New Hampshire, June 2012. Photo by Reute Butler.
Professional Accomplishments and Certifications:
Dr. Nubby Shober, DAOM is a former California Acupuncturist (Lic.#AC6633), having practiced as a clinician for nineteen years in Sonoma and Marin counties. In 2001 he trained with and took over the acupuncture practice of the late Nolan Cordon, MD, one of the very first medical acupuncturists in the United States, and the senior American practitioner of Nogier Auriculomedicine. In 2014 completed the DAOM program (Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) at the American College of Traditional Medicine (ACTCM) in San Francisco. Nubby received his acupuncture Master’s degree from ACTCM in 1999. He was the creator and owner of ASLON (an acupuncture CEU company–California State CEU Provider #177), and has studied acupuncture orthopedics with Alon Marcus, L.Ac., DOM, and Enneagram Psychological Typing with Joseph and Olivia Goldstone. He trained at the Berkelsy Psychic Institute from 1994-1997, completing their Clairvoyant training program in 1995 and going on to briefly serve on their staff. He has studied acupuncture in Malaysia with sifu Tiong Hock Seng (1993), and in Sri Lanka with Anton Jayasuriya, MD (1993). He completed Acupressure Massage certification from the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley, CA in 1994 and professionally practiced Chinese Tui Na orthopedic massage for ten years. He completed Hatha Yoga teacher training at the Kripalu Yoga Ashram in 1980. Nubby became a certified instructor of Jin Gui Golden Shield Qigong in 2011. Nubby is a published editor, working with Swami Rajarshi Muni in 1987 to complete The Philosophy of Yoga (Lllewellyn, 1994), subsequently reprinted as Awakening the Life Force. He was a fully ordained Thai Buddhist Forest Monk (dhutangha bhikkhu) in the Achaan Chah lineage from 1989-1993, and currently teaches Buddhist meditation and metaphysics. He is currently marketing his first novel, A Tangle of Spies, book one of the Homo Novii Trilogy. 
Biography:
Nubby began studying Traditional Oriental Medicine (TOM) and Chi Kung when he was a Buddhist Forest Monk (dhutanga bhikkhu) in Thailand for four years during the early 1990’s. After leaving the monkhood, he studied with Professor Tiong Hock Seng in Malaysia for six months, who then sent him for six months to the Open International University in Colombo, Sri Lanka for clinical experience in an Acupuncture hospital run by the late Dr. Anton Jayasuriya. Returning to the United States, he completed a Master of Science degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine at the American School of TCM (ACTCM) in San Francisco in 1998, and a Doctorate in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in 2014. He worked for Yen-Wei Choong, L.Ac. in Marin County until taking over the acupuncture practice of the late Nolan Cordon, MD in Petaluma, CA. Dr. Cordon was one of the very first Medical Acupuncturists in the USA, and possibly the seniormost practitioner of Nogier Auriculoacupuuncture in this country, who trained Nubby in his particular style of the Nogier method.
Nubby has had extensive experience in applied spirituality. At age 19 he moved into the Kripalu Yoga Ashram on the east coast, where he lived for 5 years after receiving Shaktipat, practicing Hatha Yoga, meditation, and chanting. At Kripalu he concurrently attended Temple University, studying Comparative Religion under Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, considered one of the major founders of the Jewish Renewal movement. At age 26 he edited “The Philosophy of Yoga” for Kundalini Yogi Rajarshi Muni in Gujarat, India. It was published under the same title by Llewellyn Books in 1998, and subsequently reprinted as Awakening the Life Force. Around this time, after quitting an executive job in Trucking and Shipping in Saudi Arabia, Nubby lived in South and Southeast Asia, studying mostly Buddhism and Buddhist meditation. This included Goenka meditation retreats; two months at the Mahasi Sayadaw Centre in Penang, Malaysia; and retreats with Tibetan masters like Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche in Nepal and India.
He eventually ordained at age 28 in Thailand as a Bhikku in the Mahanikaya forest lineage of Achaan Chah, where he spent four years, living in forest monasteries or in the jungle. During this time he had the fortune to meet a number of meditation masters, most of them Dhammayutnikaya disciples of the great meditation master Achaan Mun, like Achaan Mahaboowa, Achaan Ganha, and Achaan Bpleean. Teachers like Achaan Mahaboowa are rumored to be fully enlightened, but they also have commonly exercised and utterly extraordinary psychic abilities. Like the ability to read minds, literally thought for thought. Nubby found himself on more than one occasion soundly chastised for just thinking a disrespectful thought in the presence of such men.
In the jungle, Nubby had the opportunity to rub shoulders with a hungry ghost, a king cobra, a tiger, malarial mosquitoes, and numerous vipers, kraits, cobras, tarantulas, centipedes and scorpions. Buddhist Forest Monks live in the jungle precisely because it’s populated with such dangerous inhabitants. They force a monk to remain in the present moment; or suffer the consequences. For the last two years of his stay in Thailand, Nubby used a kasina as a meditation object, which is one of the fastest ways of developing the sixth chakra.
After disrobing, he returned to the US after studying for a further year in Asia. While attending graduate school in San Francisco, he studied for three years at the Berkeley Psychic Institute (BPI), where he was eventually on staff. At BPI he completed their Clairvoyant Program, a yearlong clinical training in reading people using just the third eye, and went on to take up a staff position.
Since 2004 Nubby has been a student of Luang Por Jumnien of Wat Than Seua, in Thailand’s Krabi Province; and since 2008 a student of Achaan Prasert of Wat Phra That Bua Leuang in Techachapi, California.