Acupuncturist ‘reads pulse’ to determine client’s health

BOULDER — In 1981, James MacRitchie was the only registered acupuncturist in Boulder.

Since then, the number of acupuncturists registered locally has grown rapidly. In 2011, there are 142 acupuncturists in the city that are fully licensed by the state of Colorado, largely thanks to the work of MacRitchie and a small group of others in formalizing the profession, he said.

Two acupuncture schools operate in Boulder County, and the profession is more well-known in the United States than it ever has been, even though it is not a scientifically validated method of treating patients.

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“The whole exercise of wanting to get the licensing so more people could practice and more patients could be treated is multitudes more successful than I could ever have imagined,” MacRitchie said. “It’s like the Space Shuttle taking off.”

Acupuncture involves treating patients with needles. While MacRitchie is considered by many in the region to be a grandfather of the profession in Colorado, his true passion is actually Qigong Acupuncture, a treatment method which combines classical acupuncture with the concepts of Qigong, the Taoist concept of developing energy. MacRitchie “reads the pulses” of his patients to create an “energy hologram” to help them be healthy. The Asian medical diagnostic procedure harkens back thousands of years to the book, “Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon,” believed to be the oldest medical book in the world.

“The most central issue is that people can cultivate their own personal energy, and it will give them better health and a better state of being, which gives more energy and more life,” MacRitchie said. “Who wants to be sick?”

MacRitchie will assess a patient by placing his fingers on various points of the person’s wrist to “read the pulses.” In those readings, he checks the small intestine, gall bladder, bladder, liver, kidneys, lungs, spleen, pericardium, colon, stomach and finally, something he calls the “triple heater.”

The assessment shows not only a patient’s physical state, but also his or her mental state, MacRitchie said. He compared his readings to a scientist trying to understand how DNA works in a particular cell in the body.

“For whatever reasons of history and culture, and our ways of viewing the world and ourselves, the Oriental tradition understood the hologram of the human being a millennia ago, and we are only just coming to terms with that as a model in the Western scientific tradition,” MacRitchie said.

At MacRitchie’s Center for Personal Energy Cultivation at 1136 Alpine Ave., he also trains others in Eastern medicine practices and sees patients. MacRitchie said he is changing the name of his practice from the current Chi Kung/Qigong School, The Acupuncture Center of Boulder, to the Center for Personal Energy Cultivation to be more accessible to potential patients who might not know what the word Qigong means.

“(MacRitchie) took me beyond the thin veneer of kicking and punching to understanding your internal energy, or your ‘chi’,” Joffe said.

MacRitchie estimates the acupuncture industry at about $72 million per year in Colorado, based on statistics that show about 1,200 acupuncturists are licensed in the state. He bases the total dollar amount on each one of those acupuncturists seeing about 20 patients per week at $60 per visit.

At MacRitchie’s practice nine-month training classes are featured — 12 weeks worth of classes for $100. MacRitchie also has written books that are offered free online. About 30,000 people from 130 countries around the world have downloaded the books, he said.

Others in the industry see MacRitchie as a “qigong master” for his work, said Valerie Hobbs, owner of the Southwest Acupuncture school in Boulder. The four-year accredited program plus board certification leads to a state license, Hobbs said. Practitioners see an average salary of $50,000 per year, she said. The school sees about 900 patients per month as part of a student clinic associated with the program.

“(MacRitchie) brought this practice and its integration into healing to America and helped form the American Association for Qigong,” Hobbs said. “This is a guy who blazed a lot of trails.”

MacRitchie founded the National Qigong Association with eight other people, including former wife, Damaris Jarboux, who is co-founder of The Body-Energy Center in Boulder with him as well as a registered nurse.

“It’s a wonderful national organization, and a lot of people have put a lot of work into it. (Jim) took a leading role, and it was a great thing to have brought into existence,” Jarboux said.