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Step into an infinite world of stories

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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

Sometimes clarity doesn’t come from adding more—it comes from taking away. Simplifying helps to see more clearly what’s already there. In medicine, that often means noticing the simple patterns hiding beneath complex presentations.

In this conversation with Fang Cai, we explore the meeting place between Saam acupuncture and dermatology. Fang brings years of clinical experience and study with Mazen Al-Khafaji, and she shares how integrating Saam principles with herbal dermatology has deepened both her diagnostic precision and her ability to communicate with patients in clear, everyday terms.

Listen into this discussion on using Saam acupuncture for troublesome skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis, urticaria, rosacea, and acne. We’ll explore how the skin reveals patterns of physiology and imbalance, and why simplicity in treatment—done with discernment—can create profound change.

Fang’s reflections remind us that good medicine doesn’t always come from complexity. Sometimes it’s about listening closely, trusting what you see, and being the kind of practitioner you’d want to visit yourself.

435 Saam and Skin Conditions • Fang Cai

The tools we use to shape our world, they in turn shape us. Whether it’s the brush in a painter’s hand or the software code that organizes the clinic day. The interface becomes part of our perception. Technology, like medicine, is an expression of relationship.

In this conversation with Kenan Akbas, we trace the unlikely path from acupuncture to algorithms. This is a story that begins in the club scene of 1990s New York, winds its way through photography, Chinese medicine, Taiwan, and eventually the creation of platforms that help practitioners connect more fluidly with their patients. Kenan’s work sits at the intersection of tradition, innovation and inquisitiveness.

Listen into this discussion as we explore what it means to build technology rooted in care and how AI might become not a replacement for human skill, but a partner in the development of it. There are challenges in evolving with our tools as we move into a new stage of development with our exo-nervous system. There’s no going back, the question is how do you move forward into a new terrain.

434 The Art of Connection- Healing in the Age of Technology • Kenan Akbus.mp3

Sometimes the most interesting things happen when we stop trying to confirm what we think we know. In clinic, certainty can close doors—but curiosity opens them. There’s a kind of listening that goes beyond the intellect, a way of paying attention that allows discovery to unfold on its own time.

In this conversation with Dan Bensky, we explore the art of noticing. What it means to let medicine be a call and response rather than a performance of knowledge. We talk about the practitioner’s stance—one that values modesty over mastery, sensation before interpretation, and the quiet skill of finding something you weren’t looking for.

Listen into this discussion as we trace ideas of Tong and connection, the dance between palpation and perception, the discipline involved with not-knowing, and how true competence might simply mean being willing to check yourself.

This is a conversation for anyone who’s ever paused mid-treatment and thought, “Huh… that’s odd.” Because sometimes, that moment—the one that unsettles what you thought you knew—is where the treatment really begins.

433 Finding What You Weren't Looking For• Dan Bensky

The 1970s were a turbulent time—streets alive with protest, classrooms charged with new ideas, and an entire generation questioning the stories they’d inherited. It was a decade of upheaval, but also one where curious opportunities arose. For some, those opportunities led not to politics or protest, but to the quiet pulse of a medicine few in America had ever heard of.

In this conversation with Gene Bruno, we wander through those early days of acupuncture in the United States. From campus strikes and existentialist lectures with Angela Davis to finding himself in the second class of Dr. Kim’s students, Gene’s story carries the spirit of curiosity and rebellion that shaped an era. His path was less about a plan and more about following questions—whether that meant bringing acupuncture into UCLA’s pain clinic, or rediscovering forgotten traditions with horses on California racetracks.

Listen into this discussion as we explore acupuncture’s improbable foothold in the counterculture of the 70s, the razor’s edge moment when the profession nearly became the sole territory of physicians, and how veterinary acupuncture was reborn in America before returning to the world stage.

432 History Series—First Licenses, Lasting Legacies- Acupuncture Amid the Zeitgeist of the 70's • Gene Bruno

Ever wonder if being human is less about mechanics and more about patterns? Not the kind of patterns you memorize in a textbook, but the ones that repeat like spirals in a sunflower, or the way a thought can shape the body before we even realize it.

In this conversation with Rory Hiltbrand, we wander through the field of being human—where Daoist numerics, fractals, and the golden ratio intersect with medicine and daily practice. Rory draws from both classical Daoist thought and his own clinical experience, weaving geometry, physiology, and spirit into something that feels both practical and mysterious.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the body as a field and the mind as its knower, how intention can be grounded in embodied experience rather than wishful thinking, why ministerial fire might look a lot like the nervous system, and the curious ways symmetry becomes a treatment strategy.

What I love in talking with Rory is how ideas that seem abstract at first end up grounding us in clinic. Patterns that echo through heaven and earth can also help us know when the best time to treat is simply when the patient is on the table.

431 Heaven, Earth, and the Geometry of Being Human | Rory Hiltbrand

Sometimes old books get treated like sacred relics. But what if the Nei Jing isn’t a mystery text at all? What if it’s closer to a well-worn how-to manual — a guide for the hands, a companion for the clinic?

In this conversation with Ethan Murchie, we explore the Nei Jing not as a theory to be memorized but as a craft to be lived. Ethan comes to this work through martial arts and manual medicine, where following the qi, unwinding entanglements, and listening through touch are daily practice.

Listen into this discussion as we consider what transmission really means, why clinical knowing often comes through the hands before the mind, and how the classics find their life not in libraries, but in the repetition of practice.

Ethan’s reflections remind us that medicine can be steady, humble, and deeply human — a craft that reveals more each time we return to it.

430 Medicine & Gongfu, the Blueprint of the Neijing | Ethan Murchie

The face tells a story, etched in its lines, the color of our skin, and the expressions we carry. These are not mere physical features; they are a language—an ancient map that, if we learn to read, can reveal traces of our life’s journey, ancestral gifts, and the yet to be resolved challenges holding us back. This wisdom often goes unnoticed in a world focused on external appearances, but it is there if you know how to perceive .

In this conversation with Anita Chopra, we journey through the landscapes of the face, and the unexpected twists of fate that lead us to our Ming—that essence that makes us grow. Anita’s approach is a tapestry woven from her personal journey and professional practice. She listens to the body's narrative, honors the lessons from her mentors, and uses her unique skills to help patients find their golden path.

Join us as we explore the power of being truly seen, the profound wisdom of accepting ourselves, how our life's path is found in a glimmer on the periphery, and the courage it takes to become the person you were always meant to be.

429 On Being Seen— Path, Destiny and Hidden Gifts | Anita Chopra

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

針灸 Needles and Moxa, it is right there in the Chinese characters that are translated as “acupuncture.” Moxa is as fundamental to our practices as needles. The applications of burning mugwort run the gamut from cheap acrid Chinese pole moxa to ultra refined sweet scented Japanese moxa. And the techniques vary as well from the smoky moxa boxes to the whisper thread of smoke from the tiny rice grains.

In this conversation with Hannah Swift we discuss not just her love of moxa, but fascination for the plant itself. Where it grows, the soils and terrain it likes to inhabit, how it shapes the local economies in Japan famous for their moxa and the process itself of turning leaves into the medicine we like to ignite.

Listen into this discussion of leaves and smoke, and how the scent of moxa itself can be part of a connective healing process. 

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

227 Repairing the World with Moxa • Hannah Swift

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