 So some people have reached out to me asking how to choose a school for traditional Chinese medicine. Now, it's a new profession in the United States and in the West. There are also options in Europe and in Asia, and it's also as expensive as a conventional medical education. So it brings up a lot of questions and in this video, I thought I'd share my own experience and what I would recommend. Hey, it's Dr. Alex Hine, Chinese medicine doctor, author of the health book, Master of the Day, and I've included two very important links for you. The first link below this video is for a free download I've put together. It's for daily longevity practices that can help you live longer. The first link below the video is a link to go ahead and download that. You'll also be given info there on if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or via telemedicine. So I thought I would share a little bit about my own story first. This is going to be a bit of a longer video, but I think giving the context of my experience will be helpful. So I booked a one-way ticket to China when I was 24 years old. I had planned to stay there and never come back. I actually did not go for Chinese medicine originally. I went to study martial arts and thinking I'd become a monk and come back in about 10 years. So ultimately I ended up studying martial arts. I learned to speak and read Chinese and write it and it wasn't that I decided to study Chinese medicine until much much later. Now one of my close buddies there in China ended up staying in China and enrolled at the Chinese Medicine School there in Beijing and that's one of the most renowned Chinese medicine schools in China. But the reason it's useful for the story is because he gave me a lot of great advice on actually not going to school in China for Chinese medicine. So come back to the US some years go by and I had now been 20 I was 29 and I had been treated by a Chinese medicine practitioner for digestive problems. And that is what kind of it didn't prompt me to look at Chinese medicine. In retrospect it was always obvious that this was like my dharma, my passion. It was just sometimes things hit you at exactly the right moment in time and then everything is illuminated and it's clear that this is the path you should be doing. So for me around 29 I realized that this is my thing. It's time to go like let's let's do this next year. So at that time I was trying to figure out which school is to go to. Now for me personally my buddy living in China said that he'd been reading about this guy named Heiner Fruhoff who had a website classicalchinesemedicine.org. And I told my buddy I was thinking of going back to China because you know this it would be free for me as a foreigner and I could come back fluent in Chinese etc. And he told me you know if I were you I would go to this guy Heiner's school which is in Portland. He's one who's not into this modern TCM BS as my friend called it. Who's really trying to discover the roots of traditional Chinese medicine and he calls it classical Chinese medicine. So my buddy said hey if I were you I would learn from this guy try to go to his school. So I ended up looking at almost all the schools in California and then National University of Natural Medicine in Portland and OCOM Oregon College of Oriental Medicine also in Oregon. And for me the main reason I did not decide to go to the California schools was just because they seemed a little bit too small. And as someone who's moving from Connecticut to the West Coast I wanted to make sure that I had some sense of community and that the practitioners were not primarily older and married and leaving campus leaving the area. And so a lot of the California schools were quite small. I didn't want to have to start over with no friends and no way to meet people. And that was a big decision for me besides the one other factor which is that I emailed this guy Heiner Fruhoff that my buddy said I should research you know research this guy's school. And I said hey I'm in town in Portland. I'm seeing the school and is there any chance I could pick your brain and buy you a cup of coffee. And he said you know I'm not in Portland this weekend but if you like you can come out to my house and we can drink some tea. And he literally hosted me at his house and for two hours endured my questions on Chinese medicine. And for me that completely sold it. I was like if this dude I can even have an hour a month of his time in a class then that would be worth it to me. Because the general TCM stuff you can learn in a textbook technically I mean you don't learn to be a doctor by studying medical books you do it by practicing but generally the standardized curriculum is not that unique and not that different. But I knew it was the world class mentorship that for me would be the thing that makes the difference in my clinical skill. So for me ultimately not wanting to go to the smaller schools in California wanting to go to NUNM because it had a classical program which no other school I think in the world has. That personal connection the fact that NUNM is the oldest naturopathic medical school so there's a quite a big university there and I think 500 students you're always bumping into people you feel like you're in school again it has an actual small campus like it had a really amazing school feel. So for me it was a really really obvious decision to go there and ultimately I'm super happy with that decision. But backing up to you there are quite a number of other factors that I would take into account that I think are incredibly important. The first thing is what do you really want to learn. You know for me I had no I didn't know too much about Chinese medicine I just knew that herbs had worked for me so I was probably going to study herbs but some schools are known for being more acupuncture oriented some are more herbal formulas oriented. Some schools are more just kind of bare bones like there are schools you can go to just for three years and you learn acupuncture and they're much much cheaper and there are schools that are like the