FBU is hosting a five part series with Steven Alpern, L.Ac. called Using the Channel Complexes of Acupuncture.

Series Details:
Weekend I: April 21 & 22
Saturday - Channel Sinews
Sunday: Discerning the World of Dao: Movement in Chinese Medicine

Weekend II: May 19 & 20
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - The Living Channel Complexes

Weekend III: June 9 & 10
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - Luo Vessels

Weekend IV: July 7 & 8
Saturday / Sunday - Channel Distinctions and Divergences

Weekend V: August 4 & 5
Saturday - Eight Extraordinary Vessels
Sunday - Clinical Application of the Channel Systems

Weekend II Details:
Day I: Primary Channels/Vessels (經 脈, Jingmai) I -- Saturday
This seminar will discuss several ways to understand the primary channels, including the one most central to modern TCM -- their external-internal relationship with the zangfu. This material is introduced in Lingshu, chapter 2, which includes the ‘command points’ and the ‘Windows to Heaven’ points. This seminar continues by introducing the important “roots and nodes” theory (Lingshu, chapter 5), which presents the channels as yin-yang pairs completely different from the familiar “husband-wife” (elemental) pairs. The theory of roots and nodes plays a central role in understanding the opportunities and challenges of individual life process and how pathologies develop, by exploring another (and equally important) side of the primary channels. While the familiar time-clock provides a continuous circuit of the external pathways of these channels, there is another sequence (originally suggested by Zhang Jingyue during the 17th century) that presents life as a progressive dissemination of jing-essence, which presents a continuous circuit including key internal pathways. So, what is the sequence of primary
channels (經 脈, jingmai), and why?

Clinical Workshop: Locating, palpating and treating the ‘command points.’ Selected needling
techniques from Lingshu, chapter 7 for the channel sinews (經 筋, jingjin) and the primary
channels/vessels (經 脈, jingmai).

Day II: The Living Channel Complexes (經 絡 脈, Jingluomai) -- Sunday

The theory of channel complexes allows practitioners to differentiate between managing a patient’s disease condition by ‘balancing’ his or her physiological transformations (變, bian), from focusing therapy on stimulating fundamental transformations (化, hua) that restore the primal movements of life process. Managing disease expression with strategies that harmonize physiological process (變, bian) maintain those diseases in patients, while restoring the primal
movements of life stimulates and facilitates profound healing.

Clinical Workshop: Clinical application of “pulse feedback” with classical palpation and
needling techniques.

FULL SERIES OPTIONS (best value)
Regular Price: $280 per weekend / $1400.00 total
w/ Faculty Discount: $84.00 per weekend / $420.00 total
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $224.00 per weekend / $1120.00 total

INDIVIDUAL WEEKEND OPTIONS
Regular Price: $320.00 per weekend
w/ Faculty Discount: $96.00 per weekend
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $256.00 per weekend

To register, contact Ali via email marketing@fivebranches.edu with Subject Line: "Channel Complexes of Acupuncture Registration" or via phone at (831) 476-9424.

Spirit of the Points II: Energetics of Earth, Metal, Water Zang Fu Points on Spleen, Stomach, Lung, Large Intestine, Kidney, Bladder

Acupuncture points each have a name, a history, and a particular meaning and energy. This course examines the name of the point, its relationship to the elements, to the official (organ system), its location and its relation to the overall context of the patient. Class includes discussion, meditation, art and poetry.

Students will gain a deeper and more personal knowledge of, and relationship to the energetics of particular meridian points. They will increase their skills in choosing points which will support the patient's psycho/spiritual well being.

FBU is hosting a five part series with Steven Alpern, L.Ac. called Using the Channel Complexes of Acupuncture.

Series Details:

Weekend II: May 19 & 20
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - The Living Channel Complexes

Weekend III: June 9 & 10
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - Luo Vessels

Weekend IV: July 7 & 8
Saturday / Sunday - Channel Distinctions and Divergences

Weekend V: August 4 & 5
Saturday - Eight Extraordinary Vessels
Sunday - Clinical Application of the Channel Systems

Weekend III Details:
Day I: Primary Channels (Saturday)
The primary channels are responsible for generating and managing post-natal qi, which is a process without end (Lingshu, chapter 16). The continuous flow of cycles supports individual life, and this central idea is represented in the familiar “meridian time-clock” sequence of the primary channels (lung to liver). This well known sequence of external pathways was presented in the first half of chapter 10 of Lingshu; it provides rich theories of human life, including how individuals understand their experience (epistemology). We will discuss little-known energetics and the physiological process of this continuous sequence, including how it introduces the inherent challenges of individual life that eventually lead to pathology.

