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On Work and Entitlement Culture

One of the most astonishing things about the holistic medical industry is that so many practitioners in holism have such a complete lack of understanding about how business actually works. Click here to read the full article

On Working Too Hard

This is an aspect of work that I find simultaneously fascinating and absurd: There is an enormous segment of the population who will despise you for going all out.Click here to read the full article

On the Pivotal Difference between Clinical Skills and Business Skills Or The Paradox of Breakthrough Success Part 2

The hallmark of superior clinical skills is shown by the clinician who has passed the point where she is still either scratching her head about theory or still rehearsing needle technique. Only you can judge yourself on this point. Click here to read the full article

On the Two Most Reliable Ways to Fast Track your Career

On the two most reliable ways to fast-track your career in holism and acupuncture during this era of healthcare reform. In a recent interview with Honora Lee Wolfe of Blue Poppy fame and one of the truly generous elder stateswomen of our profession,Click here to read the full article

On Choosing Your Own Path

Not choosing your own path has several serious side-effects – the most obvious of which is that life tends to become rather tedious. Obviously it is much less rewarding to work for the enrichment of someone else than it is to enrich yourself and your people. Click here to read the full article

On the Pivotal Difference between Clinical Skills and Business Skills Or The Paradox of Breakthrough Success Part 1

If your schooling actually brought you - as it is intended - to minimal competence and bestowed the ability to make a living, then count yourself among the fortunate. Yet the overwhelming majority of Chinese medical practitioners still struggle mightily to achieve that minimal capability.Click here to read the full article

Get ready to lead or get used to having and being less . . . and liking it

This is your fundamental choice as a holistic practitioner: you can lead and find a way to be part of the solutions now required in 21st century practice and delivery of medicine and healthcare; Click here to read the full article

On the one timeless business principle that can make (or break) your career

One of the things that is so very appealing and empowering about deep understanding of the holistic system as a system is that you come in contact with a level of psychology and understanding... Click here to read the full article

On The Incredible Value of Mentors

Think about the best learning experiences you have ever enjoyed. Was it about reading knowledge from a book? Probably not; knowledge and books are mere commodities.Click here to read the full article

On the Imperative of Speed and Chaos

If you have not yet browsed the Obama Care Survival Guide, now would be the time. It’s astonishing just how little is yet understood about what will be changing in medicine on January 1, 2014. Click here to read the full article

Overview of Clinical Essentials in a HBA Practice

Clinical essentials are learned experientially. Put another way, if you want to be a good in-clinic you gotta practice in-clinic. A printed document can only overview, circumscribe and comment upon what you must know. Click here to read the full article

On War and Peace in Holistic Medicine

“All happy families are happy in the same way. All unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way.” There is an interesting parallel between this famous passage and the confusion or clarity of holistic medical professionals. Click here to read the full article

Herbal Medicine: Go Mainstream

When it comes to practicing herbal medicine in a mainstream setting, there are a number of important points to understand when it comes to prescribing formulas. Click here to read the full article

On the Most Fundamental Skill in Holistic Healing Arts

I actually listed out several topics that I wish to address and illustrate with video. One of them was the title of this blog. Trouble is, I couldn’t recall what I was thinking or what I could possibly shoot video of regarding ‘the most fundamental skill in holistic healing arts.’ Click here to read the full article

On Targeting your Treatments: Do you ‘get’ the demand of the coming shift?

On my recent sabbatical to Guatemala, I reconnected with a friend who—like many folks in my little pueblo—studies and practices healing arts. Click here to read the full article

4 Essential Books for Hospital Quality Practice of Holism

Before narrowing down a reading list to four essential titles - especially for a topic as expansive as medical practice in the 21st century - it is incumbent upon me to include a much larger list of honorable mentions. Click here to read the full article

On Pulse Examination and Personal Subjectivism

I would like to point out what I consider to be a gross misapprehension regarding professional quality pulse examination in holistic Chinese medicine and a certain parallel to holistic practice in North America in general. Click here to read the full article

8 Secrets to Monetizing your Acupuncture Skills

Needling is NO BIG DEAL. After all theory and discussion, fancy systems and foreign concepts, acupuncture is DIRT_SIMPLE relief of pain and stress. Needling is only ½ of your professional competency. The other ½ is language and communication skills. Click here to read the full article

On The Logic of Holism

Acupuncture is so inherently suited to providing low-cost, effective, non-iatrogenic relief from pain and stress that is would be difficult for someone unfamiliar with the US healthcare system to understand just why there is not greater inclusion of acupuncture within hospital settings Click here to read the full article

Chronic Pelvic Pain

Acupuncture is so inherently suited to providing low-cost, effective, non-iatrogenic relief from pain and stress that is would be difficult for someone unfamiliar with the US healthcare system to understand just why there is not greater inclusion of acupuncture within hospital settings. Click here to read the full article

Leadership Advantages

I find two elements to be indispensible in regard to the topic of personnel management-styles for the leader. These are: 1) outsourcing; and 2) people management. First of all is outsourcing. Click here to read the full article

The Three Indispensable Aspects of the Superior Physician

There are three areas of concern for each and every physician. Attending to these three aspects day after day will inevitably produce superior outcomes. Failing to attend to even any of these areas can not result in even mediocre practice. The three indispensable concerns of the superior physicians are: Click here to read the full article

Eight Tips for Patient Education

Of course the patient’s impression of your space and their experience with you has a significance of its own. But the superior physician leaves nothing to chance. You should act as if you are dictating the reality of health / illness to your patients -- because, in fact, that is precisely what is happening whether you are conscious of it or not. Click here to read the full article

Knowing the Patient’s Threshold, or Therapeutic S & M

Of all the areas of learning about acupuncture and moxabustion, I find kinesthetic technique the least well-attended. It seems to me there are two principal reasons for this shortfall: 1) teaching kinesthetic awareness requires a teacher with good kinesthetic awareness and such people are simply in short supply; Click here to read the full article

7 Steps to Establishing a Successful Hospital Based Practice

The hospital based practice of acupuncture and integrative medicine not only offers unique insights and challenges; it also requires several ingredients either de-emphasized or wholly absent from private practice. Click here to read the full article

Who Does Best in a Hospital Based Practice?

