Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Meet David!

I'm geeky and nerdy and my writing voice tends to be verbose, so I'll do my best to keep this real. When most people find out that my undergrad studies were in biomaterial engineering they're like, "Whoa! How did you go from that to acupuncture?!" The short story is that in my senior design class I designed what I came to understand as a very expensive surgically implantable band aid for arthritis that in the end wouldn't have addressed why someone ended up with arthritis in the first place. I just so happened to take an elective in medicinal plants and herbology out of curiosity and when my professor told me that I could continue pursuing that kind of study in grad school my world kind of exploded.
Thus began the Amtrak trips around the western portion of the country in search of a naturopathic school. After thoroughly investigating the options, I noticed many of these schools also had programs in Chinese medicine. I was a martial artist and avid meditator at the time and the Chinese medicine curricula just seemed familiar and enticing. I ended up near my midwestern suburban hoemtown at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in Chicago. There I learned Taiji and Tuina before leaving for the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine where I could pursue my passion for learning to read Chinese, study of the classical texts, qigong, and palpation-based acupuncture.
And now, having graduated in August 2014, here I am: Chinese medicine super-geek, practitioner of qigong and taijiquan, lover of simplicity, complexity, internconnection, stillness, movement, and transformation. When I get a spare moment I love to play either of my two guitars, read paper books, walk freely in Ravenna Park, sketch things far beyond my skill to capture, write about anything, drink and prepare gong fu style tea for myself and others, eat dinner with my wife, ride my bike, and whistle.