FOUNDER OF BLUE ROOT HEALTH
Meet Dr. Angela Soto, O.MD., L.Ac.
Chinese Medicine. Integrative Care. Nervous-System Healing. A Deeper Way of Seeing the Whole Person.
For more than 17 years, Dr. Angela Soto has worked with people whose health stories do not always fit neatly into one diagnosis, one system, or one treatment.
Her foundation is Chinese Medicine, but her work has continued to evolve through years of advanced study in acupuncture, herbal medicine, integrative and regenerative therapies, functional assessment, nervous-system healing, somatic breathwork, and energy medicine.
What has remained constant is the way she sees the person in front of her:
Symptoms are connected. The body is communicating. And meaningful care begins by understanding the whole story.
Blue Root grew from that philosophy — and from Angela's belief that medicine can be deeply intelligent without ever losing the human being at the center of it.
BEFORE MEDICINE
The path did not begin in a treatment room.
A Calling That Began Long Before Blue Root
Angela was born in Cali, Colombia, and moved to the United States at 17.
Long before medicine became part of her life, she was curious about people — what they carry, what they reveal, and what often exists beneath what can immediately be seen.
But her first professional life took her somewhere entirely different.
For 11 years, Angela worked in the film industry behind the camera, building a successful career during a time when relatively few women held technical positions in production.
Film taught her to pay attention.
To observe closely. To notice subtle changes. To understand that what appears in front of you is only one part of a much larger story.
She had no idea then that those same instincts would eventually become central to the way she practiced medicine.
THE TURNING POINT
Sometimes the life that looks successful is not the life that feels true.
When Her Own Healing Journey Changed Everything
Angela's path into medicine was not a carefully planned career change.
It began with her own need to heal.
Behind a life that looked successful from the outside, she was navigating chronic physical pain, anxiety, emotional trauma, and years of functioning in a body that rarely seemed to fully come out of survival mode.
She began searching for more than symptom relief.
She wanted to understand why the body holds what it holds. Why difficult experiences can continue shaping how we feel long after they have passed. And why someone can appear capable, accomplished, and strong while privately feeling exhausted, disconnected, or unable to truly rest.
That search eventually led her to Chinese Medicine.
For the first time, Angela encountered a medical system that did not automatically separate physical symptoms from emotions, stress, environment, lifestyle, and the person's history.
Everything is connected.
A symptom is rarely just a symptom. The body is always communicating. And healing must reach the person — not only the diagnosis.
Angela eventually made the decision to leave the film industry and begin again.
That decision would ultimately become Blue Root.
A FOUNDATION IN CHINESE MEDICINE
An ancient system. A lifelong study.
Becoming a Doctor of Oriental Medicine
Angela earned her Bachelor's degree in Health Science and Master's degree in Oriental Medicine, completing extensive education in acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, Eastern medical theory, Western biomedical sciences, diagnosis, nutrition, and whole-person care.
Her training continued through a medical internship at Jiangsu Provincial Hospital in Nanjing, China, where she experienced Chinese Medicine within a high-volume hospital environment.
There, acupuncture and herbal medicine were not treated as isolated complementary therapies, but as part of a comprehensive medical system used to assess patterns, treat complex conditions, support recovery, and care for the whole person.
The volume and range of patients she encountered in China deepened her clinical understanding and reinforced something that would remain central throughout her career:
The same symptom does not always have the same cause — and the same diagnosis does not always require the same treatment.
Angela returned to the United States with a foundation that would continue shaping the way she practiced:
Look for the pattern. Understand the person. Treat what the body is actually revealing.
MORE THAN 17 YEARS OF CLINICAL EXPERIENCE
Thousands of patients. No two stories the same.
A Practice Built Through Listening
Angela began practicing in 2009.
Over more than 17 years of clinical practice — including her high-volume hospital experience in China — she has worked with thousands of patients across a wide range of health concerns.
That experience taught her something fundamental:
The same diagnosis does not mean the same person.
Two people can arrive with similar symptoms for entirely different reasons. One body may need strengthening while another needs calming. One may respond immediately while another requires greater stabilization before deeper treatment can begin.
Angela listens not only to what a patient says, but also to what the body reveals — through the pulse, abdomen, channels, areas of tenderness, medical history, laboratory findings, emotional patterns, and the changes that occur during treatment.
She does not approach acupuncture as a predetermined collection of points or care as a predetermined protocol.
What is the body communicating?
What does it need first?
And what is it ready to receive?
