In acupuncture school we learn about the 10 questions. But really, the questions are endless. And we are given the image of the scholar/doctor who doesn't say much, just looks at the tongue, takes the pulse and then has everything she needs to treat the patient. But that image does not fit the clinical reality in which most of us find ourselves.

Learning to ask the right kinds of questions. Learning to listen into the places that are silent, or hidden, these are skills that require the honing of time and attention,

In this episode we discuss modern brain science, the verbal and non-verbal aspects of our brains, and how the body has its own multi-textured way of communicating that is often baffling to the voice in our heads that trying to make sense of things.

Listen in for a discussion on the use of words to get beyond words. 

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

Line 17 from the.day, Jean says something to the effect that the

leader that governs best is invisible.

When things happen, the people say we did it ourselves in similar fashion

in today's podcast conversation.

Our guests said our work is to allow our patients to be able to hear what's

going on inside of themselves without imposing our ideas or structures.

Do we trust our patients to really have the answers to their problems?

It's a good question.

Most of modern medicine holds the body to be untrustworthy and most of

us well, we spend our days helping people whose body apparently has failed

dysfunction or mutiny against them.

What are your thoughts and beliefs about the trustworthiness of the body?

It's a helpful question to keep in mind as we get into today's conversation.

Hi, I'm Michael max, and this is Sheila.

Welcome to the anniversary show celebrating one year of the podcast.

And just a few minutes, we're going to get into a fantastic discussion on

how we communicate with our patients.

We're going to look into how to dialogue with the body itself by

using words to get around words.

It doesn't, that just sounds delicious, really Chinese medicine.

But first I got a few things I want to say.

I want to start with thanking you, you, the listeners as a podcasting pal of

mine and Taiwan pointed out some time ago, when you begin a podcast, all you

have is your integrity and no audience.

Wow.

What a difference a year makes.

I want to also thank the sponsors who make the show possible.

The guests who bring you the amazing stories and learning and

teaching that you get from this.

And especially, I want to thank our patients because without our patient.

Without the motivation to do the work that we do.

Well, we wouldn't be doing this stuff and you wouldn't be listening to this podcast.

I have thoroughly enjoyed all the conversations over the past

year, and I've learned something from each one of them still.

There's a few that are my favorites as they moved me in some kind of a deep way.

First one is the one I did way back at the beginning with Debra bats on treating

back pain during pregnancy fantastic show about how we can help and serve

women where Western medicine basically fails them back pain during pregnancy.

Yeah.

Debra Betts is the show to listen to the recent one was Sabina Williams

on chapter five of the, and about the resident manifestations, a union yarn.

Oh man.

That was a great conversation.

And that book is pure poetry.

Fantastic.

You want to check that out special?

Thanks to Sandy camper and Catherine Numeroff ski.

Talking to them about guash has changed my practice because after

speaking with them, I'm not using this stuff on a regular basis.

It's made a big difference to my patients.

That's a show that if you don't know much about guash out or you're

not using it, you're gonna want to check it out, hanging out with Jason

Robertson and talking about Dr.

Wong and channel, how patient, well, that show took me back to when

we were both hanging in Beijing.

That's a fun one to listen to, and you're going to learn some great

things about channel palpation.

And then there's the show at the beginning of the year, talking

with Andy Ellis about herbs.

Hey, thanks to Andy for that suggestion to go study.

Some Chinese and Taiwan was for years well spat and finally check out the

show of Toby dailies on som acupuncture, that interview and his article over

in the journal of Chinese medicine.

It got me so fired up.

I'm actively studying this method, right?

There are 47 episodes out there right now.

So if you're fairly new to qiological, well, get busy, plenty of clinically

useful material for your hair.

A couple of housekeeping things before we get into today's conversation.

First, you might've noticed the lead into the show's different

as we move into the next year.

I'm dropping the intro that you're probably used to hearing.

In fact, you're probably sick of hearing.

I figured that people who find their way to the podcast, you

know what you're looking for.

You don't need an introduction.

And for the folks that are new to the show, well, you'll find

out soon enough what it's about.

So as we go forward, we're going to be jumping into the meat of

the conversation much sooner.

Hello, geological listeners.

This is Josephine Spilker.

I've been on a journey with Chinese medicine for over 30 years.

Now, since we're here in a show about communication, I want to share that.

One of the main ways I like to communicate is to questions.

I love questions.

They open us up to new places and feelings.

They can provoke insight and lead to all kinds of creativity.

So let's consider this question today.

What do you think is the most important ingredient in any prescription?

Whether it be an herbal prescription and acupuncture.

Well, let's down recommendation.

I'll be back a little later in the show to share some thoughts on this Sydney.

Hey everybody.

Welcome to this special anniversary edition of qiological.

My guest today is NIC pole.

He's one of qiological listeners who responded to the recent invitation

to join me here on the show.

Wow.

It's hard to believe a whole year has gone by already.

And here we are at show number 47.

You know what that tells me?

It tells me there's lots of really interesting people to talk to about

Chinese medicine in our field.

And it tells me that we not only have a rich tradition.

We have a vital living medicine here in the.

I am particularly interested in is sitting down with Nick today for this

discussion, because he has a deep interest in how we use words enough, so that he

wrote a book, words that touch today.

We're going to explore how we connect with our patients and how we can go

far beyond the usual 10 questions.

So as to engage with the deeper structures and resources of our patients

that lives in the body, Nick, welcome

to qiological.

Hi, Michael, and thank you very much for having me on your anniversary

show and congratulations, indeed, such a fantastically interesting bunch

of people that you've got together.

Okay.

Oh man.

Well, we just

have interesting people in our field.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, I'm curious.

How did you find out about qiological?

What, uh, just what got you

clued in?

I can't remember it just, you know, things come to you on the internet

when they're supposed to come.

I guess

it's so true.

Isn't it?

Oh my goodness.

Well, Hey Nick, I'd like to start a bit with your background and what got

you interested in the use of language

as part of the healing process?

