Artemisia O’bi, M.A.
I approach the healing arts with the outlook that we’re more able to embrace our lives when we can traverse our inner worlds with compassion, self-acceptance, and at least a little bit of humor. My journey into Chinese medicine grew out of a longstanding fascination with the relationship between psychology and physiology, along with a love for ancient ways of looking at human nature. In my practice, I work with a broad scope of health imbalances, with special attention on digestion, emotion, and women’s health.
Alongside Chinese medicine, I love to play drums, make clothes, and travel. I spend a lot of time cooking and listening to old hip-hop and R&B.
I am inspired by the unexplainable wonders of the natural world, which I witness through rural life with my husband, Cameron, in the mysterious mountains of the desert southwest.
Path to Chinese medicine
I grew up in the rural midwest, and in my early twenties, I lived in a tiny cob house deep in the Indiana forest where many medicinal plants grew wildly. This experience was immensely formative, as I started to work with these plants to revitalize my deteriorating health and support my psychological well-being. I was inspired to study herbal medicine more seriously and began formal herbal training in 2018 through a year-long apprenticeship at the Indiana Herbal Center. After several years of western herbal study, I narrowed my focus to Chinese medicine in 2021.
Teachers and training
I am drawn to the expansive teachings and theories of classical Chinese medicine. I have taken courses and trainings with Dr. Jeffrey Yuen, Dr. Heiner Fruehauf, Andrew Sterman, Ann Cecil-Sterman, L.Ac., Dr. Evan Rabinowitz, and Thomas Avery Garran, Ph.D., and I continue to study with these teachers.
I studied Chinese herbs and learned to understand western herbs through the framework of Chinese medicine as a student in the East West School of Herbology Professional Herbalist Program, a two-year clinical training program. I recently deepened my understanding of formulation through Dr. Heiner Fruehauf’s 14-month herbal certificate program, Classical Strategies for Effective Herbal Formulation.
My current focus is a continuation of the study of both western and Chinese herbs in Chinese medicine, alongside a closer study of the writings of Li Dong Yuan - a master doctor who lived in the Jin-Yuan period and wrote extensively on the centrality of digestion in health.
Background in cognitive and psychological research
Before training in Chinese medicine, I spent the first ten years of my adult life working in empirical psychological research. I hold a B.S. in cognitive science and a B.A. in philosophy from Indiana University, where I worked on projects involving the role of the physical body in abstract reasoning and the math involved in traditionally feminine crafts. I spent a few years in industry research with education tech start-ups and as part of the Behavioral Economics Group at Disney Research & Imagineering. I started my Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Chicago with a primary focus on self-transcendent emotions and children’s experiences of awe. Through this research, and after so many years in academic labs, I became increasingly inspired to study individual transformation and emotion in naturalistic settings. I earned an M.A. in psychology while at UChicago and then stepped away from the doctoral program to explore these ideas in the interesting and messy world of clinical practice. The study of emotions has remained central to my work. You can find more about some of the research projects I’ve been involved with here.
