Qiological Podcast

Meditation is seen as an ancient panacea to modern problems. Mindfulness and equanimity will help with your productivity at work, relationships at home, reduce your need for certain medication and in general make you a better version of yourself.

But the inward turned gaze often enough does not reveal a tranquil garden, but a junkyard. The promise of stillness and equanimity evaporates in the onslaught of our unruly human minds.

In this conversation with Leo Lok, we investigate how mediation can be a source of greater suffering  and contribute to mental illness.

Listen into this discussion of meditation as repetitive stress injury, misconceptions about self/not-self, and how some core tenants have changed their meanings in the translation from the original Poli.

Pain is a helpful signal when it works properly as a warning signal. But when that signal goes awry, it dramatically changes a person’s life and also affects their close relationships.

Jonathan Riemer has been researching chronic pain in children and he’s found there are social, neurological and psychological aspects to pain and its treatment.

Listen into this conversation on illness and how it functions within the family systems, disconnections between the mind and body, and the importance of opening the mind to possibilities.

The curious thing about having someone ask me a question and engage in a conversation of inquiry is that I hear myself saying things that are usually hidden just under the surface of habit and belief.

In this episode the guest of the podcast is me. and the host steering the boat… it’s Rick Gold. if you don’t know Rick, listen to episode 323. He’s had a hand in hundreds of people learning our medicine.

Listen in for a discussion of the influence that shop class has had on me over the years, some of the nudges that shapeshifted my life, and how a panic attack turned out to be a birthday present.

We all have some kind of call to follow medicine, otherwise we wouldn’t be in the trade. If you answer that call today, you’ve got a profession you can work yourself into.

But back in the late 70’s early 80’s, the profession was still finding its footing. And if you’re like the guest of this episode, Z’ev Rosenberg, having an established professional track was less of a concern than following a hunger he had for natural methods for restoring and maintaining health.

Listen into this conversation on rock music, synchronicity, the Yi Jing, and how a feisty attitude can take you a long way.

The vast wealth, and it is a wealth, of writing on Chinese medicine is in Chinese. 

Granted, at this moment in time there is enough material that has made its way into English that you wouldn’t be able to read all of it in one lifetime. That’s far cry from the handful of books of 40 years ago. Still, the history and perspectives that have found their way down to the present in Chinese. It’s like an alternative universe. Maybe several of them.

In this episode with Michael Brown, Will Cerveles, Eran Even, and Ivan Zalava, we have a discussion not just on translation, but more importantly the varied perspectives of practitioners whose work others thought was interesting enough to print and re-print through the decades and even centuries.

These guys are the new wave of practitioner/translators and they are fired up about what they’re discovering. And keen on sharing it with the rest of us.

Listen in for a lively discussion on the perspectives of some doctors you’ll only meet through the written word.

Some people dream of being influencers and social media stars. They are looking for a glamorous life in front of the camera.

Not so for the guest of today’s episode who first published a Facebook video as a way to help support her students. It was a complete shock when someone from another country wrote to tell her how they appreciated the help in learning medicine.

In this conversation with Clara Cohen we reflect on how she got started with her YouTube channel, Acupro Academy. It’s been an accidental journey that’s helped her to be of assistance to so many and given her an opportunity to discover how to use social media as a force for good.

Listen into this conversation on grit, persistence, exploration and the connective power of a virtual community.

We practice traditional medicine, or do we?

Because Chinese medicine has roots and writings that go back into misty history, it’s easy to imagine we practice much like your average Qing or Ming doctor. But the truth is, the way practitioners worked even just a hundred years ago would be quite foreign to the standards of today.

In this conversation with Eric Karchmer we explore some of the themes and historic insights from his new book Prescriptions for Virtuosity, The Post Colonial Struggle of Chinese Medicine.

I’m serious when I tell you— it’s going to blow your mind.

Listen into this discussion of how Chinese medicine became the slow medicine, the brilliant innovation of the early textbooks, and how it is that what you think is the ancient bones of our medicine, is in many ways a new innovation. One wrought not through the communists stripping out the shamanistic practices, but rather by Chinese doctors themselves figuring where they stood in relation to the potency and power of modern biomedicine as it changed the landscape of economics, power and practice.

In this conversation, our guest Efrem Korngold said, “the definition of a good paradigm is that you can apply it effectively to new problems.”

You know how sometimes you hear something and it stops you dead in your tracks, it rings true in a way that you can feel in your bones, muscles and blood. I heard this and felt the truth of it. What’s more was his further comment that Chinese medicine; it’s good paradigm.

Listen into this conversation on the early days of Chinese medicine emerging into the mainstream in California, the way fearlessness helps to develop you as an acupuncturist and why imagination is so vitally important to the craftsperson.

“My Po made the decision”

I’m usually skeptical about most explanations of the “Spirit” of the five Zang viscera. Not that I don’t indulge speculation myself, I most certainly do. But given these ideas come down to us from another time, language, and culture. Given they’ve traveled through through the millennia I’m mightily reluctant to stake a claim on     what the ancients might have intended.

That said, the guest of today’s conversation Karine Kedar said the above quote towards the beginning of our discussion and it landed with an in-the-bones sense of “that’s right.” Which is an interesting place to start when the topic is polyvagal theory and East Asian medicine doesn’t even recognize a nervous system.

This conversation comes with a warning label. Probably best not listened to while driving or if your attention needs to be focused out into the world. There is a notable inward falling of attention as we traverse the landscape of the polyvagal not so much talking about it, but rather strolling through the landscape it offers.

Listen in for a felt sense of parasympathetic polyvagal tone, a possible way the Spirit of the five Zang might be involved, how the interplay of the nervous and hormonal systems helps create social bonds and the pre-heaven influence of epigenetics.

You don’t need to practice acupuncture for very long to realize that people frequently  slip into a deep state of quietude and repose. Often enough, they come out of a session with a completely different look to their eyes, they move slower and with a more integrated coordination, they’re focused less on the noise in their life, and more on the potency of the present.

In this conversation with John Myerson, we explore acupuncture and non-ordinary states of consciousness. This was part of a PhD dissertation he did in Psychology, but what’s more interesting is how he has evolved this exploration into his clinical work. A practice which looks quite different from his original inquiry of using needles and music to induce non-ordinary states.

Listen into this discussion of trance, leaning into the yin influence that comes from power under and how getting out of the way just might be the best way to help others.