Oh, well, um, well narrative is a, is a subject in itself.

We'll do we believe the stories we tell about ourselves and do they really matter?

Oh, if you want a story and a.

Publishers like stories, especially if you got just published a book I,

something which does feel true in a, in a bodily sense for me, this getting

interested in language goes back to me and my relationship with my dad.

My dad was an academic.

Um, he spent a lot of time writing books, not that much time as, as most dads of his

generation with, uh, in, in being a dad.

But the way he did show his feelings for us and the way he felt, you know,

seemed to come alive as a dad was when he was reading a stories, quoting

Shakespeare, making language games, it was all about language and relationship.

Guess.

And I've told that story a few times, but it's still, you know,

I still feel that it is true.

It's genuine.

And so I started at a certain point, burned out in my normal professional

career as is often the case with people who get into complimentary therapy.

I got interested in acupuncture.

A friend of mine said, well, you're not looking great.

And then go and see an acupuncturist.

I went to someone who was practicing five element acupuncture.

I got intrigued.

She told me I would be good at doing something in this area.

And, uh, I, I'm sorry to say this, but I always knew I didn't

want to stick needles into.

And eventually I found shiatsu and I just felt my hands knew.

Something knew a lot that, that I, that my head did not Rand that my hands connected

to the heart in a way, which my head.

And so I got into shout, so, and I was just fascinated and I got a

really new, powerful sense of purpose.

I had very inspirational teachers, some Jade, Jade, winter, Jade.

Yeah.

Winter Jane was talking about Pauline's a Saki.

Uh, she came over to England each year and she was working then with cliff

Andrews, who was one of my teachers too.

And they, they both started doing stuff that, um, w w was really

interesting, really fascinating, you know, relating to energy, relating to

cheesy, relating to key as we call it.

In ways that I just, you know, I couldn't figure out what the hell were they doing?

How could they stay on this stuff?

How could

they, well, could they see it and how could they feel it?

You know, you're, you're over here on the shiatsu side of the house.

I love talking to you guys because I really do, because while many of us

acupuncturist work in a palpatory way.

Yeah.

You guys have these conversations with the body from such a deep sense of.

Place, I don't even know what you call that place.

Just deep, deep

sensing.

Well, I think that's not to digress too much from my narrative, but for a moment,

I think that's a very important point.

You don't even know what to call it.

And that's a central part of why I felt I needed to write the book to explain.

There are some good neurological reasons why, but just to come

back to the story for a moment.

Yeah.

So I got really into doing this yet.

So I, I got invited to start teaching at the college in London where I'd studied.

And then after a while something started sort of tapping me on the shoulder

and saying, This isn't this isn't the whole story, Nick, and, and I didn't

know quite what it was, but in order to study, to find a way to understand

what those great teachers were doing, I started learning NLP, which I'm pretty

sure you have some acquaintance with,

I have a little bit it's it's, it's, you know,

fairly in the culture these days.

I think a lot of people have been exposed to the structures and ways

that we talk really shape our reality.

And I heard, uh I've uh, first of all, I, I heard that it had something

to do with how the, how we are different senses relate to each other, which is

very much how palpation works, how, how, the way we touch or the way we

look consists of synesthesias Cineses eyes into, into our conscious awareness.

And, and I also heard there was this NLP conference coming up where

John Hicks, who was one of the.

Co-founders of, of the college of integrated Chinese

medicine here in London.

He studied with Jr.

Whereas Lee in depth.

And he, he wanted to find out how Worsley did his stuff.

Cause Worsley, uh, you know, didn't reveal all that much about his

kind of the magic of his mastery.

And so John hex started using NLP.

What's the word, you know, without actually telling him, I think

Worsley got wise to this and, uh, it didn't go too well, but.

Certainly that was an inspiration for me, that that one Korean culture is, could

be trying to, as they say, and not model how somebody uses their delivers the

magic and NLP, if you, if you remember started from that idea of modeling,

how great therapists work, Virginia sit here for its the founder of gestalt and

Milton Erickson, the random hypnotherapy and 20th century America, they were

modeling these, these people, uh, and finding out how they did what they did.

And out of that.

Called clean language, which is the model that I now use the structure

that I now use developed, um, that also out of the work of namely and

chiefly out of the work of, uh, a New Zealand psychologist called David Grove.

Anyway, coming back to my story, um, all of this exposure to seeing people

using language and using rapport and getting changed to happen without

even touching them, I thought, wow, this is equally amazing to the.

And probably if I'm honest, I I'd say I probably wanted to give up

shots and just do that, but something didn't allow that to happen.

And I'm so, so grateful that it didn't because now what I've got I

feel is really what works for me.

It's a combination of listening to language and listening to words,

I, sorry, listening to language and listening to the body, listening to the

cheek and noticing how they interact.

So fluently and fluidly and resonantly, and in a way, if you'd leave out the

language, you're leaving out a huge part of the person that you're working.

And I'll go into that a bit in a bit more detail, but, um, that's the story.

Does, does it make sense?

It has a happy ending.

Well, to me it totally makes sense.

One of the things that I love about acupuncture and, and, you know, and when

I say acupuncture, I'm really, I should probably say east Asian medicine, right?

I mean, this includes Twain OD this include shiatsu.

This includes all the things that we do that allow us to interact with

the, with the organism, let's say.

Yeah.

Right.

And one of the things I think is so fantastic is we can use our hands

or we can use our needles and people can have deep, deep experiences

that they might have after.

Months or even years of therapy.

Yeah.

Because something in the body just shifts and eventually it

will float up into consciousness.

Now the words can be really helpful and things like therapy can be helpful

because you're using words to fill in all these blank spaces that, you know,

people kind of get lost in whether that's a psychological kerfuffle

or, you know, some sort of, uh, you know, more physical kind of thing.

Of course we know from the work that we do, that the body and

the minor and integrated fabric, so we can really work anywhere.

And so I'm particularly interested in how we can use both the words we use and

the ways that we touch to, to help people get more information about themselves.

