During the second Israeli Congress of Chinese Medicine (ICCM), we had a lecture and seminar with Barbara Kirschbaum.
If there will ever be a need to describe the term “cool chick”, Barbara Kirschbaum would easily be the first candidate that comes to my mind.

As fate wanted it, I suddenly found myself on a lunch date with Barbara.
I already had my lunch and Barbara had a bit of salad, black coffee and a cigarette.
Very quickly I asked her the question that she probably heard a thousand times: how did you come to be an expert on tongue diagnosis? You wake up one morning and decide that this is the way to go?
Of course the answer to that second part is no, and she told me the short version of the story- becoming an expert on tongue diagnosis came from her practice, she checks the pulse too but relays on the veins under the tongue, she has ten of thousands pictures of tongues from her clinic, she thinks the tongue diagnosis is much more accurate than the pulse diagnosis, the way that tongue diagnosis is being taught around the world is wrong, the very little attention the tongue diagnosis receives throughout the world is very wrong, and she stumbled upon Chinese Medicine almost by accident- she was a television engineer, and on one journey near Tibet, a monk told her she should quite simply that she was meant to work in Chinese Medicine.

Barbara is a very pleasant person.
She really doesn’t want to bother you too much, all she really wants is to get to the beach and surf.
I don’t know much about surfing but I do know that Barbara Kirschbaum’s lectures are fascinating. Her ability to talk about tongue diagnosis for hours makes on wonder about the quality of that lecture, but her captivating spirit, her energy and smart observation at CM makes her lectures a real treasure.
One is able to be at a lecture and apply the information the very next day at the clinic.
As one woman on in the congress told me “I just listened to Barbara for 4 hours. If she’d talk another 6 hours, I’d be listening and writing every word. She’s amazing”.

So if you get the chance to attend a lecture or a seminar with Barbara Kirschbaum- grab it with both hands.
You will not be sorry.

Barbara Kirschbaum wrote the Atlas of Chinese Tongue Diagnosis, volumes 1 and 2.
To read Peter Deadman’s review on the books click here.
You can purchase the books at Peter Deadman’s JCM website (click on the above link), or through Amazon by clicking here.