Studying Chinese medicine within a busy life : an experiment

One of the biggest difficulties I have had since graduating is finding time to study. This is not an inherent problem, but one created because of how I schedule around my priorities. My family, the basic work of seeing patients, running a business and my teaching work at NCNM have taken precedence over everything else. Until recently, the “extra” time was devoted to personal cultivation in the physical and emotional sense. At some point, I started to detect a lack of balance, and gave that personal cultivation an even bigger slice. Of course, I am learning in the process of seeing patients, preparing for classes, and interacting with students. That’s the sort of natural study that comes up when you’re active in a profession. That type of learning and reinforcement is valuable, but it tends to travel in mostly well worn paths. My patients tend to suffer from a dozen or so common patterns, and the deviations are more or less standard. Far from being a bad thing, that’s a sign that my marketing, and business, is working! I reach for a certain population, and I receive it. That being said, I don’t plan to stay within the same niche forever, and abberations do occur. Not to mention the study of Chinese medicine, for me, is a joyful end in itself. In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey discusses prioritization in a very particular way. He says that we should “Put First Things First,” and uses a metaphor of putting “big rocks” into a limite...
Source: Deepest Health: Exploring Classical Chinese Medicine - Category: Alternative Medicine Practitioners Authors: Tags: Study and Scholarship Source Type: blogs