HEALING AT THE SOURCE

A holistic approach to health is all that Christie Jordan has ever known.

“I was born in Seoul, Korea, and my mother raised us very naturally,” Jordan says. “She followed old-school Korean culture by treating anything that was troubling us with a natural approach. Even our food sources were very important to her.”

But it wasn’t until Jordan witnessed her father take control of his health by incorporating Eastern methods that she understood the true power of these Eastern practices.

“My father became an acupuncturist toward the end of his life after he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer,” she recalls. “I saw him do some miraculous things with holistic medicine and fasting. His body responded beautifully to it. He wanted more than the three months doctors told him he had to live. Using both Western and Eastern medicine, he got himself seven more years. It was such a natural calling for me to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

After receiving her master’s degree in Oriental Medicine in 1999, Jordan—a licensed and national board-certified acupuncturist and herbalist—founded Source Healing, a holistic wellness clinic with offices in Chicago and Winnetka. Source Healing specializes in treating anything pain and stress-related, along with women’s health and fertility, and chronic digestive and immune system imbalances. Source Healing’s primary services include acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, naturopathic medicine, Asian bodywork, therapeutic massage, and grounded energetic guidance. All of Source Healing’s Eastern medicine practitioners are licensed by the state of Illinois, are national board-certified in acupuncture and herbal medicine, and have years of clinical experience.

“In watching my father go through his health issues, my biggest takeaway is that we don’t have to wait until things are really bad for us to understand that symptoms are our body’s way of talking to us. When people come to see me with something chronic, something serious—it takes them a number of treatments to get where they need to be. But if you get a monthly tune-up when you’re healthy, it’s much easier to maintain that state of balance in the body. Our patients often move more into a state of prevention after they see results.”

Source Healing values open communication and approaches healing from an emotional and intuitive perspective. “To be holistic is to understand a symptom in relationship to the whole of one’s life. So, our intake process is pretty extensive,” Jordan explains. “If someone comes to me to have their tennis elbow treated, I will ask what else is going on in his or her life. I may ask my patients about any traumas they may have experienced. A trauma will be physically held in a body unless it’s been processed. I’ve seen trauma manifest as chronic pain.”

Patients range in age from 10 to 70 years old and beyond and include an increasing number of teenagers and young adults who have a variety of stress-related symptoms, as well as for autonomic disorders such as POTS. “Our whole body is an energy system,” she continues. “When we’re stressed, our body is physiologically running in a state of fight or flight. A lot of fight or flight creates system breakdowns in our body, and that’s when we begin having symptoms—such as anxiety, subfertility, digestive issues, insomnia, poor immune response, and pain that act as dashboard lights for what we need to give attention to in our bodies. If you learn to take care of these symptoms when they are small, it doesn’t take much to make them better.”

According to Jordan, acupuncture regulates the fight or flight mechanism in our bodies.

“Most of us are walking around in a state of fight or flight and don’t even know it.”

Acupuncture stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps calm the body and that is the key to healing no matter what the patient is coming in for,” Jordan observes.

Source Healing’s practitioners work collaboratively to ensure consistency and to find the best plan forward for their patients. “We work as a team,” Jordan says. “Medicine is an art form based on experience, education, and intuition. When our patients have more than one person working with them, they benefit from our collective expertise.”

Jordan seeks to teach her patients that “the body” is a sum of four equally important and connected systems—the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. When these systems are in a state of harmony, the body knows what it needs to do and can balance itself.

“I tell my patients that I am just one resource they have, one expert they can consult with, as they become the author of the life they want to have,” she says. “I want to help them write their ‘master thesis’ for a body they have a partnership with as they achieve optimal health.”

To learn more about Christie Jordan, L.Ac., and the wellness services provided at Source Healing, visit sourcehealing.com.