Your Why is the Life Guide
Halifax-Dartmouth bridge; circa 2011
Sometimes certain life moments, and what we do with them, continue to guide us.
Grade nine. Biology class. The teacher asked someone to come to the front of the class and demonstrate a concept on the black board. Nobody put their hand up. 5 seconds. 15 seconds. 30 seconds. Seconds in some circumstances can seem to last forever. I put my hand up.
At this time in my life I don’t remember exactly what I was supposed to teach the class, but I took the chalk from my teacher’s hand and wrote all over the black board. It was bliss. After, my teacher told me I had done a great job and would make a great instructor one day.
Fast forward to a couple years into my acupuncture & Chinese medicine career when I was a guest instructor at a Acadia University class for their History of Medicine night class. They had six (6!) black boards in that auditorium. I filled them all up, from left to right, drawing major Chinese medicine concepts on them, and then would start back over on the left erasing and continuing my lesson in “how Kenton organizes his thoughts.”
At age 14, I caught a late-night Kung-Fu commercial where an elderly white-haired man was defending himself against some ninjas on a bridge. The romantic seed of learning a martial art and the possibility of being able to defend myself was planted. I would continue to water and fertilize this well into my adulthood - and I still train regularly to this day.
Learning Kung-Fu meant studying Kung-Fu in the best way possible: by watching Kung-Fu movies. The protagonist would have to train arduously, while studying the Tao, and endure hardships in the countryside. The Tao Te Ching, Chuang-Tzu and Lieh-Tzu kept my company. I devoured the ancient texts as a teenager because I wanted my Kung-Fu to be good, too.
Kung-Fu led me to Chinatown. Chinatown led me to history. History led me to Chinese medicine. A close friend went to Chinese medicine college and I went to computer technician school. A couple years later, that same friend recommended I talk to the dean of the college and I was hooked. The same medicine that had healed a 6-month old skateboarding injury in two visits could now be practiced by me - and I could help more than just pain.
I became my class president and the president of student council so I could not only advocate for each student, but also introduce new students to what they could expect in attending Chinese medicine college. “Just survive the first semester of the first year and the rest will all work out,” I would say every year.
A year after graduation, I was able to teach for a Chinese medicine college. I taught for another one. I lectured for a Naturopathic conference and a Chinese Medicine association. I was then hired by a group of six students who felt their education was sub-par. Never receiving one piece of course material during their entire education, I created a workbook for them - something to solidify their experiences and give them a clear path to treatment: The Strength of TCM Workbook.
These students were not alone. I found graduates scattered across Nova Scotia who felt the same. I discovered acupuncturists from New York, Barcelona, and London who told me of their experiences; they, too, felt confused on how to run a business and administer cohesive acupoint prescriptions.
Maybe I could help...