A little about Christina

Christina in a pink onsie, on a plaid couch, holding an orange kitten

Christina is active in the community, she is passionate about using acupuncture as a tool for positive social change through providing outreach, increasing accessibility and bringing the practice back to its traditional roots. She continues to explore her own personal experiences as a community organizer, a woman of colour and as a founder of an unorthodox social enterprise in Victoria BC.

Read below to get to know Christina or visit her bio !


What is your hometown?

I grew up in Brampton, ON. A suburb of the Greater Toronto Area.
And which I recently learned is also Algonquin-Anishinabeg Nation.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Definitely a veterinarian, possibly a professional horseback rider or an artist.

Favorite place you’ve traveled?

Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, the Bay Area and still attempting to carve out time to just explore the amazing PNW, most likely by motorcycle.

Favorite food?

Sushi, charcuterie, maccha, dark chocolate and grapefruit!

Cats or dogs?

Cats hands down, but other people’s dogs are also great!

Current book you’re reading?

Emergent Strategy, by Adrienne Maree Brown
Mycophilia: Revelations from the Weird World of Mushrooms, by Eugenia Brown
The Science of the Sacred, by Nicole Redvers, ND
Braiding Sweetgrass (Audiobook), Robin Wall Kimmerer

What are you listening to nowadays?

Flavor of the month, new releases from Kishi Bashi, Sufjan Stevens, Cinematic Orchestra, Beirut, Yann Tiersen and Sharon Van Etten. I also LOVE film soundtracks, like Amelie, Lost in Translation and Call me by your name. I rabidly consume music, it can change from week to week.

I also recently discovered “All my relations“, by Cochemea Gastelum, a California native with Yaqui and Mescalero Apache Indian ancestry. A MUST listen <3

I am hopelessly in love with NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts.

I also enjoy the podcasts Racist Sandwich, This American Life, Gastropod, Gravy by Southern Foodways Alliance, Invisibilia and On Being.

What are things you enjoy doing with your spare time?

Health allowing, I train with SanShuKan Aikido, weight train the Super Slow method, receive plenty of pokes, osteopathy and cranial sacral therapy, cook up a storm, concoct ferments, forage for wild foods, pet stranger’s dogs, absorb many, many live concerts and ride fast moving things with 2 wheels.

I also run a little side hustle called KnitChanChan.

Non-profits you should be watching?

Our Place Society
Sole Food Street Farms, featured in the documentary A New Economy
SickKids Foundation, Hospital for Sick Kids was my home away from home until the age of 18, I make monthly contributions as well as a donation each year on my birthday. 
Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights
Pivot Legal Society
Hope in Shadows, we annually buy their calendar – support a street vendor!
Women on Web
ACLU (f*ck the Trump Administration)

What is your super power?

Defying the odds, thriving unapologetically as a Chinese Canadian living with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

Why acupuncture?

Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) are modalities that are profoundly innovative and have stood the test of time, survived brutal racism and xenophobia and transcended cultural barriers. My practice is a bridge, a (lost in) translation of my cultural traditions and with the best of intentions, an honest expression of what it means FOR ME to be Chinese Canadian.

Every so often, I pause during the hustle-bustle and can feel an ancestral presence in the clinic room with me, electrifying my intuition and allowing me to work from a potent and grounded place.

Describe community acupuncture in a nutshell.

A rarefied space of peaceful, controlled chaos, in which the needles and your fellow acu-nappers are a conduit to re-establishing a connection to yourself and to tap into something larger, whatever that means to you.

Supporting more intentional, collective spaces such as this will save lives and change the world for the better.

Heart & Hands is…

…so, here you are

too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
never enough for both.
Ijeoma Umebinyuo

As a woman of colour, a daughter of immigrants, navigating a world that regularly reminds me that I do not quite belong anywhere, Heart & Hands is the minuscule corner of the universe I carved out as a place for safety, peace and healing. Then hopefully those who feel the same would find me. Heart & Hands serves as a space where one can fall apart and put themselves back together again.

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