Heart & Hands Health Collective

08/25/2025

☯️ Supporting Immunity with Traditional Chinese Medicine ☯️

Sunday Sept 21, 2025 – 1:00 – 3:00pm
Facilitated by Jaay (Jade) Kulhawy-Bartlett, R.Ac. & Christina Chan, R.Ac.

~2 hrs in length
Hand-outs and moxa stick are provided
BRING SLIPPERS, a pen, notebook & your imagination!

MASKING REQUIRED – we are prioritizing the health and safety of our staff and attendees. If you forget yours, we will have medical masks available for $2 😷😷😷

Cold and flu season is upon us and many of us spend the fall-winter-spring season in this revolving door of illness, slow recovery and back into illness, over and over for months. Those with certain work environments (ie. outdoors, small offices, schools, health care) or certain elements at home (ie. kids, pets, mold, dust). Some unfortunate souls spend the majority of the colder months with perpetual sniffles, sore throats and general malaise as they drag through one illness to the next 🤒🥴🤧

Furthermore, transitions between seasons are also a time where you may be more vulnerable to external pathogenic invasions due to the waxing and waning of the seasonal energies as we exit one season to enter the next 🦠🦠🦠

And in pandemic times, it is additionally important to support and protect immunity to avoid COVID infection or to ensure you recover effectively and fully after the fact so your risk of lingering symptoms or long COVID is reduced.

Our session will include a basic introduction to the TCM theory of immunity as well as teaching 3 practical and accessible and traditional approaches (1) Moxibustion, (2) Gua sha and (3) Lifestyle/diet therapy for supporting and/or rebuilding immunity.

Workshop registration fees are $15-25 sliding scale. Pay what you can afford.

Registration opens August 25, 2025, visit our link in bio to register online or stop by our front desk.

08/25/2025

Our session will include a basic introduction to the TCM theory of immunity as well as teaching 3 practical and accessible and traditional approaches (1) Moxibustion, (2) Gua sha and (3) Lifestyle/diet therapy for supporting and/or rebuilding immunity.

This is a basic introduction to the TCM theory of immunity as well as teaching 3 traditional, practical and accessible approaches.

08/22/2025

A reminder that our tiny, but mighty acupunking team will be taking a well-deserved break August 30th - Sept 1st for the Labour Day weekend, so they'll be ready to rock for the back-to-school rush!

But don't forget,  will still be doing their monthly pop-up Saturday August 30th, 11:00am - 4:00pm AND they still have openings from 2:00pm onwards. If you're jonesing for a flash piece or perhaps a consult for custom work, BOOK NOW, there will be no tattoo pop-up for September!!

Otherwise, our Community Acupuncture, Cupping & Gua Sha schedule is open for September-October. Art Therapy sessions with Sonya () are ready and waiting for you. Also...upcoming Craniosacral Therapy as well as Relaxation Massage sessions with Bre Johnston (.acu) are opening up soon...

Invest in a healthy, focused and regulated start to the school year, head to our link in bio to book your late summer - early fall care!!

08/20/2025

I started coming to Heart & Hands 7 years ago, my mind and body have benefited greatly from this decision. I had no prior experience with acupuncture and no idea how much it would help me. I first came seeking help with ongoing pain, digestion and stress issues following a Bilateral inguinal hernia surgery. Christina Chan helped so much that I have been going ever since. 

In July 2024 I suffered a severe concussion that stopped me from being able to work, drive, play music (drummer) and be able to enjoy day to day "life", but every time I went to see Christina, I would be able to rest. My mind would be able to relax and the constant "noise" would go away. 

Over time my symptoms would take longer and longer to return and when they did they would be more manageable. I would not be where I am without her help and I thank Christina and the Heart & Hands Health Collective for their ongoing support.

Thank you!
S.S.

We love community. And we love stories. Humans of Heart & Hands is a collection of practitioner, volunteer & client accounts of how Heart & Hands Health Collective has made a positive impact in their lives.

