Dr. Tian Heming Modification System

Tian Heming, was born in 1883 in the town of Jianyang in Sichuan province, China. His birth name was Tian Qishang, but he later adopted his older brother’s clinical moniker and started practicing under the studio name Tian Bawei, or Eight Ingredient Tian. He practiced medicine professionally in Chengdu nearby the Qingyang Temple in the area known as the Xie Family Shrine. He died peacefully at his home in Chengdu in 1980, enjoying the age of 97 years, during which he practiced medicine for over 70 years. His brother Tian Qitai, had moved around the end of Qing dynasty, near the beginning of the Republic of China, from Jianyang to Chengdu, where he was a Confucian scholar-physician. He treated disease exclusively with Shanghan formulas. Tian Heming inherited his skill, and excelled and improved it, treating any and all condition with only Zhang Zhongjing formulas. Dr. Tian would see up to 300 patients every day and worked tirelessly through China’s tumult. The Tian family style of Chinese medicine is especially known for its advanced and intricate system of pulse diagnosis for canonical formulas. Dr. Tian Heming trained many great physicians, most notably Dr. Zeng Rongxiu former honorary director of ICEAM, and important Tian lineage^® holder.

In 1999, your instructor, Dr. Arnaud Versluys, met his ultimately lifelong teacher, Dr. Zeng Rongxiu, under whom he trained in traditional Shanghan Lun discipleship for 13 years. It continues to be Dr. Versluys’ life work to discover and reconstruct the clinical practice and theoretical underpinnings of the Tian family style of Canonical Formulas. Not only did he receive the full transmission of knowledge from his master, Dr. Zeng Rongxiu, the main representative of the Tian-Zeng branch of the lineage. But he has also received instructions from the late Dr. Zheng Guanglu; from Wu Tianfu, the widower of Dr. Tian’s granddaughter, and lineage holder Tian Yuxia; and from Dr. Tian’s sole surviving disciple, Dr. Huang Xuan. The converging of these four branches within Dr. Versluys have uniquely allowed him to synthesize and reconstruct the clinical style of pulse diagnosis and formula use and have made him into the sole living representative of the Tian system.

This seminar is a worldwide first-ever distillation of fragmented knowledge in writings and anecdotes dispersed throughout the Tian lineage, gathered and organized for the sake of this instruction and the preservation of the system. The seminar will start by presenting a biographical introduction to Dr. Tian and the structure of the lineage from the perspective of each lineage holder.

The bulk of the seminar will then be spent on the instruction of Dr. Tian’s modification system for Zhang Zhongjing formulas, as well as his use of a select group of non-Zhang Zhongjing formulas. The Tian modification system is Dr. Tian’s own clinical experience developed over the decades upon decades in practice. This is a purely clinical modification system as per the hierarchy of clinical modification of canonical formulas. As such, this seminar should only be taken after completion and mastery of the basic Canonical Formula Modification seminar, for it is its logical conclusion.

8 CREDITS (NCCAOM, CALIFORNIA)