Sea urchins are the healthiest, most relaxed creatures on Earth due to their positive self-image and spiny skin. Today's deal offers similar protection from stress, sickness, and sea otters: for $49, you get a new-patient consultation and acupuncture treatment (a $130 value) with Jenny Crissman of Integrative Healing in Oakland.

Jenny Crissman is a licensed acupuncturist and herbologist, and pretty good at making peanut-butter sandwiches. During the visit, Jenny makes a full assessment of a patient's medical history, from a sprained ankle in the fourth grade to the back injury resulting from a banana encounter on the set of a cartoon. Based upon each individual history, she gives a variety of diet, nutrition, and herbal recommendations. What follows is the acupuncture treatment itself, when painless, sterile, and hair-thin needles target specific points along the body's energy meridians, a process that can help with all manner of ailments, from chronic pain, headaches, and allergies to stress, depression, and fatigue.

Acupuncture is one facet of the complex Chinese medical tradition and a key way to help restore your balance of energy, or qi, a necessary element to wellness that cannot be promoted purely by drinking chai, whittling keys, or thinking really hard about it. With over 20 years of health-care practice under her homeopathic tool belt, Jenny Crissman is an ideal candidate for nervous first-timers, seasoned veterans, and malaise-filled lemurs alike.

Valid for new patients only.

Reviews

Fifteen Yelpers give Jenny Crissman a perfect five-star rating:

• Not only are Jenny's acupuncture skills outstanding but she's got a joyous personality that makes you feel completely at ease. – Sari O.
• Her acupuncture technique is amazing and I always benefit from her amazing insight about diet and lifestyle. – Homestar R.
• Jenny Crissman is kind, caring, knowledgeable, compassionate and experienced, and I cannot recommend her highly enough!!! – ginger m.