Ohio Valley Acupuncture

04/20/2026

I have two more weeks doing Fridays at Serenity Hills in Mason, WV. I am hoping to be open with greater availability in Middleport, OH soon.

04/18/2026

It's kinda hard to see black sesame seeds being toasted in a cast iron skillet, but I am trying to show you that I tried my hand at making the Black Sesame Balls recipe from Nicholas Duchnowski's TCMStudy.net YouTube channel. I don't have a food processor, but this sweet Vitamix blender that I got as a graduation present worked well to powder all the ingredients. I just had to mash the honey in by hand. The honey I had left from last year's Farmers Market had crystalized. I didn't bother reconstituting it, and I think it adds a pleasantly sweet sparkle to the finished product. I ate 2 or three before I took the photo of the finished product, so the recipe makes a few more than the picture shows. It's really quite delicious, and a great way to take your medicine and treat yourself at the same time. This recipe helps build yin and blood. It contains black sesame seeds, gogi berries, walnuts, and honey. He explains what each ingredient does as medicine in the video, so I will just leave it in the comments. Let me know if you try it. To your health!

04/17/2026

A snapshot from this past week. It was a for a leisurely walk on the Hockhocking Adena Bikeway.

04/16/2026

Do you love gardening or want to try it out? Then don't miss The Plant Exchange! On May 2nd from 9 AM to 11 AM, the Gallia County Convention and Visitors Bureau invites you to the Gallipolis City Park. We welcome anything garden-related, including flowers, vegetables, greenery, succulents, seeds, bulbs, soil mixtures, empty flats, pots, cuttings, herbs, tools, and more! Organized tables will be available for you to drop off your items and pick up new ones.
Don’t have any items to exchange but still want to get started? No problem! Gardening supplies and starter plants will be donated to the event, so you can grab some free gardening equipment and plants.

Once you’ve stocked up for the season, join Gallipolis in Bloom at 11 am to help beautify the community by planting flowers in and around the Gallipolis City Park. You’ll learn helpful planting tips and get a chance to contribute to the beautification of Gallipolis. This is a fantastic opportunity to volunteer and get involved in our community!

04/09/2026

I personally had never heard of Chicago MED. It's fictional TV show, a medical drama. I wouldn't expect them to get acupuncture right. Apparently, they got it very wrong. NCBAHM is the organization that requires me to take all these silly exams. Acupuncture Today is a good magazine that I will probably subscribe to at some point.

Thank you to Pamela Ferguson and Acupuncture Today for addressing the recent Chicago Med episode and speaking up against harmful misrepresentations of acupuncture.

As NCBAHM CEO Mina Larson noted, it is “disappointing to see such dramatic misrepresentations” that reinforce “outdated myths and misconceptions” about the profession. Accurate public understanding matters, and we remain committed to supporting awareness of the safety, professionalism, and integrity of acupuncture and herbal medicine.

Read the article here: https://acupuncturetoday.com/article/40042-nbc-chicago-med-episode-outrages-acupuncturists-nationwide

04/07/2026

This is what these posts would look like if I was showing you my diagnosis, rather than the patient's chief complaint.

04/06/2026

Spring is in full swing!

04/06/2026

🌱📚🌱

04/04/2026

Guasha!!! It looks ugly, but it's very satisfying work for me, and patients typically feel great afterward. Our have segments called sarcomeres that contract and relax as a unit in order to move our bodies. or are when some of these sarcomeres get stuck in contraction mode. When it's stuck like that, qi and blood and lymph get stuck in there and become stagnant and cause pain. That's when I get out my . I put down a little liquid coconut oil or moxa balm and scrape away. The color that comes up is called the sha. It's the stale blood and lymph getting pushed out, so that fresh, healthy stuff can flood in and promote healing and ease of movement.

Most folks have heard of the gentler facial that has gotten popular on Tiktok and Instagram as a treatment. It typically isn't dealing with knots and trigger points and thus is only moving lymph and doesn't leave a mark. And the world will sell you all sorts of expensive devices to use for beauty, but truly, you can use anything that feels nice to the body part being guasha-ed. Ceramic Chinese soup spoons are ideal, and the handle end of a butter knife can also work. I have a wooden cheese knife that I like to use on the back of my neck.

Many folks are also now familiar with the circular marks that are left after This is the same concept, just a different direction of force. Cupping uses suction to pull up on the tissue, drawing the stale fluids to the surface, whereas with guasha, I'm pressing down to squish it out. Cupping is contraindicated for hypermobile folks like myself, and guasha is contraindicated for folks with a history of keloid scarring, so it's good that we have options.

And if you like B movies about Chinese Medicine and cultural divides, there's a film from 2001 called The Guasha Treatment about a Chinese kid getting abducted by Children's Services after a doctor finds guasha marks on his back. His grandfather had been using guasha to treat his cold. You can watch it for free on YouTube.

03/30/2026

Massage services at The Nook are moving from Pomeroy to Long Bottom, but it sounds well worth the drive. 🌱💚✨

This is not just a massage room.
It is a space you enter.

A place where the nervous system can soften.
Where the body can be listened to.
Where something deeper is invited to participate in your healing.

Michael brings over 20 years of experience as a Licensed Massage Therapist, with a background in clinical rehabilitation, sports and injury care, chiropractic settings, and luxury spa work.

But what he is offering now is something more integrated.

Each session is guided by attunement—responding to what your body is asking for in the moment. This may include therapeutic work, lymphatic support, deep relaxation, or trauma-informed touch.

And when called for, the work extends beyond the physical.

Michael weaves in his training in Reiki, sound healing, shamanic practice, and earth-based wisdom traditions—creating a session that honors body, energy and spirit.

You may notice it as soon as you walk in.

A sense of being held.
Supported.
Not alone in the process.

This is integrative massage at The Nook. This space is sacred.

Join us as we transition from our Pomeroy location to this magical space within our healing sanctuary on the land in Long Bottom.

03/28/2026

I started working on my website in Oct. I finished it this morning. Many things about getting started have taken longer than I had hoped they would. We were waiting on the renovations of the community room to be complete in order to take photos. It still isn't complete, but it's close enough to photograph and close enough to use. We were also waiting on wording form some of the other practitioners, which finally came through this week. I am proudest of the Community Care page, because it's why I went back to school in the first place, to make acupuncture more accessible to normal people, not just people with plenty of extra income. I am also most proud this page, because that room hit us with so many curve balls during the renovation process. We took out a wall and jacked up the foundation in order to level the floor. Soon I will have the plastic off the windows and nice curtains made for them. I think it turned out pretty good.

https://www.ohiovalleyacupuncture.com/community-care