Qiological Podcast

Page through the Material Medica and it is easy to think that Chinese herbal medicine is one unified body of knowledge and practice. But, it’s not.  If you look closely you’ll see that different formulations come from different dynasties. Some were written in times of famine and war, others first penned during heights of peace, cultural exchange and affluence. While it looks like one coherent...

Chinese medicine and Korean medicine share a lot of similarities. But there are a few differences. And when it comes to constitutional types, there are some significantly dissimilar perspectives. This is one of the delights of East Asian medicine. Coming across a perspective that is close to something we understand, but different enough to edge us toward either a feeling of “wrong, this can’t be r...

We tend to think of movement in mechanical terms. How this muscle contracts, how blood perfuses a certain kind of tissue or how tendons and bones allow for particular kinds of movement. But beyond this we we can see that movement is a kind of vocabulary of the body. It has nuance or not. It has a range of expression or not. And just like micro-nutrients are vital to our metabolism, so to micro mov...

Inflammation is a popular topic in the worlds of both alternative and conventional medicine. It’s a pathologic process that is the result of certain disease processes and the generator of others. It is also something that can be treated very well with East Asian medicine. In this episode we explore how the fundamentals of the Liver/Spleen relationship, the Heart/Kidney axis and digestion in genera...

Jing, Qi and Shen— the three treasures. These are essentials that pervade our thinking as East Asian medicine practitioners. And yet, as fundamental as they are, these three are not so easy to nail down. They are concepts from another time and culture, and they are present and unfolding in your experience as you read this. If you are looking for something materially tangible to the Western mind, t...

The best teachers are perpetual students. They are ones who when things don’t work as expected don’t say the medicine doesn’t work. These people dig into finding out why they don’t yet know how to make it work.  While aspects of medicine can be taught, there is much more than can only be discovered. Discovered anew within the experience of each generation. And it is those teachers who can hel...

It’s easy to think there is one way to take the pulse, and natural to fall back on the habits that formed early on in our learning to attend to this vital aspect of diagnosis and prognosis. Pulse is something our teachers help us to orient toward, but it is our experience and patients who help to understand and learn to trust what we feel. In this episode we have a research scientist’s eye view of...

Sa’am has a good backstory. The meditative attainment of a Buddhist monk sparks a stream of acupuncture that can be taught to simple monks to help alleviate the suffering of the world. It is a good story. But, more importantly this is a perspective on acupuncture that gives some penetrating insight into the connections between the six levels (六經) and the five phases (五行). This method can help...

There are basics, principles, fundamentals, some building blocks of how the matter and energy of creation interact and transform. Over the centuries, through wildly different ideas of illness, health and workings of the human body, doctors have applied these principles to the challenges of their day to relieve suffering. As practitioners, we too are part of this stream. We use the ideas and percep...

Liver qi constraint might be one of the most common diagnosis in the modern Chinese medicine clinic. But the role of the Liver has changed over time, and at one point it was even considered to be part of the neurological system. In this episode we take a nuanced look at that wide and slippery constellation of symptoms that falls under the general rubric of “stress.” Listen in for a conversation ab...

We trace our medicine back to the Nei Jing, but most of our actual practices come from a more modern perspective. Going back to those roots is not easy. Even for native speakers of Chinese, reading the 文言文 wen yan wen, the classic Chinese is difficult. For those of us in the modern West, these ancient texts are challenging. They require not just language, but a minset that views the world from...

Like hitting black ice, suddenly all sense of traction and stability evaporate into a gut wrenching vertigo. Adverse reactions of our patients to acupuncture can trigger this kind of disorientation. And this is when we have an opportunity to learn something that we didn’t previous know.  Adverse reactions could be due to a botched treatment, we were thinking one thing, but did another. Or our...

It’s easy for us to think that because we have a darned good English version of the material medica that the centuries of herbal knowledge is at our finger tips. But there is a lot of back story to the medicinals that we use everyday in our practices Where herbs come from, how they are cultivated, how different plants have been used over the centuries; there is a lot we take for granted. Or simply...

In this conversation we have a couple of practitioners who have listened to Toby’s podcasts on Sa’am acupuncture and read his article from the Journal of Chinese Medicine ask questions based on their experience of using this perspective in their clinical work. This not a discussion of theory, but rather clinical applications from practitioners who are engaging the method. If you are starting to wo...

These days we worry about getting through school, passing the boards and then getting a practice started. But there was a time when there were no schools, or national accreditation and practicing acupuncture was a felony. That world was not so long ago, and as is often the case, it is difficult to understand the present moment without a sense of the history that it contains. Our guest in this conv...

Even when speaking in our mother tongue we often misunderstand each other. Due to our biases, perspectives, and background it is easy to overlay our story on just about any situation. Add in that we are dealing with translation between language and culture; it gets even trickier. In today’s conversation we explore the use of “upper, middle and lower” class herbs. This does not mean that upper is b...

In this encore episode with a guest interviewer. Njemile Carol Jones pulls out her old radio day skills and sits down with Lorraine Wilcox for a conversation on what has caught her attention over the years, and the various projects in which she is currently involved. Njemile and Lorraine knew each other from back in the day when they both worked at NPR. Since then they've both traveled their own p...

Needle technique is more than knowing how to insert a needle and count the turns in a particular direction. It requires more than the memorization of some protocols, or the rote following of a recipe of steps. In this conversation we explore needle technique as a part of understanding how to feel into the tissues of the body. We discuss the creation of a treatment that relies not on someone else’s...

In acupuncture school we learn about the 10 questions. But really, the questions are endless. And we are given the image of the scholar/doctor who doesn't say much, just looks at the tongue, takes the pulse and then has everything she needs to treat the patient. But that image does not fit the clinical reality in which most of us find ourselves. Learning to ask the right kinds of questions. Learni...

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is a complex of metabolic and hormonal imbalances. It not only causes menstrual irregularities, but also effects fertility, secondary sex characteristics, and  can be related to elevated cholesterol and blood sugar levels as a woman ages.  While conventional biomedicine can control some of the symptoms of this disorder, there isn't much it offers in terms of g...

In this episode we continue where we left off with our previous discussion and begin with how simply changing the amount of herbs in a formula can lead to some surprising outcomes.  We also look into how a patient's thinking and beliefs can be utilized as part of the treatment. And discuss a big topic with a lot patients seeing alternative health care, namely the issue of detoxification.&nbsp...

You know how sometimes patients have these weird symptoms that they think have nothing to do with who they are?  Well, us acupuncturists are not immune to running up against our own uninhabited edges, especially when it comes to marketing and business.    In this conversation we get down into the essence of our work, and why it's important to know what we do beyond the story we tell...

We know that the language and perspective of Chinese and east Asian medicine gives us a whole different glimpse into physiology, health, illness and healing. And if you’ve learned a foreign tongue, then you’ve had experience how language shapes thought, perspective and possibility.  The systems or currents of medicine we practice, that too gives a framework, a perspective, that helps us to or...

This "part two" conversation with Toby Daly came about because I've been trying to learn the Saam system of acupuncture as he detailed it a recent Journal of Chinese Medicine article.  In that process I've had some surprising good results, as well as a few cases that I really took in the wrong direction.  Toby points out, when you get it wrong, it's really wrong and you'll know pretty qu...

Learning the basics of promoting or controlling the flow of qi  through the Five Phases is an elemental part of every acupuncturist's training . We learn how the antique points can be used to nudge a response or invite a different kind of resonance into a patient's life.  The Korean Saam acupuncture tradition has been passed down through a lineage of monk/practitioners. It not only uses&...