Founded in 1995, The Ling Shu Instute was born out of the desire to preserve and advance the clinical techniques and teachings of Dr. Cho Yan So (also know as James Tin Yau So), and to deepen the understanding of the relevance, importance and applicability of the classical Texts (Ling Shu, Su Wen, Mai Jing, Nan Jing, Jia Yi Jing) for modern clinical practice.

As a youth Donald was active as president of the Church of all Nations Methodist Youth Fellowship and involved in the fight to abolish the central jurisdiction of the Methodist church, (a race-based administrative judicatory, that was created in the Methodist Church merger of 1939 in order to segregate African American Methodists within the predominantly white Methodist denomination).

His social and political conscience was strongly influenced and formed by his parents, his mother’s parents and through contact with Malcolm X, Mai Hutson Gray, Mel King, Rev. Gil Caldwell, Ellen Jackson, Rev. Joseph Lowerey, Rev. James Bevel, Charles Simms and Dr. Martin Luther King, Henry Winston, Claude Lightfoot, Charlene Mitchell, Donald Toomey, Vernice Gabriel, Laura Ross and others resulting in his becoming a community and trade union organizer (UE and 1199) a communist party and ANC member and political activist in both the south and the north from 1963 until 1984.

Donald is the founder, director and senior lecturer of the Ling Shu Institute for Classical Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. Though he is internationally active as a lecturer and clinician and has taught in the United States, Haiti, Senegal, India, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Germany, since the middle 90’s the focus of his teaching and clinical activities have centered around the Ling Shu Institute of Classical Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, AGTCM  and its cooperation schools, especially the former European Institute of Oriental Medicine (EIOM) in Munich where he was a founding faculty member, and the Xin Bao Institut – Köln. He was clinically active, as practice member, of the orthopedic group practice Dr.s Beck and Seiß in Munich. Though he is still actively teaching and providing supervision to collegues and former students, he ended his active clinical practice in September 2023. He is co-author of the 6th and 7th editions of the “Leitfaden Chinesische Medizin” (Compendium of Chinese medicine) and contributing author to various medical publications and journals including “Naturheilpraxis”.

Born in Boston Massachusetts in 1947, the father of three children and grandfather of four, Donald Halfkenny BSc. CMD is, with over 54 years of teaching and clinical experience, an internationally respected and sought after lecturer, teacher, and clinician of classical acupuncture and Chinese medicine. He was a former member of the Black Architects and Planners Workshop at Yale University, studied at Franconia and New Hampshire Colleges, holds a Bachelor of Science degree, has medical degrees in both acupuncture and chinese medicine and was an M.I.T. teaching and research Fellow (CFP).

Donald’s most important and intense period of professional development was from 1974 to 1984 where he was a student and assistant of his teacher and Master Dr. James Tin Yau So. Donald was one of the first three teachers of acupuncture and Chinese medicine certified by the State of Massachusetts.

He was co-director and a senior faculty member of the New England School of Acupuncture from 1977 – 1980, served as President of the Acupuncture Foundation of New England, was Founding member and New England Regional Vice-President of both the National Acupuncture Association and the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.

He was a founding member of both the Acupuncture Detox unit of the Boston Mayor’s Coordinating Council on Drug Abuse and the acupuncture detox unit of the Massachusetts Mental Health Department. Donald is a member of the Intercultural Cancer Council, the American Association of Integrative Medicine, the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine and a member of the AGTCM in Germany.

He is an active member, Prefect, and Preceptor of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission (Sahaj Marg), a United Nations NGO dedicated to the spiritual uplift of mankind, and a Heartfulness and Raj Yoga meditation Instructor / Trainer.

Donald has been living in Germany since 1984, and lives with his wife just south of Munich.