Meet your acupunks

Christina Chan, R.Ac.

Christina (she/her) is a Community Acupuncturist, community 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, in 2009, she completed her training as a Registered Acupuncturist at the Canadian College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (CCAOM) in Victoria, BC.

Christina is a Balance Method practitioner, training in the system since 2010, initially with the late Dr. Richard Teh-Fu Tan, Si Yuan Balance Acupuncture based in the EU and in November 2023, completed the Balance System Acupuncture certification with Gold Level certified Dr. Sonia Tan, based in Vancouver, BC.

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 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, community organizer, and founder of an unorthodox social enterprise in Lekwungen Territories, otherwise known as Victoria BC.

Sarah Strohan, R.Ac., R.TCMP.

Sarah (she/her), is originally from Saskatoon, but has been living (mostly) on the west coast for the past 13 years. During this time she studied acupuncture and East Asian Medicine at Pacific Rim College in Victoria, BC

Sarah is passionate about internal medicine concerns, mental emotional health, reproductive health, chronic and acute pain and overall health and wellbeing. She is fully trained in acupuncture, cupping, tui na massage, gua sha, moxibustion, channel palpation and Chinese herbal medicine. She has trained in many different acupuncture styles, including Traditional Chinese Medicine and 5 Element acupuncture, as well as an interest in Balance System acupuncture.

Sarah’s journey with acupuncture has helped her through her own personal struggles with gynaecology disorders, digestive health, chronic pain and supporting her mental health. She guides her clients through their journey from a place of hope and understanding.

After spending the past 2 years in Saskatoon, she is very exciting to be back working at Heart & Hands and bringing her enthusiasm for community acupuncture back to Victoria! 

When not working, Sarah loves spending time with friends and family and being in nature!

Jaay (Jade) Kulhawy-Bartlett, R.Ac.

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.