It's not uncommon today for top level athletes to use acupuncture as part of their health care, to enhance performance and treat injuries. 

And even though you didn't hear about acupuncture in the 1984 Olympics, it was there.

Our guest in this episode has been working with sports acupuncture for almost 40 years.

Listen in to this conversation that touches on topics that range from the importance of precise needle location to the value of stillness in your acupuncture practice.

Welcome to qiological.

Mini-series dedicated to sports and orthopedic acupuncture for the next

few days, I'll be bringing you several podcasts a day from the sports acupuncture

alliances conference in San Jose.

In addition to interviews and discussions with speakers of the

conference, you'll also be hearing from participants and you'll have

a special front row seat at a round table conversation around the issues,

running a sports medicine practice.

The sports acupuncture Alliance was created to promote the study and practice

of sports and orthopedic acupuncture.

I'm delighted that they were willing to partner with qiological to bring

you this mini series so that those of you who are not able to attend

the conference could learn from the speakers as well as the participants,

and to get a taste of what it's like to be here at this special event.

Please enjoy these discussions and take what you learned here

and use it in your clinic.

Hi,

I'm here with Whitfield Reaves.

Who's one of the speakers here at the sports acupuncture alliances conference.

Hey Whit, you've been doing acupuncture since 1981.

That is a long time.

I'm curious, what are some of the changes and some of the trends that you're seeing

with sports acupuncture these days?

Well, I would say the biggest thing that comes to mind

is that the patient is very different.

In, in this era than the patient was in 1981 in 1981, the patient presented

signs and symptoms very differently.

And, and the evolution of the disease in the, and the pathophysiology was

very different, even just 30 years.

Very much so.

And what were you seeing

back then?

That's different than today?

Well,

nobody had a computer, so there was no keyboarding, no people

weren't on electronics, you know?

And, and so.

Number one we had, uh, we did not have the postural component of the rhomboid

miners engaging to retract the staff.

You'll pull the scapula back.

And we didn't have problems with the forward head looking down at devices.

So that's one huge piece and people didn't sit this long and often in desks, a lot

of people had real jobs and worked and did things, you know, now it's even moved

more.

There was a whole different movement diet.

I absolutely, you know, and I just read an article.

Three days ago about it was Giamo or one of the, one of the major

journals that was looking at exercise and they actually concluded that it

didn't matter if you moved a little.

Or if you did intense cardio sweating, burning, if you ran a marathon or if you

walked down to the store, the difference in health, by the various ways they

were measuring, it was not that great.

And so back then people were.

Much more in a desk job where you just sat all day long.

It was much less common.

And so the, the gluteus media.

It is what comes to mind of a muscle that gets turned off in the seated position.

And so now we've got all these back problems, all of these, uh, degenerative

disc disease, all these bulging discs and deterioration of the lower lumbar spine.

And you just didn't see that in 1981 like that you saw people.

Who were shoveling, you know, and lifting and they hurt.

They strain their back from lifting and twisting, but not from slightly moving.

That was the straw that broke the camel's back from someone who who's

been sitting at a desk job for 10 years, you know, programming a

computer with their head forward.

That's a huge, huge difference.

So it sounds like what's happened.

Is people are moving less.

We have very different physiologies and we're in many ways, much weaker

than we were back in the day.

Do I have that right?

Is that, is that what's going on?

Uh, I would say you have that partially, right?

We are weaker in certain very key places.

Like the muscles that retract the shoulders, pull the shoulders back,

the muscles that pull the head back, the muscles that stabilize

the pelvis that get inactivated by.

But in other areas that were hugely stronger, as many people work out and

train and CrossFit, this an example.

So it isn't quite so, uh, it's not like we're weaker, but we're

weaker in very key postural areas.

And if someone doesn't work on that, if they're not in Pilates or in yoga or some

sort of discipline, where that gets to.

It becomes problematic, hugely problematic.

So, so the injuries are different these days?

Yes.

And there is, for instance, in 1981, I did not know how to treat the wrong Boyd

minor or the gluteus medius to activate.

And stabilize the shoulder, neck, and shoulder or the lumbar spine.

I just didn't know how to do it.

And I didn't think about doing it because it didn't seem like that was what was,

uh, presenting, but I well could have not been educated enough at that time.

