I was introduced to Pacific College of Health and Sciences by a Google search, sitting at the front desk of a Massage Envy as a receptionist. A therapist, Melissa, sat beside me as she shared stories of her most memorable bodywork sessions. One was about a woman seeking stress relief. Shortly into the session, Melissa began to smell a burnt, campfire ash-like odor exuding from the woman. When she asked about the scent, the client revealed she had lost a family member in a housefire years ago and thought of the tragedy during her massage, but neither of them could explain the smell. I was instantly encapsulated by the mysteries of the body and how it absorbs what it experiences. My curiosity fuelled my enrollment into the massage therapy and Asian bodywork certification program. But I didn’t realize I was shown a prime example of how our environment and life circumstances play a central role in our wellbeing.

	At the time, I worked at a coffee shop at dawn and ended the evening with reception work to support myself at eighteen years old. Although work days were tiring, I was always excited to meet new people. Getting to know customers through their preferences and building relationships with them over time was always a heartwarming experience. Most of all, I loved service and fulfilling the needs of those I would cross paths with. Initially, I saw a career in massage therapy as a means to escape Chicago’s minimum wages and to immerse myself in a people-centered, slow-living way of life. I was not yet aware of the holistic medicine world, orbiting around the familiar principle of compassionate care, that I would soon fall in love with.

	Originally, I planned on attending college to major in public health before my work-centered lifestyle. I was conscious of the health access, education, and quality disparities harming marginalized individuals locally and globally, and I was determined to help close those gaps. However, my time in college felt cold, distant, and depersonalized from the people I wanted to directly assist. I desired to work with women, providing prenatal care and resources to combat the high morbidity rate in mothers of color. I desired to work with incarcerated individuals, who rarely receive the human interaction, care, and health treatment they need. I wanted to equip myself with the tools needed to assist those affected by PTSD, allowing them to navigate life experiences with a more progressive outlook. I grew deeply inspired by Tolbert Small, Mutulu Shakur, and the Black Panthers. I wanted to continue their work of providing alternative, trauma-informed, quality health treatments to low-income populations and to those struggling with addiction in New York and Los Angeles. Being a massage practitioner excited me, as I knew it would grant me the freedom to provide care to people underserved by our capitalistic world.

	I chose to work at a community health clinic in their call center scheduling department while I attended Pacific College. These two commitments synchronized seamlessly in enriching my education as a healthcare provider. As I learned crucial aspects of therapeutic massage such as fostering professional client relationships, the art of listening, and clinical observation in class, I was able to integrate these skills into my call handling procedures. These interactions affirmed and fulfilled my desire to work intimately with people, supporting their health and well-being. I enjoyed the role I played in mitigating stressful health situations by simply presenting with a calm and reassuring demeanor. This alone combatted the cold, sterile, anxiety-inducing environment health clinics can have. I believe health clinics should be conducive to a patients’ healing process — warm, relaxing, supportive, and disarming. Coming from parents who have experienced adverse medical experiences and have consequently developed a distrust of biomedical providers, I understood the importance of patients’ comfort in healthcare.

	Pacific College also opened my eyes to medical politics in the U.S. and the varying worldviews of healthcare around the globe. I learned that America is known to treat healthcare as a business selling pharmaceuticals with disease being the primary consumer. In other words, America notoriously profits from the diseases that plague the greater population while quality, preventative medical care is reserved as a privilege for those who can afford it. Despite this heartbreaking reality, I was reignited once I learned that our bodies hold a poetic connection to nature through its gravitation to homeostasis in my Chinese Medicine Theory and Points course. Massage, acupuncture, and other natural medicine practices encourage the body to become its own healer. I knew I wanted to share this knowledge with my community to redirect the sole reliance on biomedicine to more individualized and accessible healthcare options. I also gained exposure to the ancient medicine practices of Averveda, Sufism and Akose Ifá that share similar beliefs on the body’s self-healing capabilities, the importance of plant medicine, and our innate connection to nature. At this point, I decided to study Traditional Chinese Medicine as a foundation to my exploration of medical philosophies practiced around the globe.

	Once we began to explore acupressure points and their physiological associations along the twelve meridian channels, I remember feeling empowered knowing how touch, paired with this ancient understanding of medicine, can have a myriad of deep influences on our physical, emotional, and mental bodies simultaneously. There is no heart, brain, stomach, or foot doctor in Chinese medicine. There is only the patient and the guide who walks alongside them through their unique journey back to balance. My time at Pacific College inspired me to fall deeper into the practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine, beyond manipulating the superficial channel layers with massage, tui na, and acupressure. I now seek a more comprehensive education, allowing me to assist people while utilizing acupuncture, nutritional counseling, and herbal medicine.

	I have always been fascinated by the diversity of human histories and identities on this earth. Attending an international baccalaureate school in my early years, growing up in the culturally rich cities of Chicago and Philadelphia, and interacting with individuals with varying backgrounds since then has instilled an unconditional sense of compassion in me for the people I share the earth with. This, coupled with my insatiable interest in the multicultural history of ancient medicine practices, carry my devotion to becoming a natural medicine student, researcher and practitioner. The beloved inspirational speaker Iyanla Vanzant once wrote, “the greatest service I can offer is the courageous investigation of everything I see, know, and believe” — I plan to embody this saying in my lifelong study of the natural world and those who inhabit it as a professional of holistic health.