Over the past twenty years in Ashland, Oregon, Licensed Acupuncturist Chadwick Moyer estimates that he has performed over sixty thousand acupuncture sessions and has placed nearly one million needles. Each needle was purposefully intended. The lives that these needles touched and changed are vast beyond what we may easily imagine. People’s Choice Acupuncture continues to change lives by setting new courses of direction both for its patients and itself. In today’s interview I speak with Chad to learn more about his approach to life, work and play.
Chad, thank you so much for doing this interview with me today. You have been a long-time member of our community and I know many people will immediately recognize you as their friend, neighbor and or practitioner.
Thanks, Shields. It’s great to be here. Ashland has been a great home for the past twenty years, a great place to raise a child, and a wonderful community. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I appreciate the opportunity to share some of the magic that happens at People’s Choice Acupuncture with your readers.
To begin with, what first inspired you to become an acupuncturist and how did you eventually come to be in Ashland?
Like many people involved in alternative medicine, I was introduced to and fell in love with my profession as a patient. In my early twenties, I suffered a lifting accident while working in a nursing home that severely injured my lower back. It was the type of injury that wasn’t suitable for surgery but nonetheless incapacitated me for many years. I really thought my best days were behind me. Just putting on shoes each day was agony. Eventually, an acupuncturist in Hawaii got to the bottom of my pain and gave me my life back. That sealed my decision to try and help others the way I had been helped, and I’ve been on a quest to do just that ever since.
Landing in Ashland was really a serendipitous affair. I won’t try to describe all the things that just fell into place when my young family and I arrived here twenty years ago but suffice it to say that we just knew we were home. It’s funny, I wish I’d kept count over the years of just how many others I’ve met in Ashland who say something similar. We are legion!
For the past twenty years People’s Choice Acupuncture has served our community, meeting all different types of needs and health concerns. Please introduce us to your clinic.
People’s Choice Acupuncture has gone through several incarnations over the years. From private practice to community-style clinic and now back to private practice. I enjoy helping patients with whatever brings them through my door, and, over the past few years I’ve really specialized in the treatment of chronic and complex conditions. Ailments like migraines, peripheral neuropathy, failed back surgeries, and post-Covid syndrome severely diminish a person’s quality of life, their productivity, and even their independence. My patients get outstanding results, and my greatest joy is watching them reclaim their energy, their vitality, and their active lives.
The clinic utilizes cutting-edge, modern medical acupuncture approaches like electro acupuncture and ATP Bioresonance therapy to treat these conditions while remaining informed by acupuncture’s 5000-year-old traditional concepts and models.
How has the clinic changed and evolved since its first inception, and how has it stayed the same?
In 2007, People’s Choice became the first “community acupuncture” clinic in Southern Oregon. The mission was to dramatically lower the cost of administering acupuncture by performing it in a group setting and thus make it available to more people. It operated this way for almost fifteen years. An underserved portion of the population benefited from this model, but there was a huge boon for me as well: due to the high volume of patients I treated, I learned more and honed my skills more in those fifteen years than I might have in an entire career of private practice. I took note of patterns that I observed over the years: conditions that acupuncture treated well, those it treated extremely well, and those which acupuncture alone seemed able to help. My interest in this last category led me to specialize and to pursue advanced training for peripheral neuropathy, and more recently, post-Covid/post-vaccine syndrome.
In 2020 a few more things changed… and People’s Choice has adapted to the times by restructuring itself again as a private practice. Patients are seen in private rooms, the office has an advanced HEPA air filtration system, and I’ve been asked by patients to meet a new need: effective post-Covid and post-vaccine recovery. The need for the results that acupuncture can deliver feels greater than ever in 2023, and I believe that People’s Choice Acupuncture is poised to meet those challenges better than ever before.
Dr. Moyer, what has been the most surprising change you have witnessed in yourself after treating so many patients and working in your field so long?
Interesting question. I think I’m most surprised that I’m still performing acupuncture after twenty years and that I enjoy it more than ever. I believe my treatments have gotten better. I’m faster, more on target, and I get better results. And I love the opportunity and the demand to keep learning. The field continues to grow and change and so do the kinds of problems patients ask me to help them solve. There’s a lot of repetition, a lot of staying the course, and a lot of room for thinking outside the box.
When you are working on patients with some of these conditions, what are they saying to you?
The specifics vary a lot, but the common thread is that whatever a person’s particular pain or dysfunction, it is preventing them from doing something they love or even from performing basic tasks like dressing, walking or sleeping. Specifically, to use peripheral neuropathy as an example, I’m told things like, “my feet burn so bad at night I go to sleep with ice packs,” “I can’t fasten my earrings or change the batteries in my hearing aids,” “I feel like I’m walking on broken glass,” “I feel like I’m walking through mud,” or “I’m afraid of stairs and uneven ground because my balance is so bad.”
It really motivates me because these are people in their 60’s, 70’s and above who have worked hard their whole lives and have had the good fortune to live into their golden years only to lose their freedom and autonomy as they lose the sensation in their feet and hands.