Cause it seems when people get more information about themselves, they

often just can sort things right out.

Yes.

To bring that information into consciousness does help in my opinion.

And also that other model, which quite a few charismatic acupuncture people have

used, you know, you don't need to talk to them, just put the needles in, just listen

to the pulses and the change will happen.

Um, that's, that's one way of thinking about it for me.

I think it's almost like a hair in a tortoise thing.

I prefer the tortoise approach.

I feel that if I can encourage the person I'm working with, uh, to develop

a more mindful relationship, first of all, with a symptom that the court

brought them along, secondly, with their whole mind, body or body mind,

they would call it, then they will be.

Developing, uh, a way of being with themselves and being in life that allows

these things to come into consciousness.

I think we put a lot of energy into keeping things away from our

consciousness and holding them down.

And that's all I say to people that my only marketing ploy these days is say,

I'm helping you to develop a more mind or relationship with your own body.

I don't say I'm going to help cure particular symptoms that, you know,

if that happens, that's great.

That's how it works for me.

Yeah.

I

w I want to dig into this because you just said that you'd like to

help people have a deeper relationship with the symptoms that they have.

And, and, and this rings a bell for me, this really, this, this,

this just goes all the way through.

And the reason that it does is because by and large people come to

us because they got a symptom and they want to get rid of the dang.

And yet I've seen so many times in my practice, this symptom

is some kind of messenger.

It's some kind of placeholder, it's some part of them, a very loyal part of them

that is not going away until a certain message gets heard as a practitioner.

At this point, I've even gotten to the point where if people have a certain

symptom, I want to make, I want to be darn sure that I don't take away something

that they actually need to listen to.

Yes.

I'd like to know more about how you help people deepen their relationship

with a symptom so that maybe it can get heard, or it can get resolved in

whatever way it needs to get resolved.

So that things actually do get resolved and not just silenced and

sort of kicked further down the road.

Yes.

I think that's a really important point about the power of, um, things

like acupuncture and herbal medicine.

You know, they can actually make changes, which are not necessarily appropriate

for the whole ecology of the person.

They can just flick a few switches and maybe rather like hypnotherapy

hypnotherapy is incredibly powerful, but it only works for a bit.

If the, if the ecology of the person doesn't really want that change.

So that's why I'm talking about the tortoise approach is if you, if you'd

go more slowly and you work with people who are genuinely willing to

explore this, then you, you tend to get change happening at exactly the

right pay pace or the whole system.

Um, So I usually begin just with a little kind of mindfulness,

meditative awareness process, asking a person just to sit quietly.

If they don't know anything about mindfulness, I just

talk them through it a bit.

If they do.

And most people do nowadays, it seems if they do, then they just enter

into that kind of state themselves.

And we just begin in our shared field of togetherness to use some very,

very simple questions, to help them explore the sense of the symptom

and what it might be telling them or where else it might be leading them.

And so on very rapidly in those cases, the body mind just loves it.

It just says, wow, somebody is listening to me at last and it begins

to unfold in its own non-verbal way.

The kind of links and connections that we need to become aware of.

If we want to work with this, then at a certain point, I just ask

people, would you like to lay down?

Now we can explore this more with the shiatsu and, um, energy work and we

can carry on talking, or the person can just drift off into some other zone, or

indeed I, as I work and drift off into some other zone non-cognitive zone.

And by the end of all that, um, I, you know, people find that the

changes that have happened are, are the right changes and they're not

too fast and they're not too slow.

Seems to be the way that it works well for me.

Yeah.

Can you give us an example

of that?

Um, an example of the,

like, like, like some of the questions, I mean, you know, in,

in Chinese medicine school, we learned these 10 questions that we're supposed

to ask about this and that, and, and they're helpful, but it sounds like you're

doing a whole other line of questioning.

Absolutely.

And I, I just wanted to emphasize at the beginning here that the diet, you know,

the diagnostic questions, the health history questions, that's another matter.

And that's really important.

I'm not saying I don't ask those.

And obviously, you know, have you seen your, your medical practitioner

and those important questions?

Um, I'm not getting rid of them.

I'm just, once we get through that, we get into this place where the mind

and the body can start connecting.

And if I could.

Perhaps this one bit of theory.

I I've got a little case study.

I can show you here, but there's a chapter in my book devoted to the

work of a very brilliant British psychiatrist called, uh, Ian McGilchrist.

He spent 20 years on a book called the master and his Emissary and

essentially, sorry, the master and master and his Emissary.

Yeah.

Uh, and that's a metaphor for the relationship between the right side of

the brain and the left side of the brain.

And almost single-handedly, he has reclaimed this fascinating subject in, um,

for neuroscience because it was beginning to be ignored by neuroscientists, brought

it back to the center of attention.

Why on earth have we, and all animals evolved with a brain that

is split into two separate heart.

And I'm not going to go into detail.

You can see plenty on, on the web about his approach, but for me, it was

a real, uh, insight into what we're really doing in, in mind-body therapy.

What we're really doing when we're trying to communicate with key with key.

And the bottom line is simply this, that for most people, the left hemisphere

is the one that works with language.

That's where the language centers are in the terms of content.

The left hemisphere is the side that loves to label things, to give things

names, to put things into categories.

It has interesting tendencies and predispositions that it's,

it is a bit like a manager.

It doesn't, you know, and it loves to think it knows what's going on.

Exactly.

And, and that's the, that's the Emissary part.

Interestingly for us, it is.

Way of thinking about the body is as a machine made up of separate parts, which

when they go wrong, need to be fixed.

And I think that's how most of our clients usually come in at the beginning

that they're in their managerial mind.

There they've got something that's gone wrong in the body.

They're probably even annoyed with it by now and fed up and frustrated.

And so Paige, why they're in

our office

and that very, very left hemisphere approach is, is dominant.

And, and it is usually dominant in our daily life.

It's the manager that gets us through our day everyday life, the right hemisphere.

On the other hand, that's an interesting expression.