That individualized attention remains one of the defining qualities of her work.
A MEDICAL APPROACH THAT CONTINUES TO EVOLVE
One foundation. Many ways of seeing.
Expanding What Is Possible Within Personalized Care
Angela has never believed that learning ends when a degree is completed.
As increasingly complex cases entered her practice, she continued studying — not to collect therapies, but to better understand what different bodies may need.
For nearly a decade, she has pursued advanced study in Japanese acupuncture systems, particularly Kiiko Matsumoto and Nagano-style diagnosis and treatment, deepening the way she evaluates patterns and the body's response in real time.
Her continued study expanded into Classical Chinese Medicine, functional assessment, Acupuncture Injection Therapy, ozone therapy, Prolozone, regenerative approaches, and cosmetic acupuncture.
Each discipline added another way of seeing the person in front of her.
But the purpose has never been to use every therapy available.
It is to understand which form of support is appropriate for the individual — and when.
Today, Chinese Medicine remains the foundation of Angela's work, while these additional disciplines allow care to become more individualized when the person or condition calls for it.
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
When the body has been carrying too much for too long.
Understanding What the Body Continues to Carry
Over years of clinical practice, Angela began seeing the same connection again and again: physical symptoms were often intertwined with prolonged stress, anxiety, grief, trauma, burnout, emotional suppression, and years of living in a state of constant responsibility.
She understood this not only clinically, but personally.
Angela knew what it was like to appear strong and capable while the body remained braced beneath the surface — unable to fully rest, soften, or feel safe enough to let go.
That understanding led her deeper into the nervous system and eventually into somatic breathwork.
Angela completed a yearlong professional certification through Breath Masters, becoming a Certified Somatic Breathwork Facilitator.
Breathwork gave her another way to support what medicine alone cannot always reach — the patterns held within the body, emotions, nervous system, and lived experience.
Today, Angela facilitates individual and group somatic breathwork experiences, including The Reset, creating space for people to move beyond understanding what they carry intellectually and begin experiencing change through the body itself.
Because sometimes healing is not about learning more. It is about giving the body an opportunity to experience something different.
ADVANCED SACRED GEOMETRY TRAINING
Healing also has dimensions we cannot always measure.
Years of Advanced Study Under Oliver Niño
Angela's relationship with energy and the unseen dimensions of healing began long before she entered medicine.
Her search eventually led her to Oliver Niño and the Geo Love Sacred Geometry Energy Healing system, beginning what would become years of progressive study, personal healing, mentorship, and advanced practitioner training.
Angela completed GEO 1, GEO 2, GEO 3, followed by ordination as a Master Healer in Sacred Geometry, and continued her advanced training through GEO X.
This work expanded the way Angela understood healing beyond the physical body — into the emotional, subconscious, energetic, and spiritual dimensions of the human experience.
Rather than replacing her medical foundation, it became another layer of how she understands and supports the whole person.
Today, this training informs Angela's energy-healing work and the experiences she facilitates through Blue Root and The Soul Voyage, including The Energy Experience and The Full Reset.
Medicine taught Angela to listen to the body. Sacred Geometry taught her to listen beyond it.
THE SOUL VOYAGE
Where healing becomes transformation.
A Shared Vision With Her Husband, John
As Angela's work continued to evolve, so did her understanding that not every part of healing belongs inside a treatment room.
Together with her husband, John Bolos, she co-created The Soul Voyage — an extension of their shared belief that meaningful change can involve not only the body, but identity, emotion, energy, embodiment, and the way a person experiences themselves.
Angela brings her background in medicine, nervous-system healing, somatic breathwork, and Sacred Geometry. John brings music, sound, embodiment, and his own experience with personal transformation.
Together, they create immersive experiences designed to help people move beyond simply understanding change and begin experiencing it.
Their work includes The Reset, The Energy Experience, The Full Reset, and their deeper transformational program, The Unbecoming™.
Blue Root supports the healing of the whole person. The Soul Voyage explores what may become possible when that healing reaches even deeper.
HOW ANGELA PRACTICES
Medicine should be intelligent. Care should still feel human.
Every Person Deserves to Be Seen
Angela's work is highly intuitive, but never careless.
It is deeply personal while remaining clinically grounded.
She brings more than 17 years of clinical experience and decades of accumulated study into the treatment room — but she never allows everything she knows to become more important than the person sitting in front of her.
She does not assume that one diagnosis explains the entire person.
She does not believe that two people with the same symptoms necessarily need the same treatment.
