Roots and Bridges

2027 guatemala

There’s a whole lot of healing already happening

Walk with Indigenous leaders moving their communities forward — and reconnect with your own resilience as a healer.

Join our waitlist!

“Our work starts with the recognition that the work of healing, of justice, of peace, is already happening in the world.

There are these gaping wounds.

But the people were already on the path of healing. And the needles just jumped on for the ride.”

— Ryan Bemis

Healing happening. Being Barefoot. Getting grounded.

Barefoot service-learning and hands-on cross-cultural immersion

Apply now

Indigenous leaders in Guatemala invite you into a grounded, real-world experience — not theory, not tourism, and not saviorism.

You’ll join grassroots projects where healing is already underway, walking with the people doing the everyday work of resilience and dignity, and reconnecting with your own grounding and capacity as a healer.

This is not just a training.

It’s a chance to slow down, listen, and be changed by the communities who carry this work forward.

You’ll have the chance to do your own healing, while walking with the everyday heroes struggling for the dignity of their communities in the highlands of Guatemala.

Breathe, Heal, pay it forward

With Barefoot Acupuncture, healing is personal—and collective.

  • Our Trauma-Informed Breathwork + Acupuncture gatherings are a space to pause, release stress, and reconnect with your resilience in community.

    Each event blends guided meditation, somatic breathwork, deep rest, and acupuncture-supported integration. You do not have to arrive “fixed” or know exactly what you need—just come as you are and give yourself space to breathe, feel, and restore.

  • Friday, June 19 | 5:30–7:30 PM
    Crossroads Acupuncture
    1100 S. Main

    Sunday, July 19 | 4:00 PM
    Dwell Yoga
    424 N. Main

    Suggested donation: $50 or more

    These events are fundraisers for our grassroots Barefoot Health projects in Latin America. Your donation helps support community health promoters and trauma survivors with practical healing tools in places where care is often hard to access.

Register
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Global Solidarity & indigenous Wisdom

You’ll build meaningful relationships with our Barefoot Health Promoters serving some of the most vulnerable groups in the Americas. You will dive deep into indigenous traditions of resilience, trauma-informed care, and nonviolence. If you want to learn how to cultivate sustainable grassroots health projects, and/or apprentice with Crossroads, this immersion is for you.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE
SERVICE LEARNING
SOMATIC RELEASE
TEMASCAL
MEDITATION
YOGA & QI GONG
CLINICAL INTERNSHIP
INDIGENOUS HEALING & CEREMONY

Daily Practices for Embodied Healing

You’ll learn mind-body practices to support your personal healing journey.

You’ll leave with simple, trauma-informed tools you can carry forward in your life and work.

BREATHWORK
ACUPUNCTURE
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Group of five women sitting and standing in a classroom, with religious images and a chalkboard in the background, illuminated by natural light from a window.
Apply now

