Our Team
Dr. Laura Tavernier
Dr. Laura Tavernier is the founder of Tantien Integrative Medicine in Branford, Connecticut. She is a fellowship-trained integrative medicine specialist who completed the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona. She has 34 years of clinical experience and is a U.S. Army veteran who served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. Dr. Tavernier will sit for the American Board of Integrative Medicine (ABOIM)-the formal certifying body for this specialty. Board certification through ABOIM is the gold standard credential in integrative medicine, and Dr. Tavernier will sit for this exam in May 2026.
Dr. Tavernier’s earliest exposure to healing began in childhood, inspired by the teachings of her curandera grandmother. After serving six years in the United States Army as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, she returned home deeply influenced by her primary care physician—an integrative practitioner who blended conventional and alternative medicine.
Dr. Tavernier went on to complete her medical degree and residency at the University of California, where her mentors and attending physicians strongly supported the incorporation of evidence-based alternative therapies within traditional medical practice. Over the following decades, she witnessed a changing medical landscape that increasingly constrained her ability to provide the kind of care she believed in—whole-person, patient-centered medicine that considers all appropriate, evidence-based approaches to healing.
This belief was profoundly reaffirmed when her spouse endured a life-threatening illness stemming from a misdiagnosis, followed by a remarkable recovery supported through lifestyle changes and alternative therapies. This experience strengthened Dr. Tavernier’s conviction that medicine must treat the person, not just the disease.
Driven by this commitment, Dr. Tavernier pursued the prestigious Andrew Weil Fellowship in Integrative Medicine. After completing her training, she founded Tantien Integrative Medicine to practice healthcare as she believes it was always meant to be: patient-centered, evidence-based, whole-person, and inclusive of all effective therapeutic modalities.
The Andrew Weil Fellowship
Dr. Tavernier completed the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona — one of the most respected and academically rigorous programs of its kind in the world. This is not a certification course or weekend workshop. It is a structured, multi-year fellowship designed for licensed practitioners, grounded in evidence-based medicine, and covering the full spectrum of whole-person care: nutrition, mind-body medicine, botanical therapies, lifestyle medicine, and the integration of conventional and complementary approaches into a single, patient-centered practice.
It is worth noting that Connecticut’s current regulatory definition of integrative medicine does not yet reflect this level of formal academic training or the existence of ABOIM board certification. Dr. Tavernier’s credentials exceed what the state’s definition contemplates — she is not simply a physician who incorporates wellness practices, but a fellowship-trained integrative medicine specialist in the truest clinical sense of the term.
Nicole Tavernier
Your body already knows how to heal. It's waiting for the right conditions.
Nicole Tavernier is a somatic movement educator, functional breathwork educator, vessel for energy sessions, and sound immersion guide at Tantien Integrative Medicine. Her work centers on meeting clients where they are and helping them reconnect with the body’s innate capacity for healing.
This work wasn’t something Nicole set out to find—it became necessary.
Surgeries. Injuries. Misdiagnosis. Each experience made it harder to do what once brought ease and joy.
At a certain point, the search for someone else to fix things gave way to something more honest: listening. Listening to the body, to practitioners who saw through a different lens, to the subtle breadcrumbs that kept appearing and leading forward.
Through that process came a new way of understanding the body—not as separate parts, but as an interconnected system. Fascia weaves everything together. Tension in one area often shows up as pain somewhere else. Patterns of dysfunctional coordination can become embedded in the brain’s motor control centers, and change only happens when the body feels safe enough to let go.
The body also reveals itself as an electrical system. Injury, illness, and scar tissue can disrupt its natural flow, while somatic movement, functional breath work, energetic balancing, and sound immersion help restore coherence.
One insight reframed everything: the body cannot learn or heal while it remains in a state of shock or fear from past trauma.
Nicole works with people who already sense something essential—that healing isn’t something done to them. It’s a process they participate in. The people drawn to this work are ready to become aware, to stay curious rather than certain, open rather than defended, and to shift from self-judgment toward observation. They’re ready to discover what the body has been waiting to reveal.