These two women are redefining traditional Chinese medicine

Jul 30

Almost everyone nowadays knows a little bit about traditional Chinese medicine whether they know it or not. Maybe Kim Kardashian introduced you to facial acupuncture or maybe you’ve scrolled past a video of cupping on social media and were intrigued by the marks left on the skin.

But when you look past the publicized, Western version of these treatments that media outlets love to sell, you can see how deeply ingrained these practices are in Chinese culture. Only a select few of these traditional treatments have really permeated mainstream wellness spaces in the past few decades.

But more recently, platforms like Tik Tok have revolutionized visibility, allowing practitioners to reach a wider audience. Gua Sha in particular, an ancient practice addressing inflammation, has gone relatively viral with companies and influencers jumping to create aesthetic crystal massage stones.

But does this publicity help or harm Chinese American communities? It can be difficult to correctly relay practices so steeped in tradition to secular audiences. Treatments that were originally so available and prevalent in the lives of these communities can be so easily gentrified.

There is hope that with the amplification of AAPI voices, progressively more Asian American practitioners are speaking about their experiences and sharing the true nature of their craft.

In a recent conversation with Parachute, two Asian American women, Samantha Chan and Kai Yim, reflected on how growing up in white neighborhoods to immigrant families influenced their career trajectory and set them on a path to reclaim cultural identity.

Can you tell me a little bit about you and your work as a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner?

Samantha Chan: I’m an herbalist for Orion Herbs in Miami Beach, but I’m also an acupuncturist. My passion is really more for herbalism because herbs are so convenient and you can take them wherever you go. In Miami, that’s really helpful because everyone is always on the go, always in a rush, always in traffic.

At our pharmacy, we have a collection of hundreds of herbs which is quite unusual for an acupuncture practice. The beauty in every herb is that it can be tailored to the needs of a specific person.

Because it's a form of medicine that is about balance and prevention, we always try to find the root of the problem. I like to understand what a person has been through.

I want to know whether there was a change in behavior or pattern maybe 10 years ago that caused a person to have an ailment. I do feel like it’s almost an art form because you have to take into account the whole body to discover what is causing a particular disease.

Kai Yim: I’m currently the founding Editor for Five Seasons TCM, a BIPOC women-led wellness brand focused on traditional Chinese medicine in food therapy. I’m also a licensed acupuncturist in New York State.

Five Seasons TCM only launched back in October of 2020, so it’s a relatively new brand. I first met our founder, Zoe, back in 2018 when I was working for this company called Strip Expertise. It’s like a burlesque lap dance company that offers classes for women who want to redefine their sexuality or just develop dancing skills.

It was my last day working there as an intern and Zoe’s first day as a trainee. She had all of these stunning tattoos and I was so intrigued, so we struck up a conversation. Instantly, I knew that this woman was going to be so powerful, and she was so young, just 23 at the time.

After our first meeting, we kept in touch and I would help her out occasionally. Then, this past summer, I was living on a homestead in upstate New York and she reached out to me asking if I’d write a book on food nutrition and congee for her brand, and of course I said yes! I finished up fall on that farm, and since then I’ve been on the board as one of the founders.

Kai Yim, the founding Editor for Five Seasons TCM and a licensed acupuncturist in New York, using a moxibustion stick, a form of Chinese medicine.

Did your upbringing and experiences as an Asian American woman impact your desire to practice traditional Chinese medicine?

Samantha Chan: I was born in Miami to my mother and father who are both first-generation immigrants. My mother is from Hong Kong and my father is from China. Down here, there isn’t a very large Asian community and I was always hiding my culture. I learned Cantonese at a young age, although I speak it more conversationally, and went to Mandarin school for about three years every Saturday after piano.

I remember having a lot of anxiety when I first entered middle school. In elementary school, my mother worked at the school and there was a level of comfort there that I just didn’t have as I got older. Because of my anxiety, my mom decided to start taking me to acupuncture and yoga. That was kind of my first big interaction with traditional Chinese medicine. It was just something my mom and I did, but it was something I never felt comfortable sharing with anyone at the time because it felt so out of the norm.

It got to the point where in my 20s I got so tired of hiding this part of me that I decided to forgo the engineering program I got accepted into and start studying acupuncture. The road just led me that way and I decided to honor it.

In acupuncture school, everyone started falling into a different modality besides acupuncture. They started pairing it with Reiki or massage and I really had no idea what I was going to do. I needed to find a genre that I was more drawn to that I could really dive into.

Then one day, bone setting just came to me. When I sprained my ankle as a kid, my mom would grab some balm and just rub it into my joints. In white, American culture, that’s maybe a bit of an odd thing to do, but it was so natural growing up to take or apply these herbal remedies.

That’s how I made the connection to bone setting. If you ever go to a martial arts tournament, you’ll always see a bone setter there to help with the injuries that happen. I went to my professor who was from Southern China and he told me that if I wanted to learn bone setting I would have to learn martial arts first to learn how it feels to fall and be injured. That’s how I started this journey with Northern Shaolin Kung Fu.

Both martial arts and herbalism are a large part of my identity and both keep me balanced. If I could give advice to my younger self, I would say, Don’t care about what anybody says, honor your culture and properly start martial arts at a younger age.

