My relationship with Leon Hammer began at a seminar in 1992 at the New England School of Acupuncture. I helped him bring his materials to the car after a rather long and grueling weekend seminar. The man was clearly rigorous, we spent hours learning the pulse positions, qualities and interpretations in the course of a single weekend. As we traveled towards his car, I expressed a desire to learn his work in depth, and that I would love teach it one day. He said to me, “You can’t push the river.” By the next year, I was organizing seminars for him in the North East and teaching some of his introductory courses.

My first experiences studying with Hammer involved extended lectures with no visual aids. The long narrative was interspersed with some guided practice and then Hammer would demonstrate his prowess with the pulse. I began organizing seminars for Hammer in 2003. As we developed the teaching team through the Dragon Rises Seminars group, I brought in the use of overhead projection in and we used that method for our week long teacher retreats. Members of those retreats included Lonnie Jarret, Brian LaForgia, Bob Hefron and me. We retreated in the Adirondack Mountains of New York and at the California seaside in a small town called Oceanside. We would take the data from completed pulse forms and interpret them.  In 1996, I invited Leon Hammer to teach in an herbal program that I was teaching for the Florida State Oriental Medical Association. I taught the first two weekends in preparation for him to teach the advanced course. The school where we taught together was in Gainesville Florida, Leon Hammer purchased the school, which he then named as Dragon Rises College of Oriental Medicine (DRCOM).  

Dragon Rises College provides training in Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis (CCPD), based on the work of John HF Shen, OMD which was further developed by Leon Hammer, MD. Dragon Rises College is the only school in the US that has the program as part of the core curriculum. I now teach at the Academy of Oriental Medicine where learners may pursue a concentration in the teachings of John HF Shen and Leon Hamme. These teachings are balanced with classical literature and the current mainstram nomenclature and common practices of Chinses pulse diagnosis.

Sincerely and Warmly,

Will Morris