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Life is a balancing act. These days, there are numerous challenges to achieving that balance – our modern lifestyle has us juggling quite a lot, which can be stressful, to say the least. If you’ve been searching for a way to bring your life and your health into harmony, the ladies at Tamara TCM Wellness Clinic know how to get you back on track. Balance is at the heart of everything they do – balance between the wisdom of ancient medicine and modern advances, and between maintaining current wellness and working toward a healthier tomorrow. It’s a balance they’ve been helping patients achieve for nearly a decade.
Tamara D. Willingham-Rapp, L.Ac, L.OM, and the team at Tamara TCM Acupuncture and Herbs Clinic in Maumee understand that balance is the key to wellness, which opens the path to a fulfilling life. As Tamara herself puts it: “We focus on keeping the mind and body stronger, and when we see imbalances, addressing them before there’s actual sickness. Like one of my teachers used to say, ‘If you’re treating the disease, you’re too late.’”
A traditional approach
Tamara TCM offers clients a wide variety of guidance and treatment for overall health and wellness. The clinic offers multiple holistic treatment modalities, including acupuncture, herbal medicines, nutritional and lifestyle counseling, and more – all from highly trained, fully licensed professionals with years of experience.
“Traditional Chinese medicine— that’s what TCM stands for— is a complete system of medicine,” says Tamara. “So within that, there are a lot of different tools. Basically, this is just natural medicine. It works like therapy – each treatment building on the one before, like with massage therapy or physical therapy. Each body heals in its own time. You can’t rush nature.”
If you’ve never had an acupuncture treatment, you might be wondering how having needles inserted into your body could help treat back pain or the myriad other conditions it can alleviate. First, it’s important to remember that the human body has an innate self-healing ability. When we have a minor cut or bruise, for example, most of us don’t rush off to the hospital. We know our bodies will take care of this over time, mending the wound. This same healing power can be harnessed by acupuncture. The needles – which are about the size of a human hair – are strategically placed in specific points along the body’s meridian, or channeled energy, system. This triggers the body’s self-healing system, so acupuncture really just helps the body do what it was designed to do. Tamara sums it up best: “I think of acupuncture like the reboot of a computer. The idea is to obtain balance from conditioning – changing life patterns – and restore the proper signal.”
When it comes to herbal medicine, that is Tamara TCM’s super-power. They have a complete herbal pharmacy unlike any other in our area, giving our community access to the largest herbal medicine system in existence. “The biggest component of what we do is the internal component, which is the herbal medicine. This medicine is the original medicine, it’s worked for thousands and thousands of years. So we know everything there is to know about these herbs,” Tamara explains. That means you won’t find any chemical ingredients on your prescription bottle at Tamara TCM. Just all-natural, whole plant ingredients formulated to work together in synergy for the most powerful medicinal effect.
You can see Tamara discuss the many benefits of TCM in her own words every Tuesday at 12:30pm, when she broadcasts via Facebook Live Video. Find the archive of Tuesdays past by clicking on the Live tab on their Facebook page. The clinic also has a monthly newsletter with helpful tips, guidance and advice. You can sign up for that by going to tamaratcm.com/subscribe/.
The bottom line: Tamara TCM can help
“We get amazing results,” Tamara said. “People suffer for so long because they don’t know they have any other option. So really, for us, it’s trying to get that education out there and letting people know that, look, you’ve got options. We can help you with that.”
Tamara TCM offers treatment for conditions as varied as pain, headaches, high cholesterol, infertility, anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, addictions and much, much more. Go to tamaratcm.com/conditions-we-treat/ for a more comprehensive list of what they can treat.
In person or long distance
Tamara TCM’s patients receive the definition of premium one-on-one care, benefitting from a personalized treatment approach that’s designed to give each patient a treatment plan that is unique to them, their body, and their health goals. Patients start with a private consultation with an expert, fully licensed practitioner, followed by their first acupuncture treatment, as well as any add-on treatments such as cupping, electroacupuncture and more available if needed. Any prescriptions can be picked up at the on-site natural pharmacy.
The clinic also offers long-distance care in the form of its newly-launched Telehealth TCM service. Clients who cannot travel to Tamara TCM due to social distancing concerns (or any other reason) can speak with one of Tamara TCM’s expert practitioners over the phone or via Doxy, a secure, HIPAA-compliant conferencing system. Prescriptions can be picked up curbside or shipped to you.
“We’ll go through everything, including all the medical history and what you’re currently experiencing, just like we would if you were here in person. We take a look at nutrition, mental and emotional state, and from there we do counseling, coaching and we prescribe herbs to nourish and tonify the body. It’s a powerful combination to get you feeling better.” Tamara said.
Your highest level
Tamara said that she hopes that all who visit Tamara TCM— whether in person or via technology— will walk away on a better path toward a happier, healthier life.
“We want everyone to be at their highest level, and you can’t do that if you’re in pain, you can’t do that if you don’t feel well. So ultimately, we want to get people better. We want to get people strong and healthy.”
120 W. Dudley St., Maumee.
419-345-4996 | TamaraTCM.com
9am-7pm, Monday and Wednesday;
1pm-7pm, Tuesday and Thursday;
9am-3pm, Friday
Q&A with Tamara Willingham-Rapp, L.Ac, L.OM:
Q&A with Tamara Willingham-Rapp,What does “wellness” mean to you? I think it would be, essentially, stability.
What is something that the average person gets wrong about acupuncture and herbal treatment? I guess that it’s “magic.” Sometimes it kinda has that magical appearance to things, especially when you’re in pain, and we can put pins in, and you can feel better. But it’s just natural medicine. And that’s kind of the same thing with the herbs, because so little is known in this area. It’s just not well-represented, right? So it’s like a mystery.
What inspired the move to the Maumee location? I wanted [a] different space, and this different space became available, and I liked the downtown location. I liked that it had more of a community feel. Downtown Maumee is beautiful, it’s so cute, you know?
Who are some of the staff that people can expect to meet when they come to TCM? 
We have two other acupuncturists – Yesenia DeCapua and Carol Kremer. We do acupuncture five days a week. And then, Bri, Maggie, Emily and Heathyr are also office staff and managers here at the clinic. And I also have Scott, who is a virtual practitioner of CCT, which is Crystalline Consciousness Technique.
What are some of the more unique services you offer? I guess what’s really unique about us in this area is, quite frankly, our training. Our practitioners all have Masters degrees specifically in this medicine and are fully licensed by the state and certified through NCCAOM. That’s a big deal because there are some out there performing acupuncture with only a weekend course. So we encourage everyone to look up their practitioner online to check out their credentials and what kind of license they have.
Where do you hope to see Tamara TCM go from here? I feel like we’re sort of the light in the darkness with everything that’s going on, because we can help people in so many different ways. So I would like to see us expand and grow to help as many people as we can. We’d like everyone to experience this medicine and reach their optimal health.
About Tamara
Tamara first started down the path of traditional medicine while attending the Healing Arts Institute in Perrysburg, now the Orion Institute. She took an elective class in acupuncture, taught by a licensed acupuncturist and was immediately enthralled. Hanging on every word the woman said, Tamara thought to herself, “I’m going to do that someday.” And thus she found her calling. After working as a massage therapist for eight years, she enrolled at Bastyr University in Seattle for training in Chinese medicine.
After graduating in 2012, she started Tamara TCM in Michigan, staying there for a year before moving to Perrysburg. There, she cultivated a variety of loyal, happy clients who followed her when the clinic moved to its current stomping grounds in picturesque uptown Maumee in 2017.
For more about Tamara or her colleagues, visit www.tamaratcm.com/our-team/.
