David Bell LAc
The Full Story
David received his 4 Year Masters degree in acupuncture and herbal medicine from the Five Branches University in Santa Cruz, California. David has over 10 years experience in the bodywork industry. Having completed a 4 year Bachelors undergraduate degree, Pre Medical Health Science degree.
While David was traveling abroad in China, he was in a car accident, at that time time the car hit him causing him to hit the pavement and he hurt his back. David went to the local hospital where they told them all they could do for his pain was give him pain killers. It was at that point that since he was in China, he should try acupuncture. As David was growing up his mother often encouraged him to use acupuncture and natural medicine so it was not completely unfamiliar to him. After a couple of treatments from a Chinese medicine practitioner / acupuncturist, he was out of pain.
David has spent the last couple of years studying with Andrew Nugent-Head, who has spent the last 20 years studying classical acupuncture from the leading acupuncturist in china and you can read more about him below.
David's approach to treatment is holistic. He not only treats the issues that cause health problems and restrictions in the body, but also looks at the patient's lifestyle and other external factors that may influence their symptoms and well-being and provides tools for managing those factors.
David has a comprehensive interest in health and fitness and has enjoyed participating in many sports throughout his life. He therefore has an excellent understanding of injuries and injury prevention, and has applied TCM and acupuncture methods with outstanding results.
After treating hundreds of patients, both in California and Maine, David opened up Phoenix Acupuncture with the hopes of reaching further into the community to provide a safe, effective, and natural healing alternative
About Andrew Nugent-Head
The Association for Traditional Studies (ATS) grew out of founder Andrew Nugent-Head’s early work translating for westerners visiting Beijing to meet and study with traditional practitioners there. In 1991, he was hired to work as a production assistant for Bill Moyers, who was filming the Mystery of Qi episode of his Healing and the Mind series which aired on PBS in 1993.
The Bill Moyers project threw into stark relief how fast the traditional arts were dying out. The few practitioners that were left were either too scared or too scattered around China to be filmed easily, and only a few practitioners were able to be interviewed. This sparked the creation of ATS, and the late professor Wang Jin-Huai (the calligrapher featured in the documentary) and Andrew Nugent-Head began traveling rural China by jeep to document the last traditional practitioners out there.
Guided by the late Dr. Lu Binkui, retired director of Chinese Medicine for the Ministry of Health, Professor Wang and Andrew drove throughout northern China to visit practitioners over a two year period. From remote villages to monasteries to factories, the two tracked down, interviewed and filmed some of the last traditional voices of pre communist China.
With the release of the Mystery of Qi on PBS, Professor Wang and Andrew found themselves invited to lecture and teach in the United States. Thus began the China Culture Lecture Series tours run by ATS and bringing different traditional practitioners to the United States and England. From 1994 to 2001, ATS organized 7 tours to the west, and from 1996-2005 12 intensive trainings to China. ATS also released over 60 educational videos and generated over $250,000 in income for the practitioners themselves.
By 2005, most of the old practioners had passed on. Professor Wang passed away in 2002, and the great Yin Style Bagua practitioner Xie Peiqi passed away in 2003. Realizing how little time was left before all of that generation was gone, ATS changed its focus from education and went into deep documentation of the last Chinese medicine doctor still practicing in a completely traditional manner left in Beijing: Dr. Li Hongxiang (1924-).
Andrew became Dr. Li Hongxiang’s closing door disciple and has spent the last 8 years with him in the clinic and in his home documenting his incredible knowledge base. ATS has generated hundreds of audio and video hours or recorded treatments and conversations, tracked hundreds of cases, and help Dr. Li write The Study of Chinese Medicine, to be published in Chinese and English December 2015.
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