FRAMINGHAM – If John Myerson had it his way, health insurance companies would tell people who are depressed to chuck their Prozac out the window and head to the nearest acupuncturist to heal themselves.

Although it may be awhile before health maintenance organizations catch on to the psychological benefits of Eastern holistic medicine, Myerson himself is already earning a living in his Framingham practice by deploying a mystifying arsenal of unconventional treatments. Only half-jokingly, he calls himself “the suburban shaman.”

“In my realm, all this is rational,” Myerson said, referring to the spiritual journeys on which he leads his patients with hypnosis and acupuncture. “I use acupuncture for emotional and psychological disorders.”

Myerson turned down a medical school admission to study acupuncture and later got a doctorate in psychology from the Union Institute, a correspondence school. He opened his alternative medical practice in Framingham in 1987, just around the corner from the Metrowest Medical Center. The location is symbolically important, he said, because he doesn’t dismiss Western medicine. If one of his patients appears to be suffering from a serious ailment, he said, he would send the person straight to the hospital.

He shares his Lexington Street quarters with an accounting firm and a massage therapist. His office is decorated with Nigerian weaves, Zapotec rugs, a spirit drum, a Buddha, and artifacts that he said help focus positive healing energy.

On a recent Thursday morning, Susan Reich came downstairs from her office and discussed why she comes for weekly treatments from Myerson .

“I get a sense of very deep relaxation,” she said, calling Myerson part healer, part psychologist. The two spoke comfortably while Myerson deftly inserted sterilized needles in her ear, calf, and toes while soft music wafted from a CD player in the corner.

Reich said she became an acupuncture enthusiast years ago when she discovered the psychological benefits of the treatments.

“When I was down, sometimes John would put the needles in and I’d start to cry,” Reich said. “For years that’s why I did the acupuncture. It allowed the emotions to flow more easily.”

Reich has experienced the whole range of Myerson ‘s treatments, including the hypnotic “shamanistic journeys” that Reich dubs “psychospiritual.”

“It’s not like a drug experience because it’s healing,” Reich said.

Myerson is a cofounder of the New England School of Acupuncture in Watertown and has studied a handful of non-Western healing techniques. His personal stamp on a field of health care that is gaining increasing acceptance is his belief that treatments like acupuncture and hypnosis can treat problems that traditionally fall into the province of psychiatry.

Myerson believes that for some patients, a regular acupuncture course that redirects the body’s energy can be just as effective as taking antidepressents.

The body has about 400 acupuncture points, where pressure from a needle can change the body’s sensation by causing a nerve to fire repeatedly. That’s why acupuncture can replace anesthetic in some surgery.

Myerson believes that strategic needle placements can trigger endorphin release – creating a result that is similar to a runner’s high – and can also have the same effect as a class of antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) that block the brain’s ability to absorb the mood enhancing chemical serotonin.

Moreover he believes that depression and emotional disorders are affected by energy pathways flowing through the body, which acupuncture can shift into healthier patterns.

For now, only Blue Cross offers its customers some partial coverage for acupuncture treatment. Practitioners across the country have been lobbying for insurance coverage for alternative medicine, but in a time of shrinking budgets when even chiropractors have been dropped from the list of most HMOs, Myerson doesn’t see change occurring any time soon.

Nonetheless, he has won some vocal adherents among patients, like Reich and Dan Lineweber, who started seeing Myerson to help deal with physical pain but said he kept returning because of the deep emotional comfort afforded by regular acupuncture.

Myerson has studied Kenyan shamanism in addition to acupuncture, and approaches his patients much like a Native American medicine man would.

He lives in Dover with his wife, a Wellesley real estate agent, and his three teenage children. “My wife always says I do a good job pretending to be normal,” Myerson joked.

After serving as president of the New England School of Acupuncture from 1977 to 1983, Myerson left to pursue private practice, saying he’s a much better healer than administrator. Since 1987, he has run the state licensing board for acupuncturists, even signing his own license.

Acupuncture’s star has been rising in America ever since Nixon traveled to China in 1972. The practice was legalized and regulated in Massachusetts in 1977. Myerson is collecting testimonials from patients for a book about the psychological impact of alternative medicine. He said his field has a long way to go before achieving mainstream acceptance.

“In California what I do is considered completely normal, but this is the whole conservative New England Journal of Medicine area,” he said.