Qiological Podcast

Part Two The body speaks with a visceral language —a hint of thirst, the ache of hunger, the sudden urge for something salty. These signals can be quiet, and easily dismissed when thinking about the “common knowledge” of modern medicine. However, they carry an ancient wisdom that, if we learn to listen, can guide us back toward balance. In this conversation with Peter Torssell, we wander through t...

Part One The body speaks with a visceral language —a hint of thirst, the ache of hunger, the sudden urge for something salty. These signals can be quiet, and easily dismissed when thinking about the “common knowledge” of modern medicine. However, they carry an ancient wisdom that, if we learn to listen, can guide us back toward balance. In this conversation with Peter Torssell, we wander through t...

History isn’t always something you study from a distance. Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle of it—shaped by the events, people, and unexpected turns that unfold around you. Those moments influence destiny, and over time, they become the foundation for how you see and practice your work. In this conversation with Craig Mitchell, we trace those threads through his unexpected entry into Chin...

Words shape the world. But they also limit it. Especially when we mistake translation for clarity—when really, it’s an act of interpretation, adaptation, and sometimes… a kind of poetic guesswork. In this conversation with Sarah Rivkin—a clinician, scholar, and longtime student of language—we talk about what it means to translate not just texts, but meaning itself. Sarah brings a thoughtful lens t...

Sometimes a few needles and a willingness to help—that’s enough to start a quiet revolution. In this conversation with Richard Mandell, we trace the roots of the Global Acupuncture Project, a training-based initiative that brings simple, effective acupuncture protocols to underserved communities around the world. What started as a gut feeling and an internet search has become a decades-long effort...

What if the first step in healing wasn’t a pill, a treatment, or a diagnosis—but dinner? In this deliciously nourishing conversation we sit down with Andrew Sterman, a practitioner of tai qi and nutritional arts, lifelong musician, and author of Diet is Medicine for Home Cooks and Other Healers . We discuss how our health is shaped not only by what we eat—but how we live, digest, feel, and listen....

Some treasures aren’t just hidden—they’re buried, wrapped in mystery and legend, and waiting for the right moment to surface and return to the world of human affairs. What’s astonishing isn’t just that these Dunhuang scrolls survived—but that they journeyed from caves to libraries, and fell into hands that knew enough to recognize them for what they are: threads of ancient medicine waiting to be r...

Long before “cold damage” became a checkbox on exams or a buzzword among classical enthusiasts, Dr. Liu Du-Zhou was quietly doing the work—teaching, treating, and writing from a mind steeped in both lineage and clinical experience. He wasn’t just preserving tradition; he was refining it. His approach to the Shang Han Lun was rigorous yet poetic, grounded in clinical realities and shaped by decades...

Wind isn’t just a breeze, it's also an agent of change. Not metaphorical change—but literal, seasonal, even cosmological change that moves through bodies, weather, and even geopolitics. The energies of nature are not only magnificent forces that sculpt landscapes. But also unfold within us as a kind of inner weather. In this conversation with Christine Cannon, we continue our exploration of the ce...

Ever wonder if the body tells its own version of your inner story? That maybe the channels don’t just carry qi—but also the shape of your longings, the tempo of your fears, and the echo of old emotional weather? What if meridians are a kind of cartography, not just for physiology, but for the inner landscape of the self? In this conversation with Andreas Brüch, we explore how Saam acupuncture offe...

Sometimes the tools that help us see clearly aren’t visible at all—like magnetism, sound, and light. We feel their effects more than we can explain them, but when you start to work with these in clinic, something subtle shifts. In this conversation with Greg Bartosiewicz, we get into a layered discussion of acupuncture, magnetism, light, and biofields. Greg’s background in proteomics and medical l...

In the early 80’s as acupuncture was emerging into the mainstream culture in the West, it developed differently in response to the established medical and educational systems already in place. In the USA there was no national health service, while in the UK, that was a pillar of the socio-political landscape.  Sybil Coldham was not a practitioner of acupuncture, instead she was involved with...

What does it take to truly learn something? To not just know it in theory, but to have it live in your hands? Discipline, repetition, and a touch of obsession might be part of it—but so is heart, motivation, and the magnetic force of curiosity that keeps pulling you forward. In this conversation with Dr. Henry McCann, we talk about what it means to engage deeply with the practice of medicine. Henr...

