The Point of Change, Acupuncturist to Artist: Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer, Maine Artist

Lisa Belisle: Hello, this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Radio Maine, or watching Radio Maine as the case may be. Today I have with me an artist and also health colleague, Alexandra Maurer. It's great to have you in the studio with me today.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Thank you. It's great to be here.

Lisa Belisle: It's only the second time we've actually done this in the studio. So it's been an interesting year, I think, for you and I and others in the health profession, getting used to seeing people face to face without masks.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yes, it has. I'll say that I did not practice much during the pandemic, and I still continue to practice in a group home where we're still masked. It just seems to be right.

Lisa Belisle: And your practice is acupuncture.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yes. I'm trained in Chinese medicine.

Lisa Belisle: So tell me about that. I know that you're an artist and you're recently affiliated with the Portland Art Gallery, but you have this interesting parallel track that you've been doing from the beginning.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yes. I was introduced to Chinese medicine because I've always had an interest in plant medicine. So I took the naturopathic pre-med track, then bumped into Chinese medicine and resonated with that paradigm of the system of medicine. It resonated with me as an artist, actually, the way you describe the diagnostic paradigm.

Lisa Belisle: So as a paradigm, you're talking like the five phases, the seasonal element. The relationship between the seasons and the organ systems, that is very nature based.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yes. It's a very refined system. Once you study the system of Chinese medicine, some say it's easier to go to Chinese medical school than allopathic medical school, but more challenging to practice. Because then what you do is, I always say that I'm always asking seemingly unrelated questions when I'm collecting data on a person's mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. So that is a wonderful fluid art. And it also recognizes that people change all the time. So with every treatment, with every day, it takes that into account as people evolve, so much like art.

Lisa Belisle: Well, tell me about that. Tell me about the changing of your art.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: I will say that I've been primarily a parent for the last 27 years, and I think I've kept the thread of acupuncture and art going so that when I have my time freed up, which is beginning right in this phase of life, I now have opportunities that are opening up to dive deeper into both, which is really exciting, and both really inform one another.

I find that when I get into a place where I've nailed a painting, I feel like it's hit me at a core that feels really balanced and complete. And then when it's revealed to a greater audience, when it can touch people, it's an amazing experience when someone resonates with a piece of work. I just read something about Kandinsky, like color when it touches the human soul. That's what it's about. That's a lot like putting someone into a very balanced state through an acupuncture treatment. It's like life gets out of their way and they can just be, and that's, I think, where we all heal, because we're capable of it if we get out of our own way to some degree.

Lisa Belisle: So I think you bring up a really important point, and that is that parenting really is its own way of creating and being part of the artistic process, and also enabling essentially humans that are evolving to be the best versions of themselves. You're just trying to get things out of their way so that they can do what they're going to do. Did you understand that as you were raising your children?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: At times as a parent you're really involved. I think there's a stage where you're trying to have them, in the end, develop a really grounded sense of self regulation. And that comes with them being deeply connected at a young age to some form of caregiver and then slowly individuating step by step. I used to say that parenting is about chronic mourning. So you give birth and that's over. That could be sad for some people. And then if you nurse and you start to introduce foods, that's kind of sad. And then they start to eat on their own. Then they get on the school bus. And then you have to practice letting go all the time. And I think if you don't do that, it can be very challenging when they go away from home, like the first living situation away from home, be it college or a job or camp. So I think you just have to practice that all along. And I think the irony is that they are secure. You think they're going out into this crazy world, but they have their feet on the ground. And that's how my husband and I raised our kids, for the most part.

Lisa Belisle: I'm really relating to this idea of letting go. And even this idea of, I think with my son, who's now in his late twenties, the first time I put something in his mouth that didn't come from me, that wasn't my own milk, it was such a deeply changing experience in a way that I wouldn't have realized it would be. Before I became a parent, and our children are roughly the same age, I assumed that there would be a more rational approach I could take to all of this. And when I got into it, it was so much more deeply emotional than I thought it would be. Did you have that experience?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: I think at times. Parenting is emotional, and actually I'm going to take that word back, "parenting." My husband and I always joke about how parenting was not a verb when we were being raised. You were a parent, and now it's a different thing. I still have to gnaw on that whole concept, but I think it implies being super attached all along the way, versus just you're a parent, they're the child. And there's some sort of individuation between both parties with that. Parenting is emotional, and I thought that babies were hard at the time. I thought that middle schoolers, high school before they are 21, but now recognizing children as adults, that's a whole nother challenge. And hopefully if you learn to change along the way, that can make it easier, but it's still tough.

