About

I am a specialist in Korean medicine neuropsychiatry whose clinical work at the National Medical Center has brought together the care of body and mind. I meet people living with trauma, anxiety, insomnia, bodily distress, and difficulties with emotions and relationships.

Over time, caring for someone reveals a life that no diagnosis can fully describe. The stories of women who discover their ADHD in adulthood have left me with particular questions. How do years of misunderstood difficulty shape a person’s understanding of herself? What does care after diagnosis need to address alongside symptom management?

These questions have led me into research, translation, and clinician education. I explore what Korean medicine and psychotherapy, contemplative traditions and contemporary research can ask of one another, looking for language that is meaningful in clinical practice.

My work begins with a belief in people’s capacity for awareness, connection, and learning new ways to respond. This does not mean that everyone changes in the same way, or that suffering can be overcome through sufficient effort. I want to explore that capacity with respect for each person’s circumstances and pace.

For me, contemplative practice is more than training attention or calming the mind. It also means examining what I hold on to, cultivating compassion for myself and others, and bringing that understanding into action. The Buddhist idea of bodhicitta is an important source of reflection for me. I understand it through compassion, wisdom, and the wish to respond to the suffering of others.

I do not want to blame the ways people have protected themselves in order to survive. When a once-helpful response begins to narrow someone’s life, I want first to understand what it protected, and then to explore what other responses might now be possible. Thinking about protection and clinging is part of my philosophical inquiry; it is not an explanation for every symptom or trauma response.

The freedom I hope for is less a life without difficulty than a life with more room to choose how we meet ourselves and others within it. Self-compassion can be a beginning. I am also interested in how compassion extends into relationships, care, and responsibility to others.

My own practice and learning continue. I try to distinguish convictions shaped by clinical experience from findings established through research, and to notice when a familiar explanation obscures a person’s experience. Learning means not only acquiring more approaches, but also recognizing what I do not yet know.