Yasmin Spencer LAc, DAOM Dipl OM

I have been seeing Yasmin for acupuncture for awhile now. I’ve had a lot of acupuncture over the years from a variety of people and have found her work to be the most effective for me thus far. Of course acupuncture can often take several appointments to get long term results depending on the ailment, but after each session, I am always amazed just how much better I feel… also how acupuncture can address just about anything! I’ve had great relief from concussions, whiplash, digestion issues, physical pain, and even my mood. She’s also really great about suggesting other things to do and remedies to pick up to try for home care. She’s helped me so much, and I can’t recommend her enough!

I have really enjoyed working with Yasmin over the past couple years. Her gentle style and deep understanding of the body and it’s complex relationship with emotion, has been very helpful. Five Element acupuncture in particular is very healing for me, and Yasmin has an amazing grasp on this system. She also uses body work at the end of the treatment that really helps me feel renewed and able to integrate the acupuncture.

Yasmin is an extraordinary acupuncturist. She is knowledgeable about body systems, herbs, and asks great questions to help assess what’s going on with my body. Her custom herbal formulas have helped me with a variety of health issues (allergy, muscular and female stuff). I feel more balanced and have more energy when taking the formulas and after treatment. I highly recommend Yasmin to anyone seeking acupuncture.

I am very familiar with acupuncture and Chinese medicine and when she first opened her practice, I went to Yasmin. I found her very attentive, seemingly very caring, and her acupuncture treatments and the herbs she recommended were very helpful in clearing up a sinus infection I’d had off and on for 3+ years. HOWEVER… her billing practices were suspect. When I first went in, I told her my insurance didn’t cover acupuncture she told me not to worry, that she had a special program for patients like me. She explained that she had established this low cost program so that more people could receive the benefits of her treatments. I thought it was great and I agreed to pay her $ 75/​visit. According to her, that was the total fee, $ 75 cash per visit, plus the cost for any herbs. I thought it was wonderful that she had a program to take care of people who didn’t have good insurance or any insurance at all. I wasn’t concerned when she also took a copy of my insurance card «just in case.» Her back office then proceeded to charge my insurance company over a thousand dollars for the services that I had already paid for. As it turned out, my insurance company actually DID cover her services for the specific condition I had and so she was paid in full by my insurance company but she continued to collect fees from me as well. When I read the Explanation of Benefits (EOB) I was livid to learn that she had billed my insurance the maximum amount allowed – and charged ME as well!!! This had gone on for many weeks before I got the EOB from the insurance company and saw that she was «double dipping.» In all that time she had never brought it up, even though I was seeing her every week and paying her in cash every week. Worse, when I brought her to her attention, she had all kinds of excuses about why it was perfectly ok to do what she had done and how she was justified in keeping both payments! I insisted she refund the $ 75/​visit I had paid which after some delay she finally did. I’ve never been back to her. Bottom line is, she seems to be a good acupuncturist, but when it came to the business end of the deal, she behaved in what I felt was a very unethical way. Was it legal? Maybe. Was it right? Hell no!

I had been putting off going to acupuncture in the Bay Area for a long time — there are so many options! In the end, it was an online deal that got me to see Yasmin. I’m happy I did though, because her treatments have really helped reduce my migraines, headaches, and occasional body misalignment issues. I have gone from almost daily headaches/​migraines to sometimes only 1 every other week. AMAZING.
The office and rooms are really nice and relaxing. Just remember to give yourself some extra time to park. :)

Yasmin is super professional, patient, caring & amazing at Acupuncture. I’ve been suffering from Panic Disorder for years & just tried acupuncture as a new treatment — and I am happy to report that it has worked! I’ve felt a huge downshift in my anxiety level — and haven’t had an attack in months. Yasmin will listen to how I’ve felt for the week and create her special acupuncture receipe to fix me right up. This is the real deal. You will be possitively impacted by her services.

This was my first experience with accupuncture, and I was blessed to have a specialist like Yasmin. She acknowledged and addressed my needs with understanding, compassion and professionalism. I found her to be very knowledgeable and interested in helping me as a person. I have suffered from anxiety for years, and addictive behaviors assocaited with this anxiety. After one session with Yasmin, my anxiety decreased and my craving for unhealthy substances decreased with them. I am fully confident that she could effectively help me manage my anxiety and associated behaviors.

