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What Chip has done is really far more profound than simply offering new treatment strategies.

Recently White Pine Institute hosted a weekend course with Chip Chace entitled “Opening to the Source”.   I will let Chip speak for himself through this short introduction but also want to give readers a sense of what Chip is teaching and its value.  This course was a success on many levels.  It filled to capacity (capacity being 12 participants) and my impression is that each student got at least what they came for out of the weekend if not much more.  It was nice for me to be taking an acupuncture course, especially of such high caliber, after years now of focusing on herbal medicine. The course was a good balance between didactic and experiential.

Chip taught for two days on the material he has been honing and integrating for many years.  Based in part on the newly published text An Exposition on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels: Acupuncture, Alchemy, and Herbal Medicine,written by Chip with Miki Shima, he taught us to think of the extraordinary vessels in ways that are both classically rooted as well as fresh and new.   The text is based on Li Shi Zhen’s writings on the nature and use of the extraordinary vessels and goes far beyond the master/couple points of modern times.  Though we did learn to apply abdominal diagnosis in determining the most available of the eight vessels to treat and we did learn many new and interesting methods and points for accessing these vessels, this was really just the nuts and bolts. What Chip has done is really far more profound than simply offering new treatment strategies.

Chip’s careful and thoughtful attention to some of the subtler points with the text, brings out and highlights an aspect of the extraordinary vessels we don’t usually consider.  This is the relationship of the vessels to what Chip terms “dynamic stillness”.  In a sense, this quality that we can learn to recognize, cultivate and access is the quality that allows for integration and healing.  Chip shows us step by step how the text is pointing to and articulating this and takes us step by step into the experience of this dynamic stillness.  Really, it’s just very very cool.  Again, click here for an introduction in Chip’s own words.

Chip will be offering this course again through Bastyr University next month and I highly recommend it.  For information about this course click here.