Qiological Podcast

Often what brings someone into our office looks straightforward at first—a concussion, dizziness, headache, or a sense that something is not quite right. But what begins as the search to fix a symptom often reveals something deeper—a nervous system that has lost its bearings, sensory maps that no longer line up, and a body quietly adapting around signals it can no longer fully trust.

Ayla Wolf and Clayton Shiu both work at the intersection of functional neurology and East Asian medicine. Through clinical observation, modern diagnostic tools, and hands-on palpation, they’ve developed ways of seeing patterns that often sit beneath symptoms most people wouldn’t connect to the brain.

Listen into this conversation as we explore how concussion can masquerade as digestive issues, tinnitus, anxiety, or vestibular dysfunction. And why the neck, eyes, inner ear, and autonomic nervous system all can be part of the problem. We’ll explore how acupuncture can help restore orientation, balance, and sensory accuracy. And what becomes possible when ancient medicine intersects with a modern understanding of neuroplasticity.

We often think of allergies as simple reactions, but some conditions reveal a far deeper conversation between the immune system, environment, and daily life—one that evolves with every exposure.

In this conversation with Rebecca Chrestman, we explore Alpha-Gal syndrome through both modern understanding and Chinese medicine, looking at how patterns like damp heat and spleen imbalance help make sense of complex, multi-system symptoms. We discuss the realities of treatment—not quick fixes, but gradual shifts in reactivity, lifestyle, and resilience.

We also touch on the emotional and practical impact of living with a condition that reshapes how you eat, live, and move through the world.

Listen in for a conversation that brings together clinical insight, traditional thinking, and the lived experience of navigating a truly modern illness.

What makes a system feel trustworthy—results, lineage, or the way it brings you into the resonance of what’s happening?

Philip Suger didn’t start with Saam acupuncture. He was in Beijing in 2010, following a thread that led him to Wang Ju-Yi and channel palpation—hands on the body, feeling where things change and where they resolve. Later, back in the States, he found himself working with patients who improved but those changes were not lasting. That got him began circling back to a method he’d once dismissed: four needles, arranged through a set of relationships rather than point functions. It didn’t make a lot of sense. But people were reporting results.

After some study with Toby Daly he got more curious, and that sent him searching for information in Chinese.

Michael Brown, has a keen interest in tracking down old texts and translating them for the world English speaking acupuncturists. Together, they have spent the past few years working on a translation of a book that traces the history of Saam, some of the luminary practitioners along the way, and the way these pre-modern doctors used the Four-Needles.

There’s been more than a little development of the Saam method since that legendary monk had his cultivated insights into medicine. One thing for sure, four needles with the right diagnosis, it can make a big difference for our patients.

The path into acupuncture isn’t always clean or linear—sometimes it begins in the grit and confusion of working out just who you are in this world. From anthropology studies in Seattle’s Skid Row to the disciplined intensity of kendo in Japan, Jeffrey Dann’s journey was shaped by curiosity, discomfort, and a search for something deeper. A knee injury, a moment on a subway, and an unexpected recovery became the doorway into a medicine that would take him through Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and Beijing in the early days of acupuncture’s global spread.

In this conversation, we follow that winding road—through apprenticeship, cultural exchange, and the evolution of practice. From forceful needling to the subtle power of touch, Jeffrey’s story reflects a broader shift in medicine itself: one that balances tradition with change, and technique with sensitivity.

Listen in as we explore how acupuncture travelled the world, transformed through different cultures, and continues to adapt to the modern body and mind.

Points don’t really have a number, they have a name. They are not just a function, they embody characteristics and relationships.

In this episode I get to sit for a conversation with Arnie Lade. He’s the author of a book I spent a lot of time with in the library when I was in acupuncture school. Acupuncture Points: Images and Functions wasn’t a book I read to pass exams, it was one I read to get a feeling for points.

We explore how the work of Moshe Feldenkrais has influenced his work. And how both learning and healing often enough requires an element of unlearning. How ‘not-knowing’ is the beginning of fruitful inquiry. That even good diagnostic models can become a box if you cling too tightly.

One of the things we touch on that is not often discussed in our trade is the later years of a career and what it’s like to step away from a lifetime of practice. I used to hold a romantic notion of practicing until the end of my days. I'm glad there are people like Arnie a few steps ahead to point out the landscape that I’ve imagined, but not accurately mapped.

Finally, we touch on his latest book Zen and the Mystic Impulse, it’s a reflection on the time spent with his teacher, his own experience of practice, and the intimacy of not-knowing. Which, curiously enough, is the polar opposite of this first book I read all those years ago on the intimacy of ‘knowing’ a point, instead of relying on memorized function.