Lisa Belisle: One of the things that I did when my youngest was getting ready to go away to school was to find something almost to jumpstart my own next stage, which was to, I actually went back and got a business degree, even though I have other degrees. At the time I wanted to learn something new. I wanted to acknowledge that this was a different phase, but it also maybe was a way of distracting myself from the sense that something really had significantly changed. I know that you built a new home and transitioned out of the family farm, you said, in 2017. Was there any bit of that that could have been a means of moving into the next phase, or even distraction?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yes. I think we were ready to downsize 17 acres and whatnot, old farmhouse. We weren't sure what was going to happen. We sold the farm without a plan. It was a disruptive, hard three years, but I have to say at one point, someone said, "someone's not speaking up in this." And I meditated on that, because we had some bumps along the way, like the failure of the sale of our house the day before it was supposed to sell, and there were a few other things. And I actually found more of my voice in the whole process. Because I'm very privileged and have lived a very comfortable life. And so I often feel like, well, it's all gonna work out, it's good. So sometimes I don't put my voice in when I really would like something a little different.

So I found my voice in this process. I put my foot down, said, "Nope, we're going to do this." And we built this wonderful house that's a near net zero house. It's an efficiency house. It's all electric, it has 12 inch walls, triple pane windows. So now we're living another level of the way we feel like we should live in the future as responsible people who were able to do this, with our state of the world, climate, fuel, things like that. So I will say I've been reflecting on this point of life, in that this, I feel like, is the maintenance stage. For the last 30 years I've been getting degrees, getting house, getting kid, getting kid, getting a career, all that growing, growing. And that is perfect for that. And now I think the challenge is entering a maintenance phase, so not consuming to feel grounded, being okay nurturing what I have, what is, being really, instead of human doing, I guess you could say. So that is a challenge when you've been busy or distractable for 30 years. I think that's the biggest challenge right now.

Lisa Belisle: How do you get yourself back to that place of maintenance? What are some of the things that you've needed to notice about your tendencies in order to put yourself into that place?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Without sounding the way people think now, gratitude practice and all that, but really stepping back and using words like enough, or gratitude for what is, as opposed to the storyline of, I'm not this, I'm not that, I don't have, trying to improve all the time when I'm pretty lucky to have my health, my mind, my healthy family. And just sitting with that also as a testament, that that's a great model for people in our culture to be. I think with the pandemic, I have a lot of friends who were pretty grateful to have the pandemic. It allowed, especially the introverts, to take a breath out. I don't know if you're familiar with the book, Quiet, it's an amazing book. And really, since the industrial revolutions, introverts have really had to struggle to promote themselves. So they have a lot to teach us, just be.

Lisa Belisle: Do you consider yourself to be an introvert?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: That's a good question, because I feel as though I am by nature an introvert and by nurture an extrovert. I was cultivated to be an extrovert. So all my friends will say, oh yes you are. But I think it's like, I'm ambidextrous. I think I'm a bit of both because of that.

Lisa Belisle: Have you needed to be more of an extrovert professionally, where you practice Chinese medicine and acupuncture?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: If you're asking if I've needed to work that, no, because it just comes to me. I am an extrovert on a certain level. I like to gather stories out of people. I like to connect people. I just love the idea of getting people together who I think are very interesting and introducing them, like say if we have a party. Then my biggest fantasy is once that's going, I go upstairs and I read my book and let the thing happen. So maybe that's the halfway between introvert and extrovert, but I just adore getting people together, gathering people who I think can be creative together. I really enjoy getting interesting people together.

Lisa Belisle: So that's somewhat similar to what you're describing about getting out of the way, just allowing things to happen. Kind of removing obstacles.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yeah. I don't always do it, but that's my work right now.

Lisa Belisle: Has it been challenging for you to begin putting yourself out there as an artist?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: My gut says no, I'm ready for this. I've just never consolidated the energy enough to step into this different realm of an audience, and I'm loving it. It's so exciting.

Lisa Belisle: At some point you made the decision that you would like to have representation and you began an affiliation with the Portland Art Gallery. What was that moment? What was that decision point? And why did you think that that became important at that time?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: That was a completely organic circumstance. I had built a studio in our new house. I'd been clearing it out. I'd been starting to work more regularly. I went and got some eyeglasses next door. I walked into the gallery, saw Emma Wilson, and just chatted. Didn't even think about it. And the next day I was at the Portland Art Museum and someone said, "You should go meet with Emma about this." I was like, "Okay." And then I did it. And everything just happened within like a week or two. So it was wonderfully organic, and it was perfect. It was like a perfect timing thing, which is what I also like about it. And for this point in time, this is a right fit.

