BA and MA in Health Arts and Sciences Programs
I feel a special resonance with the Health Arts program at Goddard, as it brings together two deep pleasures for me: progressive education and health education, radically envisioned. I find nothing juicier than to be part of a community of learners in which we take our own and each other's questions seriously. This collective attentiveness nourishes all of us. I see our diverse ways of engaging health - as something rooted in community, diversity and sustainability - as an important, transformative contribution to the larger conversations that take place around us.
I am currently a licensed mental health counselor, licensed acupuncturist and herbalist. I have practiced mostly as a psychotherapist, with over a decade of experience in that field. I am influenced by client-centered and evidence-based psychotherapies. I find, however, that my clinical work is shaped as much by my clients as by my training and credentials. I have worked with people who are diagnosed with mild depression, anxiety, and attention disorders and who are ambivalent about taking the psychopharmacological medications prescribed to them. I observe that, while most of us identify what we term a ‘biological’ and ‘psychological’ aspect to mental health, each person navigates the landscape of conventional and alternative medicine in different ways. I find myself in the role of facilitator, helping people to develop strategies for health that work and make sense in their lives. My passion is for building alliances with other providers in the service of individual client needs. I make many referrals to acupuncturists, naturopaths, homeopaths and intelligent psychiatrists.
I have a sustained interest in integrative mental health, the limits of talk therapy, and the role of body-centered, energetic, botanical and/or orthomolecular alternatives to psychiatry. I also have a unique appreciation for the way Chinese medical phenomenologies integrate into a psychotherapy practice. In general, I feel that integration should not imply a homogenized blending of diverse medical realities. I enjoy the edges where modern and ancient therapies push against each other, creating friction that is productive of new ways of thinking about mind, body and self.
My doctoral research in medical anthropology explores the emergence of classical Chinese medicines in the United States as a way of tracing practitioners’ interest in understanding and treating emotional and spiritual imbalances. Practitioners express frequent dissatisfaction with contemporary TCM as a construct compatible with communist ideologies and thus purged of its emotional and spiritual roots. A plural and eclectic ‘classical’ Chinese medicine thus emerges as a supplement to TCM, and as a means to reclaim and reinvent traditions of authenticity and depth. My research explores the cultural and clinical implications of this mythopoesis taking place in the Chinese medical community.
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Sarah L. Van Hoy, MA, MTCM, Ph.C.