Continuing Education

Learn to find the anchor

A training programme for licensed practitioners who want a repeatable way to examine the body directly — and a disciplined way to check whether their clinical judgement held up.

Curriculum

What the programme covers

The teaching follows the clinical method itself: observation first, then verification, then the limits of what can honestly be concluded.

Module 1

Why return to the patient's body

The limits of a purely pattern-based approach, and what 33 years of practice changed about how the author examines a patient.

Module 2

What "verification" means here

The three-verification loop in full: what it supports, and precisely what it does not prove.

Module 3

Direct examination alongside modern testing

What imaging and laboratory work answer, what hands answer, and why the two are complementary rather than competing.

Module 4

Tracing palpation

Starting from the lesion, recognising relatively continuous change, and the difference between a clear path and a faint one.

Module 5

From path to anchor

Clinical presentation of an anchor, how position and direction change it, and how it differs from a fixed acupoint or tender point.

Module 6

Verifying connections in practice

Complete cases, including single-path cases, contralateral and distal connections, layered presentations, and cases where the expected result did not appear.

Module 7

The "locked" body

The central hypothesis, the role of scars and old injuries, and how such a hypothesis would be tested or overturned.

Module 8

Clinical training and next questions

Building palpation sensitivity, the meaning of patient-practitioner co-verification, safety and scope of practice.


Format and schedule

Two taught days, one day in the clinic

The programme runs for three days. The first two are taught days that build the examination and reasoning method. The third is a supervised clinical day spent treating patients, because most of this skill is built in the hands rather than on paper.

A cohort opens as soon as ten licensed practitioners have registered for it. Dates and location are then confirmed directly with everyone who signed up.

Day 1

Examination and tracing palpation

Why a purely pattern-based approach has limits; how to examine skin, subcutaneous tissue and fascia directly; how to follow a relatively continuous change path out from the site of the symptom.

Day 2

Anchors, verification, complete cases

Locating an anchor point, confirming it with the patient, intervening, then re-examining to see whether the connection held. Worked through complete cases — including cases where the expected result did not appear.

Day 3

Supervised clinical practice

Treating patients under direct supervision, with individual correction of palpation and needling. This is the day the method either becomes yours or does not.

Cohort and fee

Opens at ten practitioners

Standard fee

US$3,000

Full programme — two taught days plus the clinical day.

Early rate · first 50 registrants

US$2,000

Held for the first fifty practitioners who register.

Registering is free and commits you to nothing. No payment is requested until a cohort has reached ten practitioners and the dates have been confirmed with you directly.


Requirements

Who can enrol

Licensed practitioners

Acupuncturists and Chinese medicine clinicians with a current licence to practise. You will be asked for your licence or registration details.

Allied pain clinicians

Physicians, physiotherapists, chiropractors and other licensed practitioners who treat chronic pain and want the palpation component.

Students

Enrolled TCM students and recent graduates. Places for students may be limited and are confirmed case by case.

Prerequisite: the programme builds on hands-on needling skill you already hold. It is not a route into practice for unlicensed learners, and it does not grant any licence, certification or scope of practice.


Fair warning

What this programme is not

  • It is not a protocol course for a named disease, and no disease-specific outcomes are promised.
  • It is not a certification or licence of any kind.
  • It does not claim that this method outperforms other approaches — that comparison has not been made.
  • It is not a shortcut. Most of the skill is built in your hands, on real patients, over time.

If you are looking for a technique that can be applied immediately without changing how you examine patients, this is probably not the right programme.

Register your interest

Registration is free. Once ten practitioners have registered we confirm the dates by email, and the early rate of US$2,000 is held for the first fifty to sign up.

Sign up