Sorry to be out of touch again. It’s been an amazing week. On Monday I graduated 80 beautiful souls in four continents from this year’s mentorship. Their six months of deep focus was pure inspiration and I’m still feeling the welling of heart-warmth after it. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, a two-day pulse diagnosis class in the middle of Manhattan in a beautiful room with magnificent views of the city. Students came from as far away as Kentucky, Boston, San Diego and Antigua. Then last night at 8pm at the house we experienced a 25 minute long storm so severe that I felt it necessary to pace up and down the house declaring it safe. Our power went out and is still out, but the neighborhood is still standing. Then today, Sunday, we hosted 48 people for lunch—20 Mentorship Program graduates and their families from as far away as Montreal, San Diego, New Mexico, Maryland, Colorado, the Catskills, New Jersey, and North Carolina. I drove one of the cars to pick people up at the station, stopping several times as the road narrowed to a single lane to skirt around downed power lines and trees, but it was a beautiful day. Andrew cooked up a storm, too: a 10th century recipe of almond milk with saffron, chana dal, whole rice, duck prosciutto, chicory, endive and (special treat) radicchio salad with sesame dressing, roasted broccolini, three sides of salmon, tofu skins with cellophane noodles, zucchini and porcini, and seaweed medley. Miriam made Hwacha with jellied mango and tapioca, her favorite. The sun shone and we dined outside while grateful for the roof power back up, and when that ran out, grateful for the hum of the generator. Experiencing the community bonding, and sharing their experiences of the medicine, is one of the greatest happinesses, and it seems that come hell or high water, the medicine is determined to be.
This brings me to what caught my eye the other day—yet another piece about the shrinking of the profession. Twelve schools have closed in the last five years, and the piece placed the blame on failure to educate acupuncturists sufficiently for integration with western medicine. It also mentioned a survey ranking the debt-to-income ratios of 6,300 graduate programs in the USA that put six acupuncture programs in the ten worst performers. The thing that concerned me deeply was the idea that the problem of schools closing is caused by the allopathic medicine arena declining to employ more acupuncturists because schools have failed to make students prepared to converse and work alongside other health care providers.
I see the issue very differently. You could educate acupuncture students in some western medicine ways, but we have to remember that western medicine’s genius, that is, where western medicine is absolutely indispensable, is its ability to rescue a life in an emergency. A brain tumor growing at an alarming rate—what a miracle it is that a surgical team can get that out. A stroke patient with a blood clot that is in an imminent threat—how miraculous that they can actually remove it. Your spleen is ruptured in a car accident—no problem: can do. Appendicitis with septicemia—they have it under control. Baby’s heart rate dangerously high with no progression of labor—they have it. Necrosis in the hip joint—here’s a new hip. Blind from severe cataracts—no problem. Lost a limb in a machine—they sew it back on. It’s genius.
Western medicine can be superb, but it cannot treat chronic degenerative diseases. It seeks to suppress them, and it knows how to do that. That’s its language. We, on the other hand, are talking a different language. Acupuncturists and channel practitioners help create an environment in an individual that cannot support disease. We do this by activating the appropriate channel of energy, allowing it to move freely again. These two healing professions are like chalk and cheese. Each has its vital place, but neither can do the other’s job.
So where is the overlap if any? In a hospital, there can be an overlap, for sure, and that is the amelioration of the effects of the treatments of chronic disease. When a disease is suppressed, or when it is so entrenched that it cannot be reversed, or when it’s somehow in the blueprint of the patient, there can be tremendous pain, not to mention debilitating dehydration, endless emotional distress, insomnia, constipation, and so many other things. Acupuncture and channel practice can treat all those things beautifully. And we can do it while anchored confidently and with dignity, standing with the extraordinary language and power of our practice. “The patient in 14B is in intolerable pain. Before you give morphine, I’d like to treat that pain with what we call a sinew channel. These channels relieve the pain by stopping the pooling of qi.” We are offering something different. In fact, Neena Barua, who expertly treats my patients in my office when I’m away, also works at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the pediatric cancer ward. When I asked her whether she could work at my office an additional day per week, she declined saying that as much as she loves the patients and that work, the hospital is where she is needed most right now. There, she brings untold comfort not only to the children themselves, but to their entire families as they witness their deeply ill child in less pain and distress. Neena’s work illustrates an important role for acupuncture in the western hospital system, but acupuncture is more than an auxiliary modality, it is a complete medical system of its own.
So how can we keep schools open and expand the profession? Acupuncture education should bring the student to feel totally confident in treating chronic diseases of any nature. This can only be achieved if the training includes all the channels of acupuncture, not just the 12 primary channels which cannot reach the constitution, the yuan level, where chronic disease sits. Graduates with training in all the channels of acupuncture would then be able to go into private practice and become busy quickly. Or they could form collectives to work with colleagues. Or they could work in hospitals if they wish, while standing proudly in their own profession, understanding the mechanisms of the formation and reversal of chronic diseases that the complement channels describe. Rather than graduating students with one fifth of the entire network of channels, schools could graduate them holding the whole picture—the profound medical system that acupuncture is. This is the way forward.
Ann Cecil-Sterman
Litchfield Hills, CT
5 July 2026