Studying Acupuncture at SMIC-ITCM

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve gone these past few months, I’ve been a little busy with school. Surprise! I’ve been wanting to study acupuncture since the pandemic started and thought it would be a great way to pass the time so I reached out to the two schools that I was familiar with – La Consolacion College and SMIC Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine. In 2020, both schools were closed until further notice because of the lockdown. It was disappointing, so I preoccupied myself with other things instead and told myself I’d revisit it in the future. I thought it would be a fun certification, a bit of a challenge, but a cool new skill I could pick up. Boy, oh boy, was I so wrong.

Earlier this year I figured, with places opening up and talks about schools doing face-to-face classes again in the upcoming school year, I might as well give the idea of going to acupuncture school another shot. I had learned how to do acudetox (also called ear acupuncture, auricular acupuncture, or the NADA protocol) and was pretty happy with the results I was getting with patients, and figured I could probably learn the rest of it if I applied myself enough. As luck would have it, LaCo was opening a new batch for their acupuncture course, but it was only open to students with a medical background. I sent an inquiry to SMIC to see if they accepted non-medical students, and they did, but that I would have to take pre-requisite medical courses like anatomy, physiology, and medical terminology, along with the other course subjects for the first semester. They had opened a batch of pre-requisite subjects in January, but since the first semester was about to start in May, I’d essentially be playing catch up, along with three other students, of taking up the pre-requisites along with a full course load. While I have no regrets, I really, really wish I knew exactly what I was signing up for.

SMIC’s Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine

The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God (SMIC) are a group of nuns who came to the Philippines with the intention of spreading God’s love through acts of healing, specifically, acupuncture. Spearheaded by Sr. Regina Liu, the lines at their clinic started to get longer until eventually, after a lot of prodding and pleading, they put up the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine for students who want to learn how to do the same. The institute is composed of fully credentialed and adept Chinese Medicine specialists, Western Medicine doctors, and well-respected leaders in other allied health professions. They’re also the nicest people! I used to dread having to go to class where I’d have to put up with demeaning professors or ones who didn’t care whether you understood the material or not. I was expecting the same treatment here – maybe worse, because it felt like med school and in my head it would be incredibly intimidating – but I’m happy to report that I have had such a positive experience thus far.

If you’ve been thinking of taking up acupuncture, too, or taking a deep dive in Chinese medicine, the school currently offers three programs:

1. Comprehensive Acupuncture Training Program teaches acupuncture points, proper techniques, treatments and tui na Chinese massage. The program fulfills the requirement for becoming a Certified Acupuncturist by the Philippine Institute of Traditional and Alternative Health Care (PITAHC). The program is 1.5 years.
2. Comprehensive Training Program on Traditional Chinese Medicine is a full course of TCM which includes Acupuncture, Tuina Massage, Chinese Herbology, Chinese Nutrition and Tai Chi/ Qi Gong. The comprehensive acupuncture course is an integral part of this program. This is an additional 1.5 years after you take the acupuncture program, so this is essentially 3 years.
3. Chinese Herbal Medicine Dispenser Program is designed for individuals who are interested to be a certified Chinese Medicine Dispenser. In order to learn the basic theories, proper methods and skills and to be able to prepare and provide herbs in the form specified on the prescription and implement safe and effective chinese medicine dispensing. I’m not sure how long this program runs for.

It’s Med School with Mandarin

I was pretty naïve thinking that I could take the course subjects and have it not affect my life as much. I think when I was told that the program was for 1.5 years, I didn’t think it would be as intense as a four-year course. Seriously, I had no idea how much of my time this would consume – I thought I’d be in to take a few classes that were probably two hours max each, so that would be half my day around three times a week. I didn’t expect each class to be at least four hours long. So now, when people ask me how my acupuncture course is going, the easiest way to explain it is to say it’s basically med school with Mandarin. Let me explain why:

