Every consultation between a therapist and a patient is unique. Some patients make an unforgettable impression, others are quickly forgotten. But no matter how you look at it, every meeting is meaningful to both thanks to the exchange of words, impressions, and experiences. Within this exchange, for a TCM therapist it’s not only about his specific knowledge but at least as much about the way he is standing in life.

That makes medicine according to Chinese tradition so beautiful: the realization that everything is relative to what you relate it to. Just look at the realization that TCM people have made their own that everything has a yin-yang relationship. If we go a step further, it also means that we should be able to realize that we can recognize wuji ('nothing that is everything' and at the same time 'everything that is nothing', 'the timeless where all the time is ',' the boundless place where all space is', 'Ming') in everything. Only 'timelessness' is not perceptible to our senses and the limitless realization is not tangible. Or is it? ...

Is grasping that everything is inseparably connected - and thus also with the timeless and boundless - not the way to make contact with the core of every relationship, and therefore also with the core of life? Is the realization that in the nature of things wu wei ('the non-acting acting') is the natural rhythm of the laws of qi, not of fundamental importance for every TCM therapist? Is therefore what we recognize in a patient as disturbances of yin and yang not equally to be understood as a disturbance of non-acting acting? And with that, as a disruption of someone's contact with his Ming or wuji?

If we want to recognize this as TCM therapist, we will have to be vulnerable and approach our patients from our own Ming or wuji. This goes further than applying yin-yang knowledge or therapeutically wanting to 'help' someone, it requires the willingness to move with the patient to a new situation in which the patient can regain contact with his 'Ming'.

The courses Diagnostics in practice are primarily concerned with the proper application of TCM knowledge. What is the correct diagnosis? What is the treatment plan for this? What questions should I ask to be able to penetrate the core of the patient's problem? This has partly to do with following the strategy of the differential diagnosis, and partly with human knowledge.

But sometimes acupuncture or herbal formulas are not enough to make someone 'better' and the story behind the complaints must be heard by the TCM therapist. At Bu Ming in practice, students who have followed the Bu Ming course in the past learn how to act when a patient loses contact with his Ming. How can they, together with the patient, initiate the movement so that the patient can maintain the harmonious contact with his timeless and limitless 'Ming' himself? To this end, the therapist has various treatment methods at his disposal, such as pushing hands, floor dance, five tigers, heavenly cycle, Qigong, Tai Chi, meditation and harmonious communication. There is no ready-made Bu Ming package, though. On the other hand, there is the joint-play between therapist and patient, whereby both are asked to meet each other in all purity and together reach their own Ming at the same time.

During the Walk through the inner landscape, students learn how everything according to Chinese medicine is connected to each other. The image of the inner landscape with its provinces, rivers, and specific locations is a reflection of the organs, meridians and acupuncture points, which are wonderfully interwoven into an organism that in turn moves in close connection with the universe. In addition, the inner landscape also contains all kinds of symbols with which functionality and Chinese philosophy have been given form.
Understanding the inner landscape should be a basic knowledge of every TCM student. It increases the awareness that everything is relative to what you relate it to. When you relate it to what you can perceive sensually, you see everything as yin and yang. When you relate it to what you can understand with the human mind, you see everything as philosophical, cultural, scientific, medical knowledge, as fractal, macro, and micro. When you relate it to who you are at the core, you see everything as Ming and Wuji, in its timeless, boundless relationship.

Systems Health and TCM use this insight to map the systemic, rhythmic, dynamic nature of everything. What does it mean that everything is connected? How do we notice that, as people? How do we notice that, as a world?
Whereas in Western thinking the emphasis in health care is on an 'evidence-based' reality, oriental thinking never loses sight of the 'connection', the 'relativating relationship', as well as the fact that there is no distinction between physics, emotions, and spirituality. Everything is woven together and has a specific function within a certain context (time and space) within which one can not do without the other. If quality of life is to develop on an individual level, then there must be a connection with what beares the quality of life in the all-embracing system.
At the deepest level, according to Eastern thinking, that is the timeless and boundless, the Ming, the wuji. The only ones who can connect with that deepest all-embracing and at the same time originating system are us. Our health is related to the quality (harmony, purity) of that connection. That is an essential joint-play.
Systems health brings this interaction to a higher level by linking western deductive thinking with the oriental relativating relational synergetic thinking whereby each person can be regarded as a biopsychosocial dynamic self-organizing system within the various all-embracing systems that themselves are also dynamically self-organizing. Both in time and space and in timelessness and boundlessness. Beautifully interwoven.
Concepts such as 'personalized medicine' then put things in a different perspective. For our quality of life, it is not so much about how we are doing, but about who we are in relation to the people who are part of our lives, our living environment, our work, our society, our history (both personal and general), etc. It would be better to speak of 'personalized quality of life'.

With Five Element acupunctureyou can help a person by means of acupuncture to come into balance and harmony with his own energy after he has been brought out of balance by an event in his life. The TCM therapist, therefore, has to have the capabilities to be able to understand where a patient is in his life, what has put him off balance and how he would like to change it. By subsequently using the spirit of the acupuncture points, the therapist can balance the personal energy of the patient and help someone on his personal life path. This technique is especially effective if health problems are caused or affected by emotional stress and imbalance.

The rise of Abdominal acupuncture, also known as ‘miracle therapy’, proves that age-old traditional Chinese medicine does not stand still. This technique brought out by Professor ZhiYun Bo in 1991, is based on the regulation of the navel (Ren-8 Shenque) as a central point. It is considered the first system of regulation, the basis of the meridian system and the distribution of Qi and Blood throughout the body. Purpose of the treatment is to adjust the body and mind, to harmonize and to rebalance.
Abdominal acupuncture is becoming increasingly popular in China and in the West due to its efficiency in the treatment of chronic, long-term conditions such as musculoskeletal problems, neurological disorders, dizziness, insomnia, chronic fatigue syndrome, digestive disorders, etc. The course is assessed by course participants as a beautiful widening of their acupuncture skills.

Basic Theory of Ancient Greek Medicine and Greek Acupuncture tells the special story of Hippocrates (460-370 BC), seen by us as the father of Western medicine because he was the first to recognize natural instead of supernatural causes for diseases. Less well known is that Hippocrates in his work On the Nature of Man described a network of phlebes or veins that had no connection with the blood vessels in the body but corresponded to a network of energetic channels (meridians) that are more like the Chinese meridians than on blood vessels from modern western anatomy. Hippocrates has described 72 acupuncture points that reflect the 2 (Yin-Yang and Hippocrates' theory of Fire and Water), the 3 (trinity of human nature: bone marrow, blood, intestines, the nature of the human soul, according to Plato: mind, emotions, desire) and the 4 (corresponding to the four elements and four fluids, and the number by which the number of acupuncture points can be divided into on each meridian).
What can TCM students learn from this 72 acupuncture points theory? How does the ancient Chinese theory of Five Elements compare with the ancient Greek theory of Four Elements?