Voices From the Heroes

at the heart

of the Barefoot Movement

I used to just be a housewife. But now I am a health promoter. Now I can learn other things to improve on myself.
— Cecy, Barefoot Health Promoter
I started doing acupuncture because my mom told me so much about what she learned in a moxa class. I admire my mother — watching her help others made me want to learn more.
— Nancy Ortiz González, Barefoot Teacher
Acupuncture has been a big change for me. Community acupuncture helped me feel closer to people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. And it has helped my family — and my kids.
— Sara, Barefoot Health Promoter
Barefoot Acupuncture is a prime example of how acupuncture can take root in communities in distress — providing care while training others to become providers.
— Dr. Subhuti Dharmananda
The violence brought deep psychosis — depression, fear, people not sleeping. Auriculotherapy relaxes people and helps them get their rhythm of sleep back. It’s something very needed.
— Mary Pichado, Barefoot Health Promoter / Promotora
The effectiveness of this service happens because health promoters are the ones healing their own people. It’s less about acupuncture and more about their resiliency, their dedication, their service week in, week out.
— Ryan Bemis, Barefoot Teacher (Latina Lista interview)
It is a project for the people who need it most. We’ve had very beautiful testimonies from people who felt very good with these therapies — and we want more people to know about it.
— Sara Ibarra, Barefoot Health Promoter / Promotora
Roots are not where we begin — they’re where we return when the world asks us to remember who we are.
— Mallory Ann Harmon
Since taking this course it has been a beautiful change. When you feel that you can help other people, you feel useful… I like hearing that people feel better — that the acupuncture helps them.
— Cecy, Barefoot Health Promoter
In Nicaragua, whether people of different cultures or religions, we saw how this training transcends — and that we can help.
— Nancy Ortiz González, Barefoot Teacher
The Barefoot School teaches farmers practical skills they can use right away. When people manage stress better, community wellness rises. They become active participants in community recovery.
— Rhonda Coleman
To create authentic, conscious, healthy community not based on dependency and colonialism, you must have solidarity.
— Ryan Bemis, Barefoot Teacher (Culturs interview)
No one in Juárez imagined that acupuncture, something so accessible, would be so important to us. Little by little, it helped.
— Nancy Ortiz González, Barefoot Teacher
Residents have responded very favorably, expressing gratitude and looking forward with hope to greater access in the near future.
— Dr. Subhuti Dharmananda
At the detox clinic, many clients weren’t comfortable in groups or in silence — yet with the 5 points, they were calm, letting their guard down. Silence in safe space can open people up.
— Ryan Bemis, Barefoot Teacher (Sun-News interview)
If people can feel safe and comfortable, and walk out on their own two feet feeling ready to face the world again — then that’s mission accomplished.
— Ryan Bemis, Barefoot Teacher (Sun-News interview)
That awakening became a bridge that eventually led me from Portland’s streets to the borderlands of Mexico, where I began teaching nuns how to offer acupuncture for tens of thousands of refugees in Ciudad Juárez. Their dream of transforming their city’s reputation as the murder capital of the world into the city of peace permanently planted me here.
— Ryan Bemis, Barefoot Teacher
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to the roots of

barefoot medicine in Guatemala

In 1978, a doctor taught local Mayan youth in Guatemala how to use acupuncture needles. Years later, death squads forced many to flee into the forest, taking their needles with them.

Our immersion program this year will trace the roots of the Barefoot movement in the Americas to the Rio Negro region of Guatemala, where you’ll get hear first hand about their heroic struggle and partner with them as they continue to aid survivors of the genocide.

Apply
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  • Includes:

    1. Lodging and Food for 6 days far away from the tourist spots in the Guatemalan Highlands Baja Verapaz

    2. Daily acupuncture, meditation, yoga, breathwork, and guided somatic release work

    3. Transportation from the airport to the immersion sites

    4. Clinical internship and apprenticing opportunities for acudetox/NADA protocol and community acupuncture (Pending applicant qualifications and experience)

    5. Recovery day in Eco lodge in Antigua

    6. 6 Free Webinars with Dr. Bemis and the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement before the journey, to help ground you in Barefoot Acupuncture, Community Acupuncture, and Acudetox (aka 5np, NADA protocol)

    7. One 60 minute Somatic Coaching session with either of our teachers, Park Hea-Joo or Dr. Ryan Bemis, to support your own healing work, as well as your vision and work in community-supported and trauma-informed care.

    Does not include:

    1. Lodging and food on final recovery day in Antigua

    2. Optional adventure to Tikal, Coban or Lake Atitlan

  • 🌄 Sample Daily Schedule – Roots & Bridges Immersion

    (Subject to variation by day)

    7:00–8:00 AM – Morning Meditation & Mind-Body Practice
    Begin the day with grounding practices such as meditation, yoga, qigong, breathwork, or guided embodiment sessions led by facilitators and guest healers.

    8:00–9:00 AM – Nourishing Breakfast
    Enjoy a locally sourced, communal meal with time for informal connection, reflection, and preparing for the day’s work.

    9:00–12:30 PM – Core Workshop Sessions
    Interactive, hands-on learning focused on:

    • Foundations of trauma-informed grassroots healing

    • Introduction to the NADA protocol, Barefoot Acupuncture, and somatic release work

    • Additional frameworks and practices for collective and individual healing

    • Practice of basic acupuncture, acupressure, and ear seed techniques

    • Group dialogue, case studies, and integrative discussions

    12:30–2:00 PM – Lunch & Rest Time
    Shared lunch followed by space for rest, journaling, hammock time, or quiet personal reflection.

