Qiological Podcast

In the clinic, communication happens before a word is spoken. It unfolds through attention, listening, and the tactile information the body offers when we slow down enough to notice.In this conversation, we explore palpation as a central pillar of acupuncture practice—not simply as a diagnostic tool, but as a way of relating. Drawing from diverse clinical backgrounds and decades of hands-on experience, in this panel discussion we move out of theory and into the wordless language of the body. We explore how palpation becomes a bridge between thinking and sensing, diagnosis and treatment, practitioner and patient.Listen into this conversation as we explore how palpation provides real-time feedback in treatment, how it keeps acupuncture grounded and responsive, the ways in which touch builds trust and rapport, and why listening with the hands can reveal what words and symptoms alone cannot.Attentive touch doesn’t just inform our treatments—it changes how we show up to the work itself.

The lines we draw define us. In the pursuit of "objectivity," modern medicine draws a sharp line between the observer and the observed—the doctor and the patient. But what happens when we intentionally blur that line? What is discovered when we move toward the subject rather than away from it?In this expansive conversation with Daniel Schulman, we explore what happens when acupuncture is practiced not as a technical intervention, but as a relational art. Daniel reflects on a lifetime of moving between worlds—science and spirit, objectivity and intimacy—and how Chinese medicine became a place where those apparent opposites could finally speak to one another.Listen into this discussion as we explore clinical intimacy, the difference between judgment and discernment, why knowing a patient is not the same as knowing their diagnosis, and how self-cultivation becomes an ethical foundation for practice. We wander through Saam acupuncture, Goethean science, deep time, and the quiet moments in clinic where something larger than technique makes itself known.

Good medicine has less to do with having the “right system” and more to do with the human being holding the needles. With the way we listen. The way we wait. The way we’re willing to not know… yet.In this conversation with Stephen Brown we trace his unlikely path from welding in a west coast shipyard—literally working with fire and metal—to becoming one of the key bridges between Japanese acupuncture and the English-speaking world.Along the way he unpacks how history, culture, and politics have shaped East Asian medicine in Japan, Korea, China and beyond, and why arguments about “the one true method” miss the living heart of the work. We wander through blind practitioners and palpation-rich traditions, meridian therapy, “scientific” acupuncture, dry needling, and the long-standing turf skirmishes between them.But repeatedly Stephen brings us back to the clinician’s interior: the courage to admit “I don’t know yet,” the discipline of returning to basics, the craft of letting the body teach you through touch, timing, and attention.Listen into this conversation on how Stephen refuses both magical thinking and rigid certainty. Instead, he points toward a grounded intuition born of repetition, body-based knowing, and genuine curiosity about the person in front of us. It’s a generous, searching exploration of what it means to practice acupuncture as a lifelong craft, in a world that keeps trying to turn it into a billable procedure.

There are seasons in a woman’s life that don’t arrive quietly. They come with a tremor, a shimmer, a sense that something deep in the architecture of who you are is being rewritten. It’s not collapse, but instead a reordering that can’t be ignored.In this conversation with Heidi Lovie, we wander into the transformation of menopause. She invites us to consider this transition not as a breakdown, but as a profound renegotiation between heart and kidney, ancestry and agency, biology and identity.Listen into this discussion as we explore how hormones shape our sense of reality, why perimenopause can feel like the caterpillar dissolving into goo phase of becoming a butterfly, how grief and sovereignty intertwined in midlife, and ways clinicians can expand their imagination beyond the default kidney-yin story. This is about expanding language, reframing experience, and recognizing the second spring as a time of creativity, clarity, and unapologetic self-definition.

Medicine finds its way into our lives not through textbooks, but by getting sand in our shoes, salt in our hair, and noticing how our hands long to be in the dirt—or on people.Liz Vitale didn’t simply move to the Oregon Coast. She rooted herself there among fishermen, surfers, firefighters, foresters, Latina moms, and retirees. Over time she became part of the village, not just as a practitioner, but as a neighbor, a volunteer firefighter, a customer at the grocery store and regular at the surfer pub.In this conversation with Liz, we explore what happens when medicine is not practiced from behind clinic doors, but amidst the actual people it serves. We talk about treating fishermen underserved by mainstream care, how not to impose our “Chinese medicine stories” on patients, how community softens judgment, and how sometimes medicine works quietly—by helping people first feel seen.Listen into this discussion as we explore how healing unfolds differently in rural places, why living joyfully may be part of the prescription, how treating everybody includes those who don’t agree with you, and how sometimes you find out how your treatments are working not from a clinic visit—but from the local pub, where someone shouts over fish and chips, “Liz, the herbs are working.”

