clinic

Closing Office End of February 2020

Closing Office End of February 2020

It is with mixed emotions that I am announcing the closure of my acupuncture practice, Shawna Seth, L.Ac. After Friday February 21, 2020 I will no longer be seeing patients at my current office. It has been an honor and great pleasure providing for your health and wellness needs. My wish is that my departure be as easy on you as possible.

Why? I am so proud of what we've built together. I set out to create a space and experience that anticipated your needs and gave you a place to feel heard, relaxed, empowered, and restored so you could heal and understand why so you were more in charge of your own health. I believe we achieved that. And I have genuinely loved being your acupuncturist. The truth is that running a business is challenging and for that reason I have decided to take my career in a different direction.

999 Sutter and a Sign of Relief

999 Sutter and a Sign of Relief

I’m moving my acupuncture schedule full time to the Healing Arts Building on Sutter and Hyde in San Francisco this September, which is a big milestone to celebrate. I love how calm this clinic is and patients often remark how relaxed they feel. I’m glad to be spending more time with you in this beautiful healing space!

When I visited before deciding to rent here in Spring 2018, there were many things I loved about the whole building right away. It's beautiful with a lot of old-style character. The Sutter Healing Arts building is brick, which always feels warm to me, was built in the 1900s in Beaux Arts style, and originally housed a urology practice on the first floor with the doctor living upstairs. So there’s a lot of history here as a medical space, yet it’s also been a home from the beginning, making it the perfect place to create a clinic that’s not clinical.

Can Acupuncture Treat ...?

Can Acupuncture Treat ...?

It's a very common question: "Does acupuncture treat …?" The short answer is YES!, no matter the condition, because acupuncture is a complete medical system.

While it’s tempting to hear that as equivalent to a specific drug being touted as a panacea, it’s really like saying all of medicine can address a wide variety of ailments. We’re much more comfortable with that concept. Western or allopathic medicine can help with lots of things to varying degrees. It’s much the same with acupuncture. That’s one of the reasons it’s more accurately referred to as a complementary medicine, rather than alternative medicine.

Love and Luck

Love and Luck

Two beautiful and unexpected things happened this weekend. I had recently lost my pocket tiger's eye and I found the perfect replacement. And I thought I'd have a hard timing finding the moon plant I had in my college dorm room for four years, but it presented itself precisely when I needed some greenery in the office!

I don't know a lot about stones, but I'm just starting to dip a toe in (with a hefty dose of skepticism). At any rate, I started carrying the tiger's eye last year because it was smooth and I've always liked tiger's eye and it was nice to have something to run my fingers over when I got anxious. Anyway, I lost it, probably in someone's car, and I was uncharacteristically ok with it (I normally hate losing things), but my friend had just come back from the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show and generously opened her wealth of stones to me to choose a new pocket stone. I've had carnelian on the mind a lot lately because I thought getting an orange crystal to put inside my orange lightsaber would be fun and nerdy (in Star Wars lore, kaiburr crystals are force-attuned and integral to a working lightsaber). I have a friend in my lightsaber group who has a purple crystal in his purple saber and I love the idea. So she not only gave me a beautiful carnelian pocket stone, but two carnelian beads to put in my saber.

Joining Back to Life

Joining Back to Life

I'm thrilled to be joining the team at Back to Life Physical Therapy to offer my acupuncture services to their patients and to my community as a San Franciscan. Before I changed my career path to acupuncture I worked for a variety of design agencies, all in the SOMA area of San Francisco so returning to the neighborhood feels like the completion of a perfect circle.

I have known Amy Selinger of Back to Life for years, first as her patient, long before thinking I might go into healthcare myself, and later as she became a mentor in my pursuit of integrative medicine. She embodies the type of provider I aim to be: a true resource and a human ally in the pursuit of wellness. Her whole team is also rising to that bar. We're going to do great work together so I hope you'll join us at Back to Life for acupuncture and/or physical therapy.

Here is a glimpse of the Back to Life clinic: