The Local Healer Acupuncture

10/23/2025

A beautiful day. Olive and I send our love and gratitude.

10/21/2025

Happy Tihar and Blessings to Yama, the God of Death, and to all the Crows who serve him. 🕯️

10/14/2025

So happy for the season of Fires and Sweaters!

09/30/2025

The last couple of weeks, folks are reporting that they’ve got “sluggish digestion,” as well as some sleep disturbance. Some folks are adding that they are trying to clear up their schedules because they are feeling more like being at home and don’t have the energy to be out socializing as much as they did this summer. So, I wanted to return to the idea of the Autumn season and how the gesture of this time might be reverberating through our lives.

Right now, the climate is shifting from the expansive warmth of summer toward the containment of winter. Autumn is this in-between time: some days are still hot, others suddenly cool. This back-and-forth unsettles the balance of evaporation and condensation. Clouds gather, heavy with moisture, preparing to release.

In Chinese medicine, autumn belongs to the Lungs and their paired organ, the Large Intestine. The Lung is associated with Gathering Qi (Zong Qi), the form of Qi created when the breath we take in mixes with the nutrients from our food. The Gathering Qi supports both Lung function (breath, chest opening/closing) and Heart function (circulation, rhythm). I’ve written about the Qi Cycle here, in case “Gathering Qi” is something you’ve never heard of and want to read more about it.
Grief, the Po, and the Body’s Wisdom

Each organ has a corresponding aspect of mind. For the Lung, it is the Po, often translated as the “corporeal” or somatic soul. I sometimes describe the Po as our inner “scuba gear” for being alive on earth: it regulates the background functions that keep us here, like the breath, heartbeat and peristalsis of the gut, without our conscious effort.

Read more...

The Lungs and the Cycle of Release

09/30/2025

As I wrote earlier this year, I’m now out-of-network with Providence because they decided to start using a third-party to manage their acupuncture benefits.

I know this is frustrating, especially since many of you signed contracts with Providence for the year. If you’d like to understand your rights or file a complaint with the Insurance Division of the Oregon Department of Financial Regulation1, please email me. I spoke with my contact there and can get you his direct email and phone.

09/30/2025

New batch of soap 🧼 I’m cutting to cure. It’s a celebration of the PNW forests and so much of what I remember growing up: cedar, nettles and hazelnut. It’s going to be ready for the holidays. 🥹
Making soap is one of the things that brings me a little extra joy in this one beautiful life. I hope you’re getting to do some of your joyful things to keep your spirit fed while you keep fighting the good fight.
All my love 🐙

09/28/2025

What AIM and similar trials really offer is not final proof, but evidence that acupuncture can help some women through one of the hardest parts of menopause: safely, and sometimes profoundly.

What AIM and similar trials really offer is not final proof, but evidence that acupuncture can help some women through one of the hardest parts of menopause: safely, and sometimes profoundly.

09/13/2025

When the world is a dumpster fire, sometimes it feels better to make pretty things to gift to the hearts and bellies of the people we love.
This is a little version of Thomas Keller’s Ratatouille (“Confit Byaldi”) that Remy serves Anton Ego in one of our families favorite animated films.

08/31/2025

A few photos from the Yurt this weekend.

The thyme is coming in! Thanks so much for the suggestion

The cups were put to good use last week with all the sore shoulders and backs from gardening and hiking and playing in the sun.

Loving the beautiful spawning salmon carving by we found at .

The cross orb weavers have molted 3 or 4 times and are slowly learning to stay out of the pathways. They should be laying their own eggs in a month or so.

08/14/2025

Find the link to this post in my bio.

As the field of healthcare continues to evolve, many of us are feeling the strain of constant change. But if we slow down, listen, and keep advocating for each other and for medicines that honor the whole body, reduce pain, and restore connection, there is room for many ways of knowing and practicing in the system.

Biologist Lynn Margulis taught us, “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.” And as Janine Benyus says, “Life creates conditions conducive to life.”

In that spirit, acupuncture remains the only approach that integrates all categories of points within a holistic framework aimed at restoring balance across the whole body–mind–spirit system. But there should be room for all forms of point-based care. If we can work together across disciplines and focus on what truly matters, we should be able to keep sight of our shared goal: reducing suffering and supporting healing in the world. These changes can become an opportunity rather than a threat. After all, that’s what this work is supposed to be about.

08/14/2025

Biologist Lynn Margulis taught us, “Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking.” And as Janine Benyus says, “Life creates conditions conducive to life.”

In that spirit, acupuncture remains the only approach that integrates all categories of points within a holistic framework aimed at restoring balance across the whole body–mind–spirit system. But there should be room for all forms of point-based care. If we can work together across disciplines and focus on what truly matters, we should be able to keep sight of our shared goal: reducing suffering and supporting healing in the world. These changes can become an opportunity rather than a threat. After all, that’s what this work is supposed to be about.

https://www.thelocalhealer.com/blog/dry-needling-versus-acupuncture-in-oregon-whats-changing-and-why-it-matters?

In that spirit, acupuncture remains the only approach that integrates all categories of points within a holistic framework aimed at restoring balance across the whole body–mind–spirit system. But there should be room for all forms of point-based care. If we can work together across disciplines a...

08/03/2025

Feeling moody, weepy, or wired-tired during perimenopause? You’re not alone. And you’re not broken.
A brand new meta-analysis (2025) just confirmed what many of us have already been seeing in the clinic: acupuncture helps with menopausal depression. And it does this without affecting hormones.
Turns out, it’s not just about E2, FSH, or LH. It’s about recalibrating the whole system: nervous, emotional, energetic.
Acupuncture works through the neuroendocrine web, not just the ovaries.
Full study: He et al., Frontiers in Psychiatry (2025).