Daoist Alchemy · A Landmark Treatment
An ancient, all-day alchemical treatment for the patterns that have kept you from your own life. Rare, and particularly dear to my heart.
Some people arrive carrying something they cannot quite name. The light in their eyes is not all the way present. They feel blunted, held back from the person they know themselves to be. You may recognize some of this:
You may have already tried a great deal: talk therapy, medication, other forms of healing, and still feel fundamentally stuck. If you recognize yourself here, and something in you is ready to move, this is the work I do.
The Thirteen Ghost Points are among the oldest treatments in Chinese medicine, formalized by Sun Si Miao, the physician later honored as the King of Medicine. In classical thought, a ghost is anything that hooks into us and pulls us off our own path: a trauma, a relationship, a fear that took up residence and started making decisions on our behalf.
Most healing asks you to pull on one thread at a time. The Thirteen Ghost Points work to release the whole knotted pattern at once, so you can come back to yourself. I hold this as deep alchemical work, and I treat it with that much care. My job is to hold a safe, unhurried, judgment-free space and to walk beside you while you do the real work of reclaiming your life. You are the one doing the freeing. I am here to hold the door.
In this lineage, health begins with yang fully present in the body. When it is, there is brightness: joy, enthusiasm, a certain levity, a sparkle in the eye. Most children live this way, fully at home in themselves.
Over a life, trauma, pain, loss, and substances can cause the body to partition. The spirit sits slightly outside itself, yang dims, and parts of you go quiet. You are still here, though not all the way home. This is what most people feel when they come to me for this work: stuck, blunted, inaccessible to themselves, as though the spark has been turned low.
The classical teaching holds that these openings can let in what the tradition calls gui: yin energies that never resolved their own path and look to live through someone who is not fully embodied. There is a whole spectrum here. At the lighter end are simple, almost elemental forms that mostly crowd out free yang, and they tend to clear readily. At the far and much rarer end, the tradition describes heavier presences, and it does not flinch from naming them. Most of what I meet is the gentler end: good people who are not fully in their own bodies and are ready to come home.
What the day does is clear away what does not belong and call your own yang and shen back into every part of you. For some that is an exorcism of sorts. For most it is a homecoming: the spark relit, the spirit welcomed back into the whole of the body.
This is a whole day together, an immersive ritual that takes the time it needs. We begin around ten in the morning and work into the late afternoon, without watching the clock, so the healing can unfold on its own schedule.
There is no needling in this work. I treat through energetic acupressure, where the finger becomes the needle, sharpened by intention. Alongside it I draw on the tools this lineage gave me: the I Ching for divination, shamanic mask work, and what I have come to call the Divine DJ, a practice of audiomancy. I keep a playlist of some ten thousand songs spanning every genre, era, and corner of the world, far beyond what you or I would reach for on our own. Again and again the right song arrives at the right moment. Sometimes it is a lyric that names exactly what you are feeling; sometimes it carries a piece of information you did not know you needed, or opens a conversation that had been waiting to happen. The music becomes a bridge between the subconscious and the unconscious.
The day is interactive. We stay in conversation throughout, inviting the heart to speak through what the points and the music are stirring. People often tell me it feels like years of therapy compressed into a few hours, and many leave a little dazed, in the best way.
Afterward we meet twice more: once within the week, to help you reintegrate gently, and again about three months out, when the changes have begun to show. The shift these points set in motion keeps unfolding over the following six to nine months. It is profound, and at times it will ask something of you.
"I sought the ghost point experience out of curiosity. I found it therapeutic, and it brought much peace and calmness overall. A unique treatment, and a rare opportunity for self-reflection."
Caroline S."Diego's expertise applying the ghost points treatment was truly remarkable. I experienced a sense of mental clarity and calmness I hadn't felt in a long time. His holistic approach truly resonated with me."
Brett H."I started seeing Diego for alchemy, individual sessions designed to unblock very deep-seated emotional habits. I noticed such a difference in my mindset that I asked him for a full-day Ghost Therapy."
Kristina W.One day, mid-treatment, the Nutcracker Suite came up on the playlist. I had never heard it in a session before, and for a moment I felt lost, the way these days can keep you on your toes. The patient had gone quiet. I felt almost apologetic, unsure, and I finally said out loud that it seemed like a strange song to surface.
After a long pause, he told me it was the song that had been playing in the car the Christmas his family was in a major accident, one that changed them for good. The hair stood up on my arms. The music had reached for a memory neither of us knew was waiting to be found, and the real work of the day began there.
The Treatment That Changed Everything
About five years after graduating and getting licensed, I was practicing TCM and gradually burning out. The medicine I learned had been reduced to a cookbook approach, and I was following the recipes with very disappointing results. "Poke-and-pray acupuncture" is what I called it at the time. I was treating maybe two patients a month, doing primarily fitness coaching work, and avoiding stepping into my path as a healer because I was not feeling authentically aligned with the healing itself. The magic I had felt as an early student, the reason I got into acupuncture, felt like it had boiled away.
By luck or serendipity, I found Leta Herman's class on the 13 Ghost Points, and my ears perked up immediately. This was the material I'd been curious about in school. The theory we'd barely glossed over with a warning that set of points were "reserved only for serious mental derangement" before moving on. The class blew me away. Leta shared that she had been using the points to help people root themselves in authenticity as well as to deal with the more serious mental health conditions discussed in school. I reached out to Leta right after, initially not to study under her, but because I felt stuck, entrenched in inauthenticity. She presented the treatment as a way of releasing cellular patterns of doubt, self-sabotage, and a means to clear the slate so the body can return to its naturally vital state.
I requested the treatment because I knew my calling but couldn't move forward. I knew my gifts but was terrified to share them. I doubted my capacity, my worthiness to step into the world as a healer.
Leta agreed to perform the 13 Ghost Points treatment a few months later, and from that point on, nothing was the same. I felt like myself again. For the first time in years, I felt inspired by the possibilities ahead of me. I felt an eagerness, almost a compulsion, to share what I had to offer with the world.
The magic I'd carried so strongly as a child had rekindled. I wasn't just unblocked. I was alive. I am a recreational saber fencer and that weekend I proceeded to compete and win a medal in a local tournament. I was moving and seeing the world in a different way. It felt like I was no longer getting in my own way.
I decided I needed to understand what took place and that I wanted to help Leta bring this into the world as well. I enrolled in Leta's three-year Master of Alchemy Apprenticeship Program the Fall after my treatment. What followed felt like lifetimes of spiritual growth and learning compressed into three years of intensive study, clinical practicum, personal experience, and transformation. After my Ghost Points, that belief in myself was so strong that I found a space and signed a lease, set up an office, and began offering acupuncture and alchemy in earnest. I'm proud to bring these rare offerings to San Diego, a truly magical and beautiful community in its own right.
Diego Garcia, L.Ac., in his own words
This work is rare. It is not offered anywhere else in San Diego, and only a small handful of practitioners in California are trained to give it.
The Thirteen Ghost Points includes the full day of treatment and both follow-up sessions. Because of the depth, and the day it asks of both of us, it always begins with a conversation.
The full day · both follow-ups
A note on readiness: this work is for people who are steady enough to move through what surfaces. If you are in acute crisis, or struggling with thoughts of harming yourself or others, the right first step is immediate mental health or emergency support. This work can come later, once you are on firmer ground. If you are unsure, a consultation is the place to talk it through.