Lisa Belisle: Do you subscribe to the idea that when the student is ready, the master appears?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Certainly I would. Yes.

Lisa Belisle: Which is not to say that the Portland Art Gallery is the master.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Whatever vehicle to elevate one's skill sets or one's place or one's ideology.

Lisa Belisle: Is it hard to ready yourself to be in that place, or is this all part of the practice you've been describing with the meditation and the gratitude and the grounding and the looking at the next stage of your life?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: You know, I think it's all just synchronicity at this point. I'm still dumbfounded that it's rolling in this direction. It's just happening. And I'm rolling with it.

Lisa Belisle: The piece that we have next to us is called "Holy Cow" and it's these brilliant, I always hesitate in front of artists to describe colors because I am not trained in art, but this brilliant orangy sky and some darker colors down below. You were telling me that this is all related to a study of colors with a very specific artist style. Is this something that you do on a regular basis, that you look at a set of work that's being done by a specific artist and try to find out what you can learn from it?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Sometimes. And I think because I do believe that no idea's completely original. We're all influenced by our various sensory organs, whether it's taste, sight, sound, touch. So this is someone who was exploring teaching this winter. He's a fine artist. He asked if I'd be a student of his, for a sitting of a model painting in oils with what's called the Zorn palette. Anders Zorn was a painter. He painted up until the late 1920s, mostly portraits. And the Zorn palette, it's amazing work, I just got introduced to it, is basically ivory black, titanium white, yellow ochre, and vermilion, which now a lot of people use red cadmium. And with those four colors, he was able to do extraordinary work. It is a little bit more challenging with landscapes. So if you were going to do more of that, if I do an ultramarine blue introduction, it can help that, just because of the spectrum of greens and blues.

So then I started to play around with that. I have a friend in Texas, we were working on the concept of a painting for her. And this is what I came up with, but I was working with the Zorn palette, and I was very much like, yep, this is done. And it's not quite the pinks, purples skies of where she lives in Texas. So I really needed to stop at this point and not continue for her needs. And that will happen at some point. I'll hopefully paint her a lovely painting, but this was all good, which was great to do with her. Because she inspired me to do this kind of content. So I was experimenting with that Zorn palette again.

Lisa Belisle: Why is it called "Holy Cow"?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: I think it's kind of a funny painting. It just looks like a photobomb of a cow. And I also think that at this point in life, we need some whimsical, lovely things to look at, and everything in between, to touch our souls, because our souls are being touched with some pretty hard things. So to put a complement to that. And I think holy cow is just a fun statement. When you say holy cow, it's sort of like, "wow!"

Lisa Belisle: Well, I'm glad I asked. And now that I'm looking at the piece, there is what seems to be a figure over to the side, which as you've said, it absolutely now looks like a cow that's stuck his head inside a landscape. So that is really fun. And there is something about that that kind of makes me laugh. And actually, this is one of the reasons why I really love some of the pieces that Page Eastburn O'Rourke does. Hers are art in a really different way, but I feel like you're onto something. There's something very serious about what we've been living through and what we're all continuing to work with, and trying to connect back to that childlike nature, I think, in the way of seeing the world that doesn't feel so threatening.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yeah. Kind of an innocent, pure, direct way of looking at things like children do.

Lisa Belisle: My sister practices acupuncture. She was also trained out on the west coast and she's in the Portland area. And what she told me is that her practice is just over full. There are so many people that are really wanting this type of healing, that are really needing this connection. And the levels of stress are so high. And I think that it has been hard for her, as I think it has been for many people in the healing fields, because we want to help, we want to bring people back to a state of balance. Have you found that also to be the case?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yes. Although my private practice has really dwindled significantly, and actually it was okay because we became general contractors during the time. So that was fortuitous. I work in a group home with co-occurring adults. Co-occurring illness is substance use disorder with mental health. And it's a residence of up to 12 people. And I do the protocol once a week there. And I also do additional individual treatment, because, not a protocol, National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, your acupuncture should be delivered daily. And I can't do that there. So whoever wants individualized treatment, I offer that. Interestingly, these are people who clearly don't live outside the pandemic, but clearly do. The level of other things that continued to happen other than COVID still happened: opioid addiction, homelessness. And so to some degree, their lives were just the same as ever except masked.

