“But we came for a back pain seminar. So what's the point for back pain?” Adi hears that question from many people at his lectures. His answer: you'll get points for back pain at the end, don't worry. But first he wants to give you what Dr. Tan wanted to give you: principles. “If you understand principle, you can treat every disease. If you just know protocol, you can just treat this particular patient.”
That's the seminar in two sentences. Lower back pain was the example. The real subject was how wide and broad the Balance Method really is, and the step that's often missed between diagnosing the sick meridian and choosing the points. He calls it the mechanism of disease.
Practitioners joined from Portugal, Italy, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Slovenia, the US and the Philippines. A quick poll at the start showed that more than half of them use the method regularly in practice, a quarter had taken a course, and a handful were completely new to it. Adi pitched it for all of them.
Full recording of our live seminar with Adi Fromm, 7 November 2026. About two hours, including the Q&A. Chapters are in the YouTube description.
Who is Adi Fromm?
Adi Fromm learned the Balance Method directly from Dr. Tan, hosted him in Israel many times, and in 2013 founded the Israeli Tan Center together with him. He holds Dr. Tan's Gold Level.
- →Almost 30 years in Chinese medicine, about 22 of them with the Balance Method, which he has taught in 18 countries.
- →Dean of Reidman College in Israel, a four-year school of Chinese medicine with more than 1,000 students.
- →Head of an integrative medicine unit in a public hospital for 17 years.
- →Official consultant for Canaan Oncology Hospital in Haining, China.
Want the story behind the man? Read our interview with Adi.
Is the Balance Method TCM, or Chinese medicine?
Adi opened with a simple question: what is Chinese medicine? His answer: everything you do in your clinic whose roots and logic you can find in the Huang Di Nei Jing. And he reads that book as science, not philosophy. It was written by physicians for other physicians, as instructions.
His example: give astragalus because it tonifies the Spleen and lifts, and that's Chinese medicine. Give it because it's an adaptogen that supports white blood cells, and it isn't. “It's not bad, but it's not Chinese medicine.”
TCM is something else. When Chinese medicine moved into academies, the goal was to train more people faster and to standardize what they learned, so the schools taught what was already written. Almost all the classics were herbal, acupuncture was nearly banned during the Qing dynasty, and a hands-on therapy is hard to put in a book anyway. That's why TCM, the written form of Chinese medicine, leans so heavily toward herbs.
So where does the Balance Method sit? Every idea in it has its root in the Nei Jing, so it's Chinese medicine through and through. But it wasn't written down until the 20th century, so it can't really be traditional Chinese medicine in that sense.
Why did acupuncture only develop in China?
Patients often ask how the Chinese came up with acupuncture, and the stories are always the same: the thorn in Large Intestine 4, the soldier healed by an arrow. Adi's point is that thorns and arrows existed everywhere. Every culture discovered food, herbs, massage, breathing and movement. In his view, only China developed acupuncture. So the real question isn't how. It's why.
His answer: in Chinese culture the human being is truly a part of nature. Look at a river. When the water is good and it flows smoothly, the riverbeds thrive. Everything in Chinese medicine serves one of those two purposes: the quality of the blood and Ying Qi, and the flow. Food nourishes. Almost everything else is about flow, and at some point you have to reach the underground river. In Adi's words, acupuncture is a form of micro-surgery that moves blood from one place to another, and with that blood come the Wei Qi and the Ying Qi.
How many meridian systems are you actually working with?
Adi walked through five meridian systems from the Ling Shu, each with its own sequence, function, symptoms and techniques:
Jing Jin, the sinew meridians: every tissue that gives flexibility, movement and strength. Their sequence starts with the Bladder, not the Lung.
The primary meridians, which run straight to the organs and keep everyday functions going. The system most of us know.
Luo, which stores what the body can't clear yet. “It's not the first cigarette that kills you. It's the 10,000th one.”
The divergent meridians, which keep illness away from the organs, sometimes by parking it in a joint.
The eight extraordinary meridians.
Masters used to teach these systems one at a time, over years. Modern teaching mixes them: the point books list every indication without telling you which system it belongs to. That's one reason a point is supposed to do something and doesn't.
Dr. Tan's answer was to bring back the meridian language and to simplify. Learn to work well with the primary meridians and, according to Adi, you can help around 90% of what comes to you. Learn principles, not protocols. Start practicing tomorrow, and keep learning for the rest of your career.
