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About The Event

Now in its thirty-second year, Pacific Symposium is the best attended Chinese medicine and acupuncture conference in the US. Typically gathering close to a thousand participants every fall in beautiful Mission Beach, California, Pacific Symposium offers a powerful combination of inspiring presentations, one and two-day workshops, exhibit halls, networking opportunities, and time to recharge your batteries with a beachfront setting, daily outdoor qigong sessions, and fun parties.

However, this year we will enjoy each other’s company virtually. After much deliberation, we have organized the conference to be an online event. As much as we would love to maintain the tradition and brave the circumstances, the safety of our community comes first. We hope that the combination of live presentations by speakers and special offers from exhibitors will bring you a rewarding and educational experience. We are continuing to develop other fun ideas to bring the community together and send you some virtual San Diego sunshine.

Whether in person or online, we are still a thriving, dynamic, resilient community. We are looking forward to getting together with you in the fall!

WHERE

Virtual

WHEN

Thursday to Sunday
Oct. 29 – Nov. 1 , 2020

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Welcome Message from Jack Miller!

I hope this finds you in good health and good spirits. If you are like me, there are better days and not so better days. Yet, I am still optimistic that the human mind and spirit will prevail and create solutions to our current challenges. As social distance is required, our spiritual connection becomes all the more important. No, not important. Critical. Essential. With these thoughts in mind, we bring you Pacific Symposium 2020.

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Featured Exhibitors

Can’t Wait to See You Again!

Pacific Symposium 2020 will start in

2020 Featured Speakers

Symposium attendees and exhibitors: please meet the distinguished 2020 faculty.

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Conference Schedule

Join us again this year in San Diego for the largest annual acupuncture conference in the US!

The schedule below is listed in Pacific Time. For Eastern Time, add 3 hours; for Central Time, 2 hours; and for Mountain Time, 1 hour.

Click on the title of each session for more detail.

  • Day 1

    Thursday, Oct. 29
  • Fertility health changes as the world changes. Modern life presents unique challenges to fertility. Identifying what fertility health means in the modern context includes understanding menstrual cycles, hormonal balance, and emotional factors in both Western and TCM contexts. This class will examine the mechanisms and effects of the modern environment on fertility. These include diet, lifestyle, environmental toxins, PCOS, endometriosis, and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, and others. We will explore solutions to modern day fertility challenges, from developing emotional resources to nutrition to toxin management to working with auto-immunity to optimize fertility.

  • The goal of the lecture is to help practitioners understand the complexity of modern illnesses and the importance of understanding the tools used in other paradigms to seek information and determine treatment. We all recognize an illness from the particular method of training we received, but sometimes it is insufficient to use one paradigm or one approach and expect the patient to recovery from illness. By understanding what other paradigms can offer, it is possible to gain additional skills to improve your patient's health. The morning lecture will focus on the internal terrain of the individual while the afternoon presents the effects of the external environment on creating chronic inflammation and oxidative stress and their ramifications on the internal terrain. Levy will integrate biomedical, Chinese medicine, functional, and naturopathic approaches as he discusses each topic.

  • Dillberg will review neuro-anatomy and define photobiomodulation. He will also conduct a review of published photobiomodulation literature, how this stimulus can influence treatment outcomes, and integrative therapeutic protocols for common conditions.
    Online Streaming

  • Attendees will learn to promote patient recovery from illness and injury by integrating the various restorative care approaches within the framework of Chinese medicine. Some attention will be paid to recovery from respiratory disease.
    Online Streaming
    Workshop

  • Day 2

    Friday, Oct. 30
  • This seminar will introduce the use of motor points to treat difficult facial and constitutional syndromes. Wakefield and MichelAngelo will review, in depth, the symptomatology of the Eight Extraordinary meridians, and how these vessels affect the deep roots and imbalances on the DNA level. For clarity, the function of motor points will be defined, and compared to that of trigger and "ashi" points. Techniques for locating and needling facial motor points and the associated facial muscles will demonstrated. Significant syndromes to be addressed will be: Bell's palsy, windstroke, and differentiation between the two; migraines and their mind/body connection; temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ) and specific jaw and neck points; and types of neuropathies and pain patterns. The instructors will demonstrate treatment protocols for all the relevant syndromes for the attendees.
    Workshop

  • Tragically, hate has been too easy to come by this year. Abuse and divorce rates are up. Allies have become enemies. Ethnicities and races, economic classes, political parties and spouses have been facing off, their underlying prejudices glaring with hate in the stark daylight of 2020. Can we do something about hatred? Is it a toxic disease state or a healthy survival instinct? Does it make our patients feel sick or powerful or both? Should we try to cure them of it? From the perspective of Chinese medicine, is there an appropriate place for hatred in a healthy individual? In this hour, Dr. Dunas will look at hate from several perspectives that a clinical acupuncturist will find useful.
    Online Streaming
    Workshop