Day II: Luo Vessels (Sunday)
The luo vessels are introduced in the latter portion of Lingshu, chapter 10, as separations that allow individuals to maintain the continuous flow of qi in the primary channels in the face of unresolved stagnations. The embodied spirit “handles” unresolved emotional and spiritual conflict, by displacing and embedding these internal pathogenic factors (IPF’s) into physical humors, and storing them in the luo vessels as “storage reservoirs.”
The luo can also contain external pathogenic factors that the embodied spirit has successfully kept in the external anatomy, but failed to release or expel. Indeed, the entire system of luo vessels expresses shaoyang, as they all contain the residue of an embodied spirit’s indecisiveness (unfinished process) between the interior and the exterior, until that accumulation overwhelms the individual’s containment (in dormancy) to overflow back into the interior. While this common strategy allows the embodied spirit to “move on” to other experiences in the short-term, it does not eliminate the eventual need to address the individual’s unfinished (and thus unresolved) process.

FULL SERIES OPTIONS (best value)
Regular Price: $280 per weekend / $1400.00 total
w/ Faculty Discount: $84.00 per weekend / $420.00 total
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $224.00 per weekend / $1120.00 total

INDIVIDUAL WEEKEND OPTIONS
Regular Price: $320.00 per weekend
w/ Faculty Discount: $96.00 per weekend
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $256.00 per weekend

To register, contact Ali via email marketing@fivebranches.edu with Subject Line: "Channel Complexes of Acupuncture Registration" or via phone at (831) 476-9424.

In Medical Qigong IV, students are introduced to advanced Medical Qigong theories and clinical application. Topics include: energy purgation, tonification, regulation and cultivation, as well as the exercises and meditations used as homework prescriptions in the Medical Qigong clinical training. Other topics are: clinical protocols, combining Medical Qigong with other TCM modalities (acupuncture, massage, cupping, moxa and herbs), clinical ethics, clinical burnout, principles and parameters of Medical Qigong therapy, contraindications, and clinical observations of pathological energetic patterns, internal organ prescriptions, and Healing Sound Therapy. Upon completion of this course, students are ready to begin practicing on their own, utilizing Medical Qigong treatment protocols in combination with other TCM modalities, and empowering their patients by teaching them modified Qigong prescriptions to suit their personal needs.

To register, contact Ali at 831.476.9424 or email marketing@fivebranches.edu. Our online registration link will be posted shortly.

FBU is hosting a five part series with Steven Alpern, L.Ac. called Using the Channel Complexes of Acupuncture.

Series Details:
Weekend I: April 21 & 22
Saturday - Channel Sinews
Sunday: Discerning the World of Dao: Movement in Chinese Medicine

Weekend II: May 19 & 20
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - The Living Channel Complexes

Weekend III: June 9 & 10
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - Luo Vessels

Weekend IV: July 7 & 8
Saturday / Sunday - Channel Distinctions and Divergences

Weekend V: August 4 & 5
Saturday - Eight Extraordinary Vessels
Sunday - Clinical Application of the Channel Systems

Weekend IV Details:
While the channel distinctions and divergences (經 別, jingbie) are not an important part of modern acupuncture theory, they were central in the classical acupuncture theory of Neijing. Before the early Song Dynasty (circa 980 C.E.) when the Bronze Man was erected in the capital for all to see the organization of external pathways of the primary channels, the jingbie (經 別) were considered the subtle complex core of acupuncture. There are several references in both of those venerated texts and the Jiayijing (Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) of Huang Fumi (215-282 C.E.) that characterized the jingbie (經 別) as the most important system of channels, which ‘lower’ physicians ignore and ‘higher’ physicians understand are very difficult to grasp. This weekend seminar will introduce their important roles, and how individuals use them (physiologically and behaviorally) to support their lives.

As channel ‘distinctions,’ the jingbie (經 別) facilitate the primary channels in processing each individual’s large number of physical and experiential interactions. They contain each individual’s disposition or temperament, and project his or her core (unconscious) interpretations onto experience. While those habituated interpretations facilitate the individual in processing current experience, they also leave the embodied spirit with the unresolved qi and blood stagnations that arise, because circumstances and events don’t always flow as individuals wish. These channel distinctions also ‘contain’ and project onto the primary channels the individual’s specific ways of implementing each the primal movements of vital physiology.

