Acupunktrix: Acupuncture, Apothecary, Birth and Death Guide (2025)

11/08/2025

Since moving from Los Angeles to Buffalo, the sun 🌞 has become my drug of choice.
I’ve lost any goth cred I may have had, because chasing sunlight has become my passion.

Around the summer solstice I harvested yarrow and the brilliant yellow blooms of St. John’s Wort flowers and steeped them in avocado oil in a sunny window until the oil became a deep vermilion.

St. John’s Wort is a powerful anti depressant which actually sensitizes you to the sun. It brings joy and lightness. If you’re on any pharmaceutical antidepressants, thyroid meds, certain mugraine meds, warfarin, and birth control (anything that uses cytochrome p450) as well as if pregnant or breastfeeding is considered unsafe to take internally, but as a topical oil in very small amounts (a few drops) it can be lovely to ease pain and bring the uplifting power of the sun on metaphorically (and literally) dark days (only use on covered places to avoid sun sensitivity).

I made the oil for use in the winter, to bring that energy into the grey days, but I may use most of it up before then 😂.

It smells incredible like hibiscus and strawberry with the slightest hint of allspice and anise.

Every day I shuffle the deck and flip the top card from The Herb Crafters tarot to give me inspiration for the day. Hilariously, I pulled St. John’s wort today. I was already planning to strain the flowers from the oil this morning!

I rubbed some of the nourishing oil into my sore spine and over my heart and felt a smile radiate from my lips.

I needed this energy today. The world feels so heavy. It is hard to find calm and peace in the middle of a time that is fraught with evil and fear. But today, I applied the oil like an anointing. I choose joy. As an act of resistance. I choose the light inside me, because I am not going to be an effective healer or activist or mother or partner if I succumb to the devastation that the right wants me to feel.

We can take back our power. They want us broken, but we are healing. They want us cowering, but we are brave. They want us to give up, but instead we will rise up. We will beam sunlight so their lies and cruelty and greed and prejudice are exposed for all to see.

St. John’s Wort is one precious ally to help us fortify ourselves right now.

In what ways are you nourishing your body and soul in this moment?

07/08/2025

Nature offers us the opportunity to bask in relative silence, to give our brains a break from the need for constant background noise, rhythm, and information. It’s like a reset button for your nervous system.

There was a time when I would wear headphones when I walked in the woods, music thumping in my ears or the chatter of podcasts or audio books. But I realized that wearing headphones divorces me from the environment, and steals away the opportunity to be fully present in nature.

I can, perhaps, understand wearing headphones if you need to drown out the sounds of the big city or unpleasant and unnatural noises, or you’re running on a track or down asphalt. But nature demands our full attention.

When I see people hiking with headphones on now I feel a little sad. But when people walk through the woods and blare their music on a speaker, my initial response is rage. I breathe and actively tell myself to let that s**t go, but it’s challenging to relax and listen when people are disrupting the natural environment.

I read somewhere that the brain needs two hours of relative silence every day. We need time without a soundtrack to process and organize all the input we are receiving.

We need time to listen for birds and rain and scampering feet and the rustle of leaves and the rushing of water.

We also need to be aware of our surroundings as a safety measure. Not all humans are safe and some animals may be dangerous simply because they are big or hungry or protecting their young.

I once had a herd of giant bucks stampede past me and my daughter, coming within inches of our bodies. We barely had seconds of lead time to step out of the way as we suddenly heard the swiftly approaching hooves. If we’d had headphones on, we might have been trampled.

Listening to nature is necessary for our health and safety, but also for our spirit.

How can we hear the lessons of the natural world if we are not listening?

There is so much wisdom in nature, and it offers us the gift of renewal if only we allow ourselves to hear.

05/08/2025

Every element can feed us or destroy us, but nothing captivates us like🔥 fire. We are instinctively drawn to its heat and glow. Simply sitting by a campfire and gazing into the flickering flames is a medicine nearly as old as humanity.

In Chinese medicine, the body is said to function optimally when it is kept pleasantly warm, & when the digestive fire is stoked. Food, drinks, & herbs with warm energy like ginger and cinnamon, foot soaks, hot packs, fire cupping, and moxibustion ( the burning of mugwort floss on or near the body) are all ways of bringing a cold weak or stagnant aching body into balance.

But fire can also be pathological, too much spice, infection, exercise, s*x, work etc cause an excess heat, and a flaming fire that scorches body fluids and burns too hot and too bright to be healing. It can show up as a rapid and slippery pulse, a bright red tongue with red spots or a yellow coat. Deficiency heat, however, is like the heat in an engine when you run out of oil. It comes from not enough fluid, rest, or dwindling hormones. It may look like hot flashes, irritability, insomnia, or dryness. It manifests in a thready pulse with a dry red tongue with no coat.

