I have been studying with Dr. Arnaud Versluys since 2005, as a student at National College of Natural Medicine (now NUNM). I was fortunate to get much of my foundational medical training from him, as well as from many other excellent scholar-clinicians. During my last year, and the transition to full-time practice, the Institute of Classics in East Asian Medicine was born, and I was part of that process, in the very first cohort to take the Canonical Chinese Medicine courses. I also met Dr. Zeng multiple times in different contexts, and having the opportunity to learn from him, even a little bit, stands out as among the greatest privileges of my life.
From the first days of my clinical practice, I utilized the principles and formulas I learned to treat my patients. For the first five years of my practice, I only rarely modified formulas, and exclusively focused my prescribing and my ongoing training on the information flowing through the Tian-Zeng lineage. Since then, I have of course learned other formulas and have even tried a few - but nothing in my experience has ever beaten the power and elegance of Zhang Zhongjing’s formulas, and the particular way that this lineage presents them.
After graduating from NUNM in 2009, I was invited to teach the herbs practicum course series. From there, my teaching load grew to include Clinical Medicine, Ways of Knowing, Ethics & Jurisprudence, and I was also a clinical supervisor. But the majority of my time teaching was focused on building and teaching the entire business & practice management curriculum for the Classical Chinese Medicine department.
In the early days of my education, and for many years after graduation, I ran a series of websites devoted to exploring topics in Chinese medicine. The first one, Deepest Health, was an integral part of my learning process, as my reach expanded widely, exposing me to a variety of people worldwide all with their unique perspectives. I taught a materia medica focused course through the site for a while, called the Shennong Relational Herb Learning method, which I developed in part during my formal teaching appointment at my alma mater.
I currently practice at a clinic, Watershed Wellness, that I founded and own with my wife, Amanda Barp, LMT, in 2009. We moved the clinic from Portland to Astoria in 2017 and have grown it to nearly 20 employees including 16 clinicians who see over 900 appointments per month. Along with seeing patients, I head up the Classical Chinese Medicine department, which includes 3 younger acupuncturists with whom I am in a mentorship relationship. They’ll be on the ICEAM path soon. 🙂
I also have a background in philosophy. During my undergraduate education, I received both biology and philosophy degrees at Oregon State University. My focus was primarily ethics and environmental philosophy, but the closer I got to graduation, the more I became entranced with the philosophy of science and medicine. I completed significant graduate work in Applied Ethics at OSU before discovering NCNM and deciding to leave the path of academic philosophy to go to medical school instead. That said, I still consider philosophical inquiry a fundamental part of my intellectual orientation, and I currently serve as Vice Chair of a local public philosophy organization called Philosofarian.
On a more personal level, I am a lover of the natural world - all kinds of plants and animals. I love being in nature, and living in Astoria makes it very easy to spend a lot of my time surrounded by it. I cultivate Chinese herbs at my home, as well as in partnership with Great Vow Zen Monastery, where I practice and attend sesshin retreats. I am a bit of a tech nerd on top of all of it, and have always been an early adopter. I am currently exploring ways that responsible use of AI can help acupuncturists be more effective in business and in their studies.