How Tracy Got Here

Tracy’s Story

Long before Tracy became an acupuncturist, she was an athlete. She competed in high school and college at a time when there were few good answers for female athletes and their injuries. Over the years, she experienced her own share of incomplete answers—quick prescriptions, skepticism about symptoms, and little consideration of how diet, movement, lifestyle, or other factors might be contributing to what was happening.

In the late 1990s, a shoulder injury that wouldn’t heal led her to the student clinic at the New England School of Acupuncture. Over a period of treatment, her shoulder improved. More surprisingly, so did other health issues she hadn’t even mentioned to the students treating her.

That got her attention.

The thinking behind the medicine intrigued her just as much as the results. Tracy had already studied theology and philosophy, and she was drawn to the classical Chinese understanding of the human person in relationship to the natural world. She became fascinated by the medicine’s roots in Han Dynasty thought, its evolution over centuries, and especially what happened as those traditions encountered Japan.

At the time, Tracy was working in the athletic and corporate world, including product marketing at Reebok. She continued exploring acupuncture for several years before eventually leaving her corporate career and enrolling at the New England School of Acupuncture. There she pursued dual-track training in Chinese and Japanese acupuncture along with Chinese herbal medicine, graduating in 2005.

Japanese acupuncture became an especially important part of her development. Its emphasis on careful observation, refined palpation, very precise needle technique, and adapting treatment to what is actually present resonated with the way Tracy had come to understand the work. She continued studying with teachers in Japan and the United States and developed a practice that draws from both Japanese acupuncture and moxibustion and Classical Chinese herbal medicine.

Her earlier life never disappeared from that work. Her years as an athlete, along with her experience in fitness, movement, and dance, continue to shape how she thinks about the body. Her study of philosophy continues to inform the questions she asks. And more than twenty years of clinical practice have reinforced the importance of remaining curious rather than assuming the same answer will fit every person.

That commitment extends beyond her own clinic. Tracy has taught and mentored other practitioners, participated in research, served professional organizations, and shared clinical skills with community health workers. For her, continuing to learn the medicine and contributing what she has learned are part of the same responsibility.

A quote attributed to Mother Teresa reflects something of that ongoing practice of attention and beginning again. It is an idea that reaches well beyond the treatment room—and continues to shape how Tracy approaches her patients, her profession, and the work itself.