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The dozen students in the intense three-credit seminar gather around the black briefcase, leaning in to hear instructor Ann Ramsay explain its mysterious contents.

The case is filled with clear plastic vessels of various sizes for a traditional Chinese cupping ritual. As Ramsay describes the process of applying the cups, she talks about how cupping differs in America versus China (post-treatment bruising, for example, is not acceptable to patients here). Then a student asks her about another traditional technique.

I personally dont bleed, Ramsay says. Its been used for millennia, but it doesnt fit in the culture and historical moment were in.

Ramsays class in traditional Chinese medicine, offered in early June through Continuing Education, aims to put health in a historical and cultural context by exploring the ways that Chinese view the body and its ills. Ramsay is both a registered nurse and a skilled student and practitioner of Chinese medicine, directing and founding the Vermont School of Asian Body Therapy in Essex Junction. Her UVM course, says Beth Taylor-Nolan of CE, is the only one of its kind at a university nationwide.

The students in the class are massage therapists, nursing students, nutritionists, enthusiasts and a first-year medical student aiming to become a surgeon. What unites them is a desire to understand the care and feeding of qi, the energetic system on which much Asian acupuncture, bodywork, nutrition and exercise is based.

To emphasize the holistic nature of the subject, Ramsay approaches teaching it through a variety of techniques, which range from letting students sniff herbs to handing over the class for an hour each session to martial arts master Arthur Makaris, who leads the students in the slow, meditative bodily movements of Qi Gong.

Despite having only two weeks to grasp the contours of a vast and ancient practice of understanding the body and its functioning, complete with a voluminous specialized vocabulary, students were enthusiastic about what they were learning.

I wanted to inform my scientific studies with something less sterile, says Jan Estelle, a Rutland dietetics student who largely avoided the long commute by sleeping on friends couches. For credit, no credit, it didnt matter.

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