At the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine is where Chelsea Sposit finds herself today—but it’s been a long, difficult road getting there. Last October, Sposit suffered an injury to her right eye that impacted her vision and forced the closing of Lotus Layer Medical Spa, the successful Beachwood-based business she had owned since 2014.

With support from her family, close friends, and a holistic acupressure approach known as Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Sposit picked herself up with a new business plan and applied to the inaugural Healthcare Innovation Bootcamp (held jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School). Sposit is one of just 70 people selected from thousands of applicants worldwide and will travel to Cambridge, MA, in mid-August to study in a program that is the first of its kind.

Her goal? “To help teach people suffering from chronic illness how to heal themselves by releasing trapped emotions in their bodies that can be causing physical symptoms, and in turn, keeping them sick or even making their symptoms worse,” explains Sposit.

Sposit plans to reach that goal by developing a protocol based around EFT, alongside “forgiveness work.” Also known as “tapping,” EFT focuses on pressure points correlated with certain emotions, which Sposit says can provide a means of “reverse engineering the diagnosis process and emotions that go along with it."

According to Sposit, patients can alleviate symptoms by tapping and naming the emotion, after which the practitioner guides them through the four steps designed to restructure the way they think: Resistance, Physical, Emotional, and Forgiveness. Sposit has been a believer in EFT since 2012, when she connected with a Dayton-based Ukranian energy healer who introduced her to the technique.

At the 10-day MIT/Harvard bootcamp, Sposit will work on further developing her approach and fast-tracking her business plan—following a rigorous 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. schedule daily.  To help offset the $8,500 tuition, Sposit is currently running a crowdfunding campaign cheekily titled #ChelseaGoestoCambridge.

Upon return to Cleveland, Sposit plans to undertake targeted research in finalizing her protocol, as well as continue to spread awareness of EFT in the Cleveland medical community and beyond. “Cleveland is a leader in traditional Western medicine, but not in holistic or integrative medicine,” she says. “I think if [Cleveland] really wants to become an innovator in medicine, we have to encompass the mind and body.”