And she does not force the body to move faster than it is ready to move.
Instead, Angela listens.
To the story.
To the history.
To the symptoms that may be connected.
To what the body reveals during examination and treatment.
To what has already been tried.
To what may need attention first.
Because the goal is not simply to decide what can be treated.
It is to understand what this particular person needs.
That is where Angela believes meaningful care begins.
A PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM ANGELA
Why I continue to do this work.
Blue Root Began With My Own Yes
I did not create Blue Root because I had always known exactly who I was meant to become.
I created it because there came a moment when I had to say yes to myself.
Yes to leaving a life that no longer felt true.
Yes to beginning again.
Yes to healing the parts of myself I had learned to hide, silence, or carry alone.
And yes to following a calling I could feel long before I could fully explain it.
Chinese Medicine became the doorway through which I began understanding the body. But my own journey kept leading me deeper — into the nervous system, trauma, breathwork, energy, Sacred Geometry, and the parts of healing that medicine does not always know how to name.
Every part of that journey lives within Blue Root.
When I sit with a patient, I am not only listening for symptoms.
I am listening for the story.
For what the body has endured.
What it has protected.
What it has adapted to.
And what it may finally be ready to release.
You do not have to arrive here with all the answers.
You do not have to know which service you need.
You only need a place where someone is willing to listen.
Blue Root began when I said yes to myself.
And every day, this work gives me the privilege of helping someone else discover what their own yes might become.
— Dr. Angela Soto
EDUCATION, CREDENTIALS & ADVANCED TRAINING
A lifetime of learning in service of the whole person.
Professional Background
MEDICAL EDUCATION & LICENSURE
- Doctor of Oriental Medicine, O.MD.
- Licensed Acupuncturist, L.Ac.
- Master's Degree in Oriental Medicine
- Bachelor's Degree in Health Science
- Medical Internship — Jiangsu Provincial Hospital, Nanjing, China
- Advanced education in Acupuncture & Chinese Herbal Medicine
- Practicing since 2009
ADVANCED CLINICAL TRAINING
- 8–9 years of ongoing Kiiko Matsumoto & Nagano-style clinical study
- Advanced abdominal, pulse, channel, neck & reflex-area diagnosis
- Classical Chinese Medicine training with Dr. Heiner Fruehauf
- Chinese Herbal Medicine
- Acupuncture Injection Therapy
- Ozone Therapy certification and training under Dr. Frank Shallenberger
- Advanced Prolozone & regenerative injection training
- Functional & laboratory-based assessment
- Certified training in Cosmetic Acupuncture
NERVOUS SYSTEM & SOMATIC TRAINING
- Certified Somatic Breathwork Facilitator
- Yearlong professional certification through Breath Masters
- Somatic nervous-system support
- Individual & group breathwork facilitation
- Creator and facilitator of The Reset
ENERGY HEALING & TRANSFORMATIONAL WORK
- Ordained Master Healer in Sacred Geometry — Geo Love system
- GEO 1, GEO 2, GEO 3 & GEO X training under Oliver Niño
- Multi-year advanced practitioner training
- Co-Creator of The Soul Voyage
- Creator and facilitator of The Energy Experience and The Full Reset
- Co-Creator of The Unbecoming™
BLUE ROOT TODAY
What began as a calling became a place where many forms of healing could come together.
Where Everything Comes Together
Today, Angela continues to practice full-time at Blue Root Health in Fort Mill while leading a growing team devoted to thoughtful, individualized, whole-person care.
Over the years, Blue Root has evolved far beyond Angela's original acupuncture practice.
Today, the center brings together Chinese Medicine, integrative and regenerative care, functional assessment, therapeutic bodywork, nervous-system support, energy healing, and transformational experiences — allowing care to meet people in very different places and in very different ways.
Yet even as the practice has expanded, the philosophy behind it has remained the same:
See the person.
Listen to the story.
Understand what the body is communicating.
Then decide what comes next.
Angela continues to treat patients, study, create, and lead Blue Root forward — while surrounding herself with practitioners and team members who share the belief that care should never lose its humanity as it grows.
Blue Root was never meant to become a collection of services. It was built to become a place where the whole person could be cared for.
READY WHEN YOU ARE
Your Story Is the Place We Begin.
You do not need to know exactly what is causing your symptoms.
You do not need to know which treatment or service is right for you.
Start by telling us what has been happening.
Our team will listen, help you understand your options, and guide you toward the most appropriate place to begin.
Whole-person care begins by seeing the whole person.