Tsao-Lin Moy, L.Ac, MSOM, LMT, C,SMA, has over 20 years of experience as an expert in alternative and Chinese medicine. In her practice of which she is the founder, Integrative Healing Arts in New York, NY, she brings into service Chinese medicine, acupuncture, herbal medicine and energy healing.
In her practice, she incorporates both Eastern and Western medicine to bring her patients healing not only from conditions or illness, but to provide an overall sense of well-being and optimal healing.
Hello Tsao-Lin E. Moy, L.Ac., MSOM, LMT, C. SMA!
Welcome to the Acupuncturist of the Month interview.
So, how long have you been practicing acupuncture for, and what are your specialties?
I have been practicing acupuncture for over 22 years. 90% of my patients are female, and my specialty is women’s health and longevity, fertility, menopause as well as anxiety, digestive, stress and pain.
Tell us more about your professional journey that led you to practicing acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and opening your own practice.
Initially I pursued a career in business, the Fashion industry and corporate. I also hold a BS in International Trade and Marketing. There came a point where it was evident that working in a corporate job was not sustainable, and a recipe for burnout. If your job is stealing your life force it is the definition of “soul sucking”. Creating a family and having time for the things that are important in life meant freeing myself from a 9-5 job that could not offer me this kind of freedom.
I really felt a calling to do something that would make a real difference in people’s lives that would be both meaningful and fulfilling for me. I asked myself ‘what would I love to learn and do?’, and the quiet voice said massage therapy, and I enrolled in the Swedish Institute. While studying Eastern foundations I knew the next step would be to go on to study acupuncture and herbal medicine.
Acupuncture and Chinese medicine are experiential medicine, a lifelong commitment to learning where you continue to grow, and cultivate your skills through practicing. You get better and better the longer you are in practice, and that is something that cannot be taught, but only through experience. It is also a profession the older you become the more you are respected in the field. This is a very different model from the Western ideals that don’t look to elders for wisdom.
I practiced massage therapy while going to acupuncture school, and that helped me to manage my time and studies and set me up for opening my own practice. Not everyone is cut out to open their own practice. You have to love what you do, and setting my own hours and how I work with patients is freedom and feeds my “life force”.
How was your experience at the Tri-State College of Acupuncture in New York?
My experience at TSCA was great! The faculty was phenomenal and Mark Seem always brought in the best lecturers. We learned in the first year palpation skills and needling, and of course studied several styles of acupuncture, including Kiiko Matsumoto style, Acupuncture Physical Medicine and TCM. We also learned classical Chinese acupuncture styles as well.
We were encouraged to develop our own “style” drawing from a lot of hands-on clinical practice in different styles as well as observing grand rounds from many masters. Clinical rotations with different acupuncture styles with supervisors with expertise in those styles.
The curriculum and clinical practice was designed to set us up for success in treating patients when compared to other schools. Our graduates came away with more hands-on experience and confidence to treat pain conditions as well as other patient complaints.
Once you have graduated and are treating patients, you realize how great the education was. I know I sound like a spokesperson for TSCA, but the level of training in my opinion was at the top.
What are your fondest memories of your time at acupuncture school?
Our spring intensives which were 3 days of being taught by guest lecturers and master practitioners. We had Dr. Tan, Arya Nielsen,Shudo Denmei and Kiiko Matsumoto.
The camaraderie with my classmates, having spent 3 years together studying and practicing “on each other”, for that time we were “a family”.
What obstacles did you face as a recent acupuncture graduate and how did you overcome them?
I had my daughter in my 3rd year at TSCA, so navigating motherhood with a newborn, and starting my practice was a challenge. It began as part time a couple of days, and I started teaching at TSCA one evening a week. I think practicing as a massage therapist and understanding business I had to be very organized and clear about running a practice.
