Photo by Lauren Wadsworth
Harty T. Kelley, LAc
Licensed Acupuncturist by the
Oregon Medical Board, 2019
Certified practitioner of Kiiko Matsumoto Style Acupuncture 2025
Masters in Acupuncture and East Asian Medicine (OCOM 2019)
Bachelors of Science in Applied Psychology (Montana State University, 2014)
Certificate of Completion of the JingDao program of Traditional Daoist Arts (Qin Jian Akademin Society for Classical Chinese Arts, Stockholm) under Master Zhongxian Wu.
Qigong Instructor with certification in Thousand Hands Buddha, Five Dragons Qigong, 28 Lunar Mansions & Shamanic Tiger
Certificate holder in various Myofascial techniques through the Moving Mountains Institute, as well as having completed Cranial Sacral I & II and III.
Harty began her career path pursing holistic psychology practice after her undergraduate research in the gut-brain axis in 2014. While on the pre-med track she began a deep dive into Eastern Medicine and realized that the ancient Chinese has developed a clear system of understanding the Mind-body connection far beyond even the most recent discoveries in the western medical journals on the subject. So she decided to change courses and study the ancient teachings and remedies for the myriad imbalances that arise in the modern human.
During her Masters program, she started studying Qigong under with Master Zhongxian Wu and Japanese style acupuncture under Kiiko Matsumoto. Her first job as an acupuncturist and Qigong instructor was at the Quest Center for Integrative Health in Portland, Oregon in 2017. Quest is a non-profit providing alternative health services, counseling, nutrition education for historically underserved communities. Their programs are focused around chronic pain management and addiction recovery.
During the 2020 lockdown during the initial outbreak of COVID-19, Harty began expanding her qigong instruction internationally by offering free virtual qigong courses in an effort to help others manage their anxiety around the global pandemic.
Since then, she has continued teaching qigong both in person and virtually, and is available for hire for workshops and retreats where mindfulness practices are needed.
Since relocating to Central Oregon in 2023, she has been seeing patients at Bigfoot Wellness in Sisters and out of her private home practice on her ranch in Alfalfa.
About Harty
Harty was raised on a horse farm in rural western New York. She came to Eastern Washington in 2005 when she was 18, where she was first introduced to eastern spirituality and mindfulness practices. Her studies and travels took her throughout the western US until she settled in Portland and began her undergraduate studies in 2006 as a Women’s Studies major, spending a year living in Cairo, Egypt enrolled in a gender studies program. She finished her bachelors degree in Applied Psychology at Montana State in 2014. Her thesis research was centered around the gut-brain axis, and her fascination with mind-body medicine led directly to a career path in Chinese Medicine.
In Chinese Medicine she found the ancient answers to modern questions. Traditional Chinese medicine intuitively understood the dynamics of the two-way communication system between body and brain and even understood imbalances in the gut as being the root cause for psychological imbalances and systemic inflammation. Beyond that, this system had been established for thousands of years, with time-tested, low-risk and holistic approaches to treating these imbalances.
Harty utilizes a trauma-informed approach to her treatments, utilizing Kiiko Matsumoto Style and other schools acupuncture that use smaller needles and rely on the wisdom of the patient’s own body to direct the course of treatment. These treatments are known for their immediate results, short needle retention time and low discomfort.
Treatments are relaxing, energizing and grounding. They are based firmly in the Do No Harm ethos, with the underlying knowledge that we do not need to cause our patients any discomforts in order to treat them with acupuncture.
Harty also believes in the power of healing touch and utilizes hands-on massage therapies in order to expand and deepen every treatment. In this way, the body is able to reach a state of calm in order to trust the healing process, allowing and directing the course of treatment through a continuous verbal and nonverbal communication between patient and practitioner.
