Sherman Lai is a retired Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner and licensed acupuncturist based in Guelph, Ontario, who practised from 1986 to 2023. He is also a 27th-generation Ninjutsu grandmaster who founded and taught the University of Guelph's Ninjutsu program from 1983 to 2006. Over a career spanning nearly four decades, Lai built one of the largest integrative medicine clinics in North America, helped shape Ontario's regulatory framework for TCM and acupuncture, and became a well-known figure in Guelph for introducing Ninjutsu to Canada.
Early training in two disciplines
Lai comes from a family lineage of Ninjutsu masters stretching back 27 generations, and began training in the art as a young child. According to a 1990 Daily Mercury profile, he was admitted to medical school at age 15 — an early example of the parallel paths in martial arts and medicine that would define his career. He immigrated to Canada in 1982 and settled in Guelph, where he began teaching Ninjutsu and practising Traditional Chinese Medicine within a few years of his arrival.
A career in Traditional Chinese Medicine
Lai practised acupuncture and TCM in Guelph from 1986 until his retirement in 2023. He was the founder and director of the Oriental Healing Arts Research Institute and the director of the Centre of Integrative Natural Medicine, a clinic that grew to treat more than 20,000 patients from across Canada and internationally over its history. The clinic combined Chinese medicine with Western science, nutritional science, and lifestyle coaching, and became known for its work with chronic pain, digestive disorders, arthritis, sleep disorders, and hormonal imbalances.
In 2002, Lai founded BioHerbalai Inc., which operated until 2017, to manufacture herbal formulations and provide education for health practitioners. Throughout his career he presented clinical observation reports at conferences in Canada and the United States, including meetings co-sponsored by the World Health Organization. A full list of his research presentations is on the Research & Practice page, and Guelph's broader TCM history is covered in Traditional Chinese Medicine in Guelph: A Local History.
Helping regulate TCM in Ontario
In 2003, Lai was appointed by the Ontario Minister of Health to the advisory committee tasked with establishing a regulatory framework for TCM and acupuncture in the province. He served on that committee through 2004 — work that contributed to Ontario becoming one of the first provinces in Canada to formally regulate the professions under what is now the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncturists of Ontario, giving patients a verifiable standard of training and a body of professional accountability that hadn't previously existed. Lai's own account of that process is in Why Ontario Regulated Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Founder of Canada's Ninjutsu program at the University of Guelph
Alongside his medical career, Lai founded and led the University of Guelph's Ninjutsu program from 1983 to 2006, at times running clubs for both university students and young children through the city's parks and recreation department. He holds an honorary 10th-degree black belt and was known locally for public demonstrations aimed at correcting Hollywood's violent portrayal of ninjas — teaching Ninjutsu instead as a discipline centred on restraint, self-control, and avoiding conflict. The Press Archive collects newspaper coverage of this work going back to 1987, and the connection between his two careers is explored in From Ninjutsu to Traditional Chinese Medicine: The Sherman Lai Story.
Community and international service
Lai was a member of Rotary International from 1992 to 2006 and chaired the Rotary Club of Guelph's Health Committee. In 1998 he volunteered for three weeks in Taiwan providing care to Indigenous communities living in poverty, a connection he has maintained since 2006 through his role on the medical advisory board of St. Mary's Hospital in Tai-Tung, one of the most remote hospitals in Taiwan. Since retiring, he has continued collaborating with practitioners in Taiwan, Japan, and China on integrating Chinese and Western approaches to care.
Sherman Lai today
Lai is retired from clinical practice, and the Centre of Integrative Natural Medicine is no longer operating. He remains active as an educator and occasional speaker for medical institutes internationally, drawing on nearly forty years combining Traditional Chinese Medicine with a parallel career as a martial arts grandmaster.