Isn't it?

. The one, which is much more intimately connected with the body in the sense of

the feelings that come up from inside us, from the guts, from the heart, from that

kind of felt sense that they talk about in focusing come up into conscious awareness.

They come into the right side of the brain.

That's the right side.

That is much better equipped to sense and interpret the somatic

information, the emotional information that's coming at us all the time.

And of course, between these two sides of the brain, the neuroscience

geeks in the audience will know.

We have the thing called the Corpus callosum, which is nerve nerve

neurons that connect the two sides, but actually a lot of the neuronal

activity in the Corpus callosum.

Is, um, inhibitory it's like the left side is actually using the bridge to

actually inhibit signals coming across from the right side, vice versa.

Sometimes it's like each side has to be doing its own thing.

And at the same time somehow sampling something of what's going on in the other

side.

Oh my God.

It sounds like the American political situation.

I'm sorry.

It just sounds so much like that, which is one why I love Chinese medicine because

Chinese medicine has this metaphor of the human body with all its organs,

as you know, as a governmental system.

Why do we talk about right-wing and left-wing in politics, you

know, it's interesting and it's.

So that's, that's, that's the bottom line in what makes this work for me,

knowing that that's how our brains work and that the right side is always trying

to present information to the left.

And the left is always kind of trying to inhibit it because anything that's new

that the right side is the mindful side.

The right side is the side that's in the moment that's aware of

everything that's going on.

That peripheral vision that you were talking about before we started things

that pop into the peripheral vision are coming in through the right side.

And then the left side is often saying, well, if it hasn't got

a name, if it isn't in one of my categories, I don't recognize it.

It's not happening.

And even

might be dangerous.

So denial, I guess, lives on the left side of the brain.

And we all have to do a bit of denial to get through the working day, but some

people seem to be really good at it.

Anyway.

So does that make sense as a, as a very, very brief summary of

the neuro science part of this?

Yeah, yeah, totally.

Does I follow it?

Okay.

And what we're doing when we're asking these kinds of questions, clean language

questions, as it's called, we're using utterly simple questions, which the

left side has to recognize as valid because they're, first of all, their

language, second of all, they're simple and third, all them, they make sense,

but we're using questions to inquire about what is going on in the body.

In that nonverbal place.

So the left side of the brain gets a little confused at first sometime,

but it gradually has to admit that something is going on and you often

hear people saying things like, I don't know where this is coming from,

but I got a funny feeling down here.

We know that sort of thing.

So in a

way you're using language to, I don't know if the word trick is

right, but to somehow soothe the left side and calm it down just enough that

it's less inhibitory on the right side.

So more information from the right side

can come through.

Absolutely.

That's what we do in any kind of mindfulness process.

Mindfulness is about calming down the left side and.

Opening up access to the information that comes into the right side.

I mean, when somebody starts off from a meditation course or a mindfulness course,

it's the left side that makes a decision.

It's our left side says, oh boy, this is going to be great.

We're going to learn to concentrate better.

We're going to learn to men, men, he's got all this big to-do list and then it

has to actually do the mindfulness bit.

And it thinks, well, I can't do that.

I haven't been allowed to say anything for 30 seconds.

What's going on here.

Yeah.

That's, that's what mindfulness training is about.

Calming down on the left side.

And um, so on.

So I'll give you this little example here, cause you asked her some kind of

example, and this is with a woman who is, you know, pretty connected to her body.

So I wasn't struggling hard and she'd had a few sessions with me already.

She knew what was going on when I'm asking these questions, but she arrived and she

said, First thing I'm exhausted from work.

Okay.

So there's your problem.

I'm exhausted from work and I don't make any presuppositions the point about clean

languages, the therapist, the practitioner makes absolutely no presuppositions

at all about the meaning of that.

That's why it's called clean.

It's supposed to be keeping the clients, the patients space clean

of my staff, my agendas, my desire to help my, um, interpretations,

my diagnoses and all that stuff.

I just keep them all out because the questions are too simple to allow them in.

So my first question is, and where is that sense of exhausted

using her exact word exhausted?

So I'm exhausted from work.

And where is that sense of exhausted?

So that obviously is a direct invitation to, to get some somatic information.

Uh, probably she might say, well, it's in my head, but anyway, that's my question.

Where is exhausted.

And her answer is it feels very tight across here and she just is

across the front of her abdomen.

So she's already into feeling, uh, not that many, you know, you might

find patients, aren't some patients aren't getting into that so quickly,

but she's certainly when I asked her, she becomes aware that it's

very tight across the abdomen.

My next question is just to gather more information.

And is there anything else about really tight across there?

And then she says something interesting.

I really want to do a good job.

I really want to please.

I really want to please them, which is not somatic information.

It's something much deeper.

Isn't it that's like logical stuff.

Okay.

So I don't make any presuppositions again.

I just ask her.

And is there anything else about really want to please.

And she says, well, it gets tighter here.

She suddenly feels across her abdomen that is getting even tighter.

So that was the F the second bit she said was, I really want to please them.

And it gets tighter when she says that.

So now I go back to the first bit, she said, anything else about do a good job?

And then she says another interesting thing that comes from my heart.

Like she's suddenly aware that there's a feeling in our heart about doing a

good job and the way she said it sounded like it was quite a healthy thing.

Whereas it looked pretty much as though the tightening in the abdomen

and really wanting to please him.

Wasn't such a healthy thing.

So already it's kind of for one, one little thing, she said, we're getting

some differentiation, the actual movement of the, of the chairs looking different,

the locations in the body of these.

Uh, things are becoming clearer.

So next, my next question is I D you know, I decide let's go

with the pleased them thing.

Anything else about you really want to please them and tighter there?

So again, I'm using her exact words, which is very important.

And then social awareness, uh, attention comes back to the abdomen and she

says, it's like a layer around me.

Oh, now it's outside the body.

Yes,

exactly.

So I'm not, so I say, and what kind of layer around you?

And she says protection, and I say, and is there anything else about protection?