Learned enough to know that while there, there

certainly is that we learn as we grow.

Yeah.

So, but the other thing, and I think this is also very important

is that the prolonged exposure.

To what I would call artificial environment.

I mean, in a sense I'm really a Taoist and I love being in nature.

And I love like being in California.

I go to the sequoias and I just lay on the ground next to one of those massive trees.

And the energy is just incredible.

And so I love nature.

And I see that in the Daoist tradition, how important the, you are, the union

of heaven and earth is the human.

And as we don't have enough earth because we're sitting in chairs and offices with

artificial climate control and fluorescent lights and the sword, we get imbalanced.

And I think that what happened.

Is the neurologic system starts overreacting to, to any stimulus.

You can see the overreaction just in the personality of people who

have gotten shorter and agitated and angry and relationships

where one of the two spouses.

Overreacting to the other spouse.

And so you can see this kind of behavior in this combativeness and

on a physiological level, we're talking about neurologic overbearing

or over a reaction to stimulus.

So somebody gets a, a strain of, of, of as intend to sell.

And in 1981 tennis elbow, three treatments, and the patient was fixed.

Now you get a tennis elbow patient on a computer programmer, and you

don't know if it's going to take six months to get this person fixed.

And so the neurologic system, I think, has reacted and had.

Overreacted and created pockets of stagnation all over the body,

wherever, wherever things are not right posturally or from injury, trauma,

repetitive stress and the sword.

And so you get pockets of cheat and blood stagnation, which then

gets to your original question.

What's different and what's different is in 1981, mastered.

And the, the empirical points of Chinese medicine of Chinese

acupuncture were marvelously effective.

They were just brilliant.

You know, one, two needle treatments and people get fixed at every decade.

It's gotten about 10% less effective.

And so 10, 20 years into this, the, the many of these points, uh, for me,

And I'm only talking my experience.

I don't know what somebody else does, but my experience is that those stagnations

are so fixed that you can't go to a disparate point and move the cheese

because there's no blood flow getting into that area where the pain and the

stagnation and the injury is occurred.

And so no cheese, no blood, no blood.

No.

I mean, it sounds like local treatments really

helpful getting their bus set up.

I'm really struck here what you're saying about this overreaction of the

neurological system, because what it sparks in my mind is increasingly we see

lots of auto-immune diseases as well.

Exactly.

That sounds like just the other side of an over.

Neurological system, the system's just sort of turning on itself

does not know what to do with

itself.

Absolutely.

I think it's the same mechanism.

And I know so little about internal medicine that, uh, I couldn't speak

knowledgeably about that, but I think you've got it precisely articulated.

Yes.

Well,

so that leads me to this question.

And knowing something about internal medicine or not, it sounds like

you've got your eye on this.

You're working with it.

You see it's present.

Uh, you're taking that into consideration in the work you do.

So what are you doing to help dial down the nervous system so that people

can have enough stillness to maybe move some chia and blood and have.

A little quiet time to actually heal.

Oh boy, you're, you're asking the impossible, you know,

I mean, how do we ask our patients to live in a way that's different than

the dictates of our current call?

It's very, very complicated.

It's very, very difficult.

And I have reached the place where I just don't feel like I can change that.

You know, the psyche, the communal psyche of this country, especially.

It's such that, you know, I can't change that.

I can't change the way people are reacting to the world because of

these powerful forces of greed and consumption and the sword.

So I just try to fit.

Pain and I, if the patient will listen to me, I'll try to, uh, get them

to go on a vacation or maybe even meditate if they're open to this.

But I don't have a solution for that.

The ultimate problem that you're talking about.

I don't know.

So I just have to exist.

Within the confines of what I'm given.

And I do the best that I can.

And it just isn't as easy as it was 30 years ago.

Right.

So you don't add in some sort of spirit points or do something that

tries to dial down their reactivity.

You're working on the blood and she have the presenting problem and letting.

Sort of reverberate through the system pretty

much.

Yeah.

If I think that a patient really needs.

Internal medicine.

Of course they all do.

I refer them out.

I, I'm not skilled enough to do a good job of point selection and

of course, herbal prescribing.

So I'll refer that out.

That's the best that I can do, but I do love the formula way.

Shaoyang.

shaoyang to me is the formula of the era.