We tend to think of eyesight as a technical problem—retinas, optics, refractive errors, clearer lenses. But eyes don’t just see—they interpret. They blur when the world feels too intrusive, or sharpen when clarity feels like safety. The eyes are woven through with story, memory, emotion, and the ways we've learned to look—or to look away.In this conversation with Dr. Marc Grossman, optometrist, acupuncturist, and lifelong investigator of vision, we explore how eyesight is more than biology—it’s biography. He's spent decades asking not just what eye problems are, but why they appear in this person, at this moment, in this way. His work lives at the intersection of physiology, psychology, Chinese medicine, and the soul’s need to see clearly—not just out into the world, but into one’s own experience and heart.Listen into this discussion as we explore how nearsightedness can emerge from emotional overwhelm, why some people develop tension in just one eye, how the optic nerve can reflect sensitivity and empathy, and why prescriptions sometimes don’t correct—but instead freeze—a moment in our story.This isn’t a conversation about fixing eyes. It’s about recognizing eyesight as a living conversation between body, spirit, and the world we orient ourselves toward. It reminds us that inquiry—not protocol—is often the most powerful medicine.

Some people find acupuncture after a twisted ankle, a twist of fate, or some stubborn health condition that finally surrenders to a few needles. But every now and then you meet someone who caught the spark early—before the world had a chance to talk them out of their own curiosity.In this conversation with Will Martin, we trace the path of a high-school kid who dove headfirst into Chinese medicine—ordering textbooks at sixteen, poring over ideas he could barely pronounce, and never letting that fascination go. Will brings a mix of youthful boldness and genuine reverence for the medicine. He’s thoughtful about the landscape of healthcare, clear-eyed about the challenges in our field, and articulate in how he sees acupuncture stepping more fully into the role of primary care.Listen into this discussion as we explore why he thinks the medicine needs less defensiveness and more confidence, what it means to keep your treatments simple, how to stand in your authority as a new practitioner, and why the future of acupuncture might be brighter than we’ve been telling ourselves.

Punk rock and Chinese medicine might seem worlds apart, but both pushed back on dominant systems. Punk challenged the mainstream music industry; Chinese medicine, the dominance of biomedicine. Each created space for alternative voices, for people questioning authority and rewriting the rules.In this conversation with Tyler Phan, we explore how rebellion, identity, and power intersect in the making of American Chinese medicine. His research looks at how a healing tradition that arrived through the Chinese diaspora was caught by the imagination of white countercultural movements, shaped by state regulation, and often distanced from the very communities that carried it here.Listen into this discussion as we unpack Foucault’s ideas of power, the counterculture’s fascination with the East, the formation of professional standards, and how the DIY ethos of punk still hums beneath it all.Tyler’s perspective challenges us to see that medicine is never just about healing—it’s also about who gets to define what counts as knowledge, and who that power ultimately serves.

Sometimes clarity doesn’t come from adding more—it comes from taking away. Simplifying helps to see more clearly what’s already there. In medicine, that often means noticing the simple patterns hiding beneath complex presentations.In this conversation with Fang Cai, we explore the meeting place between Saam acupuncture and dermatology. Fang brings years of clinical experience and study with Mazen Al-Khafaji, and she shares how integrating Saam principles with herbal dermatology has deepened both her diagnostic precision and her ability to communicate with patients in clear, everyday terms.Listen into this discussion on using Saam acupuncture for troublesome skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, urticaria, rosacea, and acne. We’ll explore how the skin reveals patterns of physiology and imbalance, and why simplicity in treatment—done with discernment—can create profound change.Fang’s reflections remind us that good medicine doesn’t always come from complexity. Sometimes it’s about listening closely, trusting what you see, and being the kind of practitioner you’d want to visit yourself.

