Living Beside the River

Trey Casimir (’99) has returned to Lewisburg, PA, the small town where he grew up, to build his practice as an acupuncturist. “After I graduated, my wife and I traveled out here for a day or two every week, to see if it would be a viable place to make a living,” Trey said. “From the start, a cross section of the population sought out my services. The people who came usually sought help with pain, or had conditions that are difficult to treat or have very harsh allopathic treatments. This is still the case.”

Trey has a full-time schedule of between 20 to 30 patients a week, a number he says has doubled since the Pennsylvania law changed in February 2007. “The old law required a doctor’s referral for acupuncture treatment,” Trey said. “Now, I can provide acupuncture for anyone for 60 days; after that, all I need is a diagnosis in order to keep treating a patient.” Pennsylvania does not yet license acupuncturists, but requires a registration instead. This too, may also change soon, which Trey feels will be beneficial for insurance billing, which would then recognize him as a “licensed health care professional.”

A hometown feeling
As Trey talked about Lewisburg’s population of about 6,000 residents, his screen door squeaked open and closed, evoking images of a slower pace of life and vistas open to the nearby Susquehanna River. He recently purchased the house next to his and plans to move his office, now in a storefront on the town’s main street, into the ground floor. The second floor will become a bed and breakfast suite.

His location, a five-minute walk to nearby Bucknell University or the historic downtown area, makes it an ideal option for tourists. Though it can be rented by anyone, Trey said he could also envision it as a place where patients can stay for a planned detoxification program or during a series of Divergent Meridian treatments.

Divergent issues
When asked to define a Divergent Meridian treatment, Trey described it as an approach he would use “when there is more to a problem than a conflict between a pathogen and the body’s defenses. A Divergent Meridian issue will also involve a ‘tangle’ in the different levels of a person’s own qi flow,” Trey explained. “Our layers of qi are supposed to function somewhat independently of one another and when they get entangled inappropriately then the body may respond in unexpected ways.”

Trey relies on an energetic evaluation (pulse and tongue) and intake to guide him in choosing a treatment strategy. “If I have any doubt about whether it’s a Divergent issue, I’ll do a simple treatment that I think will have benefits but still be safe. If it turns out to in fact involve the Divergent Meridians, then the entanglement will become apparent in the patient’s response to the simple treatment. Once you are treating Divergent Meridians, any ‘clearing’ that takes place could be interpreted as ‘symptoms’ of a new illness or flair-up of a chronic condition if it wasn’t understood as meaningful in the context of acupuncture treatment.

“As a person begins to release toxins from the deeper layers of the body the process of elimination might be mistaken for a ‘cold’ or ‘allergic reaction’ or even ‘food poisoning’. But afterwards, the person feels stronger or relieved, not weaker or more bound up. That’s the hallmark of a healing crisis.”

Trey Casimir can be reached at (570) 523-3004.

Photo Credits All photos on this page were taken by Tiffini Scott of Creative Images Plus.

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