Offers a 2 ½ year Graduate Mentorship Program
Taught by Sharon Weizenbaum
Program Details
This course is for students and practitioners who have completed or are soon to complete foundational Chinese herbal training.
During the program, students become involved in a community of practitioners and receive steady contact and in-depth involvement with the material and resources.
Overview
The program’s foundation is the clear and grounded diagnosis of our patients.
Most of our school training involves learning techniques, herbs, and formulas while not emphasizing our ability to see and synthesize the principal diagnosis that can unlock the knots of disharmony. We learn to gather information from our patients through various methods – touching, asking, seeing, and hearing. But we are not given a method to process this information to lead to precise and effective treatments. When our diagnosis is clear and well-articulated, determining the correct treatment follows seamlessly. Proper diagnosis is also our best way to ensure safety in our work. When we are confident that our diagnosis is correct, we can easily stand behind stronger and more focused methods, herbs and formulas. For this reason, during the first weekends of the Graduate Mentorship Program, the focus is on diagnostic skills.
Diagnose with Confidence
To diagnose confidently, one must begin with a proper understanding of physiology.
In the Graduate Mentorship Program, we learn physiology described by the organization of the medical classic, the Shang Han Lun. This physiology is not merely of the human body; it is the physiology of life and nature itself. It resonates with students because it echos our intuitive sense that this is how the body, the universe, and life work. Because it makes sense, it is easy to learn and forms a solid foundation for conducting a meaningful intake.
The intake is when we gather the information we need as practitioners. When we have a good understanding of physiology, our intake aims to see clearly and with certainty where the physiological function has become pathological. In the Graduate Mentorship Program, we will learn and practice the art of the intake, asking questions in ways you have not been previously taught to get to the correct diagnosis.
The diagnostic skills we learn involve grounding ourselves in what we know with certainty from our intake. While relaxing our habitual impulses to figure everything out, we experience the wonderful feeling of having the diagnosis reveal itself to us. We learn to identify and avoid common habits that throw us off track. We often use our minds to create a convincing story about the diagnosis, yet it is entirely wrong. How do we know when we are off track? This is what we will learn and practice. We will also learn a systematic method for integrating abdominal diagnosis, pulse, body type, and symptom presentation. Articulating a diagnosis, whether in terms of Zang Fu and disease factors (such as Yin deficiency, Qi stagnation, etc.) or in terms of Shang Han Lun key symptom presentations, it is essential to match the diagnosis to an appropriate herbal formula. In addition to articulating the diagnosis, we will learn to “see” the pattern and the key aspect to address to find the most optimal formula. We want to feel the accuracy of our diagnosis in our gut and to be able to explain easily what it is and how we came to it.
Clinical Practices
After developing these skills and beginning to work them into our clinical practices during the first three modules, we bring these skills to various areas of medicine. We will focus on applying classic formulas from Shang Han Lun and Jin Gui Yao Lüe. This text and the formulas describe the complete cycle of Yang dynamics, which is the dynamic movement of the life force itself. Understanding the structure of these classical texts is essential for a Chinese herbalist as this structure is a map of the physiology of human beings and the cosmos at large. Once we grasp this notion, the formulas make sense on an entirely different and much more functional level. So much of Chinese medicine falls into place once these dynamics are understood.
Depending Our Understanding
After deepening our understanding of the spirit and emotional disorders, we move into and study women’s health. This section is particularly in-depth and covers menstrual illnesses of all kinds, vaginal and breast issues, and fertility. From fertility, we move to pregnancy, labor, and postpartum issues.
Other areas we bring our newfound diagnostic expertise to are colds, flu, respiratory disorders, digestive disorders, pain disorders, metabolic, autoimmune issues, and cancer support. You will become very skilled at treating these conditions.
All students are invited to have an individual mentoring session with Sharon over Skype or Zoom during the program.
Additional Opportunities and Support
- Each student is assigned a TA who will be working with you on diagnosis and formula choice skill development through the program
- Your TA will also help you transform a case from your practice using the diagnostic process outlined in the program. Sharon will review this case and your process in a way that will tremendously help you hone your skills.
- Each student has the opportunity to have a private mentoring session with Sharon
- Each student has access to our student library, which is full of additional resources.
Handouts
PDF handouts created from the slide presentations will be uploaded in the handout section on the menu at the top of the online classroom streaming page a day before the start of class. Given that slides are not ideal for compiling notes, a handout summary is also given for taking notes and creating notebooks of the material.
