Today’s conversation is inspired by Leo Lok’s ideal of “Bodhisattva Math,” which is a great reminder for us to focus on topics in Chinese medicine that have the most impact on alleviating unnecessary suffering with the least amount of effort! In this context, Sun Simiao reminded us already in the seventh century that food is essential for human survival but can be medicine or poison. As he put it:

In this episode on “Eating for Old Age: The Lost Art of Chinese Food Therapy,” Leo Lok and I explore the potential and power of food in the contemporary clinical practice of Chinese medicine. To cite Master Sun again, dietetics is

You will see, there are some real gems that Leo shares with us in this episode, such as how to have your ice-cream and eat it too…

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• Leo's course on "Weight Loss in Chinese Medicine"
• Leo's course on "Shen Nong's Secret Sundae"
• Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
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• Translating Chinese Medicine: Dr. Wilms' website for learning classical Chinese
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• Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Medicine, like any other skill or knowledge system, needs to be rooted in both subjectivity and objectivity. By valuing either one over the other, we deprive ourselves of an essential part thereof. Can traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy help us find a more balanced way of making sense of the world than the cold, rational, evidence-based cause-and-effect thinking of biomedicine and modern science? As Greg Bantick, our special guest on today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond puts it with his wonderful clarity: The act of failing to examine our filters is not benign, but dangerous, and results in problems like racism, cultural appropriation, and orientalism.

When we encounter perspectives of the world that make us squirm because they challenge our own beliefs and experiences, we have three choices in how we respond:

1. We can deny their value and write them off as “barbaric” or “superstitious”;
2. we can orientalize or exoticize them as “other” and then creatively interpret them in such a way that they ultimately confirm our own beliefs; or
3. we can accept the discomfort and embrace this challenge of getting our own world rocked as a chance to learn something new, and then we grow in that process.

The choice is ours!

For today’s episode, titled ““Questioning our Filters,” our special guest is Greg Bantick, a leading practitioner and international teacher of Chinese medicine with almost half a century of experience, who also happens to be a deeply committed practitioner of Buddhism with a beautiful kind heart and a deep well of wisdom.

I should warn you though: We end a bit abruptly and sadly, with us sharing a sense of grief at the huge loss of so many centuries of information and experience that can be found in the treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine. As our conversation explores, the misunderstandings and ignorance that affect the transmission of Chinese medicine into the West are due to two key factors: The lack of an open mind, and the linguistic barrier that prevents the vast majority of Chinese medicine practitioners in the West from even knowing what is out there.

Additional Information

• Orientalism, Cultural Appropriation, and Critical Thinking — Happy Goat Productions
• Greg Bantick's website
• Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
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• Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

What makes somebody a master physician? What can we learn from historical texts about some limitations and possibilities, strengths and weakness of Chinese medicine that are no longer visible in the modern clinical context, especially as practiced in the West? How can we acquire and transmit skills to adapt Chinese medicine more flexibly, beyond the now standard “perfumed, candle-lit privileged context of the so-called worried well” (in Daniel Altschuler’s words) in order to serve patients in dire need who may not have access to standard health care? Wouldn’t YOU want to try and to save a patient suffering from appendicitis with Dahuang Mudanpi Tang, rather than watching them suffer and possibly die as they wait for biomedical care in an overburdened or nonexistent system?

On a deeper level, is there a role for Chinese medicine as a tool to “re-humanize” (in Leo Lok’s poignant word) the people we touch by reconnecting them with their physical, social, and environmental bodies and helping them find peace and ease and comfort, rather than merely making their lab results and diagnostic tests conform to a standard value imposed by for-profit pharmaceutical companies? Can Chinese medicine, or any medicine for that matter, be a tool of resistance to our modern relentless pressure for maximum productivity and efficiency in our industrialized capitalist society shaped by corporate greed where doctors are left feeling like assembly line workers and cogs in the machine?