    2:00–4:30 PM – Outreach & Cultural Exchange
    Service-based experiential learning including:

    • Volunteering in local wellness spaces or community centers

    • Participating in intercultural dialogue circles

    • Listening sessions with elders, healers, or community organizers

    • Visits to grassroots projects focused on justice, healing, and resilience

    4:30–6:30 PM – Integration & Open Time
    Unstructured time to rest or choose from:

    • Supervised clinical practice or mentoring

    • Somatic journaling or integration exercises

    • Nature immersion, swimming, or contemplative time in silence

    6:30–7:30 PM – Dinner
    A communal meal shared in gratitude, featuring regional ingredients and space for connection.

    7:30–9:00 PM – Cultural Immersion & Community Ritual
    Evening activities may include:

    • Temazcal (traditional sweat lodge ceremony)

    • Fire circles, music, or storytelling nights

    • Guest presentations from indigenous leaders or local wisdom-keepers

    • Silent meditation or community ritual closure

  • ✅ Harm reduction, recovery, or community health workers (New Mexico-based or international)

    ✅ Nurses, doctors, acupuncturists

    ✅ Acupuncture/Acudetox educators and providers hands-on experience with Community Acupuncture and the NADA protocol

    ✅ Community organizers and social entrepreneurs working in trauma recovery or public health
    ✅ Students or practitioners seeking hands-on experience in grassroots and global health settings

  • email all application materials to crossroads@gmail.com

    ✅ 1000 + word essay about why you’re interested in this work, any experience you have working in overseas and/or community projects and what you hope to contribute to our cohort of students and the communities we serve.

    ✅ Resume resume outlining your relevant international and community health experience, all the licenses and certifications you hold as a health provider (including your license #), and at least one professional reference.

    ✅ Please include where in the world you live and work.

    ✅ We will notify you within 1 week if you have been accepted, after which you will need to pay your deposit within a week after you have been accepted

  • Ryan Bemis, DOM is the co-founder and director of Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare and the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement.   He teaches meditation, somatic release work, Barefoot acupuncture and Acudetox in jails, shelters, rehab programs, harm reduction and humanitarian aid settings. He is a licensed Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Internationally Certified Heroic Coach, and TRE provider.

    Park Hea-Joo, MHP serves as a Trauma & Tension Release Exercise (TRE) trainer at the Korea National Trauma Center, providing courses for disaster response personnel.   She is also Director of TRE Life Asia, and is internationally accredited TRE Trainer & Provider and Systemic Embodiment Coach, where she teaches meditation and somatic release.  She holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Management from the National University of Singapore.

    James Daria, PhD is a cultural anthropologist at Spellman University working on issues of labor and migration in the global food and healthcare system. His work is centered on modern slavery, exploitation, and the labor and human rights of migrant farmworkers in North and Central America. Also certified in the NADA protocol, Dr. Daria combines teaching, research, and activism to make academic knowledge accessible to the general public, as well as to his collaborators in the field.

  • Nicaragua: https://www.crossroadsacupuncture.com/immersionstories/t9jetgrcpymbe3libunxhlqd3q5p67

    Mexico: https://www.madnessradio.net/borderlands-acupuncture-herman-garcia-ryan-bemis-madness-radio/

    To

FAQ’s

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email your application materials to crossroadsacu@gmail.com

Rooted in Experience

  • Build meaningful relationships with local indigenous leaders and fellow participants—grounded in mutual respect, learning, and solidarity.

  • Train with Dr. Ryan Bemis and the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement in trauma-informed care and somatic release work, as practiced in recovery centers, global health, refugee care and disaster relief settings. Educators welcome to gain real-world teaching experience at the grassroots level. You’ll get to dive into 6 webinars around Barefoot medicine, NADA protocol, Community acupuncture and trauma-informed care. In addition, you will receive one 60 minute Resilience Coaching or Consultation with Dr. Ryan Bemis to support your vision and work around trauma-informed care.

  • Explore Somatic Release techniques, including TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises), Qi Gong, and discover how to integrate them into community-based care as well as into private practice acupuncture and trauma therapy.

  • Partner with indigenous community health workers supporting survivors of genocide and underserved populations in the Guatemalan Highlands. Learn from their stories, resilience, and ancestral healing practices.

  • We’ll be tapping into our inner resilience with meditation, qi gong, breathwork, yoga, and acupuncture—for you to take with you on your personal healing while learning to also apply these tools in community healthcare settings. You’ll receive one 60 minute individualized Resilience Coaching Session, as well, to support your healing journey.