And she says, it comes out from here gesturing again

to the front of the abdomen.

It comes out from here.

So it's now she's really getting into some center.

Whatever it may be of something moving from, out, out from the body

and into the energy field around her.

And it's got something to do with protection.

And I just say, and then what happens?

And she says, it literally takes a lot out of me.

It's draining me.

And that's really interesting.

She's aware that there's this something moving out from the abdomen

and that it's taking something out of her and it's draining her.

So that really does seem to start linking back into first thing about I'm exhausted.

And when I say, and when it's draining you, what would you like to have happen?

Now?

That's a different kind of clean language question.

That's switching, asking, inviting the patient to, um, switch into, well,

what would you like to get from this?

Uh, under the question we use in clean languages.

What would you like to have happen?

So on when it's draining you, what would you like to have happen?

And she said to know better how to look after myself, which is pretty sensible.

And then I asked him, how would that be?

And she said that she didn't S uh, go on about how to look after herself.

She just said, when I said, how would that be?

She said, oh, it's relaxing.

That tight place here is.

In other words, her abdomen was agreeing with her.

She was immediately feeling if that, if she could know better

how to look after herself or abdomen saying, yeah, yeah, please.

That would be a very good idea.

And I'll just relax here a bit, just to show you, I agree with you.

So the body is talking back to her now, and that's, you know,

very, only a few minutes of work there, but the, she is moving.

She has conscious awareness.

She's actually chosen her own kind of outcome here.

It's not me telling her she needs to do.

All right.

So now it's not the therapist saying, Hey, you need to, you need

to take a break, you need a vacation.

Yeah.

And then she can lie down and we can begin the, sort of the energy work, the

Meridian work and carry on, exploring it sometimes with words or, or not.

It's very much what the, what the client or the patient wants.

But at the end, at the end of the session, you've got this, the outcome that she

said, you know, you can check in again.

Um, you know, you were talking before about taking more care of yourself,

any ideas that came to you during this session about how you might do that.

So they go out with, with something to do something that they've

chosen, something that's naturally arisen organically from them.

And, uh, I think that's a pretty good process myself.

Yeah.

So I've noticed a couple things about this.

First of all, you, you've clearly been doing this for awhile and you're skilled

at it because just following your voice.

I'm like already half in trance, right?

A little Milton Erickson.

He there.

All right.

Yeah.

So I mean, some of it, some of it is our ability to focus, our

ability to be present to the other person, somewhat present to ourself.

I'm curious to know how you kind of track what's going on in all

of this, because it, as you went into this and you're saying, yes,

these are very simple questions.

You started going into it and I'm already like, golly, you're in this deep place.

And how do you, how do you know what's up and what's down.

Does that question make sense?

It's really interesting because what we're looking at and in clean

language is the sort of embodied metaphor.

So if you say, how do you know what's up and what's down.

The year already, you have to pay attention to language in that level

of detail, we use up to mean things which are generally positive when

I'm feeling, oh, I'm feeling good.

Uh, we use downs main things in the generally negative and just paying

minute attention to the words that people use and being really curious

about them and taking them literally, and sort of gently and respectfully

asking permission of the left hemisphere.

Could we find out a little more about what you just said?

That's the intention, that's the feeling behind these kinds of questions on the

left hemisphere will say, well, I know what I just said is what I just said, and

I need to go any deeper into it because that's where the left hemisphere lives.

It lives in virtual world of language.

It doesn't, it's like the language doesn't have to connect to anything real in the

left hemisphere, but we're inviting it.

Get into the body through via the right atmosphere.

That's what we're doing.

Well, I've

noticed too, in the way that you were doing this, and I've read

some of your book as well, that you often will link things together with the

word and, and something I've noticed.

This is just in my own practice.

And this has just come about because you know, I sit with people

every day and ask them questions.

Sometimes I will find myself saying something and you know,

they'll say something and I'll go.

But, and then, and then I catch myself, I stop and I go, oh, actually

it's not a, but it's an aunt.

And then I'll ask them some kind of a question.

I've noticed this for myself that, but really we'll stop something.

And, and kind of invites a little more information to come out.

Well,

the, they mean different things obviously, and also where the right

brain, uh, comes into to the understanding of language is in the sounds in, in

the, the way that the sounds, the vowels and the consonants, the rhythm,

the pace, the tone, the emotion in the language, the way that all these

things register in the patient's voice or in my voice, those are appreciated

by the right brain, not the lamb.

So all that aspect of language is also there, but it's re it's the right brain.

That's tuning into that.

So literally, but it begins with the continent.

That's.

That's a hard one, a noise to the ear and is very soft and connecting kind of word.

Yeah, you can, you

can just feel it emotionally.

Can't share.

Yeah.

Okay.

I got it.

I

feel that.

And there's something you said in our email conversation before they're setting

up this interview, you said sometimes I use just a few needles to quote, set

the change that already rippled through the room during the quote interview.

I just thought that was, that was lovely.

That's exactly how I think about how I use yet too, that I'm trying to get the

change to ripple through the person's body, through their mind, through the room

as you so accurately point out that it ripples through the whole field between

the two of us it's registered in my body.

And then the, you know, well, would you like to lay down and that's set to that,

let's allow that change to make its way through the whole mind body system.

Yeah.

I, you know, it doesn't happen in every interaction I have with patients,

but it happens, it happens often enough and it is a palpable sense.

I mean, something really ripples through the room.

Something will come out, usually the patient's mouth.

Sometimes I say it and I feel it, but often the patient says something

and it just about knocks me over.

Yeah.

And sometimes they will catch it as they say it, but more often they will not.

And so I, because I caught it, I simply feed it back to them just as a way of

double checking that I heard it correctly.

And.

When they hear it coming back to them, they go, yes, that's right.

And then often they'll say, how did you know?

Right.

How did you know?

And, and I'm thinking to myself, because you just told me, and sometimes I'll tell

them that it's like, how did you know?