It sounds strange, but to some degree, I didn't see that stress as much at that house. I did with the staff, because I was just navigating all the new protocols. But I think stress is blind. I think that acupuncture does an amazing job at resetting the central nervous system, the sympathetic versus the parasympathetic, fight or flight versus rest and digest. We need to be living in our parasympathetic rest and digest. 99.9% of the time we don't. So I think that's the ultimate service in a basic way that acupuncture serves, getting the reset into that, because the cascade effect of that is better digestion, better sleep, better emotional regulation. And when all those happen, there is less destruction, less busy-ness, less, for lack of a better description, poor choices happen. So that's what I love about acupuncture. It's a great equalizer of the person, it just grounds them into the parasympathetic.

Lisa Belisle: So I don't think I could smile any more broadly, because I resonate so deeply with what you're saying. And as someone who's trained in Western medicine and practices family medicine, but also has had this parallel path for 15 years or more, there's something I find that is so much more useful with acupuncture in many cases than any of the other things that I have ever learned. And when a patient comes to see me, and many times they're referred by other family physicians or PAs or nurse practitioners, they'll say to me, well, "I need you to take care of my shoulder pain." And it's something that's very focal, and I'll say, "yes. And also, let me tell you about this other aspect of acupuncture that I find to be really deeply healing." And people don't quite understand that. So it's a reeducation for them. It's different, maybe, when they come to see me than when they come to see you. Because I would assume they have a little bit more of an understanding of what acupuncture is, but I don't want to assume that.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Yes and no. Sometimes we're the last stop. My husband's a naturopathic doctor. He's often the last stop. And then often it is the first stop, if there has been an experience or a word of mouth experience, or a determination not to, say, have surgery, let's try this. So it's all very varied. I will say that most people who I begin to treat, I like to say that you need to practice getting acupuncture, because the first, you need to get a few treatments to really understand it. Because it's shifting your body into a potentially new way of being. I'm a tennis player, I'm a rackets player, hands down, whatever racket I have in my hand, I love it. So I often say an acupuncture treatment is like getting a tennis lesson for the game, which is out in life.

So in terms of back to the parasympathetic, you're basically creating cellular memory of deep relaxation that you, either intentionally or just because your nervous system has reawakened the parasympathetic, that you can call up in your daily life. So that's really how I work, especially with the group home. Notice how you feel at the end of your treatment. And then throughout your day, your week, take note of that, of where you are in that moment. Don't try to get back to the acupuncture feeling, but notice the space, the distance of that. And I think instead of trying to relax, if you just notice where you are, you'll remember on some level the capacity your body has to reach that parasympathetic, that rest and digest state. It involves the amygdala, really that part of our brain that stores our emotional memories, which is neuroplastic, and that's a whole other pathway. We can change this kind of stuff. So it's really an interesting time, both mentally and physically with medicine, I think, with what we now know.

Lisa Belisle: Well, one of the reasons that I'm very glad to be in Western medicine and also know what I know and practice the way I practice is because I feel like some of the things like acupuncture that have always been here, been here longer than Western medicine, are going to become more useful, because we are at a place where we realize medicine is good for some things, surgery is good for some things, we need emergency care. And also things like substance use disorder or things like grief maybe are better served by doing something else that's not been within the Western medical model. So it's kind of fun, because all of these years I've been trying to convince other people that this is a good idea. And here we are, and people actually are starting to understand. So it makes me really happy to hear that you're using the NADA protocol, because I'm trying to get this from my lips to the universe's ears, as I'm trying to get this within our medical system. And you definitely understand the benefit of this, but even start from the beginning and say, this is NADA, this is what this means, this is what it has to offer. It's interesting to have to be kind of the proponent of that.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: The history of NADA is very interesting. It started in Lincoln Hospital, in the Bronx, in the seventies, where they didn't have enough funding for pharmaceuticals for withdrawal symptoms. There was a medical doctor, Michael Smith, who is an acupuncturist who said, I've got this ear acupuncture protocol, let's give it a go. And it reduced the withdrawal symptoms without medicating, which is a huge success. Amazing. Considering that I think at the time one needle was 5 cents or something. So you're using 10 needles.

So that's great, and fast forward, it has spread to a lot of different places. I was trained in Portland, Oregon at OCOM, Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. And, again, another synchronicity, David Eisen was brought from Boston by a judge in Portland, Oregon to start a court mandated NADA program. And NADA, again, National Acupuncture Detoxification Association protocol. It was court mandated. It was public health, and we were in all sorts of clinics. And that was in the early 1990s. So when I moved to Maine in 1994, I tried various ways to do it. I was going to be a full-time parent. So that was a big one that got in my way. But I did little pilot projects. I started one at Preble Street. It was an eight week one. We used a dental surgical office across the street from Preble Street in Portland.