Kai Yim: My parents are both immigrants from Hong Kong, but I grew up in New York in a very suburban white neighborhood. I tried to hide as much of my culture as possible from my friends and peers. My parents enrolled me in Chinese school and I learned how to do traditional Chinese dance but didn’t tell a soul. I was so embarrassed and so ashamed. I thought, No one has to know about this aspect of my personality and my life.

I actually grew up with a lot of Chinese philosophy integrated into my upbringing. I was raised by a really wonderful nanny who grew up as a farm girl in Hong Kong. She just had so much knowledge about living with the seasons and how to take care of yourself. She really instilled a lot of that in me without me being fully aware of it at the time.

My parents definitely did incorporate a lot of Chinese medicine practices into our life. They promoted a lot of soup drinking and we would always talk about how during a specific season, you’re supposed to eat certain foods versus others. Like in the fall, we’d have watercress soup to rehydrate the lungs.

Even though I had those influences that I now think about in my adult life, as an adolescent, I liked to reject everything my parents suggested. As far as my peers were concerned, I didn't really have any Asian or Chinese friends at the time because I had this internalized racism issue going on and I felt like I had to uphold two different personas.

So when I decided to live in China for two years as an adult, it really felt like a homecoming back to myself and my culture. It really felt like a love affair. Everywhere around me I saw all of the amazingness my culture has to offer. I was being reintroduced to so many things that were so familiar to me without this internalized rejection.

How has incorporating aspects of traditional Chinese medicine into your everyday life impacted your personal wellness?

Kai Yim: I’ve dealt with eczema all of my life and before I traveled to China, I was managing it pretty well using fluid therapy, avoiding allergens and taking tea baths. But the pollution was so bad in Shanghai when I lived there that when I returned home, I felt like I’d been put through a blender.

I went to go see this amazing traditional Chinese herbalist in New York City and he managed to completely cure me of my eczema. Although I can feel the psychological effects it’s had on my life, I no longer have to deal with it physically. I hated taking photos throughout my childhood. I still don’t love taking photos because it’s always still in the back of my mind that I can’t show my face because I have all this inflammation and dryness.

Chinese medicine doesn’t just treat the physical, we also address deep-rooted psychological issues. It’s slowly healing my issues with insecurity and has revolutionized the way I feel.

How can traditional Chinese medicine be used as a tool for anti-racism work?

Kai Yim: I think that Chinese medicine is such a great tool to build a strong community and support system because it attracts people from all different backgrounds and all different walks of life. It's not just for Asian Americans, but anyone who is into health and wellness and more natural ways of living.

I also feel that being part of this business entity has allowed me and the women I work with to have some say and some power in whom we support and whom we elevate. For part of Women’s History Month, we’re showcasing all Chinese women from TCM who have significantly touched the culinary world in some way.

Elevating those stories and showing people that we have so much to offer really helps redefine the narrative for us. We get to finally correct these crazy narratives spun about us and share our own experiences and culture.

Do you have a favorite practice that you incorporate into everyday life and would recommend others to do so as well?

Kai Yim: One thing that I will always recommend is to literally just soak your feet in hot water at home for 30 to 45 minutes before bedtime. It will absolutely revolutionize the way you relax. Especially if you have a partner at home, it’s a really good bonding experience.

Of course you can do a simple hot water soak, but I love throwing in herbs like Sichuan peppercorn and safflower. These herbs actually boost circulation, which is why it’s such an effective treatment.

You can actually treat the entire body using your foot. We have three major meridians that run through the foot: the spleen, the liver and the kidney, and these are so essential especially for women’s hormonal and reproductive health.

What is the best way to start learning about traditional Chinese medicine, and what pathways are available to those interested in becoming practitioners?

Samantha Chan: I love to start with something a bit more fun like five element personality types! It’s such a creative way to learn the basics of the elements traditional Chinese medicine is based on. When I first met my colleagues, they told me that I was definitely a full blown metal type because I’m very organized and detail oriented.

If you’re interested in herbal medicine, you don’t always have to go through traditional acupuncture school. There’s a lot of online courses and a lot of universities that dive into herbalism.

But if you do decide to go to acupuncture school, know that it might be a lot more stressful than you think it will be, but it will lead you to amazing places! If you get frustrated, you just need to remember that this won’t be your whole life. You just have to learn what you need, move on and then you’ll learn the real, practical stuff later.

What advice would you give to someone who is trying to reconnect with their heritage?

Kai Yim: There is nothing sweeter and more beautiful than being different. What I see far too often in the U.S. is that everyone is constantly trying to be the same. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to conform, but now I can’t understand the desire for conformity at all.

I kept trying to hide my heritage to convince others that I really was white on the inside just like them. But that is such a boring facade. There’s nothing more powerful and fulfilling than proudly showing your rich culture and ancestry. I wish I could talk to myself at that age, shake myself and be like, “Girl, that’s not the way.”

To the younger generation, just keep shamelessly embracing your cultures. If you’re thinking about becoming an acupuncturist or traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, just do it. It’ll be hard schooling, but you won’t regret it because you’ll be given so many tools, not just for the wellness of others, but for yourself. The healing has to start from you before you can start to help other people.

This article was originally published on Parachute Media

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