Santi Integrative Health

05/26/2025

04/25/2022

A wild-crafted, uncategorized variety of tea from pristine forest. Super silky, sweet, with notes of stone-fruit.

Perhaps a lucky mother would benefit from something this delicious and healthy? A question worth pondering…
💛❣️💛

03/31/2022

New arrival! ✨✨✨

‘Jade Crown’ 2022 Organic, Ceremonial Matcha. 💚

This very special matcha is crafted by a 10th degree Tea Master (Chashi), a ranking only 13 individuals have world-wide.🌀

The Tea plant has special medicinal properties within the traditions of Asia: a view similarly shared by modern science. Tea interrupts inflammatory cascades through multiple channels by its extremely potent antioxidant compounds called catechins, the most famous and well-studied being EGCG. The amino acid L-Theanine in tea crosses the blood-brain barrier to modulate psychological states, producing a calm alertness. When very fine, artisanal tea is brewed with presence and an open mind, the inherent physiological medicine combines with the meditation of ritual to create a powerful mind-body therapy. Cognition, emotional intelligence, somatic awareness, creativity, and spiritual insight have been found to blossom through tea practice by many cultures.🙌🏽

03/28/2022

Yīn and yáng.. familiar to most, yet perhaps there is something to tell of this mysterious symbol. Named the tàijítú, "Supreme-Ultimate Diagram", it represents through image the flowing nature of matter and energy constituting all phenomena (qì), seen and unseen. At micro- and macroscopic scales, this 'flow' is quintessential to Asian cosmology, culture, spirituality, and medicine. Yīn embodies Earth, darkness, shade, cold, dampness, slowness, density, matter, and space. Yáng embodies Sky, light, heat, dryness, quickness, lightness, energy, and time. Within the domain of the medical arts, yin-yang express these five fundamental principles or characteristics:
1) Interdependence: Yin exists only in relation to yang; they define each other’s boundaries and nature, limiting and co-creating one another. Yin needs yang, and yang needs yin to exist.
2) Opposition: Yin and yang are polar-opposites. Where there is light, there is also shade; where there is heat, something is cool. Things and phenomena are only such in relation to something else. The Sun is yang compared to the moon. Yet the light of the moon is yang compared to the light of Venus, viewed on Earth. Santa Cruz is yin compared to San Diego, but San Diego summer is yin compared to summer in Joshua Tree.
3) Mutual consumption: Yin and yang grow as their counterpart declines, and increase further still as the other fades.
4) Inter-transformation: When yin or yang reach the zenith, they will transform into their opposite. When the body is very cold, a flood of warmth will rise when danger of losing life is critical, after intense shivering and shaking. The cold-yin state leads to an attempt by the body to warms itself using the last of its yang.
5) Infinite divisibility: Yin and yang are relative, and each aspect of something can be analyzed through the yin-yang paradigm ad infinitum. Think of a fractal or a hologram. Nothing is all yin, or all yang. Yin and yang are the primordial movement, and in essence, are present as all things, and are the image of the absolute unity in motion: transforming, creating, birthing, dying, returning to the void and emerging to cycle endlessly.

03/26/2022

Welcome to Santi Integrative Health, a clinic in Santa Cruz, CA offering in-clinic and virtual telehealth visits. Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, and Functional Medicine utilizing lab diagnostics offer a well-rounded, evidenced-based approach to primary healthcare. Safe and effective, this medicine is for anyone called to cultivate optimal health, performance, longevity, and well-being. If this speaks to you, send a DM or book a free health consult when convenient. I am looking forward to working with you to achieve your health goals.

Warm regards,
Dr. Skylar Stumpf, LAc, DTCM

03/25/2022

Part 1: "In all cases, when you treat disease as an eminent physician, you must quiet your shén and fix your intention, you must be free of wants and desires, and you must first develop a heart full of great compassion and empathy. You must pledge your desire to rescue all sentient beings indiscriminately from their suffering."
-Sun Simiao 孫思邈 from Qianjinfang translated by Sabine Wilms

03/23/2022

Ancient wisdom has no end or beginning, it is a river of living knowledge... it is felt within the deep, hidden essence of the body, and expressed through the patterns and rhythms of Nature. Listen closely!