Category Archives: AOM Class Offerings

Complex and Chronic Pain

Check back for next live class date, or contact us to be notified by email

Contact us to let us know of your interest in self-paced distance-learning PDAs and/or CEUs

Conditions addressed include:

  • Complex regional pain syndrome: reflex sympathetic dystrophy, causalgia, and Sudeck’s atrophy.
  • Myofascial pain syndrome.
  • Fibromyalgia syndrome.
  • Primary headaches (migraine, tension-type).
  • Neural hyper-sensitization and sympathetically-maintained pain.
  • Phantom limb pain.
  • Post-herpectic neuralgia.
  • Chronic pain syndrome, including co-morbid sleep and mood disorders.

Patho-physiology and -Psychology

  • Integrating contemporary understandings of complex and chronic pain with AOM jing-jin, jing-luo, zang-fu, wu xing and herbal patterns and pathomechanisms.
  • Mind-body relationships in complex and chronic pain: moving from mal-adaptation to health.
  • How understanding complex pain mechanisms can help with treating pain generally.

Assessment and Diagnosis

  • Taking histories: key questions and techniques.
  • Physical exam: integrating orthopedic, neurologic, vascular, rheumatologic, psychologic with TCM examination.
  • Diagnosis in standard medical (ICD-10) and AOM-specific jing-jin, jing-luo, zang-fu, wu xing and herbal pattern identification terms

Treatment

Student Ratings and Comments

from evaluations as required by California Acupuncture Board

Respondents: 10 of 10 enrolled

Average rating:  97/100

  • “I found this class very interesting and helpful. So many of my patients are in chronic pain, and I have been fumbling to know how to communicate with them in a productive way.” – Dev’a Laggner, L.Ac.
  • “Guest speakers are great!…This could definitely be a 2-day class.” – Jennifer Root, L.Ac.
  • “Maybe more info on how to manage our own and patients’ expectation of pain reduction/reversal.” – Rose Mulhearn, L.Ac.
  • “Nice to break up the didactic with cranial nerve exam.” - Anonymous, L.Ac.
  • “Thank you!”  –Anonymous, L.Ac.
  • “I’d love to see this class going in-depth for treatment protocols including acupuncture, herbs, diet for these conditions. More advanced protocols and evaluation of patterns from a more advanced perspective than the Masters’... Nice having local physicians come speak in the class–feeling like doctors are not so scary.” - Anonymous, L.Ac.

Next live offering: TBA. You may also register for a distance-learning version of this class.

And we invite you to view our full program schedule and register for in-person classes and live webinars.

Clinical Applications of AOM Research

Check back for next live class date, or contact us to be notified by email

Contact us to let us know of your interest in self-paced distance-learning PDAs and/or CEUs

Enhance your familiarity with AOM research, and your ability to:

  • Obtain improved outcomes with a wider variety of cases, by applying research regarding mechanisms of AOM modalities, techniques and treatment variables;
  • Educate patients, health-care practitioners, and the general public regarding AOM therapeutic mechanisms;
  • Participate in professional discussions and studies with other medical providers and researchers;

Assessing Research Quality and Relevance

Improve efficiency and accuracy in evaluating research for its quality and relevance, including:

  • Independence from bias and financial interests
  • Blinding of subjects and evaluators
  • P-values, confidence intervals, statistical power and sample size, effect size, number-needed-to-treat, and more
  • Patient-practitioner relationships and the “Therapeutic Alliance”
  • Patient beliefs and expectations, placebo and nocebo genomics, and the “Placebo Paradox”

Review studies regarding therapeutic mechanisms of AOM modalities

including explanatory studies of acupuncture, electro-acupuncture, myofascial trigger point needling, cupping and gua sha:

  • The inflammatory cascade, and provocation of anti-inflammatory responses
  • Diffuse noxious inhibitory controls and closing the spinal gate
  • Homeostatic processes of the peripheral and central nervous and vascular systems
  • Myofascial tissue stimulation, including trigger point reduction, tension homeostasis, and disruptive and proliferative effects
  • Bio-psycho-social variables in patient responses to acupuncture
  • Effects of concurrent use of anti-inflammatory medications and opiates/opioids

¹with California Acupuncture Board

Next live offering: TBA. You may also register for a distance-learning version of this class.

And we invite you to view our full program schedule and register for in-person classes and live webinars.

