Qiological Podcast

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.

We no longer pretend the gut and the mind are separate; we know the interconnections are vast and rich. Furthermore, their communication isn’t a hack—it’s a relationship that responds to your input, and it’s something you can actually touch.In this conversation with Henry Tarazona, we hear about his unlikely path into Chinese medicine—his love of tuina, and how he uses it to affect organ function and biochemistry. We’ll discuss Liver/Spleen stress dynamics and the quietly radical clinical power of moderation in improving digestion, along with Henry’s thoughts on the gut–brain axis through the lens of the vagus nerve and the Chong Mai.We also touch on what it means to learn medicine in a more traditional way, where you rely on memory, repetition, and learning to see what is in front of you.Listen in for a conversation that mixes together old style learning with both traditional and modern ideas.

Sometimes the people who shape us most aren’t the ones who formally taught us anything. They’re the people in a potent moment who say something that we hear with something other than our ears— it sends us down a path we hadn't noticed that was right under our feet.In this conversation with Haunani Chong-Drake, we explore the edges of mentorship—not as a program, credential, or transaction, but as something serendipitous and unexpectedly catalytic. The kind of connection that doesn’t give you answers, but instead changes the questions you’re asking.Listen into this discussion as we explore the difference between teachers and mentors, why confidence is earned long after graduation, how expectation management can make or break a career, and why Chinese medicine has a way of working on the practitioner as much as the patient.This is a conversation about the relationships that remind you to not give up on yourself. How to stay in the game when things get hard. And the unavoidable fires of development and learning as a practitioner.

Often enough, medicine evolves not through the accumulation of answers, but instead by posing annoying questions. The thing about learning, it usually carries an element of disruption. In this conversation with Peter Eckman we follow him in his journey of sleuthing out where JR Worsley learned his medicine. But, it’s not just a story of where Worsley got his stuff, to set the stage we have to go back to the shaman practitioners of a time before history. Then come forward through the pantheon of Chinese doctors of the past, and then into the modern age where colonialism opens the door to acupuncture making its way into the West. Peter’s book, In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor details a story that goes from East to West and back to the East with a new Chinese language edition. What better place for a discussion like this than in a History Series conversation?

There’s a moment, in the slack tide between one flow and another, when a potent stillness arises, and the possibility of a new direction arrives with a feeling of invitation. It’s like standing on the threshold of a dream.We share this conversation with Gregory Done as we metamorphize from the Wood Snake to the Fire Horse. What’s in store as we enter a year of unmitigated Fire? Where is caution advised and where do you double down with the creative energy of the Horse?Listen into this conversation as we explore time-as-qi, what a dramatic handoff between years can do to the psyche; cautions around giving free rein to the unbridled “sovereign fire” of the Heart, and how discipline shapes intensity into something useful.If you’ve felt the past year pulling you inward, you’re not alone. In this conversation we discuss the natural inclination to come back out—into action, into contact, into the bright problem of more momentum than you’re accustomed to. Saddle up!

In clinical work pattern and intuition inform each other, treatment decisions arise somewhere between what we can measure and what we can only sense. This episode investigates that in-between space, where “knowing” as a human and the patterning of Large Language Models merges in uncanny ways.Vanessa Menendez-Covelo has been a guest on the podcast and recently she’s been exploring the ever changing frontier of AI, as both a former computer scientist and actively practicing acupuncturist.Listen into this discussion as we explore how AI “hallucinations” might be creative sparks of fertile imagination; what a tongue-reading machine in a café might mean for diagnosis; the uneasy line between health equity and surveillance; and why shame, not ignorance, may be the real barrier to better care.

What if “failure” was just expectations being uncomfortably rewritten by reality?In this conversation with Neal Sivula we discuss the experience of failing forward—what it actually looks and feels like when you’re a practitioner, a clinic owner, and a person who cares. How to navigate the employee who doesn’t show up the way you hoped, the power outage, or the appointment someone forgets. And the uncomfortable moment when you have to hold a boundary, especially when you’d rather not be the hammer. Neal has found a few steady anchors: the micro-business reality of “one day at a time,” and the quietly radical skill of addition by subtraction. Sometimes the way forward isn’t adding another technique. It’s stopping something. Simplifying. Doing more with lessing.There’s also the importance of tenderness . Neal works with older animals and the humans who love them, he leans on the practice of accompaniment—staying present when things are hard, not avoiding the difficult moments, but instead inhabiting them. It makes a difference.Listen into this conversation for how failure teaches, and what it asks of us when we’re the ones doing the learning.

