The NADA protocol is compassionate care at it’s best. I quickly recognized that behavioral health and mental wellness is an integral component of whole health and wellness. Mike, Carlos Alvarez, Nancy Smalls, and the staff of the Lincoln Recovery Center took me under their wings. Smith invited me to join the staff at the Lincoln Recovery Center where I apprenticed and trained in the NADA protocol. It is this desire to escape that can lead to behavioral health challenges, like addiction.ĭr. That because of life experiences, we can become wounded, go within ourselves and some of us can get trapped inside, attempting to escape. He told me that acupuncture helps to re-ignite the shen of those that have had their shen buried within them. As a psychiatrist and acupuncturist, he often spoke of the practice of acupuncture within spiritual contexts. I was working as a research assistant and case manager in the psychiatry department at Lincoln Hospital when I met Michael Smith.

After completing my undergraduate studies at Vassar College, I began to work in community health and advocacy. This is why my work with the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center really spoke to me and paved the path of community health and wellness that I continue to advocate for. I’ve spent considerable time in the Caribbean and Africa where the connection between health care and wellness (body, mind and soul) is deeply rooted to faith based systems and spiritual practices. My later years were spent living in the South Bronx, Queens, and going to church in Brooklyn. Born in Denmark Hill, London, my parents trained as health care professionals (my mother, a registered nurse and my father, a hospital administrator).

What’s your ‘NADA story’? How did you come to be trained in the NADA protocol and as an acupuncturist?Ī daughter of Jamaican immigrants, I grew up in several places. The ultimate goal is to balance body, mind, and soul. It is in that re-start that we can begin addressing other health challenges. In that place, all that is necessary is to breathe and start again. The NADA protocol is compassionate care at it’s best…NADA (“Nothing” in Spanish) has the ability to empower us, free us from the woundedness and get us back to center – a quintessential ground zero where “Nothing” exists. Sharon trained as an AcuDetox Specialist at Lincoln Recovery in 1991 and has been a NADA member for 30 years. She maintains an acupuncture & herbal medicine practice, Chakramoon, Inc, and in fall of 2020 was appointed Department Chair of Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine at Maryland University of Integrative Health. Sharon Jennings-Rojas is an acupuncturist and herbalist.

Sharon Jennings-Rojas (Odenton, Maryland)

Home Free by Sharon Jennings