Today we’d like to introduce you to Aimee Van Ostrand
Hi Aimee, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born in Manila, Philippines. My parents, who were both veterinarians, accepted an opportunity when the US federal government was recruiting professionals from Asian countries under the US Department of Agriculture in Food and Meat Inspection program. My parents, myself, and my two siblings immigrated to the United States in 1972. I arrived speaking two dialects of the Philippines, but not a word of English.
Once I got to the States, I learned English very quickly in kindergarten simply out of necessity. My years in elementary school were difficult. I endured a lot of name-calling and bullying. My childhood wasn’t made easier by the fact that my family moved around quite a bit due to my parents’ work with the federal government. Those early experiences, as a little Brown immigrant child with no English, still to this day guide the impact I want to make through my work.
I did my undergraduate work at Iowa State University, then worked for Aetna Health Plans and UCare Minnesota. Many years in health insurance and three kids later, I continually felt the pull to do something different with my education. With the guidance of my own acupuncturist, who later became my mentor, I enrolled in a four-year Master’s Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
While finishing my Master’s Degree in 2012 I took a part-time position in the shoe department at Macy’s Department Store. The plan was to save a little money to eventually start a business and avoid the need for a business loan. I worked on commission sales and studied during breaks. After graduation and national board exams, I joined my mentor on a community acupuncture project in downtown St Paul. Several months into the project, a change in management led to the project being abruptly discontinued.
There was urgency to find space to continue our work in community acupuncture. With $2000 saved from the part-time work at Macy’s, I bought five folding zero gravity chairs, small signage, acupuncture needles; with money left over for a few months of rent and insurance. I began subleasing space from Lauri Hopple at Drishti Yoga Studio in downtown White Bear Lake. I offered community acupuncture two days a week. With that, Healing Within Community Acupuncture was born November 2013. It was thanks to Lauri’s generosity of a reasonable monthly rent that I was able to weather the slow early days of any new small business. In those days, I spent a lot of time by myself in the studio waiting for patients, and I used that time to read. I found myself researching studies on Delta brainwaves: when the brain enters these Delta waves, the mind and body enter peak restoration and healing. I thought about what might be accomplished if I could come in with acupuncture needles while the brain is already in this Delta state.
My community acupuncture practice slowly grew and almost a year in my practice, a yoga instructor in Stillwater contacted me, looking for an acupuncturist who might consider bringing community acupuncture to Stillwater. The plan was to share studio space and offer community acupuncture in between yoga classes at Compass Center for Healing. It would be a similar setup to that at Drishti Yoga Studio. Barriers came up and plans fell through. However, by this time, I had set my intentions on bringing community acupuncture to Stillwater and within a month, I signed a two-year lease on a studio space – coincidentally just around the corner from Compass Center for Healing. On a cold winter’s day in January 2015, I moved into that space in Downtown Stillwater: the first studio of my own. A couple of weeks later, a mutual friend brought Dr. Holly Walsh into the studio. I knew instantly that we were a good fit. She joined me at the studio offering Biodynamic CranioSacral Therapy in the treatment room. Soon after, Dr. John Hauser, RN, ND, LAc joined me in community acupuncture and as our first tai chi instructor.
As both locations of Healing Within Acupuncture continued to grow, the concept of providing acupuncture while the body is in a Delta brainwave state continued to intrigue me. I started to explore the idea of needling while in a final resting pose of yoga, called savasana. I talked to a few local yoga instructors, but Marilyn Calver, the Stillwater yoga instructor who had reached out to me initially, was the only one adventurous enough to say “yes”. We began talking though ideas and landed on a Restorative yoga session ending with acupuncture during an extended savasana. In March of 2015, Marilyn and I rolled out our first Yoga + Acupuncture at Healing Within Acupuncture in Stillwater. It quickly became popular. People raved about the peace and healing they felt after trying the class. Once a month, Marilyn brought her yoga mats, bolsters, and blankets around the corner to my studio. To this day, Marilyn and I continue to offer Yoga + Acupuncture the second Thursday of every month. It is often sold out and we will soon celebrate 10 years of Yoga + Acupuncture. In the early years of Yoga + Acupuncture, I went on to explore pairing acupuncture with other styles of yoga and with other instructors, primarily yin yoga and a challenging vinyasa flow. These trials confirmed for me that it is Restorative Yoga + Acupuncture that hits the mark.
As an acupuncturist, I was noticing that many patients were leading a sedentary life stye. I would jokingly tell them, “I can’t out-needle over sitting.” This became the impetus for developing a tai chi program. We made good use of the small Stillwater space by offering Saturday morning tai chi classes. Dr. John Hauser and myself, plus a handful of our tai chi students, started bringing our tai chi practice outdoors during the summer months to breathe the fresh river air and be among the calming sounds of early Saturday morning life. Thus began Tai Chi by the River – now a longstanding tradition. These days, outdoor tai chi practices are all year round. Practices are in the mornings during the summer months, with a much bigger group, often including drop-ins from curious passersby. And, by popular request, we continue outdoor practices in the afternoons during the winter months. Outdoor winter practices initially came about due to the pandemic. We realized quickly that we can do it, so we simply continued to do it.
The idea of outdoor tai chi practices is a favorite of mine. When I heard about a global celebration called World Tai Chi/QiGong Day, I knew we had to join in the celebration. The concept of World Tai Chi/QiGong Day began in 1999. Thousands of cities around the globe practiced tai chi/qigong as the morning moves through time zones across the world. That 24-hour period is a continuous tai chi practice for solidarity and world peace.
