I am in Massachusetts and have just came from the clinical integration class with Lonny Jarrett. People have asked why I travel all the way from Colorado for a dozen weekends over two years to study with a Jewish guy in rural New England.
I have been studying and practicing Chinese medicine for almost twenty years. I was first exposed to acupuncture when I was learning martial arts and a senior student of Tung Kai Ying was an acupuncturist who helped me out when I was injured. It seemed to me like magic at the time, a miracle that pain could disappear from the insertion of needles and some earthy smelling Chinese liniment.
For many years, I pursued that magic and promise of Chinese Medicine, studying in Asia, studying at Taoist Monasteries, seeking out masters of the medicine and honing my skills over tens of thousands of patients.
The interesting part of it is after so many years of practice, I realized that the gap of what I was missing from the medicine more and more. In the past couple of years, when my clinic moved into the same building as The Integral Center, my view of human development became more complex and nuanced. I really wanted to embrace the medicine I practiced in way that embraced human development and did more that just treat pain and other health problems. That saw the actual problems in health as vital evolutionary indicators of where a person could engage their further development.
When I read Lonny's book Nourishing Destiny, I realized that folks were engaged in that conversation and it so happened to be in a small community in Western Massachusetts.
These last two years, I am proud to have engaged with devoted students of Chinese Medicine in asking the deeper questions about what it means to practice and to be challenged in a way by Lonny's teaching to embrace Chinese medicine in the deepest of ways. Lonny asks for a devotion to the medicine in a way that I have always sought and is incredibly generous in his willingness to answer the most difficult questions.
If you have been impacted by my practice and are studying Chinese medicine, I can not recommend his Clinical Integration class with enough praise to do it justice. Lonny transcended the magic I was seeking in the medicine and included it with a greater path of seeing the medicine as one of the most powerful tools of assisting in human development.
Marco Lam, LAc.
BOULDER ACUPUNCTURE