What happens when you skip the sick meridian?
Years ago, Adi was an assistant teacher in a third-year student clinic. A first-year student came in as a patient, with a common cold. The intern chose Lung 7 and Large Intestine 4, added what both of them believed was a classical protocol for expelling wind, and finally a point on Du Mai because “it opens the nose”. He found the point, got the qi, and waited.
“Nothing happens. Nothing at all.”
After 30 minutes the patient asked the obvious question: you needled a point that opens the nose, so why isn't my nose open? Adi told her to give it a few days, knowing she'd be fine in a few days anyway. She had a cold. But the question stayed with him. How can a medicine so precise about every herb, every dosage and every point location become so imprecise when it comes to the treatment itself? Spleen deficiency? Spleen 6 and Stomach 36. Doesn't work? Spleen 3 and Lung 9. Still nothing? Ren Mai 4 and Ren Mai 6.
Dr. Tan's answer is what every master of acupuncture says: first diagnose the sick meridian. With that diagnosis, you're not surprised by the result, because the body reacts immediately. Then select the balancing meridian. Only then select the points. It turns acupuncture from a point system back into a meridian system.
Adi pointed out that we already do this for pain. A patient says “my shoulder hurts” and you ask where, because you want to know whether it's Large Intestine, San Jiao or Small Intestine. Nobody asks a patient with insomnia where their insomnia is. But take the meridians out of acupuncture and there's no logic left. Insomnia and constipation need a sick meridian too. It's harder to find. It isn't optional.
Use whatever diagnostic tools you trust: palpation, pulse, questions, observation. Then pick a balancing meridian. Every meridian has three to five meridians that balance it, as our guide to the 6 Systems explains. As Adi put it: “Even if you don't understand why, I promise you it's still going to work.”
“If you don't diagnose the sick meridian, then you are practicing the art of prayer.”
— Adi Fromm
What's the missing step between the meridian and the points?
This is the heart of the seminar. Between choosing the balancing meridian and choosing the points, there's a stage that often gets skipped: understanding the mechanism of disease.
Adi quoted the Ling Shu: the lower-level practitioner guards the barrier, the higher-level practitioner guards the mechanism. For the seminar, he divided it into three: a local mechanism, a meridian mechanism and a global mechanism. They're different problems, and they need different tools.
And the Balance Method has plenty of tools: imaging and mirroring, Meridian Conversion, meridian techniques, Wu Xing (five elements), seasonal treatments, the 12 Magical Points, smart picks. Without the mechanism, choosing between them is random. And then you're back to randomly choosing points. “You may have good results, but you don't get the great ones.”
Adi remembers Dr. Tan getting irritated whenever someone asked for “the points for PMS”. His answer: “Forget about the points. Focus on the diagnosis.” Not every PMS patient is the same.
Local or meridian: how do you tell them apart in acute back pain?
Take acute lower back pain on the Bladder meridian.
A local mechanism means the problem sits in one area and doesn't affect anything else. Work with images: Lung 5 with ashi palpation is one of the best treatments there is. But it doesn't work every time. “If it would work 100% of the time, we wouldn't need this lecture.”
A meridian mechanism means the whole Bladder meridian is blocked, and it just happens to show up in the lower back. That's a different diagnosis, and “show me where it hurts” won't find it. Palpate along the meridian away from the pain: is it still sensitive there? Feel the pulse: a local problem won't change the Bladder pulse, a meridian problem will. A meridian problem needs a meridian technique. Dr. Tan's own technique for the Bladder always uses the same three points.
Then there are smart picks. For acute lower back pain radiating to the side of the body, there's the Ling Gu combination. Adi remembers asking Dr. Tan why he called it the $1 million combination: “Because you're going to make $1 million before you retire” using it for lower back pain. Sometimes you add Yao Tong, sometimes San Cha (not Master Tung's San Cha, Adi stresses, but a different point system). Our guide to back pain and sciatica shows Dr. Tan's Million Dollar Combo in full, with the Ling Gu combination on one hand and Lung and Heart on the other arm. Adi's warning: smart picks only work when the diagnosis is right. Use San Cha when there's no radiating pain and it won't work.
When does back pain stop being acute?
Here's the pattern Adi wants you to notice. A patient comes ten times. Every treatment helps, for two days. Then the pain comes back.
