American University of Complementary Medicine

I am a long-​time client (over 8 years and counting) of «Dr Jay», Parla Jayagopal, who is the Director of Ayurvedic Medicine there. I cannot say enough good things about him.
I credit him with not only being a gifted doctor who treats me for the occasional ailment or imbalance but with being a gifted teacher and healer who has taught me and continues to teach me how to better live in alignment and in health.
I have an autoimmune disease which is managed in large part due to Dr. Jay’s treatment and teaching. Between him, yoga practice and a tiny maintenance dose of a western medicine it’s been stable and managed for years now. My endocrinologist was originally in awe and is now a fan!
The only down side is sometimes the support staff structure is not so solid. So keeping in touch and getting in can take some diligence and determination. But it is SO worth it!

Can someone tell me what is up with them not answering or returning phone calls or emails? I’ve emailed twice and called a few times, leaving messages.
Is this place even real?
What the heck. It looks like an awesome place.

I’ve been in the Classical Chinese Medicine PhD program at AUCM for quite a few years. I enjoy the teachings of Jeffrey Yuen immensely. And that’s where the joy ends. It took 4 years to get papers I’ve written back. Repeated requests for transcripts, further classes, and the remainder of my papers have been ignored. Available classes online are sketchy at best. A complete disappointment. Beware.

I just completed the certificate program for Ayurveda through AUCM. This was life changing. I had been interested in Ayurveda since yoga teacher training. Having the opportunity to go into more depth was wonderful. The teaching staff is very supportive and knowledgeable. My classmates through the program were also very supportive and inspiring. Not only did we explore the theory of Ayurveda, but had hands-​on, practical experience with treatments, food, lifestyle, daily routine, everything that allowed me to really incorporate these ideas into my life. Also it allowed me a safe place to ask questions, voice frustrations, questions and learn from the staff and my fellow students. This is a great program and I recommend it to anyone wanting to really learn Ayurveda.

I have just graduated from the 2 year Ayurvedic Practitioner Course.
It was two years spent learning about yoga, meditation, cooking, Panchakarma,
diet, seasonal food, doshas, pulse diagnosis, marma points, chakras, chanting,
preparing medicinal oils and herb combos, and lots about herbal medicine.
I loved it. It was so rich and deep. Dr Parla Jayagopal was thorough and patient
and taught from his heart.
If you are thinking about your health, or having a more meaningful relationship
with yourself… run to sign up. You will never forget it.

I recently completed the Ayurvedic Medicine Practitioner Certificate Program at AUCM (link here:
) with Dr. Parla Jayagopal (otherwise known as Dr. Jay), the Director of Ayurvedic Medicine at AUCM. This is my fifth year as a client of Dr. Jay’s, and my fourth year studying with him. I actually audited the certificate program for the first two years but then was so inspired by our capstone trip to India that I decided to register for the full credit program, and am so glad I did. In addition to being an incredibly gifted healer, Dr. Jay is also an enormously talented educator, able to take complex and sometimes very abstract concepts from this ancient and beautiful science and translate them into a language that Westerners can understand. Dr. Jay is the real deal, classically trained in India with more than a decade of clinical experience.
One of the advantages of studying with AUCM is that there are two locations for the classes — one at the main school in Beverly Hills, and a satellite location in Upland (near Claremont off the 210), so you can choose your location depending on the timing of when you start, and you can finish your clinical hours in either location. As you can see from the website above, the curriculum is rigorous and thorough, and with the theory plus the many clinical hours of practice, provides a great basis for a counseling and treatment practice as well as a great foundation for further study.
In short, this journey with Dr. Jay (including the capstone trip to India — wow!) has been a life changing, transformative experience, and I cannot recommend this program highly enough. Make no mistake, this is a major commitment, but one that you will not regret! As a yoga teacher, ayurveda has given me a new perspective on my own teaching and healing work, and a passion to share this science with others. As a human being, ayurveda has changed the way I understand my own body, mind, and spirit, and given me tools to heal myself as well as others — I have certainly grown as a human being through this program, under the expert guidance of one of the greatest teachers I have ever known.

In 2003 – 2004, I spent a year doing a 660-​hour Ayurvedic bodywork program with this local university. At that time, it was one of the only programs in Ayurveda around, and we were lucky enough to have an awesome Ayurvedic doctor/​acupuncturist (John Holmstrom) teach us!
John is a WEALTH of knowledge — he spends weeks seeing patients in India each year and beyond his wealth of information, he’s got an intuitive sense of others. Learning from him and getting his feedback as we’d practice was really huge for our growth as students.
At the time, I had really only practiced Jin Shin Jyutsu (energy work) for a couple of years so Ayurveda was this all-​encompassing, totally new thing that focused on the body and mind and the psyche and herbs and diet and behaviors and LIFE. The classes were intensive, yes, there was SO MUCH information! But what I learned was PRECIOUS.
John taught us about tissues, pulses, marma points, doshas, herbal prescription writing, medicinal uses of wild growing herbs and ancient Ayurvedic herbs, yoga, anatomy, panchakarma, abhyanga, shirodhara, pinda swedhana, swedhana, nasya, vasti, spirituality, Ayurvedic cooking, and — most interestingly — the psychology behind people’s desire to hold on to potentially damaging behaviors (and food and drink!). We had one other teacher for Practice Management and Ethics and Anatomy 2 (both great), but other than those 2 classes, John was our main man!
Students had the opportunity to work in the school’s clinic for credit, which was really instrumental in getting us used to the flow of abhyanga and shirodhara. John would do an intake interview with the client, then discuss the information with the students and form a plan of action. We’d do everything else — set up the room and the equipment, make the rice/​herb mixture for pinda swedhana, work on the client, and then clean up!
I have such fond memories of working in clinic — when you do 4 hands on or even 6 hands on one client, you learn to listen in to *everything* around you — yourself, your fellow bodyworkers, your teacher, at the SAME TIME you’re listening in to your client. Without those 2 quarters of clinic experience under my belt, I never would have had the courage to practice on my own!
Plus, especially for a student who doesn’t yet understand the power of their new skills, there’s nothing quite like seeing a client go in to a treatment looking wan and weak and feeling achy and depleted, and emerge hours later (abhyanga and shirodhara can be an hours-​long treatment) looking 10 years younger with a sparkling gleam in their eyes. (If you’re interested in being a client, they still have a clinic where they offer amazing prices on Ayurvedic bodywork!)
There were many times that us students played client, when we didn’t have a client to work on. Throughout my program, I ingested so many herbs and oils just from working with them, that I felt my own healing take place.
Aside from all the intensive memorization, there was really fun stuff: wild medicinal herb lessons taught at a few botanical gardens in the area, oil and salve and tincture making classes that were messy and herbaceous, and herbalized ghee making classes.
The bottom line: I had an amazing and *life changing* learning experience at this university, and still stay in touch with the awesome administrators. I cannot say enough good things about what I took away from John Holmstrom or the university!