Small Town Meets Folk Medicine

Have you heard about the days of the small town doctor? The one who would serve a whole family over multiple generations. The one who would recommend honey, lemon, and hot water for a simple cough (rather than a pharmaceutical). The one who may even do a home visit if you need it. The one who you’d see out and about at the local grocery store. Yeah, that’s kind of like who we are at Oak & Well Acupuncture.

The only difference is that we’re pulling from a rich and deep history of traditional medical knowledge dating back nearly 2500 years (when the first written record of Chinese Medicine showed up on the scene in the Huang Di Nei Jing/Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic.). Because of this, our tools and approach are a bit different than modern conventional medicine.

Although we can read imaging and interpret blood work, we may also take your pulse, look at your tongue, and palpate different regions of your body to help form a diagnosis. Even though we’re keenly interested in your symptoms, we may spend some time talking to you about your childhood, your family relationships, your work life, your hobbies and interests, and your hopes and fears because we really want to see and treat you as a whole person. And despite having “licensed acupuncturist” as our title, we can chat about nutrition, physical movement, herbs, meditation, nature prescriptions, and other lifestyle modifications too.

Either way, we work to uncover the story of how you got where you are now, in an effort to help you paint a more complete portrait of where you’d like to be. Stop on by our Port Townsend office and see what we’re talking about.

What’s In The Name “Oak & Well”?

Here in the Pacific Northwest, on the unceeded territories of the Chimakum and S’Klallam people, it is a place of woodlands and waterways.  The very essence of where we work, rest, and live is shaped by the elemental forces of wood and water. These mountains, rivers, and forests are in an ongoing and dynamic relationship of these two opposing and complimentary forces.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has a way of seeing the world, and our place in it, as highly related and interdependent. The relics of a nature-inspired medicine rooted into a bio-region is more important now than perhaps ever before. Bridging the chasm of time, Oak & Well weaves together the traditional medical knowledge of those who have come before us with the place where are feet are now planted.

Descended from an Irish immigrant family, I am first-generation born in the US on my paternal line. Even with this displaced footing, my ancestral roots are steeped in the psyche and patterns of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In these rich “Celtic” traditions, the world too is viewed as living and animate. Trees are viewed as sacred in ceremony and ritual, and are the intermediary between earth and sky, the seen and the unseen. The wise old Oak tree in particular symbolizes longevity, grounding, and interdependence.

Meanwhile, the land offers the medicine when healing waters arise from bubbling springs. In Ireland alone there are over 3000 document healing wells (or holy wells) serving as meeting places, and sites of worship and prayer. Here, the water is the “cure of incurable illnesses” and each sacred well has its own blessings and gifts.

Bringing together healing, heritage, and place, Oak & Well is the culmination of my life’s work thus far. Here’s to the many steps ahead along this journey.