Today we’d like to introduce you to Tamryn Hawker
Hi Tamryn, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Where to begin? I was born and raised in South Africa and through a fortuitous series of events, I found my home in Big Sur, California, right as I began to harness and develop my interests and offering to the world. The wild expanse of nature and the depth of community present in my upbringing and my new home, right on the edge of the world, deepened an already passionate desire to cultivate the relationship between self and nature. As it turns out, this IS healthcare. Little known to me, I would keep coming back to this reminder in all of my education and professional development.
In Big Sur I lived at the Esalen Institute as an Extended Student. During this year and a half immersion between the PCH and the Pacific ocean, I began my formal training as a yoga teacher and massage therapist, while interning with Dr. Randy Baker MD (homeopath and holistically oriented family physician). This was also my first introduction to the concept of Gestalt, a self inquiry practice to develop a keen awareness of the self in relationship to the “other” or surrounding landscape in which the organism exists.
After many years of experience working in private practice as a bodyworker and yoga teacher, I began my studies in Eastern Medicine and Acupuncture at Dongguk University in Los Angeles. Eastern Medicine has held a deep understanding of nature as a blueprint for the body, the microcosm within a greater macrocosm. Poetic in it’s effectiveness as a way to both diagnose and actually treat the root of disease, I am yet to come across a more health giving approach to the almost cliche concept of “holistic” medicine. How is it that you can go to the doctor and be prescribed a test, a medication, a procedure and yet still not get better, still not feel well?
Becoming a mother further inspired my understanding of the importance of health across the generations and deepened my passion for providing effective to care families, and women in particular. I specialize in Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation and am proud to be able to provide relief to a severely underserved community.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
COVID x Motherhood is one I recall! I actually loved the break away from the hustle and bustle of daily life that COVID required. The timing happened to dovetail nicely into the 3rd trimester of my eldest’s pregnancy and I experienced deep rest in a way I didn’t know was possible – despite the existential angst of losing sense of everything I had once know as my life. First in response to COVID, and then through the ever evolving and ongoing metamorphosis that is motherhood.
Owning, running and practicing within a small business has many challenges in and of itself. Mix in a family, individual pursuits and the mostly paradoxical nature of being a human body with a mammalian nervous system on our planet and you have a fully formed curriculum ready to go!
We’ve been impressed with Artemisia Acupuncture + Apothecary, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Our clinic in downtown Pasadena is made up of a team of Acupuncturists who specialize in the field of holistic treatment of acute and chronic pain, women’s health across the lifespan, pelvic floor disorders and seemingly intractable auto-immune and digestive issues.
We are owned and run by an incredible team of women, dedicated to studying, understanding and providing solutions to the ailments of modern living.
Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine are my true loves. It’s hard to choose a favorite. Acupuncture is a hard reset for the body, prompting it to heal and remember in a way that only the body really knows how to. Pharmaceuticals and surgeries can only get us so far – what created the imbalance in the first place? The body is an incredible vessel, and given the right circumstances it can heal from almost anything.
Eastern medicine provides a framework from which to view the body, mind and spirit as a whole, thereby assessing the opportunities for nourishing deficiencies, invigorating blockages, and rebalancing disharmonies. This is where Herbal Medicine comes in.
Eastern herbs have been used for thousands of years as concentrated nutritional substances to powerfully balance the body. In conventional medicine, a person’s chief complaint is often solely identified and treated, sometimes with no regard to co-morbidities. The goal in Eastern Medicine is to address the underlying cause of all of these symptoms, thus we say we are treating the “patterns of disharmony.” After a thorough health history, the individual’s unique constitution and their relationship to their environment are taken into consideration in order to prescribe herbs that will bolster deficiencies, drain excess and bring harmony back to the organ systems.
From this supported place, the organism thrives. Feeling good really feels good!
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
That’s a hard one – I’m generally an open book!
Something I have been thinking about lately is how to demystify health and healing. The current model of practitioner and patient is so limiting. I am constantly thinking of ways to bring back the deeper understanding and listening, and therefore knowing, of what it means to be a living, breathing, bleeding body in the world.
Motherhood has intensified this. Our babies come out vulnerable and helpless and completely dependent on their communities to keep them safe and provide healthful options to them. These options heavily influence their physical resilience, microbiome and toxic exposure and therefore gene expression. We were each these same babies at one time, deeply influenced by the common knowledge and practice surrounding us. One can spend years trying to unravel a challenging start.
It has become harder and harder to live with ease and health as we have become separated from our natural instincts, ancestral knowledge and ability to listen to our body’s needs. This can sound highfalutin, but I mean it in the most practical sense: how to feed ourselves and our kids so that we are not constantly sick, what to use in our immediate surroundings if we or someone close to us has a cold, a stomach ache, a rash? These are basic skills in my opinion.
I am constantly shocked, well, maybe not anymore, by how many families move from one cold to the next. This may be normal, but it is not necessary.
It is my sincere hope that the work we do with our patients at Artemisia empowers them, instead of making them dependent on us.
We offer free consultations to provide a space for folks to ask questions they may have and understand more about what we have to offer.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.artemisiawellness.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artemisia_wellness/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artemisiawellness/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/artemisia-acupuncture-and-apothecary-pasadena
Image Credits
Erim Simkin
Natalia Gomez (couch photo only)