As channel ‘divergences,’ the jingbie (經 別) absorb qi stagnation, including ‘excesses,’ such as struggle with unresolved pathogenic factors, from the primary channels. Their capacity to absorb and store those incipient stagnations in ‘dormancy’ allows individuals to sustain “apparent health” by putting their unresolved conflicts and struggles ‘into the closet’ rather than having to resolve them in real time. However, this capacity to suspend unresolved experience is limited, and storing accumulated stagnation exacts an ongoing ‘tax’ on the individual’s zheng-upright (正) qi.

Eventually, the individually embodied spirit is no longer willing or able to continue suspending unresolved pathogenic factors, so they overflow back into the primary channels, where they are finally expressed as the overt symptoms and of disease. While treating the primary channels may provide such patients temporary relief, it can only be temporary, because once cleared away the previously stored blockage will re-emerge to express itself overtly. Some clinicians call this process ‘bounce back,’ where patients’ symptoms improve for a short time with primary channel treatments, but then return in a few days or even hours.

Our brief exploration of the philosophical basis of the channel distinctions and divergences leads naturally into our discussion of their physiological functions, both as a group and individually. We will discuss the distinctive symptoms and clinical signs they express when in distress, and how these channels lead to a wide range of progressive and degenerative pathologies. The clinical practica for this weekend identify two key skills involved in treating patients with habituated constrictions and/or stored pathogenic factors in the jingbie (經 別) -- dredging them out from ‘storage’ and stimulating their release to the exterior. Once we understand this principle of dredging unresolved pathogenic factors that had ‘settled’ into one’s being, guasha may not be required to treating patients successfully.

Clinical Workshops Saturday: Gua-sha to ‘dredge’ the divergent zones -- be mindful this can be a deceptively powerful technique for some and others need very strong guasha to experience any movement. Sunday: Using pulse feedback to identify the “drain point” for a confluence looping method treatment strategy, and possibly clinical demonstration of channel divergence evaluation and treatment(s), local laws and patient availability permitting.

FULL SERIES OPTIONS (best value)
Regular Price: $280 per weekend / $1400.00 total
w/ Faculty Discount: $84.00 per weekend / $420.00 total
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $224.00 per weekend / $1120.00 total

INDIVIDUAL WEEKEND OPTIONS
Regular Price: $320.00 per weekend
w/ Faculty Discount: $96.00 per weekend
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $256.00 per weekend

FBU is hosting a five part series with Steven Alpern, L.Ac. called Using the Channel Complexes of Acupuncture.

Series Details:

Weekend II: May 19 & 20
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - The Living Channel Complexes

Weekend III: June 9 & 10
Saturday - Primary Channels/Vessels
Sunday - Luo Vessels

Weekend IV: July 7 & 8
Saturday / Sunday - Channel Distinctions and Divergences

Weekend V: August 4 & 5
Saturday - Eight Extraordinary Vessels
Sunday - Clinical Application of the Channel Systems

Weekend V Details:
Day I: The Eight Extraordinary Vessels (Saturday) The Eight Extraordinary Vessels provide the constitutional foundation for individual life. While they were mentioned in Neijing, during the classical period they were generally considered beyond the reach of therapies other than acceptance. Fifteen centuries later, during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), practitioners began systematically to explore clinical interventions for these fundamental vessels. We will discuss the meanings and functions of the pre-Heaven and post-Heaven vessels (the latter group has been further divided into 2nd and 3rd ancestries by this oral lineage), and how each supports an individual’s (post-natal) life. While this may appear solely philosophical theory, this discussion leads directly to the pathologies characteristically expressed by each of the Eight Extraordinary Vessels and their associated treatment strategies.

Day II: Clinical Integration of the Channel Complexes (Sunday)
This seminar is designed to help participants use the material presented during this series. The Neijing (Inner Classic) approach to acupuncture, focused on the five systems of channels and vessels, offers contemporary acupuncturists opportunities beyond modern acupuncture. We will review and refine the key principles of Neijing style acupuncture, based on treating channels rather than collections of points, and respond to questions that participants have developed during the program. Where local laws and regulations allow, Steven will evaluate and treat two or three sample patients, as clinical demonstrations. While those demonstrations may involve any of the five systems of channels, participants will likely be interested in focusing on the creative “story telling” process Steven uses in designing treatment strategies for the channel divergences or eight extraordinary vessels.

FULL SERIES OPTIONS (best value)
Regular Price: $280 per weekend / $1400.00 total
w/ Faculty Discount: $84.00 per weekend / $420.00 total
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $224.00 per weekend / $1120.00 total

INDIVIDUAL WEEKEND OPTIONS
Regular Price: $320.00 per weekend
w/ Faculty Discount: $96.00 per weekend
w/ FBU Student or Alumni Discount: $256.00 per weekend