• What kind of practitioner is best suited to succeed in a hospital setting?
• What are the qualities required to thrive in clinic?
• In hospital culture? Click here to read the full article

Here at Last: Community-style Acupuncture in a Hospital Setting

Community Pain and Stress Centers (CPSC) and Hospital Based Acupuncture Training open the doors to their inaugural clinic on February 1st, 2012 at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center in downtown Chicago. Click here to read the full article

The Essential Debate Regarding Integration in Medicine

What exactly is the essential debate between proponents of different medical systems? I submit that the issue involves a somewhat ill-defined discussion of the core concepts of intuition and logic. Nor am I alone in framing the debate thusly, as the bibliography will attest. But what do these key terms - intuition and logic - actually mean? What is their significance to integration in medicine and how can one understand the concepts they represent? Examining and clarifying these key terms and core concepts allows a practical vision of integration to arise. Click here to read the full article

The Burden of Proof in Holistic Medicine

When I speak to physicians about what I do, the questions they ask about acupuncture and holistic medicine seem to fit within certain categories. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that their queries seem motivated Click here to read the full article

Keys to Integration

Epistemology (from Greek ıμ - episteme-, "knowledge, science" + ,"logos") or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and Click here to read the full article

Opening Day

In the fall of 2006, I first met with Juan Manuel Chuc, Guatemalan director of the Hospitalito of Santiago on Lake Atitlan. On the 6th of August 2008, he was the first patient Click here to read the full article

Patient Education in the Age of Chronic Disease

Patient Education is fundamental to TCM. It is even more essential in North American culture precisely because the holistic model is: 1) foreign to our culture’s Click here to read the full article

A New Day, A New Hospitalito

I haven’t heard anything official, but I suspect the Hospitalito in Santiago, Atitlan may have to change its name. The inauguration of the new building – more than five years in the making – was Friday, November 19, 2010 Click here to read the full article

A Note on Shamanism: Reflections from the Forest of Guatemala

Strolling one of the labyrinthine foot paths which transect the pueblo where I live, I overheard a tourist couple: “ . . . should go there so we can get our certification in shamanic healing.” Click here to read the full article

Themes of Integration

The International Conference on Integrative Medicine, held in Jerusalem October 2010, contained several significant and timely themes. In addition to hopeful and promising Click here to read the full article

Why we call it Medical Practice

In my recent sojourn to Jerusalem to attend the International Conference on Integrative Medicine, I had one particularly telling encounter with a fellow whom I will call Jake. Click here to read the full article

On Barefoot Medicine -- a solution for holistic practice

The term Barefoot Doctor describes that solitary physician-healer who strolled village to village, roaming the land to offer succor to those in need. Such an image is as quaint as it is an anachronistic. Click here to read the full article

The Importance of Treating Blood Stasis

In holistic Chinese medicine, there is a concept, the understanding of which is essential to the treatment of almost any chronic illness; that concept is referred to as blood stasis. Click here to read the full article

Health is Wealth but Does Wealth Lead to Health?

How is your portfolio these days? The nest egg? 401k? If these are in good shape, then lucky you. But consider one thing that in every case trumps one’s financial net worth: your health Click here to read the full article

Myths of Integration

The flurry of new ideas - some brilliant, some less-well-thought-out - and the sheer and harrowing pace of change which characterize American society especially Click here to read the full article

On Research Methodologies

The following is an excerpt from a paper titled Synchronicity and Qualitative Methodologies, which deals with the vicissitudes of research and the epistemological tenets of holism Click here to read the full article

Language and Integration

To understand the origins of literal-minded reductionistic cognition and lateral-minded holism, one need search no further than the language used to elucidate each approach. Click here to read the full article

Bu Fa vs. Xie Fa

In holistic TCM, all therapeutic applications can be classified as either 1) supplementing or 2) draining / attacking. These two approaches may be combined as there quite often appears, in clinic Click here to read the full article

A Letter to Lonny Jarrett

In an article titled “The Awakening of Choice” (California Journal of Oriental Medicine, Vol. 18, no. 1, Spring/Summer 2007), Lonny Jarrett describes an essential problem confronting Click here to read the full article

The I / Thou Relationship, the Quantum Omission And The Legacy of Reductionism

There exists in modern culture a conspicuous and pernicious feature, a blindness, which seems to be the limitation humanity is destined either to supersede or by which we shall be ruined. Click here to read the full article

Control and Illusion
The Paradox of Healing and Self-realization

There is an extremely difficult paradox regarding integration in medicine, the misapprehension of which can prove the rock upon which the ship of one’s understanding founders. Click here to read the full article

Teishin-Therapy in a Western Hospital

The overwhelming prevalence of common complaints like pain and stress are -- in some way -- the niche market of physical medicine. No matter how grievous a patient's condition Click here to read the full article

Teishin Therapy for Common Psychological Complaints

The overwhelming majority of US adults suffer some adverse health outcomes as a result of stress. The American Institute of Stress estimates that 75 to 90% of all doctor visits are stress related. Click here to read the full article