You know, it, it harmonizes the liver, it clears the heat in the liver.

It, it nourishes some of the liver.

It does a lot towards addressing this neurological stress sort of related.

Reaction in the body.

So of any one formula that, that just stands out is just, you know, a really

great way to start with, with someone.

But.

We all, we all have our favorites for those don't wait.

Oh yeah.

I'm kind of a, a child who Shu gone son, guy myself.

Oh, there.

So

both of those are so close, you know, so similar.

Yeah.

And I do use that formula by the way, often, depending on the patient.

So yes, that all fits into that category of harmonizing, you know,

it's so.

Reassuring and validating to hear what you say that people are, are different

today than they were back in the eighties.

I mean, I remember before screens, right.

You know, we all have this little computer in our hand and.

Certainly I watch what it's done to people's attention.

I watch what it does to their posture.

I mean, you describe it really well with, with what it does to the rhomboids

and neck postures and things like that.

You've seen this incredible changes that tech it's like we're co-evolving

with technology and it's having a big impact on our physiology.

So it leads me to wondering about what else about acupuncture and

maybe orthopedic in particular.

Cause, cause this is your, uh, your sweet spot and the thing.

What are some things about acupuncture that you now believe

that you didn't believe 10 years ago?

Wow.

A good question.

Well, I get down to very simple things and so my work is very simple.

Anybody who's taken my acupuncture, sports medicine,

apprenticeship program knows that.

I, I sift things down to very simple, easy to understand assessments and treatments.

So what stands out to me is the power of the acupuncture needle that when it

is put in the right place, precisely for the millimeter in the right place.

That whatever the barrier is to the flow of blood in this area of

stagnation, that the, the well-placed needle is absolutely miraculous.

So that generally speaking treatments, don't take six to 10 treatments

cumulatively to fix something that often takes one treatment and that

treatment might happen on the.

Day, or it might happen on the 10th day, depending upon your fortune

and, and your karma and your skill and what it is you're doing.

But the precision of all of it is what has kind of marked the last 10 years for me.

And I was criticized, uh, in a doctorate program teaching that I was too.

Eurocentric.

Uh, and I am a white guy, you know, I'm really white, you know, so I could

understand some of my work may appear Eurocentric, but I spent a little

bit of time saying, okay, I have to listen to this criticism or critique

and I have to really look at it.

So I dug into a very simple, uh, texts by mouth showing me masterpiece.

Uh, his translation of the Hawaiian Dean aging, Sue win.

And I just started reading through stuff and I always have

this quote right in my hand.

I have it in my hand right now.

And this is one little section where she says what is meant by acupuncturing the

bone level, but not injuring the tendons and the temper response, a response.

The physician responds with needling.

The.

Do not stop at the level of the tendons before reaching the bone level, go all

the way in one breadth or a series of breaths, depending on your technique,

but reach that depth without removing the needle with needling to the depth

of the tenders, one can avoid injuring the muscles by inserting past them.

This logic follows with each specific level.

The needle must go to the proper.

Any depth other than the correct one will cause undesirable effect.

This is the precision you're talking about.

It's the precision.

Now I have no idea what all of that, all of that meant

above of getting needle in past the tendon, et cetera, et cetera.

And it went on and on in ways that I couldn't understand it.

But I did understand that each of these layers of anatomical

tissue were being clear.

Described and that the needle must go to the proper depth than

any other one than the correct will cause undesirable effects.

That's what struck me.

And I went, you know, what, what we're doing is traditional Chinese

medicine through and through.

And, and Eurocentric or not, everything we're doing is backed up in the classics.

So how is it that you were accused of being Eurocentric?

Oh,

son, Billy.

So many people love when you have to feel the pulse or you

have to treat design food.

You're not really going to the problem.

People forget this simple fact, the cause of disease.

It can be exaggerated.

When he called damp, et cetera, the causes of disease can be indogenous the

emotions or the cause of disease is other, and in the other causes of disease or

accident and trauma and people are always trying to go to look at the zone, Fu the

emotional state, trying to find this.

You know, there's Zhan food route for this disease.

When the cause of disease is trauma

treat the, treat, the trauma.

Yeah.

Or just the, I mean, one of the great things that Dr.

Tom would always talk about is forget the Zang Fu what's

the channel that's involved.

