Bob Quinn Seminars

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

The Value of A Master

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

Iwashina Anryu Sensei just returned to Japan after teaching at the end of April here In Portland, OR. He is called Dr. Bear, a name given him by Native Americans in the late 1980s in recognition of his unique healing skills. Here’s how he was given the name: A Native contingent was in Japan for an anti-nuclear march, and one of their leaders had a severe asthma attack. He had such relief from Mr. Iwashina’s treatment that a few days later in a full-moon ceremony he and others in the group honored Mr. Iwashina and bestowed the name Dr. Bear on him. They said he practiced “bear medicine.” He has used the name proudly ever since. Dr. Bear has many times visited Sundance ceremonies and delivered free treatments to all in need and has also worked in Native clinics when he has visited the Bay Area.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Three-Legged Stool

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

One can sit on a one-legged stool; it is a bit of a balancing act, but it is possible. A two- legged is a bit easier but also not really so relaxing. It is not until one gets three legs on the stool that real comfort and stability is possible. The triangle is after all the smallest stable structure in nature. This is a big part of what Buckminster Fuller used to formulate his ideas on how the universe works.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

The Field

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

“The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.”
Albert Einstein

I tried last year to write about fields and acupuncture but was unhappy with the result, so I did not submit it anywhere to be published. In October I taught Sotai with Jeffrey Dann, Ph.D. at the Zen Shiatsu Chicago Conference (Sotai was well received—it was an honor to work with Jeffrey). In that conference Michael DeAgro, a well regarded shiatsu practitioner and psychotherapist, taught two days on his approach to the sinew channels. He brought in an element of “spatial awareness” that he had picked up in his Zen and Quantum Shiatsu studies with Pauline Sasaki. I will not go into what this means right now other than to say it once again ignited my interest in exploring this concept of “fields.”

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Cordyceps

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

In the winter of 1997 I drove home from night class at OCOM where I was working on my master’s degree. That evening we had studied the yang tonics. The last one we had talked about was cordyceps. It was a substance I was familiar with already since I was working in a Chinese herb company that imported a few tons of the stuff every year and sold it to manufacturers. But here I was studying it in a more focused way, reading Bensky and listening to the teacher. When I drove home I flipped on the TV; it was set to the public television channel. The very first image that popped up on the screen was of a Tibetan woman carefully digging up cordyceps. Fascinating timing. I take note of synchronicities of this sort and took it here to mean that cordyceps would play a key role in my professional life, and that has been the case.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Tool Quality

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

I have quite a collection of shonishin tools. I use them in my classes to show possibilities, but in actual practice there are only a few I use again and again in my actual treatments. Students always ask how important it is to have an expensive teishin or other tools. (A teishin is one of the nine classical needles mentioned in the Ling Shu—it is about the size and shape of a toothpick, some bigger and some smaller than that.)

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Moxa – An Art

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

I taught a class on moxa this morning at NUNM in Portland, OR where I am employed as an instructor. It is always gratifying to open the “moxa door” to another group of practitioners. I myself waited probably 5-7 years after I acquired my license before I brought in moxa in a meaningful way. For the sake of my earlier patients I wish I had begun earlier, because I now see moxa as almost indispensable. It does something that needles cannot do (of course the reverse is true as well, what needles do cannot be done with moxa).

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Mentorship

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

Training under a mentor has long been a part of Chinese medicine. It is in the clinic that we learn how the theoretical side of Chinese medicine gets put into action. This past weekend I had an opportunity to see how this plays out for the fortunate ones who have access to such a mentor.

On Saturday and Sunday I hosted Junko Shuto, the daughter of the most famous traditional pediatric specialist in Japan, Masanori Tanioka, Junko sensei brought three of her students with her, and it was evident in their skill demonstrations that the long-term contact with a talented mentor has benefitted them enormously. Junko herself gives 500- 600 pediatric treatments every month and has been doing this for 30+ years; I doubt anyone in the US has treated even half this many. It is difficult for us to duplicate this mentor-student system in the US for a few reasons, the most obvious and important of which is that we lack sufficient senior practitioners with enough experience.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Direct Moxa In The Treatment of Chronic Lyme Disease

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

Many people have by now read the extremely helpful material (literally life-saving for some patients) put out by Heiner Fruehauf, Ph.D. on the treatment of Gu syndrome. This was discussed in my last blog. Chronic Lyme disease is, in his opinion (and mine at this point), a modern instance of this ancient syndrome. Always the focus in Heiner’s material is herbal medicine. Here I want to briefly mention how direct half-rice grain moxa (or smaller) can be used to help these chronic Lyme patients.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

The Hobgoblin of Dose

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

A year ago I gave a Scholar’s Hour talk at NUNM in Portland, OR with this—The Hobgoblin of Dose—as the working title. I want to come back to this topic in this blog post, in part because I am working on a review of Stephen Birch’s new edition of Shonishin, and in this book he gives a great presentation of Dr. Yoshio Manaka’s dose model, but also because of a recent interaction with a patient, an interaction I have experienced many times with many patients over the years. By the way, I recommend this new edition of Shonishin—it is an improvement on a book that was already stellar.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Defending What Is Sacred

“Our problems are so complex that only a truly simple solution will do.”
Jiddhu Krishnamurti

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
R. Buckminster Fuller

The radical theologian-ecologist Matthew Fox tells of having a dream long ago in which a voice tells him that the only problem humans have is that they have lost a sense of the sacred. This is surprising. I would have thought we had a lot of big problems, not just one. When I contemplated the message of his dream, it demanded a reorganization of my typical thought process. Could this be true? Only one problem?