Dragon Fire.Sides

Dr. Julian Grow, MSTOM, L.Ac., treats patients at Sacred Silence Acupuncture in Bushwick and the Financial District in New York City. He came to Chinese medicine through a rare bone tumor at 22, then spent years testing nearly every alternative path there is, from raw veganism and jiu-jitsu to plant medicine ceremonies in the Amazon. But none of that is why this conversation matters.Most origin stories stop at “I got sick and found this medicine.” Julian’s keeps going, through the misdiagnosis, the surgeries, the detox workshops, the ceremonies, and the day he was suspended from acupuncture school. What he took from all of it is simple: no one is responsible for your health more than you are.What we cover:Why a runner who broke school records lived on daily Advil for years under a stress fracture diagnosis, and what it took to finally get a second opinionThe day his leg gave way while he was waiting tables, the second surgery, and the warning that he might lose the leg if the donor bone didn’t fuseWhy recovery in a hospital convinced him it was a place people go to die, not to heal, and the documentary that sent him toward food as medicineA decade of raw vegan, paleo, CrossFit, jiu-jitsu and fringe therapies, and why “just keep detoxing” stopped making sense: at some point you don’t detox, you buildAyahuasca, San Pedro, and a 115-year-old medicine man in Ecuador, and the tradition’s belief that the healer has to suffer tooGetting suspended from acupuncture school in his last semester, and what the medicine men taught him about staying quiet about what’s sacredWhy so many acupuncturists come out of punk culture, and what “the revolution happens inside” means for a practitionerWhat nobody tells you: being good at acupuncture does not pay the rent, and the years he spent learning thatThis is part one. Part two is who he is now.Chapters (from the transcript timestamps, so check against the final cut):0:00 Intro0:22 The diagnosis2:55 The leg gives out4:52 Food Matters and food as medicine14:28 Nobody is responsible for your health more than you19:09 Silent retreats and the first ceremony23:58 The book that led to the Amazon31:12 Ecuador and Don Basilio36:10 Don Cesario, 115 years old41:20 Good at acupuncture, still broke43:38 Punk, anti-establishment, and Chinese medicine51:08 Spirit before self-willFind Julian on Instagram: @juliankeenangrowSubscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@davidmartinbernard?sub_confirmation=1

Dr. Ron Sandoval is a licensed acupuncturist, the founder of Mosaic Wellness in Melville, NY, and a man who has lifted weights since he was sixteen. At 54 he says he is the strongest he has ever been, and he opened his clinic a year ago and watched it take off. But none of that is why this conversation matters.What matters is that Ron is one of the few practitioners saying out loud what men in their 50s say to no one: you feel tired, you feel heavy, your back hurts when you get out of bed, and the only thing anyone offers you is a prescription for the symptom. He is building the alternative from the treatment room up.What we cover:Why the idea that 50 is the beginning of the downhill is a story men tell themselves, and the daily habits Ron uses to refuse it.The “piecemeal” trap: why a peptide you saw online, a pinch of salt in your water and a promise to wake up early don’t add up to a plan, and why a system you can actually follow beats all of them.The exact routine, with numbers: a gym session before work, 180 to 190 grams of protein at 200 pounds, three cold-water plunges a week, and 15 minutes in the sauna four or five days a week, most of it done before he walks into the office at nine.Why “I don’t have time” is not an answer if you work an eight-hour day.What happens to a man who goes to his urologist with a problem he can’t talk about, and why Ron calls a pill taken right before you perform “taking a juice” instead of fixing the problem.Why guys will open up in a gym or with another guy who is already doing what they want to do, and why that’s how Ron’s men’s program started: a first appointment for shoulder pain, and a second conversation about everything else.The case study: a 55-year-old retiring school teacher who came in because his shoulder wasn’t improving and left, three months later, fifteen pounds lighter, without a GLP drug, pain-free, and a more present husband and father.And why Ron believes Joe on the corner can feel good at 55, and start the business he thought about at 35.This is Part 1 of three, and it is the conversation men over 40 need to hear before they accept the slide as normal.Guest: Dr. Ron Sandoval, L.Ac. — Mosaic Wellness ~ Melville, Melville, NYWork with Ron: https://www.mosaicwellnessli.com/Instagram (Ron): https://www.instagram.com/ronsandovalhealth/Instagram (Mosaic Wellness): https://www.instagram.com/mosaicwellnessli/Text or call: 631-424-8601Host: David Bernard — Dragon Fire.Sides / Clinic Dragon AIhttps://clinicdragon.aiAbout the show: Dragon Fire.Sides is a conversation series for acupuncturists and integrative practitioners about building the practice, the profession and the path.Subscribe: https://youtube.com/@davidmartinbernard?sub_confirmation=1