A local or meridian problem should have resolved with those treatments, even if it took ten sessions. When it keeps returning, the problem is chronic, and a chronic problem has another mechanism behind it. Is it global? Is it a conversion problem? Five elements? Seasonal? Spiritual?
He's careful with the word acute, though. Acute doesn't mean small. A major herniated disc can be an acute local problem that you simply can't fix, because the body is physically too broken. Chronic isn't always worse on the X-ray. It means the patient says: “Every single time I come to you I feel better, but the disease doesn't go away.”
His example: lower back pain with a Kidney deficiency picture, a little insomnia and some pain at the shoulder blade. That narrows it to Shao Yin and Tai Yang. Narrowing it down is already a diagnosis, because lower back pain could just as well sit in Tai Yin and Tai Yang, or in several other pairs.
If it's a global mechanism and the problem only lives in the lower back, needling all four meridians should work. But if the patient also has real insomnia, not insomnia caused by the pain, the problem between Shao Yin and Tai Yang is bigger. Then you need to “write a code” on the relevant meridians, one that reaches the organs and the whole system. That code language comes from the I Ching. Meridian Conversion is written in it, and a code always has the same points.
Earth, human or heaven: where does the back pain live?
The mechanism also has to match the level of the problem. Adi used the classical three: earth, human and heaven.
Earth is the physical level and the vital substances. A herniated disc, a Kidney Yang deficiency. Yours and mine will look pretty much the same.
Human is what makes us human: our emotions, and the way we interact with nature. This is the level of Wu Xing, Dr. Tan's five element method: is the back pain there because of cold, heat, deficiency, excess, or because the patient is scared? If someone has lower back pain because they're scared all the time, no Ling Gu combination will help. You need to treat the fear. Adi's example is Kidney 2, 4 and 7, which tonifies the water in the body: a human-level treatment. The same goes for the patient whose back always hurts in winter, while the pulse and the tongue show no Yang deficiency. A moxa box helps for an hour and that's it. The problem isn't a lack of vital substances. It's the interaction with the season, and that needs a different code. Winter can even be a time of day.
Heaven is the spiritual level. For lower back pain, Adi looks at the Zhi, the spirit of the Kidney. Not a lack of motivation for work or for being a good partner, but a lack of motivation for life itself. In back pain patients, low libido is a red flag for a Zhi problem.
Adi admits this level is trickier to see in back pain, and we'll keep it at the level of concept here. He also quoted Dr. Tan, who loved the spiritual side of the work but called it the worst value for money there is: many years of study for very few patients who need it. “We love to think that our problems are because of fate. But they're not.” Most of the time it's what we eat, smoke and drink, and the boss who annoys us.
What should you learn next?
Towards the end of the lecture, Adi laid out the learning path as Dr. Tan taught it. Start with the basic one, two, three. If you mainly treat pain and orthopedic problems, you could stop there and do very well. For internal medicine, add Global Balance and Meridian Conversion. With those, Adi says, you can deal with about 80% of the people who come to your clinic.
After that come the 12 Magical Points, meridian techniques, Wu Xing, seasonal treatment, the I Ching and more. Want to treat emotional problems? Then Wu Xing is your next step. But not everyone needs that: most of what walks in is physical. Dr. Tan used to laugh that the value for money drops at every step: you learn more and see fewer patients who need it. “You don't have to know everything to be a great practitioner.” Learn while you practice. Two lessons in, you can start.
Adi recalls that Dr. Tan expected his students to grow the method, not just copy it. If they only copy him, it will decline. That's why he teaches principles: so you can work out what went wrong when a treatment doesn't hold. Did you misdiagnose? Choose the wrong points? Miss the mechanism? He tells more about learning from Dr. Tan himself in our interview with Adi.
For anyone who wanted something concrete, he closed with a simple take-home protocol for the lower back. You'll find it on screen near the end of the lecture in the recording.
A selection from the Q&A
The questions ran for most of an hour. These are the ones we keep coming back to.
Is it seasonal, or just cold?
A participant described a patient with pain right beside the spine, every year from October to March or April, worst in the early morning hours. Seasonal? Adi didn't think so. “Winter is an energy. It's not a temperature.” It's a contraction energy, and a long cold period isn't the same thing. What the participant described sounded like cold, not winter. Cold needs the meridian to be warmed up, for the Kidney for example with Kidney 1, 3 and 4. Warming the meridian is a Wu Xing technique: in Dr. Tan's hexagram language, you place wood over fire.