What is the tissue that's involved and get that done?

And

I need to criticize that or critique that from the standpoint

that that was very effective 30 years ago.

But if you get on the right channel, the right Meridian, but the, the, the trauma

or the stagnation, it is fiber-optic and walled off from the rest of the

body, you can activate that channel, but it's not going to get better.

If there's no blood flow and therefore no cheat into that pocket of say, if it's a

tendinitis or tendinosis with fibrosis, you know, so that is what has changed.

So much of my thinking that the meridians are no longer for me.

It's function.

As they used to be when I first got into practice, just putting a couple

of disappoints patients better now, it's like, well, that's not working

because there is fibrosis and stagnation that is so enclosed and no longer

integrated into the system of the body.

And that need that local area needs to be opened up

with that totally makes sense.

I'm thinking about some cases in my own clinic and I'm thinking, wow.

Yeah.

I mean, and sometimes I can palpate and, you know, I mean, you can feel

this gooey stuff or there's areas really straight aided, things like that.

So, so what do you do?

Is this a matter of distal and local?

Or is there, are you using palpation?

How do you suss out these pockets of stagnation and liberate them a

lot of the land?

Suss them out and liberate them.

I would say that in order to understand where that stagnation is, uh, orthopedic

testing is more reliable than any other way of assessment that I know in general.

So for instance, if you have a tendonitis or you have a, you have a

nodule on a tendon that you've got, you know, you got, you got paid.

You know, in the 10th, what have you, you can needle above and below

on the Bridion enough that happens.

And it's because of this fibrotic nodule.

But in this particular case, actually, I'm talking in circles, but this particular

case is very clear because you find the lesion, you palpate the lesion and.

Treatment is fairly simple.

If above and below and distal aren't fixing that, then

there's no, there's no blood.

You have to need a locally.

However, what about the things like a rotator cuff injury that

refers pain out into the desert?

You can evil the deltoid Sanchez 14 Sanjay 13.

You can needle the deltoid till the cows come home and it's

not going to fix the problem.

The problem is back in the superspinatus or the infraspinatus

and the Taiyang area of the body.

And so by orthopedic tests, You can determine that there is dysfunction

in say the super spy natives.

That's my favorite muscle.

And that's what always comes up.

There is dysfunction in the super spy Natus and then you translate

that into DJing low that's the Taiyang meridians, small intestine.

And then you look for where those nodules or stagnations or trigger

points, or what have you are within the context of that muscle tendon unit?

It could be tendon, it could be muscle, it could be muscle belly.

It could be muscle tendon junction, but at least, you know

about where the stagnation is.

So you're not wasting your time needles.

Into tissue.

That's really, actually not the

problem.

Right.

And

so the Meridian idea works great when the problem,

the pain is on the Meridian and everything lays out perfectly.

But when you have a referral pattern going from one area to a whole nother area, the

Veridian becomes exceedingly ineffective.

And I would say how I came about this was that in my early years, 81, 82, 83 of

treating patients, I would needle bladder 23, bladder, 25 bladder, 40 bladder,

60 to treat back pain, lumbar pain.

And it wasn't very effective.

As a matter of fact, it was really.

Less than placebo, you know, and little by little as I came to understand

things, uh, meeting Janet Trevell the 1983, certainly helped significantly.

You know, tune my attention to the muscles and trigger points in the anatomy and, and

the, and the, and the function of those muscles that you would then realize that

much of back pain is due to the quadratus lumborum, which is almost underside.

And it's a shaoyang.

And so treating those Taiyang treating Taiyang all day long, back in the

old days in China, the cold, which is drain the kidneys of these individuals.

And they would have low back pain due to the kidney, but that's not what we see.

Yeah, we see other cause of disease, strain lifting, twisting strain,

and it's not a kidney problem.

And some treating the bladder and the kidney till the cows come home,

doesn't really do much in my experience.

None.

Maybe other people get great results with that, but I would say the

number one reason why people come to my apprenticeship program is.

In about three or four or five years of practice, they come in and they

say, I've been doing bla bladder, 23, bladder, 25 bladder, 40 bladder, 60.

It's not working.

And I need a different perspective because, because things are

really clinically resolving as I thought they would.

And I'm a really good student and I've studied hard and I'm doing everything that

I was taught, but it's not working though.

