The Healing Arts

WaPo featured the Tai Sophia Institute, the local alternative medicine school, in its Health section this week. We found it informative, even if we might quibble with the story's description that the campus offers "an undeniable allure, blended into the woods and streams near Columbia."

Last time we were in the neighborhood, over off Johns Hopkins Road, we couldn't help notice the sterile office park and hum of traffic noise from Route 29.

Here's an excerpt:

Tai Sophia has grown in size and influence as interest in alternative therapies has increased. From a small healing-arts clinic founded in 1975, it has become an academic institution accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. The Maryland Higher Education Commission has endorsed all three of Tai Sophia's master's degree programs: acupuncture, started in 1981; herbal medicine, begun in 2002; and applied healing arts, a general wellness degree, opened to students in 2002. Its 100 graduates a year practice in 40 states and eight countries around the world.

The institute sees itself as a bridge. Tai Sophia's name represents the joining of two ancient healing traditions: the Chinese word "tai," meaning "great," and the Greek word "sophia," meaning "wisdom." Similarly, it views its mission as bringing together different approaches to health: "We're committed to reuniting the science of medicine and the art of healing," said Robert Duggan, the institute's president. "Herbal medicine, for example, has elements of both."