Chinese Medicine
When qi moves freely, the body remembers how to heal itself. My work is helping it remember.
Five thousand years of pattern recognition. Twenty years of clinical practice. One integrated approach to healing you, not just your symptoms.
The medicine that treats the person, not the disease
Most people come to me after Western medicine has run its course.
They’ve been told their labs are normal, but they don’t feel right. They’re on medications that manage symptoms without addressing causes. They’ve been passed between specialists, each one treating a different part of them, none of them asking the question Chinese medicine begins with: why is this happening in this particular body, at this particular time?
Chinese medicine doesn’t separate the body from the mind, the symptom from the story, or the organ from the ecosystem it lives in. It asks where the pattern comes from — and how to restore the balance that lets your body do what it’s always known how to do: heal itself.
That’s the work. And it’s what I’ve been doing for more than twenty years.
The Taoist roots: harmony, not war
Chinese medicine grows directly out of Taoist philosophy — a worldview that sees the universe not as a collection of separate parts, but as a single living system where everything is interconnected.
In this framework, health is not the absence of disease. Health is harmony — the free flow of energy through a body in right relationship with itself, with nature, and with the rhythms of the seasons.
Disease is not an enemy to be defeated. It is a signal — a message that harmony has been disrupted somewhere, and that the body is asking for a return to balance.
This is why Chinese medicine does not fight your symptoms. It listens to them, decodes their meaning, and helps your system find its way back.
The core principles Taoism gives us — yin and yang, the five elements, the flow of qi, the wisdom of wu wei (non-forcing) — are not metaphors or mystical abstractions. They are clinical tools. They describe how the body actually works, in ways Western medicine is only beginning to confirm through research on the nervous system, the vagus nerve, circadian biology, and the microbiome.
What is qi?
Qi (pronounced chee) is the vital energy that animates every living being. It moves through the body along pathways called meridians — fourteen main channels that connect every organ, tissue, and system into a unified whole.
Think of meridians as rivers. Where the rivers flow, they carry life. They nourish every cell, every organ, every gland. They regulate your digestion, your sleep, your mood, your immunity, your hormones, your thoughts.
When qi flows freely, you feel vibrant, clear, and whole.
When qi becomes blocked — through stress, poor diet, emotional trauma, physical injury, seasonal change, overwork, or grief — the rivers dam. Nourishment stops reaching parts of you that need it. Over time, this is how chronic symptoms, fatigue, pain, inflammation, anxiety, sleep issues, and disease set in.
My work is to find where the blockages are, understand what caused them, and restore the flow.
How I practice
I trained at Five Branches University in a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine program, and I’ve been in clinical practice for over twenty years. My work is rooted in classical Chinese medicine and extended with modern tools — functional diagnostics, biomarker testing, and integration with psychedelic and herbal medicine when appropriate.
In our sessions, I use Chinese medicine as the primary lens to understand what’s happening in your body. From there, I draw on whatever tools serve you best — acupuncture, herbal formulas, bodywork, qigong prescriptions, dietary changes, nervous system regulation, and occasionally modern diagnostic testing.
I do not offer quick appointments. I offer real relationships, diagnostic precision, and enough time for the medicine to actually work.
What I treat
Chinese medicine is effective for a remarkable range of conditions. Some of the most common reasons people come to see me:
Pain & Physical Conditions
- Chronic and acute pain (neck, back, joints, muscles)
- Headaches and migraines
- Digestive issues (IBS, reflux, bloating, constipation, diarrhea)
- Women’s health (menstrual irregularities, PMS, menopause, fertility)
- Autoimmune conditions and inflammation
- Post-surgical and post-injury recovery
Mental, Emotional & Nervous System
- Anxiety, depression, and mood imbalances
- Insomnia and sleep disturbances
- PTSD and trauma
- Burnout and chronic stress
- Brain fog and cognitive fatigue
Whole-Body Patterns
- Chronic fatigue and low energy
- Hormonal imbalances
- Allergies and immune dysregulation
- Addiction recovery support
- Post-viral syndromes
- “Everything looks normal but I still don’t feel right”
If you don’t see your condition listed, reach out. Chinese medicine is a whole-system approach — if there’s an imbalance, there’s usually a way to address it.