Well, you just told me, and they'll be quite shocked by that.

And there's a good neurological reason for that, which is simply

the part of the brain on the left.

And the left hemisphere that is in charge of speaking is separate from

the part, which is also in the left hemisphere, which is in charge of hearing.

So when we're speaking, we're not necessarily hearing ourselves and

that's obviously you're, you're doing it really effectively in your way.

And the clean language questions are designed to do it by, by,

um, specifically using the exact words that the client has used.

Putting them back in these very simple questions.

So it's not really the questions themselves that doing the work.

It's, it's the words, hearing your words back, you, you know, in a way you don't

ask any questions, you could just say the words back with your eyebrows slightly

higher, and it would have the same effect.

I recently read a fantastic book on negotiation and it's written

by an ex FBI hostage negotiator.

I've heard of this.

Someone

else recommended.

Yeah.

This guy, his name is Chris Voss.

Hey, you acupuncturists listening to this.

Chris Voss never split the difference.

If you want to run a business, any business, if you want to get

along better with your spouse.

This book is fantastic.

When I first heard the words, FBI hostage, negotiator, I thought, oh, this

is a really like, you know, gloves off, you know, hard knuckled negotiation.

No.

Super soft based on the work of Carl Rogers, it's based on empathy, it's

based on connection because when you're negotiating with somebody,

you don't want to fight them.

You want to connect with them.

And so one of the things he talks about in doing negotiations at me,

if someone says something and you'd like more information you do exactly

that you just take the last few words.

They said, ideally using their words and you just feed it back and then you shut

the hell up and you let the silence work.

And that is an invitation to go in and bring something else out.

And, and you can use this in negotiations for like, you

know, the lease on your office.

Or you can use this in sitting with a patient, not, not to manipulate

them into something, but to invite them into a deeper experience.

Of their own experience.

And so you can better understand them.

Absolutely.

And one way to think about it, uh, comes from another, I'm a researcher.

This is Alan Shaw.

Who's based in California, spent many years thinking from a

psychotherapy he's a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and his background,

but he did a lot of research on this essential question in psychotherapy.

Is it just the language or what else is going on?

And, um, brilliantly has come up, I guess, the sound bite really that sums

it all up is the way he puts it is that while our left brains of two people

in the room are having a conversation verbally, the right brains of these

same two people are having another conversation, a different conversation.

And that's the way I think about it.

I'm using the clean language questions to bring some, um, sense of both these

sides of the brain can be listening to the same conversation, but at the same

time, there are things which I'm aware that I'm doing, especially when I'm

actually doing the hands-on work that will never come into my cognitive awareness.

And that there's just this really deep conversation going on between

my hands, my embodied sense of self and the person's energy and body.

And it's just about listening to that and allowing it to happen and

keeping the left brain occupied with other things, uh, that I think that's

a really important model to have in mind when you're, you know, you're,

you're doing your acupuncture into.

And this person's body is trying to speak to you.

They, you know, don't ignore the things that happen.

I sometimes find a person's talking about the issue and their hand goes

and points, literally points to a certain acupuncture point, say on their

leg or on their shoulder, they aren't even aware that they're doing it.

But the body is almost as if the body knows that I know about points.

I know about radians.

And it's just trying to tell me, it's trying to short circuit

the left brain at the time.

Tell me, look, this is what I need.

Hi, Josephine here again.

I hope you've been enjoying this episode and considering my question.

What is the most important ingredient in any prescription?

You might think that what I'm about to say is completely counter to

all you've learned about medicine.

But in my experience with myself, my clients and my students, this

is the one thing that is the most true, the most important ingredient

in any prescription is you, I don't mean you the ego or the persona.

You the acupuncturist.

No.

I mean you, the living, breathing, sensing, being who has feelings,

perceptions, and thoughts arising in every moment, when you are listening

to a person's pulse, looking at their tongue or hearing them speak, what

is arising inside, you will be the most important guide for creating a

powerful prescription of any kind, no matter where you are in your journey.

Now, I wonder if you feel connected to your own, knowing to your own power as

a practitioner, what might you need now to feel more connected, more confident,

more strong in your own practice.

I'd love it.

If you talk to them, Email me that Josephine Edison's presence.com

or go to essence presence.com.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Now let's listen to the rest of today's conversation.

I

love this idea that when we're sitting in the room with a

client or a patient, the left sides of our brain are having a conversation.

The right sides of our brain are having a conversation that,

that those are both going on.

They're going on in very different realms.

I am curious to know what you do for yourself when you're working to help

quiet the left a bit so that you can dip into what's coming up from the

right, even if you will never know completely cognitively what's going on.

How do you quiet the left down and then kind of know that you're plugged in.

I like, I mean, there's so many ways to talk about this.

The guy that does it for me is, uh, the, the, the Zen master

who wrote, or he, he, uh,

oh, Roche, uh, yeah, Suzuki

Roshi.

He wrote a book, you know, it was, it was a recorded lectures,

actually know some of his students and he who put it all together.

And he talked about beginner's mind and expert's mind that really

famous quote in the beginner's mind.

There are only many possibilities in the expert's mind.

There are a few, and I don't think that means that the expert's mind is bad.

And the beginning of mine is good.

It means we need to recognize these two sides of ourselves.

And once you put it together with that neuro neurologic.

Staff about right hemisphere left hemisphere, UC.

Oh yes.

The expert mine is the left hemisphere that knows and categorizes and

has choices to make decisions, to make and, um, outcomes to secure.

And so on treatment plans to fulfill boxes, to tick that's the left

hemisphere, that's the expert mind, and it needs to be able to do its thing.

Then there's the beginner's mind, which as, as he says, I've got the quote here.

I think the practice of Zen he says is beginner's mind.

That's it.

In a nutshell, the whole practice of Zen is beginner's mind empty

free of the habits of the expert.

Ready to accept, to doubt, open to all possibilities.

And that's that's the mind I.

I just do a little deal with myself every time I sit down next to

the client, uh, ready to start.