It's not doing what it's supposed to do.

Yeah.

There always comes that point where we've got these maps in our head know,

were these ideas and they kind of work, but then at a certain point, it's

like, you have to throw the map away and start navigating with a compass.

Yeah.

There you go.

Yeah.

And it sounds like the compass that you use is various, uh, orthopedic tests.

And really paying attention to what is connected to.

Yeah, visual, um, postural assessment, uh, palpation,

literally palpating along a muscle to try and define that there's a bursa that's

inflamed or rolling across a tendon to see if there's a tendon problem.

But yeah.

Uh, orthopedic testing, manual muscle testing, vision.

And observation and pal patient with my hands to find out where the problem is.

Yeah.

Going to the source, using, using the body to assess the body.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you, I learned something early on.

I was very fortunate to learn this early on from a nurse practitioner that I worked

with and I was really struggling with.

And she looked at me and she said, when you're thinking that this patient has

a really rare, strange, and peculiar disease, and you're trying to be the

hero to figure out what the diagnosis is, and you're going to come up with

something that none of the other specialists could come up to your house.

Yeah.

But.

Statistics would say that in 80 to 90% of the time, the patient will present

with a very typical and common disease or condition and present with atypical

symptoms, which then tells you that say in, in ortho, in, in treating pain and

injury, we can narrow things down to 25 injuries that cover, you know, 80 90%

of all the problems we see, no matter how the patient presents, it's probably

going to be one of these top 25 or 30 injuries or tissues or muscles, or what

have you, you know, because those are statistically where the stresses are and

where the, where the stagnations occur.

And then once you learn that everything becomes so, so.

You know, you can do it

in your sleep.

We know it makes so much sense.

Uh, you know, we're, we're, we're sitting here having this conversation

and I'm thinking to myself on it, partly because I'm kind of a lazy guy.

I've always been sort of an 80 20 guy.

Right.

I'm looking for that 20% of something.

That's going to get me 80% of the result that I'm looking for.

Uh, and I always talked it up to being lazy, but I'm listening to you speak about

this and I realize, but it's also true.

I mean, it's so often 20% of the cases.

R I'm sorry.

80% of the cases are probably going to cover 20% of the issues.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're you're brilliant.

You've got it figured out then.

You've just got to make sure you know what those 20 conditions are 20%.

No one the exception shows up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What are some things that tip you off that there is an actual.

Uh, I'm not sure I can answer that question.

I think I would have to hear that question within the context of, of,

of a serious offense specifically.

I think that's a little bit too.

That's asking too much of me.

I don't think I'd get

it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

That's so, and for me, this is the difference between theory and practice,

because even we can have these nice ideas, but really it's, it's the nitty gritty.

Where this stuff comes together.

And so speaking of that, you know, and you were talking about earlier about, you

know, treating the lumbar back pain with the, you know, the usual sets of points.

What about like the DJing?

Well points on the tendon or muscular channels.

And what about things like the sheet cleft points that are supposedly

so famous for treating pain?

Do you see those playing in our modern acupuncture world these days?

I start with always.

Considering bleeding, a gene Wellpoint of the Meridian or meridians involved.

That's the first step that I, I think I've, even if it's just going to clear

off a level of stagnation in the tendon or muscle Bridion on the more surface of

the body, it's a start and many patients will kind of go, oh, that feels better.

How, how do you do that?

It doesn't get all the way down to maybe attempted to bone

junction that might be too.

For the tendon or muscle Meridian, but I very much like to start if,

if applicable and if, if indicated bleeding one or more DJing, well points.

I like to bleed with a Lancet and I like 10 drops of blood.

So that's, that's what I do with the June well point, but yeah, it's the

first thing that I think of after.

Made this orthopedic or made this assessment and I know

what tissue is involved.

And then I have translated that tissue into the right.

So that, for instance, if it's a, a disc issue with pain going down the

gallbladder channel, but the problem is in the spine, I'm not bleeding, the

gallbladder channel DJing Wellpoint, because that's not where the problem is.

The problem is in the spine, you know?

So you, you do have to make sure with referred pain, you're not

bleeding, a DJing Wellpoint.

Of where the referred pain is.

You want to bleed the DJing?

Well point where the stagnation and injury is.

And so often it's this.

