Chad Bong is one of the organizers of the Sports Acupuncture Alliance's conference. 

He's a busy guy, but we managed to grab a few minutes to talk about acupuncture, community and the inspiration and effort behind this conference. 

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, California.

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 learn here

and use it in your clinic.

Well, it's been really fun here at the sports acupuncture alliances conference.

There are so many wickedly smart people that are here.

Learning more about the stuff that we all want to know about.

I E helping our patients and more importantly, fantastic conversations going

on in the hallway is going on at lunch.

Uh, people really sharing, uh, their questions, their insights.

It's pretty cool.

And the guy that we have to thank for this is a dude named Chad.

He is the, uh, kind of instigating force behind this with his

team of Mary pranksters.

And I've got him buttonholed here, uh, by the stairwell and ah,

Chad, welcome to qiological man.

Thank you, Michael.

It's great to have you here, so great to have you too.

And thanks for coming by the way.

Thank you for making the opportunity.

Cause this is, this is such a cool thing.

Well, you know, I know you're a busy acupuncturist.

You're a family man.

You got to practice, right.

Wha w number one, where do you get time to do, I guess more than

where do you get time to do it?

Cause we always find time to do it's important.

What instigated you into doing this conference?

I mean, Whitfield Reaves.

So I'll refer to him as wit from now on, uh, my mentor.

So studied with him for years and he had run.

Uh, he had helped found an organization in the nineties called the national

sports acupuncture association.

And.

It ran for a while and then due to some circumstances and

ended up, um, ceasing to exist.

But, uh, we had talked about kind of resurrecting it for years.

Um, we were kind of hoping somebody else would do it basically.

Um, and that's just never happened.

Uh, and then I was in, uh, Santa Fe helping him teach, uh, a weekend

and I met Catherine Ford there.

And she ends up being one of the people who help motivate me to start this.

But at the time when I kind of decided a podcast might be a good idea to

kind of start reaching out to people.

So, and you've got a podcast and yeah, I mean, you're also a

pocket, you know, in addition to everything else, you also have.

We have a podcast it's very, you know, specific to sports acupuncture,

uh, called pinpoint performance and.

Doing the podcast.

And on that podcast, the first episode, Whitten, I've talked about this

organization that he used to have and how interesting it would be to, you

know, restart something like that.

And then, uh, basically Catherine started bugging me about actually doing it.

I was like, uh, I'm not sure.

I actually wanted to do that.

If it was just a good idea, hoping somebody else would do it.

Someone should pick this up and run with it.

And then, um, Michelle.

I hope I said that right.

Was a student of mine at tri-state and she at this right around the

same time, it was basically like, Hey Chad, can I help you do something?

Uh, as far as like a project for acupuncture stuff.

And I was basically, I guess I'm starting to develop enough of a team that sure.

Let's try to do this thing.

And then Alex , who helps me with the podcast.

It was a student of mine at the wan Institute in Philadelphia.

I basically told him he was part of it.

He didn't really have a choice.

So that was my team.

And we just started working from there.

It took, it took us quite a while before we got the first

one going, how long did it take.

Putting this together in 2015, um, our first conference was in

2017 and now we're on our second one here in San Jose this year.

It seems like the beginning is always the hardest part.

There's so much to do.

There's all these unanswered questions, all these unknowns

you're like work and work and work.

And is this thing ever going to come to fruition?

Yeah.

And we're just making it up as we went, like, what do we need to do next?

Oh, let's, uh, let's get a logo.

You know, what do we want to call this phone?

You know?

And just things that took a lot of time and, you know, my team has been great

where they're putting in a lot more effort than they are getting compensation for

it other than helping the profession.

So, yeah.

My suspicion is for people that do this kind of thing.

Part of our compensation is not just the money that goes in our pocket, but

exactly what we see happening in our profession, that we see people being able

to do things better, that they've got new ideas that they're talking to each

other, that there's a sense of community that patients end up with better care.

I mean, that's what this is all about, right?

This is.

Improving our profession, bringing our profession together is a big part of this.

The, so tell me more about that part to bring in the profession together.

Think it's super important in that, you know, we don't have these super

strong national level organizations where everybody's involved in it.

We didn't, you know, in the state organizations have a tough time getting

everybody to contribute and be part of it.

I just want to be part of making a stronger bond amongst all of the

acupuncturists and helping to, I think if we all like know each other and are

bonded together and I think we we're willing to fight for each other a little

bit more, and I think that'll help our profession in the, in the long run.

