Meet Dr. Rachel Oristano

I knew that I wanted to be an acupuncturist when I was twelve. As my education progressed, I explored other academic interests such as neuroscience, folklore and mythology, foreign language, and human psychology. I came to appreciate that the practices of Chinese Medicine and mental health would provide the most fulfilling avenue toward exploring and integrating these interests.

That being said, I have long found myself at odds with the ethos of the American Wellness Industrial Complex. I’m highly critical of how “toxic positivity” and “spiritual bypass” put the onus of healing exclusively on the individual. Chinese Medicine has the capacity to act as joinery for a conflicting world. It creates movement where there is stuckness. It favors flow and wholeness over false dichotomies. It rejects the misconception that we are separate form the world around us.

In my ideal scenario, I would be able to sit outside with a shining light to signal my availability. When the light was on, I would be there for first-come-first-served acupuncture and healing conversation. When the light was off, I would be off doing whatever else struck my fancy. Alas, the modern trappings of capitalism make this functionally impractical.

Instead, for the last five years I worked out of a delightful little office space. It served me well through the early pandemic. And as with the natural cycle of things, I eventually felt the need to exhale and expand.

I found myself dreaming about a different kind of business: a community space that could be a café/pop-up-space/what-have-you by day with Queer-centered cabaret events at night. I knew that I would call it “Thornback’s” as a reclamation of my feminine identity outside of heteronormative conventions:

“At twenty-six, women without spouses became thornbacks, a reference to a sea-skate with sharp spines covering its back and tail. It was not a compliment." - Rebecca Traister, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation

"While single women in their mid-twenties might be viewed with both 'alarm and pity,' a thirty-year-old New England Spinster would be openly labeled a 'thornback.'” - Terri L. Permo, Winter Friends: Women Growing Old in the New Republic, 1785-1835

And then, a spark: Why not build an acupuncture clinic that also functioned as a flexible community space that could transform based on whim and opportunity? Why not both?

And so I proudly present Thornback Acupuncture, the hard-won actualization of my afternoon flight-of-fancy.

My goal is to cultivate something that is both nurturing and honest. This space is not for the conventional wellness community; this space is for those who don’t fit in anywhere else, who exist on the fringes of the fringes. It’s for those who find themselves uncomfortable with the performative spirituality that is often found in wellness spaces.

Thornback Acupuncture is for those seeking the deeply gratifying softness and candor of the earth.

Let's collaborate.