Yang-chu Higgins is a 2007 graduate of Yo San University in Los Angeles, the only institution in the US requiring a year of Taoist cultivation as a condition of graduation, in addition to the standard curriculum of biomedicine, herbology, and acupuncture. Before becoming an acupuncturist, he studied Chinese language and history as a master's student at the University Michigan and Academia Sinica in Beijing.

Be it insomnia, sciatica, or recurrent infections, Yang-chu is keenly aware that each person presents unique circumstances, which necessitate dynamic responses to the needs of body and spirit for the restoration of balance. Illness gives form to vitality. The tension of opposites is the core attribute of true balance and the organizing principle of his collaborative approach, an approach based in the Chinese medical and philosophical classics.

He was named by his father for an ancient Taoist philosopher and began his training in Eastern meditation and philosophy at the age of three.