  • Participants will learn the vital areas of inquiry to which practitioners must attend in order to truly know their patients in depth—body, mind, emotions, and spirit. They will learn how to quest beyond simple “information”, gain rapport and trust, and reach the deeper levels of imbalance that are present, regardless of the label of the disease.
    Online Streaming

  • The Wei Qi is the most important line of defense against external pernicious influences or external pathogens that cause illness. Facial Diagnosis can help practitioners recognize the current state of their patients’ Wei Qi and monitor it after treatments. This lecture will cover the signs on the cheek area of the face that indicate immune function and this information can immediately be applied in the clinic.
    Online Streaming
    Workshop

  • Day 3

    Saturday, Oct. 31
  • Cosmetic facial acupuncture is one of the fastest-growing specialties among acupuncture professionals. Goldstein will explore how biomedical aspects of the aging face relate to traditional Chinese medicine, channel theory diagnosis, and treatment.

  • Similar to crossing points (jiao hui), nerve anastomoses, where different nerves join together and communicate, can be used as points to powerfully influence more than one nerve or channel (jing). Other areas in the body, where opposing anatomical tissues join, are vital to the functional stability of the region. Callison will discuss the use of these important points for face, head, neck, and upper extremity conditions, as well as the anatomical importance of ST 4 (dicang), Du 16 (fengfu), and Du 1 (changqiang), which can provide unexpected insights.
    Pain and Orthopedic Track

  • Nugent-Head brings the influence of the four seasons on our patients into tangible, clinically applicable focus. By examining the different pulses of each season matrixed over their constitutional or illness pulse, the shifts in qi direction as yin and yang wax and wane, affecting the hearts of our patients, become apparent. Learn to recognize when the shifts happen, and what heart conditions will pose greater danger for at-risk patients in each season. Understand the cascade of symptoms other chronically-ill patients can expect as their qi, and thus pulses, change due to the shifts between what the Nei Jing calls the Influence of Heaven and Earth.

  • Enjoy a lively discussion of the four distinct, integrative approaches to the treatment of orthopedic disorders and pain represented by each of our four experts. Techniques discussed will include motor points, posture therapy, neuromuscular re-education (NMR) and Japanese acupuncture.
    Pain and Orthopedic Track

  • Day 4

    Sunday, Nov. 1
  • As increasing numbers of the population turn to supplements and superfoods, it is the role of Chinese medicine to educate the public that no single substance is miraculous for every person. In this brief discussion, JulieAnn Nugent-Head discusses how the Shen Nong Ben Cao guides us to understand more than a hundred herbs deemed safe to be taken in large doses and for long periods of time without harm. Combining classical herbal theory with individualized diagnosis, practitioners can devise custom herbal teas for health and longevity.

  • Learn effective, safe treatment techniques for treatment with essential oils in an acupuncture practice. Holmes will cover the theory and practice of concurrent use of acupuncture and aroma acupoints, the principles of matching essential oils with acupuncture points, and the necessity of selecting oils with Chinese medicine-based theory in mind.

  • Gynecology is one of the crown jewels of traditional Chinese medicine. Wilms will discuss its key concepts as explained in roughly thousand-year-old Chinese medical literature, contrasting them with popular Western, biomedical, and even TCM perspectives. Learn to see the healthy female body as a complex system of personal, social, and cosmic forces affecting the flow and balance of qi and blood, expressing itself in adulthood through cycles of bleeding in resonance with the moon, or with conception, pregnancy, birth, and lactation. Chinese medicine practitioners are in a unique position to support this process, from menarche to menopause and beyond.
    Online Streaming
    Workshop

  • Students will gain an understanding of the development of TCM in modern times and China’s role in fostering Chinese medicine globally. Issues related to how Japanese and Korean traditional medicine and U.S. developments like integrative medicine interact with China’s agenda will be raised. Students will become familiar with the World Health Organization’s (W.H.O.) insertion of a chapter on Chinese medicine in the International Classification of Disease (ICD-11). Beijing's recent proposal to make defaming Chinese medicine a crime will also be discussed.
    Online Streaming
    Workshop

Register Today!

Reconnect with the Pacific Symposium community and enjoy a variety of engaging lectures, exhibitor deals, and fun surprises! All the courses will be live, with downloadable certificates. Exhibit halls will be open to all.


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