So I just want to see us all come together.

I didn't think this was going to go into a political trend, but anyway, here we are.

So I'll just throw it out there often.

It seems like we focus on our differences at the expense of how

we're similar, you know, it's almost like there's turf wars between us.

And so instead of coming together here, we've all got a similar set of

tools that we use to help people with.

Oh yeah.

I mean, I think it's silly that we, you know, argue about like this

style working better than that style, or you need to do this and that

won't work and things like that.

I think.

I think we need to come together as a group and we need to band together

and be a strong group of people.

And I don't know if acupuncturists in general are, are exceptional at that

particular thing, but I would like to, you know, I'd like to get people together.

So I can't remember who it was that I talked to because I've talked to

so many people here this morning, but somebody said something to

the effect of we work with and treat people out of the perceptual

framework that we ourselves have.

Which makes, which makes a lot of sense.

And, and, and then, and then, you know, we're having this conversation

talking about getting people together.

I was sitting at lunch today and I hear this and I hear someone else say

something to the effect of, you know, there's people that do this, like

really soft, like just barely hands-on or tell you harsh kinds of stuff.

They get good results.

You get these other people that use a strong stimulation.

They get good results.

I mean, this is something that we've heard in our profession.

Right.

And it occurred to me that thing that I had heard earlier today,

we work out of our own perception.

I also think we attract people who are interested in the way we work.

So I think I bring in a certain patient to my office because of the

way I work and because of the way I think, and you know, some of them.

My patients wouldn't want to go see another type of acupuncturist and

the people who are going to see that other type of acupuncturist certainly

wouldn't want to come and see me.

So I think, you know, we all have our, our attraction.

We attract a certain type of people, and I think we need lots of types of people.

To keep acupuncture strong.

I mean, I think if we all did the same thing, we just have a very

small niche piece of the world here.

And I think if we're all doing different things, I think we can get

a lot of people treating a lot of patients that makes a lot of sense.

And plus the opportunity to learn something new about what we do

from someone with a whole different mindset than what we have, you know,

I mean, I know, I know for myself, I've run into things in clinic.

I just can't seem to get it and I'll end up thinking, oh, I guess acupuncture

doesn't treat that when the truth of the matter is you might, I care.

That's exactly.

So.

Last week I referred four patients to other acupuncturist.

I just, people, you know, somebody call me with a graves' disease and I was

in, they were like, can you help me?

And I said, no, uh, but I know somebody who probably can and I gave them.

Names of a couple of acupuncturists that I think would do an exceptional

job at that particular thing.

And you know, those acupuncturists called me and were like, Hey, thanks.

You know, and I think it's a great way to build your network is sending people who.

Don't necessarily have the skills for having had success

with, to another patient.

And, you know, I have a lot of acupuncturist who refer me

patients because of that, you know, cooperative relationship.

I think it's really important.

I absolutely agree.

Um, I like to switch the topic just a little bit or, you know, you're, you're

very involved in, I'm using air quotes here, sports acupuncture world right here.

You're kind of the man.

I don't know about that, but I'm involved.

Yes.

You're involved.

You're involved in there's.

Oh my goodness.

There's so many people that are lit up about this.

What are some of the trends that you're seeing with sports and

orthopedic acupuncturist or anything?

That's kind of like, well, like, like you're here in interesting

now, but anything on the horizon that's kinda got your attention.

Um, I'm not sure.

Um, I think just the rise of.

Sports orthopedic, you know, anatomy based kind of acupuncture is really interesting.

But with that said, I don't want to see acupuncture go to just being

like orthopedic kind of thing.

You know, Matt Callis and I were just sitting down at lunch talking and,

and we were talking about programs that just weren't necessarily

involving the traditional stuff.

You know, the, you know, traditional point stuff and how important it is to keep.

That stuff in the medicine so that we don't want to lose it.

So hopefully that the thing is moving towards understanding orthopedic

stuff, but still incorporating all the traditional stuff.

The thing I do see coming up a lot right now, and people talking

about it a lot is tending on muscularity ans dinging or gin, gin.

It seems to be a really hot topic right now with the

fascia kind of things going on.

And so I'd say the two hot topics are fascia and tendon or muscular

meridians, two aspects of the same thing.

What, what is your sense of working with the fascia and

the team chant as this point?

Is

this, uh, a piece of what you're doing is, is this an inquiry of yours?

Uh, this is a piece I'm trying to learn.

