Ancestral Acupuncture was founded by Erin Langley, MSCM, LAc, Dipl CM. My people are Anglo-Saxon, Gael, Ashkenazi, Frank, Germanic, and the indigenous peoples of Anatolia, the Caucasus range, and Eurasian steppe. I grew up on Timacua and Seminole land (Middleburg, FL), lived on Chochenyo land for nearly 20 years (Oakland, CA), and recently moved to Occaneechi-Saponi/Eno/Lumbi land (Chapel Hill, NC).

I first knew that I wanted to “be a healer” when I was 11 years old. My maternal grandmother and I were watching a show in her living room about a little girl who performed miracles while she was asleep. The girl's mother brushed her long, black hair as people gathered around the bed. Something came alive in me instantly, and I knew I wanted to do that. My mom experienced her own version of this calling, and earned a four-year degree from the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. I came to understand that “healing” emerges from a salvational worldview. Now I think in terms of balance, integrity, art, and collaboration.

I come from the rural South. My father's side is all teachers and preachers--circuit riders steeped in strong ideas and faith healing. My paternal grandmother tells amazing stories of the dreams of my late grandfather, who still helped her raise her boys even after he passed.

When I was 14, I started having dreams, visions, and out-of-body experiences, which terrified me. Frequenting these liminal places inspired me to record and track thousands of dreams over decades. A scientific approach to dreaming helped me become literate in symbolism, and build a solid foundation for “Path Dreaming,” or participating in symbolic reality with creative intent. Intentional dreaming as a non-dual animist happens day and night, asleep and awake.

Dream diagnosis has always been integral to the Chinese Medical tradition. I also love helping people work with nightmares and recurring dreams. My Master's thesis, Reinstating the Role of Community Dreaming Using Traditional Protocol and Open-Source Technology, explores dreaming as a way of life and as a measure of communal health. I cataloged dreams by theme against an astronomical ephemeris to detect patterns and develop a dictionary of portent.

As a teenager, I experienced acupuncture and herbal medicine for the first time. Dr. Kawalski, a seven-foot-tall Slavic OMD, helped my allergies, asthma, eating disorder, and severe depression more than anything ever had, so I began to consider East Asian medicine as a career path. I always pestered the local acupuncturists with questions. They told me to go to acupuncture school. I declined after they told me it would take three years. Eventually, it took me six.

After graduating from the University of North Florida with an English degree, I left Florida in 2004 to attend the Indigenous Mind Master’s Program at Naropa University in Oakland, California. I began to study with elders while exploring my own ancestral traditions (and I learned a lot about ceremony the hard way). My teachers—storytellers and medicine people from all over the globe—showed me that everything is natural, and nothing is supernatural. Continuity with my native lands and traditions helped me develop a sense of belonging, which I learned to carry with me.

My journeys to Ireland changed my life by showing me the deep, awakened comfort of a cultural homeland. The enchanting power of the megalithic monuments inspired the logo for Ancestral Acupuncture. I have dreamed of indigenous Gaels blessing recumbent co-conspirators with holy water on the branches of mistletoe in the mounds. I marvel at my Nuragic ancestors’ mastery of the interplay between land and sky, archived in sophisticated stone structures. These portals' precise embodiment of natural cycles motivated me to pursue the similar, unbroken traditions of Chinese calendar science and geomancy. 

In 2004, I began studying Mantic Arts and Path Dreaming with Liu Ming, founder of Da Yuan Circle and Five Branches University. The following year, I undertook an immersive study with Anglo-Buddhist elder Joanna Macy, whose work combines Tibetan Buddhism, living systems, and deep care for the natural world. Shortly after, I enrolled in Acupuncture and Integrative College, Berkeley to engage the medical aspects of Chinese cosmology.

I began to apply my study of the Chinese almanac clinically by inviting people to notice and participate in alignment with cyclical time through common-sense ancestral practices. I have loved practicing orthopedic medicine with Olympic and collegiate athletes at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as internal medicine at the Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College, Berkeley. I also interned with Dr. Robert Levine and Dr. Kalsang Wangyal, whose expertise showed me the reaches of East Asian medicine.

As part of my broader practice, I’ve edited projects for Joanna Macy and Liu Ming’s Da Yuan Circle (The Butterfly Book), and have served as a reader and informal editor for several best-selling authors.

My life blends literary, medical, visual, and performance arts. Currently, my focus is geomancy, or working with the Earth in the style of my stone-age ancestors. My practice is highly intuitive with a strong foundation in Chinese and Gaelic cosmologies. I believe in building robust contexts in which human and ecological bodies balance themselves. Integrity with environment, community, and cyclical time invites mutual flourishing. Personal and ecological health emerge from a web of loving relationships. I stand with people they find their place.