Chinese Medicine Notes

Shen-Hammer Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis Seminar

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Yael

The pulse is probably one of the most important assets for a practitioner.
We have a number of tools to diagnose, but it seems that most people agree that the pulse will remain a key tool.
Of course, it is very difficult to master. Some say that it takes about 10 years of practice to start figuring out all the nuances.

One of the practitioners who teach the pulse is Dr. Leon Hammer.
Dr. Hammer himself might not teach anymore, but he has students to carry the torch and pass on the valuable information.
One of those students is Ross Rosen, who had a guest post about Chinese pulse diagnosis in CMNotes last year.
Ross will be teaching a Shen-Hammer Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis Seminar on November, in NJ.
I am attaching all the details for you below.
If you get a chance, if you can get to NJ, studying more about the pulse is always a good thing.

The class details:
Dates:  November 21 and 22
Times: 9am – 5pm
Location:  Center for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine, 166 Mountain Ave, Westfield, NJ 07090
Cost:  $300
CEUs/PDAs:  16
Registration:  email rossrosen@gmail.com and send check made payable to ‘Ross Rosen’ to the above address.
Instructor:  Ross Rosen, JD, MSOTM, LAc, CA, Dipl OM (NCCAOM)

Ross Rosen is one of a small group of close students of Dr. Leon Hammer and a certified teacher in Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis.  He works closely with Dr. Hammer on a regular ongoing basis.

Ross Rosen…is a valued instructor of and a direct inheritor of my work and teaching. He is extremely observant and creative in his work, adding to our accumulated knowledge more than any other associate. Of great value is his ability to formulate the essence of Chinese medicine in simple terms accessible to the average person. Chinese medicine at its best, as practiced by Ross Rosen, is capable of discerning the disease process at a very early stage before it manifests an illness, therefore preventing disease, and above all capable of delineating and treating the individual who has the disease.

 –Dr. Leon Hammer

Ross has published numerous articles on CCPD, which can be accessed at his blog.

The class will introduce the major concepts of CCPD, the Principle and 22 Complementary pulse positions and the most commonly encountered pulse qualities, clinical significance and some interpretation and much more.  70% of class will be dedicated to hands-on pulse instruction and training.  Those attending will leave the weekend with a body of knowledge and skills readily and immediately transferable into one’s clinical practice.

Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis™ (hereinafter “CCPD”) is a sophisticated system of diagnostics which relies on the subtleties of the sensations, qualities and structure of the radial artery at both wrists. Heavily steeped in ancient wisdom and classical pulse diagnosis dating back thousands of years, CCPD breaks out of the dogma of pulse systems that in many respects are not relevant to the present day and age. CCPD provides insight into the modern diseases and constitutional imbalances that affect modern man in an industrial world.

CCPD, while having its roots in classical pulse systems, was significantly adapted by Dr. John H.F. Shen over the course of his long and well renowned career having seen hundreds of thousands of patients. After an intensive apprenticeship with Dr. Shen over a period of 28 years, Dr. Leon Hammer took on the arduous task of codifying and continuing the evolution of this pulse system.

The intricacies of CCPD are complex and require significant amounts of hands on training with a certified teacher to fully learn. Essentially, however, information is synthesized from the combinations of various qualities felt at the six principle pulse positions and the twenty two complementary positions, as well as the qualities perceived uniformly over the entire pulse and at each of the requisite depths. Integrating the information from these seemingly disparate parts, one is able to arrive at a complex diagnosis which prioritizes levels of imbalances of not just the symptomatic representations, but more importantly the root causes of disease.

Incorporating concepts and clinical realities that have not been diagnosed by any diagnostic methods in Chinese medicine, CCPD is truly a treasure which can change the lives of patients. By incorporating a precise measure of a healthy balanced pulse, even the subtlest deviations from this norm can be detected, thus establishing its importance not only in treating disease, but also as a preventative medicine.