Are you feeling the stress from upcoming holiday travel, maybe dreading interacting with that least favorite family member in the next couple of weeks? This has come up a lot in interactions with patients and (especially female) friends this week. ​

Dr. Yongxin Fan is an accomplished instructor of traditional Chinese tuina. He practiced and taught as an attending medical doctor and instructor at the Acupuncture Institute at the Chinese National Academy of TCM and at the Beijing International Acupuncture Training Center. A member of AOBTA, Yongxin Fan has lectured and worked as a visiting professor in Holland, Germany, and Japan. He has more than 16 years of clinical experience and his research has been published in the National Journal of TCM.
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He specializes in applying an integrated therapy consisting of acupuncture, herbs, and tuina to treat various pain syndromes, including acute and chronic articulation and muscle injury lumbago, recovery from fractures, and headaches. Such integrative treatment is a hallmark of his approach to common ailments such as stress, allergies, insomnia, and gastrointestinal disorders. Fan has been on the faculty at AOMA since 2002.

If you’re in the Austin area, then you definitely know that we are smack in the middle of summer season. Summers in Austin tend to be incredibly hot and humid. This year has brought warm temperatures and abundant rainfall. My tomatoes, mugwort and jalapeños are loving it, while I am left to sweat continuously until October arrives.
Patients often want to know how to best eat along with the season. One of the tenants of TCM philosophy is to live in harmony with your surroundings. What may be appropriate for Austin might not be the best for someone in Arizona. What may be best for a peri-menopausal woman might not be best for a 12 year old boy. While everyone is different, there are some guidelines that apply to most you can follow to make summer a little more bearable!

Flora-Joan and Michael Silvester van der Giessen are an inseparable pair of creatives who now have been working together for over fifteen years. Recently the couple introduced themselves to the world of 'the healing arts' through the Nature of the Points project (N.O.T.P).
Flora grew up in a family of acupuncturists and this shaped her art and identity. A professional cultivation of this upbringing became a beautiful addition to her curriculum after she herself graduated from the academy as an acupuncturist where she works as a clinical assistant).
Prepping the students for their exams gave her a good indication how mnemonic devices could help with learning the name, the meaning and function of each point. The couple is reverse-engineering this insight into easy to consume memory aids for students.

Flora believes that exemplifying the nature of the points may invigorate a practitioner's art and could inspire a patient's interest in the waiting room, as a bonus.

Qi stagnation is a common diagnosis in any modern clinic, with the stressors of daily life making us all a little more stressed, achy from hour-long commutes, and irritable to be around.
An easy way to visually think of qi stagnation, is as the movement of water in a stream. If you think of a stream that stops flowing or of an eddy, the water might start to get cloudy. It might smell a little muddled - that “old water smell.” Algae might grow more abundantly. Sticks and litter may collect there. When you have a stream that is full and moving continuously, there’s no time for the water to get cloudy. Any disturbances from hiking through or an animal digging something up, will be easily be carried downriver.