Folks Healing emerged at the crossroads of many sources, shaped by years of study, practice, questioning, and return. It grew through lived experience, community care, and a persistent longing for a medicine that could be both deep and accessible.

My early life was shaped by displacement and survival. My family came to the U.S. as refugees after the Vietnam War, carrying both resilience and unresolved trauma. Care existed in our home, most visibly through my mother’s cooking and tending, but it was not named as knowledge or valued as medicine. In an effort to modernize and survive, folk ways were often minimized, sometimes criticized, and held as less legitimate than Western medicine. Growing up in this tension taught me something lasting: how deeply people long for healing when it is unnamed, devalued, or inaccessible. That lived experience has profoundly shaped my path and my commitment to restoring forms of care that are practical, relational, and woven back into everyday life.

I have spent over 28 years studying and practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine, drawn especially to its cosmological foundations, the way health is understood through relationship, seasonality, and the movement of life itself. After completing TCM school, I founded Berkeley Community Acupuncture, which became the primary place where I practiced medicine with an emphasis on accessibility, shared space, and relational care.

The clinic has continued to evolve alongside me shaped by years of listening, practice, and refinement, and remains an ongoing expression of my belief that healing should be available to everyone, not reserved for the few.

From this clinical grounding, the next phase of my work emerged. I went on to found and direct the Navajo Healing Project, which marked my first experience teaching medicine in a way that closely resembles what would later become Folks Healing. Working with Diné community members clarified something essential for me: that medicine must be taught in ways that are experiential, culturally respectful, and rooted in community responsibility.

The Navajo Healing Project was not an adjunct to my work — it was a turning point. It revealed how cosmology, self-care, and healing practices can be transmitted in grounded, relational ways, and it directly informed the pedagogical and ethical foundations of Folks Healing.

Alongside clinical and teaching work, I have long been engaged in storytelling and public education. I have hosted a radio show on KPFA and created the podcast You Are Medicine!, both reflecting the same core intention: to remind people that healing is not something distant or rare, but something alive in everyday life. I have also taught workshops in community and professional settings and have been invited as a guest teacher at the college level, sharing Chinese medical cosmology, seasonal health, and embodied approaches to healing. This teaching work has always been oriented toward making complex ideas felt, lived, and usable.

I have also written and published books on Chinese medicine, seasonal health, and healing as a lived practice. In addition, my visual art reflects this same cosmology, exploring movement, rhythm, and relationship through form and image.