Healing Roots Acupuncture is Here to Support the Trans Community

Cristina Michaels (she/her) wears many hats—She is a transgender artist, a small business owner, a licensed medical professional. She owns and operates Healing Roots Acupuncture, a queer- and transgender-inclusive acupuncture clinic, as well as Queer Dance Project, her inclusive dance studio grown from her years as a professional ballerina.

OFM had the opportunity to sit down with Michaels and chat with her about complementary medicine, trans health, and her experiences running a small business.

So you’ve been working in acupuncture for what, 25 years?

I’ve been working in complementary medicine for 25 years. I’d been working in acupuncture for just two years before going to grad school, where I started to study Chinese medicine in 2000. Then I went and got my graduate degree and medical license as an acupuncturist, so I’ve been practicing in Colorado since 2016, so for, like, eight years, I’ve been practicing with needles—before that it was my fingers.

I know that your clinic focuses a lot on queer and transgender health, so how has that affected your business?

I initially tried to focus my care around transgender care because right out of graduate school I was living in Boulder, where I had access to a lot of trans men or transmasc individuals who were going through top surgery. That was really eye-opening because, of course, with the field of medicine I was in before as a massage therapist, I was just catching everything that was falling through the cracks. Like a physical therapist couldn’t figure something out, or they would send somebody with a frozen shoulder, and I could take care of it in no time. Then when I saw this whole other avenue and path open to help the trans community, I sort of made it my effort because, you know, we don’t have a lot out there for us.

I didn’t realize how much of a struggle it was going to be as a small business owner—I’ve been doing small business for 25 years, but the last eight have been really eye-opening. As a queer woman and as a trans woman with a deeper voice, I got a lot of eye rolls from people who didn’t believe in what I do, or who I am. I also struggled with some discomfort and knee pain, I had a torn meniscus in my knee, so I had to change my pace.

And you know, I’ve always been meditating. I started meditating at the age of 8 and was introduced to yoga at the age of 9. My roots—like Healing Roots, my business name—I’m actually rooted in healing meditation and grounding. So I’ve made this switch to create a more inclusive healing space, since it’s something I’ve already been doing for decades on my own. Now I’m realizing I really need to focus on how I can heal, and a place that we can heal.

You own a dance studio too, right?

I opened Queer Dance Project something like three, four years ago in the middle of the pandemic. It was a virtual space at first, and then I ended up creating a physical dance studio. So I would teach classical ballet, because that was my background. I had found it was easy to hide my gender in the classical ballet world. I was a professional dancer for 12 years, from the age of 18 to 30, had three surgeries on my feet to continue dancing, and I traveled all over the world.

What would you say is the connection between queerness and dance—or even queerness and complementary medicine?

Well, for that, we should talk about queerness and healing too. I mean, most of us don’t really have a place where we can heal. And if we do, it’s often an imaginary place in our own head, because we’re living in abusive relationships or unsafe housing. There are so many gaps in, for example, the way trans women could definitely benefit from acupuncture and massage right after surgery. But we don’t get that option, we don’t have that luxury of, like, “Hey would you like to get some massage or acupuncture?” And this is just one of those gaps that we’ve missed as we transition and as we work with the medical community. They just want to help us in one aspect, and that’s it.

I mean we’re allowed, what, 20 minutes of face-to-face time with a doctor, like, it’s a really hard process. Now you have to write down and script all your questions before you get in there and make sure the answers they give you don’t take all your time, and that really does happen. And so that gap led me to my first book, The Adventures of Vaginoplasty: A Trans Woman’s Guide to Healing, which was a way for me to offer whatever I had to help the community heal. And yeah, it’s a niche market, but it gives trans women an individual guide to healing.

Then in the medical community, I mean, I’m sort of the “bastard child” of medical practitioners as an acupuncturist, so I’m not necessarily “in line” with them as well. I think that’s another disconnect in Western medicine, where there’s always a pill to fix it. And yeah, as a trans woman, I need my estradiol. I need this and that to make me feel right and live a healthier life. But we still need to think about the bigger picture: What is it doing to my body; how can I help myself? So I do want to write a second book eventually, about how there’s foods that we can eat as trans folks and practices that can help us in our daily lives, so with the hormones and prescriptions we’re already taking, we can assist that with certain practices or herbs.

There’s also still this delegitimization of you as a trans woman by society, by the culture. And you know, “hurt people hurt people”—and where do we find time to heal that hurt in ourselves? We often don’t, so we just continue to hurt other people because we’re hurt. And that’s why, with my acupuncture and massage therapy, I mean, the line for my business is “Healing begins from the root.” We all were damaged, you know? We didn’t get to have that young girl’s life or get raised that one way or another. Yes, I’m going to hold a place for that. But also, from that place, I have to plant a seed for beautiful growth and healing.

Follow her business journey or support her at healingrootsacupuncture.com.

Photo by Julius Garrido