About Eric

I’m Eric Grey, an acupuncturist, classical Chinese herbalist, aspiring scholar, business owner and longtime student of Zen based in Astoria, Oregon—where the Youngs & Columbia Rivers come together with the mighty Pacific Ocean.

For the last 15 years, I’ve worked at the crossroads of ancient medicine, real-world practice, and the quiet (but relentless) question of how to live well. I co-founded Watershed Wellness with my partner Amanda Barp in 2009. What started as a small practice in Portland has since become a thriving integrative clinic on Oregon’s North Coast, where we serve many hundreds of people each month in a building on a Pier surrounded by the Columbia River.

I studied Classical Chinese Medicine at National University of Natural Medicine, where I later joined the faculty to teach herbalism, medical philosophy, and clinical reasoning. Over the years, I’ve also taught workshops, created online courses, and mentored students and practitioners looking to ground their work in something deeper than marketing tips and hustle culture.

I’m driven by a lifelong curiosity about systems—biological, philosophical, social—and by a desire to understand how we can live and work with integrity inside them. That inquiry has led me through many disciplines: from Zen to business planning, from classical texts to software like The Brain, from deep ecology to the practical realities of running a clinic in a country that often seems hostile to deep flourishing.

This inquiry has seen me pursue degrees in Biology and Philosophy, study Classical Chinese medicine, learn to translate Classical Chinese medical texts, and spend time as a park ranger in the forests of Oregon. Most recently, I've begun to seek out PhD programs that might help me investigate some of these lines of curiosity with depth.

Since the early days of online publishing, I've participated in writing online. For years, I had a thriving blog about East Asian Medicine that allowed me to meet people all over the world. Busy practice life has recently kept me away from the keyboard, but I’ve returned to public writing because the questions feel increasingly urgent. And time waits for noone.

I write for:

• students & practitioners that want more than protocols and exam study tips
• EAM teachers, administrators and scholars
• Zen practitioners exploring what embodied practice can look like
• People building meaningful businesses in a chaotic world
• Classical Chinese language learners and those that love to get nerdy with ancient Chinese and Japanese philosophy
• Anyone who suspects that care, clarity, and context still matter
• Nerds of all shapes and stripes

I live with my wife Amanda and our three cats (Nimbus, Dudley, and Spruce) in home surrounded by a burgeoning rhododendron forest. I drink a lot of tea, tend herbs in the backyard, and try to remember that this life—this one right here—is enlightenment.