Meet Emily
I share my surname (Boschert) with my Maternal Grandmother, a name that is unaccidentaly composed of the ancient Germaic elements "fierce, wild, angry, hardy, strong and brave". Interestingly, within Chinese Medicine, anger and compassion work synchronistically, and my primary responsibilty as a practitioner is to hold a compassionate and fierce space for the patient in the treatment room by recognizing, cultivating and encouraging the human potential to create health, and the individual's own ability to sustain it. In this way, I unapologetically live up to my namesake.
A licensed Chinese Medicine Practitioner (Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine) with nearly 15 years of experience, I care for patients in NorthWest Washington DC and on Mount Desert Island in Maine. As I employ a compassionate, curious, and all encompasing approach to care, I practice the traditional healing relationship; in their own respective roles the practitioner and patient practice seeing the entire human being in bodymindspirit, recognizing the process of health and illness, and the path to restoration of lost health - with the patient empowered to act as their own Healer.
I utilize all channel systems: primary, the eight extraordinary, luo, sinew, and the divergent, as well as Chinese Herbal Medicine, nutritional therapy, with a special emphasis on chronic illness, mental health and emotional trauma. Through these modalities, the development of self awareness contributes to the physiology of healing and the patient's ability to move beyond the management of symptoms to sustainable health. I am daily astonished by the remarkable responsivity of my patients to the healing message - seemingly completely lost, ill beyond repair, in excruciating emotional or physical pain - the body does not fail to Remember health.
I first pursued a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Maryland, and then a Master of Oriental Medicine degree from the Maryland University of Integrative Health, a Western pioneer in the transmission of the 5,000 year old art of Classical Chinese Acupuncture. I am board certified in Acupuncture and a certified Acu Detox Specialist in the trauma protocol established by the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association.
Transitioning into Chinese Medicine from the field of Epidemiology and International Public Health, my previous experience includes work with high risk trauma populations in the United States and East Africa, and throughout my training as a Chinese Medicine practitioner I continued public health work with University of Maryland's Shock Trauma, UMD Center for Integrative Medicine, and Johns Hopkins University, all experiences that deepened my understanding of how health, and lack of health, is informed by factors at the individual, familial, and community level.
With graduate training as an infectious disease epidemiologist, I acted primarily as an on-the-ground community health program manager and qualitative researcher in domestic and international settings of devastating health disparities. My field relationships developed from a humility, respect, and open hearted curiosity for the perspectives and experiences that contribute to a human's condition. It is my active practice of deep listening and inquiry into the personal insight one has about their own state of Being that allows me to be fully present with those I care for, encouraging folks to grow fully present to themselves as well.
Thus, whether the treatment goal is to explore and dissolve the root cause of severe back pain or migraine headaches, fibroids or seizures, or it is coping with an emotional trauma, depression, or anxiety, a culture of mutual inquiry and discovery guides progress towards physical, spiritual, and mental healing in my treatment room. A growing awareness of the ways in which we hold and carry ourselves through life circumstance serve as profound medicine to the patient. It is within this philosophical and medical paradigm that I also incorporate mental health and nutritional counseling, fundamental to the traditional practice of Chinese Medicine, into the primary treatment modalities of Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine.