SP046
Week 1 – March 21 to 25, 2018
Week 2 – May 30 to June 3, 2018
Deposit payable on registration – 2nd payment by February 21 – 3rd payment by April 30

FEES IF PAID IN INSTALLMENTS
Licensed Health Care Practitioners
$8,976.00 CDN
McMaster Contemporary Medical Acupuncture Program Graduates Only
$7,876.00 CDN

Installment Terms
Licensed Health Care Practitioners
$1,998 down payment upon registration, 2nd payment $3,489, 3rd payment $3,489
McMaster Contemporary Medical Acupuncture Program Graduates Only
$1,998 down payment upon registration, 2nd payment $2,939, 3rd payment $2,939

FEES IF PAID IN FULL UPON REGISTRATION ($200 DISCOUNT)
Licensed Health Care Practitioners
$8,776.00 CDN
McMaster Contemporary Medical Acupuncture Program Graduates Only
$7,676.00 CDN

Below, there is a full description of the New Advanced Curriculum.

“A personal commitment to a process of professional excellence requires clarity and depth, attention to detail and focus, as well as purposeful action and intelligent observation of results in clinical practice.”

Dear Manual Medicine Colleague,

Below you will find all the relevant information regarding the New Advanced Neurofunctional Curriculum at McMaster University that will lead you to a Certification as a Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner and Specialist.

Starting in the Fall of 2015, the Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner Certificate Program becomes an “all or nothing” training Program, meaning that it will only be possible to register for the full training.

This decision will allow for a better experience by participants and a higher value for their investment. The group of participants for each class will now be consistent throughout the Program, creating a more familiar and pleasant learning environment. Likewise, the continuity of the clinical cases presented in class will add greater value to the learning experience for every participant. Finally, the cost of running the Program as a whole will be a bit cheaper than running it as separate units, and these savings will be passed on fully to the registrants.

For those of you truly interested in achieving maximum skills in this field, an additional advanced program Neurofunctional Meridians Dissection, has already being offered for the first time in January 2015, in Tempe, Arizona. I plan to continue to offer this program every year.

Completing the Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner Certificate Program, the Neurofunctional Meridians Dissection Program, and one of the Neurofunctional Clinical Advanced Programs that I also started offering last year (in 2014 there were two programs, one in April in Cologne, Germany, and the other in August in Oviedo, Spain), will lead to the award of the Neurofunctional Sports Performance Specialist Diploma, granted by the International Neurofunctional Acupuncture Institute.

The Advanced curriculum presented throughout these courses is the synthesis of my best work of the last decade, empirically validated by the successful treatment of hundreds of athletes and active individuals by myself and by an elite group of graduates and instructors from the McMaster University Contemporary Acupuncture Program. All the strategies and techniques developed and refined throughout this process are the ones presented and practiced throughout this New Curriculum.

Professional excellence to me means mastery of one’s trade, and like mastery in any complex discipline, it requires a long life commitment to study and practice.

Personally, I have been practicing and studying medicine for over 30 years. During all these years, I have spent literally thousands of hours learning live from other practitioners; many times in formal training courses, sometimes at their clinics, and occasionally in odd places like the sports arena. More than anything, exposure to these experienced colleagues has provided invaluable technical guidance and inspiration to continue the refinement of my clinical skills until today.

Sometimes, I had to travel very far away to find the clues to open new avenues of improvement for my diagnostic and treatment skills. A few times, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do so without leaving my town, but these occasions were uncommon. As a result, in order to fulfill my commitment to continuous learning and professional excellence, I had to invest literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in my continuing education.

I am glad I did. The investment has paid back handsomely in knowledge, skills, ability to help people, and ability to generate value in the marketplace. My patients, my students and I will be able to enjoy the benefits of it for as long as I practice and/or teach, which likely will be for the rest of my life, as long as I am healthy to do it.

As an integral part of my long-term commitment to a process of professional and personal excellence, I consider my responsibility to teach others what I have learned. It also no secret that teaching is the best way to refine one’s skills.

This is what I do when I teach: full disclosure of techniques and reasons for doing things, without gimmicks. I always show exactly what I do and how I do it. It will defeat my personal purpose to do it any other way. When I offer to train you is because I really want you to be successful.

Accordingly, sharing my more advanced clinical experience, knowledge, methods and techniques, all organized in a clear, clean and practical manner has been the reason behind my development of this New Advanced Neurofunctional Curriculum on How to Design and Integrate Effective Neurofunctional Acupuncture and Manual Treatments for Sports Injuries and other complex Musculoskeletal Problems that encompasses all the clinical aspects involved in the diagnosis and treatment of Musculoskeletal Dysfunction including Neurofunctional Electroacupuncture, Advanced Needling Techniques, as well as my original Living Anatomy Palpation Manual Techniques and the very effective Neurofunctional Soft Tissue Micro-conditioning technique for the treatment of peripheral nerves and miscellaneous soft tissue dysfunction, I have used for almost two decades.

This New Advanced Neurofunctional Curriculum is the accurate reflection of how I assess and treat Sports Injuries and other Musculoskeletal Disorders, and it reveals in minute detail what are the fastest and most effective approaches I use to restore neuromotor and biomechanical function when dealing with musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. It also reveals my strategies for The Protection of Athletic Performance, and the methodology to address athletes or active individuals when they are not injured.

This New Advanced Neurofunctional Curriculum is all about clarity and depth, attention to detail and focus, as well as purposeful action and intelligent observation of results in clinical practice.

As I said on my general message elsewhere in this website, the singular elements of any craft when examined in isolation can be deceitfully unimpressive. But, when combined with the power of understanding, insightful vision, and precision, these humble elements suddenly become the fundamental components of superior performance.

The Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner Certificate Program curriculum includes four different components that were before taught as four separate advanced Programs. Now, as stated above, they are all part of one single program that can be taken in two different versions (see above): four three day modules (four weekends Friday to Sunday afternoon) or two five day modules (two Wednesday to Sunday full days modules). The content (and price) of both versions is the same:

• Advanced Functional Assessment of  Sports Injuries and other Complex Musculoskeletal Disorders
• Advanced Soft Tissue Micro-conditioning™ Techniques (for the Treatment of Peripheral Nerves and Soft Tissue Dysfunction)
• Advanced Neurofunctional Assessment and Integrated Treatment of Upper Extremity Sports Injuries and other Complex Movement Disorders
• Advanced Neurofunctional Assessment and Integrated Treatment of Lower Extremity Sports Injuries and other Complex Movement Disorders

The first course, Advanced Functional Assessment of  Sports Injuries and other Complex Musculoskeletal Disorders now introduces the Advanced Living Anatomy Palpation Techniques which are the foundation of the Advanced Neurofunctional Soft Tissue Micro-conditioning™ techniques for the Treatment of Peripheral Nerves and Soft Tissue Dysfunction. The two Advanced Neurofunctional Assessment and Integrated Treatment Courses, Upper and Lower Extremities show you in detail how to assess in depth the multi-layered complexity of the ongoing adaptations developed by the musculoskeletal system in athletes, and how to correct them (when possible) or support them (how to support adaptations optimally) combining Advanced Needling Techniques with Advanced Manual Techniques, and Advanced Rehabilitation with other Functional Training Strategies.

Upon completion of these four parts, you will receive a Certificate as a Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner.

After you have obtain your Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner Certificate and practice for a while, if you want, you will have an additional process to be awarded a Diploma as a Neurofunctional Sports Performance Specialist by the International Neurofunctional Acupuncture Institute when also completing the Neurofunctional Meridians Dissection Program, and one of the Neurofunctional Clinical Advanced Programs that I also started offering last year.

Enrollment on the New Advanced Neurofunctional Programs gives you access to a site with password protected online videos for the review of the techniques and strategies learned during the courses.

Over the upcoming years, I look forward to working with those of you who wish to participate on this New Advanced Neurofunctional Curriculum. In these courses, I will help you personally to continue your development as an excellent Neurofunctional Manual Medicine Practitioner and to become a Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner and a Neurofunctional Sports Performance Specialist with the highest qualification to help athletes and individuals with functional adaptive problems recover their Neurofunctional Performance.

A final reflection for all of us, but especially for those who believe is possible to master something by having access to the secrets that simplify the complex. There are no secrets, there is only understanding, and a lengthy process of refinement of this understanding (through repetition and focused practice).

The power of the the excellent Manual Medicine Practitioner, like the chess master, the artful writer, the accomplished musician, or the genius sculptor and painter—the secret that makes their “technique” superior—is simply their ability to master the elemental components of their craft, specifically the ability to combine these elements timely and with timing for the service of a higher purpose. This is the secret of all mastery.

And, as it is often the case, to master such a simple recipe requires a lifetime of intelligent observation of our own “modus operandi” and the purposeful determination to apply this controlled experience to refine our next output. Patience, passion, vision, determination, and purposefulness can infuse quality and even immortal life on a chess piece, a collection of words or musical notes, a piece of marble, a canvas, or an in our case, an acupuncture needle or your fingers.

The choice is literally and figuratively in Your Hands, our Hands, everyone’s hands. If you choose professional excellence in the treatment of musculoskeletal pain and movement dysfunctions, sports injuries, functional problems, problems of dysregulation, headaches, stress-related disorders, chronic pain, etc., I am committed to providing the friendly and productive learning environment where you can refine your clinical skills to better help your patients with these problems.

These new Advanced Courses have the potential to accelerate your professional development tremendously. If you use in an intended manner what I am going to show you in these Advanced Courses (and help you practice during the courses), I promise you that your clinical results will improve significantly for the rest of your professional career. Not because I am going to show you “a secret method” to do things but because I am going to assist you to clarify, refine and re-engineer the process of analyzing and understanding a movement dysfunction and the methodology to generate the most effective neurofunctional acupuncture and manual medicine inputs to extract existing adaptive potential from your patients, as well as to develop new adaptive potential to the available extent.

With this clear and clean, no-nonsense methodology, clinical success is inevitable. The kind of individualized clinical success that depends on the identification, extraction and/or promotion of adaptive potential for each individual case of movement dysfunction. The kind of clinical success supported by Superior Results.

Whenever our professional paths cross, I will be grateful and excited for the opportunity to assist you on your lifelong learning journey.

Remember, Medicine is in Your Hands.

Your colleague in excellence,

Dr. Alejandro Elorriaga Claraco, M.D., Sports Medicine Specialist (Spain)

Director – McMaster Contemporary Medical Acupuncture Program

Director – Neurofunctional Sports Performance Practitioner and Specialist Programs