About Acupuncture & Traditional Chinese Medicine

Acupuncture is a stand-alone medical art that has the potential to help with any physical or psychological condition or disease.

The lens of Chinese medicine views a person as a unique, whole individual. It describes, in its own medical language, how humans have always functioned both internally and in relationship to the external world. Internal functions include the ability to relate to our self and the organization of material into coherent organs and tissues that function to produce energy and substance from food and oxygen. External functions include relationship to other people and defense and adaptation to an ever-changing physical and emotional environment. 

I have worked with hundreds of individuals over the course of 16 years and am constantly amazed at acupuncture’s potential to help health challenges. It sometimes seems like magic when an age-old problem heals in just a few treatments. After all, if only tiny wire needles with no physical medication in or on them have been the sole intervention, what caused the change? Acupuncture clearly works at a different level than pharmaceuticals. Healing for most folks is a process, one of undoing a long accumulation of factors that have taken their body or mind off of the course of health. These factors more often than not do not show up in western medical testing.

I began my studies at Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine and continued my education studying for 7 years with Dr Tran Viet Tzung, a gifted and inspired teacher and  physician from France. I then had the great fortune to begin studies with Ann Cecil-Sterman, author of the book Advanced Acupuncture. She has inspired me with her knowledge, compassion and thorough integration of classical Chinese medicine from the Han Dynasty. Her teacher, Dr Jeffrey Yuen, has for more than 30 years taught from a lineage tradition which has never been documented in writing, instead being passed down orally through 88 generations. His teachings are knowledge from a primary source, much of which was abandoned over the centuries in China. At the heart of this knowledge is taking into account a person’s essence, their true self, and then exploring what has gotten in the way of its expression. The compliment channels are the place where these accumulations of life are stored in the body and likewise released with acupuncture therapy. This body of wisdom not only informs acupuncturists of how to help people, it also helps everyone understand how they function and how they can help themselves.

 In my practice I see one person per hour in order to give each my full attention and presence. I also plan to practice this medicine until I’m 100 years old so I’ve chosen what for me is a sustainable pace.

If you have questions about your condition I offer a free 10-minute phone consultation for evaluation.

Patients who continue with acupuncture “tune-ups” several times per year, after help with more severe issues, report that they feel better, get sick less often, and maintain a greater sense of well-being. Your body benefits from a tune-up just like your car benefits from a regular oil change and tune-up. The most elegant practice of medicine is prevention of illness.