David Berkshire assistant professor in the College of Classical Chinese Medicine at NUNM, has been teaching for more than 10 years. He is the founder and co-owner of two large integrative medical clinics in Portland, Oregon: Kwan-Yin Healing Arts Center and Kwan-Yin Healing Arts Center East, with many naturopathic and Chinese medical residencies. Berkshire is also the current president of the non-profit organization Worsley Institute. Berkshire received his master's from Oregon College of Oriental Medicine; completed an informal apprenticeship in 5 Element acupuncture with David Ford, LAc, and an in-depth training in Drainage Homeopathy with Dr. Gerard Geuniot, and ongoing study with Judy Worsley.
Fertility acupuncture sometimes gets presented as a narrow protocol: a handful of reproductive points applied uniformly across patients. What this case reinforced for me: The most powerful work happens when we read the whole picture. The hormone data, the constitutional tendency, the sleep, the digestion, and the menstrual pattern, so we can treat the environment the ovaries live inside.
Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) affects more than 15% of the U.S. population but evades most practitioners’ radar. Just five years ago, it wasn’t even on my radar, despite already having 20 years of experience as a clinician at that time. The more I dug (similar to leaky gut and post-COVID syndrome), the more I found my patients were suffering from this disorder.
The motivation behind our practice of medicine is important, impacting not just our experience but also the experiences of those we treat. It is perhaps for this reason that the aspiration to help not just some, but all beings heal, has historically been an important part of the medical tradition. To explain this, we need to consider how medicine is interwoven with other social domains.