ABOUT SIX BRANCHES FAMILY ACUPUNCTURE

Six Branches Family Acupuncture offers a holistic, trauma-informed approach to healthcare, with a particular focus on fertility, pregnancy and hormonal imbalances.  Our mission is to offer safe, effective support for chronic pain, autoimmune conditions, and hormonal imbalances showing up as infertility, irregular, painful or heavy periods, peri-menopausal symptoms and common conditions of pregnancy and postpartum. Our whole team has advanced training in addressing fertility and hormonal challenges, and supporting pregnancy. We work collaboratively to bring you the best care possible.

At Six Branches Family Acupuncture we believe:

• Black Lives Matter - only when we all truly believe and act on this statement will we be able to say that all lives matter.

• Love is Love - we support all who want to grow their family.

• People build families in all kinds of ways. We support you in whichever way you are building a family.

• We support trans folks and will respect your pronouns.

• Pregnancy happens in many genders, not all identify as women. 

• We take a Health At Every Size approach to support patients in all body sizes and we will never tell you to lose weight. We have arm extenders on our treatment tables and comfortable office seating, and our tables support weight up to 550lbs.

• People who want hormonal medications should have full access to them.

• People who want help with painful or heavy periods or irregular cycles should have alternatives to taking hormonal medications if they want them.  

• We share wisdom from the Traditional East Asian Medicine tradition to help people and are deeply indebted to our teachers. We will never appropriate East Asian cultures for our brand or marketing.

• We donate a portion of our proceeds to support various community organizations. Follow us on Instagram to see our posts about organizations we support.

• We are committed to listening, learning, and uplifting others in the healing journey.

We are located in Rosemont Wellness Center on Brighton Avenue in Portland, Maine.  Appointments with Six Branches Family Acupuncture may include acupuncture, gua sha, cupping, moxabustion, dietary/lifestyle suggestions and/or custom herbal consultations.

Why Six Branches?

“Six Branches” refers to the idea of six major acupuncture meridians branching throughout the body like limbs of a strong tree.  In traditional acupuncture, the meridians are thought of as pathways in the body for the movement of ‘Qi’.  In modern terms, this translates to lines of connective tissue (fascia) that stretch across the body. There have been studies that have shown higher electrical conductance along these lines of connective tissue and others that show various brain activity changes with acupuncture stimulation. Acupuncture is not magic, but it can feel like it sometimes! 

Meet our team

NAOMI SKOGLUND, L.AC.

MS TCM (Master of science in TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE)

Fellow of The Acupuncture and TCM Board of Reproductive Medicine

Senior Member of the Obstetrical Acupuncture Association

Naomi Skoglund (she/her) is a Nationally-Certified Acupuncturist and Herbalist, and the owner of Six Branches Family Acupuncture. In practice since 2012, she has seen the ways that acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine empower her patients to optimize their health and build the families they want.  She has helped countless patients over the past 12 years - to have easier menstrual cycles, get pregnant, have healthy pregnancies, and through the ups and downs of peri-menopause.

Naomi earned a Masters of Science in Traditional Chinese Medicine with over 3,500 hours of didactic and clinical training from the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco, CA. Since graduating, she has completed extensive post-graduate course work focused on treating hormonal health, infertility and complications of pregnancy. She is a senior member of the Obstetrical Acupuncture Association and a Fellow of the The Acupuncture and TCM Board of Reproductive Medicine (ABORM). She has studied with master practitioners such as Dr Aide Men, Raven Lang, Sharon Weizenbaum, Jane Lyttleton, Randine Lewis and Claudia Citkovitz.  She continues to grow and learn as a practitioner and as the clinical director of Six Branches Family Acupuncture.

Before becoming an acupuncturist, Naomi was a public school teacher in New York City, where she worked with students with learning and emotional difficulties.  Naomi relocated to Maine in 2015 with her daughter and husband, who grew up in Maine.  She sees practicing Acupuncture and Chinese medicine as an extension of the work she did as a teacher and is committed to helping people grow and thrive. When she’s not helping people live the healthy lives they want, Naomi enjoys gardening, needle felting, and spending time with her family.

angela bell, l.ac.

MAOM (Master of Acupuncture and East Asian Medicine)

Angela Bell (she/her) Nationally-Certified Acupuncturist and Herbalist. She has been practicing acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine for close to two decades, in which time she’s helped hundreds of women conceive, thrive during pregnancy, and have empowered, healthy births.

Angela received her Masters in Acupuncture and East Asian Medicine from the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA) and is certified through the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and East Asian Medicine (NCCAOM). A lifelong student, she has attended the highly respected Integrative Infertility Symposium and studied with some of the top specialists in Eastern Gynecology and Obstetrics such as Brandon Horn, Debra Betts, Jane Lyttleton, Ray Rubio, Randine Lewis, and Rixa Freeze of Breech without Borders. She has also trained with some of Massachusetts’ most highly skilled acupuncturists and birth professionals, including Bo-In Lee of the New Life Health Center in Jamaica Plain, Dr. Richard Tan and Spinning Babies® approved trainer Lorenza Holt, MPH. 

Angela is a trained birth doula and is certified in Better Birth as a Friend of Breech Babies. As a former board member of Resolve New England (RNE), she worked with the top fertility specialists in Boston. These collaborative relationships extended into the pregnancy and birth communities, positioning Angela as a renowned and respected professional in greater Boston’s fertility and pregnancy community. This broad network enables her to personally connect her patients with resources that best support their needs before conception, throughout pregnancy and in preparation for birth.

While focusing on women’s health, fertility, and pregnancy, Angela developed a particular specialty in helping turn breech babies naturally. In the face of  the sometimes scary news that their baby is breech, Angela has provided mothers with the information, options, and resources they need to navigate their choices. She saw countless babies turn head down over the years in her Cambridge, MA practice.

And, as a new mom to a baby girl conceived via IVF, Angela has personal experience facing infertility—the protocols, the pain, the frustration, the fear. Her daughter was born at home with the loving support of a homebirth midwife. Angela brings the same deep level of compassion and insight to her writing as she does to her in-person treatments, drawing upon her experience and expertise to build individualized plans with her patients.

Angela returned to Maine where she grew up so that she, her wife and her daughter could be closer to extended family. She's excited to begin seeing patients again but this time in her home state, Maine.

ELAINE MEADE, L.AC.

MAC (Master of ACUPUNCTURE)

Certified in Integrative Koshi-Balancing & Cranial Therapeutics

Elaine Meade (she/her) has been a Nationally-Certified Acupuncturist and Herbalist since 2013 and holds a Master’s of Science of Acupuncture from the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM) in Portland, Oregon. In addition to her Master’s degree she studied Qi Gong in the Jin Jing Gong Lineage for 3 years. Elaine’s areas of focus are chronic and acute pain management, headaches/migraines, hormonal health, and digestive health.

Elaine’s path to becoming a healer began with exposure to natural healing while growing up. Her mother taught her Reiki and bodywork, gave her herbs when she was sick, and took her for regular chiropractic visits. In her early twenties, Elaine began exploring nutrition, fitness, yoga, and meditation.

Through her own process, Elaine began to understand that the path to greater health and well-being involved tuning in to inner knowing, taking personal responsibility, and receiving expert guidance and loving support. Pulling from her years of practice, personal experiences, her formal study, and her gift as a healer, Elaine is dedicated to helping others along their path to finding greater vitality and well-being.

Elaine moved to Maine in 2013 and enjoys spending time in the great outdoors or in the kitchen with her family.

Sarah Snyder, L.AC.

DACM (Doctor of ACUPUNCTURE & Chinese Medicine)

Certified in cranial sacral Therapy