Qiological Podcast

Resonance, 感應 gan ying, is an aspect of Chinese philosophy that runs through many aspects of our medicine. We see resonance as we look through the unfolding of life through the five phases. The way we see east, spring, liver, green, beginnings and wood as having shared energies; the way they resonant the phase of wood. We see it in the how the six conformations express health or illness through...

We all know that Tech is part of a modern practice. And regardless of whether we love it, or hate it, it plays a central role in our day to day operations, marketing and communications. Just like our patients find the language of Chinese medicine to be confusing. Many practitioners find the language and work flow around technology to be foreign territory. Where to find a translator who can speak o...

We can approach the business and financial aspects of our practices a distasteful task that we’d prefer to delegate to someone else. Or we can take it as the opportunity it is to work through our shadow material around the issues of money, power, authority and integrity. In this conversation we explore how wealth allows us to interact more fully with our world. How finances are just one aspect of...

Last year for the first anniversary of Qiological I invited a listener of the podcast to join me for a conversation, this year I did the same. Part of the reason is that I love hearing from listeners of the show. And the other part is that we all have something to share with each other, and I especially love talking to practitioners that you might not know. I love talking to people that have been...

I started this episode thinking we would be talking about lions, tigers and bears. But we ended up with glial cells, learning and neuroplasticity. Just like in clinic there are often surprising things that show up, and so too it is podcast conversations. In this conversation we start with veterinarian acupuncture. But then take a hard right and go deep into neuroscience, the treatment of pain, ner...

When I lived in China I’d often hear people there say “use western medicine for quick results, but use Chinese medicine for chronic conditions.” It was a bit confusing for me, as even as a student and new practitioner I’d see Chinese medicine be really helpful for more acute conditions. It made me wonder if the Chinese really understood Chinese medicine. In this conversation we get some perspectiv...

Medicine is an unending study. A process of learning, sifting what helps from what doesn’t, and recognizing that we often are students of the unknown. In this conversation we explore healing, sacrifice, the importance of learning a tradition and finding a mentor. Head on over to the show notes page for more information about this episode and for links to the resources discussed in the interview. &...

There is more to growing herbs than understanding plants. There are the considerations of soil, economic environment, weather patterns, cultural and market forces, and the kind of eye and vision that can see the interactions of these forces not just over seasons, but years or decades.  In this conversation we explore the cultivation of Chinese herbs here in the West with one of the pioneers o...

Trauma has both a physiological and emotional impact on us. It can set up a kind of dysregulation that while in the midst of trauma can be adaptive, and in fact help us to survive, but over time can be source of all kinds of physical and emotional problems. In this "part two" conversation we discuss the cycle of healing that can occur as patients move through the five phases of trauma and recovery...

Mushrooms are a curiosity. Neither plant, nor animal, they are stuff of fairy tales and dreams. They hint at something dangerous. They could be delicious, or they could kill you. They sprout up unexpectedly and then quickly melt away. Their underground mycelial networks make them some of nature’s largest collective organisms. Yet their fruiting body is just one small momentary expression of their...

We rely on the skills of experts. The car mechanic, plumber, web designer, business coach. We want to trust the people that are in the position where our lack of knowledge leaves us vulnerable. We’d like for them to have our best interests in mind, and we also know from experience that we question the car mechanic’s assessment when they find more problems with our vehicle than we’d suspected. Most...

Chinese medicine has a long, long history of puzzling through and treating women’s health issues. In this conversation we touch on clinical considerations that come to us from the Song dynasty. Listen in to this conversation that just might make you question some of your assumptions about some things we consider to be true when it comes to our modern understanding of Chinese medicine gynecology.

Business is one of those aspects of practice that many new practitioners approach with a not small amount of fear and loathing. Business is often viewed as something bothersome and takes away from focusing on our practice. But the truth is, just like there is a false dichotomy between mind and body, the idea that business is somehow separate from our practice not only is not helpful, but cuts us o...

The experience of trauma is as much a part of life as is falling in love, having family disagreements, and wondering how we fit in this life. And while we tend to focus on the problems that have their roots in traumatic experiences, it is also possible that we can become more resilient and anti-fragile by moving through traumic experiences in a way that allows us to harvest the lessons of the expe...

What we tell ourselves might be more powerful than our actual experiences. Not only that, our thoughts shape our bodies. Practitioners of East Asian medicine have hard-won, clinically derived tools for conceptualizing how biography affects physiology.   Importantly, this is not limited to counseling our patients.  Instead, through palpation and other components of East Asian medical phys...

When I was a kid it was easy to smell a snow storm coming, or to be able to feel how the wind shifted and the light in the sky meant that you’d better take cover as a thunderstorm was maybe, if you were lucky, 20 minutes away. Us humans have the ability to sense deeply. And if you don’t’ think that’s true, reflect on the last time you knew there was trouble in your relationship, but when you probe...

When you come right down to it… the practice of Chinese medicine is a kind of applied natural science. What makes for an effective natural scientist? Mostly an abiding sense of curiosity. A willingness to have yourself proven wrong. The capacity for a kind of encouraging delight that emerges from following a thread of inquiry. And the fortitude to spend years or decades on following something that...

Fake it till you make it is not a helpful strategy for acquiring confidence. Any halfway competent human being can sniff out inauthenticity. We can only work at, and improve from, our genuine growing edge of ability and skill. Cultivating confidence requires time and experience, generous amounts of both failure and success, and a kind of dogged persistence. It requires confronting what we don’t ye...

Some learning is more transmitted than taught. Observation, touch, the kind of connection that does not rely upon words. We love to make sense, especially to ourselves. But the theories in our heads, the maps of thought that can point the way, but are not the way; these can lull us into a feeling we understand when in fact our understanding is limited and limiting. Developing a way to sense direct...

Chinese medicine is fractal nature. We can take the broad principles outlined in the Yi Jing, Five Phases or Six Jing and watch as they help us to tune in the particular level of life in which we are embedded or observing. Be it the resonance from tendon, to Liver, to Spring to the arising energy of the East. Or the way Taiyang cold balances Shaoyin heat. Or how the trigrams of water and fire are...

Our lives unfold in space-time. It’s the water in which we swim and so like fish, it is difficult to know the influence of the matrix within which we live our days and experiences our lives. The Chinese ba zi, the eight characters, is a system based on the heavenly stems and branches that can help us to orient to the influences that shape us and can guide us in making sense of certain seasons of o...

Books on herbal medicine go way back, back into the misty time of myth and story. We have Shen Nong with his peculiar ability to taste and feel the influences of plants. We have the foundational writings of astute practitioners like Zhang Zhong Jing, Li Shi Zhen and Ye Tian Shi. And then there are the thousands of years of regular doctors like you and I, who have recorded their clinical experience...

The classics are more than just a way to focus our thinking in clinic, they are part of a perspective that sees the world as an integrated and ever evolving whole. It can be a challenge for us with our modern linear, rational, material perspective to grasp the the fractal perspective of a world that made up of resonance, and where observer and observed are both parts of a greater whole. Listen int...

The pulse is emblematic of Chinese medicine. It is a highly subjective measure that helps us to orient in helpful ways toward a patient’s problem and their strengths. While most any practitioner would tell you the pulse is vitally important in accessing a patient’s condition, the ways in which we can approach and interact with the pulse are wide and varied. In this conversation we explore the puls...

In this episode of Qiological we are taking a look at dry needling not from the legal or scope of practice point of view, but rather from the viewpoint of how acupuncturists can learn something from this form of acupuncture that has quickly grown in popularity among our conventional medicine colleagues. We all know that acupuncture can be powerful medicine. Little wonder that other professionals w...