When we bring the Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Metal inside of us into balance with one another, we have flow and optimal health.

Last, night I attended Flow Jam, a free weekly gathering about 2 miles from my home. Fire performers dazzled us on the edge of the lake to the sounds of a live band. One wrong move and something so beautiful could become painful or even deadly. And yet, with respect and expert hands, fire can be absolutely beautiful. Something about dancing on the edge of danger makes it all the more exciting. I’ve dated TWO professional fire breathers and circus performers, but I was still captivated.
It made me contemplate the delicate balance of fire in the lives and bodies of not only my patients, but myself. Where can fire and energy feed and warm me? Where do I need to cool that burn with rest and fluids and gentleness? What do I need to approach with caution and respect? Where do I need to be brave? Fire is a teacher, if we are willing to listen.

04/08/2025

Chinese medicine is all about balance. Yin and yang, hot and cold, solar and lunar, active and receptive, work and play. When we are out of balance, when we can have too much or not enough of one element, it causes stagnation, a lack of flow, or other physical and emotional symptoms that alert us to the imbalance so we can correct it.

Tonight, I watched the delightful acrobats of the balance gracefully while on a rocking raft at the edge of Lake Erie. Their playful performance was infused with whimsy and imagination, made all the more special by the perfect weather and pink sunset.

Balance takes practice. Whether it’s balancing a boot on a pole, suspending yourself from a trapeze, healing your gut, or creating healthy work and life boundaries, we need to mindfully practice, every day, what it feels like to be in balance, to be in flow, to be gently aware of the subtle shifts within our environment and within us that tell us what little adjustments we need to make.

It was easy for me to feel joy and excitement and capacity when my body was cooperating, but now with this new set back of the Prolia side effects, I have to be so much more aware of my needs and the delicate balancing act required of me.

To attend the Circus tonight, required me to stay in bed for most of the day. I also know that the effects are temporary, maybe five months. Hopefully less. But this time around I’m going to find a way to be less devastated and more curious, less anxious and more playful. I am going to find ways to take pleasure in rest and tune in to the quiet messages my body is sending me about the ways it needs support right now.

I am grateful for infusions of magic. For community and collaboration and people who make joy accessible. If you can, go see Flotsam River Circus as they move down the Erie Canal to NYC. Tomorrow they’ll be in Tonawanda, then Lewiston. Shows are free, donations appreciated.

What ways are you cultivating balance within your own life?

01/08/2025

Two weeks ago, I got the 3rd dose of a medication for my extremely severe osteoporosis. The medication causes horrible side effects in me including extreme exhaustion and increasing bone, muscle, and nerve pain. The two months prior to this injection, I was doing the best I’ve done since my brain hemorrhage, seizures, and fractures. I felt like myself
again! Out in nature, working, writing, protesting, cooking, creating art.

This week all I can manage is a short walk and then barely getting through my work day. Otherwise, I’ve been mostly in bed. I stretch and take my herbs and magnesium baths and acupuncture, but it may simply be a matter of waiting 5 months again for the side effects to recede.

Still, I force myself to walk. Even if it’s just a 1,000 steps, I need to keep moving. I refuse to let the side effects of this recent prolia injection steal my joy again. Even if have to spend the rest of the day in bed, it’s better than spending the whole day in bed.

I am strongest in the morning, so that’s when I walk. It means that I may get nothing else on my to do list done, but I feel like prioritizing my health and trying to push through and maintain any forward momentum I gained in the two months between injections is of utmost importantance in the long term.

Today, I decide to walk in the patch of woods at the edge of the neighborhood. It’s a liminal space, an example of the necropastoral if ever there was one.

I’m only 25 yards in when a deer walks directly towards me. I offer her some sunflower seeds on the ground a few feet from me. She accepts and begs for more.
I tell her she’s a good girl and continue on.

There is more trash than I’ve ever seen and a random red bell pepper. Several people are living in make shift encampments in these woods. Last year, or maybe the year before, crews came through and thinned out tons of trees to prevent such a thing, but there are more people trying to survive in here then ever.
Just like the deer, that I now notice are flanking me and increasing in number as I continue down the path.

A fox darts in front of me, crows caw, starlings stammer, rabbits rush, a toad hops, butterflies open and close their wings, and a snake slithers past at an astounding pace. Nature and man eeking out a life at the edge of urbanity, and in the midst of decay.

The wild grapes and sweet peas wrap their tendrils over everything. The mugwort, having reached the peak of its power at the summer solstice is starting to die back. Above me staghorn sumac sways, and above that, the sweet cotton wood shimmers with the light morning breeze.

These woods are a paradise for deliquent teens. I find one perched on the big, graffiti covered retaining wall, smoking a blunt. The sides of his head are shaved, but the top is all Afro. He’s beautiful, wire rimmed glasses giving him an air of sophistication like a beat poet. We exchange hellos, and I clamor down the steep path towards the car.

