Ra'ufa C. Clark, L.Ac., Dipl. OM.

Licensed Acupuncturist
National Board Certified (Diplomate) in Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM)

Willing to travel a unique course through life and medicine, Ra'ufa Clark has dedicated herself to serving others, and dared to leap across cultural, linguistic and medical paradigms along the way.  Past-President of the Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine Society of Massachusetts (AOMSM) from 2003-06, and a pioneer in the field of Integrative Medicine, she has recently served as an Advisor to Acupuncturists Without Borders, a trauma relief organization operating in the US.  She and husband Bryn Clark, L.Ac., co-own and serve as principal Clinicians at New Harmony Center for Health & Wellness, at 7 Thorndike Street in Beverly, MA.  Ra'ufa is respected for her outstanding healing abilities and inner wisdom.

Clark, the former Christy Allen, pursued undergraduate pre-medical studies at Tulane University and earned her B.A. in English cum laude from Washington & Jefferson College (PA) in 1974.  She spent the next 15 years providing grass-roots development assistance around the world—first, as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in the African Kingdom of Swaziland, then as a teacher at the Navajo Nation’s landmark Rough Rock Demonstration School, from 1977-79.  This was followed by graduate study on a FLAS/NDFL Fellowship in African Studies & Languages at Michigan State University, where she received a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Economics in 1982.  From 1982-86 she lived and worked as a development economist in the jungles of central and west Sumatra, Indonesia, leading a micro-enterprise project on honey hunting and beekeeping, then returning to West Java in 1989 as a Consultant to the Asian Development Bank.  By 1990 she had assimilated a working knowledge of French, siSwati/Zulu, Navajo, Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia, “and a couple of Sumatran dialects,” she says smiling.

A stress-induced illness, after leaving Sumatra for the urban jungle of Washington, DC, led her to seek help from Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine.  “It healed me and gave meaning to the experience of my illness,” she says.  “Over time, I saw that the medical career I had once envisioned was indeed beckoning—but now, through the doorway of East Asian medicine.  It all came together—my experience with indigenous systems of healing, languages, and Asian botany wove a perfect platform for what I do now,” she says.  "The rest, I learned from motherhood."  (She has a son, already globe-trotting, who is 18.)

She earned a Clinical Master's degree in Acupuncture (M.Ac.) in 1995 from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute (now Tai Sophia) in Columbia, MD, and completed a post-graduate program there (’94-’96) in Chinese Herbology with the brilliant Ted Kaptchuk, OMD.  In 1996, she moved to Tucson, AZ and soon launched the very successful Red Lotus Center for Energy Medicine with colleague Wren Breedlove, P.T.   In 1997, visionary physician Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D. hired her as an Acupuncturist for the Clinical Faculty of his much-heralded Program in Integrative Medicine (PIM) at the University of AZ School of Medicine, in Tucson.  In that role, she served as both clinical colleague and mentor to 12 post-residency physicians selected for 2-year Integrative Medicine fellowships, demonstrating the effectiveness of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine in a special Integrative Medicine clinic developed by Dr. Weil.  As one of the first Licensed Acupuncturists in the U.S. to be hospital-credentialed and accorded peer status with physicians at a major medical center, she describes the Integrative Medicine experience as “one of the most creative efforts to date, to shift physicians’ conditioned mindsets, and to experiment with collaboration of both ancient and modern medical arts.  Almost a miracle!”

Expert at bridging Eastern and Western thought, and a compelling speaker, she has lectured at meetings of the American Society of Health Systems Pharmacists, the American Holistic Medical Association, and Canyon Ranch’s Integrative Medicine programs (for US physicians) in Tucson.  Periodicals such as Science News and the Tucson Daily Star have featured her work.  While serving as Board Secretary for the Acupuncture Society of AZ (’97-’98), she collaborated with colleagues to write and pass the first Acupuncture laws to legalize practice there and to establish the AZ Acupuncture Board of Examiners.  She also held the post of Lecturer (’98-’99) at the Arizona School of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, in Tucson, where she taught advanced clinical theory & techniques.

Her life was forever changed when, in 2000, she met the respected Sufi sheikh and spiritual Guide, Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal ar-Rifa’i ash-Shadhuli, a leading figure at Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock.   “I could not have anticipated hearing God’s call in the form of Islam—but the Sufi path spoke a language my heart already knew,” she says.  After committing to a life of holy service through the Sufi lineage, the Guide gave her the name Ra’ufa, Divine Compassion.  Later that year, marriage to fellow Acupuncturist Bryn Clark resulted in her relocation—first to join her husband’s practice in Philadelphia, and subsequently to the North Shore of Massachusetts, where the couple joined a wide circle of family members.  Upon leaving Arizona, she legally adopted the name Ra’ufa Christy Clark.  These incredible life changes have made her a more conscious healer and teacher, and clients from all spiritual perspectives can find comfort in the universality of her approach.