I was referred to Yasmin by a friend last year, when I was suffering from a back injury and just general physical stress and exhaustion that likely cause the back injury in the first place. I’m personally skeptical of much herbal or «alternative» medicine but was happy to discover that Yasmin’s approach was refreshingly practical and professional. She treated my injury and my body as a whole and her body work and massage are amazing! She focused on helping me recover completely and trying to improve my health overall.
I’ve since come to her to treat a little case of «travelers gut» that I picked up on vacation, which she treated with affordable herbs and practical biology. Yasmin offers good overall health and wellness services and has flexible hours :) I’d visit her more if she had an office in san francisco but she’s still often worth the trip to Oakland.

If I could give this place ZERO stars, I would! Yasmin Spencer is completely UNPROFESSIONAL AND INAPPROPRIATE in running her business! I will never go back to her because she shared personal information of mine with another client. When you go to a professional, you expect a level of professionalism and trust! As with any work by a health professional, there should be a level of confidentiality. She broke it! DO NOT GO TO YASMIN SPENCER! There are many other acupuncture/​massage specialists who are far more professional and respectful.

My session with Yasmine was wonderful and profound. I feel she’s a truly gifted healer, a calm and wise presence, very sensitive, intuitive and gentle .The space is great, peaceful and totally comfortable .I experienced a beautiful movement of energy within the session and the sense of opening and healing continued for the next few days. I highly recommend her !

I am so grateful to Yasmin Spencer at East Bay Five Elements! For her gentle touch, for her quiet and calm, for her attentive practice and for her patience. I went to her with a hip pain that had me antsy and filled with anxiety about the pain interfering with my first marathon. It took some time, some ‘strong’ needles and some coaching from Yasmin to get me healed, but here, six weeks later, I am pain-​free and in great shape and spirits.
Yasmin’s office is well-​situated off Grand Avenue, and the atmosphere is soothing for an acupuncture newbie. Her touch with the needles is light and confident, and spot on. I never once experienced any pain, and at all times felt heard. She gave me excellent herbs that helped with an unrelated problem, and she paid attention to my progress, adjusting treatment as we moved forward.
She also seemed unfazed by the insurance claims maze. That helps a great deal.
In all, it has been a positive and productive experience, beneficial to my particular problem and to my overall well-​being. I will happily go back, and will gladly recommend Yasmin to others seeking acupuncture and herbal remedies. I found Yasmin’s practice to be a terrific addition to my care.

With all the up and down trail walking I have been doing since I moved to the East Bay, it was bound to happen: I pulled something in my hip/​groin area. As a result I was limping around for days.
I went to see Yasmin for the first time. She gave me a Five Element treatment, plus did some very good Tuina bodywork on me. When I got up from the table, the pain in my hip joint was gone. I was ecstatic! But it started to come back 4 days later. Not very surprising so I didn’t wait for it to get worse, I went to see her again right away. Normally in Asia, people come for acupuncture treatment at least twice a week when they have a pressing issue. Yasmin gave me another treatment, and this time when I got up from the table, the pain was still there but the intensity level was lower. As the days went on, the pain level kept getting lower and lower until it disappeared completely. I have been painfree ever since. Yeahhh for Yasmin!

I heard about Yasmin through a friend a few months ago. I went in to see Yasmin for anxiety and digestion issues. I haven’t done much acupuncture due to my anxiety about needles, but I was so glad that I finally did. I was amazed to see such a huge difference after our session. It was really incredible actually. My anxiety has lessened tremendously, and my digestion has returned to normal. I was blown away. Yasmin really took the time to get to know what I was struggling with, and provided a really warm and healing energy while she worked on me. I am now seeing Yasmin weekly for acupuncture, and would recommend her in a heartbeat. Blessings and good health!

I had my first acupuncture session with Yasmin last week, and it was great! She is very easy to talk to, and had a lot of helpful suggestions for me about nutrition, herbs, etc. I left feeling relaxed and balanced. Looking forward to going back next week.