Since Oct. 16, Dr. Haunani Chong Drake, the newest addition to the College of William and Mary’s McLeod Tyler Wellness Center staff and the College’s first and only licensed acupuncturist, has quickly made her mark at the facility.
The College’s Acupuncture Lounge provides a group setting for accessible, generalized treatment that uses needles in the ear for a calming mental and physical reset. Meanwhile, Drake also offers private sessions attuned to a patient’s specific health needs with a detailed intake and treatment plan. Students can register for either type of appointment through either the College’s wellness app or website.
For Drake, however, regardless of the type of session booked, or what the student is coming in for, she hopes to treat everyone that walks through her door.
“I’m totally in service to all of you who are interested in finding holistic ways of being in relationship with yourself,” Drake said. “That’s how I see my job here. So whether you’re coming to me for more mental, emotional balance or physical stuff, to me, I’m always going to be seeing you as full and complete, and all we need to do is try to find out why we’re getting in our own way.”
She also emphasized the importance of college students utilizing these wellness sources like acupuncture during the peak of their youths.
“What I anticipate seeing is a lot of mental health, anxiety, depression, sleep stuff, but also just your general aches and pains that may have been there for a year, or two, or three, and you’re just not really worrying about it,” Drake told The Flat Hat. “You’re young, you’re healthy, the body recovers really quickly.”
Before coming to the College, Drake traces her roots to Hawaii, where she was born before moving to Washington state. There, she grew up deeply involved with a local Native Hawaiian community; along with learning to dance hula from a young age, Drake adopted values from the culture, which she acknowledges have informed her present spirituality.
“There is a lot of talk about your connection with the earth,” Drake said. “That’s the most important connection, really, for understanding who we are as humans. So I grew up around that, but I don’t think I actually knew what I was hearing, because when you grow up with it, you don’t know what you don’t know. You think everyone’s hearing the same message.”
Eventually, Drake earned her B.A. in sociology on the pre-med track at Whitman College, which she recalls as having been a lifelong goal. However, when re-evaluating her post-grad plans after deciding not to attend medical school, Drake remembers struggling to find direction. Instead of following the route she had planned to embark on, she found herself working in the food service industry while also dealing with chronic pain.
“I’ve always had this very strong interest in other forms of medicine outside of allopathic, but never formally,” Drake said. “I just didn’t know it was even a possibility. But then, sometimes when life gets really dark, you start asking yourself questions, and I have no other way to describe it, but it’s like the universe just started putting things in front of me.”
At this time, Drake started studying Ayurveda, a traditional South Asian medicine system that includes herbal medicine, diet practices and yoga. This study, along with her daily practices of yoga, helped Drake consciously connect with spirituality and find her true path. Finally, Drake experienced a revelation about her future while meditating at Green Lake in Seattle, Wa.
“I just said, ‘I’m not moving until I find clarity,’ and all of a sudden there was a moment, a millisecond of my mind not chattering, and I heard the term ‘Chinese medicine,’ and something inside me just lit up,” Drake said.
Drake then went on to earn her M.S. in traditional Oriental medicine as well as her doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science. The field of Chinese medicine extends beyond acupuncture, using a wide range of traditional practices like herbal medicine, massage and movement exercises. Chinese medicine emphasizes a holistic approach that maintains both physical and spiritual balance and the flow of energy.
“It comes from a paradigm of recognizing, first and foremost, that we are nature, we’re not separate from nature, and that because we are nature, the way a tree is part of nature, the way a river’s part of nature, a human is part of nature, that our physiology, our makeup operates under those same principles and those same patterns that are in all of nature,” Drake said.
Currently, Drake lives with her husband, her two kids and their two English bulldogs. After learning her husband’s job as a Marine officer would relocate her family to Williamsburg, Drake happened upon a job posting for an integrated wellness professional when browsing the College’s website — an opening that she found fortuitous. Drake expressed her long-held affection for small college towns like Williamsburg, along with her enjoyment of nature, something Williamsburg has in spades.
“Because we just moved from Massachusetts, I’ve discovered how amazing it is to just walk around and look at all the different mushrooms that are growing,” Drake said. “Virginia is one of those places, too, that’s blowing my mind, because just walking out into my yard here, there’s, like, 30 varietals, and they’re all just so beautiful.”
To those interested in practicing acupuncture, Drake recommends researching East Asian medicine and shadowing a professional to gauge your interest. She also emphasizes the importance of self-advocacy in one’s career of choice.
“You have to also be willing to be advocating for not only yourself, but the medicine, and also your patients, and I was not aware of that coming out of college,” Drake said. “There’s just so much advocacy work that has to go into keeping our patients safe and getting them the services that they really want because there’s a lot of forces at play trying to push us off to the side.”
Despite the challenge of maintaining this type of constant advocacy, Drake affirms that her profession is more than rewarding. With her passions for spirituality, service and holistic wellness, Drake says she is here to stay at the College.
“I plan on doing this forever,” Drake said. “I don’t know if you ever retire from this. That’s how much fun I have, that’s just how much I love it. I breathe, drink it. It’s everywhere. You begin looking at the world differently. Everything just fits.”
CORRECTION (11/09): A previous version of the article misspelled Dr. Haunani Drake’s name in the headline. The article has been updated to correctly capture the spelling.
CORRECTION (11/09): A previous version of the article said that the information in the article was obtained from a talk delivered on Oct. 4. The article has been updated to reflect that the information was obtained in the standard manner, through an interview.