The Hungry Ghost Within: Clinical Acupuncture Strategies for Addiction and Compulsive Behaviors
In this focused, 9:40-hour clinical training, you’ll gain powerful tools to treat addiction with clarity, confidence, and compassion.
The Hungry Ghost Within: Clinical Acupuncture Strategies for Addiction and Compulsive Behaviours
What can you do when a patient’s addiction is beyond your current tools?
This 9:40-hour online course provides a clinically grounded, deeply integrative approach to treating addiction and compulsive behaviour. Blending Classical Chinese Medicine with neurophysiology and trauma-informed care, it gives you practical strategies that you can use in clinic right away.
Learn at your own comfort
On-demand Video
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CEU/CPD/PDA
A Word from your Teacher
In this focused, 9:40-hour clinical training, you’ll gain powerful tools to treat addiction with clarity, confidence, and compassion.
- Diagnose addiction patterns through trauma history, channel pathology, and patient narrative.
- Select and apply extraordinary vessel treatments for substance and behavioural addictions.
- Use Luo and Sinew channels to address emotional compensation and somatised trauma.
- Combine acupuncture with verbal cues and affirmations to influence belief patterns.
- Learn specific protocols for various types of dependencies, from substance abuse to behavioral addictions.
- Gain practical skills in combining cognitive therapeutic strategies with acupuncture treatments to enhance patient outcomes.
- Identify and treat clinical signs of dissociation and energetic fragmentation in addicted patients.
Leave the course with both theory and practical tools you can apply in your clinic — immediately.
Course Overview
A Chinese Medicine Perspective on Addiction
You’ll explore the concept of Gui (Ghost) as a clinical framework for understanding addiction — including Hungry Ghost, Wandering Ghost, and Sexual Ghost patterns. These ideas are grounded in Classical Chinese Medicine and influenced by Daoist and Buddhist thought, offering a diagnostic map that links trauma, unmet needs, and compulsive behaviours.
Extraordinary Vessels as Diagnostic and Treatment Tools
Use the extraordinary vessels not just for symptom relief, but as a roadmap for identifying deep trauma imprints. You’ll recognise how specific vessels — like Chong, Ren, Du, Dai, Wei, and Qiao — reflect core emotional patterns, and how to build effective treatments around them.
Clinical Protocols for Real Cases
Gain clear acupuncture protocols for a wide range of addictions: nicotine, compulsive eating, sexual behaviour, screen and gambling use, OCD, and workaholism. These treatments target the emotional and physical layers simultaneously, using Luo and sinew channels to address somatised trauma.
Integrating Acupuncture with Cognitive Strategies
You’ll also learn how to support change at the belief level — combining acupuncture with structured affirmations and verbal cues that help patients reframe identity, release fixed stories, and build internal regulation.
Class Content
- Hungry Ghosts: concept of Gui ≈ Ghost
- Neuro-physiology of dependency and addiction
- Trauma & defence mechanisms in Chinese medicine
- Extraordinary vessels and psychology; compensation issues
- Co-dependency and addiction
- Nicotine addiction
- Substance addiction
- Behavioural addiction
- Bulimia; anorexia; orthorexia
- Obsessive-compulsive disorders
- Treatment strategies
- Case studies
Grounded in Experience. Built for Practitioners.
This course isn’t theoretical — it’s drawn from over 40 years of clinical experience and refined through hundreds of patient cases. You’ll gain a framework for understanding dependency, plus the tools to guide patients toward lasting change — even in complex or resistant presentations.
Note
❗This is a perfect addition to the Psychosomatic in CM Program (40+ Hours). For those who want to take their trauma work to the next level.
This course is approved for CEUs by:
Disclaimer | Before You Purchase
Accessing Your Course
After the checkout, the course will be automatically added to your account, and unless otherwise specified, you can start learning immediately.
The course is always available for you if you have an internet connection.
To watch your course, log in. You can reach your courses from your account or the course page.
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NCCAOM PDA Course Participant Attestation
By registering for this course, I agree to abide by the NCCAOM PDA Course Participant Attestation.
I understand that the information in this course presented by the Provider and/or Instructor(s) is for educational purposes only and should only be applied with appropriate clinical judgment and used by a trained and licensed
practitioner. Governmental laws and regulations vary from region to region and the contents of this course vary in permissible usage. The participant is required to check their local, state, and federal laws and regulations regarding the practice requirements and scope of practice issues and the use of the information of this course including, but not limited to, theory, herbal medicine, and acupuncture. I acknowledge that NCCAOM does not endorse any specific treatment regimens of any kind. Furthermore, if I use any modalities or treatments taught in this course, I agree to waive, release, indemnify, discharge, and covenant not to sue NCCAOM from and against any liability, claims, demands, or causes of action whatsoever, arising out of any injury, loss, or damage that a person may sustain related to the use of the information in this course. I understand that this Release is governed by the laws of District of Columbia, U.S.A. and shall survive the termination or expiration of this course.
Unlimited Access
Once purchased, we grant you a lifetime access license. See more on our Terms of Use page.
We encourage you to return to courses as learning continues; in each view, we learn and understand new things.
CEU/CPD/PDA
Unless otherwise stated, CEU/PDA/CPD requirements must be completed within 1 year of the purchase. You are advised to print and save your certificate for your records and under your association requirements.
Dimploamtes of NCCAOM & Floridas members need to fill in a form after completing their courses for us to submit the points. CAB & Fachverband members need to write to us an email upon completing their courses to get the required documents. Look for our email after the completion of the course.
Course Content
About the Teacher
Course Includes
- 9:40 Hours Course Duration
- Course Certificate
- Course Credits
AACMA8 CPD's 
ACICertificate 
AGTCMCertificate 
CALIFORNIA9 hours 
NCCAOM2 CEU's 
TCM FACHVERBAND9 Hours 
ACUPUNCTURE NZCertificate 
NZASACertificate Course Reviews
May 6, 2025Dr. Montakab’s course is well organized, concise and his teaching style captured my attention for the entire lecture.
I have been teaching and practicing acupuncture for 33 years and the topics covered in the “Hungry Ghost Within” are relevant, insightful and applicable to my practice.
The handouts and key points are easy to read and comprehend.
I appreciate the integration of Dr. Montakab’s knowledge from both the Western and Chinese Medicine point of view.
I sincerely look forward to more lectures with Dr. Montakab!
