Developing Your Qi and Using It in the Clinic: From Personal Practice to Treating Patients

Taught by 25 year China Veteran Andrew Nugent-Head, this Seminar is 'Module 1' of ATS' collaboration with the Tri State College of Acupuncture in New York City to offer a 300 hour post graduate course: Acupuncture in Orthopedics and Rehabilitation. Please visit www.tsca.edu to sign up for the complete program, or contact  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to register for one individual seminar.

Mistakenly thought of as ‘energy’ in the West, Qi has many different meanings in Chinese. First by explaining what Qi literally means in Chinese language and cultural usages, and then by contrasting it with current English translations, Andrew Nugent-Head creates a clear understanding of what Qi is and isn’t from the Chinese perspective. Participants then integrate this clear understanding with real experience by learning the Eight Storing Qi & Developing Sensitivity Exercises. These are the foundation practices of the Yin Style Bagua medical tradition, which reached its peak in the Qing Dynasty court at the end of the 19th century. They bring the practitioner's awareness to the Qi within their own body and then increase, store and move Qi within the body. This is followed by demonstration of affecting Qi in other people, critical to testing and strengthening one's own practice.Taking this skill into the clinic and to the treatment of your patients is what defines Classical Chinese Medicine. The patient has to tangibly feel the Qi, and the practitioner must be able to tangibly control the Qi. To do so means not just having a personal practice like the Eight Storing Qi & Developing Sensitivity Exercises, it means understanding the issues involved with affecting Qi in others within the context of Chinese medicine and internal cultivation. After learning the subtle hand, breath and body skills necessary to generate obvious Qi sensations at specific points and along the channels, participants pair up for partnered practice. A person skilled in these techniques should be able to create an intentional, obvious and controllable sensation in 8 out of 10 people.

Integrating this understanding into the clinic means understanding how to channel this skill through a needle or into a bodywork technique. The tangible manipulation of Qi must be organic, built into every part of the treatment a practitioner gives in whatever circumstances are present. It must be a natural extension of the practitioner, not a complicated state to achieve. Participants are challenged to develop a flexibility of application, realizing that tangibly affecting Qi in a patient is not the end goal of the treatment, but the starting place. Manipulating Qi is not a high skill secretly passed on but a simple ability once commonly shared by all practitioners. Demonstrating with acupuncture and bodywork, Andrew Nugent-Head walks participants through each stage of the process to completely demystify the use of Qi.Finally, participants will end by revisiting the Eight Storing Qi and Developing Sensitivity Practices from the perspective of tangibly manipulating Qi in patients. Aside from personal development, which of the practices train what clinical techniques? How can I integrate the practices within my treatment strategies? With these questions answered, participants will have the information and techniques needed to approach every clinical situation from a foundation of Qi.

All seminars include partnered practice and guided practice time using both needles and bodywork.

This three day intensive seminar is followed by Grand Rounds focusing on applying the content covered this seminar. In Grand Rounds, Andrew treats actual patients in a clinical situation while talking about his treatment methods and accepting questions from the group during the process. The Grand Rounds Clinic features an overhead camera broadcast to monitors for the audience to follow his hand and needling techniques clearly.

Teaching Daoyin Health Practices to Patients:
Each morning, participants learn and practice the Eight Healing Sounds from the Yin Style Bagua Tradition, then each afternoon teach them to actual patients in the TSCA community clinic under Andrew' supervision. Taught to patients at the end of a treatment session to dramatically speed their healing process, each Sound affects a different organ and is prescribed individually or in combination in the same manner as herbs.