Sotai – Bob Quinn Seminars

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Movement

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

As I write this I have just left a unique class we offer at NUNM in Portland, OR: Advanced Palpation and Perception is what we call it. I co-teach it with another colleague, Michael McMahon. There is a basic idea we pursue in this class, and it is that manual therapy has an important role in the practice of acupuncture. We study the integration of Sotai, myofascial release, qigong tuina, teishin use, Trager rocking, and assorted acupuncture strategies. The result is that students enter their internship year well equipped to help patients with diverse physical medicine complaints.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Bob Quinn

Autumn

Here in Portland, Oregon even though our days are still warm, it is clear that we find ourselves firmly in autumn—fall air feels so different from summer air. The kids are back in school, and next week my teaching duties start again at NUNM with a new cohort of students eager to make Chinese medicine their career. There is a great poem from Rainer Maria Rilke that captures masterfully the feeling of the fall time (below is my translation):

Posted on September 21, 2019September 21, 2019 by Bob Quinn

The Vagus Nerve

For the last few years I have been developing a deeper interest in the vagus nerve. Part of this interest comes from my training in the Toyohari system and its gentle naso techniques in the greater neck-supraclavicular fossa complex (in this region of the body we are working right over the vagus nerve as it runs over the SCM), and part comes from my study of the polyvagal theory of Stephen Porges, MD, a psychiatrist-researcher who has developed a ground-breaking new understanding of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). In this blog I’d like to describe why this topic is so fascinating for me, and why I continue to be drawn ever deeper in this direction. Although this work is new and developing, we Chinese Medicine practitioners with our ancient medicine have a lot to contribute. That’s what excites me.