Today we’d like to introduce you to Wade Thoren.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
It’s been a winding path to get to where I am. I never even believed that higher education was something I could consider, college and a master’s in Acupuncture. When I think back on my teachers from elementary through high school, I remember mostly annoyed expressions. It wasn’t all of them, but I don’t recall anyone asking me what college I was thinking of going to. My first career was in music, something I loved so figured I could at least do something with it. I went to a trade school for recording and sound engineering, and my first job was assisting sound engineers in an internship at one of the biggest recording studios in NYC. I worked nights and slept days, got paid under minimum wage, and used to save half my lunch sandwiches so I could eat dinner. Working long hours at night and for pennies didn’t seem sustainable even though I got to work with some of music greats like Biggie, Busta Rhymes, Nas and more. Side note: my eighteen-year-old voice is hidden in the background of a track on Busta’s first album, “The Coming.” So I decided to move home to Connecticut, and shortly afterward I started taking a martial arts class. I loved it. My martial arts teacher’s teacher came to the U.S. from China for a weekend seminar, and I was expecting a weekend full of learning how to kick some extra ass like a Shaolin movie. But the whole weekend was spent on massage and healing, and Sifu Chen introduced me to the idea that “it’s easy to hurt people, but healing them is a challenge.” It also turned out I was good at it. I found a massage school and started in 1999 at the Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy, where I studied for two years. Then Moved to Santa Barbara, CA (’02) and worked under Dave Dallmeyer in his Physical Therapy practice, which was like a myofascial release boot camp where I was in the trenches for a few years, working on all kinds of injuries, surgeries and ailments for 10 to 12 hour days.
Simultaneously I also met Dr. Mike Luan DC, and took his movement class for body nerds like me, or shall we say academics. It opened me up to gaining a more in-depth skill of observation surrounding movement and function of the body. Then, I decided to study Thai massage in Chang Mai and went there studying under three teachers in two months loved it so much I was going to move there after my trip. I came home and was planning on packing my things to move for good, but during this short time, I met a girl who is now my wife. So my plans to move to Thailand was detoured, and I ended up in LA, where she is from, and with her encouragement, I decided I wanted to pursue higher education for the first time. Got myself to acupuncture school in ’07 and failed the exit exam twice but finally got through it the third time, and because I had taken the exit exam so many times, I passed the Boards with flying colors in one try. Throughout all of this were the people I had the opportunity to help, which is what drives me, and I’ve been incorporating my knowledge of the body, movement, massage, physical therapy, Thai massage, and experience working in multiple health care environments to my acupuncture practice. I also teach Tui Na at the master’s program I graduated from at Dongguk University, and the whole class is practical application.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s not that my road has been rough or smooth, but winding. Some of the struggles: ultimately as a child, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Treatment in the eighties was Ritalin and forget. The notes stopped coming home, but me having a hard time learning in the classroom was never addressed. That was less of a priority. I felt like I didn’t really learn how to learn until I went to CCMT (massage therapy school), where using my hands in practical application and studying something I was interested in made my brain act like a sponge for the first time. Turns out the three times I had to take my exit exam was ultimately more test anxiety where I would freeze up than the lack of knowledge. Guided meditation solved that one. The business side of my practice has been a challenge. You don’t learn how to run a medical practice in graduate school, so it’s something I’ve been learning more about. I’ve also started taking some insurance patients and incorporating more paperwork and administrative duties into my practice. This has helped me learn to expand and hire help.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Source Point Wellness?
I work with my colleague and friend Dr. Amanda Cohen, another wonderful acupuncturist, and we work in an office with several other healers. I specialize in acupuncture and bodywork with a focus on pain management, and because of my experience working alongside medical professionals, I work closely with a few chiropractors and physical therapists to provide more holistic treatment. In addition to treating symptoms, I work on maintenance to keep pain away or avoid it to begin with. Problem-solving the root of the pain and coming up with solutions.
Over the years, I’ve been quite successful at helping people out of pain that they believed they were stuck with. There is often a mindset shift that needs to take place concerning pain, and I can be of help with that as well. I’ll tell my patients: Healing takes place in the presence of movement. This is always in the back of my mind. It’s one of my oldest career insights.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I struggled as much as everyone else did during this time. Most of my days were filled with taking care of our toddler while my pregnant wife was in and out of the hospital. It was a difficult pregnancy which required a lot of bed rest. Of course, she got acupuncture almost daily for her symptoms because that was at least something I could do to help her through. My daughter’s daycare shut down, and with mommy in bed so much I needed to figure out unemployment and entertainment simultaneously. Parks shut down, and playdates gone; I plotted a daily walk that she, now five years old, still has so many memories from. We had our second baby, our son, who was born during the shutdown in 2020, and I learned a lot about how to care for pregnancy and postpartum through this process. I’ve got a pretty good track record helping move things along when an overdue mother is ready to go into labor, including my wife.
Pricing:
- $150 for one hour
- $180 for one and a half hours
Contact Info:
- Website: Sourcepointwellness.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wadethoren/
- Yelp: https://biz.yelp.com/biz_info/jXOfUV74FhK1YHEWkAyQBg
- Other: https://patient.unifiedpractice.com/source-point-wellness/booking/previous-visit