When I am nearly there, the “always do” man zooms by on his scooter. I see him around a lot. He is middle aged with bright blue eyes, a close cropped white beard and a sing song voice. He is always the first to say “have a nice day,” and when you inevitably say “you, too” he replies “I always do.”

I take it for a good omen, like passing the Happy/Sad Foot sign (rip) on Sunset Blvd when the smiling foot is facing you.

It’s been a rough week, in many ways that I don’t share here. I know, it’s hard to believe there are things that I don’t blurt out to the world. But it’s true.😂

I hope I can turn it around. With intention and my choices, I CAN turn it around.

I always do.

29/07/2025

Gaza. 2002. I took this photo. This is the family of a man named Ali, who served as a guide when I traveled with the International Solidarity Movement to help make connections and lay ground work for international observers and activist work in Gaza. I think around 30-40% of our group was Jewish and Ali always wanted people to know that. He was so eager to help us to see each other as human.

Ali’s large family lived in a small house and had very limited resources. But when his wife (in the blue hijab) heard that I was ill, she cooked me a massive several course meal and brought it to my bedside. She had no way of knowing that I was both a vegan and suffering from severe nausea. She’d cooked a turkey, and a raw egg puréed with wild greens, amongst many other delicacies. She knelt beside me and literally fed me with her own hands. Of course, I choked it all down. Her actions were pure love and I wanted to accept them in the spirit they were offered.

I think about them all the time. The children that must now have children of their own. Are they dead? Are they alive? I do not know.

Things were horrible for Palestinians back then, but they are so much worse now.

I am always trying to give context, as a Jew, to acknowledge Jewish fear and suffering, historical and at present, and to also speak out about the rising tide of antisemitism in Islam, on the left, and amongst the right wing. But there is no way around the absolutely criminal behavior of the Israeli government and army right now.

And if we are being truthful, the starving and massacre and destruction of Palestinians does not and will not make Jews around the world safer. Instead, it turns us into the very thing we have despised and spoken out against for thousands of years.

Is there a spreading of some disinformation, hatred, and propaganda on both sides, sure. But I am horrified by the ethical gymnastics that I hear from many of the Jewish people I love. Regardless of the October 7th attack by Hamas, the murder of 60,000 Palestinians (many of whom are women and children) cannot ever be justified.

As a Jew, I want to be very clear, Not in my name! Never again is now.

28/07/2025

Custom care is truly holistic care. Every person who walks through my clinic door is an individual and needs individual treatment. One size does not fit all.

First, you need a detailed health history. Then, you need to ask good questions and listen deeply to the answers.

I could see four people with headaches within the same day and they might all get different treatments and different herbs, because I look for the root of the issue. Yes, I also want to treat the branch (the symptoms), but I want to know WHY they are out of balance and how we can work together to help achieve harmony.

Making custom herbal formulas, treatments and teas is fun because we can easily adjust a treatment over time to reflect the needs and changes of the body.

I was busy making teas and foot soaks this morning, concocting potions after I put needles in and the patient is resting comfortably.

I am fond of asking my patients what THEY think they need. Their instincts are often very good. I can use my expert guidance to help give them options, but it is always up to them to decide what feels right and will work best for them, not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, practically (do they love the ritual of making tea or would a quick tincture be better?), and even financially.

If we aren’t listening, we aren’t serving and we aren’t facilitating healing.

Your listening ears (or reading eyes if you are hearing impaired) are your most valuable skill.

#716

27/07/2025

To continue my thoughts, re: my last post.
Times are strange and frightening. It is ok to take a moment to reflect, to feel the push and pull of your emotions and experiences, to try to sort out where you are and where you’re going.

I’ve reached a stage in my stroke recovery where I am (knock wood) no longer in acute crisis, but can begin to respond with careful thought and awareness and a focus on building health as opposed to simply trying to stay alive.

I am in a place professionally, where I can begin to focus on enriching and feeding my own wisdom, focus on teaching and sharing knowledge while still sitting at the feet of both nature and mentors, focus on giving my patients the tools to connect with their own insight and potential.

I am at a place in my activism, where I am figuring out where and how I can be most effective. The injustices happening in the world are ever present for me. My dreams are almost always about Palestine or the safety of my trans children or various forms of rebellion and political upheaval. From donating money to protesting to calling representatives to art creation to direct action to serving my community…how do I find balance and remained rooted in a humble and sustainable response to the heartbreak of the world and the aggressions of our leaders.

For me in this moment it is nurturing my connection with the earth, my family, my friends and my community. It is writing, it is beginning to reconnect with herbal allies and the voices of my ancestors. It is in listening to the stories of the people most affected by any given situation. It is in creating a clinic that offers refuge and safe space. It is in focusing on my own internal work and self healing and growth. It is in dance and art and song and love. Always love.

