Classical Chinese Medicine goes far beyond the institutionalized phenomenon currently known as “TCM” (Traditional Chinese Medicine). Since the 1970s, the TCM process of enclosing the many and varied roots of Chinese medicine within the sterile confines of a highly standardized model has been widely adopted in both Western and Chinese education, and is quickly becoming the dominant face of Oriental medicine today.

 

While TCM marks the infusion of scientific and materialistic methodology, Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) remains firmly attached to its ancient roots. MCC is a science in its own right, founded in a poetic-mythological mode of observing and describing nature, which united the macrocosm and microcosm. It has since ancient China been preserved in a body of literature works (spanning out of just medicine) known as "the classics".

 

MCC does not advocate blind adherence to precepts of the past

— any theory must be measured against its clinical application —

but embraces the classical spirit on which it was based. Far from the linearity and standardization desired by TCM, MCC, thanks to the classics and doctors still imbued with this medical art, can still deploy its incredible richness through a practice deeply rooted in its original complexity. The practitioner of this medicine is a thinker of a holistic system which seeks to connect consciousness, biology, physiology, biosphere, culture and cosmos.