Clinical Applications of AOM Research: Class Notes and E-book

Class Content Notes
How Interactive E-books work: Read this first View Guide
1. Overview: Why research?; Types and Levels of Research; Challenges View Slideshow
2. Ancient Acupuncture Technique Variables from "Acupuncture: A Comprehensive Text" View Slideshow
3. Assessing Research Quality View Slideshow
4. "Placebo Effects" and the Therapeutic Alliance View Slideshow
5. Case Reporting Guidelines View Slideshow
6. Therapeutic Mechanisms of Needling View Slideshow

Anatomy/Cadaver Lab: the Myofascial Tracts of Acupuncture

aka the "Sinew Meridians"

With Instructor Anthony Von der Muhll, L.Ac., DNBAO, FAIPM

Check back for next live class date, or contact us to be notified by email

Study the structure and function of the jing-jin (myofascial tracts or “sinew meridians”) in a cadaver lab.

  • Review how different depths and angles of needle insertion can be used to affect different tissues.
  • See where needles can safely and usefully be inserted–and also should never go–in actual anatomical specimens.
  • Learn the way ancient physicians did: by tracing the longitudinal fascial connectivity between bones, muscles, tendons, organs, and neuro-vascular bundles that make up the jing-jin or myofascial tracts.

Structures reviewed will include both appropriate targets for neuro-anatomical acupuncture, and adjacent critical structures to avoid puncturing (in italics):

  • Taiyang: plantar fascia and superficial musculature; Achilles tendon; hamstrings; (sciatic nerves); sacro-tuberous and sacro-iliac ligaments; paraspinal musculature; facet joints and discs; (kidneys, pleural cavity) trapezius, sub-occipitals, (brain stem), levator scapula, and rhomboids; triceps brachii, ulnar-carpal joint.
  • Shaoyang: peroneal muscles; superior tib-fib joint; IT band; gluteals, quadratus lumborum (kidneys), serratus anterior, sterno-cleido-mastoid (carotid artery, jugular vein), scalenes (dome of lung, brachial plexus), supraspinatus.
  • Yangming: tibialis anterior; knee ACL, PCL, meniscii and patello-femoral structures; adductors, (femoral nerve, artery, vein) iliopsoas; acromio-clavicular and gleno-humeral joints; forearm extensor compartment and radial tunnel.
  • 3 Yin: tibialis posterior; popliteus; (popliteal artery, tibial nerve) knee MCL; vastus medialis; pectorals; (axial and brachial neurovascular bundles); biceps brachii, supinator, and pronator teres; (median and ulnar nerves) carpal and ulnar tunnels.

My personal statement about cadaver lab as a learning experience:

Of all the classes that I teach, this is the one that means the most to me personally and professionally.

Why do I feel so passionately about spending a day in a chilly lab with a bunch of dead bodies  that smell like preservative chemicals? In no other setting do we have the opportunity to study the technical, tangible and physical structure and function of humans from the inside out, and to simultaneously appreciate the transiency and poignancy of the gift of life, with all its sorrows and joys its pleasures and pains.

By seeing where our all of our ancestors have gone, and where we and every patient we treat and every person we know will go, we can see the physical body as a temporary vehicle for the soul, and come to a greater reverence for the value of health, healing, and happiness.

And this lab fills me with appreciation for the generosity the people and their families who give this extraordinary and privileged opportunity to examine their bodies, so that we may put such knowledge to use in the service of humanity, and that we may all enjoy the brief time we have together on our fragile planet Earth. To everyone who makes it possible for us to learn about life from death, I give my profound and heartfelt thanks.

And to those interested in such learning, I hope you will join me in enjoying and making the most of this journey of curiosity, love, and reverence for the miracle of being.

Please note: due to chemicals used and stored in cadaver laboratories, we are unable to register students who are pregnant or nursing.

Next live offering: TBA. You may also register for a distance-learning version of this class.

And we invite you to view our full program schedule and register for in-person classes and live webinars.

Practice-Building and Risk Management: Classes & E-books

Grow and maintain a safe, ethical, and sustainable practice with these classes to sharpen your knowledge and skills in risk and practice management. Anthony Von der Muhll, L.Ac. lends his experience with cultivating physician referrals and building a successful, busy practice from scratch in a highly-competitive market (Santa Cruz, California, a small community with a large, old TCM school). Learn ways market successfully without social media, prepaid packages, advertising, or other expensive and high-risk marketing techniques!

Anthony Von der Muhll has also served as an expert witness in over 25 cases of malpractice, regulatory board, and insurance investigations driven by consumer complaints. As one of very few acupuncture expert witnesses nationwide, he offers unique insights as to how to avoid medical malpractice and inadvertent legal and ethical lapses. Learn the easy way so you don't have to learn the hard way!

Required for Certification in Integrative Acupuncture Orthopedics:

Electives: