Puzzling Through Saam Acupuncture – Questions, Clinic Cases, Organ Archetypes and Getting Out of Hot Water

Aug 14, 2018 | Qiologician Podcasts

Puzzling Through Saam Acupuncture - Questions, Clinic Cases, Organ Archetypes and Getting Out of Hot Water

by Michael Max | With Guest Toby Daly

This “part two” conversation with Toby Daly came about because I've been trying to learn the Saam system of acupuncture as he detailed it a recent Journal of Chinese Medicine article. 
 
In that process I've had some surprising good results, as well as a few cases that I really took in the wrong direction. 
Toby points out, when you get it wrong, it's really wrong and you'll know pretty quickly. Unless you're still fairly new at it and not yet tuned into the warning signs of trouble. 
 
This discussion comes from my own clinic experience with trying to learn the diagnostics and how to tune my clinical thinking. 
Toby really makes the Saam perspective come alive with relevant clinical examples as he helps me to “correct my errors in the forest of medicine.”
 
If you have an interest in employing this powerful method of acupuncture, pull out a notebook and pen, because you are going to want to take notes!

 

In This Conversation We Discuss:

  • Images and symbols to help navigate the channels
  • Archetypes of the organ systems
  • Climatic resonance of the organs/channels
  • A helpful clinical rule of thumb is tonify the deficient channel. Add that they don’t have or are lacking. 
  • How to recognize and reverse a mistake in treatment

I began studying Chinese medicine in 1997 with Sunim Doam a Korean monk trained in the Saam tradition. I earned a master's degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine in 2002 upon completion of training at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Francisco and Chengdu University in China.

During my four years of training in San Francisco, I interned with Dr. Angela Wu who taught me how to apply the lofty theories I was studying in school into the pragmatic setting of a busy clinic. She also taught me how to eat an entire cheesecake in one sitting! In 2013, I developed the Chinese Nutritional Strategies app to provide digital access to the wealth of Chinese dietary wisdom. In 2016, proving once again that some people never learn, I completed a PhD in Classical Chinese Medicine under the guidance of 88th generation Daoist priest Jeffery Yuen.