Our team
CHINESE LINEAGE ACUPUNCTURE | CO-FOUNDER
Qilian Shang
Qilian Shang is a classical Chinese acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner whose work is rooted in traditional lineage training, years of clinical experience, and a deep respect for the body's innate capacity to heal.
Her journey into Chinese medicine began through direct apprenticeship under her Sifu in China. Traditionally, she was accepted as an indoor disciple and taught through close personal transmission: teacher to student, family to family. Her Sifu often said she was like a "blank sheet of paper" - pure-hearted, sincere, and willing to learn. What he chose to pass on was not only acupuncture technique, but a way of seeing people, understanding illness, and practising medicine with compassion, humility, and care.
The style of acupuncture she learned differs from much of modern acupuncture. It relies on careful observation, precise diagnosis, and refined needle technique. Treatments often use points far from the area of pain, chosen according to the body's underlying patterns rather than symptoms alone. Every detail matters: the free-handed needling, the angle of insertion, the depth, the quality of stimulation, and knowing when the body has received exactly what it needs.
Alongside her lineage training, Qilian completed a four-year diploma at Shenzhou University in Amsterdam, where classical Chinese medicine was studied alongside Western anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Over the past decade, she has treated thousands of patients from many different backgrounds, working in China, India, Thailand, Myanmar, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. Her patients have included yogis, refugees, office workers, mothers, retirees, people recovering from stroke, and those living with chronic pain, fatigue, digestive disorders, sleep difficulties, and complex long-term conditions.
Beyond her formal medical training, Qilian has spent many years immersed in meditation and contemplative practice. She has also studied energetic healing in Thailand and holds a Reiki qualification. While these influences remain quietly in the background, they shape the way she holds the room.
At Metta Medicine, much of her work focuses on pain conditions, including neck, shoulder, back, hip, knee, and nerve pain, as well as post-injury recovery and scar tissue patterns. She also has a special interest in women's health, supporting fertility, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, menstrual health, and hormonal balance. In addition, she works with sleep disorders, neurological conditions, emotional exhaustion, digestive complaints, and constitutional imbalances that require patient, long-term care.
Patients often describe her treatments as both powerful and gentle. She combines traditional skill with careful listening, taking the time to understand each person as an individual rather than a diagnosis. Her work is precise without being mechanical, strong without being forceful, and grounded in the belief that healing happens best when people feel genuinely seen, heard, and cared for.
SHIATSU | CHINESE HERBAL MEDICINE | CO-FOUNDER
Alexander Ahamer
Alexander is a Shiatsu and Chinese Herbal Medicine practitioner. His work brings together structural precision, meridian-based bodywork, Chinese medicine diagnosis, and energetic perception into one complete hands-on therapeutic system.
Alex reads the body as structure, nervous system, energy system, and lived history. In treatment, he works with the spine, pelvis, joints, fascia, muscles, meridians, organ patterns, and the deeper emotional or subconscious tensions that often sit underneath chronic symptoms. His sessions are precise, responsive treatments shaped by what the body is actually presenting.
His method draws from several traditions. Japanese Shiatsu provides the meridian structure and whole-body diagnostic frame. Traditional Thai bodywork brings depth, rhythm, stretching, and precise pressure. Chinese medicine gives the understanding of Qi, Blood, organs, deficiency, stagnation, heat, cold, and constitutional imbalance. Structural manual therapy brings attention to alignment, mobility, and the mechanics of the spine, hips, shoulders, and pelvis. Energetic healing allows him to work with the emotional and subtle dimensions of the body when they are part of the pattern.
Alex began in patient care at eighteen as a paramedic with the Austrian Red Cross. He later worked for years as a Shiatsu therapist and energetic healer in psychiatric, orthopaedic, and neurological rehabilitation hospitals in Austria. This gave his work a strong clinical foundation in post-surgical recovery, chronic pain, neurological rehabilitation, depression, anxiety, trauma-related tension, and the long process of helping a body regain function.
His formative training took place across Europe and Asia. He studied traditional Thai bodywork in Chiang Mai with Dot Po, Ajahn Sinchai, and Ajahn Pichet; completed a four-year Shiatsu training in Austria; trained in Reiki with Venerable Namgyel in Bodh Gaya; studied spiritual healing with Inge Maria Moser in Austria; practiced and treated in monastery clinics in Myanmar; trained in Taiwanese manual adjustment with Ajahn Thanom in Thailand; and studied Chinese medicine clinically in China under Dr. Zhang. He continues advanced Chinese medicine and herbal medicine training with Dr. Florian Ploberger.
At Metta Medicine, Alex works especially with chronic pain affecting the back, neck, shoulders, hips, pelvis, and joints, as well as postural imbalance, nervous-system dysregulation, stress-related tension, and recovery from injury. He also supports a wide range of internal patterns through Chinese medicine and integrative bodywork, including fatigue, digestive disorders, sleep disturbances, hormonal and reproductive health concerns, emotional imbalance, and chronic symptoms linked to deeper energetic or constitutional disharmony.
Alex’s strength is direct perception. He reads what is happening in the body, identifies the central pattern, and works from there. The aim is not temporary relaxation, but a real shift in how the body holds, moves, regulates, and reconnects.
Born through shared service A practice that began in service, before it became a clinic.
Qilian and Alexander first worked side by side while volunteering at a monastery in Myanmar, treating refugees and patients recovering from stroke. The connection began in real service, before it became a relationship, and before it became a clinic.
Join the practicEAn open door for aligned practitioners
Metta Medicine is a growing clinic. We're particularly looking for practitioners whose values align with our way of working, skilled in their craft, with service rooted in metta.
Nutritionists
Somatic Psychotherapists
Movement (Physio-) Therapists
If that's you, or you bring another skill that fits the clinic, write to us with a short introduction: your training, and what you'd bring.