There are 3 things you need when you open your clinic:

1. You really need to know what you’re doing.
2. A place for your clinic.
3. Patients.

Assuming you have the first 2 things, you need to work hard on getting patients.
I already presented a way to market yourself- Never Market Again by Burton Kent provides you with good ideas and strategy to market yourself and get those patients into your clinic.
One of the things Burton talks about, and I feel is a very important thing to have, is a website.

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It’s a bit early in the week for weekly links.
I figured that since I’ve been so behind on my posts, the least I can do is make a special list, hoping that next week will mark my return to routine.

When I finished school, I knew that I mainly want to help women who went through a sexual trauma.
I have no doubt in my mind that Chinese Medicine, especially when you understand the 5 Elements at it’s deepest levels, I know it can help those women understand the trauma better and all it’s affects on their lives.
So I was very happy to read Abdallah Stickley’s post about PTSD, Heart Disease and Acupuncture, which was posted on Abdallah’s blog Even Unto China. As PTSD has a lot to do with sexual trauma, understanding what PTSD can do to a person is highly important during treatment.

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It was a bit difficult to write this month.
The family was sick, the nanny is here only 1 day a week, grandma had a little operation on her foot- all of this left me with 99% of my time as a mommy and 1% of my time as an independent small business.
No, these are not excuses, but they are the explanations I have for not writing as much as I would like to.

Baby Healing tells the tale of my boy being ill and all of the things it brought up in me, including my own illness…

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When I first started studying Chinese Medicine, I hated the thought of using needles.
“I will use only acupressure” was my constant thought.
The 2nd year came rather quickly after the 1st year (it’s only natural I guess),  and I quickly understood that there’s no way I will not use acupuncture.
Two things helped me to understand this:
1. The power of the most delicate touch on the right point at the right time.
2. The acupuncture sessions I started to take with a healer, who quickly became my mentor.
So my fear- if you can call it a fear- of needles vanished and never returned.
It didn’t return when I started to have friends as patients. It didn’t return even when family members were forced to become needle-cushions on my 3rd year (”dad, it’s for a good cause!”).
And it didn’t return when I finished my 4 years and had my clinic growing steadily.

Recently I told you about my son being ill.
One of my biggest frustrations is that when it comes to my husband, my ability to diagnose is blurry, but I manage. When it comes to my son- I am completely clueless and have no re-collection what so ever about Chinese Medicine and it’s ability to help people.
Strange isn’t it?

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I was very sad to read just now about Randy Pausch, who passed away today, July 25th, at the age of 47.
Randy battled cancer in a very brave way. He chose to talk about life and to celebrate it with his family.
He held “The Last Lecture“, which was supposed to be for his young children, but it turned out to influence over 6 million people around the world, thanks to YouTube.
You can now find the book, titled The Last Lecture, which can easily sit next to Tuesdays With Morrie in our private library.

What Randy talks about is not directly Chinese Medicine, but it has a lot to do with the human spirit.
It’s a good book and lecture to refer people to when they face situations similar to Randy’s, or different situations but they are still in need of a fresh look on life.
Randy does not talk about anything new, but the way that he does it is fresh, warm and beautiful.

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It’s been a while since the last weekly links was posted.
Things are still a bit messy when I look at my work-time, but hopefully this will change a bit next week and will change more dramatically as August unfolds.
Thank you all for your patience, it is very appreciated!

Acupuncture Today is a website that always leaves me a bit confused. When I look at the website, I can obviously see a lot of information. But then a closer look at some of those articles makes me wonder about the editor’s guidelines. Maybe this happens because I tend to be less TCM, or maybe it has to do with different strokes, but I always get that confused feeling after visiting the website.
2 articles caught my eye on the recent newsletter from AT:

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I guess you know by now that I am a Chinese Medicine books fan.
I now have less time for it, but during my school years, I used to read a lot about Chinese Medicine.
I find these books to be very enjoyable, and also a wonderful way to learn on my own. This is not to say that books are better than practice- not at all- but this is only another way for me to say, that even if you are a practitioner for the past 20 years- don’t stop reading.
It is so important!

Chinese Medicine books are expensive.
But there are ways to find some goodies (and by goodies I mean Chinese Medicine books that their price won’t kill our bank accounts). Yes, I know, it’s rare. I still think that buying a new Chinese Medicine book every now and then is important, and it is for a good cause.
When ordering from on-line book stores, one should consider the fees of shipping, and make sure that if you order from the Internet it doesn’t amount to more than what you can find in a store near you.

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Heiner Fruehauf has to be one of the most interesting people in the field of Chinese Medicine today.
His knowledge of Chinese philosophy is like nothing I’ve ever seen before, and I only witnessed 3 lectures by him. But the amount of information that I have from my notes, and the information that keeps echoing even now, almost 4 months after the lectures, makes me realize that I indeed was in the presence of one of the great people in our beautiful field.
Ah, if I could only move Portland Oregon to Israel…

Classical Pearls is a new product line by Heiner Fruehauf, Chinese herbal formulas, based on Fruehauf’s experience and vast knowledge of classical texts. As stated on the Classical Pearls website: “It is the mission of Classical Pearls to launch a return to the classical and clinic-based roots of Chinese herbal medicine”.
Based on classical texts, but these formulas are well adjusted to treat conditions we face in our clinic on a regular basis.

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I am writing this post on very few hours of sleep, sour throat and an over-all fuzzy feeling in the brain.
Therefore, this post might come out a bit different than usual.

My son is 18 months’ as of last week.
He was having a very bad birthday week, and the worse part of it all was being infected by a virus while waiting at the doctor’s office (how I hate when that happens!).
So what started with general discomfort bloomed into mouth ulcers, low fever and pain.
Poor babe!

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What a busy month this was!

We kicked things off with a bit of advice for all you students out there.
7 Techniques to Study For Exams in Chinese Medicine offers some of the tips that helped me during my studies, I hope that you’ll find them helpful too.

I was very happy to bring you my interview with Phillippe Sionneau, a practitioner from France who has a lot of experience with herbs- he also wrote a number of books and many articles and he gives lectures all over Europe and the USA.

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