A little about Jade
Jade (she/her) is a white, trans woman settler who came to holistic medicine after 7 years of work in activist communities. In them she honed collectivist values and observed a shared need to address our physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies alongside liberation work for the social body.
She is deeply passionate about the role acupuncture – and community acupuncture in particular – can play in helping communities and individuals to be more engaged in their own health care. Jade finds the accessible, gentle, and effective medicine we practice to be a radical intervention in the health of our culture as a whole.
Read below to get to know Jade, visit her bio , or click below to book a Cupping & Gua Sha session with her :)
What is your hometown?
I grew up in Hinton, AB, Treaty 6 territory. Native-land.ca shows this area as shared by the Cree, Stoney, Tsuut’ina, and Métis.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
At different times an astronaut, an archaeologist (thanks Indiana Jones), a paleontologist (thanks Jurassic Park), and a rock star.
Favorite food?
Probably pizza, especially homemade! I’m the archetype of the ‘we have that at home’ meme when it comes to food, and love to try cooking or baking new things.
Cats or dogs?
I am a cat lover through and through, but I have been known to run around a yard with a dog or two.
Current book you’re reading?
Current: X by Davey Davis
Recent: Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom
Trickster Drift by Eden Robinson
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
Honorable mention: Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
What are you listening to nowadays?
Podcasts: Trillbilly Worker’s Party; Desert Oracle Radio; Girls, Guts, & Giallo; Ear Hustle; The Silt Verses; t4t.
Music: Liz Phair, L7, Hole, The Breeders, Pixies – mostly things I missed being a kid who loved grunge but was too young to listen to it as it was happening, and didn’t know to listen past the outer layer of dudes.
What are things you enjoy doing with your spare time?
Planning/planting/tending/harvesting my garden; creating little DIY projects for myself; watching weird movies; taking on elaborate baking recipes the day before an event; walking all over my neighbourhood and watching the cycles of the lives of plants throughout each season.
Non-profits you should be watching?
Substance Drug Checking
Victoria Tenant Action Group
Qmunity
Victoria Native Friendship Centre
Recyclistas Bike Shop
Worker Solidarity Network
Victoria Event Centre
What is your super power?
Synthesis of big/new ideas; putting a concept into new words (and maybe never being able to replicate the specific phrasing)
Why acupuncture?
Acupuncture works on a level that is relatively untouched by the conventional medicines available to us in Canada. For all the many things Western medicine treats well, as humans we need all parts of our being to be well, to be freely flowing, to be in right-measure. We also need medicine which seeks to invite the body back into balance rather than imposing it. Acupuncture can work with our nervous systems in an increasingly overstimulating world, and encourage us to recall what it is like to feel regulated, rested, and calm.
Describe community acupuncture in a nutshell
Community acupuncture is a way to access healing in a shared space, using a portion of the body to treat the whole. Practitioners utilize the model to keep costs lower than private acupuncture and also multiply the benefits to clients by curating an atmosphere in which everyone’s systems are receptive to the gentle power of the medicine. Community acupuncture can remind us that we are all in this together, even when our struggles are so deeply personal.
Heart & Hands is…
… so many powerful things in one little building. It is a space in which you can be held gently and fought for fiercely. It is values-centred and community-driven. It is bigger than any of us but nothing without us.