I reached out to a friend and fellow tai chi instructor, John Kerschbaum, to see if he’d like to gather a few of our students by the St Croix River. John brought two instructors from Minneapolis. Another local Stillwater tai chi instructor reached out to me. This became the first World Tai Chi Day – Stillwater. The annual community celebration has since become a huge event for the city and attendance grows every year. The event now attracts 10 to 12 Twin Cities Tai Chi/Qi Gong Instructors to lead various practices. In 2024, the Year of the Dragon, we came together to hand-create a traditional Chinese dancing dragon as part of the celebration, using the talents of our tai chi community. World Tai Chi/Qi Gong Day takes place annually on the last Saturday in April, 10:00-11:00 am.
By 2017 we had outgrown our studio space in downtown Stillwater and made the decision to move up to our current location on the south hill of Stillwater. During his time, I changed the studio name to Healing Within Acupuncture and Wellness Studio, and Marilyn Calver officially joined the team as a yoga and meditation instructor.
Meanwhile in White Bear Lake, I continued to offer community acupuncture two days a week as a satellite location. This all changed when Lauri Hopple made the decision to close Drishti Yoga Studio in 2018. I considered taking over the Drishti Yoga Studio space, but it wasn’t meant to be. Somewhat by accident, it was Lauri who found what would become my Healing Within Community Acupuncture studio in White Bear Lake. And in full-circle fashion, Lauri is nowadays on the Healing Within Studio Team as our website and outreach coordinator.
It took several months and a lot of help from the Healing Within Studio community, but the White Bear Lake studio renovations were completed in September 2019. We were just getting off the ground when in March 2020 all yoga and wellness studios were mandated to close due to the global pandemic.
I closed both locations and Healing Within Studio quickly pivoted to 100% online. Within two weeks all yoga and tai chi classes were on Zoom. There was no acupuncture. It was an incredibly overwhelming time, but I knew I had to keep Healing Within Studio functioning in whatever capacity we could. People needed healing and a sense of community more than ever. This is, at its core, what we’re here for. In such a time of uncertainty I found myself relying on the community that had come together around me over the years of Healing Within, just as much as the community relied on the studio.
The strength of Healing Within Acupuncture and Wellness Studio has been in its ability to be fluid, to move and flow with change. The past several years brought further changes for me. I was being pulled to play a more active role in political movements, social justice, and activism. The interconnection with the health and wellness of community was undeniable. I explored the possibility of becoming a 501c(3) nonprofit organization only to realize that it wasn’t a good fit. It led me to a decision to close the White Bear Lake studio. For the first time in a decade, I had one location. All my energies are now focused on providing accessible and affordable care in the St Croix Valley area, but I’m not slowing down.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Strangely enough I’ve often felt my journey has been pretty straight forward with little obstacles in my path. For the most part the people and the situations that I have needed manifested when I needed them. However, as I look back a little more in depth, there were a couple of significant challenges. And meeting and eventually getting past them do not lessen their level of difficulty.
My first challenge in starting a community acupuncture practice was the fact that the term “community acupuncture” was not well known. At the beginning, most of my work was not only in educating people how acupuncture itself worked and what it can treat, but also what is community acupuncture, how does it work, what does a treatment look like? After over ten years, I am still the only community acupuncture studio in the northeast metro area.
Another significant challenge was the global pandemic, beginning with the mandated closure in March 2020. It was a difficult time for any small business; we were no different. In addition, as a health and wellness studio, it was us who our community depended on to help get them through difficult times. We were challenged with thinking outside the box to continue to meet the increasing health needs of our community. Ancient traditional wellness practices tend to be low tech. Our studio was very simple and it was no easy feat to quickly and completely pivot to an online, technologically-involved format. Even with the end of the mandated studio closure, our community did not feel comfortable coming into shared indoor spaces quickly. We remained online and outdoors. Our studio has always been about the safety and comfort of the most vulnerable in our community.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Healing Within Acupuncture & Wellness Studio?
Community acupuncture is the core modality of Healing Within Acupuncture & Wellness Studio. Community acupuncture and its small group setting is closer to the ancient traditional Chinese model than the modern form of private treatment rooms. It was introduced to America originally by the Black Panthers and the Young Lords in the 1970s – out of necessity to take care of the Black community which was disproportionately refused treatment for addiction. The practice, which uses a “pay what you can” sliding fee model and peaceful group treatments, is founded on the nature of community and social justice. The sustainability of this model relies on a balance between those who pay on the higher end of the scale and support access for those who must pay on the lower end of the scale. This way, community acupuncture makes healthcare affordable and accessible to more people. However, where community acupuncture truly shines is it gives access to higher frequency of care when it is needed. This is especially important for those in cancer treatment, living with PTSD, addiction, or chronic conditions. Community acupuncture allows patients to decide how often they need care. Having access to multiple visits a week can greatly improve health outcomes.
Healing Within Acupuncture & Wellness Studio focuses on ancient traditional practices like Traditional Chinese Medicine, which includes community acupuncture, tai chi/qigong, herbal medicine and tuina bodywork. We also have a strong yoga and Ayurvedic program. We’ve recently added sound healing and Hanna Somatic Education to our modalities.
Our studio is active in various initiatives around social justice, health care equity, and the environment; because of their direct impact on the health and wellness of our community.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
Healing Within Acupuncture & Wellness Studio actively participates and seeks out opportunities to work on racial, gender, environmental justice and health care equity. We welcome collaborative efforts with other local studios or traditional healing practitioners who are also dedicated to ending cultural appropriation and the rebranding of various ancient traditional healing practices; to instead acknowledge and elevate the contributions of these cultures and people.
Pricing:
- Community Acupuncture sliding fee $30 – $60
Contact Info:
- Website: https://healingwithinacupuncture.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healingwithinacupuncture/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/healingwithinacupuncture
