Frequently Asked Questions

What is Traditional Chinese Medicine?
Traditional Chinese Medicine is based on a 2000-year tradition of clinical observations and testing, and the recording of those observations. It is a complex medical system that offers explanations for both health and disease, providing a picture of the totality of a patient’s symptoms, and facilitating an understanding of the patient’s particular pattern of disharmony that encompasses the entire problem. Treatment tools include food therapy, lifestyle counseling, acupuncture, traditional herbal prescriptions, tui na, which is a form of medical massage, and moxibustion, a form of heat therapy. These tools are used to correct the disharmony, and restore balance to the system.

What is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture is one treatment modality within Traditional Chinese Medical practice. It involves the insertion of very fine-gauged needles into selected energy channels along the body surface, called meridians. Often heat or electrical stimulation is applied while the needles are in place. There are fourteen major meridians that run like rivers flowing through the body and over its entire surface. These channels irrigate and nourish the tissues and organs by circulating a subtle energy called Qi.  Qi is the vital force that organizes and energizes each human body, mind, and spirit. It must flow unimpeded in order to sustain life. Acupuncture needles unblock obstructions to the flow of Qi, thereby correcting patterns of disharmony, which we in the West define as disease. These needles can also be manipulated to improve energy and encourage the body to maintain its own health.

What is Classical Homeopathy?
Classical Homeopathy takes the Traditional Chinese Medicine paradigm one step further, addressing the patient’s world-view. If, as a practitioner, I listen carefully to how a patient perceives his/her life experience, I may be able to discern a deeper pattern of disharmony at the level of perception. This could be a thought, a feeling, even a recurring dream, all of which can disturb the Qi, and initiate a pathological syndrome. Using medicines derived from nature, Classical Homeopathy deals with this perceptual driving force that is behind all the patient’s symptoms by mirroring it back to the patient, rather than changing it.  This allows the patient to access alternate perceptions; thus providing a new way for the patient to respond to his/her experience.

What are the advantages of using these two modalities in concert with each other? 
Traditional Chinese Medicine immediately addresses the stress caused by the pattern of disharmony, thereby relieving the patient’s symptoms. Classical Homeopathy then goes further, addressing the driving forces that initially caused the pattern of disharmony to develop. The inner perceptual changes that the patient is now able to make promote healing at a deeper level.

Explain your belief in “whole family” treatment.
Healing is a process that involves change. If any one member of the family begins to change, it alters the dynamic of the whole, putting pressure on all the family members to change. If one is healthy, this pressure is interpreted as inspiration. If one is stuck, however, in a pattern of disharmony, pressure is interpreted as an additional stress . . . often followed by combustion. Whole family treatment illuminates the experience for all concerned, and allows true healing to occur.

What is your personal philosophy of healing? 
Simply put, healing is a process that restores harmony and increases our capacity to fully engage life.

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