Elizabeth Sailer, Founder & LAc

Chinese medicine took Elizabeth by surprise. She considered journalism, law, maybe architecture—it never crossed her mind to become an acupuncturist.

Her father grew up outside Beijing, but she was raised on the East Coast and studied at Yale. Her first acupuncture treatment was in 1980, in a hospital in Shanghai.

In her 20s, she read widely about healing - herbs, nutrition, pharmacology - and experimented on herself and friends. Eventually, she decided to study something in depth and, at a friend’s suggestion, found her way to acupuncture school.

She graduated from the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1993 and began her career working with people with HIV and AIDS. Over time, her practice broadened, and she went on to spend 16 years in private practice before co-founding Petaluma Community Acupuncture in 2010. She continues to be inspired by the effectiveness of Chinese medicine and by seeing long-standing problems improve and often completely resolve.

Outside the clinic, her life is her family, her big dogs, a close circle of long-term friends and a wild garden. She spends a lot of time outside.