Bob Flaws

Bob Flaws, Dipl. Ac. & C.H., was born in 1946 and grew up in Rutherford, NJ. From the age of 14, Bob had three main areas of interest: writing/reading, philosophy, and biology. He attended Newark Academy and then Middlebury College where he earned a B.A. degree. His major in college was American Literature. In 1969, Bob went to India and Nepal to become a Buddhist yogi. He became the student of a family of Nyingmapa lamas headed by H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche, the Ven. Jetsun Pema Rinpoche, and Sonam Kazi. When the Kazi family moved to New York City, Bob followed them at their request to continue his Buddhist training. Bob continued his Buddhist studies for 18 years, receiving oral transmissions, teachings, and empowerment from a number of Nyingmapa lamas, the last of which was Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. He held various positions within the Nyingma hierarchy, including chopon (master of ceremonies), omdze (cantor), and lopon (teacher), and spent considerable time in solitary retreat. During this time, Bob also studied Tibetan medicine with such Lama doctors as Ven. Trogawa Rinpoche and Chagdud Tulku.

Because Bob could not see a clear path in the mid-1970s to becoming a Tibetan doctor, he decided to study its closest kin or cousin, Chinese medicine. President Nixon had reopened the United States' relationship with the People's Republic of China and James Reston had created a groundswell of interest in acupuncture with his articles about that subject in The New York Times. At that time, Bob knew of only one American acupuncture school, the New England School of Acupuncture. Before enrolling in their program, however, he decided to first study massage therapy in preparation for studying acupuncture. Therefore, in 1977, Bob moved to Boulder, CO to attend the Boulder School of Massage Therapy, which he graduated from in 1978.

At the same time, he began studying with another New York Nyingmapa who had moved to Colorado, Jerry Gardner. Jerry was a lifelong student and teacher of martial arts. In particular, Bob sought out Jerry's advice about ways of training the qi in his hands. So Bob started practicing various types of qi gong culled from a number of different styles of martial arts taught by Sifu Gardner. These included wing chun, tai ji quan, ba gua, and tai ji chi (tai ji ruler). Because of his previous many years of meditation and yogi practice, Bob quickly made progress in qi gong, and, after graduating from BSMT, opened the first qi gong school in the United States to operate outside of a martial arts context. This was the Blue Poppy Chi Kung Association. It was dedicated to teaching qi gong for health and healing purposes. In 1978, Bob invited Lucjan Shila, to teach for Blue Poppy. Lucjan was yet another New York Nyingmapa who had also studied and taught tai ji quan, xing yi, ba gua, and xi zang mi zong lama pai (Tibetan secret sect lama system, also known as Tibetan White Crane gong fu). Bob continued his qi gong studies with Lucjan, taking various qi gong exercises from the martial arts Lucjan taught.

In 1978, Bob became engaged to Honora Lee Wolfe, the founder and director of the Boulder School of Massage Therapy. This engagement effectively put an end to Bob's plans of attending the New England School of Acupuncture in Boston, MA. Therefore, he began studying acupuncture with Eric Tao (Xi-yu) in Denver, CO. Dr. Tao had learned the Tao family style of acupuncture from his uncle in Beijing when he was a teenager. After 1949, Dr. Tao and his family were forced to move to Taiwan due to their Guo Min Tang affiliation. There, Dr. Tao decided to make acupuncture his profession, and during the 1950, 60s, and early 70s became associated with Wu Wei-ping and his circle. Bob studied with Dr. Tao for a year and became certified by Dr. Tao in acupuncture-moxibustion. At the same time, Bob studied acupuncture and Chinese medicine whenever and wherever possible. This largely meant correspondence courses put out by the Occidental Institute of Chinese Studies and Henry Lu. It also meant reading anything and everything on Chinese medicine and taking lots of workshops by such people as Naburo Muramoto, Herman Aihara, Kiiko Matsumoto, Paul Chen, Michael Broffman, etc.

From 1979, Bob conducted a private practice in Boulder, CO mixing massage with acupuncture. In addition, he taught daily qi gong classes, weekend workshops, and six week summer intensives through Blue Poppy Chi Kung Association. Articles written by Bob about qi gong began to appear in Yoga Journal and Black Belt Magazine, and Bob did a national qi gong teaching tour in 1981. In 1982, Bob went to the Shanghai College of Chinese Medicine to continue his acupuncture-moxibustion studies. The purpose of this first visit to China was mostly to gain more clinical experience and test what he had already learned against contemporary Chinese standards of care. In 1983, Bob went back to the Shanghai College of Chinese Medicine to study tui na or Chinese medical massage. At that time, he was honored by being accepted as a personal student and North American representative of the famous Shanghainese tui na specialist, Dr. Ding Ji-feng. Dr. Ding had pioneered the creation of the guan fa pai or rolling method school of Chinese tui na. In 1986, Bob went back to Shanghai one more time to study Chinese herbal medicine, again to get more experience and compare what he had learned already to contemporary Chinese standards of care.

In 1982, Bob published his first book on Chinese medicine. This was titled Path of Pregnancy. It was a compendium of everything Bob had found on acupuncture and Chinese medicine for gestational, birthing, and postpartum diseases. Bob compiled this information first because of Honora's pregnancy and the birth of their son Ian. Bob and Honora self-published this book which they sold through ads placed in various health magazines. This was the beginning of Blue Poppy Press. Bob's family had been in the printing industry for 90 years, and Honora had worked as a layout and design person and also as a copywriter for a number of magazines and journals. Therefore, Bob and Honora had the combination of skills and background for publishing.