The tools we use to shape our world, they in turn shape us. Whether it’s the brush in a painter’s hand or the software code that organizes the clinic day. The interface becomes part of our perception. Technology, like medicine, is an expression of relationship.In this conversation with Kenan Akbas, we trace the unlikely path from acupuncture to algorithms. This is a story that begins in the club scene of 1990s New York, winds its way through photography, Chinese medicine, Taiwan, and eventually the creation of platforms that help practitioners connect more fluidly with their patients. Kenan’s work sits at the intersection of tradition, innovation and inquisitiveness.Listen into this discussion as we explore what it means to build technology rooted in care and how AI might become not a replacement for human skill, but a partner in the development of it. There are challenges in evolving with our tools as we move into a new stage of development with our exo-nervous system. There’s no going back, the question is how do you move forward into a new terrain.

Sometimes the most interesting things happen when we stop trying to confirm what we think we know. In clinic, certainty can close doors—but curiosity opens them. There’s a kind of listening that goes beyond the intellect, a way of paying attention that allows discovery to unfold on its own time.In this conversation with Dan Bensky, we explore the art of noticing. What it means to let medicine be a call and response rather than a performance of knowledge. We talk about the practitioner’s stance—one that values modesty over mastery, sensation before interpretation, and the quiet skill of finding something you weren’t looking for.Listen into this discussion as we trace ideas of Tong and connection, the dance between palpation and perception, the discipline involved with not-knowing, and how true competence might simply mean being willing to check yourself.This is a conversation for anyone who’s ever paused mid-treatment and thought, “Huh… that’s odd.” Because sometimes, that moment—the one that unsettles what you thought you knew—is where the treatment really begins.

The 1970s were a turbulent time—streets alive with protest, classrooms charged with new ideas, and an entire generation questioning the stories they’d inherited. It was a decade of upheaval, but also one where curious opportunities arose. For some, those opportunities led not to politics or protest, but to the quiet pulse of a medicine few in America had ever heard of.In this conversation with Gene Bruno, we wander through those early days of acupuncture in the United States. From campus strikes and existentialist lectures with Angela Davis to finding himself in the second class of Dr. Kim’s students, Gene’s story carries the spirit of curiosity and rebellion that shaped an era. His path was less about a plan and more about following questions—whether that meant bringing acupuncture into UCLA’s pain clinic, or rediscovering forgotten traditions with horses on California racetracks.Listen into this discussion as we explore acupuncture’s improbable foothold in the counterculture of the 70s, the razor’s edge moment when the profession nearly became the sole territory of physicians, and how veterinary acupuncture was reborn in America before returning to the world stage.

Ever wonder if being human is less about mechanics and more about patterns? Not the kind of patterns you memorize in a textbook, but the ones that repeat like spirals in a sunflower, or the way a thought can shape the body before we even realize it.In this conversation with Rory Hiltbrand, we wander through the field of being human—where Daoist numerics, fractals, and the golden ratio intersect with medicine and daily practice. Rory draws from both classical Daoist thought and his own clinical experience, weaving geometry, physiology, and spirit into something that feels both practical and mysterious.Listen into this discussion as we explore the body as a field and the mind as its knower, how intention can be grounded in embodied experience rather than wishful thinking, why ministerial fire might look a lot like the nervous system, and the curious ways symmetry becomes a treatment strategy.What I love in talking with Rory is how ideas that seem abstract at first end up grounding us in clinic. Patterns that echo through heaven and earth can also help us know when the best time to treat is simply when the patient is on the table.

Sometimes old books get treated like sacred relics.  But what if the Nei Jing isn’t a mystery text at all? What if it’s closer to a well-worn how-to manual — a guide for the hands, a companion for the clinic?In this conversation with Ethan Murchie, we explore the Nei Jing not as a theory to be memorized but as a craft to be lived. Ethan comes to this work through martial arts and manual medicine, where following the qi, unwinding entanglements, and listening through touch are daily practice.Listen into this discussion as we consider what transmission really means, why clinical knowing often comes through the hands before the mind, and how the classics find their life not in libraries, but in the repetition of practice.Ethan’s reflections remind us that medicine can be steady, humble, and deeply human — a craft that reveals more each time we return to it.

