Acupuncture & East Asian Medicine
A foundational part of how Sarah understands the body
Acupuncture has been practiced for thousands of years as part of the larger system of East Asian medicine. Its traditional framework looks for patterns across the body rather than isolating a symptom from everything around it. Modern research offers another lens, exploring how acupuncture influences the nervous system, pain processing and the tissues surrounding the points being stimulated.
For Sarah, those perspectives do not need to compete.
Sarah Piestrup has more than two decades of experience in acupuncture and Traditional East Asian Medicine. She does not approach acupuncture as a fixed collection of points for a particular complaint. She looks at the person in front of her, how the body is moving and compensating, where function appears disrupted, and how symptoms relate to the larger pattern she is seeing.
Fine, sterile acupuncture needles allow her to stimulate very specific areas with extraordinary precision. Depending on the person and the reason for treatment, acupuncture may be used on its own or as part of a broader plan that includes movement, herbal medicine, functional medicine or regenerative therapies.
Training That Goes Far Beyond Basic Acupuncture
Sarah’s approach has been shaped by decades of study and by teachers representing very different branches of Chinese medicine.
Neurological Acupuncture
Sarah has trained with Professor Ming-Qing Zhu, founder of Zhu’s Scalp Acupuncture, and Professor Shi Xue-Min, creator of the Xing Nao Kai Qiao acupuncture system developed for neurological rehabilitation.
Their work brought unusual precision to the use of acupuncture in conditions involving the brain and nervous system. Sarah incorporates principles from this training when neurological function, sensory changes, motor patterns or recovery are part of the clinical picture.
Classical Chinese Medicine
Sarah has also studied with Jeffrey Yuen, an 88th-generation Daoist priest and internationally recognized teacher of Classical Chinese Medicine.
That tradition asks the practitioner to understand more than the location of a symptom. It considers the pattern that produced it, the resources available to the body and how physical health exists within the larger context of a person’s life. This classical foundation remains central to the way Sarah thinks, even when she is using very modern diagnostic or regenerative tools.
Sports Acupuncture
At Five Branches University, Sarah trained in sports acupuncture with Frank He, LAc, DAOM, founder of its Integrative Sports Medicine program and developer of Muscle Channel Technique.
That training combines detailed musculoskeletal assessment with precise acupuncture techniques designed around muscles, movement and injury patterns. Sarah uses that perspective with active patients and with people whose pain or restriction is preventing them from moving the way they want to move.
Where Acupuncture Meets New Technology
Sarah’s acupuncture training also changes how she uses newer technologies such as StemWave.
Rather than simply moving the applicator across an area that hurts, Sarah uses what she knows about acupuncture points, tissue patterns and the relationships between different parts of the body to guide where she looks and where she treats. She has described using StemWave almost like an “acupuncture wand,” allowing the technology to become another way of interrogating and stimulating a very specific area.
Acupuncture and StemWave are different treatments and may be used independently. When Sarah brings them together, however, the technology sits inside a clinical framework she has spent decades developing.
That is an important distinction in Sarah’s practice. The newest tool does not replace the older medicine. It gives her another way to work with what she already knows how to see.
