MaryEllen Velahos is an experienced acupuncturist who has spent years as both patient and practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. She decided to become an acupuncturist after her own successful experience with acupuncture. “Two months of weekly acupuncture treatments turned a chronic problem completely around for me. I was surprised to find that the needles were hardly 'needles' at all and felt nothing like I had expected. I found myself going to each treatment session wondering what would happen next, as my condition made a 100 percent improvement. I also discovered the sessions themselves were very relaxing." 

The Center for Acupuncture and Traditional Medicine is founded on the belief that the body's ability to heal itself can be harnessed and used to achieve health and balance. Conditions such as arthritis and joint pain, uro-genital and digestive disorders, insomnia, and even diseases that cannot be diagnosed by a physician even through extensive testing—have been thought of by many people as just the condition of "getting old", or the wear-and-tear of everyday life. In many cases, acupuncture has proven to be effective in alleviating these disorders, and has allowed people of all ages to resume active lifestyles. 

After her initial experience with acupuncture, Velahos studied the concepts of Chinese medicine first informally and then formally in a graduate program at The Eastern School of Acupuncture and Traditional Medicine in Montclair, NJ. Velahos had previously trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1980s. “Acupuncture seemed to be a continuation of what I had been doing for the past 20 years, only now the canvas was replaced by a human body." She opened the Center for Acupuncture and Traditional Medicine in 2005.