Kim Blaufuss, of Best Acupuncture in Woodland, was first inspired to help others in a unique way while she was in high school.
Her mother had stage three breast cancer and turned to Chinese medicine for help, lighting an interest in Blaufuss.
Blaufuss currently provides medical care in the form of Chinese medicine. Her services include consultations, post-COVID recovery, acupuncture and Qi Gong healing.
“A lot of the time, it’s because they’ve been trying regular medicine and they haven’t been getting results,” Blaufuss said regarding a reason to try acupuncture. “And so there’s gonna be two types of people that will come to acupuncture. There’s going to be the people who come to acupuncture because regular medicine can’t help them or hasn’t been helping them, and there’s going to be the type of people who really want to look at taking holistic care of themselves.”
Blaufuss said there are many methods of acupuncture. When looking back in history, she said there used to be schools of acupuncture and thousands of individual family lineages who did it with a unique twist.
“You’ll see that a lot of the differences today can either come from family lineages or where they learned their acupuncture, so Japan is very different than China. Vietnam is very different than China and Japan,” Blaufuss said. “It really depends on where you learned your trade. Then if you look here in the United States, most of it is what they call traditional Chinese medicine. And that was Chinese medicine that Mao brought in.”
Mao Zedong focused on westernizing China. The politician initially wasn’t interested in acupuncture, Blaufuss said.
“What they did instead is Mao brought in, I believe 10 of the top Chinese medical doctors in the country, brought them into the capital and had them skinny down Chinese medicine to really fundamental aspects of it that dealt mainly with physical symptoms and some emotional symptoms,” Blaufuss said. “So before that, acupuncture was much bigger. And so you’ll find that a lot of practitioners here in the United States start training with family lineages, start training with people from Vietnam, start training with people from Japan to start expanding outside of what Mao had limited the practice to.”
Blaufuss said she focuses her practice on Dao, which she said is a very old-style Chinese medicine. She got her inspiration and her first real experience when her mother decided to try Chinese medicine over a second stint of chemotherapy for breast cancer.
Chemotherapy back then was about six times as much as what is used today, she said, and the surgeries were more intrusive.
“When her cancer came back, she just couldn’t do Western medicine again,” Blaufuss said.
Her mother had a Chinese background and found a Chinese medical provider in Boston in the 1970s, who focused on the nutrition side of Chinese medicine and “how to eat to repair your body.”
“And so my mom and my dad flew out and spent time out there learning to change their whole eating style and that’s what my mom did instead of doing any Western medicine,” Blaufuss said.
Blaufuss said in the 1970s, choosing the path of Chinese medicine was uncommon, especially after being diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Her mother did great after the first three years, she said.
“Then, she decided to go back to her Western medical doctor, and when she went back, she was in complete remission, so she didn’t have any cancer and this is from somebody who was stage three,” Blaufuss said. “You know, here all the biggest and brightest minds in the whole world were trying to find a solution to cancer and my mom ate her way to health and I just couldn’t understand that at the time.”
Blaufuss’ mother ended up living for around another 40 years and died in 2018.
Today, Blaufuss offers two types of acupuncture services, which include acupuncture for emotions and in the genre of auto accidents. Her website states acupuncture can address shock, decrease pain and increase range of motion, and relax tense, knotted and strained muscles. It can also be used by people who deal with physical health issues after an accident.
“I think part of it is I really love helping people find their way so that it’s not just about addressing their physical symptoms, but that they find that not only has that improved, but their emotional outlook and their emotional well-being has also improved, and how they interact with the world has changed,” Blaufuss said.
Blaufuss sees clients on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday in-person and via telemedicine on Monday, Thursday and Saturday.
“So with remote sessions, the only thing that you’re not really doing is needles,” Blaufuss said. “You can do a lot with herbs.”
Her telemedicine care focuses on the nutritional side of Chinese medicine that once helped her mother beat cancer.
Blaufuss’ Best Acupuncture clinic can be reached by phone at 360-841-7558. It is located at 566 Goerig St. in Woodland.
Those interested in more information can also visit best-acupuncture.com. Blaufuss is currently accepting new clients.