You know, in the case of like shin splints, anterior shin

splints, it's stomach 45.

It's right along the stomach Meridian.

And you know, it's, it's a no brainer, you know, sometimes with referred

pain, it can get a little more complex.

So you have to make sure you, you do that.

Right.

You got to make sure you're on the right Meridian.

You're not, you're not following some red herring.

Yeah.

Not where the pain is.

But where goes away, the problem is.

And then the, uh, then you mentioned, uh, the sheet clap points

really after bleeding, the DJing.

Well point I'll usually look to see if there's an empirical point of some other.

That might work and empirical point lingered out by, or way

or any of those type of points.

Uh, people who've studied with master dong system.

They have tons of options.

So I'll often try that before I start needling into the local area, because

it gives you a chance for them to move it while the needles and the empirical

point or the opposite side or something.

But once I've exhausted, like the sheet cleft point, the empirical points

and the gym Wellpoint, then it gets into local and adjacent and that's.

Where 70% of the time, the treatment will evolve to include

the local energy Jason points.

Right.

So it sounds like you kind of work from the edges into the center.

Exactly.

And I, and I learned that.

The hard way, a number of times.

I'm so glad I'm not alone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But more than once for sure.

You, you've got to get swatted on the head a few times, but it was during the, uh,

pre Olympic period in Los Angeles, 1984.

And I had, uh, a British tennis player who had pain around sun

gel for, so on the doorstep.

Surface of the hand on the extensor tendon, around San gel for, and he had

had surgery to have a sheet release and they tried to get away, get out, you know,

all the fibrotic tissue from the problem.

And I was so sure that there was still stagnation in that room.

And I was threading tendons along the threading needles, along the tendons

and trying all these tricks and, you know, doing these strategic little cups

and stuff and little cups were not that easy to find back in 1983, you know?

And that treated him four or five times and nothing happened.

And finally, I just got desperate.

I'm going, I've got to fix this guy, you know?

So I thought, oh, well I remember upper lower treatment.

So there you have treat the real.

But with the ankle.

So I went to the opposite side, ankle Sanchez four is the Yuan source point.

So I went to gallbladder 40 Yuan source point on the opposite side,

I put a needle into gallbladder 40.

He moved his wrist and all the pain and all the decreased rate of all the range

of motion improved within 15 seconds.

And it was just miraculous.

And so he came back about three weeks later, said, oh, that

treatment worked wonderfully.

It's just starting to come back.

But he came in and talked to me before he kind of signed it.

He said, I just want to make sure all you're going to do.

Is needle that point down in the ankle.

You know, I don't want you to do any of this other stuff up in the wrist.

You know, I know what works and that's all I want you to do.

So it was so funny.

The patient was just going to keep me from being so diligent that

I was going to do bad treatment.

He knew what good treatment was.

And so I treated him maybe three times.

And it fixed it.

And it went completely against my belief system that that kind

of thing had local stagnation.

And you can't get to.

With the disappoint and, you know, so that's why that you said outwards

inwards or from distal to local.

That's why I kind of have this flow chart or this list that I can always look at.

I have this in writing, it's in my book and I have this, this progression

of 10 techniques going from Jane Wellpoint to the local point.

And I'm always looking at that just in case.

I think I'm smarter than the system.

And so I'll look and I'll make sure that I at least consider the opposite side

or upper lower or what, what happened.

So I don't miss something thinking I'm going to go right to the local.

Cause I know that'll fix it.

It usually does, but it doesn't

know where this doesn't always.

Well, you know, you bring up, you bring up the thought about

belief system and I think we all.

Our benefited and challenged by this, right?

Because we've got ideas and often the ideas work where they work to some

degree, but then there's the times where we've got to believe about something.

We think it goes a certain way, but it, you know, but it really doesn't.

And we, it takes being wrong and somehow, okay.

Enough with being wrong, that we can set that belief aside and pivot

or try something different or.

Yeah, it's something I read in which book or something, you know, like this,

uh, thing you gave us from the, uh, one Dean aging earlier about needling

directly to where it needs to go.

So often we have to switch and it, and it makes me think about

here at the conference, you're presenting on a contrarian approach

to treating well back pain.

I kind of like contrarians for some reason.

I don't know.

I'm curious to know how do you go?

