Meet your acupunks
Christina Chan, R.Ac.
Owner/Operator & Clinic Director
Christina (she/her) is a first generation, Hong Konger Chinese-Canadian originally from the Greater Toronto Area, the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Anishinaabeg, including the Chippewas and the Mississaugas of the Credit and since 2005, has resided on the unceded territories of the Lekwungen peoples. She is a Community Acupuncturist, grassroots organizer-educator, rider of many things with 2 wheels, martial artist, immunocompromised lupus survivor and high functioning spoonie. In 2006, Christina became certified as an National Acupuncture Detox Association (NADA) provider. Then completed her training as a Registered Acupuncturist at the Canadian College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (CCAOM) in Victoria, BC in 2009.
Christina is a Balance Method practitioner, training in the system since 2010, initially with the late Dr. Richard Teh-Fu Tan, followed by Si Yuan Balance Acupuncture based in the EU and in November 2023 completed the 9 level Balance System Acupuncture certification with Gold Level certified Dr. Sonia Tan, based in Vancouver, BC. And currently, she is in a 2 year mentorship in the 8 Extraordinary Vessels with the esteemed Dr. Yvonne Farrell.
She is also a certified Cranial Sacral Therapist, completing her training in 2011, through the Department of Holistic Health Studies at Langara College in Vancouver, BC. In a previous lifetime, she completed a Master’s in Human Physiology in 2005, specializing in Cardiovascular Cell Biology at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON.
She has practiced her craft in a variety of unusual settings including at the Vancouver Daytox, Indigenous Wellness Week at UVic’s First People’s House, Motherfest at Mothering Touch, Fernfest, Victoria’s Annual Anarchist Book Fair and AIDS Vancouver Island.
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 woman of colour living with chronic illness, first gen Asian diaspora, grassroots organizer-educator, and founder of an unorthodox social enterprise in Lekwungen Territories, otherwise known as Victoria BC.
Jaay (Jade) Kulhawy-Bartlett, R.Ac.
Office Manager
Jade (she/her) is a white, trans woman settler who came to Chinese medicine after 8 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.
Jade studied Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) at Pacific Rim College starting in September 2017, completing a Diploma of Acupuncture in December 2020. Licensed since December 2021, she is interested in the ways in which Daoist philosophy underpinning Chinese medicine makes space for identities, bodies, and hearts unrecognizable to Western culture.
As a practitioner Jade is especially curious how she can intervene in the world of often-inaccessible and expensive transgender medical care, a community that has overall lower earnings and less access to stable employment. She has focused her education on interrogating the unique ways Chinese medical modalities can be used to supplement many of the medical interventions trans people receive for gender-affirming care.
She is also 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.
Jade (JO) Oswald, R.Ac., R.TCMP
Jade or JO (she/they) is a Registered Acupuncturist (R.Ac.) and TCM practitioner (R.TCMP.). In 2021 Jade completed a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner program at Kootenay Columbia College of Integrative Health Sciences on the unceded territories of the Sinixt, Syilx, and the Ktunaxa peoples (Nelson, BC). Studying both acupuncture & East Asian Herbal medicine. Shortly afterwards in 2021 they completed the NADA Acudetox Certification.
She came to studying acupuncture and TCM with an interest in providing accessible care and working in outreach. They believe acupuncture and TCM can be a powerful tool to build resiliency, restore a sense of connection and safety within the body and can help support and manage a diverse range of conditions.
She is passionate about providing compassionate, weight-inclusive care and practice from a HAES (Health at Every Size) approach. They believe deeply in body liberation, and that everyone has a right to exist in their bodies and the world free from shame, blame and stigma. JO looks to have deeper, more radical and expansive conversations around health and wellness outside of the dominant cultures ideas about what it means to exist and occupy a body. They strive to provide a safe, inclusive environment that is affirming to all genders, orientations, abilities, ages, bodies and beings!
JO has an exciting year ahead of studies and personal development including taking the Balance System foundations with Dr. Sonia Tan, and a year long Body Trust Certification program offered by the Center for Body Trust. They look forward to offering their expanding skills at Heart & Hands!
After a year living on the East Coast, JO landed on Lekwungen Territories last fall and have been keeping life pretty simple these days. They like playing the banjo, cycling around the city and would love to get another dog companion in the next few years.
JO is excited to meet folks and be part of the Heart & Hands community!