This episode of the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond is actually the second part of a conversation Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms had with Daniel Altschuler, on “Compassionate Practice.” It turned out that Daniel was the perfect person to help us find answers, due to his varied experiences of training under a traditional Chinese medicine doctor in Taiwan, followed by his work teaching and practicing in Seattle and his passion project of providing free healthcare to any and all once a year in a monastery in rural Nepal. I hope that you agree with Leo and me that Daniel is a rare treasure and wonderful example of just this “compassionate practice” that this whole conversation is ultimately about.

If you haven't done so yet, please sign up for my newsletter at HAPPYGOATPRODUCTIONS.COM/CONNECT to stay in touch. Also, please rate, review, and share this podcast wherever you can. Lastly, to hear the last third of this conversation, join my Imperial Tutor mentorship, where you can listen each month to the exclusive follow-up “Imperial Tutorial” episodes that drop every full moon, in addition to receiving all sorts of other benefits like weekly translations and live Tea Time Talks. Find out more and sign up at happygoatproductions.com/imperialtutor.

Additional Information

• Open Hands Medicine - Daniel Altschuler's Non-Profit in Nepal
• Daniel Altschuler's clinic website - Home - Acupuncture Seattle - Traditional Chinese MedicineAcupuncture Seattle – Traditional Chinese Medicine | Looking for Acupuncture in Seattle? Chinese Medicine, Cancer Acupuncture Specialist, Dr. Daniel Altschuler can help you.
• Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
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• Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
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How does the training and practice of Chinese medicine change depending on one’s location? What is the difference in patient expectations, scopes of practice, and lineage versus institutional training and licensing? And what is really behind this supposed contrast between biomedicine, perceived as instantly effective and ideal for emergencies and serious conditions, versus Chinese medicine, supposedly being slow medicine, for chronic conditions, and too often seen as a benign complementary treatment?

In today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “Compassionate Practice, from Seattle to Taiwan to Nepal,” my collaborator Leo Lok and I are talking to Daniel Altschuler. Having lived and studied Chinese medicine for many years in Taiwan, he has been practicing and teaching in Seattle for the past 18 years, and also travels to Nepal each year to treat patients there through his nonprofit. So he is the perfect person to give us some new perspectives.

For the second part of this conversation, join Dr. Wilms' Imperial Tutor mentorship.

Additional Information

• Open Hands Medicine - Daniel Altschuler's Non-Profit in Nepal
• Daniel Altschuler's clinic website - Home - Acupuncture Seattle - Traditional Chinese MedicineAcupuncture Seattle – Traditional Chinese Medicine | Looking for Acupuncture in Seattle? Chinese Medicine, Cancer Acupuncture Specialist, Dr. Daniel Altschuler can help you.
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• Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
• Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
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Catching up on the news this morning, I felt a strong need to do something so I got in touch with my friend and colleague Dr. Brenda Hood, whose tuning forks are magical. I just felt like the world had a little need for some of her healing magic, and she was happy to oblige. So here is yet another spontaneous recording session, created in response to the horrendous things happening for far too many of us locally, nationally, globally, and cosmicly.

As the image associated with this episode shows, the sound of Dr. Hood's singing bowl symphony is accompanied by what she calls a "Healing Grid" created specifically for this recording. It consists of the following stones (and I hope I got this right because I am no specialist in fancy stones but just took quick notes while Brenda was explaining it to me):

• Pink Himalayan healer quartz (top left corner), for healing
• Green phantom quartz (top right corner), for communication
• Labradorite (center stone in the very middle of the wooden structure), for processing, as the dark side of the moon
• Tangerine quartz (top, left, and right sides of the wooden structure), for trauma
• Lepidolite (large stone on the bottom corner of the structure), for calmness
• Pyrite (below this bottom corner, on the cloth), for protection and bountifulness
• K2 Jasper (three stones underneath the Pyrite), for protection and trust.

The healing grid is arranged on a rose pink cloth to echo love throughout the entire soundbath. The singing bowls are antiques from Brenda's personal collection, dating back as far as the seventeenth century. In Brenda's words, the sound produced by her bowls is filtered through all the healing vibrations of the stones in the Healing Grid, to create a certain energy to send out into the world.

