David, originally trained as an Attorney, made the decision to study Chinese Medicine came on the heels of the year 2000 failure of NorthPoint Communications, the technology company that abruptly crashed and burned when Verizon pulled out of a merger between the two companies. David is not bitter, but he also does not own, nor will he ever own, a single Verizon product.

He was introducted to his acupuncture teacher, Dr. Bear during his first semeseter of school at AIMC – Berkeley. His primary goal was to make as many mistakes as he could in the student clinic. “It’s really nice to be able mess up on someone elses license” he was fond of saying. By graduation in 2007, he had done the majority of his clinical hours using Dr. Bear’s method, much to the chagrin of his supervisors.

In 2008, David traveled to Morioka, Japan to study with Dr. Bear. When he left, Dr. Bear said, “OK, now you have graduated from Elementary School” and handed him one copy of the Nan Jing, “the commenary in this one is Middle School.” Then handed him a thicker copy of the Nan Jing, saying “the commenary in this one is High School. But most importantly, see lots of patients. When you have done that you will graduate from College.” David returned home to Georgia and founded Red Earth Acupuncture, which paterns itself as closely as possible to Dr. Bear’s clinic in Morioka, Japan.

By 2009, David had realized that the TCM herbalism often failed to reproduce the results enumerated in the Classics. He concluded that either he had been a really poor student (which still remains a distinct possibility), or that the model of herbalism he learned in school fell short. At the behest of a friend and mentor, he was encouraged to study with Hai Sha and Bo Shi Ni, before finding his root Jin Fang teacher, Dr. Arnaud Versluys.

In addition, David has developed a fully modular exctract system that delivers the classical formulas as concentrated decoctions at classical dosages for his patients. In David’s spare time, he loves hanging out with his two children, staring at his navel at the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, practicing Shorinji Kempo and irratating his family with the banjo.