The Learning Hand - A Training in the Intersection of Text and Touch in Chinese Medicine

A Three-Weekend Seminar with Chip Chace, L.Ac. Organized by the Stillwater Study Group.

Location

Southwest Acupuncture College, Boulder, CO

Dates:

February 14th and 15th (9 a.m - 5 p.m.)
March 21st and 22nd (9 a.m - 5 p.m.)
April 25th and 26th (9 a.m - 5 p.m.)

Cost:

Professionals: $900.00
Students: $825.00 (Must have completed second year of study)

A deposit of $300 to hold your place in the class is due by January 15, 2009. Another installment of $300 is due at the beginning of the first class, and a final installment of $300 is due at the beginning of the second class.

Cancellations processed prior to January 31st will receive a 100% refund; cancellations thereafter receive a 50% refund.

Registration:

Registration Form

Qualifies for 42 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)
This course has been approved by the California Acupuncture Board, provider # __ for 42 hours of continuing education in Category 1 (pending).

To ensure an effective hands-on learning experience for participants, the class is limited to 20 participants and there will be three trained assistants to help out.

Course Overview

How does one go about making sense of the acupuncture classics and then put those ideas into clinical practice? These are perennial questions for those interested in both the practice and development of Chinese medicine. How we go about answering them shapes the way we approach acupuncture.

This training is based on the premise that many palpation techniques used in cranial osteopathy can be understood as aspects of the state of the body’s qi, and can therefore be interpreted in the context of a Chinese medical perspective. Though they are grounded in a fundamentally modern and Western tradition, the insights gained from such palpatory techniques both inform and enrich our understanding of many opaque passages in the Classical acupuncture literature, providing a practical, hands-on context for a critical analysis of these texts. Although we will probably never know how acupuncturists in Early and Medieval China actually practiced, the techniques presented in this training provide useful tools for using these texts in a modern context.

Those with no experience in palpation-based forms of acupuncture practice will be given a thorough introduction to this approach. The training will help those with previous experience in osteopathic palpation to both broaden and deepen their understanding, and to better integrate it into their acupuncture practice.

The texts discussed in this series will include selected chapters from the The Divine Pivot (Ling shu), Dongyuan’s Acupuncture Method from the Gathering of the Blossoms of Acupuncture (Zhenjiu ju ying, 1529), a cogent approach to the treatment of complex diseases and Li Shizhen’s Exposition on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels (Qi jing ba mai kao, 1575). Translations from these texts and relevant commentaries will be provided

Participants will be also introduced to the acupuncture applications of the following palpatory techniques:

Assessment of the superficial lymph circulation
Manual thermal diagnosis
General listening techniques
Local listening techniques

In addition, participants will be introduced to the cranial rhythmic impulse (CRI), Mid Tide, and Long Tide and how they can be understood in the context of an acupuncture practice.

Japanese meridian therapy will be the fundamental context for the training, although the techniques presented are adaptable to nearly all styles of acupuncture practice.
The training will emphasize:

Precision in point location
Refinement in needle technique using both contact needling and insertion techniques.

Course Outline and Syllabus

Each weekend will focus on a particular text as the basis for discussion and practice.

Subsequent weekends will build on the concepts and skills presented in the previous weekends to develop a comprehensive set of palpatory tools.

Weekend 1 (February 14-15, 2009)

Presents the general principles of this approach to palpation and focuses on the primary channels.

Topics Covered: Overview of Divine Pivot, Chapters One and Nine; Introduction to the quality of contact; Principles of Pattern Selection; Needle Technique; Introduction to Manual Thermal Diagnosis; Channel listening; Listening Posts and the Cranial Rhythmic Impulse.

Weekend 2 (March 21-22, 2009)

Applies the above tools to the extraordinary vessels and explores the deep circulation of qi.

Li Shizhen’s Exposition on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels; Mid Tide; Local Listening; Long Tide.

Weekend 3 (April 25-26, 2009)

Applies the skills learned to complex pattern presentations and the channel divergences, and focuses on the integration of those skills: Dongyuan’s Acupuncture Method; Channel Divergences; Integration and Consolidation.

About Chip Chace, L.Ac.

As a student of Chinese medicine and palpation based forms of acupuncture for more than twenty years, Chip is uniquely positioned to teach this class. He has maintained a longstanding interest in the medical literature of China and is the translator of a wide variety of books and articles on premodern acupuncture and Chinese medicine including a translation of the first textbook of acupuncture from 100 C.E., The Yellow Emperor’s Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxabustion (Huang Di Zhenjiu jiayi Jing), and Li Shizhen’s Qijing bamai kao, the seminal text on the extraordinary vessels, which will published by Eastland Press in 2009. He has completed both basic and advanced Toyohari training. Chip has practiced acupuncture for over twenty-five years and is on the faculty of the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine where he teaches palpatory approaches to acupuncture. He maintains a clinical practice in Boulder, Colorado.

If you have any other questions or would like to talk with Chip or others who have been trained in these palpatory techniques please contact us at the email address provided below.

Charles.Chace@Colorado.edu