some advice for new practitioners

There are two things that you should remember, the first mistake most beginners make is to over treat their patients. Especially when the patient presents with a complex set of symptoms and multiple complaints, the typical response is to do a little of everything in the hopes of making a change somewhere, somehow. I noticed this was particularly true of recent graduates who are instilled with TCM differential diagnosis. It looks like there is a little Blood Stagnation, a little Liver Qi Stagnation, a  little Qi Deficiency, and so forth. It is difficult for them to arrive at a single root cause. This is where establishing the root deficiency through Japanese pulse diagnosis will simplify the entire process.

  In fact, the best approach with complex patients is to do less than you would with a relatively healthier patient. Here, one should do a root treatment (treat the basic deficiency) and perhaps some light stroking techniques or other over-all tonification, sometimes known as TaiKyoku or Tai Qi treatment.

  Consider it this way, a patient with multiple issues has had years of deterioration of their health for various reasons such as poor diet, poverty, lack of exercise, hard work, western medications and inherited problems. You can’t expect their already over worked and exhausted body functions to accept and translate multiple and often confusing messages created by over needling.  With a small dose and a simple tonification, we have a much better chance that the patient’s metabolism will respond. Most of the time, over treatment will result in exhausting the patient, aggravate the symptoms, or cause a healing crisis.

  The second thing to remember is that a light treatment always helps. If you succeed in producing even a minor positive change in that patient, they will return and you can make gradual progress. On the other hand, if that patient has a negative reaction to your treatment, they will not return. On the second or third treatment, you can begin to add points for pain and other symptoms, but continue to be on the lighter side of things.

  I hope this is helpful information for you. You can give me feedback by email.

Thanks so much,
Carl