The Waterfront Acupuncture Team
Meet Alex
Alex is an acupuncturist licensed by the Massachusetts Board of Medicine and nationally certified by the NCCAOM. She received her Master’s degree in Acupuncture at the New England School of Acupuncture at MCPHS University in Newton, MA. She is trained in both Chinese and Japanese styles, but tends to favor Japanese style for its gentle, energy balancing approach.
Her practice is grounded in the belief that acupuncture not only has the potential to resolve troublesome symptoms and disease, but it can also increase self awareness, helping people come to know themselves better on a physical, spiritual and emotional level. She is passionate about helping people find more ease and joy in their lives by acknowledging their inner truth and coming to know and love themselves at a deep level.
I call it divine intervention whenever I tell the story about how I found acupuncture, because it really did fall into my life out of the blue. I spent a year soul searching after college, seeking a career path that I felt passionate about. I spent hours reading books, watching TED talks, and taking personality tests, which ultimately gave me an incredibly vague description of my future happiness: “you would enjoy a career that involves caring for other people, problem solving, and working with your hands in a non-traditional work environment.” I found this quite unhelpful. Yes it was true, but I still didn’t have a concrete answer. So I carried on living my life with this newfound, seemingly useless guidance.
This is where the story gets good, though. At the time I began to explore all natural lifestyle approaches and started dabbling in making my own soaps. This led me to start researching healing herbs that I could add to them. One day I decided to find an online herbal course and a quick Google search led me straight to the Chinese herbs department at the New England School of Acupuncture. Acupuncture! Why hadn’t I thought of that?! At this point the sky opened up and there was a lot of singing— well, not exactly, but it was certainly an “Aha!” moment and I knew immediately that I wanted to be an acupuncturist. I finally discovered a career that fit into the obscure description I received from all of my career guides. What I didn’t yet know was how much I would fall in love with the medicine and how much it would change my life.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from my personal journey is that life is often about picking up puzzle pieces. I spent a long time trying to see the big picture, but I didn’t realize that everyday I was putting pieces together, getting closer and closer to seeing the finished product, the answers to my big questions. Progress is happening even when it feels like a setback, and every single day and every single experience is an important step in taking you where you’re meant to go.
This is what acupuncture has done and continues to do for me everyday. I believe that acupuncture has the ability to help us come to know ourselves better on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level. It can help us put together the pieces of our health stories, personal stories, or life stories. Great things often begin with awareness. It is my hope to be a guide to help people discover who they really are, and live life at their fullest potential.
Meet Brendan
Brendan is a practicing acupuncturist specializing in Chinese and particularly Earth style acupuncture, which lends itself to a mix of strengthening the overall condition of the body and harmonizing anything that is out of balance. He has been licensed by the Board of Registration of Medicine in Massachusetts and is certified by the NCCAOM as a Diplomat of Acupuncture. He received his Doctorate in Acupuncture at Phoenix Institute of Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture (PIHMA) in Arizona.
Brendan is very passionate about helping patients to achieve their wellness goals through education and the practice of holistic health modalities. He values Chinese Medicine as a modality that provides benefits equal to the effort put in, making this medicine so empowering and transformative. To Brendan, Chinese medicine is much more than a medicine; it is a lifestyle, a philosophy and a paradigm by which to live in and interact with the world. Brendan deeply appreciates this all-encompassing nature, and he has known Chinese Medicine to impact patients on multiple levels including the mind, body and spirit.
It is often said that practitioners don’t find Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), but that TCM finds the practitioner. I am proud to state that I am no exception. While grappling with my own health and wellness, I was presented with a rare opportunity to try acupuncture, which I had never heard of at the time. The ten-needle treatment I received was something I had never felt before, and by the end of thirty minutes I knew definitively that I wanted to pursue TCM and make it my own.
Looking back, many small pieces of my life have invariably led me to Chinese Medicine. I began to develop an affinity for eastern thought and natural phenomena in Middle School. I took four years of Mandarin Chinese in High School and even made a trip to China. By graduation, I found myself immersed in Theravada Buddhism. Long before I had any formal understanding of herbal medicine, I would frequent Cambridge Naturals to purchase skull cap, lemon balm, valerian root and passionflower for brewing various teas.
TCM is so much more than an occupation or philosophy— it is a full-fledged way of living. Since I first discovered it, TCM has reshaped nearly every aspect of my life for the better, from the time I wake up, to the types of activities I engage in, to the types of foods I eat, to the very thoughts I think. When I eat a meal, I look at my plate as a cornucopia of medicine rather than something to be simply consumed or enjoyed. When I feel an emotion or have a counterproductive thought, I have the means and understanding to engage with it in a healthy, productive way.
Aside from my own personal benefits, I treasure Chinese Medicine for the way it has empowered me to serve others. While I always knew I wanted to work in a healing capacity, I was never fully satisfied with the offerings or insights of western medicine. However, I very quickly recognized in TCM a consistency and scope that was unfamiliar but deeply satisfying and comprehensive. It had everything I was looking for: a strong philosophical underpinning, a consistent theoretical framework, varied and effective modalities and consistent, dependable results. It has done more for me and for my friends, family, and patients than I can ever fully express, and I am deeply grateful that I get to practice this medicine every day.