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Michael Max

Acupuncture and East Asian medicine was not developed in a laboratory. It does not advance through double-blind controlled studies, nor does it respond well to petri dish experimentation. Our medicine did not come from the statistical regression of randomized cohorts, but from the observation and treatment of individuals in their particular environment. It grows out of an embodied sense of understanding how life moves, unfolds, develops and declines.

Medicine comes from continuous, thoughtful practice of what we do in clinic, and how we approach that work. The practice of medicine is more — much more — than simply treating illness. It is more than acquiring skills and techniques. And it is more than memorizing the experiences of others. It takes a certain kind of eye, an inquiring mind and relentlessly inquisitive heart.

Qiological is an opportunity to deepen our practice with conversations that go deep into acupuncture, herbal medicine, cultivation practices, and the practice of having a practice. It’s an opportunity to sit in the company of others with similar interests, but perhaps very different minds. Through these dialogues perhaps we can better understand our craft.

Qiological Podcast

Here in the West, acupuncture often feels like something foreign, something patients approach with curiosity but no context. “I don’t know anything about Chinese medicine,” they’ll say. And most of the time, that’s true. We didn’t grow up with an uncle who prescribed herbs or a parent using needles to ease the illnesses and injuries of childhood.

For Wei Dong Lu, medicine wasn’t foreign at all. He grew up inside it, part of a family where healing was daily life. At sixteen, during the Cultural Revolution, he was told to learn a “practical skill.” His classmates were sent to carpentry or sewing. He was handed needles. 

Listen into this discussion as we trace the path that took him from Shanghai to Nebraska, from teaching at the New England School of Acupuncture to practicing oncology acupuncture at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

What you’ll hear isn’t just the biography of one practitioner, but a story about how medicine travels—how it bends and blends to circumstance, how it adapts to new settings, and how something essential continues to move through it all.

428 History Series, From the Cultural Revolution to Harvard • Wei Dong Lu

Ever notice how our bodies have their own climate? The heat of fire and cold of water aren’t just metaphors, they are elemental forces that don’t just live in the weather—they’re playing out in our patients’ bodies every day.

In this conversation with Roseline Lambert, we explore her work blending Saam acupuncture with Japanese palpation methods, and how she’s been experimenting with heating and cooling as clinical strategies. What began as curiosity has become a set of questions for her hands, and a more finely tuned sense for how temperature sketches the contours of channel health and pathology.

Listen into this discussion as we talk about how observation and palpation guide treatment, how listening closely to patient language reveals diagnosis, and why heating and cooling formulas might unlock clinical puzzles where standard approaches fall short.

Roseline brings the improvisation of a musician and the hands of a cartographer to her practice. Her story is a reminder that our medicine grows not just from what we’re taught, but from how we follow the questions that arise in clinic.

427 Heating and Cooling with Saam • Roseline Lambert

Some things can’t be seen—only felt. The texture of presence, the quiet shifts in atmosphere, the way the body speaks before words arrive. In the clinic, it’s not always the protocols or point prescriptions that lead the way, but something quieter. Something more fluid.

In this conversation with Felix de Haas, we meander through the tactile world of East Asian medicine—through pulse, palpation, and the subtle feedback that unfolds when you listen with your hands. Felix shares how Chinese medicine didn’t just appear in his life—it found him. And how the most meaningful parts of practice often live in the places we’re still learning to trust.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the idea of 通 tong as communication and opening, the felt shape of qi, why protocols eventually fall away, and how clinical insight often begins with not knowing.

Felix brings a lifetime of experience, sense of history, and a willingness to stay curious. This conversation is for anyone who’s ever wondered if the body might be whispering more than we’re used to hearing.

426 Tong, Texture, and Ting- The Subtle Shaping of Qi • Felix de Haas

Books are more than just words on a page. They carry texture, weight, and the kind of quiet intimacy that screens can never quite match. A book slows down time, unfolds the quiet potency of a moment, and invites us into its rhythm.

In this conversation with Erinne Adachi—acupuncturist, editor, and devoted bibliophile—we explore her lifelong love of books and how it has shaped her path, from making stapled “newspapers” as a child to editing manuscripts and guiding authors, and eventually into the world of Chinese medicine.

Listen into this discussion as we touch on the tactile joys of paper and print, the hidden labor of editing and shaping a manuscript, the vulnerability of rough drafts, and how books and medicine both serve as vessels for stories that change us. Along the way we wander into questions of authorship, ownership, and how narrative itself might be as healing as a needle.

Erinne’s reflections remind us that medicine and literature share a common thread: both require attention, presence, and the courage to trust what emerges on the page—or in the clinic.

425 Books • Erinne Adachi

Part Two

The body speaks with a visceral language —a hint of thirst, the ache of hunger, the sudden urge for something salty. These signals can be quiet, and easily dismissed when thinking about the “common knowledge” of modern medicine. However, they carry an ancient wisdom that, if we learn to listen, can guide us back toward balance.

In this conversation with Peter Torssell, we wander through the landscapes of Chinese medicine, food traditions, and the yin–yang rhythms that shape health. Peter’s approach is simple yet layered—he looks for what unites different styles of practice, invites patients into small changes with big impact, and trusts the body’s own feedback as a compass.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the subtlety of provoking thirst to build yang, the way salt cravings reveal more than taste, how harmony is born of difference, and the art of choosing foods in dialogue with the seasons and yourself.

424 Food, Sensing and Body Wisdom, Part Two • Peter Torssell

Part One

The body speaks with a visceral language —a hint of thirst, the ache of hunger, the sudden urge for something salty. These signals can be quiet, and easily dismissed when thinking about the “common knowledge” of modern medicine. However, they carry an ancient wisdom that, if we learn to listen, can guide us back toward balance.

In this conversation with Peter Torssell, we wander through the landscapes of Chinese medicine, food traditions, and the yin–yang rhythms that shape health. Peter’s approach is simple yet layered—he looks for what unites different styles of practice, invites patients into small changes with big impact, and trusts the body’s own feedback as a compass.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the subtlety of provoking thirst to build yang, the way salt cravings reveal more than taste, how harmony is born of difference, and the art of choosing foods in dialogue with the seasons and yourself.

424 Food, Sensing and Body Wisdom, Part One • Peter Torssell

History isn’t always something you study from a distance. Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle of it—shaped by the events, people, and unexpected turns that unfold around you. Those moments influence destiny, and over time, they become the foundation for how you see and practice your work.

In this conversation with Craig Mitchell, we trace those threads through his unexpected entry into Chinese medicine during the HIV/AIDS crisis, the formative years at ACTCM, and the serendipitous encounters that led him to Taiwan and the translation of the Shang Han Lun. His path weaves together scholarship, clinical practice, and the kinds of opportunities that appear when you’re willing to say yes.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the realities of practicing during a public health crisis, surprising opportunities that arose when pursuing medicine in Taiwan, the challenges and losses inherent in the process of translation, and why flexibility in clinical thinking is essential for treating real people in the real world.

423 History Series- Hunches, Glimmers and Serendipity • Craig Mitchell

Words shape the world. But they also limit it. Especially when we mistake translation for clarity—when really, it’s an act of interpretation, adaptation, and sometimes… a kind of poetic guesswork.

In this conversation with Sarah Rivkin—a clinician, scholar, and longtime student of language—we talk about what it means to translate not just texts, but meaning itself. Sarah brings a thoughtful lens to the edges where language meets medicine, where history presses against the present, and where the clinical meets the poetic.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the unseen weight of choosing one word over another, the challenges of translating classical Chinese into modern context, how diagnosis itself is a kind of translation, and the subtle power of bias in everything we do—from clinic to scholarship.

422 Language as Border, Language as Bridge • Sarah Rivkin

Sometimes a few needles and a willingness to help—that’s enough to start a quiet revolution.

In this conversation with Richard Mandell, we trace the roots of the Global Acupuncture Project, a training-based initiative that brings simple, effective acupuncture protocols to underserved communities around the world. What started as a gut feeling and an internet search has become a decades-long effort to empower local practitioners across Uganda, Mexico, and Guatemala.

Listen into this conversation as we explore the early days of the AIDS Care Project in Boston, how addiction treatment shaped a community-style model, the decision to train midwives and laypeople instead of doctors, and what it means to offer acupuncture as a “people’s medicine.”

Richard’s story is a reminder that healing doesn’t need to be complicated to be profound—and that with commitment, collaboration, and a bit of boldness, even a modest idea can ripple across the globe.

421 Global Acupuncture Project • Richard Mandell

What if the first step in healing wasn’t a pill, a treatment, or a diagnosis—but dinner?

In this deliciously nourishing conversation we sit down with Andrew Sterman, a practitioner of tai qi and nutritional arts, lifelong musician, and author of Diet is Medicine for Home Cooks and Other Healers. We discuss how our health is shaped not only by what we eat—but how we live, digest, feel, and listen.

Andrew shares how a simple bowl of carrot-ginger soup can profoundly shift the nausea in early pregnancy, and how learning to say “no” to particular foods might unlock better digestion. He takes us through the lived reality of dietary change—from resistance to revelation—and reminds us that health isn’t just delivered in the clinic; it’s built at home.

From his intertwined career as a touring musician and Chinese medicine practitioner, Andrew weaves together insights on energy, food therapy, the role of emotions in healing, and how music and medicine are both about tuning what’s gone off-key.

420 Nourishing Mystery • Andrew Sterman

Chinese medicine is fractal nature. We can take the broad principles outlined in the Yi Jing, Five Phases or Six Jing and watch as they help us to tune in the particular level of life in which we are embedded or observing. Be it the resonance from tendon, to Liver, to Spring to the arising energy of the East. Or the way Taiyang cold balances Shaoyin heat. Or how the trigrams of water and fire are mirror images. The ancient Chinese sciences and philosophy can help us to unfold a phase within the ever-shifting tides of change.

Today’s conversation takes one of these fractal perspectives, the heavenly stems and branches, and investigates how it shows up in the practice of acupuncture.

Listen in to this conversation on how the stems and branches are reflected not just in heavenly cycles, but in the arrangement of acupuncture points and how this fractal energy can help enliven the work we do with our hands and needles.

 

Head on over to the show notes page for more information about this episode and for links to the resources discussed in the interview.

087 Stems and Branches: A Down to Earth Perspective on the Practice of Acupuncture • David Toone

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