About Dr. Michael Keane, D.Ac., L.Ac.

I’m Dr. Michael Keane — a practicing acupuncturist, teacher, author, and painter.

Before getting into medicine, I had a Bachelor’s in Philosophy, and I was already deep in Chinese philosophy years before I ever became an acupuncturist. It’s the actual lens everything else got built on top of, and it’s a big part of why the ancient and the modern don’t feel like a contradiction to me; philosophy is what taught me how to hold multiple frameworks together and find where they actually meet, even if they sometimes disagree.

I’ve spent over a decade in full-time clinical practice. First in Philadelphia, where I treated everyone I could: from professional athletes, to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, and all over the city with the people in my communities. Now I live in Utah, where I am at SLC Qi Community Acupuncture in Salt Lake City. I also teach graduate-level courses at the Won Institute of Graduate Studies, where I earned my Doctorate in Acupuncture and did my herbal medicine training. I teach leadership, acupuncture research and methods, and the history of Chinese medicine there. I’m the author of Covid: A Modern Form of Gu Syndrome from 2024, with Essays on Acupuncture coming next in 2026. I plan to continue writing and self-publishing books for the foreseeable future.

Herb and Needle is where all of it lives: videos and articles for anyone curious how acupuncture actually works, courses for students and practitioners who want the real depth, and books for people who want to go further than either. I want to make the practice of acupuncture understandable, genuinely interesting, and scientifically grounded, without losing what makes it ancient.

I’m also a painter. I don’t keep that separate from the medicine, as they come from the same creative and artistic place for me. You’ll find both here, and more of the art side over on MakingArt.

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