Russell Brown
POKE Acupuncture
After graduating from University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor's degree in journalism, Russell came home to Los Angeles and enjoyed a career in feature film development, working on some fun movies—including The Fast and the Furious films and Cruel Intentions—and some terrible ones for which he secretly fears he may someday be karmically punished.
At breakfast one morning in 2002, he eavesdropped on a conversation at the table next to him where a woman was talking about going to acupuncture school, and -on a whim- quit his job and enrolled at Emperor’s College the next day. After graduating with a Master's of Science in Traditional Chinese Medicine and passing the California State Board exam, he opened Poke Acupuncture in Los Angeles, CA in 2009. He has also operated pro-bono acupuncture clinics for the HIV/AIDS community at the Immune Enhancement Project in San Francisco and Being Alive in L.A., and was the in-house acupuncturist for the Alexandria House, a transitional home for women also in L.A.
Russell is so proud that the very nature of what we do- “pinning someone down” without distraction- is in defiance of the neon buzz of the modern world, whose virtues of speed, volume and productivity have given us much, but too-often rob us of the experience of living deliberately and fully. What a rare privilege it is to serve as a reminder that more can be felt than seen, and to spend my days sitting together with a stranger in the dark, waiting for something to happen.