TAI Profiles

Carol Kari
Alumna

Carol Kari I have a long history of working with complicated situations. I was a nurse at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with a background in oncology and neuro-oncology. I enjoy treating the most unusual, complicated patients. It is exciting to have another way to look at these people-through the eyes of the acupuncture paradigm.

I saved money for two years to come to TAI, which is a great resource for this state. I worked part-time as a nurse throughout the program and for a few years after it. Now I practice acupuncture full-time, sharing an office with a couple who are acupuncturists and with three social workers. I am President of the Maryland Acupuncture Society.

In my practice is always a certain number of people with cancer. I have a long-term relationship with each person. This is very familiar since at NIH we often followed patients over a long time. After they improve, I usually see them a few times a year.

I decided in my own practice I would never again work weekends or rush through the day. I spend an hour at a time with each person so that they feel they are getting cared for, both physically and emotionally. In the initial diagnosis session, I spend two hours with them.

Acupuncture is a great career for nurses. They are very well prepared for the work, able to tend the whole person with an attitude of caring. Two patients of mine, one of whom is a nurse, are studying at TAI now. As more nurses know about acupuncture, many more will be doing it.


Walter Hayley
Student

Walt and freinds While I was stationed in Korea in the early 1970's, a friend suddenly became ill and literally could not move to get to a hospital. A local healer was summoned. Within minutes of having a few needles skillfully placed, the friend was up and about, moving comfortably. No explanation was ever offered. That first experience of acupuncture stayed with me over the years.

In Korea, I was involved in meditation and martial arts. Later during my career as a financial consultant with Merrill Lynch, I returned to these studies to help alleviate stress. One day while looking in a holistic health directory, I discovered that not only did acupuncture exist in the United States, but that schools here teach the art, including one in my own backyard. I was unhappy, so after some research, I decided to leave the financial world and join the next class at TAI. My decision received strong support from my family.

I have found a good deal of support from the faculty, staff and students at TAI. Coming to school is a process of extending my family. The transition was very smooth following my study of Eastern philosophies. My appreciation for my surroundings has increased through sight, sound and touch, while I have a deeper acceptance of life's gray areas. Possibilities are opening for me.


Paulette Hill
Alumna

Paulette Hill Paulette is a family practitioner and acupuncturist in Baltimore. With faculty and students, she has worked to set up a community health/detox clinic in her neighborhood.

From my background in Family Practice and Preventive Medicine, I have always had an interest in a preventive and a holistic type of health care. After I graduated in 1974 from New York Medical College, I did a residency in Family Practice. Following this I went to Johns Hopkins for an MPH. While I was in private practice for eight years in Washington, DC, I did physicals for the Washington Acupuncture Center.

When I opened my practice in Baltimore, I did acupuncture as I had learned it in conferences. After a while, it felt like I was doing first aid and I wanted to offer a more in-depth approach.

Then my life caught up with me, and I came into treatment for back pain. I was so impressed by the results: my life was restored to me. Within three months, I enrolled at TAI.

I have always done a lot of patient education. Now I can have a different conversation with a patient. I now help them relate some of the changes that take place in their life to some of the changes they see in the seasons-something outside themselves which is normal and natural, understood and accepted. They can see that it will pass, that they won't get stuck in a disease, and that it doesn't have to be "a sentence for life." I am more aware of labels for disease than ever before.

I feel a strong commitment to practice acupuncture in my community, dispelling the fears and misinformation about the needles. I want to offer it as another option to medication or surgery so that people can support their own lives with lifestyle changes and through education.


Greg Lee
Student

A very happy Greg Lee The greatest impact acupuncture has had on my life is in my power to be clear and present for myself and others. I appreciate new qualities in myself which I bring to the other communities I belong to, including aikido, Alexander technique, Cranio-sacral bodywork and the New Warrior Men's community. I am able to observe energetic shifts in people and to help them to experience the benefits of those shifts.

After getting a B.S. in computer science, I worked off and on for NASA contractors. During five of my years there, I also studied Alexander technique. For the last four years I have studied Cranio-sacral therapy. I did not feel fulfilled doing engineering any more. In February 1993 I was in a Cranio-sacral class holding a colleague's occiput. While I was in a very clear, meditative state, I thought, "Acupuncture," and my whole body responded in a "Yes!"

I talked to several practitioners about TAI and other schools. With their recommendations, I decided to come here. What drew me is the spiritual nature of this work and the transformative processes involved. I am impressed by the clear and present quality of TAI graduates and their rapport skills. These qualities of caring, clarity and thoroughness are what I want to bring to other people.

Being able to come a few days a week enabled me to keep a balance in my life between learning and building acupuncture skills and my other life activities.


Peter Marinakis
Faculty

Peter's Pic Our mission is to get acupuncture out to populations of greatest need, to those who require community health advocacy, healthy relationships and mentoring into life. Specifically, this includes those who are indigent, those who are drug-addicted, families in distress-either because of illness or drug abuse, and children in foster care or with single parents. That population is the target of the Community Health Intiative [CHI].

Our newest program, the Neighborhood Center, accepts anyone who walks through the door for treatment that same day. Now part of our population that starts treatment in prison may continue it in the community. We are also fortunate to have two of our projects solely with women, who have a great impact on their families, their children, and their community.

The potential for students is great. They see a different clientele than they would normally see at the school, and they have an opportunity to teach a client population that is eager to learn. Working within a community health model, they are part of a team of social workers, case managers, doctors, and other acupuncturists.

Together with other psychosocial treatment modalities, acupuncture has so much to offer people in overcoming fear and other limitations by providing a place of strength where they can root themselves. In order to gain a shift in community consciousness people must see their responsibility for the relationships among each other in their families and neighborhoods. We need to reassert healing relationships in cities fraught with disease and disinterest.


Linda DeChambeau
Student

Linda DeChambeau For the past twelve years, I have been working as a small animal practitioner, with my veterinary clinic attached to my home. Yet over the years, I also came to realize the frustrations and limitations of the standard western medicine I had been trained to perform. Many of my patients with chronic diseases kept requiring more and more medications, with more and more side effects developing.

When one of my own dogs developed lymphoma last year, I contacted Maureen Walsh, a traditional acupuncturist. Together we worked a protocol that combined chemotherapy with acupuncture and herbs. The chemotherapy was unfortunately necessary to keep the tumors in remission. The acupuncture was what really made the difference.

My dog would feel so tired and achey after a chemo treatment. When Maureen did acupuncture, she would hop off the table and run outside to pick a fight-what bulldogs just love to do! It was a joy to share one of the best years of her life.

I knew then that the gift she gave to me was the imperative to learn more. So I tell everyone that my dog sent me here.

Getting life organized to actually be here, took many days and weeks of sweat and tears. I was going to do this, no question, no doubt. Somehow, things fell into place and here I be.

My patients are excited to be involved in this new direction for the practice.

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