Belinda Roberts, Licensed Acupuncturist (LAc), Livelong Acupuncture, LLC

 Owner/Director, Elk Haven Wellness Center

Although to do so added a year to my course of study, I am happy that I studied acupuncture at both of North Carolina’s acupuncture schools. My first year was at Daoist Traditions College of Chinese Medical Arts in Asheville, and it was a thrilling, hectic year. Due to the intense schedule there and the demands of family life (I still had 3 of my 4 kids at home), I changed schools, starting over at Year One (and with plenty of new material to ponder), at Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine in Sugar Grove. There, I completed four years of coursework, graduated, and thenon my own, studied even more to take the three national licensing exams. 

The raw unfamiliarity and the sheer volume of the information I took in over the years I was on this path of learning made my Business Administration degree from the University of Kentucky seem like College Lite. Now, as an acupuncturist, I am in more familiar space, but always learning and certainly never bored with looking at my world and the people in it through the lens of classical Chinese medicine. My own complicated health challenges had led me to look outside the western medicine box, exploring many health practices that were not mainstream and evaluating how each one might help me recover from illness to wellness. But it was the way Chinese medicine could explain and affect the systems and processes of life within our universe that brought me to this destination, serving the community around Elk Haven with all the tools and maps and compasses---and, oh yeah, the filiform needles--- that I have acquired as a devoted lifelong student of the Chinese medical arts. 

My teachers and classmates at Jung Tao introduced me to Dr. Tan’s methods of acupuncture and Bruce Ladd, who worked with his clients at Elk Haven before he closed his practice, introduced me to the value of Master Tong’s work. I find great satisfaction in helping my clients overcome pain, menstrual cramps, digestive woes, allergies, headaches, depression and any other concerns they have that may have been building to the point of interference with life’s works and wonders.  

Together with a client, I look at the details of function and dysfunction, and examine all the ways that might encourage change. Those hair-like needles are one powerful way, but there are always others to consider. Looking at diet and lifestyle and therapies that can help, I work as a personal health strategist to allow my clients to seek and select what will promote health, encourage balance and create ease in living a vibrant life.