Even though I was a massage therapist, massage clients do not naturally convert to acupuncture, and after having a baby I had taken time from my massage practice. I had to build a new client lists and promote acupuncture. The internet was just starting, and I already had a website as well as taking credit cards which made a difference with accepting payments. Also getting the word out and networking to everyone I knew.
At one point I taught practice management at TSCA, it was called “Taking the L out of Learn and Earn”. What is not taught in Acupuncture school, is that you really have to have an entrepreneurial mindset and be able to educate people about acupuncture and how it can benefit them.
You have a world of experience in fertility! Which work or educational experience sparked your desire to focus on fertility?
I was pregnant as a student in TSCA, and having a baby after 35 years myself. I was acutely aware of the bias towards women with regard to age and reproduction, and much of it is not really true.
At least 90% of my patients are female, and it was the women that first came to me seeking assistance with their menstrual cycles and fertility that directed my practice. There was a need for these women to be supported with their health and on their fertility journey, and helping them with their calling to bring a life into the world by becoming a mother.
I empower my patients to reclaim their health by showing them natural and better ways to balance and heal so they can make informed decisions about their health. There is a lot of wisdom in Chinese medicine and understanding women’s health.
Western medicine is still taught and practiced on old models of gender and cultural bias, dismissing women’s symptoms and concerns because it lacks clinical data. Until 1993 most clinical trials did not include women, which is pretty egregious. In this day and age, women need alternatives to the usual narrative of hormonal birth control, anti-depressants, fertility medication and then hormone replacement therapy.
What was the process like to write your best-selling book, “Will I Ever Get Pregnant?: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Get Pregnant Naturally Over 40,”?
For many years I was asked by my patients and students “when are you going to write a book?”. It was the pandemic that motivated me to write. With the lock downs it was more important than ever to share my experiences with women that were not local, and felt hopeless about their fertility. I wrote the book in a manner of how I work with my patients as if the person was sitting in front of me.
Writing a book is a process of clarifying what information you want to convey, and how it will help the target audience. Then step by step each chapter answering what is the take away. I worked with a book writing incubator that helped to create the form, deadlines, proof reading, and edits. As I wrote each chapter it was as though the writing came through me from a higher consciousness.
What advice would you give to other acupuncturists who may be considering writing their own book?
I think it is important for practitioners to share their experience as each of us has helped patients to tap into their natural healing abilities, and empowered others to cultivate a stronger mind-body connection. When you help someone it has a ripple effect.
You’ve been featured on some major television and media networks, such as the Dr. Oz show, Good Day New York, Fox26Houston, AskMen, PBS, and a lot more! That is absolutely amazing. Tell us more about your experiences educating the public about acupuncture & TCM on these major networks.
Every day in my practice I am supporting my patients and educating them about what they can do to support their well being, and when they can make small changes they see results. After this they are then empowered to keep going. I have an integrative approach to support patients where they are, and help them navigate using both acupuncture as well as look at other lifestyle changes they can make or shift so they can feel confident in their health choices.
This is also empowering them to ask questions of their Western doctor that they may feel they don’t have agency or choice. Sharing acupuncture and Chinese medicine and how it can help people feels natural for me because of my experience in sales. Also, I was teaching at TSCA for 16 years, where I supported students helping them to articulate and communicate with patients in the clinical setting.
There is a lot of misinformation and cultural bias towards East Asian medicine, and often people in the media that comment being quoted as “experts” have no education, knowledge or experience in the field. As a profession, we need to take charge of the narrative about what we do and how we can help people to connect with their body and help themselves. This is different from the broken and fix model of Western medicine to a paradigm of balance, healing and transformation.
It was exciting to be on the Dr. Oz show treating a patient in front of a studio audience with Dr. Oz and Dr. Andrew Weill observing. No pressure there!
There is a lot of interest in natural and alternative medicine also known as complementary and alternative medicine. The awareness, the desire, and the need for it, and yet not enough experienced or qualified clinicians are making themselves visible. Acupuncture and Chinese medicine are of interest to the public, and we as practitioners owe it to our patients and the public to articulate the clear potential benefits to people’s health and wellness. I regularly pitch to journalists, and reach out to podcasts to continue to increase visibility.
