Who We Are
“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
-Sir William Osler
Meet Terrence
Terrence benefits from an unusually diverse breadth of education: a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lafayette College, a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Iowa, and a Masters in Science and Traditional Oriental Medicine from the Pacific College of Medicine. This diverse training and life-long passion for learning affords Terrence a uniquely flexible approach to healthcare: one custom made to your particular desires and experiences.
Terrence has been teaching yoga and meditation for decades all over the world. These two ancient tools of physical and mental health have been profound gifts for him personally and professionally, and remain daily practices. He has managed three yoga studios in his native New York City, completed thousands of hours of teacher trainings, and led several international retreats. Terrence hopes to continue teaching these precious gifts until the day he dies (hopefully many decades from now!). And so, Terrence created Blue Orchid Wellness as a natural evolution from his diverse training and practical experience to impact health care on a profound level.
Blue Orchid Wellness takes a 360 degree approach to your health. We believe it’s not enough to treat symptoms and alleviate pain; instead, we seek to find the causes of dis-ease and cut it out at the roots. Using the powerful tools of acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine to initiate a change, we then incorporate custom made diet and exercise programs to achieve long lasting results. We are committed to educating our patients to use these tools themselves, and explain what may be foreign concepts in a language you can understand. Ultimately, it is our goal to serve you in becoming fluent in the language of your body and realize your most vital self.
About Blue Orchid Wellness
In many ways, it would have been easier to call it Terrence Monte Acupuncture; it’s simple, direct, and functional. However, it also puts the emphasis on the practitioner and not on the patient. For too long in our history medical practice has been focused on the doctor, or the hospital, and not on the patient. Terrence wanted to work for something that always makes the patient’s preferences the most important driver in making medical decisions. That idea is the very heart of Chinese Medicine, and Blue Orchid taps into this principle.
The color Blue was chosen based on a fundamental principle in medicine called the 5 Phases. It’s an all encompassing philosophy; a Chinese Medical “Theory of Everything.” Essentially, blue is the color for the Kidneys, for Wisdom, for Family, for Contemplation. These are the things we need to be fully present, happy, productive in this life. (Family is both blood and chosen family- you can’t go through this life alone).
Orchids were chosen because, while there are thousands of different species, they grow all over the world. They are the oldest family of flowering plants, and like humans can live up to 100 years old. But most importantly, an orchid’s bloom is directly effected by the care it’s given. If an orchid has the right amount of sunlight, and nutrition, and access to resources, it will bloom more beautifully and brightly. This is distinctly different than say, a dandelion.
So Blue Orchid is the idea of caring for you as a WHOLE person, a person that is connected to family and nature, a person that has unique wisdom and experience, and a person that can realize a magnificent bloom when given the right care. It is our not so secret hope that our philosophy will spread (like pollen) and change the very essence of healthcare here in America.