It looks like it’s the season to be turning e-mails into blog-posts… I’ve been pretty busy just coming out of mid-terms and starting to focus on studying for our Comprehensive Exams that come at the end of this semester and cover all the material we’ve learned up until now. I just got an e-mail from a friend asking a few questions about “alternative medicine schooling.” I figured it might be something a wider audience would be interested in… so, for all those potential students of Chinese medicine out there…

I like these questions, they’re very practical, and they’re important things to have information about.

a) Recommendations for what to study undergrad to prepare for such graduate work. Would community college be a reasonable direction to take?

As far as undergrad goes, I would say that you can probably study whatever you want to, but it would be very very helpful in terms of both saving time and money to take as many bio-science classes as possible (similar to a pre-med major – but the way that usually works, is that you can often major in anything: English, Philosophy, History, while taking pre-med classes). These classes will be accepted as your Bioscience classes for your school and you’ll have a firm foundation and understanding of the sciences. That said taking some electives somewhere along the line about Eastern thought/philosophy, Confucianism, Daoism, or Chinese History could also be helpful is setting up an understanding of where the Eastern medicines come from philosophically and culturally.
Another really important thing: not all schools require a full-undergraduate degree. So my current school (PCOM) for instance only requires I think around 60 undergraduate credits, and graduates then receive a Bachelors and a Masters when the graduate. Other schools like the one I’m transferring too (Southwest), do require Bachelors. I think community college would be a great way to go for undergraduate. You’ll save money and most likely get a good enough education to have the foundation you need for grad school.

b) Thoughts about what a person who’s interested in the field should do to prepare themselves
Self-cultivation. I would strongly recommend focusing a substantial amount of energy on figuring out who you want to be (as opposed to only thinking about what you want to do). You can practice being who you want to be every day, no matter what, and doing what you want to do should be an outgrowth of that.
Having a “spiritual” practice is important (meditation, prayer, yoga, qi gong), as is learning/knowing how to take care of your physical self (getting enough sleep, eating well). Spend the time leading up to school learning how to cook, learning what type of exercise is most enjoyable/fun for you.
Personally, I’d also recommend spending some time in some form of psychotherapy. This may sound a bit strange, but the more whole you are as a person, the more you’ve done to mature and understand your self, the better you’ll be at helping others and understanding others. I spent around 8 months in therapy my senior year of college and learned a tremendous amount about myself, patterns that I may have, weaknesses, strengths, etc. Getting to know yourself is important.
Touch people! Not in inappropriate ways (haha), but seriously, the more experience you have getting to know other people’s bodies with your hands, the better off you’ll be. To me this mostly means giving massages to your friends and family, being comfortable sharing your touch with them will help become comfortable eventually sharing touch with people who are initially complete strangers.
Read “The Web That Has No Weaver” and flip through some anatomy books.
Be treated by whatever modality you’re interested in. If it’s acupuncture, go get some acupuncture, from one person, from several. Get a massage or two or three. Talk to a few practitioners, find out what they like about it, what they don’t.

c) Thoughts about what the awesome things and the harder things are about going to alterna-medicine school
This questions is pretty fascinating to me, because a lot of the awesome things about school are the harder things about school. The awesome things about going to complimentary medicine schools are that you’re learning to help people heal. You’ll become part of a community of people who are working to help alleviate suffering. You’ll come to understand yourself, other people, and the world in new ways. Assisting others on their path to health is a fairly large responsibility, you have to know and understand a lot about how the human body works, from a Western scientific perspective as well as from an East Asian perspective. A lot of the concepts of the medicine may be foreign, some of them may not really make much sense at first, but eventually you’ll get it.
Also, I think it’s important at some point to do some research on the job market, and understand how much money you can expect to make and what it might take to either find a job or start your practice.

I’m always open to fielding more questions… and interested in hearing other people’s thoughts…

Stay warm, and don’t forget your Vitamin D!