Welcome to Guan Academy
Guan Academy of Chinese Medicine was founded in 2025 by Peter Firebrace and Kathaline Lauge Firebrace. We have both taught for many years and have decades of clinical practice, so giving us a wealth of experience and knowledge to share. We both have a vision with this platform to share and give out all that was given to us for the last forty years and to explore further and dig deeper. We want to create a modern space to expand ideas and knowledge and dive into a great world of Chinese medicine with you through courses, teaching, articles, interviews and podcasts. A resource for all who are interested that will never stop in a lifetime!
The Chinese character guan 關 is a frontier gate, a well-guarded passage, a barrier, a mountain pass. Closed, it cannot be crossed. Open, it gives entrance to another realm.
“Make time for the timeless…”
Peter Firebrace is a teacher, writer and acupuncture practitioner with over forty years experience in the field of Chinese medicine and philosophy.
Following his original studies in herbalism and homeopathy, he studied acupuncture at the International College of Oriental Medicine in England from 1980 to 1983, later becoming the college principal from 1985 to 1990. He worked to present a curriculum that included 5 Elements, 8 Principles and Stems and Branches.
He studied Chinese language, Daoist texts and Chinese medical classics with Claude Larre and Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallée of the Institut Ricci and Ecole Européene d’Acupuncture in Paris, Oxford and London from 1984 to the present day. These studies, particularly of the Daoist classics of Laozi, Zhuangzi and Huainanzi, have rooted him in the tradition and culture that are essential to a deeper understanding of the medicine. Many of those seminars were transcribed and made into books by Monkey Press in their Chinese Medicine from the Classics series.
He travelled to China in 1984 with lectures and clinical work at the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu. He has taught widely in schools, colleges and associations at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. His online teaching can be found at Net of Knowledge.
His writings have been published in the Journal of Chinese Medicine, the Review of Oriental Medicine, the European Journal of Oriental Medicine and BAcC magazine Acu. He has produced educational Chinese medicine videos, two albums of Chinese medical songs, complete with music videos, and a book of poems Cloud Falls Rap. He also wrote a A Guide to Acupuncture with Sandra Hill, a book for the lay person.
He lives now with his wife Kathaline and their dog Luke on the northwest coast of Denmark, where the rhythms of the North sea can always be heard and the dunes stretch out into the distance, shaped and reshaped by the tell-tale touch of the wind. Teachers all our professional lives, we want to continue to share our knowledge, experience and enthusiasm for Chinese medicine and its traditional philosophy. Hence Guan Academy.
Peter has a particular interest in these four subjects:
• Time, Timing and the Timeless, Following the Chinese Calendar’s Call
• Point Portraits, the Essentials of Key Acupuncture Points
• Patterns of Change, Exploring the Hexagrams of the Yijing Book of Change
• Internal Alchemy, Neidan Transformation in Chinese Medicine.
“Observation & sensistivity…”
Kathaline Lauge Firebrace was born in 1968. She studied Traditional Chinese Medicine from 1993 and graduated from the Open International University for Complementary Medicines in Denmark.
In 1995 she went to China for an 8 month journey to study and work in No.1 Hospital in Nanning, China. Most of her studies and interests were in wind stroke in cerebral thrombosis and hypertension. She learnt the skill of scalp acupuncture from Professor Tao Dong. She went back to China in 2001 to Jinzhou Medical Hospital in the north of China, mainly to study back pain. The rest of her journey back to China was for cultural reasons and an interest in Buddhism. From 1998 to 2004 she had intensive teaching from healer Mike Robinson in England, to explore and develop qi, and understand its nature. It is still something she observes and works with in different forms, especially in using different needle techniques.
She had a full-time clinic from 1998 to 2021, with students, and was also connected to a refugee center, helping severe cases with PTSD and trauma with acupuncture. She has been a teacher in diagnostic TCM for over 25 years in different schools, in psychology, behaviour, body language, voices, 5 elements, pulse, and tongue. She also works with qi and needle technique. She followed Lillian Bridges for many years in face reading and finished her face reading qualification with Kelly Harrington and Deirdre Courtney.
Kathaline writes:
I live by the sea in the north of Denmark with my husband Peter Firebrace. This is where we both teach from, mostly online out to the world. We also have a little place in the mountains in Italy, where we also work. We both hope to see students and colleagues in small physical groups, both by the sea in Denmark and in the mountains in Italy.
My way of working:
I have a well-developed sense of observation and sensitivity, so I can see what is happening at different levels of a process. So, combine that with my many years of theoretical and practical experience, I am very aware of what the students or colleague needs, to go even deeper with their skills, working with people on their terms, with a respect for what is good for them to give out, to be an even better practitioner. I am looking forward to share and work with you..