Biographical Sketch – Dr. DruAn Kindred
Bio-brief: Dr. Dru (DruAn) Kindred Here is a brief biography of my personal and professional background. I appreciate the opportunity to work with you and I want to share a little about me with you.
Before I became involved in natural medical care, I grew up in Iowa. I enjoyed nature and training in outdoor survival skills and camp counseling at Midwestern summer camps. Some of these rigorous programs were run by graduates of early ‘Outward Bound’ courses. In 1976, I entered Iowa State University and majored in nutrition. I spent summers working as a camp counselor for the Girl and Boy Scouts and I loved working outdoors so much I decided to move to Alaska to finish college and go to trade school. In 1981, I graduated from the residential carpentry Trade School program in Fairbanks. In 1982, I received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from UAF. I enjoyed building custom homes in rural Fairbanks for several years and still miss the outdoor settings of that artic woodlands work environment.
Prior to and while I was earning my natural medical degrees, I trained and worked as a massage therapist and specialized in three body-mind therapies. The first, is a healing system from India that emphasizes cultivating the ability to sense mental and emotional knots in the chakras that lock up vitality in both the psyche and the body. Identifying these knots allows one to untangle them using breathing and visualization exercises. The second body-mind therapy in which I trained has a Western origin and was called Rebirthing. It uses breathing exercises to break through past psychological traumas, as far back as one’s birth trauma. And I earned professional certification in Jin Shin Do acupressure. It is a synthesis of Eastern philosophy and Western Jungian psychology.
In 1991, I received my Master’s of Acupuncture degree from the The Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Columbia, Maryland. In 1994, I graduated cum laude from Western States Chiropractic College in Portland, Oregon. I lived and worked just outside of Washington D.C., prior to returning to Alaska.
I have been operating a holistic clinic in Ketchikan since April 1995. In October of 1998, I studied and did hospital rounds in Seoul, Korea. I spent time in 1999, 2000, 2011 and 2013 and 2022 updating my studies in Western nutrition as well as learning new methods for allergy desensitization and detoxifying environmental pollutants. In 2011 I began studying principles for Brain Regeneration. In 2016 I embarked on training that combined brain research on PTSD with Acupuncture. It is enhancing all therapies. In 2020 I trained in Japanese scalp acupuncture and updates on Autoimmune disorders. In 2021 I studied new developments in sports injury acupuncture with emphasis on neck, shoulders and arms.
Other in-depth studies in Oriental Medicine:
- Between 2001 and 2020 my training and work focused exclusively on Kiiko Matsumoto style, Japanese 5 Element acupuncture. Kiiko collated the main lines of Japanese Master Teachers into a unified system. Her final work for this was published in 2010. In 2012 she became the first woman to have a style of acupuncture named after her. In 2016 she discovered how to use acupuncture to treat PTSD and Chronic Pain. In 2018 I attended a workshop at her Boston clinic on detoxifying prescription medication residues to treat pain.
- 2002-2003 Bob Flaws program on “Complicated” disorders like Autoimmune diseases and skin disorders.
- 2010 in depth study program on Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Resistant Weight loss and Type 2 diabetes.
- In 2020, with covid shut down and online classes, I was able to begin the advanced study of Classical Acupuncture based on the Jade Purity Tradition as taught by it’s oral lineage holder Jeffery Yuen.
Simple problems, like sports injuries, generally need one to three treatments while disease patterns need closer to 8 in-depth treatment sessions to dismantle the entrenched problem patterns. In these cases, I recommend quarterly follow-up sessions for a year. This enhances and stabilizes the corrections over the cycle of seasonal energy changes that the body and organs go through.
Research data continues to demonstrate holistic and natural therapies are as effective as many pharmaceutical therapies yet without the side effects. Most recently data has built up to show that therapy that is not holistic often relapses, pointing the way to holistic healing as the better investment, even though it requires the patient to face and learn more self-awareness. Using quick fixes usually means suppressing symptoms, not correction dysfunction. So as more research supports my style of therapy – enhancing body/mind functions as a means of restoring and promoting health, prejudices are starting to give way. Continuing education aside, I feel fortunate to have found a career that continually enchants me with edifying insights about the nature of being a healthy human as I strive to provide enhanced restorative results.
