Our highly trained practitioners will work with you to destress, alleviate pain, or begin working on a complicated medical condition. We offer Chinese medicine, herbal prescription and wellness treatments in our beautiful Asheville clinic!
Appointments can be booked conveniently online! please click here
Chinese Medical Treatments:
- New Patient Intake: first consultation to gather information about the case, outline a treatment plan & prescribe herbal formula. Clients who book this service should expect to follow up with the practitioner 1-2 weeks. Booking sequential visits ahead of time is highly recommended to ensure practitioner availability and ensure continuity of care.
- Follow Up Treatment: consultation to quantify changes, modify herbal formula, and perform acupuncture & bodywork time permitting. Clients should expect to spend 40 dedicated minutes with a practitioner. Booking sequential visits ahead of time is highly recommended to ensure practitioner availability and ensure continuity of care.
- Extended Treatment: for new patients with complicated conditions or for those who require more than 40 minutes with their practitioner, booking two back to back appointments is recommended.
Wellness / Walk-In Services
- Massage: therapeutic, deep tissue or relaxing massage. we are a tip free facility.
- Destress Acupuncture: a combination of acupuncture and bodywork to move qi and relax the mind.
- Neck & Shoulders Treatment: massage, sliding cups and acupuncture as appropriate to release tight muscles.
- Health Consultation: find out what Chinese medicine can do for your health or longevity, receive advice and common sense explanations for your health concerns. discussion only, no treatment provided.
Pharmacy Services
We sell herbs and fill prescriptions by walk in. Formulas must be submitted in person to our front desk staff with payment at time of order. Formulas will be added to our que and filled as quickly as possible. Formulas are not accepted by email or phone request.
Clinic Membership
The Alternative Clinic is a branch of the 501c3 not for profit educational organization, the Association for Traditional Studies (ATS) (www.traditionalstudies.org). In tandem with ATS’ online educational programs, our mission is to teach the public about the efficacy and tangibility of Chinese medicine, and raise the bar of medicine in our field through clinical training and hands on education.
In the state of North Carolina, insurance rarely covers alternative medicine treatments. This makes acupuncture and wellness services a financial hardship for many. As a teaching clinic, we rely on a broad patient base and range in illness severity to create meaningful educational opportunities for interns. If our colleagues see effective treatment for a variety of illness in our clinic, they will be able to duplicate the skill in their home clinics. This elevates our profession and ensures the seeds of tangible and effective Chinese medicine are spread far beyond our clinic’s doors. Maintaining affordable treatment prices to ensure those with a variety of ailments and socioeconomic backgrounds are able to seek our care is thus crucial for our clinic’s credo.
There is no way to translate the cost of our practitioners dedication to one patient at a time, or the operating cost of our staff or wellness center to a per-patient or per-treatment price. Running a meaningful business does not easily translate to balanced business accounting.
Thus, our board of directors raises $50,000 each year to subsidize treatment prices, and we are always seeking grants and donations to expand our pro-bono services. Currently we provide 20% of our treatments on a pro-bono basis, including free care to the local fire and police force. Our herbs are top quality, lab tested and organic, yet we apply the lowest possible markup, ensuring that herbal medicine is also affordable for the short or long term.
Clinic membership is thus grass roots support crucial to helping us run a top notch clinic with exceptional practitioners and medicines at affordable and accessible prices. Membership shows grassroots support for our mission, which is crucial when applying for grants and funding, and creates a community of patients helping our community of patients.
Clinic membership is an annual contribution, and applies to the whole household to receive discounts on every Chinese medicine or wellness treatment, as both a thank you for the support as well as encouragement to make follow up visits and wellness treatments a frequent part of one’s care regime.
As our teaching center on the second floor of Asia House opens in the summer of 2022, members will be invited to member’s only events and will receive discounts on classes.
Other Questions? Click here for more patient information.