My Story

My interest for acupuncture was sparked in 2002 while living in Beijing as part of my undergraduate studies. It was there I was first exposed to the quick healing and art of acupuncture and traditional medicine as it was the main medicine used when any of us students came down with an illness; from the severe flu my brother had while visiting, to a terrible sinus infection I came down with in my first few weeks there.

Coming from L.A. and being raised in a family who always ran to western medicine in times of illness, it absolutely blew my mind how effective acupuncture and herbs were and how great I felt after leaving the acupuncturists office – something I can say for sure never happened after leaving a doctor’s office back at home.

When I returned to California I finished my studies with a Bachelor of Science degree and moved back to Los Angeles. I began working in a well-known acupuncture center in West Los Angeles and it was here that confirmed my passion, love and admiration of this medicine. One of the employee perks was I received weekly acupuncture treatments (Lucky me!!)

Within a few short weeks, I had noticed something truly unbelievable; headaches that I had been dealing with on a daily basis since I was a teenager had vanished! They were just gone! But the best part was these results were not just limited to me; there would be patients in our office that were crying tears of joy because they were suddenly out of pain that they had been living with for years, or shouting from the rooftops with glee because they felt like a fog had lifted and they were back to themselves again, or my absolute favorite, women announcing that they were pregnant after years of trying. It was right then that I knew… THIS is what I wanted to do with my life! I wanted to help people feel their very best and live their fullest life! The very next quarter, I was enrolled in the Masters program of Acupuncture and Traditional Medicine at the #1 acupuncture school in California.

My passion for women’s health was born a few years later. My husband and I had moved to Nepal (this is where my husband is from) to do some humanitarian work. It was there that I was fortunate enough to become pregnant with our first child and this was the moment that changed the course of my practice forever. Being pregnant in a developing country, I was introduced to an entirely new culture I may never have been privy to otherwise.

I was able to experience the yin and the yang of giving birth in this beautiful, yet hundreds of years behind the times, country. I could see firsthand the level of maternity care, the conditions of the hospitals, the lack of compassion from the medical staff, and the lack of amenities and comforts that I was accustomed to. But in the same scene, I was also able to witness the outpouring of love and support that was provided to these women from the community of women around them. I was able to observe the loving and compassionate after-birth rituals that took place.

Women would travel from near and far to take care of the mother and child, making sure the birth mother didn’t have to lift a finger and could focus 100% on healing herself; they would cook her food, prepare her herbs, fetch her water, wash her clothes, take care of her baby so she could sleep, and take care of all her household duties so that her husband and other children were also taken care of.

This type of love, support and compassion shown towards the birth mother by the other women in her life was overwhelmingly beautiful and unlike anything I had ever experienced before. It was then that I decided I wanted to bring this type of support to my own practice and dedicate my life’s work to serving and helping other women in my community. I strive to bring this type of support to women who may otherwise not have it and to support all women’s health, not just through childbirth, but through all stages and changes of being a woman.