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Last night I arrived home after a really lovely two days visiting friends at the beach in South Carolina. It was a treat to travel just for the sheer enjoyment of friendship. When I landed in New York I turned on my phone to type “landed 💕,” which is our custom, only to see a

Sometimes it’s necessary to step up and take strong action as one’s own practitioner. What a gift the complement channels are when one finds oneself in times of trouble.  These past few days I’ve taken some long walks in the very early morning and finding extra meditation time since I’ve been quite sad about a

Sometimes people ask the question, “What does it mean if the patient releases a little blood during a sinew treatment?” Often, if there is wind (pain) in the musculature and you’re performing a sinew treatment, blood will move since it must move to move wind. This is how cupping works to relieve pain; the red

An interesting question came in this week:  “I‘ve been working with a client who for years has had a stubborn vaginal yeast infection. Her legs always feel icy cold to her, but not to the touch, and they’re so cold that while driving she has to pull over to nap. Her tongue is red all

Reprinted from The Golden Flower Newsletter, 2014.  My favorite chapter of the Ling Shu is certainly chapter 22. In those remarkable passages we read of a highly sophisticated system of channels that treat any condition related to Blood or Fluids. Of particular interest to me is the Blood because it is the Blood that contains

by Andrew Sterman A few colleague-students have recently asked about lineage in our medicine and related practices.  How do we work within a lineage, and what are the healthy ways to say where we’re from? We need to understand that as Westerners we’re not very good at understanding tradition.  We suffer from the “cult of

This week I received another surprising email from an experienced practitioner looking for definitive answers to specific questions. If you find that you are studying in order to put more and more questions to rest, you will not be able to treat in the moment; you won’t be treating the individual in their unique humanity—you

Can I combine what you teach with my current practice? This good question is sometimes asked by prospective students.At first I always wonder why the practitioner wants to change their mode of practice after so much study and personal investment. Perhaps they feel that their style of practice has limitations and that a different practice

Currently I’m in the fourth week of teaching a six month course in acupuncture to a group of beautiful individuals, every one a treasure. I can’t imagine a more enjoyable teaching experience. This week one of the students was inquiring about why she couldn’t feel in her body an acupuncture channel we were working on.

A patient arrived eager to announce she had given blood for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene blood test. Her grandmother had ovarian cancer and her aunt breast cancer, and she felt she wanted to know.  Generally, I have a reasonably good poker face and very nearly always offer no dissuasion for any decision. Though I

This week my teaching venue was a huge, beautiful old stone house built in 1877, not far from Barcelona. For the last nine years, one of my dearest friends and Spanish translator of my books and classes, Monica Martin, has brought me here to teach. People usually come from all over the world, but this

Something that concerns all of us is that professional publications in our field are becoming more and more removed from acupuncture. They look like tabloids that misrepresent and disrespect western medicine. Western medicine is not our business. And as acupuncture training becomes increasingly a fusion of western medicine and modern acupuncture; where students are taught

Standing at the head of the treatment table in my office at the end of a beautiful and rewarding long day, suddenly the sun lit up the stainless steel cladding on the Empire State Building just a few blocks away. It was a dazzling sight. The mother of all needles that crowns the city’s main

November 2th 2022 It’s marathon season New York and the big race is on Sunday. People flock here from all over the world and spend days training on the Central Park and West Side Highway jogging paths, which are now teeming with determined faces. People derive much satisfaction from this race and a great sense

October 11th, 2022 Today I graduated a patient. She had come for her first treatment in January, presenting with severe, debilitating migraines often lasting for days and for which she took strong, daily medication. She was in a state of perpetual worry, fearful of the future, obsessively overworking, constantly thinking, carrying severe childhood trauma, and