脾 Pi – Spleen : Lessons learned from Yin Earth Earthly Branch Si – The Snake : Lesson – You can take in a lot more than you think, but don’t overdo it The Spleen is associated with the 6th Earthly Branch 巳 – Si. This is one of the…

I have a feeling I’m going to get in trouble for my teaching. It’s not that I’m that revolutionary, or that I really even know that much more than my students. It’s just that my fundamental orientation towards the universe is to be always, always asking questions. I don’t always…

This is another repost of archived content.  In this case, it relates closely to the type of information I work with when teaching the relational herb method.  This is actually more advanced stuff – the kind of thing we dig into during the second stage of the training.  But, I…

I’ve been working with students explicitly for about a year now, teaching at NCNM. I think I will be continuing to do this, as the activity suits me and it also forces me to keep studying. I find that I want to teach about learning a lot, even though I…

As I’m working on some of the foundational materials for the upcoming Shennong Relational Herb Learning course, I’m revisiting some material from classical Chinese medicine texts that I don’t know particularly well.  It’s prompted me to get out my Big Chinese-English Dictionary and start slogging through the tedious process of translating…

Established readers : this is one of many reposted articles you will see in the coming months.  It is part of the redesign process.  I hope you agree that all of these articles are worth another look! I have to admit to some weirdness around the concept of “constitution.” This…

So, I didn’t write much about using the faculty of sight in learning Chinese herbs. That’s mostly because I’m doing other research about it, particularly around the doctrine of signatures and I’d prefer to write more when I have more to say. I’m already retooling my NCNM class for next…

In my last article, I mentioned my idea that the best way to learn Chinese herbs is through what I’m calling the “relational method.” Before we can dive headlong into the process I am describing, we need to prepare some ground. Today, I want to talk a little about learning…

Update : This post formed the beginning thoughts of what eventually became the Shennong Relational Herb Learning Method.  If you think you might be interested in taking a course that tackles what’s below – why don’t you consider signing up for the interest list?  You’ll get the free Shennong Formula…

Here are the last few paragraphs of my thesis in Chinese medicine for my MSOM degree at National College of Natural Medicine. As you can probably tell, I did not go as far with any of my research topics as I would have liked. I saw it mainly as a…

For your reading pleasure, I would like to offer the third piece of my Chinese medicine thesis, written at NCNM. As promised, I’m breaking it up into bite-sized chunks and only presenting the final chapter. The next installment will be the last. Chinese medicine and phenomenology thesis Part I Chinese…

There is a very interesting discussion going on over at Richard Goodman’s blog – He explains… “…Ling Shu Chapter 55 The superior physician treats that which is not yet ill. The inferior physician treats that which is already ill. This is a fairly famous statement, which is often interpreted to…

Update : I passed!  :) As I said before, I’ve been spending a significant amount of time studying for and taking my NCCAOM acupuncture board exams.  As I said in my last post… “…I’ve successfully completed the foundations and biomedicine exams already.  I found them to be much different from…