Bryan McMahon L.Ac.
To treat disease, first examine its source and appreciate the dynamic process of its development.
-The Divine Husbandman's Classic of Materia Medica
Third Century a.d.
“Sub-optimal health and disease are products of inertia. It is possible to predict fairly accurately where you will be in 10 or 20 years in your health journey based on the way you live today. A holistic form of intervention begins with the conscious decision to shift that momentum and lean into the resistance. We need to look at all aspects of our life with honesty, compassion and acceptance and decide what we can do to initiate change, no matter how big or small. This strength in the face of adversity takes on its Own momentum, until one day you realize that you are no longer the person you used to be.”
Medicine is in my blood. As the son of a career ICU nurse and a clinical psychologist, my mother and father were my first role models of a healthcare provider. My childhood dinner time conversations were filled with stories of sickness, trauma and recovery from across the medical spectrum. The dedication to their patients’ care that my parents displayed left the deep impression in me that medicine is not just another career you choose; it is a calling.
It would be many years until I felt that calling in myself. I needed to travel far in order to discover my own personal connection to medicine. As an undergrad, I focused on languages and the humanities. After graduating in 2001, I accepted a research fellowship at the prestigious Kyoto University and returned to the city I fell in love during my year abroad there. I quickly narrowed my focus to classical Lao-Zhuang philosophy and Daoist health cultivation, immersing myself in source texts and commentaries in their original languages. I also began to branch out and explore in my martial arts training. This resulted in a deeply impactful introduction to meditation and the healing practices of qigong. I began to connect with an inner landscape of experience that filled me with a sense of vitality and well-being. In my own self-styled fashion, I was following the thread of traditional preparation for medical study, I just hadn’t put the pieces together yet. By late 2003, the recognition of my career path in traditional Asian medicine had taken shape and my time in Japan began to come to a close. The return home to my roots had begun, but it would first take another decade-long detour through the land where it all started.
I arrived in Beijing in early 2004 and threw myself straight into further preparation for formal medical training. Over the course of the next six years, I would meet the many rigors necessary to become one of only a handful of Western students to graduate from the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine with a degree completed entirely in Mandarin. But the best thing about being a student in China was the environment of opportunity for private study that it provided, something I took advantage of from the beginning of my time there. My the end of my second year of the program, I was invited by Dr. Li Xin to intern at the recently founded Shanghai Insight ACM Clinic for the summer recess. His teaching style and clinical acumen reflected grasp of medicine that impressed me deeply. When I finished my degree program in the summer of 2010, I eagerly accepted the opportunity to join him in Shanghai where I became one of the first foreign licensed practitioners of Chinese medicine in the city. I spent the next four years as a resident practitioner and instructor at Insight ACM and the Zidao Jingshe Center for Traditional Arts, two of the leading centers of Chinese medicine in the country, establishing a base of both Chinese and international patients and students.
In 2015 after having spent nearly half my life in Asia, the time to return to North American soil had arrived. I chose the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the city of Portland, OR, where I joined the then NUNM College of Classical Chinese Medicine as a part time member of their academic and clinical faculty. It was a very fruitful period in my life professionally: collaborating with the extended NUNM community of practitioners, introducing Ancient Chinese Medicine to an audience of Western students for the first time, refining my clinical skills through daily patient encounters in different practice settings and traveling back to China regularly to continue my clinical and instructional work with Dr. Li.
Early 2020 and the widespread turmoil of the pandemic would mark the beginning of the unraveling of life in Portland for me. I had been keeping in close contact with my mentor Dharma Bodhi [Kolbjorn Martens], traveling to be with him and deepening my connection to the path of Trika Mahasiddha Yoga as much as possible since our initial meeting in 2014. The richness and intimacy of this relationship had become undeniable and I decided that it was time now to make it a priority in my life. In the summer of 2022, I relocated to Costa Rica to join students from around the world for the opening of the TMY three-year Acharya Training Program. This past year has seen the successful completion of both a year of retreat practice in Kundalinī Hatha Yoga and the construction of my new home overlooking the TMY Center, from which I joyfully continue the work of bringing together the study, practice and instruction of Ancient Chinese Medicine and traditional yoga.