Share a recent success story you had with a patient. What acupuncture points, herbs, or other interventions (meditation, yoga, nutrition, etc) did you use to help them achieve results?
Most of my patients that come to me have tried all that Western medicine has to offer, and they have reached a point of exhaustion, emotionally, physically and financially.
One of my patients, “M” a woman of 43, had frozen a couple of embryos several years before, but wanted to do another retrieval, because she was afraid that the embryos she had might not be “good”. She was super stressed with a corporate job and was going between 2 fertility doctors trying to improve AMH levels and balancing hormones and her menstrual cycle.
We worked together consistently for 6 months focusing on regulating her nervous system, digestion, following her cycle and sleep. Her vitals were good except constipation (rabbit balls) and massive anxiety.
I am a Kiiko Matsumoto style practitioner and use her treatments for constitutional treatments and then overlap other modalities that are personalized. General treatment points that would vary based on palpation and findings.
I used the 8 extra points TW5 with GB41 for autonomic nerve imbalance, K6/K27 or K7/K10/27, STQi, SP6, HT7,LV4/LU5/ immune pts. CV12, (b) /ST25, CV6, CV4, ZiGong, LV3/LI4, alternative SP4/PC6 depending on findings Back Sacral iliac tx, 6 flowers and 4 liao pts. Releasing TTPs along the paraspinals.
The patient also had chronic low back pain so I added moxa and manual treatment. The strategy was to keep her treatments simple so as not to give her body too many signals.
The biggest hurdle was the anxiety and how it was interfering with her menstrual cycle, hormone levels, sleep and digestions. I gave her breathing exercises so that she could reset her nervous system, and I also recommended magnesium to help with sleep and it also had a calming effect. Her fertility cycles kept getting canceled because of the irregular response to the hormones.
When patients are in the throes of fertility treatments fear and despair are out of control and that will block fertility success.With patient M, there were already viable embryos from a previous retrieval and trying to get “more” was causing more health issues. I encouraged her to consider doing a transfer with what she had.
The result was a successful pregnancy and a healthy baby in the new year. Supporting my patients where they are so that they can achieve their dreams of holding their baby in their arms is what is important and this means also working closely with Western medicine.
What makes you feel inspired about acupuncture?
Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, and is not going anywhere. In fact, more and more studies are showing the benefits of acupuncture on the nervous system, and how it influences relieving inflammation and helping to bring the body and mind into balance.
Looking back, what advice would you have given to the younger version of yourself, who was just getting started in this profession?
It’s a difficult question to answer as I feel I am right where I’m supposed to be on my journey! I would have loved to travel more, learning esoteric, and shamanic studies sooner as well as indigenous plant medicines.
What keeps an acupuncture practice going?
Curiosity about the wisdom of the ancients, and how they knew so much about the human body and nature. There is more to learn. Helping people tap into their natural healing, and witnessing how powerful and ancient the knowledge of acupuncture and Chinese medicine is.
What are specific roadblocks to watch out for as a new acupuncturist?
I am not a fan of insurance as it is based on a western diagnostic and procedure model creating a cookie cutter, and protocol approach to treatments versus personalized care. I encourage new acupuncturists to continue to study, and take classes and get treatments so they can enhance their skills. Acupuncture school teaches the minimum level of skill to pass the boards and do no harm, but real learning comes from treating patients.
What are your favorite acupuncture points, and why?
My favorite points are based on Kiiko Matsumoto style. I do abdominal palpation and check which points are active and what points release the reflexes. Looking for what is the presentation and priority of the treatment: structural, immune, adrenal, inflammation along the channels, blood stagnation, water stagnation, pain conditions & autonomic nervous system. Determining the priority for treatment answers a question, if this part of their health is not addressed will the chief complaint resolve?