The path that connects can’t be seen when you’re looking forward, but there are values, hunches—and maybe even whispers from the future—that nudge us onto the path that matches our spirit and heart.In this History Series conversation on Qiological, we take a trip in the Wayback Machine with Misha Cohen to the early days, when her interest in health and wellbeing crisscrossed paths with Chinese medicine—an unconventional grandmother, a sudden onset of back pain, and the goings-on at Lincoln Hospital quietly setting the stage for her later work with AIDS and cancer patients on the other side of the country.Misha’s curiosity has kept her at the leading edge of weaving Chinese medicine and biomedicine together—without flattening either one. In practice, that means clearer thinking, better collaboration, and a steady reminder that acupuncture and herbs often fill a hole in the modern medical system.Listen into this conversation for a glimpse of what integrative medicine can look like when it’s practiced with an eye toward honoring the value—and the real clinical power—of Chinese medicine.

There comes a time in midlife when the body’s signaling becomes a bit disordered. Energy dips without explanation. Sleep thins out. Recovery takes longer. It’s not that the system has failed—it’s that the signals aren’t as attuned as they used to be. Something in the conversation between stress, hormones, and resilience has gone a little quiet.In this conversation with Mark Brinson, we explore what happens when hormone replacement therapy and Chinese medicine are used to complement one another. Mark shares both clinical and personal insight into how modern, well-monitored HRT has evolved—and why, when used thoughtfully, it doesn’t override the body so much as restore missing information. From a Chinese medicine perspective, this opens the door for acupuncture and herbs to once again regulate, refine, and integrate, rather than constantly compensate.Listen into this discussion as we explore hormonal signaling and receptor responsiveness, why balance can sometimes reach a ceiling without additional support, how acupuncture can smooth the transition into HRT, and what it means to practice medicine that restores communication rather than chasing symptoms. This is a grounded, nuanced look at aging—not as decline, but as a shift that asks for better listening and a more open mind about how, and when, to intervene.

In the clinic, communication happens before a word is spoken. It unfolds through attention, listening, and the tactile information the body offers when we slow down enough to notice.In this conversation, we explore palpation as a central pillar of acupuncture practice—not simply as a diagnostic tool, but as a way of relating. Drawing from diverse clinical backgrounds and decades of hands-on experience, in this panel discussion we move out of theory and into the wordless language of the body. We explore how palpation becomes a bridge between thinking and sensing, diagnosis and treatment, practitioner and patient.Listen into this conversation as we explore how palpation provides real-time feedback in treatment, how it keeps acupuncture grounded and responsive, the ways in which touch builds trust and rapport, and why listening with the hands can reveal what words and symptoms alone cannot.Attentive touch doesn’t just inform our treatments—it changes how we show up to the work itself.

The lines we draw define us. In the pursuit of "objectivity," modern medicine draws a sharp line between the observer and the observed—the doctor and the patient. But what happens when we intentionally blur that line? What is discovered when we move toward the subject rather than away from it?In this expansive conversation with Daniel Schulman, we explore what happens when acupuncture is practiced not as a technical intervention, but as a relational art. Daniel reflects on a lifetime of moving between worlds—science and spirit, objectivity and intimacy—and how Chinese medicine became a place where those apparent opposites could finally speak to one another.Listen into this discussion as we explore clinical intimacy, the difference between judgment and discernment, why knowing a patient is not the same as knowing their diagnosis, and how self-cultivation becomes an ethical foundation for practice. We wander through Saam acupuncture, Goethean science, deep time, and the quiet moments in clinic where something larger than technique makes itself known.

Good medicine has less to do with having the “right system” and more to do with the human being holding the needles. With the way we listen. The way we wait. The way we’re willing to not know… yet.In this conversation with Stephen Brown we trace his unlikely path from welding in a west coast shipyard—literally working with fire and metal—to becoming one of the key bridges between Japanese acupuncture and the English-speaking world.Along the way he unpacks how history, culture, and politics have shaped East Asian medicine in Japan, Korea, China and beyond, and why arguments about “the one true method” miss the living heart of the work. We wander through blind practitioners and palpation-rich traditions, meridian therapy, “scientific” acupuncture, dry needling, and the long-standing turf skirmishes between them.But repeatedly Stephen brings us back to the clinician’s interior: the courage to admit “I don’t know yet,” the discipline of returning to basics, the craft of letting the body teach you through touch, timing, and attention.Listen into this conversation on how Stephen refuses both magical thinking and rigid certainty. Instead, he points toward a grounded intuition born of repetition, body-based knowing, and genuine curiosity about the person in front of us. It’s a generous, searching exploration of what it means to practice acupuncture as a lifelong craft, in a world that keeps trying to turn it into a billable procedure.