1. Half the course is composed of western medicine subjects. Anatomy, physiology, medical terminology, pharmacology, pathophysiology, and ethics are all part of this semester. If you already took up a medical-related degree, then you’ll skip all this and focus on the traditional Chinese medicine subjects. But for someone like me whose background is business, it’s cramming a ton of bony landmarks, body functions, and how they all relate to each other, how that delicate ecosystem can be messed up, and where we draw the line as medical practitioners when it comes to treating patients. That’s two to four hours per subject, three times a week. Yet while it is intense, the upside is that SMIC hired amazing instructors to teach that can condense complicated concepts down to something a layman like myself would understand. The subject I was dreading the most for this semester was Pharmacology – I didn’t think I’d retain anything from it at all, but it turned out to be one of my favorites. I’m already my Saturday mornings listening to our instructor go through a slew of prescription drugs, how they affect our physiology, and interesting side effects, as well as all the side chat about funny stories about said drugs. It feels weird having weekend brunch and not talking about how Metformin is the only diabetic drug recommended for people with obesity. Also, did you know that Metformin with B12 makes for a great anti-aging combination, too?! God that little tidbit from doc Candy when she was on her anti-aging conference in Thailand!
2. Then there’s the actual Traditional Chinese Medicine subjects. It’s fascinating, seeing how the Chinese made sense of everything more than 2,000 years ago, and how modern medicine is finally starting to make sense of the concepts now. Working at Centro Holistico, I love seeing how Functional Medicine and Chinese Medicine are similar in a lot of aspects, so learning the basics like the Five Element Framework, Yin-Yang Theory, and how they’re all tied to major organs, senses, flavors, etc. is pretty amazing! This school is definitely the gold standard here, as it also came with a crash course in Mandarin in order to better understand the names of the points, channels, and collaterals, as well as the history and philosophy of the practice. I find Chinese medicine to be a mix of medicine, art, and intuition. It takes a while for the concepts to sink in and make sense – there is an intuitiveness to it that I really like once you fully understand the concept and see how it makes sense when looked at through a Western medicine lens, too – but once it does the retention is forever. There’s no unlearning that now that it’s taken up space and made a home in my brain.
3. The tuition fee is what you’d pay if you went to med school. This definitely surprised me the most – it surprised a lot of my medical professional friends, too. I really didn’t expect to be paying upwards of ₱50,000 per trisem. For this last trisem I paid around ₱80,000 (including the three pre-requisite subjects), and the next semester is expected to be the same. It’s a lot of money, considering most of the classes are over Zoom. Plus, when I have to do face-to-face classes for subjects like acupuncture theory and point location, I have to schlep all the way to Quezon City from Las Piñas, so that will also start to add up. But then again, there are no reputable acupuncture schools here in the south, so I just have to put my big girl pants on and figure it out.

Certified, Not Licensed

One of the frustrating things for me about taking up acupuncture is that all I can get in the Philippines is certification that I’m an acupuncturist. The government – I guess this is under the PRC – still hasn’t come around to require a license, even though a lot of the job entails seeing patients, going through their medical history, coming up with a treatment plan, and treating them with needles, moxibustion, ventosa, or whatever else is needed to help them along. Unlike in the US, where having a license is a requirement to be able to practice, and whose requirement would differ per state. Having a document that says you are registered by a governing agency so there are checks and balances in your profession gives a whole new level of trust for patients who come see me. My frustration with certification also stems from being in the coaching industry as well, where anyone can call themselves a coach, essentially. You can put in the year’s worth of training and mentoring or take a personal mastery course over a weekend and call yourself a coach. So yeah, my personal take is that getting a license to practice is important, and I know the OGs in the industry are working on it, but it hasn’t been given much of a priority. My long-term goal is to be able to incorporate acupuncture into my coaching practice and vice versa when I’m here, and be able to do the same in the US when I have to fly out.

So Is It All Worth It?

I’ll be honest and say I don’t know. In terms of pursuing a passion and knowing that this skill is invaluable in helping patients whose issues range from pain management to antiageing, then yes. Totally! But in terms of it being a money making business – because let’s be practical, the program isn’t cheap – then I’m not so sure. It would probably depend on how you market yourself, which institutions you partner up with, and how much of a demand there is for acupuncture in your area. One of our instructors sees as many as 16 patients a day. If let’s say, he makes a conservative ₱500 per patient, that’s ₱8,000. But do you have any idea how tiring it is to do acupuncture on 16 patients? Even the doctors at Centro do around 8-10 patients max. I’m lucky that I can plug myself into a space that allows me to observe, and then eventually practice once I meet all the internship hours.

A lot of my classmates taking up the program are in the medical field already – anesthesiologists, GPs, OB-GYNEs, nurses, PTs, etc. So taking up acupuncture to add to their skill set is easier as well as cheaper, since they can do away with most of the Western medicine subjects. I also have classmates who are taking up the course because they have loved ones who are in pain who want to help them manage what they’re going through. And lastly, I have classmates who took up the program because they started off as acupuncture patients and saw results, so they wanted to learn how to needle, too. So far we’ve stuck with the program, and as far as I know only one of our classmates won’t be coming back for the next semester, but that’s because she’s committed to finishing university before she comes back to complete the certification program.

So on whether taking up acupuncture is worth it or not would probably depend on what your big why is for doing it. It’s been a worthwhile investment for me, even though it has taken a lot more of my time, brain cells, and money than I expected it to. And even though I question my sanity at times for signing up for this, I know it’s all going to be worth it in the end. The second semester starts on the 30th, and I’m already feeling excited and slightly anxious at the same time.

Do You Want to Be a Chi Whisperer, Too?

The only thing I really regret about signing up for the acupuncture program is not being fully aware of what it was I was signing up for in terms of commitment, and the stamina and mental fortitude that came with sitting and paying attention to four-hour long lectures. But if you’ve read through this and decided that learning acupuncture and/or Traditional Chinese Medicine is for you, then you’ll be happy to know that SMIC-ITCM has opened a new batch for enrollment for the Comprehensive Acupuncture Training Program. For inquiries you can send them a PM on Facebook, send them a message on 0917 305 1405 or shoot them an email at smicitcmphilippines@gmail.com.