de facto Harvard all-in-one package education and they're a lot more expensive. So that to me is worth thinking about quite a lot because in terms of the general standardized education you're going to generally get the same education everywhere you go because you need that to pass the national board exams but each school also has some slight subtle differences and those are worth looking into as well. So I would say a big question is what does the school have that no other school has and cost savings is a real thing. Is this school one half the price of other schools that is worth knowing and that's worth being a factor you take into account. The next thing is very very important which is what can you afford financially. Now a dark side of alternative medicine education and I still think one of the reasons why enrollment has never been as high as it should be is because you often can pay the price of a conventional medical school two or three hundred thousand dollars with your living expenses in debt but you don't come out making six figures like a physician right. If you go into private practice you start making zero dollars if you do a residency you're probably making two three thousand dollars a month and on and on it goes and if it's private practice most people can't hack it because you have to spend as much time studying and learning business skills as you do your skill in medicine. That's a big burden for most people and I do not think most people will make that happen. Now if you know you're driven then great you'll make anything happen and none of this applies but here are three or four questions that I think are super important that you should think about because the big thing is this is going to be one of the biggest financial investments of your life like getting a house and you should not take it lightly at all because many practitioners are in debt for the rest of their life so be smart. So the first few things one option is maybe you go to a three-year program that's much cheaper and then you can study the things you really like or find a mentor on the outside. The second option would be to do a five or more year program and also work half time 20 hours a week. The third would be is there an option for you to live at home and save that potential hundred thousand dollars that you would be spending on living expenses and eating and driving etc. That's a huge cost savings that you're going to have to spend if you move somewhere to a new state and then you're paying rent and food etc. Those are really important considerations that should not go understated or lightly. If you have a mentor maybe the best decision is the cheapest program and then study the stuff you really want and study with a mentor. Don't get caught up in necessarily going to the best program but then you're in three hundred thousand dollars of debt that you can never pay back. That may be a really bad decision because you can always learn a lot of things later. Now two other final things that are quick. Number one is is there a special reason to go to that program. Now for me I chose the National University of Natural Medicine because just for what I wanted it seemed like the Harvard of classical Chinese medicine. It was a school with a strong mission to teach the classical Chinese medicine not the standardized modern TCM education. All of the mentors and doctors there shared that focus and they had individual lineages where for me that was amazing because you learn how many different practitioners practice. For others who just just give me the way to do acupuncture one way that works that may be stressful. For me it was amazing because I could see and try to understand all these different lineages and for me one of the most valuable things was the traditional mentorship tutorial series where for one doctor you get to study with them in their lineage every week for a year. Now for me that was basically worth the price of admission alone. I mean being out of school now to find those mentorship opportunities they're often around $10,000 in the real world and I did three you all in school. So that was basically $30,000 worth of education to me that I would not have even been sure of how to find outside of school because none of those mentors I learned from teach out of school. So that's you know that to me was the one in a million opportunity that I cannot get back and was worth everything to me. So if there's a specific reason to go to that school then that's also worth considering. Now final piece of advice which is the most important piece of advice. Now this doctor at our school gave students a very very wise piece of advice when he said five years out of school if it matters where you went to school then you're probably doing something wrong and what he meant was if five years out of school you have not dedicated at the time to self-improvement and skill improvement and mastery and growth and doing what it takes to become great in your field and great at your work then you're probably not doing something wrong like if you peaked right out of school that's a big problem because ultimately most things are available out there to learn now. If you want to find the mentors you can seek them out you can pay them for their time you can see them as patients you can enroll in some of their continuing education programs there's often a way to get the same info either way. So at the end of the day think picture it doesn't matter a whole lot if your goal is becoming creative what you do and you're willing to learn from whoever and you're willing most of all to become a master and become the best. So that is my two cents my impassioned rant for the day. Now again if you guys would like below this video I've included this free handout which is four daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine and again if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or via telemedicine you'll find a link below as well in that email series you'll be notified how to reach out all right guys before you go two more related videos that'll help you right here.