It is Brenda's and my desire that this offering may bring healing and a moment of peace to as many people as possible. Please feel free to share this recording with anybody who you think may benefit from it, whether they are a fellow practitioner of Chinese medicine or your patients or community.

May you find some peace, love, rest, and support!

Today’s conversation started out with an innocuous email I sent to Leo, requesting that we explore that aspect of any good healer’s practice that is challenging to speak about and analyze rationally, let alone measure, certify, or transmit. And yet, we all know how powerful a healer can be, not because of their technical expertise but because of something else.

What is this something else? In today’s episode, we once again look at the Chinese medicine classics for insights. Our journey takes us in several different directions, all in order to avoid the danger of literally going crazy from overintellectualizing and overanalyzing, which is an issue whether we practice translation or medicine or really any other art.

Answers offered in the classics include the healer’s and/or the patient’s concentrated or “unified” spirit shén (or 意 yì “intent” or 志 zhì “will”, in the sense of attention, in the clinical encounter. In addition, there is their cultivated presence as an ethical and “realized” human being, whether in terms of 德 dé “virtue-power” or charisma or presence, or in terms of wisdom and compassion, as the result of having gained 清靜 qīngjìng “purity and stillness,” by means of Buddhist or Daoist meditative practices of emptying and stilling the mind.

And if this hourlong conversation wasn 't enough on this topic, do you want to join Leo and me for the second half of this conversation, titled “Jiggling the Jing,” where we looked more deeply at the dangers and limitations of an overly analytical and intellectual approach and then, by contrast, at real mastery, both in ancient China and in contemporary practice? In that case, I invite you to join my Imperial Tutor mentorship to listen to the exclusive follow-up “Imperial Tutorial” episodes that drop every full moon, in addition to all sorts of other benefits like weekly translations and live Tea Time Talks. Find out more at happygoatproductions.com/imperialtutor.

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• Subscribe to my newsletter!
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This episode is a spontaneous response to the intense sorrow that I see so many of my friends in multiple places of the world experiencing right now, whether directly or indirectly. So I have invited my dear friend Leo Lok for a conversation about suffering, sorrow, Guanyin, compassion, and processing and transforming emotions. We invoke the healing power of religious maternal figures in both of our life histories, from the Virgen de Guadalupe in the American Southwest to the Bodhisattva Guanyin/Kannon all over East Asia, to the Virgin Mary in my native Bavaria. With their assistance, we explore what we each can do, as deeply sensitive human beings, with the sorrow that we are feeling, without either suppressing it on the one extreme, or drowning in it on the other. Ultimately, this is a conversation about being human and keeping your heart open, and about being of service in a world that makes that pretty darn difficult right now. May our conversation be helpful to you!

Additional Information

• Roshi Joan Halifax Meditation on Transforming Grief

How do we cultivate the ability to hold two opposite experiences of reality at the same time and thereby somehow get closer to the truth in between? How do we overcome the limitations of language in describing the ineffable while still appreciating its analytic function? If we can use language in communication with others like multiple fingers pointing at the moon, to literally “round out” all of our understanding, how do we handle alternate voices that may not even be pointing at the moon but at the sun or at birds flying by? And how is this issue relevant to the transmission of authentic but ever-changing Chinese medicine to the West, and to its biomedicalization?

On a totally different note (sorry, can’t help it), what do you do when a person won’t stop singing? Is the Western mind different from the Eastern mind? Or are there different levels of truth and complexity to be found in any scientific and medical paradigm? And how do postmodernism, differential diagnosis, Daoist cultivation, authority, samadhi and Humpty Dumpty, and the “Six Warps” 六經 fit into this conversation? How do we express, cultivate, revise, and share our expertise with compassion rather than righteousness?

That is the topic of today's episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “Truth in East and West and in Between.” I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined today, as so often, by Leo Lok, resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives, and our resident Daoist sage Dr. Brenda Hood among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove that make up the core of our Pebble in the Cosmic Pond team.

Please remember to sign up for my newsletter to stay in touch. Also, please rate, review, and share this podcast wherever you can and check out the show notes if you want to learn more.

