Thank you to Feedspot for ranking 4 Branches Chinese Medicine Center blog as one of the top 60 traditional Chinese medicine blogs on the web.  Feedspot sorted through thousands of blogs on the web and selected 4 Branches and ranked them by traffic, social media followers & freshness. 4 Branches is in the company of other clinics and business from all over the world, including ones from China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Their picks include blogs the by voices of many experienced and eloquent practitioners in the field of Chinese medicine. Check out one of my personal favorites, Giovanni ..read more

Are you wondering how herbs, qi gong, and meditation can support you?  They each have the potential to help ease both physical discomfort (ie like pain with menstrual cycle, issues with menopause, digestive upset, sinus issues etc) and emotional discomfort like anxiety or depression.  They can facilitate physical ease, emotional ease, and help the body be a more comfortable and comforting place to be.  What I really want to talk about, though, is how these practices actually work. Any practitioner of Chinese medicine needs to understand what the physical, emotional, and spiritua ..read more

We are excited to report that we have found a new home for our qi gong meditations offerings. For those who tried to access the downloads or a CD for purchase, we apologize for any inconveniences for the malfunctioning links. We have fixed and updated everything. We are no longer offering the hard copy CDs, but instead have downloads available of the entire set of meditations for both Qi Gong for Radiant Health and Qi Gong for Emotional Health. The sets of downloads are available for 7.99 each using this link. We do have some remaining copies of both CDs at our office if you would like to purc ..read more

  At 4 Branches Chinese Medicine Center accessibility to our services is a priority. For that reason we make every attempt to connect with institutions and groups that will make acupuncture and Chinese medicine more affordable. These are the networks that we are connected to: 1) Veterans who contact the VA to have them make an appointment with us get acupuncture covered by Veterans affairs. So if you are a veteran you can enjoy acupuncture as part of your benefits simply by contacting the VA and having them contact us to make an appointment for you. You will need a referral fro ..read more

Each and every one of us has an inner compass or inner guidance. I think of the voice of your inner guidance as your soul or higher self that is available to you always but whose voice may not always be easy to hear. It may feel especially hard to access this inner guidance and knowing as we are navigate change, and challenging, hard moments in life.  I want to share a new website I just launched, Inner Radiance Institute, to offer some support for you in your journey. This website combines online learning opportunities with writing to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual support as ..read more

It is with my heart completely broken open that write that I Andres, my life partner and partner in 4 Branches Chinese Medicine Center, died at the end of June. Some of you already know this because I have been telling people individually as I have had opportunity to do.  I have the deepest heartfelt appreciation for every single act of kindness and love and every single prayer that each person I have told has offered to me and to Gabriel.  Thank you.  To those of you who are first hearing this news as you read my words, the grief is beyond anything I could have ever i ..read more

In this article I would like to share some thoughts on transforming emotional energy into useable energy drawing on meditations advanced by generations of Taoist sages, as well as the wisdom of Peter Levine, a psychologist and writer who specializes in trauma. Both offer wisdom for transforming our emotions to find vitality and peace.  Emotions can grab us and send into a spiral where we lose our connection to our inner guidance. Anger, sadness, frustration, impatience, worry, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt.  This is an incomplete list of the host of emotions that we all cycle thro ..read more

The stomach and spleen are, in certain schools of thought in Chinese medicine, considered the most important organs in the human body. This is because they are in charge of transforming and transporting energy from the heavens and earth mostly through food and drink and distributing the refined Qi to power our daily activities. Digestive issues are an important clue that the body is having trouble assimilating foods, drinks, and the heavenly and earthly energies.  It is not only physical digestion of food and drink that can indicate an imbalance in the spleen/stomach organ systems, but ou ..read more

Chinese medicine is a wonderful system of self care because it has an answer for how to address practically every imbalance. These approaches are practical, simple and often very effective. Many of these answers are found by studying the concept of correspondence for the 5 phases/elements used in Chinese medicine: water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. In this article I want to give you an example (this is Andres) from my own life of how I am using Chinese medicine for my self care. In Chinese medicine the eyes correspond to the wood phase/element and to the liver, and the eyes/wood/liver all c ..read more

I have helped many people heal holistically from a wide range of conditions using herbs and acupuncture. I never guarantee any results, and yet most people find great benefits from a combination of acupuncture and herbs, as well as the use of qi gong. Being a new father I experienced a level of worry and fear around his health and well-being and a new time drain that I was unaccustomed to. Up until I became a father, I was used to having abundant time for my qi gong practice and also time for self-healing with herbs and Chinese medicine. I experienced and continue to experience great joy with ..read more