Your stories are a living document of how community acupuncture can change the world, shifting societal views about self-care, the use of traditional modalities for prevention as well as supporting our organization and it’s hardworking practitioners.

08/18/2025

Our lean mean acupunking team is taking some well-deserved vacation time at the end of the summer, which means changes to our Community Acupuncture and Cupping/Gua Sha hours at the end of August!

Jade will be away from Friday August 22nd to Tuesday September 2nd, so Christina will be extending her Tuesday-Friday hours by 1 hour earlier/later to accommodate her absence:

📍 Friday Aug 22, *2:00 - 7:45pm

📍 Tuesday Aug 26, 9:30am - *3:30pm

📍 Wednesday Aug 27, *2:00 - 7:45pm

📍 Thursday Aug 28, 9:30am - *3:30pm

📍 Friday Aug 29, *2:00 - 7:45pm

📍 Tuesday Sept 2, 9:30am - *3:30pm

Then it will be Christina's turn to get away from Saturday August 30 - Monday Sept 1, so the clinic will be CLOSED over the Labour Day weekend. 

And as always, this is our PSA to BOOK AHEAD with the gradual return to school and winding down of the summer season...eep. Our schedule is wide open for September and October. Thank your future self by planning ahead for your late summer self-care 🫶😴

08/17/2025

Since Heart & Hands Health Collective was slated to table at TransFest today before the community response to zi*nist involvement, I wanted to make a bit of a statement regarding my feelings about how things unfolded.

First off, I and our collective are staunchly anti-zi*nist and anti-imperialist. We are committed to the mission of Liberation Acupuncture. We have never equivocated about this.

As the news started to roll in, I was looking forward to being there in vocal and visible solidarity with the anti-zio contingent, with all of us showing up still in community, providing services by donation in support of Gazans suffering under an horrific genocide. I knew other trans vendors who were looking to do the same thing.

The community member who was at the centre of the concern was speaking for a total of 3 minutes, and in my opinion going to boo and turn our backs would have made much more connection between all of us than a total shuttering of the event. It was disappointing to see the sponsors and vendors drop off one by one, resulting in the event being canceled.

I understand that things I didn’t witness included repeated attempts by other members of the organizing team to rectify their complaints with the founder, including disassociating the event from the offending individual. Undoubtedly there were many steps along the way where things could have, and should have, ended differently.

I feel the rage, and the urge to purge the soul rot from our communities that allows people to so wholly dehumanize others and try to exterminate them. I hear the appeals to safety from those who have been endangered by the actions of the person in question. I also know that appeals to safety and purging people in the pursuit of ideological or other purity sound a lot like the motivations of those to whom we are opposed. This is the insidious nature of fascism: in fighting it one can risk replicating it. I believe the actions of the Isr*eli government and settlers are an example of exactly that.

I think we are at a moment where if we take for granted our position in society as trans people, and do not seek to build broad coalitions, we will be faced with an ever more uncertain and dangerous future. This doesn’t mean to abandon the most radical and liberatory of our political dreams. But it does mean being strategic and finding commonalities where we can find them and building a larger movement than we can sustain alone. This does not mean people learning to say and do the ‘right thing’. It is a messy act of creation that takes all of us hashing it out together.

I’m not claiming that I know the right way, in fact I reject a notion of a single right way. But I am also rejecting that what happened yesterday was the only way for us to respond. I would like a little more for our community than fracture and animosity. I’m not saying I condone people digging in their heels, but when call-outs happen on a disembodied stage like social media, the only natural way for a human to respond is with defensiveness and stubbornness.

I would like this to be read less as a finger-wag at the efforts of those people yesterday who brought issues to public attention, and more as a dream for the future. We need spaces to come together. And yes, we need to address the presence of community members who have outlasted their usefulness as bulwarks of the collective.

Let this be my dream for something better for all of us.

Jade Kulhawy-Bartlett, R.Ac

08/15/2025

A reminder that next pop-up is happening on Saturday August 30th and they still have openings from 2pm on!!

Sooooo if you're looking to book a flash appointment or perhaps a consultation for future ink, head over to our link in bio to book your spot for the end of the month!

And FYI, no pop-up for Vic in September, but pop-up dates from October 2025 till February 2026 are up and waiting for you in heartandhands.janeapp.com!

Head to heartandhands.janeapp.com to book 🌈🌈🌈

08/13/2025

https://www.heartandhandscommunity.ca/2025/07/the-joys-and-pains-of-gardening-cupping-gua-sha-for-acute-low-back-pain-by-jaay-jade-kulhawy-bartlett-r-ac/

If you’re like me and many of us who live in the “City of Gardens” you might be experiencing the slow build-up of stiffness or pain from the ongoing maintenance of your beloved backyard-, balcony…

08/11/2025

https://www.heartandhandscommunity.ca/2025/07/updates-from-sonya-gracey-art-therapist-of-otherways-creative/

Hello lovely Heart & Hands community! I wanted to write this small update to let you know how my first few months have been here doing art therapy at this wonderful community third space – and in…

08/07/2025

Good evening Heart & Hands Collective,

I’m just hoping you can please pass this message on to acupuncturist Christina, I saw her last Tuesday for an appointment as a perinatal patient. I ended up delivering my son less than two days later, on June 5th at 3:46am. He is a beautiful, healthy baby boy weighing 8lbs and 10 ounces.

Thank you again for your treatment, expertise, and support on Tuesday, Christina!

Cheers,
A.L.

Did you know? Heart & Hands offers safe, drug-free and affordable care throughout your pregnancy journey, whether you are trying to conceive, managing the symptoms and discomforts during, preparing to give birth or needing post-partum support, we are the place! Find out more, Pokes for pregnancy: Community Acupuncture for happy, healthy parents & babies.

08/04/2025

🎉🎉🎉Introducing Breanna Johnston, Diploma of Acupuncture🎉🎉🎉

We are delighted to introduce the newest future member of our tiny acupunking team who will initially be offering Craniosacral Therapy & Therapeutic Massage services, but with the future intention of joining the ranks of Christina & Jade as part of our Community Acupuncture practitioner team!

📢 STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES ONCE HER OFFERINGS BECOME AVAILABLE LATE SUMMER/EARLY FALL!! 📢

Breanna or Bre (she/they) lives and practices on the unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples, also known today as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

She came to acupuncture not as a calling, but as a lifeline. In her early 20s, Bre entered what would become a long and often isolating stretch of illness — years of being dismissed, misdiagnosed, and trying to survive with complex conditions no one could quite name. Like many, she had to become her own advocate: researching, navigating fragmented care, and trying to piece things together on her own.

In 2009, she was lucky enough to experience community acupuncture at Six Degrees in Toronto, where, for the first time, she felt truly seen. The care offered there was financially and physically accessible, consistent, and rooted in mutual respect — and it changed the course of her life. Acupuncture has supported her ever since, and it’s been a long-held dream to pay that care forward.

Bre is currently offering relaxation massage and craniosacral therapy at Heart & Hands while preparing to write her licensing exams in October. In addition to her Diploma of Acupuncture.

She welcomes people of all backgrounds and bodies, whether you’re managing complex, chronic conditions or seeking support for acute pain or stress.

Outside the clinic, she makes experimental music and engages in community-rooted creative work that helps her stay connected to process, collaboration, and care.

For Bre's full bio, visit, https://www.heartandhandscommunity.ca/acupunks/ -johnston-diploma-of-acupuncture

08/01/2025

Introducing Bre Johnston, Cupping & Gua Sha for Acute Low Back Pain & Updates from Sonya Gracey, Art Therapist! - https://mailchi.mp/8a220729dcbd/hhnewsletter-aug2025