They sat on like gurneys and I just did ear acupuncture. That was great. Then there's this community acupuncture clinic model, my classmate, Lisa Rohleder, started it. And basically it's a sliding scale community room. So it's somewhere between $10 to $30 a treatment. There are a few in Maine that do this. And so I operated one Friday mornings out of my office so that, for affordability, people could come see me a few times, but it's nice to get treatment weekly. So they would come in on the Fridays when I knew what the protocol was and not have to be charged as much. So I did that for a while. Wildwood Medicine, I worked there for a while. They have a public health community health clinic. And then what was really exciting was three years ago, I think 2018, four acupuncturists did a year long study. We did one week, every month at Milestone on India Street where we introduced the NADA protocol. And Milestone is an acute detox place, acute meaning five to seven or five to 10 days, in Portland. And that was great too. And then there's the veterans clinic that a lot of people have volunteered for, which again shut down during pandemic, which was challenging.

Lisa Belisle: And the veterans association hospitals, they use a lot of battlefield acupuncture, which is also ear acupuncture. And what I love about your acupuncture is it's really so simple and so powerful. And I wonder sometimes if part of the reason why acupuncture hasn't had as much of a hold until now within mainstream medicine is because it's so simple. It's something that people don't understand, that using these needles, it can really move things in a way that we wouldn't expect. What do you think?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Well, having done a few auricular acupuncture courses, the ears are so close to the brain and they're so innervated. So they do have a potency that's a little different. And just for viewers, the interesting thing, if you look at the ear, it kind of looks like the fetus. So when you map it out, it has the spine and the different parts. It's very, very cool. So one thing I was going to say about the beauty of this protocol, and this I think was truly discovered after 9/11, is some people need to talk, some people need to be touched, and some people don't need either. And acupuncture offers all that full spectrum. When I'm treating someone who does not need to talk, is not used to talking about emotions, acupuncture works. If I need to work with someone who needs to process verbally, acupuncture works. And in between, some people are really not comfortable being touched. So I think that's where, when they started doing the protocol in trauma zones, that's where it really was a testament to a new level of access, not just addicts or whatnot.

Lisa Belisle: Well, this is one of the reasons we actually have our sculpture behind you with the large ears, just acknowledging the importance of the ears in lots of different ways. I'm really struck by the fact that, like art, acupuncture can be both simple and complex, and it can be experienced on so many different levels. And it sounds like you've really spent time doing that. You've worked in studies with different color palettes. You started this back as an undergraduate, I believe. Have you had any revelations over the course of doing this now for, it sounds like a few decades, three decades, perhaps?

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Oh, certainly. And the one that stands out that I thought was pretty neat, I'll just give one example. Tom Curry is a pastel artist in Brooklin, Maine, and I did some pastel, I guess you could call plein air workshops, with him about 10 or 15 years ago. And his method is he starts his pieces with the complementary color of what he's going to do. So orange compliments blue. So if you have a blue sky, he will start with orange and then work blue over that. And that's when you study a very precise system, like color wheels, that's as precise a system as Chinese medicine. So diagnosing, to me, involves internal, external, excess, deficient, hot or cold, distal, proximal. Then you put all of these in a very, very specific system, and then you have freedom. So you have very solid boundaries.

And that's my biggest challenge with painting, is creating my own boundaries so that I can be free within it. And I think that's just a great metaphor for a lot of things. When we feel like we're confined, or we create that boundary or structure, sometimes it seems as though we're limiting ourselves. But I think when you go through that risk of creating those structures, you actually open up to a wider spectrum. And I think Dietlind Vander Schaaf might've mentioned that. She said, "when you shut a door, another one opens," she said, "no, no, no, you open the window and jump out." I loved what she said. So that's what I think about with art. I have to put a lot of self-imposed boundaries on it, because anything can happen.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. Well, speaking of gratitude, I'm very grateful that I've had the opportunity to have this conversation with you today. I've learned a lot. I've really enjoyed getting to know you better. I think you and I have connected over the years, but to have this time to really have more of a deeper conversation has been wonderful. So I appreciate your willingness to come join me today.

Alexandra Strawbridge Maurer: Thank you. This was really a pleasure.

Lisa Belisle: I've been speaking with Alexandra Maurer, who is an artist in her own right, but recently with the Portland Art Gallery. If you'd like to see more of her work, go to the Portland Art Gallery website. And I hope that maybe you'll have a chance to come join Alexandra and I at an upcoming opening at the Portland Art Gallery, which have recently gone live again. Thank you for joining us today on Radio Maine.