Our Family Tradition
My Father’s Story:
Dr. Stephen Greenberg
retired 2017
I was always interested in healing. However, what most directly lead me into acupuncture and massage were my knee problems. If I did even moderate exercise, my knees would swell with fluid and greatly limit my activities. My parents took me to many different doctors who said my problems fell into a kind of gray zone. All they could tell me is basically, don’t do anything! This went on until I was living in New York city in my early 20’s. I began training in martial arts and once again I was hobbling around. A training buddy of mine told me he had received great help for his knee problems through acupuncture. That was the first time I had ever heard of acupuncture, but I figured, why not, nothing else had worked.
This led me to a Chinese gift shop in Greenwich Village where a young woman treated me on a cot in her family’s kitchen in the rear of the store. Nobody spoke English, so it was just a lot of pointing. Amazingly, even after my first visit I was walking much better! After another 5-6 visits, my knees were pretty normal. Needless to say I was very impressed and wanted to learn more about acupuncture. The closest I could find at the time was the Shiatsu Education Center. After studying there for awhile, I spoke to my teacher after class, and he told me about an acupuncture college he was attending- this was Tri-State College of Oriental Medicine, which at the time was located in Stamford, Connecticut. I contacted them and began studying to be a massage therapist in order to fulfill my science requirements for entering the college. I received my massage license and worked my way through acupuncture college doing massage.
After graduating from Tri-State and passing the national board exams, I began practicing in 1985. That same year, I moved from New York to Connecticut in the expectation that acupuncture was going to be licensed. At the time, the practice of acupuncture was still poorly understood in the United States. In many states, including Connecticut, it was not yet recognized as medicine, and so its practice was completely unregulated. Practically anybody who wanted to could hang out a shingle and start sticking needles in people! Dr. Mark Seem, founder of Tri-State, in cooperation with the very small number of acupuncturists who were practicing in the state at the time, had introduced a bill in the state legislature to license acupuncture. This would establish it as a legitimate health profession with a clearly defined scope of practice, licensure requirements, and safety standards. This bill was vetoed at the last minute by the powerful lobbying interests of a number of other health professions who did not want the additional competition a new field of practice would bring to the state. In the mean time, I obtained my acupuncture license from the State of Rhode Island so that I could have at least some sort of government-issued credential to certify my practice. My fellow acupuncturists and I were still determined to get our profession licensed in our state, and so a number of us formed the first Connecticut Acupuncture Association. We then began a 10 year lobbying battle that finally proved successful. In 1995, acupuncture was officially licensed by the State of Connecticut, and I received License #42.
After 33 years in practice, it’s time to retire. It is with great joy and full confidence that I entrust the care of my patients to my son, Aaron.
Dr. Stephen Greenberg, Dipl.Ac.
Cromwell, CT
7/18/18
My Story:
Aaron Greenberg
I remember being small and watching my father seated at the dining room table, poring over the worn old books, their covers embossed in arcane characters, like the tomes of a fairy tale sorcerer. I would look at them myself when he had done with them. With a child’s curiosity I would turn their pages, delighting with that peculiar glee of boys in the colorful grotesqueries of medicine- the lurid glossy plates of tongues with textures like ground beef, or stained with black coatings like wet tar, the diagrams of the naked body mapped with meridians like some fantastical country in a story book, points labeled with names like “Spirit Gate”, “Pillar of Heaven”, and “Palace of Wind”.
When I was old enough, my father showed me how to remove the thread-thin needles from his patients- finding the all but invisible things by their brightly colored handles, withdrawing them swiftly and covering the spot with a cotton ball, pressing it for awhile in case of the occasional pinprick of blood. In this way, I got to be comfortable around the patients, familiar with their hurts and with their characters, unembarrassed around the body, acquainted with all the myriad postures and gaits and complexions and moods. I saw miracles- patients limping in and striding out, weeping with relief from years of pain no doctor had been able to explain, unborn babies turned in the womb with the burning of an herb on the mother’s little toe.
As I grew up, I pursued other arts- acting and writing and music- but always I found myself tending to the hurts of friends and family. Something about me seemed to invite suffering people to seek me out for solace. Even strangers in line at the grocery store would tell me, unasked, their secret woes, and I would listen in the way that I had seen my father do- “being the bartender” as he called it.
It started with massage for me as well. I remember in elementary school, the girl with cerebral palsy whose crabbed fingers I would rub for her. I discovered in this way the long, sleek glove of tendons- the flexor digitorum- running from the fingers all the way up the forearm to the elbow.
At the arts academy where I went to high school, I was sought out by the dancers to massage their aching feet and thickly muscled calves- mimicking as best I could what I had seen my father do.
In college and graduate school it was my fellow writers- with their cramped necks and shoulders from hours bent over keyboards and notebooks.
My father had taught at the Connecticut Center for Massage Therapy, and spoke highly of the program there, so I attended and attained my license. I went to work with my father then at his office, treating many of the same patients from whom I had withdrawn needles some ten or fifteen years before.
In the course of my massage education, I also discovered the work of the great anatomist Thomas W. Myers, who had diagrammed and even dissected structures in the body’s web of connective tissue that were almost point for point with the meridians I had seen in my father’s books. This sparked a curiosity in me about how I might merge the Eastern and Western ways of understanding the body. I began to put this into practice, merging my father’s understanding of the East Asian meridian system with these newly dissected “myofascial meridians”, to powerful effect.
One day, Deb Diers, another acupuncturist and longtime friend of my father’s, encountered me at work in my father’s office, remarked that my father must be thinking of retiring soon, and asked whether I had thought of going to acupuncture school and taking over for him. Something clicked in me then, and I realized this was the natural evolution of my practice. I attended acupuncture college at the University of Bridgeport, received a Master of Science degree in Acupuncture, passed my National Board exams, and received my license from the State of Connecticut.
My father retired on June 22, 2018, after 33 years in practice, and I have now made it my mission to carry on his legacy of efficacy, patience, justice, and compassion as I take over the practice.
Our name, Silk Road Health, refers to the ancient trade route between the Eastern and Western worlds, which allowed for the first real exchange of ideas between the two. This is the perfect metaphor for my practice, as I seek to merge the best of Eastern and Western approaches to healing the body.
Aaron Greenberg, MS L.Ac. LMT
Cromwell, CT
July 18, 2018