About Steven
Steven Alpern, L.Ac., practices acupuncture and Chinese medicine as applied clinical philosophy. He is also a teacher, author and speaker. His efforts to discern the nature of individual health draw upon the classics of Chinese medicine and several historical traditions and specialties. Learn more...Subscribe by Email
Category Archives: Personal
IVAS Rocks!
Thank you all for a wonderful 37th annual conference! A special thank you to Vikki Weber, executive director of IVAS (International Veterinary Acupuncture Society). It appears that I’ve finally been discovered for my unique contributions to the field of Chinese medicine. Is it strange that these enthusiastic doctors are Veterinarians, and that I’ve never treated [...]
Also posted in Scientific Medicine, The Philosopher's Stone Tagged classical acupuncture, embodied spirit, essays, IVAS, Veterinary acupuncture 2 Comments
Focus Health & Wellness Educational Symposium
While my domicile remains in Sonora, I haven’t been focused on the local community since closing the Healing Center of the Sierra several years ago. I’ve cut back my practice quite dramatically, so I could focus more intensively on my researches into classical Chinese medicine, and work on various writing projects. Some of those writings [...]
Busy, Busy, Busy
I haven’t quit blogging. In fact, I have A LOT of ideas I want to explore in this venue. This past month has just been AMAZINGLY busy.I hope to return to blogging CCM at least a couple times per week, even though I have many other things on my platter. In addition to me ongoing [...]
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Lessons from the River
My brief hiatus from blogging has come during a Colorado river trip through the Grand Canyon from Lees Ferry to Phantom Ranch. It was a GREAT trip, but alas I wasn’t well prepared with a backlog of posts to publish while I was out of contact! While I was hiking out of the wondrous canyon, [...]
Posted in Personal 2 Comments
Teaching the Soul of Classical Chinese Medicine
Give a man a fish to feed him for a day; teach him to fish to feed him for a lifetime! I’m committed to sharing the wealth of classical Chinese medicine, which I’ve been able to learn through the generous teachings of Jeffrey Yuen. Yet, Jeffrey doesn’t make it easy – The sage is not [...]
Is Health Care Against Society?
I ran into an old friend at the grocery store a couple days ago. We greeted each other warmly, after not seeing each other for several years. Matt is a medical doctor, specifically a radiologist, who was one of few medical professionals in our small rural California town to accept my efforts practicing Chinese medicine [...]
Also posted in Health Care Policy Tagged health care revolution, normative standards Leave a comment
Practicing Health Care
A few weeks ago, I taught a weekend continuing education seminar for acupuncturists on the channel divergences, which have central importance for both understanding and reversing progressive and degenerative disease. Early in that seminar, I posed the following question, which I believe lay deep in the soul of many health care practitioners: Do you want [...]
Also posted in Channel Divergences and Distinctions, Health Care Policy Tagged embodied spirit, healing process 2 Comments
To Publish or Not to Publish?
That is the question. It’s particularly salient for me, as my own editor and publisher of this site. I’m wanting to make good use of my precious time and energy, and have bit into a REALLY BIG project — trying to share a worldview about health and healing that’s profoundly different from our modern “knowledge.” [...]
Is it a Fairy Tale?
The conceptual model of physical “reality” articulated by modern scientific medicine is powerful and compelling. It appeals to our naïve experience of living in, and learning to manipulate, a mechanistic physical world that submits to our control according to fixed “laws of nature.” The ideas of scientific medicine are deeply satisfying to many, especially relative [...]
Also posted in Personal Health, The Philosopher's Stone Tagged chronic disease, Jeffrey Yuen's teachings, progressive/degenerative disease 1 Comment
Wonders Never Cease!