How are you making sense of these unusual and challenging times?

27/07/2025

I’ve been struggling with what to post these days. Aside from the fact that I do so many things that I have no “brand” or “niche”, I am also feeling many things at once. So here is a pic of me smiling, because people seem to like that sort of thing. And here is what I wrote at 2 am last night.

:

I should be asleep, but my brain is busy trying to thread my thoughts through a needle that is just too damn small. Maybe if I lick the raw edges, I can shape my life into a perfect point and stitch the seams of my experience together in a way that finally makes sense.

I’m just laying here wide eyed in the dark, and time has gone wavy and soft at the edges and somehow I find myself stepping into the past and the future while my body lingers in the ever urgent present. My nearly 49 years of touch, smell, hear, see, tasting every moment seem simultaneously brief and unfathomably long, and though I’ve sewn the years together, the pattern has a strangeness to it. I search for myself in the lines that stretch out before and behind me…search for repeating motifs, the tell tale embroidery of my penchant for rebellion, my passion for chaos, dancing across the expanse like a signature.

I have been so many people already. I have lived so many lives inside this one.

It all concertinas down, no division between me at eight years old yelling trick or treat at my neighbors door and me at sixteen taking a pregnancy test in the bathroom and me at twenty four fighting for on campus married housing with my wife and me on my fortieth birthdy on stage with Greg singing to a crowd of sweaty fans and me at 47 screaming in pain as my brain filled with blood.

Space seems equally irrelevant. I am buckled over in Gaza, and tucking my daughter into bed in California, and laughing over huitlacoche tacos in Mexico City, and following the processional through the steep and winding cobblestone streets of San Lupo.

But I am also here. Right here, wound tight like a spring. All of me vibrating softy with a kinetic ache. I am haunting myself.

I am ghost. I am holy water. I am memory. I am longing. I am fabric. I am panic. I am acceptance. I am Death. I am Life. I am my choices. I am my ancestors. I am my children. I am story. I am song. I am fabric, and I am needle, and I am thread.

I am thread.

23/07/2025

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈Worried that if you died tomorrow your family of origin wouldn’t respect you in Death or follow your wishes or listen to your partner? This is the form you need. FILL IT OUT NOW. And get two witness (different from the agent) that will not benefit from your estate to sign it.

This is the New York State form, you can download it for free. I’ll put the address in the comments. You can find similar forms for your own state.

If you are concerned that your family might dress you in the clothing of the gender you were assigned at birth, or have your grave stone or funeral program etched with a name you no longer recognize, you need this form. If you want a natural burial or cremation and think your family won’t abide by those wishes, you need this form.

Particularly, if you are not legally married and your next of kin would disrespect your wishes. You can state who you DO want to carry out your wishes, what those wishes are, and even if you specifically do not want certain people involved.

Hopefully, you and your family of origin can have fruitful conversations about all this ahead of time, and come to a place of peace and mutual respect, but it’s not always possible to reconcile. And that’s when you need this form.

Choose an agent that is reliable and that you can trust, a friend, partner, mentor, etc. Make sure to get consent from them and have good meaty discussions about your wishes. Make sure your agent clearly know what you want and is able to carry out your desires.

Get it witnessed. Give a few people copies. Keep a copy with your advance directive or will. Keep a copy in your photos.

Keep it fresh. You can update it at any time!

We are not promised tomorrow. Protect yourself with this simple and free form!

***r ***rendoflife

08/07/2025

Lately, EVERYWHERE I go is absolutely bursting with sunny St. John’s Wort flowers, including places I’ve never seen them before.

St. John’s Wort is a powerful ally against depression. It’s as if the earth knows we are grieving and sending us this energetic surge of support.

If you intended to take St. John’s Wort internally it is crucial to consult your doctor and herbalist, as there can be drug interactions and a number of possible side effects. However, I’ve collected some to make infused oil. It’s anti inflammatory properties are good for sore muscles and wounds, but I kinda just wanted some to apply to get in touch with that feeling that the earth is watching out for us and that joy is available to me. An anointing oil, if you will, to bless myself with the summer sun and all the goodness of growing things. They say the earth laughs in flowers.

To make infused oil, cover the fresh flowers in olive, grapeseed, avocado, sesame, sweet almond, or coconut oil in a clean jar or bottle. Place in a sunny window and shake everyday. The oil should turn bright red!

I’m so grateful for this planet’s gifts, especially on days where things feel a little out of step.

Acupunktrix: Acupuncture, Apothecary, Birth and Death Guide

11/08/2025

07/08/2025

05/08/2025

04/08/2025

01/08/2025

29/07/2025

28/07/2025

27/07/2025

27/07/2025

23/07/2025

08/07/2025

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