Dr. Yvonne K. Scarlett, DACM, L.Ac, didn't set out to become a fertility specialist. Thirteen years of daily migraines and a medicine cabinet that wasn't working led her to Chinese medicine almost by accident in 2004 — and six sessions later, she woke up without a headache for the first time in over a decade. That one result pulled her out of a stable engineering career and into a doctorate in Chinese medicine, eventually landing her in the one corner of practice she didn't expect: helping women who had been told they couldn't have children.In this conversation, David sits down with Dr. Scarlett, founder of Red Lotus Wellness Center, to talk about what it actually looks like to hold hope for a patient without promising her an outcome — what Dr. Scarlett calls being "hope tired." They get into the real mechanics of her practice: what she's actually looking for when a woman comes in after a low AMH diagnosis or a failed IVF cycle, why the male partner is involved in roughly 40% of fertility cases but almost never shows up to treatment, and why "unexplained infertility" is a starting point, not a verdict.The conversation also goes somewhere neither of them planned — into the placebo effect, the burden and privilege of carrying patients' outcomes home with you, and a direct conversation about racial bias in women's healthcare, sparked by David sharing his own family's experience of being dismissed by a doctor during his wife's pregnancy.This is the first of at least two conversations with Dr. Scarlett — there was more to get into than one episode could hold.In this episode:How thirteen years of chronic migraines led an engineer into a doctorate in Chinese medicineWhat "root cause medicine" actually means in practice — "I'm like a PI, I'm digging for the missing piece"What it's like to sit across from a woman who's been told she can't have childrenLow AMH: why a number isn't a prophecyWhat Dr. Scarlett looks for after two or three failed IVF cycles that the fertility clinic didn't catchWhy the male partner is involved in ~40% of fertility cases — and why he almost never shows upThe placebo effect, "holding hope," and the real cost of carrying patients' outcomes homeA candid conversation about racial bias in women's healthcareGuest: Dr. Yvonne K. Scarlett, DACM, L.Ac — Red Lotus Wellness Center, Carlsbad, CA. RedLotusWellnessCenter.comHost: David Bernard, Dragon Fire.Sides / Clinic Dragon AI

Dr. Kassie Sorokach came up working for a neurologist, watching patients get funneled through the same medications and the same follow-ups with zero individualization to any of it. That's what pushed her toward Chinese medicine. She financed her way out of a single rented room and into her own building on her mother's credit card, because four and a half years of living in an RV with her family had wrecked her credit too badly to qualify for a loan herself. Then a video about wearing socks to bed changed everything.In just over a year she grew from that single room into her own building — a full team, an aesthetician, a student clinic. Alongside it she built a second business: an online coaching program with her own coaches underneath her, running close to 200 clients. Since January, one revenue stream in that business alone has cleared $852K.What she'll tell you is that none of it happened because she softened the medicine for a wider audience. It happened because she stopped translating it.This conversation goes deep on the split running through TCM right now — practitioners who think they have to speak the language of allopathic medicine to earn a seat at the table, versus practitioners like Kassie who lean all the way into TCM terminology instead, because naming the pattern out loud keeps her inside her scope, not outside it. She talks about the carousel format that actually converts versus the reels that just rack up views, why she has her own acupuncture students building a social media presence before they graduate, and her blunt read on an industry in crisis: people go to who they resonate with, and the acupuncturists who are struggling are the ones who never learned to sell a transformation instead of a session.She also gets candid about the RV years — two kids, four cats, crying on a call with David just trying to get her software set up because she was so far past her capacity — and what building both businesses at once actually cost her at home.

Dr. Cleo Amelia came up through chronic illness — Lyme disease, autoimmune struggles, the long road that eventually led her to a doctorate in acupuncture and Chinese medicine. She opened a clinic, added functional medicine, built something real. Then she found the online space and everything changed.In two and a half years she closed her in-person practice, built a functional medicine coaching company with eight practitioners under her, launched a second business coaching health and wellness practitioners, and hasn't looked back.What she'll tell you is that none of it happened in spite of the medicine. It happened because of it.This conversation goes deep on why TCM practitioners are the most resistant group to go online — and why that resistance might be the thing that kills the profession. Cleo talks about ideal client messaging, the difference between selling sessions and selling transformation, the mindset work that almost nobody wants to do but everybody needs, and why if you have a gift and you're not putting it out there, she finds that selfish.She also gets candid about her own anxiety at the peak of her success — and the hypnotherapy that helped her understand where it was coming from.