Knowledge and Skills from the Menghe-Ding Lineage of Chinese Medicine

Twelve free Lessons containing clinical wisdom and insight from the renowned Menghe-Ding lineage, and the life’s work of Dr. John H.F. Shen, O.M.D. and Dr. Leon Hammer, M.D.

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Course Description:

Contemporary Oriental Medicine (COM)

The result of a lifetime of study and devotion to healing, Contemporary Oriental Medicine (COM) has been formulated over eighty years of clinical practice from wisdom that reaches beyond the beginnings of recorded history. It is grounded in ancient medical knowledge that has evolved through the course of many centuries and has been developed further by Drs. Shen and Hammer to manage the challenges of the modern world.

COM fosters development of a level of perception and connection between human beings that can transform people even before any treatment begins, freeing them from the cages that restrict them in life.

As Dr. Hammer has said, “everyone wants to be heard, truly listened to, and understood.” Training in COM creates a practitioner who can listen in many ways, not only to what people say but also to how they say it, and even to what they avoid or don’t say. COM practitioners can draw upon exemplary diagnostic skills – pulse diagnosis, combined with an analysis of symptoms and medical history – giving them an ability to hear and understand what a patient truly needs. This results in a complete picture, encompassing the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual life of the patient.

COM is an insightful and profound journey into exactly what brought someone to the place, state or condition in which he presently exists. The transition from assessing a catalogue of symptoms to understanding a patient’s condition is an integral part of COM and its universally-applicable wisdom. Symptoms are messages from the body, indicating its deeper disharmony. If a practitioner only treated symptoms and ignored their true cause, he would ultimately create aggravation and further disharmony. For true healing to be achieved, symptoms must be examined and understood, and taken in the larger context of a patient’s condition. If a patient has a fever, his body is attempting to expel an external pathogenic factor. Suppression of the fever, while it may alleviate some unpleasant symptoms, will inhibit the body’s healing mechanism, allowing the toxin to penetrate more deeply. It is only when the source of the fever, in this case the pathogen, is addressed that recovery can begin. Symptoms are translated into conditions, and their causes, rather than their manifestations, take priority in treatment.

With this clarity and depth of understanding, the patient and practitioner together can formulate strategies to make true, lasting change possible: change that can alter the fabric of one’s life. This is healing, as it ought to be.