In today’s Shop Talk Damo Mitchell explores the Craft of Acupuncture and our relationship with the primary tool of our trade— the needle. Along with a practical understanding of Butcher Ding and the critical importance of knowing how to slide through the sinew channels with an attentive awareness, so we can target our treatment to the primary channels.

You can find out more about Damo's work at 

Lotus Nei Gong, Xian Tian College, and on Youtube.

Damo Mitchell

I started out in the martial arts which I began at the age of four; it was through these studies that I first encountered Chinese medicine which I began to learn at age 14 with Tuina.

Fast forward 28 years or so and I find myself having completed a UK degree in Chinese medicine as well as having been apprenticed to a number of Chinese medical doctors in China and South East Asia. Never really finding myself comfortable in a conventional ‘clinical;’ setting, I always leaned more towards study with esoteric and Daoist practitioners of medicine who worked in smaller communities or out of their own home.

To me, the separation of personal cultivation from Chinese medical study shouldn’t really exist and they both form an equal part of my lifepath.

These days, I am the head of the Xian Tian College of Chinese Medicine as well as the director of the Lotus Nei Gong School of Internal Arts which keeps me more than busy!