About Dr. Milburn

With a background in science and training in complementary medicine, Dr. Michael Milburn has two decades of experience with the best alternative approaches to healthcare. He works hard to find individualized solutions to common chronic health problems and to offer world-class programs guaranteed to improve your health. His programs and clinical services include Tai Chi and Qi Gong, nutrition and cooking, acupuncture and herbal medicine.

Dr. Milburn has studied with some of the world's best Tai Chi and Qi Gong teachers and offers world-class Tai Chi and Qi Gong programs for health and stress reduction. He has written many popular articles on Tai Chi and wrote a foreword to Tai Chi Master Chunna Zhang's book Earth Qi Gong for Women. He has lectured extensively on the health benefits of Tai Chi and Qi Gong and will have the opportunity to present his own research on Tai Chi at a University health research conference in April, 2010.

Dr. Milburn's research on traditional diets as a solution to contemporary health problems while a professor at Cape Breton University can be found to influence best selling author Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food. He has lectured extensively on the relationship between diet and chronic disease, especially intensive nutritional changes as complementary therapy for chronic health problems. He makes extensive use of nutrition in his clinical work and offers a range of cooking and nutrition classes designed to help you really make a difference in your health. He is particularly interested in nutrition and cancer and offers a cooking program for cancer survivors.

Dr. Milburn's clinical work is focused on using the powerful systems approach of traditional Chinese medicine. The overall balance of your mind-body system is assessed through an extensive interview process combined with tongue and pulse observation. A focused set of therapies can then be used to bring you back to balance.....and health.

"Michael P. Milburn brings both a scientific mind and an intuitive understanding to the study of the relationships between Chinese healing arts and Western health care. In this book, he translates those complexities into easy to understand language. He explores topics ranging from nutrition and preventive medicine to the fascinating concept of qi (ch'i), or energy. "The Future of Healing" will be valuable to everyone interested in these approaches to healing.

Marvin Smalheiser, Editor, T'AI CHI Magazine

"Michael P. Milburn's book, THE FUTURE of HEALING, invites us to undertake that rarest of endeavours - to think.

More than anything else, this book, although undoubtedly full of facts and fascinating anecdotes, challenges us to take a new look at our beliefs and assumptions, and to consider how subtly these unconscious biases, based on our Western culture and history, influence our approach to health.

Beyond the "scientific" cause-and-effect explanations, from which much of modern medicine draws its treatments, lies the world of Oriental medicine where cause-and-effect comprise "a tangled web" in which mind and body and spirit are inseparable.

Michael P. Milburn's book is about Chinese Medicine, but beyond this it leads us into a new empirical approach - one which could conceivably encompass ancient traditions with the cutting-edge of modern medical research.

With the modern-day scourges of heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and allergies all becoming more prevalent and with treatments proving invasive and less than effective, many patients are questioning our traditional Western approaches

Consequently, there is now a movement in North America away from allopathic treatment modalities. Naturopathy, herbology, acupuncture, energy medicine, therapeutic touch, etc., all approach disease in ways unlike those used by conventional physicians. Unfortunately, some practitioners of alternative medicine have followed this trend too far and now "blame people for their illness."

Michael Milburn shows us how this approach causes much harm and is actually evidence that the practitioner does not understand the indivisibility of mind and body. And so even when we think we are emulating the Oriental way, this flawed approach is evidence for our hidebound thinking. Milburn shows us a more appealing approach wherein Chinese medicine lays no blame but merely attempts to re-cast, or re-visualize the Qi, that hard-to-define concept of energy-matter which organizes and influences life processes.

This clear and well-written book, THE FUTURE OF HEALING, opens up for us a realm of new (for Westerners) possibilities. The book's great strength is that it provides an overview of Western and Oriental medical approaches while at the same time highlighting the exciting parallels becoming evident in both. East and West have both looked for the symmetry of life systems: one from the spiritual level, and one from the molecular level. Michael Milburn's book leads us to envision a future wherein both will meld into one comprehensive systems-based approach to health, one which can only bode well for humanity.

All in all, this book, not only invites us to think, it prods us to think well. And since, according to M. Scott Peck, thinking well is a radical activity, it follows that Michael P. Milburn opens up for us a "radical" (for our times) vision of health - one viewed from a systems perspective: mind, body, spirit - all enmeshed in a plastic matrix.

I recommend this book to all who seek to explore a broader view of health than the one traditionally presented to us by our Western culture. But be forewarned, once inklings of the Oriental concept penetrate our consciousness, one’’s view of medicine will forever be changed."

Jen. L. Jones, Editor/Publisher, Herbs at Home Magazine

"Michael Milburn gives us a clear overview of two important fields of study -- the leading edge of new science and the centuries old knowledge of Chinese medicine -- and he charts parallels between them. A fascinating exploration that will be of interest to everyone concerned with the future of health care in North America."

Prof. Kai Chen, BS, MS, Ph.D. in Chinese Medicine

"This book expertly and lucidly explores the concepts and practices of traditional Chinese medicine. Based on detailed study he has compared Chinese and Western medicine and made thought provoking comparisons. This is a must read for anyone wanting insights into the history, philosophy and practices of this fascinating subject."

Norman Temple, PhD, Professor of Nutrition, Athabasca University