How do you know fear is the root cause?
The link comes from the patient. Start simple. Adi first saw it on an orthopedic ward, with 20 to 40 lower back pain patients a day. For most of them the Ling Gu combinations and meridian techniques worked like a charm. For some it got stuck, and the imaging didn't explain why. So he started digging. When did it start? What happened a few months before?
Then he tests it. His example: Bladder 40, 60 and 65 with a Ling Gu combination helps for two days, every time. So he keeps that treatment and adds something for the fear. If the relief now lasts only half a day, it was the wrong idea. If it holds for more than two days, he got it right, and he notes it down. That's how you build your own clinical judgment.
A second example came from his fertility work. Three patients he was seeing at the same time: one with a clear blood deficiency, one anxious and frustrated, and one with a good pulse, abdomen and tongue. He asked the third: “Do you see yourself holding a baby?” She said no. Not a Liver problem, not a frustration problem, Adi said: a Hun problem, which needs a different code.
Should you nourish the blood when someone is nervous?
Only if there really is a blood deficiency. If someone is nervous because the Liver can't flow, you disperse. If they're nervous because there isn't enough blood, dispersing is like “dispersing a dead river”. And if the picture says blood deficiency but the tongue is barely pale, think again.
Is more pain after a Meridian Conversion normal?
It can be. Acupuncture moves blood toward where the pain is, so more pain on the first day happens. The difference Adi draws: a reaction goes up, comes down, and the patient gets better. A side effect comes down, but the patient doesn't get better.
Can I still use Master Tung points?
Yes, inside the one-two-three principle. If you only know the points and not Master Tung's way of diagnosing, you're just swapping one point system for another. Use the Balance Method to diagnose, and you'll know when a point fits. More in Balance Method vs Master Tung.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the mechanism of disease in the Balance Method?
It's the step between diagnosing the sick meridian and choosing the points. Adi divides it into a local, a meridian and a global mechanism, and adds the level of the problem: earth, human or heaven. The mechanism tells you which Balance Method tool fits the patient in front of you.
How do you tell a local from a meridian problem in lower back pain?
A local problem stays in one area. A meridian problem means the whole meridian is blocked. Palpate along the meridian away from the pain and check the pulse: a meridian problem shows up in both, a local problem doesn't change the pulse.
Is the Balance Method a protocol medicine?
No. In Adi's words, “Balance Method is not a protocol medicine.” Diagnose the sick meridian and the mechanism first, then choose the tool and the points.
Is the Balance Method TCM?
It's Chinese medicine, Adi says: every idea in it has its root in the Huang Di Nei Jing. But it wasn't written down until the 20th century, so it isn't traditional Chinese medicine in the sense of the written, academy-taught tradition, which leans heavily toward herbs.
Where can I watch Adi Fromm's seminar?
The full recording is at the top of this page and on our YouTube channel.
Note: This is our written account of the live seminar Adi Fromm gave as our guest. His spoken words are lightly edited for reading, and the clinical insights and examples come from his own practice and teaching. It's for educational purposes only — for acupuncturists and interested professionals. Not treatment advice or a substitute for professional consultation.
Go deeper with Adi
Adi teaches the Balance Method in person in many countries, often with clinical days where he demonstrates the techniques. For his current seminar schedule and his online courses, see Healthy Seminars.
Online courses and his teaching schedule → healthyseminars.com/bio/adi-fromm
Follow his English Instagram → @adifromm.balancemethod
Next Steps
To go deeper:
For the whole method at a glance: Dr. Tan's Balance Method
For the full back pain framework, with Dr. Tan's Million Dollar Combo: Back Pain and Sciatica with the Balance Method
For a multi-meridian back pain case from our clinic: the lower back pain case study
For when a local treatment keeps wearing off: Global vs Local Balance
When the problem is function or Shen rather than pathway: Meridian Conversion
To keep every system on one page: grab the free Balance Method matrix PDF
To get to know Adi and how he learned from Dr. Tan: our interview with Adi Fromm
For the man behind the method: about Dr. Richard Tan
To see the Ling Gu combination needled: the Ling Gu combo demo, one of our needling demonstrations
To learn the method in person: Balance Method training programs
To discuss cases with colleagues worldwide: the Practitioner Community
New to the terminology? See the Balance Method Glossary for every core term in one place.
