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Greetings from Paris! Twenty-seven years ago, when I was living in my native Melbourne, I met Andrew on the phone. I’d been introduced to him by email through a friend as I was looking for some esoteric advice for a essay I was writing as part of a Masters degree at Melbourne in 1997. A

In response to a post we put up on Instagram a couple of weeks ago about unexpected reactions after treatment, a strong and very kindly worded reaction came back. Responses of this nature are always welcome, by the way, especially if they elicit a hopefully helpful blog! Here’s the post:  And here’s the response:  “Humble

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