  • Explore the history of community-based acupuncture in Latin America, from its origins in the 1970s amidst civil war to its role today in global health. Meet the heroes in Guatemala who have carried this tradition forward—using acupuncture as a tool for survival, resilience, and grassroots empowerment.  We will learn how they have—and how we can—use simple, accessible mind-body technologies to respond to violence and trauma in our world today.

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“Our problems connect us with others out in the world. Service to others is helpful and part of becoming a better and a healthier person.”

—Ryan Bemis, Roots and Bridges Barefoot Teacher, Interview with Culturs Magazine

Apply to join Roots and Bridges:

An immersion into trauma healing in Guatemala

Accepting applications for 2026 and 2027!

Email all of your materials to crossroadsacu@gmail.com

How to apply

✅ 1000 + word essay about why you’re interested in this work, any experience you have working in overseas and/or community projects and what you hope to contribute to our cohort of students and the communities we serve.

✅ Resume resume outlining your relevant international and community health experience, all the licenses and certifications you hold as a health provider (including your license #), and at least one professional reference.

✅ Please include where in the world you live and work.

✅ We will email you within 1 week if you have been accepted.

A lush green tropical landscape with mountains in the background, two rustic huts with metal and thatch roofs, and vibrant greenery under a partly cloudy sky.

“​Without solidarity,

the noblest of achievements

will be washed away.”

Paul Farmer

A woman with a child riding on her back is smiling while washing clothes in a river. The scene is outdoors with mountains and cloudy sky in the background.

who can join us

✅ Harm reduction, recovery, or community health workers (New Mexico-based or international)

✅ Nurses, doctors, acupuncturists

✅ Acupuncture/Acudetox educators and providers hands-on experience with Community Acupuncture and the NADA protocol

✅ Community organizers and social entrepreneurs working in trauma recovery or public health
✅ Students or practitioners seeking hands-on experience in grassroots and global health settings

Cobblestone street in a historic town at dusk with a mountain in the background.

Support barefoot acupuncture in Guatemala

Can’t join us for Roots and Bridges? You can still support the project by donating to support the work of everyday people aiding survivors of trauma, violence and poverty in Guatemala.

*video showing is from our project in Cd Juarez, Mexico

Donate

Roots in stillness,

bridges of trust:

the heart of our Barefoot Movement

Offering acupuncture is like planting a seed of peace.
— Monsignor René Blanco, Vicar Catholic Dicese, Cd Juarez, MX
Without solidarity, the noblest of achievements will be washed away.
— Paul Farmer
If you don’t trust people, you make them untrustworthy.
— Tao Te Ching
These are hard times for all of us to trust. And it’s important we don’t stop giving it a try.
— Ryan Bemis
Behind walls, outside walls, on either side of the border walls of this world, each of us spends our days pacing around the boundaries of our limited cells of influence, bearing our heavy weights of inherited and accumulated trauma, and regularly compelled to reckon with our reliance on and rub with others that edge our spheres.
— Ryan Bemis
I need this time to be able to heal myself.
— Group participant
When I look in through their eyes, I see strength amidst susceptibility. I feel hope within desperation.
— Ryan Bemis
May you be well. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be loved.
— Loving-kindness closing from group
We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.
— Dorothy Day
Under the surface of glitter and trash in the midst of all the mess of traffic, there are the people: sick and distraught, drunk, mad, melancholy, anguished or simply bored to extinction. It is the people I love and not the roles in the city, not the glitter of business and of progress. Can’t we give them something more than air conditioning?
— Thomas Merton
I will be fond of keeping still, and the people will of themselves become correct.
— Tao Te Ching
Before this church belonged to another parish, and when I first came here there was nothing. This sector of the city was a garbage dump, where the city just threw trash away. Neighbors told us, “The grocery store is going to throw away its waste here,” and as kids we would rush out and see what we could salvage for our families. Later, little by little, people moved in until it became overpopulated. When we first came to this church, we sat on rocks in a big vacant lot. People would bring their own chairs or blocks to sit on. We sat down and listened to Mass outdoors. Later, a congregation of priests came from the United States, the Maryknolls, and they helped to build the chapel. And eventually the nuns started a health dispensary, where we offer acupuncture.
— Nancy Ortiz González, Barefoot Teacher, Ciudad Juárez
The number of NADA practitioners has multiplied from a handful to nearly a hundred in the last year alone. And it is almost entirely women who have taken up the steel, who have done over thirty-five thousand treatments, poked hundreds of thousands of needles into ears, well on their way to unleashing a million tiny daggers on the city’s side-intelligencers. I will not say the needles empowered them, because that maybe suggests the women in this city weren’t always the ones keeping it afloat.