And this gets into belief system, I think, but how do you go about developing

a contrarian eye that helps you to get over beliefs or vision or ideas that

just, just need to be gotten over or set down or viewed from a different way?

How do you develop that contrarian?

Um,

I think this gets back to one of your earlier

questions about this battle.

We're fighting with the culture that we live in that sometimes is very

detrimental to our mental, physical, and emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

And so for me, I think what's most important is that the practitioner

needs to have a discipline.

Uh, and I personally think meditation is probably the most effective for me.

I'm a long time meditator.

And, and that's what meditation is, is you, you, you're just sitting

in this moment or you're sitting with the breath or what have you.

And all you do is practice.

Every time you start making the list of what you're going to do or what

you're going to eat or who you forgot to call you practice coming back to that

focal point of the breath or whatever.

And it's a very useful skill to help one in looking at the patient fresh.

Every time I'm looking at this as like, this is the first time

we've ever seen each other.

And I'm going to look at this fresh to see if I can develop what I need

to develop and assess and treat the way I need to treat the help this.

So I think the discipline is in the mind of the practitioner.

And, and I think it's really essential that, that this be the case.

I don't talk about it at all.

In my training programs.

I don't tell people they shouldn't meditate.

I'd never even hardly bring it up, but I think it's probably

the most important thing.

And so from that place of being able to, to have this

fresh and look at things, then.

You can start to develop a clinical experience that's effective.

And in the case of the back it bladder 23, bladder, 25 bladder, 40 bladder, 60

didn't work, the white doji points didn't work the do points along the center line.

Didn't.

And so I had to kind of go, okay, if I'm honest with myself, this is

not working very well and there by then lots of develop something else.

And nobody else is telling me to do this nobody else.

And that's what makes it contrarion is that you, you, you have to jump into

the river without anybody else there.

You have to be willing to be hanging in the rubbish.

You know, and so the only way that you're ever going to be good is you've just

got to hang on the abyss with terrifying loneliness and extraordinary terror of

failing because you're doing something that's just not what they told you to do.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds too, sometimes it's recognizing the failure

that we're already in the middle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and, and waking up to that and then finding something else.

Well, I so appreciate your time taking some time out here at the conference

to, uh, speak with me and to share this with the listeners of qiological,

uh, any closing comments that you'd like to leave us with before we, uh,

get back to the activities around.

Whoa, closing comments.

Well, certainly we're, we're so pleased that so many people, so many practitioners

want to look at this community that we've formed here of anatomical orthopedics.

And sports medicine practitioners, and they're all different.

The orthopedic practitioners are different from the, the sports medicine

acupuncturist in certain ways, you know, but we all share a common

basis of needing to know something about anatomy and, and movement

our assessment in treatment plans.

And that is not articulately.

In Chinese medicine, as the dictates that we get from what's translated in the

English, or even what's still in Chinese.

But to me, it's so important because as we began this conversation

of how different my patients.

Now from 1981, when I first started practice, imagine how different we all

are from 10 72, the year of the brunch.

And the compendium of the bronze statue, where all the acupuncture

points were presented in their entirety, uh, except for extraordinary

points that were added after that.

So that's over a thousand years and I'm seeing change in 30 years.

So, you know, things

are different and we have to question and we have to question

Chinese medicine while we still love it.

And we love the dictates of Chinese medicine, but we have to

understand that it's not perfect and it needs to be added to, and

what we're doing with an anatomical orthopedic and a sports approach.

Is that we're just adding this incredible breadth to, to Chinese

medicine and especially acupuncture.

We're not creating a new acupuncture.

We're just adding to the centuries old lineage that we've all been able

to tap into and, and to be part of.

And so I'm very appreciative that so many people would come

to this conference because they too are looking for community.

They've had their failures and felt alone.

And sometimes the texts don't tell them what they need to know to fix something,

because it's a modern something that needs a different point of view.

And so everybody is looking, uh, and the community is completely open

there's there's nobody in charge.

There's not a boss.

There's not a guru.

There's just a number of people that range from teachers to students.

And eventually the students will be the teachers as all those forward.

It's a, it's a beautiful system

where there's a lot of lit up people here.

Yeah.

Well, thank you so much and I'll see you around the conference.

Good.

Thank you, Michael.

Very much.

You're doing wonderful work, uh, and keep it up.