So she actually, that this is a beginner's mind time now, please.

And on the emptiness, you know, in, um, in Zen philosophy, the whole idea of

emptiness is the place to come from that emptiness, from which everything arises.

That's, that's it, you know, just be empty and allow things to arise and keep that

expert mind as the, as the loyal servant.

That that's what the title of in the Gilchrist book, the master and his

Emissary means it's like the master is beginner's mind the industry that

is like the Chamberlain, the prime minister, the, the loyal assistant.

So we're in a way we're talking heart and

pericardium functions here

very much, I think.

Yes.

The way the heart and the brain talk to each other, or don't.

And it says at the beginning of home that he's, he's really

troubled because his father's just been, just died very suddenly.

Nobody knows how or why.

So he's traumatized.

Meanwhile, his uncle is married his mother within a few months and they're having

a huge party to celebrate only a few months after his father has been buried.

He's the only one in the whole court who, who finds this odd and he says, break,

break my heart for, I must hold my tongue.

And it's very embodied.

Isn't it?

It's like his tongue can't actually speak the truth.

And so his heart breaks that.

So Chinese medicine isn't

man, isn't it though.

Well, and it's a source of so much trauma when you think.

And the source of the so-called talking cure.

You know, the idea that when we begin to speak, when the tongue begins to

move and what's in the heart can be expressed and things begin to heal, or

at least to be heard well, and isn't it

I'm and I'm going to express my, uh, loss of some Chinese

medicine basics here, but isn't the tongue related to the heart.

It doesn't the heart open to the tongue.

I think we have that in Chinese medicine.

Don't wait.

Yeah, it is.

I love it.

When you see these absolute exact parallels between Western culture and

Asian culture, um, that's one of them and of course in Shakespeare's day, unlike

now, the, the language was very embodied.

Well

then again, we got Shakespeare.

I mean, maybe the language was embodied, maybe it wasn't, but you

got someone like Shakespeare, that guy knows how to use some language.

Yes.

And in a very embodied,

well, I realize I might need to go, go reads me

a little more Shakespeare, her,

oh shit.

I could go.

I could go on with that one.

That's the great thing about that quote, that ham it's actually

talking to his body to his heart.

And the sense that you can communicate with your body of course, is what's coming

back now in 90 illness in mindfulness.

We bring our attention to the body.

We listen to the body, we wait for some response to come in

certain kinds of mindfulness.

And I just think it's wonderful that the times that we are living in, honestly,

the way that Eastern Western things.

Not just Eastern and Western things, um, in terms of complementary stuff,

but the way that science and the so-called wisdom traditions are coming

together, the mindfulness is a wonderful example of that because mindfulness

would not be such a big thing as it is right now, if it weren't for the

fact that academic research extremely expensive double-blind clinical

testing has been done online on this.

And it was when those tests showed that it was as effective, if not more effective

than antidepressants for depression.

That's when the boom in academic studies of mindfulness began, there

was an exponential growth in papers written about it from that time on.

So these, the coming together of these things is I think the, this

is the times that we're living

in, in some ways we're so lucky to be living in this.

Yeah.

Hey, I want to, I want to get back to something that you said earlier in the

show that really caught my attention and, and I, and I think it's germane

to the conversation at this point.

You said that there are neurological reasons for not knowing

something when we're working.

Do you remember saying

that?

Yes.

Yes.

That's all.

I was what I meant about the left brain.

Not wanting.

And, and for not being able to give a name to something, I think is

what you said, something like that.

So w

I have a specific question about that.

And the question is this, because the left side, and I'm speaking here

of me and my experience, maybe the listeners have this experience too.

There is the left side that wants to make the diagnosis.

There's the left side that, you know, wants to do something.

Cause you know, I'm being paid to do something.

And then there's just, you know, my own ego that feels like I want to make

sure that I'm giving money's worth.

And at the same time, there's a part of me that does trust the piece that I don't

know, but often I don't really trust how can I, and if the listeners have this

issue to quiet that left-brain down, just another turn or two on the volume dial.

Hm.

Well, how you do that, I think is just do some mindfulness,

whatever works for you.

I don't mean you have to sit and meditate, but bring your attention to

your body in a mindful way that doesn't mean go to the gym and pump weights.

It means bringing your attention to your body in a mindful way.

I mean, I can walk my dog in a mindless way when I'm just taking her around the

block, because I've got to walk the dog or I can take my dog for a walk in a

mindful way, in which case, instead of pulling her along on the lead, uh, because

she's smaller than me and I can do that.

I'm listening to that lead that connection between the two of

us and allowing it to be slack.

I'm allowing her to tell me where she wants to go, as well as me telling her

I'm feeling my feet on the pavement.

I'm becoming more aware of the impatient thoughts in my mind,

I'm coming back to my breathing.

I'm aware that we are two mammals together, engaged in an enterprise

walking and all these things.

That's all there is to it.

I think.

So you take it, you

take yourself back into your physiologic, kinesthetic being, I, I, I,

I mean, here's my left mind again, which loves to think it's running the show.

It's usually wrong.

It's often wrong, but it likes to think it's running the show.

Are there any clean questions I could use on myself?

To quiet my left side down.

Well,

we can experiment.

Now, if you like with that, would you, would you like to try that?

Okay.

Should I buckle up?

But the point is, is just an exploration.

There's we're not trying to make a change.

That's we're just exploring something.

We're just exploring something.

And that is a really important attitude to have in mind, I think, in any therapeutic

work, because if you already think, well, I've got to make a change for this person.

You're setting yourself up in an unnecessary way, the Wu

way that the non-doing doesn't really have a chance to get in.

Yeah, this

is such a contradiction with our work because you know, people come

in because they want us to do something.

People do have something they want to get rid of our contract with someone

is I'm going to help you get rid of the thing you don't want or help you get the

thing you don't have that you do want.

Yeah.

So, so here we are being these east Asian medicine practitioners

putting that over on the side and saying, we'll see what happens.

Yeah.