The hands-on modalities I offer
Acupuncture is the most well-known piece of Chinese medicine, but it’s only one of several tools. Depending on your pattern, constitution, and goals, your sessions may include any combination of the following.
Acupuncture
The gentle insertion of ultra-fine, single-use, sterile needles into specific points along the meridians. Each point is chosen based on thousands of years of clinical tradition and my own assessment of your constitution and condition.
Acupuncture restores the flow of qi. It also measurably calms the nervous system, reduces inflammation, releases natural painkillers, and signals the body to shift out of fight-or-flight into rest-and-repair mode. Most patients describe the experience as deeply relaxing — many fall asleep during treatment.
Effective for: pain, anxiety, sleep, digestion, hormones, fertility, headaches, stress, trauma, and more.
Tuina
Tuina is a form of Chinese medical massage that uses rhythmic compression, rolling, pressing, and stretching techniques to move qi and blood through the meridians. It’s especially effective for musculoskeletal pain, tension patterns, and chronic holding in the body. Tuina enhances lymphatic drainage and eases stagnation that talk therapy or stretching alone often can’t reach.
Cupping
A technique used across many cultures — in Chinese medicine for thousands of years — where glass or silicone cups create gentle suction on the skin. The suction pulls stagnant blood and lymph toward the surface, bringing fresh circulation, releasing tight fascia, and supporting detoxification.
Cups may be left in place or glided across oiled skin (sliding cupping). The temporary circular marks sometimes left behind are not bruises; they reflect the degree of stagnation released.
Effective for: muscle tension, back pain, respiratory congestion, and stress.
Moxibustion
The warming of specific acupuncture points with smoldering moxa — a compressed form of the herb mugwort. Moxa’s gentle heat penetrates deeply, moves stuck qi, drives out cold and damp, and nourishes weakened tissue.
Particularly powerful for: chronic cold conditions, digestive weakness, fatigue, reproductive health (especially fertility and breech pregnancy presentation), and winter depletion.
Gua Sha
A technique in which I use a smooth jade or ceramic tool to apply firm, pressured strokes along areas of stagnation. Gua sha brings trapped blood and toxins to the surface, relieves tight fascia, releases tension, and clears inflammation.
It’s especially useful for: neck and shoulder tension, headaches, fever, immune activation at the first sign of a cold, and facial rejuvenation (in a gentler form).
Electroacupuncture (E-Stim)
For certain orthopedic, neurological, and recovery cases, I attach small electrodes to acupuncture needles and apply a low-level, comfortable electrical current. E-stim amplifies the therapeutic effect of acupuncture and is particularly effective for nerve pain, post-surgical recovery, stroke rehabilitation, and chronic joint pain.
The sensation is gentle and rhythmic — most patients find it relaxing rather than stimulating.
Food as medicine
Chinese medicine has understood for thousands of years what Western nutrition has only recently caught on to: what you eat is medicine, and what you don’t eat is often the difference between health and illness.
In Chinese dietary therapy, foods are classified not only by nutrients but by their energetic nature — warming or cooling, damp or drying — and by their five flavors, each of which nourishes a specific organ system:
- Sour supports the Liver
- Sweet supports the Spleen
- Bitter supports the Heart
- Pungent supports the Lungs
- Salty supports the Kidneys
When I work with you, I’ll often recommend specific foods tailored to your constitution and current pattern. As Sun Si Miao wrote in the 6th century: “A true physician first seeks the cause of disease and, having found it, tries to cure it by food. When food fails, then prescribes medicine.”
If you’d like to go deeper into dietary therapy, we can build it into your treatment plan.
Herbal Medicine
Long before pharmaceuticals, there were plants. Chinese herbal medicine is one of the oldest, most sophisticated pharmacopeias in the world — a living system with over 2,000 years of documented clinical use and thousands of individual herbs, each with its own temperature, direction, and energetic action.
