About Dr. Sophia Scheffel | Diablo Acupuncture

Dr. Sophia Scheffel

DACM, L.Ac.
Doctor of Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine

I came to Chinese medicine the long way — first as a patient.

I was born with a chronic respiratory illness and life-threatening allergies that shaped much of my early life. Hospitals, specialists, medications, and missed school days were familiar from a young age. When I was five years old, I saw my first acupuncturist, and Chinese medicine became an important part of my healthcare journey — a relationship that continues to this day.

Chinese medicine offered me something I had not found elsewhere. It helped me understand the connections between my symptoms, my environment, my emotions, and my overall health. Rather than focusing on a diagnosis alone, it taught me to see the body as an interconnected system capable of change and healing.

As I got older, I assumed I would become a physician. Medicine was the world I knew. But when it came time to choose a career, I found myself asking a simple question: who had made the greatest difference in my life?

Again and again, the answer was my acupuncturists and Chinese medicine doctors. They helped me understand myself, manage pain, navigate chronic illness, and find a path toward greater health and possibility. They listened deeply, looked at the bigger picture, and treated me as a whole person rather than a collection of symptoms. Their impact on my life ultimately inspired the work I do today.

Chinese medicine has been woven through nearly every chapter of my life. Helping others through this medicine is both a privilege and a calling.

Those experiences continue to shape the way I practice. I listen deeply, look for the underlying patterns that connect seemingly unrelated symptoms, and work collaboratively with my patients to help them move toward greater health, resilience, and possibility.

My Approach

Individualized medicine — because the same condition lives differently in each person.

I do not treat diagnoses. I treat people. Two patients with the same label — the same kind of pain, the same anxiety, the same difficult diagnosis — rarely experience it the same way, and rarely need the same care. Anxiety has its own shape in each person who carries it. No two cancer journeys feel alike.

So my work begins with understanding how your condition actually shows up in you: your history, your patterns, what you have already tried, and the specific way your body is holding what it is holding. From there, I build care that fits the person in front of me — not a protocol applied to a chart.

My practice is grounded in classical Chinese medicine and informed by a modern understanding of the nervous system. I use acupuncture as a primary tool, along with classical herbal medicine and dry needling where they fit, to help the body move out of long-held stress patterns and toward a more regulated, adaptable state. Healing is rarely linear. It is a gradual restoration of balance — and my role is to be a steady, skilled partner through that process.

Dr. Sophia Scheffel in the hills near Walnut Creek, with Mount Diablo behind

Education

Doctoral-level training in acupuncture & Chinese medicine.

Doctorate in Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine (DACM)

American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine

M.S., Traditional Chinese Medicine

American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Bachelor of Arts

University of California, Berkeley

Ordained Daoist Priest

Quanzhen Longmen lineage, through Parting Clouds

Advanced Clinical Training

Ongoing study with senior teachers.

My training reflects continued specialization in classical Chinese medicine, integrative mental health, orthopedic acupuncture, and herbal medicine — through ongoing mentorship and study with some of the field's most respected teachers:

Orthopedic Acupuncture & Dry Needling — training with Anthony von der Muhll
Chinese Medicine Psychiatry & Shen-Hammer Pulse Diagnosis — mentorship with Brandt Stickley
Classical Herbal Medicine — studies with Heiner Fruehauf and Jeffrey Yuen
Five Element Constitutional Acupuncture — training with Lonny Jarrett
Psychedelic Research & Therapy Training — California Institute of Integral Studies

Outside the Clinic

The practices that keep me grounded.

Much of my own time goes to the things that support presence and balance — time in nature, especially backpacking and being in the mountains, which is an essential part of how I reset. I read, I meditate, and I continue my study of this medicine, which I see as a lifelong practice rather than something that ends with a degree. My two dogs are a steady part of my daily rhythm.

None of this is separate from my clinical work. It is where my understanding of regulation, stress, and healing actually comes from — and it is part of why this medicine remains, for me, a calling rather than a job.

Dr. Sophia Scheffel, DACM, L.Ac.

Individualized medicine — because the same condition lives differently in each person.

Doctoral-level training in acupuncture & Chinese medicine.

Ongoing study with senior teachers.

The practices that keep me grounded.

Begin with a conversation.