Dianne Connelly and Bob Duggan

Short biographies of Tai Sophia founders Dianne Connelly and Bob Duggan are shown below. However, their experience is not easily summarized. Their learnings are drawn from teachers all over the world; they have been privileged to be in the company of many renowned healers, scientists, and teachers, gaining riches they have brought to the Institute.

Each founder brings a distinct and complementary gift to the academic richness of Tai Sophia. Dianne Connelly brings a gift for language, an attention to the power of language, and a consciousness of how words create the world. Besides earning her doctorate in cultural anthropology, she has done advanced studies in acupuncture as well as in linguistics, poetry, and the biology of cognition. Dianne’s promise is to make sure that we are aware of the fullness of the present moment, whether in the treatment room where a word can be a gift (along with the gift of a needle), or in the classroom, or in a meeting in the hallway, or in the family — awareness that in each moment we call each other to our beauty and possibilities.

Bob Duggan has a background in philosophy and theology, studying in seminaries in New York and in Rome. From the age of 12 he was mentored by Ivan Illich, the philosopher, historian, and cultural critic who wrote Medical Nemesis and Deschooling Society. With this background, Bob brings to the table the ability to see as optional what exists in our culture at the present moment, and then to construct new possible futures. He focuses on “What is possible? What are the implications of what we say and do for the future?” and then moves toward that future.

These unique contributions of the Institute’s founders fuel a passion for the common good throughout the wider community. Tai Sophia is a continually evolving academic center, in large part because Bob Duggan and Dianne Connelly have inspired many other faculty members to bring their gifts to this work.

When they began their study of acupuncture with J. R. Worsley in 1971, they listened to his teachings about the wisdom of nature and the power of our senses to observe life, and they saw the enormous potential of his insistence that the body is deeply wise. They went on to infuse those teachings with knowledge drawn from philosophy, theology, humanistic psychology, anthropology, and Western science.

In 1972 they organized the first American group of students to study with Worsley in Kenilworth, England, and later created conferences and opened a clinic, the Centre for Traditional Acupuncture, in Columbia, Maryland. This work continued to expand: they opened a school in 1981 (then called the Traditional Acupuncture Institute), and invited many scholars to teach and study at Tai Sophia — scholars such as Claude Larre, who brought his wisdom of the Chinese classics, and Simon Mills with his wisdom of herbs.

A legacy of the rich diversity these founders bring to the life of Tai Sophia might be termed a ”calm restlessness”: the calm that’s required to be present for learning, joined with a restlessness — the urge to pass on this knowledge for the sake of the next generations. All the work of the Institute is rooted in this passion for learning that honors the ancients and is used in service of the grandchildren.

To learn more about the teachers and intellectual threads that converge here at Tai Sophia, click here to link to a Meridians article.

Dianne M. Connelly, Ph.D., M.Ac., Dipl.Ac. (NCCAOM)

A practitioner of traditional acupuncture since 1973 and cofounder and chancellor of the Institute, Dr. Connelly received her master's qualification from the College of Traditional Acupuncture (UK) in 1979. She obtained a Ph.D. in crosscultural medicine from Union Graduate School in 1975, an M.A. from New York University School of Education in 1970, and her B.A. from Le Moyne College in 1967. Chancellor of the Institute and an international lecturer (she lectures regularly in Italy and Germany), she is the author of Traditional Acupuncture: The Law of the Five Elements, All Sickness is Home Sickness, and coauthor of Alive and Awake: Wisdom for Kids. She is the mother of Blaize, Jade, and Caeli, as well as grandmother to Tamar, Lennox and Rianna.

Robert M. Duggan, M.A., M.Ac. (UK), Dipl.Ac. (NCCAOM)

Robert Duggan, President and Co-Founder of Tai Sophia Institute, has practiced traditional acupuncture since 1973. He holds a master’s degree in human relations and community studies from New York University as well as a master’s in moral theology from St. Joseph’s Seminary, and received his master’s certification in acupuncture from the College of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture (UK). A national leader in the development of the acupuncture profession and the emerging healing arts community, he has served as a commissioner of the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, on the board of trustees of the Horizon Foundation (a community wellness foundation in Howard County, Maryland, which in 2008 honored him with its annual Leadership Award), and a panelist at meetings sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Mr. Duggan lectures throughout the United States and abroad, and is author of Common Sense for the Healing Arts.