And two more things: If you can’t wait until the next new moon for the next episode to drop, you can always become an Imperial Tutor member to listen to the exclusive “Imperial Tutorial” episodes that drop every full moon, in addition to all sorts of other benefits. And second, my two-year-long Triple Crown classical Chinese training program starts this September 14 with the Foundations course.

Additional Information

• Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
• Triple Crown Training Program — Translating Chinese Medicine - Dr. Wilms' 2-year training program in classical Chinese, starting every two years in September
• Subscribe to my newsletter!
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Support A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond

What does it mean when the Yellow Emperor mourns and why might that matter to you? Does he “lord it over” his subjects and discuss medicine and needles because the exploitation of a healthy population yields more taxes? Or does he love and care for the people like a parent for their children and is heartbroken about their suffering? How do we read and translate a text like the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic that was compiled two thousand years ago but references figures from what was even then a mythological past of many centuries earlier? What tools do three experienced translators turn to when we get stuck and our “spidy sense” tells us that we are just not getting it? That our finger is no longer pointing at the moon but quite possibly at the sun? And how do we cultivate this spidy sense that alerts us that we may be misunderstanding a phrase or passage? A teaser: It involves a book called “Beware of Chicken”!

The process and pitfalls through which we find meaning in the classical texts is what we are discussing in today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “The Yellow Emperor’s Broken Heart.” I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined once again by Leo Lok, self-proclaimed Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives, and Dr. Brenda Hood, our resident Daoist sage, among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove that make up the core of our Pebble in the Cosmic Pond team.

If we have inspired you and you want to learn more, you can join my Imperial Tutor mentorship to listen to the more clinically oriented and EVEN NERDIER Imperial Tutorial bonus episode, released on the full moon on 8/30, and also receive some related translations. Or you can explore learning classical Chinese at "translatingChinesemedicine.com" by signing up for my free "Introduction to Classical Chinese" course, my membership, or join the new cohort of my two-year-long Triple Crown intensive training program, which starts on September 14 with the Foundations course.

Additional Information

• Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
• Triple Crown Training Program — Translating Chinese Medicine - Dr. Wilms' 2-year training program in classical Chinese, starting every two years in September
• Subscribe to my newsletter!
• Translating Chinese Medicine: Dr. Wilms' website for learning classical Chinese
• Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
• Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Support A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond

A quote from Sun Simiao (translation by Dr. Wilms):

Inspired by that quote, we look at the following questions:

How can we use food as medicine? How do we nurture essence? What makes food nourishing? How can we help our patients, friends, and family decolonized their experience of embodiment by rediscovering their innate ability to sense what is good or bad for the body, and for their jīng 精 “essence” in particular? What does that mean for immigrants in the US who are craving the taste of home? Lastly, what are some of the dangers of popular diets and fads, in particular the Keto diet and elimination of carbohydrates, or of nutraceutical extracts? What is the difference between a carrot and a carrot, and between losing weight and losing jīng “essence”? What are some of the other magical aspects of flavor or wèi 味 in Chinese, which the Nèijīng already mentions as the key to supplementing jīng Essence?

We have fun as we look at factors ranging from love and fermentation to refrigeration and round-up, and even Mexican Coca-Cola and, of course, German “Gummibärchen.” And as a special bonus, our conversation concludes with Z’ev’s favorite breakfast congee recipe so make sure you listen closely all the way to the end…

For today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “Food as Medicine,” I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, as usual supported by Leo Lok, our resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove. In addition, we are joined by Z’ev Rosenberg who you may be familiar with from Episode 2 of our podcast on the “True Medicine of Yangsheng.”

If this has got you really interested, check out my follow-up conversation with Leo Lok in the Imperial Tutorial episode on "Jing and Wei: Essence and Flavor," exclusively produced for the members of my Imperial Tutor mentorship. Find out more at happygoatproductions.com/imperialtutor.

Additional Information

• The True Medicine of Yangsheng - A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond
• Can Kyoto's Buddhist Cuisine Teach us All to Eat Better? | Saveur
• What is Macrobiotics? | Ohsawa Macrobiotics
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