I do a differentiation and constitutional assessment and gravitate towards these combinations to start. All based on reflexes and relevant point resolution.
Oketsu (LV4/LU5)
Immune points
ST Qi points
A variation of an adrenal treatment based on reflexes (K6/27, Kd7/10/27, KD9/27)
ANS treatment based on pulse (GB41/TW5, GB40/TW9)
Tell us about some herbal formulas and foods you find yourself consistently recommending to your patients, friends, and colleagues. What makes these herbs/foods so helpful?
I teach my patients to take Yu Ping Feng San and Yin Qiao San when they are in the early stages of a cold. For worry and anxiety, I like Gui Pi Tang and Jia wei Xiao Yao san for many conditions including constipation especially with type A personality type people.
I will also recommend supplements from my dispensary such as probiotics, collagen with C, GABA and magnesium. I do make dietary recommendations, and encourage my patients to eliminate from their consumption diet or energy drinks, processed foods, sugar, alcohol, dairy and wheat (gluten).
Bone broth with seaweed is a classic food medicine, and I love this one from OMA. I have been recommending it to all my patients because it is easy to make, detoxifying, supporting gut health and nutrient dense. It is fantastic for sports injuries, immune recovery, fertility and postpartum Here is a link.
When recommending herbal formulas I am cautious, herbs are powerful. Since many patients are taking other medications that can have interactions, and if the patient is not compliant, it can interfere with their health goals. I look at eliminating things that are inflammatory, before adding herbs.
Sometimes, the best resource for improving our skills is by learning from the other acupuncturists we meet along our professional journey. What is one thing you learned from another acupuncture practitioner that has helped you in your professional growth, or in your care for patients?
Being a student of Kiiko Matsumoto and learning her diagnostic style has helped me to be clear about how to begin with a patient and help them. Her style of checking reflexes and understanding patterns is so accurate, it is different in that you have to look at more than symptoms, but understand systems and how they create patterns. Being able to recognize patterns and check them with reflexes is a dynamic way of treating.
Do you have any daily habits or rituals that keep you at your “best-self”, both as an acupuncture practitioner and person?
I do daily breathing exercises, lymphatic drainage massage and mobility stretching. The breathing is a form of meditation and helps with oxygen saturation, lymphatic self massage helps remove metabolic waste and inflammation and mobility stretching helps with balance and improves range of motion and muscle function.
The kindest thing a patient said to you recently:
Recently a patient shared that their parents that came to see me many years ago really loved seeing me.
The funniest thing a patient said to you recently:
Conversations with my patients are on the light side, though we can get serious especially when we are working through trauma.
As an acupuncturist, what are you most proud of thus far in your professional journey?
I am proud that I continue to practice after 22 years, and receive referrals from people I have never met but got my information from an old patient.
If you could have a billboard with anything on it, what would it be and why?
“The healing you seek is already inside of you”
What is your definition of success?
Doing what you love and being paid for it, having time to be with family and friends, being healthy and strong, and being the author of your destiny.
If you could have one super power, what would it be and why?
Teleportation. Get to travel anywhere, and see the world.
*Rapid fire questions! *:
Morning or night? Morning
Tea or coffee? Coffee
Sun or moon? Moon
Cupping or Tui na? Tuina
Yin or Yang? Yin
Meditation or exercise?both
Instagram or Facebook? Neither
Top 3 Favorite Books? Harry potter, GOT and Tai Pan.
Spirit animal? Snake
Where can other licensed acupuncturists, students, and patients go to learn more about your work?
Integrative Healing Arts
Integrative Healing Arts Linktree
Integrative Healing Arts Facebook
Integrative Healing Arts Instagram
Tsao-Lin Moy Linked In
Tsao-Lin Moy Dr. Oz Episode
Will I Ever Get Pregnant, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Get Pregnant Naturally Over 40 by Tsao-Lin Moy