What makes it different from the supplement aisle? Formulas are custom-built for you. I don’t prescribe the same “immune blend” or “sleep blend” to everyone. I read your pulse, look at your tongue, listen to your story — and then combine herbs in precise ratios to address your specific pattern of imbalance. A formula for your insomnia and a formula for someone else’s insomnia can look completely different, because the root cause is rarely the same.
I work with raw herbs, granules, tinctures, and traditional patent formulas, and I’m trained to check for interactions with any medications or supplements you’re already taking. Many of my patients use herbs alongside acupuncture to extend the effects of treatment between visits — it’s one of the most powerful combinations in the medicine.
Qigong
Monthly classes, private sessions, and personalized qigong prescriptions — ancient movement practices for cultivating vitality, regulating the nervous system, and strengthening qi.
If acupuncture moves your qi from the outside, qigong teaches you how to move it from the inside.
Qigong (pronounced chee-gong) is a 4,000-year-old practice of gentle movement, breath, and focused attention — the foundational self-care system of Chinese medicine. It’s simple enough for anyone to learn, and deep enough to practice for a lifetime. Modern research is catching up to what Taoist masters have known for millennia: qigong reduces stress hormones, improves sleep, calms the nervous system, lowers blood pressure, and supports immune function — all without a single pill.
I teach qigong because I believe you are your own primary healer. The treatments I offer in my clinic are powerful, but the practices you bring into your daily life are what create lasting change. My classes are accessible to every body and every experience level — whether you’ve never moved this way before or you’ve been practicing for years.
What to expect in your first session
Your first appointment is approximately 90 minutes. We’ll begin with a thorough intake — your history, your symptoms, your lifestyle, your emotional landscape. I’ll examine your tongue and palpate your pulse (both classic Chinese diagnostic tools that reveal patterns invisible to Western lab tests). Then we’ll begin treatment.
You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of what’s happening in your body, a plan for moving forward, and often immediate relief of whatever brought you in.
Follow-up sessions are typically 60 minutes and can be weekly, biweekly, or monthly depending on your condition.
Where we work together
In-person: in Boulder, Colorado and Santa Cruz, California
Virtually: for herbal consultations, dietary therapy, lifestyle counseling, and follow-up support
Acupuncture and hands-on modalities require an in-person session. Everything else can happen over Zoom.
Why Work with Me
- Doctor of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine (DAOM), Five Branches University
- Licensed Acupuncturist, California Acupuncture Board
- Licensed Herbalist
- Licensed Natural Medicine Facilitator, State of Colorado
- Certified Qigong Instructor, Holden Qigong
- 20+ years of clinical practice
- Integrative approach combining classical Chinese medicine with functional diagnostics and psychedelic-informed care
- Small by design — I take few enough patients to know each one deeply
Testimonials
Chinese Medicine Testimonial
Judy T.
Aptos, California
Chinese Medicine Testimonial
Steve L.
Louisville, Colorado
Frequently Asked Questions
Most people are surprised by how painless it is. Acupuncture needles are about the width of a human hair — nothing like the hollow needles used for injections. You may feel a brief pressure or warmth as a point activates, but the overwhelming sensation is relaxation. Many patients fall asleep during treatment.
Some insurance plans cover acupuncture — coverage varies by plan, provider, and condition. I can provide a superbill for out-of-network reimbursement. Let’s discuss details during your discovery call.
It depends entirely on what’s bringing you in, how long you’ve had it, and how your body responds. Acute issues (a recent injury, a cold coming on) may resolve in 1–3 sessions. Chronic conditions typically require a series of sessions followed by maintenance. I’ll give you an honest estimate after your first appointment.
In almost all cases, yes — acupuncture and most modalities have virtually no interactions with pharmaceuticals. For herbal formulas, I carefully review any medications you’re taking before prescribing. Safety is non-negotiable in my practice.
Absolutely — and I encourage it. Chinese medicine works beautifully alongside conventional medicine. I’ll communicate with your other providers whenever helpful.
Ready to begin?
The best way to find out if we’re a good fit is a short, no-pressure call.