It’s the quiet, gentle skills that often enough create the most change in clinic, especially for kids. The techniques easily overlooked because they seem so subtle, gentle or simple, it’s these interventions the body soaks in with a thirst.

In this Shop Talk, we sit down with Maya Suzuki, a practitioner rooted in Japanese medicine, whose work with pediatrics reveals just how responsive, intuitive, and astonishingly resilient children’s bodies can be.

Listen in as we explore why treating kids requires a completely different mindset than treating adults. The importance of proper dosage. How overtreatment is surprisingly easy to slip into, and how children themselves often tell you exactly they’ve had enough. 

Maya takes us inside her palpation process and shares how the Shang Han Lun becomes a 3D map in her hands. She describes how this is useful in tracking colds, coughs, and seasonal pathogens through the taiyang and beyond.

She also talks candidly about knowing when East Asian medicine can take the lead, and when Western medicine needs to step in—emphasizing the importance of collaborative clinical care.

Effective treatment isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing just enough, with presence, precision, and trust in the body’s own capacity to heal.