Well, here I am at home on a Monday, while all my apprentices are on holiday (usually I teach every Monday at the Jing Fang Apprenticeship), and I have decided to start a blog for our school, the School of Classical Chinese Herbalism (SCCH). This is a momentous decision and I still can’t quite believe I am overcoming my social media phobia!

I’m just remembering this time last August, when I broke my ankle and was lying on the sofa surrounded by Chinese herbal medicine soaks for fractures, that my partner Mark helped me to cook up. It was rather messy but incredibly effective – I adapted the fracture formulas from A Tooth From the Tiger’s Mouth by Tom Bisio, and combined that with getting back to tai ji as quickly as possible and using a wobble board. My ankle will always be slightly oddly shaped I think and still clicks a bit when I do tai ji, but it healed fantastically, and one year on it gives me no problem.

Graduation of 2022

So to the subject I want to talk about today – we had a great graduation celebration this year, with three students graduating from the jing Fang Apprenticeship.

JFA graduates 2022

2022 Graduates: Cristina Palici, Cristina Lopez-Pasqual and Andrew Nuttall

The students are Cristina Lopez-Pasqual, an acupuncture graduate and staff member at College of Integrated Chinese Medicine (CICM), Cristina Palici, also a CICM graduate, and Andrew Nuttall, a graduate of the London College of Traditional Acupuncture (LCTA), where I used to teach. Andrew is also a staff member at the College of Naturopathic Medicine (CNM). Cristina will be working in Reading, Cristina in Southampton and Andrew in Bristol, so the reach of Jing Fang is growing!

We invited our new governors – I’ll blog about them soon – and had a bring-and-share picnic in the park in Cholsey that our teaching room opens out onto. Gorgeous sunshine, lovely people, what more could you want.

JFA 2022

The 2022 JFA class

This is the eighth year of our Jing Fang Apprenticeship, and the year of the founding of the School of Classical Chinese Herbalism. Exciting things are happening, and I look forward to the next academic year, and to sharing it with you on this blog.

JFA picnic with governors

Picnicking with the JFA governors

Interested in becoming a Jing Fang Apprentice?

The Jing Fang Apprenticeship is a practical and clinic-based approach to the study of Chinese herbal medicine. To start your own apprenticeship journey, simply click here!

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