Syndrome differentiation is something you do at every consultation. This course day starts from there and adds the herbs.

Annelies Espeel, acupuncturist in Brussels and one of the Muchin teachers, takes the thirteen patterns we see most in Western practice and links each one to a Herbal Masterblend. The focus is pattern recognition: learning to read the profile in front of you with enough certainty to match it to a formula. By the end of the day you can take any of the thirteen and name the formula, or the combination, that goes with it.

The thirteen Herbal Masterblends were developed by two of our co-founders, ShaoMin Xue, physician with a PhD in Chinese medicine from Peking, and Anneleen Six, physician, from the patterns that kept coming back in their own consultations over the years. They come from the classical Chinese pharmacopoeia, refined for the Western constitution, in capsules. No decoction, no weighing, no preparation. One capsule for the healthusiast, one sentence of advice for you.

The morning sets out the thirteen patterns and their formulas. The afternoon puts them to work on clinical cases, including the mixed patterns where two profiles overlap and the obvious formula is no longer obvious. You leave with formulas you can use in your practice the week after.