The face tells a story, etched in its lines, the color of our skin, and the expressions we carry. These are not mere physical features; they are a language—an ancient map that, if we learn to read, can reveal traces of our life’s journey,  ancestral gifts, and the yet to be resolved challenges holding us back. This wisdom often goes unnoticed in a world focused on external appearances, but it is there if you know how to perceive .In this conversation with Anita Chopra, we journey through the landscapes of the face, and the unexpected twists of fate that lead us to our Ming—that essence that makes us grow. Anita’s approach is a tapestry woven from her personal journey and professional practice. She listens to the body's narrative, honors the lessons from her mentors, and uses her unique skills to help patients find their golden path.Join us as we explore the power of being truly seen, the profound wisdom of accepting ourselves, how our life's path is found in a glimmer on the periphery, and the courage it takes to become the person you were always meant to be.

Here in the West, acupuncture often feels like something foreign, something patients approach with curiosity but no context. “I don’t know anything about Chinese medicine,” they’ll say. And most of the time, that’s true. We didn’t grow up with an uncle who prescribed herbs or a parent using needles to ease the illnesses and injuries of childhood.For Wei Dong Lu, medicine wasn’t foreign at all. He grew up inside it, part of a family where healing was daily life. At sixteen, during the Cultural Revolution, he was told to learn a “practical skill.” His classmates were sent to carpentry or sewing. He was handed needles. Listen into this discussion as we trace the path that took him from Shanghai to Nebraska, from teaching at the New England School of Acupuncture to practicing oncology acupuncture at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.What you’ll hear isn’t just the biography of one practitioner, but a story about how medicine travels—how it bends and blends to circumstance, how it adapts to new settings, and how something essential continues to move through it all.

Ever notice how our bodies have their own climate? The heat of fire and cold of water aren’t just metaphors, they are elemental forces that don’t just live in the weather—they’re playing out in our patients’ bodies every day.In this conversation with Roseline Lambert, we explore her work blending Saam acupuncture with Japanese palpation methods, and how she’s been experimenting with heating and cooling as clinical strategies. What began as curiosity has become a set of questions for her hands, and a more finely tuned sense for how temperature sketches the contours of channel health and pathology.Listen into this discussion as we talk about how observation and palpation guide treatment, how listening closely to patient language reveals diagnosis, and why heating and cooling formulas might unlock clinical puzzles where standard approaches fall short.Roseline brings the improvisation of a musician and the hands of a cartographer to her practice. Her story is a reminder that our medicine grows not just from what we’re taught, but from how we follow the questions that arise in clinic.

Some things can’t be seen—only felt. The texture of presence, the quiet shifts in atmosphere, the way the body speaks before words arrive. In the clinic, it’s not always the protocols or point prescriptions that lead the way, but something quieter. Something more fluid.In this conversation with Felix de Haas, we meander through the tactile world of East Asian medicine—through pulse, palpation, and the subtle feedback that unfolds when you listen with your hands. Felix shares how Chinese medicine didn’t just appear in his life—it found him. And how the most meaningful parts of practice often live in the places we’re still learning to trust.Listen into this discussion as we explore the idea of 通 tong as communication and opening, the felt shape of qi, why protocols eventually fall away, and how clinical insight often begins with not knowing.Felix brings a lifetime of experience, sense of history, and a willingness to stay curious. This conversation is for anyone who’s ever wondered if the body might be whispering more than we’re used to hearing.

Books are more than just words on a page. They carry texture, weight, and the kind of quiet intimacy that screens can never quite match. A book slows down time, unfolds the quiet potency of a moment, and invites us into its rhythm.In this conversation with Erinne Adachi—acupuncturist, editor, and devoted bibliophile—we explore her lifelong love of books and how it has shaped her path, from making stapled “newspapers” as a child to editing manuscripts and guiding authors, and eventually into the world of Chinese medicine.Listen into this discussion as we touch on the tactile joys of paper and print, the hidden labor of editing and shaping a manuscript, the vulnerability of rough drafts, and how books and medicine both serve as vessels for stories that change us. Along the way we wander into questions of authorship, ownership, and how narrative itself might be as healing as a needle.Erinne’s reflections remind us that medicine and literature share a common thread: both require attention, presence, and the courage to trust what emerges on the page—or in the clinic.

Part TwoThe 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 the landscapes of Chinese medicine, food traditions, and the yin–yang rhythms that shape health. Peter’s approach is simple yet layered—he looks for what unites different styles of practice, invites patients into small changes with big impact, and trusts the body’s own feedback as a compass.Listen into this discussion as we explore the subtlety of provoking thirst to build yang, the way salt cravings reveal more than taste, how harmony is born of difference, and the art of choosing foods in dialogue with the seasons and yourself.