CEFP Member:
Elizabeth Carpenter, MS, L.Ac.
Clinic & Contact Information:
Oriens Living
16 East 40th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10016
212-213-5785
“Elizabeth Carpenter is one of those rare women that stands out as one you can say, ‘I had the great fortune to meet her as a blessing in my life.
Brilliant, compassionate and soulful, Elizabeth is changing the face of women’s health. We have been in the same healing community.
We have attended and co-led retreats together. We’ve learned from each other. But most significantly, I can call her one of the greatest and most honorable names I have to give: my friend.”
– Dr. Randine Lewis, Ph.D., Author, The Infertility Cure
About My Approach
It’s my great pleasure to share vision, approach and to continually learn and grow with Randine Lewis and her organizations, The Fertile Soul and The Clinical Excellence in Fertility Professionals Group.
After Randine’s book, The Infertility Cure, came out, I rushed up to Toronto where she was holding a continuing education event for fertility professionals. The book became not just a great tool for my patients, it was a revelation: there was a whole movement of practitioners like me, who were practicing integrative care, merging East and West methodologies very successfully.
The approach Randine and I share isn’t just about integrating best medical strategies (Chinese medicine and biomedical). It’s also about the woman and her life, helping her heal and take the right next steps for her, and not downplaying, but respecting and addressing the stress she faces in her fertility challenge.
I’m not sure how many Fertile Soul Retreats I’ve been part of -- treated patients at, taught at, facilitated discussions at, since my first in 2006 -- we even held a Fertile Soul Retreat in my NYC clinic -- but each one has deeply enriched my life and my practice.
About My Specialties within Fertility
My clinic, Oriens Living, treats all types of fertility cases (men too) but it specializes in Unexplained Infertility and Advanced Maternal Age.
Long clinical experience has taught me two things: that “unexplained” is code for “not yet figured out;” and maturity is an asset.
So many women lament that they are “late to the game,” perhaps not meeting their mate until their forties, or were engaged deeply in career, or the desire to have a child awakened after some other chapter was concluding. But in my experience, these women’s joy in motherhood is unparalleled. And it’s very very possible to create family during this time of life. Do they have special challenges? Most often, yes.
Those challenges are as complex as autoimmune and as common as stress and exhaustion. Helping her recapture her fertility, her hope and her life is perhaps the most gratifying aspect of being a clinician.
About My Experience
I’ve been in practice since 1998, a practice that includes men but is devoted to women’s health.
A great passion for me is sharing my approach and my knowledge. I’ve been blessed with many opportunities to do so.
I’ve served on the faculties of 5 colleges and universities. I’ve taught Chinese Medicine and advanced acupuncture techniques for the main Chinese medicine school in the U.S.: Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, and some other Chinese medicine graduate programs. I’ve supervised and helped train hundreds of acupuncturists. I’ve developed Masters Program curriculum.
Growing up with surgeons and nurses in my family line, I have a profound regard for biomedicine. Yet my own healing path and interests have been Eastern medicine.
Before acupuncture was in hospitals, I was invited to be part of a think tank to create a medical model that could function in hospitals to bring CAM (complementary alternative medicine) into interface with biomedicine. We were successful. Our methodology was evidence-based and research sensitive, but grounded in real patient needs and the clinical experience of the practitioners. It’s the approach I developed rigorously for my own clinic.
As a speaker I am privileged to address both medical and lay audiences. As a guest clinician, I am privileged to travel around the country and help others develop a layered therapy, integrative holistic medicine approach to treating infertility, modeled on the one I created in my own clinic: The Oriens Fertility Program.
More on The Oriens Fertility Program
We have helped hundreds of women conceive and carry healthy pregnancies through The Oriens Fertility Program.
The program builds a comprehensive, integrative and holistic fertility strategy around each woman, rooted in her Chinese medicine diagnoses, and informed by her GYN, RE and MD diagnoses and reports. We case conference her care.
Acupuncture and electro-acupuncture, Chinese herbs, nutraceuticals, diet and meal planning, qi gong, breathing, meditation and movement, fertility massage are all possible components of her program. We teach her self-massage, self-care and self-acupressure techniques to use on her own at home.
About Time Pressure
Very importantly, we pay special attention to her mind-emotion complex through sessions we call “Navigating the Stress of Infertility.”
Nearly all fertility patients feel “time is running out.” They are experiencing frustration, urgency and fear things will never work out. “Navigating the Stress of Infertility” sessions put mind-body tools in her possession so that she can use her rational mind effectively for great decision making, and simultaneously release the sense of panic and fear.
Because of the role stress itself can play on driving and perpetuating fertility compromises, all of our patient treatment sessions offer support somehow. The physical impacts of stress are handled as part of standard care inside the fertility enhancement treatment strategies (such as the acupuncture) employed for her key issues (for example, egg quality, blood flow, etc.), but all her in-office care offers active opportunity to off-load and manage stress. This may take the form of talking through issues she may be considering with her RE or partner, or perhaps working together on self-regulation tools to manage her stress: yoga poses, breathing, movement, meditations, etc.
It sounds like a lot, but New Yorkers are short on time so we maximize her weekly visits tremendously, to provide her clinical care, empower her with tools and information, and help her bring peace into her process and life.