncture, also known as auricular acupuncture, is the most widely used form of acupuncture within Western health settings in the United States and Europe.

"A lot of our students migrated from other parts of Mexico to Juarez with their families to work in the maquiladoras, and a lot of the people they help are employed in the factories (or used to be until they got laid off). Our new school is inspired by another migrant and factory worker who is credited as the founder of acupuncture in the West: Miriam Lee. Back in the 70’s, she assisted other factory workers in California after she immigrated from China. It’s fitting that we are teaching her techniques and her spirit of service has caught hold among our students.