Sometimes it’s not what we hear, but what emerges in the space just before—where meaning hasn’t formed yet—but something is already calling your attention. It’s that quiet edge of awareness where both healing and mystery tend to show up. In this conversation with Christoph Wiesendanger, a jazz pianist with an abiding interest in Chinese medicine, we explore how rhythm, resonance, and reflective aw...

Part One What if the body wasn’t a fixed map, but a living, improvisational landscape? In this conversation with Lan Li, a historian, filmmaker, and rhythm-savvy thinker at the crossroads of medicine and imagination, we explore how anatomy is more than skin and sinew—it’s a set of metaphors, shaped as much by culture as by scalpels. Lan brings insight from her work in neuroscience, film, and Chine...

Part Two What if the body wasn’t a fixed map, but a living, improvisational landscape? In this conversation with Lan Li, a historian, filmmaker, and rhythm-savvy thinker at the crossroads of medicine and imagination, we explore how anatomy is more than skin and sinew—it’s a set of metaphors, shaped as much by culture as by scalpels. Lan brings insight from her work in neuroscience, film, and Chine...

The roots of tradition sometimes take hold in unexpected soil. What happens when traditions from France, Korea, and China converge in one practitioner’s hands? There’s a kind of alchemy in the way knowledge travels—through stories, teachers, and clinical results that raise the question of what is going on here. In this conversation with Jacques MoraMarco, we explore the shape of a career that’s sp...

What do we do when the world feels like it’s unraveling? How to respond when our systems—political, economic, medical—feel brittle, even broken? It’s easy to fall into despair, or look away. But maybe what we’re being asked to do is look closer. To stay present. In this conversation with Ed Neal and Mel Hopper Koppelman, we explore the edges where medicine, ecology, and culture meet. Both are thin...

Sometimes the best opportunities don’t look like opportunity—they look like risk. Like driving hours into the mountains. Like renting a stranger’s massage room and hoping someone shows up. But there’s a strange kind of capacity that comes from following a hunch—especially the kind that seems to go against the grain. In this conversation with Irina Cividino, we explore her unconventional path as a...

Technology is evolving fast—and it’s starting to mirror us in ways that are both fascinating and a little unsettling. As AI becomes part of our daily lives, it raises an important question: how do we stay human while working with machines that mimic us? In this conversation with Vanessa Menendez-Covelo, we explore the intersection of Chinese medicine and artificial intelligence. With a background...

It’s a curious thing, sometimes you want to get away from something. Maybe it’s the town you grew up in, or a family business. You think you know it, and are not interested. But circumstances change and find your way back to it with new eyes. In this conversation with Thomas Leung, we trace the arc of a family deeply rooted in Chinese herbal medicine. From his great-grandfather’s shop in Guangdong...

Sometimes what holds us back isn’t a lack of skill or knowledge, but an old story unknowingly agreed to. One that says it’s unseemly to want success, that business is at odds with healing. But what if your clinic wasn’t just a way to help people—but also a practice of alignment, agency, and even joy? In this conversation with Julie Bear Don’t Walk, we explore how business and medicine aren’t separ...

There’s a moment in every practitioner’s life when they start thinking less about where they’re going and more about what they’re leaving behind. What does it mean to practice for decades, to see students turn into colleagues, and to watch the medicine evolve through your hands? The arc of a career in acupuncture isn’t just about technique—it’s connection and contribution as well. In this conversa...

Childhood is a surprising, messy, and unpredictable unfolding that follows an orderly  pattern of stages through reliable spirals of development. In this conversation with Moshe Heller, we explore the complexities of childhood development through the lens of Chinese medicine. Moshe shares his insights from years of working with children, drawing connections between physiological, emotional, a...

There's magic in learning how to translate the mysterious into the practical—especially when it comes to bridging the world of acupuncture with the language of Western medicine. Sometimes, all it takes is a burrito and a bit of bravery to create connections that open doors. In this conversation with Elie Cole, we explore her journey from a massage therapist to a successful acupuncturist with a thr...