So, well, how would you, would you frame that?

What, what, what's the, how would you describe this relationship you have with

the, the left hemispheres way of thinking?

Oh, wow.

Um,

as we go here.

Yeah.

Okay.

Here we go.

And the contract is also important that we need to just agree that maybe

we've got five minutes to explore this.

You know, we're not going to do a whole psychotherapy session.

I'm not a psychotherapist,

but yeah, let's take, let's take five

to

seven minutes, sir.

Okay.

Five to seven.

And the other part of the contract, like was that, is that your as much

in charge of this process as me, we're in it together, I'm not an expert in

any sense, except in the use of the language or the expert, and we're

trying to tap into your expertise.

Okay.

So when you were asking me about my leg, the left side of my brain,

it's the part that really likes to think it knows what's going on and

it likes to feel proud of itself.

It really likes to think it knows what's going on and it

really likes to feel proud of it.

So.

So there's two things which, which of those draws you the most

knows what's going on or proud of?

It's

it's the, it likes to know what's going on.

Likes knew what's going on.

And is there anything else about it likes to know what's going on?

Well, I, I have a certain family member that is so keen

on always knowing what's going on.

This is an influential person in my life and this person, many times drives me

bat shit crazy because they're always so concerned with knowing that they know.

And there's a part of me that has spent much of my life hanging

out more on that right side.

Okay.

With not knowing, but it, is it a butt or is it an and, and.

There's still the left side, sort of tapping its foot going, come on.

When you, when you're going to get this knowing down, so you got it

down, then you can feel comfort.

Oh, then you can feel comfortable.

Then you can feel secure.

It's connected to security and comfort.

Knowing is connected to security and comfort

and listeners at home.

You can hear how Michael is already making his own connections here.

Um, exactly.

You you're just running with the ball here.

It's connected to security and comfort.

And is there anything else about security and comfort when this, uh,

voice of this family member that can drive you batshit crazy, finds it so

important, uh, to know what they know.

Is there anything else about security and comfort?

Yeah.

When I think about this in the context of working as an

acupuncturist, oh boy, here we go.

I actually am putting my patients in the position of that particular family man.

In that I think they're wanting to make sure that I know what I'm doing

and that I know what's going on for them, and I know how I'm going to be

able to help them with their problem.

Um, and so a good question here then would be when you're you notice

that you're putting your patients in the position of that particularly

particular family member, what would you like to have happened?

Yeah,

well, I'd like to recognize that, so I don't do

it cause it's not very helpful.

Right.

Because then I'm not interacting with my patient.

I'm interacting with my idea of who this family member is.

And

how would that be to recognize that, oh,

it'd be super helpful.

I could just like recognize that and go, oh yeah, there, there, there,

this account and just drop it, you know, like any mindful practice.

Oh yeah, there it is again.

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah, back to where we were.

And

w what, how, what difference would that make for your patient?

Well,

I'm not sure what difference it would make for the patient, but it,

the difference that it would make is that I'm actually listening to them and

not, not listening to some projection of this family member that I have in my own

mind.

Okay.

And is that a good place to finish?

Oh yeah.

That's, that's great.

That's super helpful.

That's something I can use it, you know, when I go to work this afternoon and

help me stay, it'll help me stay more present to the person in front of me.

It

leads beautifully into the other little quote that I had from, from

Shunryu Suzuki, which is when you listen to someone, forget what you

have in your mind, and just listen.

If your mind is empty, it's ready for anything and open to every.

Yeah, that's, that's such a, you know, the way you came to that

little conclusion there is, is a perfect example of that, I think.

Yeah.

That's,

that's lovely.

Thank you.

I a Cuban

boy.

Well, this is probably a pretty good place

to wind this conversation down.

Is there, is there a, what in the spirits of the conversation, is

there anything else that you'd like to share before we wind it down?

Um,

yeah, I just, what, I would also want to talk about one other person who

really inspires me in this whole approach.

And I think it's really important to remember when we're learning to stick

our thumbs into points or needles into points that in the, in the traditional.

The healing arts, we're part of a whole other bunch of arts

that you were supposed to learn.

You're supposed to learn martial arts or Tai-Chi calligraphy, poetry music, you

know, in traditional Asian approaches to being a well-rounded person.

And I get a lot of inspiration just from opening up to that.

And somebody who really does it for me again, is, is a Japanese,

uh, concert pianist called Mitsuko.

Uchida how we'll have

to put it on the show notes

page.

Yeah, she's one of the greatest, I think she must be in her late

sixties, early seventies now, I don't know, but she's one of the greatest

interprets of the Mozart music.

She came from Japan at a young age because she was something of a prodigy

to Vienna the absolute capital of Western classical music and, you know, develop.

Her career and became known.

And so on that I first came across there when I was reading a review and

the reviews said she doesn't get in the way of the composer's intention

or impose our own will on the music.

She doesn't show off her own style or virtuosity.

And then it said something that really rang a bell.

For me, she said, as a performer, she truly listens.

And I thought, yes, that's what she had too is we're performing as a performing

art in a way with an audience of one.

And it's all about listening.

And as a performer, she truly listens.

And by listening you imagine she allows you to hear more clearly what

Mozart was hearing inside his own head.

And I thought that was just beautiful.

That's what we want our patients to experience.

They want, we want them to hear what's going on inside of them.

Something we're telling them we're not trying to impose on them.

It just summed everything up for me.

And um, if, if that's a good point to leave it, then I'd like to leave

you with was that if you watch her on YouTube performing, which is easy to

do you see how incredibly embodied she is as a performer, she's tiny, but she

puts so much meaning, so much movement, so much facial expression into the

way these notes resonate through her.

It's extraordinary.

I do recommend it.

Yeah.

We'll

put that on the show notes.

I am looking forward to having a visual of a person who is both performing

through the process of listening.

Yeah, exactly.

That sounds great, Nick, thank you so much for joining me here.

It's this, uh, anniversary edition of qiological

congratulations again, and please keep going.