Two years ago, the New York Times wondered if Juárez could remember hope. I suspect you could give Rosario and Esther, and all the other nuns and all the other women who now practice NADA, pretty much anything—needles or moxa or herbs or handfuls of nothing but air—and they’d find a way to ease the suffering of those around them, even just a little bit, just by showing up, just by coming together and making it clear that hope was never a thing they neglected.
— Joshua Wheeler, “A Million Tiny Daggers,” Acid West
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4 slots left! Apply now!
Two women sitting on plastic chairs against a teal wall, talking and smiling. One woman holds an open folder, and the other holds an open book. There is a bookshelf with books and some furniture in the room.

“If you don’t trust people,

you make them

untrustworthy.”


— Tao Te Ching

building bridges of solidarity

Through shared stories and hands-on experience, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how grassroots healing unfolds in communities responding to trauma, systemic violence, and historical injustice—and how you, too, can be part of this living legacy.

Trace the Barefoot journey toward a million tiny daggers — led by the women, community healers, and everyday people who make this movement possible.

4 slots left! Apply now!

Be a part of our vision for the world

Where people have the tools and capacity to heal themselves and their communities.

An older man, a younger man, and a woman are engaged in a close conversation outdoors. The older man is holding the younger man’s ear, possibly to remove something or for a health check. The scene appears to be in a casual setting, with other people visible in the background.
Three women standing in a kitchen, holding corn, dressed in traditional colorful clothing and skirts.
Three people standing together outdoors in a forest with green foliage in the background. The woman in the center wears a colorful traditional dress, the woman on the left wears a pink top and jeans, and the man on the right wears a plaid shirt, cap, and backpack, all smiling.

Stories of Barefoot acupuncture integrated into local healthcare

over 650 students….140,000 treatment….6 countries….a

nd moving forward with hope as we work to “care” it forward toward a million tiny needles

Featured
Culturs Magazine Features our global project
Culturs Magazine Features our global project

Crossroads Acupuncture not only works in Las Cruces. Our non-profit is the center of an international acupuncture project serving underserved groups. In this Culturs Magazine feature, you'll meet some of these amazing acupuncture providers and teachers that are at the heart of our Barefoot Acupuncture Movement.

Liberation acupuncture and the road of recovery ahead</a>
Liberation acupuncture and the road of recovery ahead

On the eve of the Coronavirus outbreak in the Americas, the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement’s Solidarity Immersion program travelled to Nicaragua, and gathering with a group of community workers and famers, we reflected on the question: How does solidarity show up in your world?

Madness Radio Interviews </a>Crossroads and Rahrami tribe
Madness Radio Interviews Crossroads and Rahrami tribe

Are psychiatric treatments, experts, and medications the best way for traumatized communities to heal their mental health problems? Could indigenous practices, including traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, offer a different way forward — through grassroots community development?

Madness Radio’s Will Hall explores these questions in his podcast “Borderlands Acupuncture” airing December 8, 2016. Hall joined the Barefoot Acupuncture Movement during our 2016 Immersion in Mexico, where we trained local health workers in the NADA ear acupuncture (acudetox) protocol.

“These are hard times for all of us to trust.

And it’s important we don’t stop giving it a try.”

Ryan Bemis

roots barefoot Acupuncture

A woman in a blue top receives a facial massage or treatment from a man in a pink shirt inside a brightly lit room.

The Barefoot Doctor movement offered care for millions of people in rural and underserved areas in Asia starting in the 1950’s, filling a need where urban-trained doctors would not work.  ​The World Health Organization adopted this model and started similar community health training projects. Over the past 50 years, a variety of global health programs cultivated this model in addiction and recovery, refugee, and community health projects.  ​

Our project grew out of Barefoot Doctor projects in the Americas, including the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) and the Guatemalan Acupuncture and Medical Aid Project.   Replicating these models of popular acupuncture education, we have designed and refined a core curriculum to replicate these models within global healthcare. 

Learn more

breaking down

barriers

to integrative healthcare

donate

As a 501-3-c non-profit organization, Crossroads supports the growth of clinics for the homeless, for people with addictions and psychiatric problems. We also train nurses and counselors how to offer acu based care within jails, hospitals, recovery programs, refugee care, and disaster relief.