The path to health leads to 735 Broadway in Somerville, home to KenkoDo acupuncture clinic.

By Nidhi Mathson

“It’s so relaxing,” Paula Hogan said. “For me, it’s stress relieving. I’m in outside sales all day, driving all day, and I’m like, this is better than any cocktail, any good book. This is overall good for my wellbeing.”

It was Friday night, the end of a long work week, and Hogan, a client at KenkoDo Clinic in Somerville, had just come out of her regular acupuncture session.

The clinic opened its doors at 735 Broadway in Ball Square in October, and contrary to the relaxation and calmness its patients enjoy, owner Lori Pino, a Somerville resident who also owns of Amal Niccoli hair salon next door, is always on the go.

Although born and raised in Somerville and once again living in her childhood home, she has also lived in California, where she drove to cross-country on a whim. In addition to being a licensed cosmetologist and barber, she has also earned an associate degree in business management, a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in acupuncture and Oriental medicine. She is currently completing her board certification in acupuncture.

“This has been a journey since she was 19 years old, continuous self improvement and business improvement,” Hogan, a Stoneham resident who works for a pharmaceutical company and who has been Pino’s client for 35 years, said. “Some people have been very fortunate to be able to go to college and to go right out of high school and go get a four-year degree. As someone who also did the untraditional, I really know how hard this has been, but she makes it look so easy.”

Although Pino didn’t go from high school straight into business, she explained how it was more of an organic evolution.

She had worked at a hair salon in Belmont for a few years before she decided to come back to Somerville and work at Amal Niccoli with the original owners of the salon. She realized after a few years that she needed to equip herself with an education in business management and signed up for an associate degree in business management from Bunker Hill Community College. But that wasn’t all. She went to school full time, worked full time cutting hair and even took a part-time job at Star Market “for the insurance, because I needed insurance,” she said.

This may have been a turning point in Pino’s life because it was the two-year routine of working a full-time job, a part-time job and undertaking full-time study that led her to California.

When she finished her program at Bunker Hill, Pino took the cross-country drive with her girlfriend. After a month, she fell in love with the place, and she had already decided that she was going to move to California before she even got back to Somerville.

“For six months to a year,” she said. “You know, just to take a break and live on the beach and not do hairdressing but just find some sort of job.”

Pino ended up staying for two years, having landed a job managing a hair salon for a big Japanese corporation.

“How funny is that?” she said, realizing that it may have influenced the Japanese name she chose for her acupuncture business. She picked up on-the-job management skills at the hair salon. When she returned to Somerville, she bought Amal Niccoli.

After graduating with her master’s in acupuncture and Oriental medicine in 2011, Pino knew she wanted to open a clinic. So when a space opened up next door to Amal Niccoli, she jumped on the opportunity.

“It came up when I was in the middle of my boards (certification), and I had to make that decision – and there you go.”

That was the way she seemed to tackle all her life decisions: If there was an opportunity that aligned with her goal, she took it.

“She had this whole vision that she kind of outlined from a long time ago, in terms of like, you know, where the rooms were going to be and how everything was going to look,” Katie Walker, an acupuncturist at KenkoDo, said in describing an earlier tour of the then-unfinished business design during her interview with Pino some months ago. “When everything’s in frames, it’s hard to imagine what it’s going to turn out to be, but it’s even more beautiful than what I anticipated, so, yeah, it was really impressive.”

“I decide what I want to do and I do it,” Pino said. “I guess I don’t have that fear factor that everybody has. It’s like, you fail, you fail, try again.”

Pino is still putting the finishing touches to the interior decoration of KenkoDo, which, according to the company website, means “the path to health” in Japanese. The place was busy on a recent Wednesday evening, and she confirmed that business was good.

Pino noted that her friends and family are never surprised when she tells them what she’s decided to do next.

“Anyone that knows me, they just look and say, ‘Of course!’” she said.