Worse, they’re usually told that there’s nothing to be done or that it’s normal for their age to lose sensation and balance and they’ll just have to live with it. It is not “normal” and we restore feeling and function every day in our clinic. It’s hard to imagine unless you’re living with it yourself or are caring for a spouse or parent.
When patients improve, they are ecstatic, and hearing their stories of returning to walking, hiking, or getting down on the floor with their grandchildren is gratifying beyond measure. Sometimes the stories are unusual. In October, an eighty-something year old patient named “Ron” (not his real name) was so excited that he could feel and hold toilet paper again. It sounds funny, and he laughed at the absurdity of it, but the underlying message was poignant. He can go to the bathroom unassisted again. It has freed both him and his wife of an ordeal and has given him back his dignity and autonomy. It’s a big deal for them both and I am thrilled.
It must be very satisfying for you to be able to help and change the quality of life for these patients.
I feel incredibly fortunate. I knew from a young age that I wanted to work in a profession that made a tangible positive impact in people’s lives. I feel lucky to have found a good fit with acupuncture.
I’ve heard that when you are starting out with clients who need long-term care you tell them that “we are going to be like family.” What does this mean?
Yes, I do tell patients that. Well, first, it means that for a period of time, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other – like family. But more importantly, it means that my staff and I take a genuine interest in the lives of each of our patients. We celebrate their birthdays and anniversaries, listen to their stories of travel and adventure, enjoy pictures of their grandchildren and pets, laugh with them and share the joy of their progress and success, and cry with them during times of heartache and loss. I know that might sound campy or cliché, but it’s really like that. It’s a privilege to get to know our patients the way we do, and we never take that for granted.
Besides the outstanding results our patients achieve physically, the family atmosphere is, I believe, the best feature at People’s Choice Acupuncture. I love hearing from so many of my patients that they truly look forward to their appointments.
Chad, I’m curious how your career as an acupuncturist has shaped the way in which you meet the world.
I think the principles of balance and harmony that inform East Asian Medicine and acupuncture have deeply altered the quality of how I pay attention to life and the world around me. Striving for just enough of everything but not too much of anything, attending to details while remaining cognizant of the broad picture, and observing the interplay of complex, dynamic systems are all fabulously interesting to me. That combination of elements likely explains why I’m such an avid (albeit novice) sailor.
For me, sailing is about balancing awareness of and responding in the moment to multiple demands like shifting winds, tides, currents, waves, and weather, along with tasks like trimming sails and managing the strengths and weaknesses of crew, all while trying to get somewhere on the map and have a good time doing it. It’s a great microcosm of life: from the inherent risk and danger to the elation, joy and seeming effortlessness when everything just lines up right. For me, there’s nothing like the feeling of sailing close-hauled with well-trimmed sails in a fresh breeze!
What do you enjoy doing in your free time and when do you find yourself finding the most fun in your life?
Well, I’ve mentioned sailing. I also enjoy hiking the local trails with my most faithful hiking buddy, Ollie, my fifteen-year-old standard poodle. But he doesn’t take pleasure in long, vigorous hikes the way he used to, so these days he spends more time listening to me work on my bucket-list endeavor of becoming a passable guitarist and musician. But mostly, fun for me is found in simple pleasures like cooking and enjoying conversation over a meal with my partner, Sharon, my daughter, Althea, and friends. I also love to dance, but that’s a thread I haven’t picked up yet post-Covid.
Dr. Moyer, what are your key skills as an acupuncturist that make you great at what you do?
I think my years and experience in the field have honed my sense of sequencing and timing, and I have a keener sense of how the interlocking pieces of what-makes-us-work fit together. For example, pain often interferes with sleep. Sometimes it’s important to address the source of pain to aid sleep and other times helping a person sleep is key to addressing their pain. No two people are exactly alike, but the patterns of harmony and disharmony that operate within us change in predictable ways and I recognize them and adapt faster now than I did even a few years ago.
Another key factor is mindset. Almost like a coach or a cheerleader, I maintain a sense of what is possible for my patients, and I am extremely persistent. I don’t give up. I often hold the space of belief in their progress when they cannot. It’s not uncommon for someone to come to me as a last resort – the little red caboose on a long train of exhausted options. I take that very seriously and I work hard to find solutions that give them a legitimate reason to have faith that their condition and their quality of life will improve.
How can our readers book an appointment and start working with you?
The easiest way is to call the office at 541-482-1060. I have three fabulous patient care coordinators working with me, Trina, Sarah, and Tracy, and they can answer any questions people may have prior to booking a consultation.
In conclusion, are there any last thoughts or comments you would like to share with our readers here today?
I would. It’s a paraphrase from an ancient Chinese text on healthy living. It says, “It is better to enjoy life than to preserve health.” It means that enjoying life, basking in the love and warmth of meaningful relationships, and having fun is both more rewarding and more effective at promoting health than rigidly or joylessly exercising, dieting, or meditating. More than ever, I believe this is a message for our times, especially as we pick up the threads of our lives in a post-Covid world. It’s an old recipe: Focus your mind on what you love. Be with those you love and who love you. Spend your time and energy on what brings you joy. The rest is details.