Bob and Honora then wrote and published a book on Chinese dietary therapy, titled Prince Wen Hui's Cook. In 1983 or 84, Paradigm Publications bought the rights to both these books and republished them under their own imprint. However, Bob and Honora quickly saw that their income from these books was drastically reduced by this. Therefore, they decided in the future to publish all their own books, and a steady profusion of books ushered from Blue Poppy Press from that time forth.

Because more women go to health care practitioners than men and because women have babies, Bob very quickly specialized in gynecology and pediatrics in his clinical practice. Because Chinese medical gynecology and pediatrics primarily mean the prescription and internal administration of Chinese medicinals, Bob also has come to specialize in that modality. In the early 1990s, Bob came to the inescapable conclusion that real knowledge of and a doctoral competence in Chinese medicine requires at least a reading knowledge of Chinese. Therefore, beginning in the early 90s, he taught himself to read medical Chinese. This direct personal access to the Chinese medical literature revolutionized not only Bob's own personal practice but also the quality of Blue Poppy Press's publications.

Some of Bob's other credits include being a Fellow and Governor of the National Academy of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine, a founder, past President, and Lifetime Fellow of the Acupuncture Association of Colorado, a founding member of the National Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine Alliance, and a Fellow of the Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine in the U.K. In addition, Bob has been the editor of the Colorado Acupuncturist and The Journal of the National Academy of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine. He has written, edited, and translated more than 75 books and scores of articles which have been published in professional and popular journals and magazines all over the world. Bob has taught at dozens of American acupuncture schools and Chinese medicine colleges as well as at a number of national professional conventions and symposia. He regularly teaches throughout Europe and has taught in Australia, New Zealand, and Israel. Bob is coauthor of an NIH-funded acupuncture research protocol on AIDS-related peripheral neuropathy, the report of which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In addition, Bob is a founder of the Council of Oriental Medical Publishers and is Colorado Commissioner of Clan Sinclair. Bob's hobbies include gardening, genealogy, reading historical fiction, walking/hiking, skiing, and sailing.

Lynn Kuchinski

Lynn Kuchinski, M.B.A., D.O.M., Dipl. Ac. & C.H., has practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine since 1994. Certified by the National Commission for the Certification of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM) in both acupuncture and Chinese herbs, Kuchinski specializes in internal medicine and gynecology. The Treatment of Diabetes Mellitus with Chinese Medicine, published in July 2002, is her second book. Her first book, Controlling Diabetes Naturally with Chinese Medicine was published in July 1999.

Kuchinski is originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota where she graduated from Augusburg College with a triple major in Education, English, and Latin. She did her graduate work at the University of Minnesota in Classical Languages (Latin and Greek) where she also taught medical terminology to western medical students. Kuchinski has an M.B.A. in International Management from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) in Glendale, Arizona where she specialized in French and European business and politics. Upon graduation, she lived and worked for nearly twenty years in the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. for American and European computer corporations specializing in programming and data base architecture. During her travels she became acquainted with Traditional Chinese Medicine. Upon returning to the U.S., she attended the International Institute of Chinese Medicine inSanta Fe, New Mexico and received her Master of Oriental Medicine in 1994.

In addition, Kuchinski studied Chinese language at the University of New Mexico from 1994 to 1997. Her translated articles have appeared in the Journal of Oriental Medicine in America, the Journal of the National Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, the Journal of Chinese Medicine (U.K.), and in the Blue Poppy Research Reports. Also, Kuchinski studied with Bob Flaws, attended the Blue Poppy post-graduate course in Traditional Chinese Gynecology, and was certified in TCM Gynecology in 1997. Currently, she lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her husband, Robert.

Robert Casanas, MD

Dr. Casañas was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in the midwestern U.S. After obtaining his B.S. in psychology from Lynchburg College in Virginia, he toured throughout the U.S. in the early 70s. He received a Master of Arts in biochemistry and microbiology from the University of South Florida where he also taught biology at the undergraduate level and was chosen as a National Science Foundation Fellow in marine biology research. In the 70s, Dr. Casañas engaged in infectious disease research for two years before going off to Latin America on a one-year sabbatical. He pursued his medical studies there as well and received his M.D.from a Jesuit school in Santo Domingo. After finishing his internal medicine training at Washington University in St. Louis, he settled in a small town near San Francisco where he opened a very successful solo private practice. Dr. Casañas received additional post-graduate training in medical acupuncture and Chinese medicine at U.C.L.A., where he also taught other physicians. He became an Assistant Professor at the U.C. San Francisco School of Medicine where he taught medical students and presented at several national medical conventions. His last major presentation was at the Fifth Annual Update in 2001 at UCSF School of Medicine on herbal analgesics. He also served as a consultant in integrative medicine for various state agencies in California. In 2003 he moved to the Tampa Bay area of Florida to blossom forth with the love of his life, Dr. Beata Herman, who is not only a shining beacon, but also a rising star in the realm of medicine. He can be contacted at doctorfeelgood@sierratel.com.