In practice, healing often begins with seeking a solution to a problem that has us looking for help. What first looks like a search for relief becomes an encounter with something wider: the patterns of striving, the habits of attention, and the quiet ways body, mind, and spirit reorganise when we slow down enough to notice.

Sue Crites is a qigong teacher with a background in ecological science, holistic nutrition, and bioenergetic medicine. Her path into this work began through caregiving, chronic illness in her family, and her own unexpected experience of healing, which opened into a deeper exploration of energy, presence, and the practice of non-striving.

Listen into this conversation as we explore how repetitive and even “boring” practices can become powerful agents of change; why peace is different from resignation; how qigong can soften the grip of anxiety, over-efforting, and old beliefs. And what it means to cultivate steadiness in a world designed to keep us distracted.

Some projects kick off with a business plan. Others begin as a response to an odd little ad in the back of a magazine, or sparked by following a hunch. When you think about it, this is often how the interesting work begins—not with certainty, but with curiosity and enough craft and gumption to stay with the question.

This conversation with Rick Gold and Yuval Ron moves through the strange and increasingly practical territory where music, medicine, plants, and perception collide. We discuss Yuval’s early work with the pioneer of binaural beats and how psychoacoustics adds emotion to film scores. Beyond that there is an audio frontier that includes the exploration of how frequencies can shift attention, mood, and perhaps even help protect cognition.

Their current work takes medicinal herbs and records their bioelectrical activity, then turns those signals into music. Not synth magic, not a novelty trick, but a painstaking process of listening for pattern, repetition, and relationship—finding something humanly hearable inside something that is not human at all. Five years of work. A lot of editing. A lot of not giving up.

There’s something here about collaboration across species, we’ve been doing that with Chinese herbal medicine for a while now. But this new exploration using the language of music. That’s an innovative collaboration. Listen into this conversation and expand your ideas on both music and medicine.

We all find our own unique way into the practice of East Asian medicine.

It’s part luck, part dogged curiosity and persistence, and sometimes a bit of fate.

In this conversation with Holly Guzman, we wander through her circuitous route into the medicine—from knocking on the door of the Chinese embassy in Kabul, to hanging out at a bookstore in San Francisco, waiting to see who might pick up the one English book on acupuncture. Along the way she crossed paths with some remarkable teachers, witnessed extraordinary ways acupuncture was used in China, and learned lessons about herbs, storytelling, and clinical responsibility that shaped the practice she has today.

Listen into this discussion as we explore her early travels to China in the late 1970s, what it was like to practice before acupuncture was legal, and the powerful influence of teachers like Miriam Lee and Yat Kee Lai. Holly also reflects on herbal training that emphasized curiosity over categories, the role of storytelling in clinical work, and how imagination opens the door to new possibilities in medicine.

Holly reminds us that this medicine didn’t arrive fully formed—it grew through the curiosity, audacity, and persistence of practitioners who were willing to explore what was possible.

Sports medicine acupuncture is one of those phrases that sounds neat and tidy. But, what does it actually mean?.

In this conversation with Darren Maynard, dig into the complexity and methods that fall within the world of orthopedic and musculo-skeletal medicine. We explore what it means to be bilingual in clinic, and the value of being able to hold a Chinese medicine diagnosis and a Western ortho assessment in the same set of hands. We’ll discuss why “sports” doesn’t mean “athletes only,” how palpation is a key to effective treatment, and why training means more than a few weekend courses—especially when needle depth, safety, and confidence are on the line.

Listen in as we take a look at the turf-war issues of dry needling, and what it means to have acupuncture “integrated” into the larger medical care system. And how Chinese medicine principles allow for nuance that results in better clinical outcomes.

Some concepts in Chinese medicine don’t need more poetry. They need a hands-on palpable marker, and a willingness to admit, “I think I get it… and then the light changes and I can’t see it.” That’s the territory we’re in with the Ming Men—the so‑called Gate of Destiny, the fire that isn’t just heat, the thing we can discuss over the centuries and still not be sure about when meeting it again on Tuesday afternoon in clinic.

This panel conversation is an attempt to better understand the Ming Men. Not by flattening it into one definition, but by tracking it from different angles—textual, palpatory, alchemical, ecological—and seeing what stays consistent as the perspectives change.

Anne calls it an activation power that wants to move freely, so a person can occupy their whole existence without leaving corners uninhabited. Thomas brings it straight to the table: put your hand below the navel, check the relative coldness, watch what happens to breath, warmth, and the eyes when things begin to organize. Zev keeps widening the lens—ministerial fire as warmth and life, as clinical strategy, and as a reflection of the larger world we’re burning to keep ourselves comfortable.

This is delightfully open-ended conversation on the Ming Men, one that helps to guide our focus not by providing answers, but by exploring enlivening questions.