I'm trying to learn with people like, well, Anthony Vanderman was here.

Teaching this kind of stuff.

So I want to do more stuff with him.

I did an interview with Mary Rowe gal out of Illinois.

And you know, this is the kind of stuff she's talking about.

And I have a, a lead on somebody.

Who's doing some really interesting stuff in, uh, New Jersey with Jim Johnston.

And Brian Lau, I'm trying to secure an interview with, and you know, there

there's people out there doing it.

And I want to, I want to track these people down and learn from them and see

what I can incorporate into my practice.

I was talking with Anthony earlier, earlier, and one of the things that

was that it kind of blew my mind.

And it's, I guess this is a self confession moment, right?

I've been doing this for about 20 years.

And for some reason, I've had this idea in my mind that that's

a sinew channels through these like super superficial channels.

And yes, they're helpful for tendon and muscular issue.

But I somehow just thought of them as superficial in a way I, you know,

it was just, it was like a, in some ways that's how they're taught.

Exactly.

And then in talking to Anthony and he pointed it out and I mean, all

I've got to do is looking at it.

And when Adam he's book and you look at like, we're certain fascia and

senior planes are planes, are they go deep, deep, deep into the body?

There are some, not all but many that too well on the fascia, you know, some people.

You're talking about how a lot of acupuncture points lands on

points, where fascia dips into the muscles a little bit more like the

deeper veins of fascia in the body.

So maybe that's part of the.

They conduct electricity a little differently than the rest of the body.

So maybe that's part of how all this stuff is working.

I don't know.

I'm just trying to learn all this stuff.

It's a little bit mysterious.

I mean, I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm learning again.

I've been now that I've included into, oh, you can think of.

The fascia and think about the tenderness sensuous material in this whole other way.

It's very exciting.

I mean, wit definitely uses this, but he uses it in a very different

way than say Anthony or whatever.

So I think there's multiple ways to access this.

And I think spending some time to learn what you can accomplish with

them is, would be very interest.

So we're going to need to get back to what's going on here in just a couple

of minutes and, um, you know, in the conversations that we've been having for

months now, because you know, there's a lot of planning that goes into this.

I keep hearing you talk about community and I keep hearing you

talk about people sort of working together and kind of riffing off each

other and just, you know, it's kind of bumping up against each other.

And something happens to sense of something that can

arise out of a community.

And, um, Certainly you're talking about it here in the acupuncture world, but

where do you get this idea of community?

Is this come from some other places or is it just something that you've

seen, you know, within our profession or is there some other inspiration

you've got, I'm sure there's lots of inspirations, but part of it is I like

to watch documentaries and one kind of theme I see in a lot of documentaries.

You know, when they're talking about one person who made it or one band who

made it or something like that, there's always a time in this documentary

where there's a whole bunch of people sitting in a room doing something

we'll, we'll keep on the band music band kind of thing, where there's a

bunch of people sitting in a studio, like putting things together and then.

Those people end up being some of the great minds of that generation.

And they all happen to be sitting in the same room, working on these

projects together when they're young and throwing around great ideas.

And from these great ideas, you know, spawns this exceptional music.

And I would like to see some of that happen here.

So.

You know, people are just connecting here.

So like we have somebody who's specialist, you know, like is all about concussions.

And we have people who work for NFL football teams and connecting

them to try to help some of these guys, you know, not have, you know,

brain problems when they're 50.

Uh, you know, I think as an exceptional thing, and I think it'd

be great for our profession, that we can reach those kinds of Heights.

And if those two people never get connected, then you know, maybe somebody

has problems later on that what could have been, that could have, or would

have been solved from them two meetings.

So I want to bring a lot of those kinds of people together and great minds,

you know, to create some great things.

You know, we saw this in like, The 20th in Paris, right?

Where you have all these artists and poets and painters and Renaissance,

and it's just like hanging and then something gets catalyzed.

Yeah, 20 years later, there's brilliance.

Yeah, occasionally you put like two or five or 10 great minds together

and there's leaps, you know, and there's exceptional things that happen.

And if those two people or five people never got together,

maybe that leap never happens.

Well, curious to see what the spawns 10 years down the road.

Hey Chad, thank you.

First of all, for putting together this fantastic event and for grabbing a few

minutes out of your busy day to have it.

No problem.

And, uh, I just want to say thank you to, to Catherine, Alex and Michelle

for just being exceptional at helping me put this thing together definitely

would never happen without the three of them and the people around them as well.