Dr. Wang Ju-Yi was ever curious about why some treatments worked and others did not. He deeply studied the classical literature along with his own clinical experience, and somewhere along the way started putting his hands on patients to simply see what the channels had to say. 

For those practitioners who find palpation to be a key part of their practice, the work of Dr. Wang opens a whole new way of interacting with patients. And for those who are interested in how to puzzle through confounding clinical cases, Dr. Wang has some ways of clarifying complex situations. 

Pull up a cup of tea and listen in to this conversation that gives you a personal view of Dr. Wang and his work through the eyes of his apprentice Jason Robertson, co-author of Applied Channel Theory in Chinese Medicine, Wang Ju-Yi’s Lectures on Channel Therapeutics.

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

The medicine of east Asia is based on a science that does not hold itself

separate from the phenomenon that it seeks to understand our medicine

did not grow out of Petri dish experimentation, or double-blind studies.

It arose from observing nature and our part.

Chinese medicine evolves, not from the examination of debt structures, but

rather from living systems with their complex mutually entangled interactions.

Welcome to qiological.

I'm Michael max, the host of this podcast that goes in depth on

issues, pertinent to practitioners and students of Chinese medicine.

Dialogue and discussion have always been elemental to Chinese medicine.

Listen into these conversations with experienced practitioners that go deep

into how this ancient medicine is alive and unfolding in the modern clinic.

My guest today is Jason Robertson.

Jason is an acupuncturist who lives in.

Seattle Washington, he's on the staff over at Seattle Institute at east Asian

medicine, I think is the name now.

And he is the author of a fantastic book on channel palpation and a channel theory.

These studied a long time with Dr.

Wan Julie, our show today.

Primarily around channel palpation and the work along JueYin Jason.

Welcome to qiological.

Hey, Michael.

Good to be here.

Thanks for having me on.

Good to hear your voice again.

You and I met right in the kind of formative era when I was first really

doing a lot of my research with Dr.

Wong and Beijing, and, uh, spent a lot of time together in Beijing.

You and I, and also you and Dr.

Wong.

And I spent a lot of.

Yeah.

Great to have you do the interview.

It's amazing.

Here we are years, decades, almost later, talking about Dr.

Wan, who unfortunately recently passed away.

I, you know, our time in Beijing, it was a lot of fun there in

the early part of the century.

Yeah.

We were there before the extra 12 subway lines were built and before microbreweries

and the Bhutanese, oh my God.

Microbreweries in the Hutong who would ever thought we'd see that.

Well, they happened.

And then recently they all got shut down.

So if things continue to evolve in that syncretic way that maybe.

Changes every two or three days.

It's so true.

You know, one of the things I love about your book, we'll get more into

it later, but you know, one of the things that's great about your book,

it's not just that it's full of great information, which it is, but you give

these glimpses, these snapshots of what Beijing was like back in those days.

Cause you know, you're, you know, you were just hanging, you know, and

sometimes you take a day off and go for a walk in the Hutong and you know,

that was always good for an advance.

You know, it was really that spirit of Dr.

Wong that, that got me in that frame of mind, because he was such an old

Beijing or himself that, uh, he got me interested in getting out into the

small alleys and walking around and the stories and the history of the city of

which, you know, he really was a part.

And as you might remember, even his, his grandfather had been an Imperial

guard with the Ching dynasty, you know, he was born and I think it

was called like elephant knows who Tom, I can't remember even the name.

I just remember.

Which is, you know, right in your shaoyang area in Beijing.

And yeah, so he, he just grew up steeped in that history of the city.

And so it was perfect to have him as a guide for Chinese medicine, but

also the history of that, of that city before it all started changing.

But when he was born, there was like 400,000 people.

What's the population.

He said 400,000, not even a million, not even a million, no.

And there was still a wall around the city.

The first string road was a wall, you know, an actual medieval wall.

That's unfathomable from the Beijing that you would see today.

Hey, for those listening actually connected to what we're saying right now.

And you would love this as well.

There's a book called midnight and peaking, and it's a

fascinating book about 1937.

There was this interest.

Crime committed a murder in Beijing.

And it was the very year Dr.

Wong was born and it was the very year Dr.

Wong, his family had to evacuate Beijing and it really brings to life

exactly what it was like in the city.

And in that really turbulent era at the end of the Republican era and the

beginning of the communist era, and then what it was like to be a foreigner there.

And I, I mean, it was really one of my favorite books in

the last couple of years.

And it was, it was so much at the time Dr.

Wong, you know, started in two.

So for those interested in history of Beijing, if we could spend the

whole time talking about that subject, but I highly recommend that book.

And if I got the name wrong, we can put it up on your podcast later.

You know what?

I will check it out and put it up on the show notes page, such as a page

Turner mystery, but a true story.

Yeah.

Anyway, that may not be what we're here to talk about.

We're here to talk about Dr.

Wong's work.

And I love hearing you talk about how part of what your study was with

him was getting out and getting a feel for things and feel for things

is a good way to put it, right?

Yeah, it is.

I mean, a little little play on words there.

Remind me again how you first met Dr.

Wong and how you ended up in Beijing.

Basically being his apprentice.

It began with me is this.

Of Chinese medicine at the American college of traditional

Chinese medicine in San Francisco.

I've been living, uh, as you live for some years, also in Taiwan and

I'd lived in Taiwan for six years.

Been studying Chinese there and went to the Taiyang school in

Taiyang to see if they would let foreigners, you know, study there.

And when I went there, when I was living in Taiwan, they said, no, you

know, you can come study all you want, but we're not giving you a degree.

So of all things, some of you listening may remember there were

a couple of years where AC TCM in San Francisco had a Chinese lady.

Program.

And so I found this program moved from Thai bay of all things to San Francisco

to study Chinese medicine and Chinese.

That's hilarious.

That was how I ended up back in the U S after living, you

know, for years in Taiwan.

And one of my teachers in that program, she was an old, uh, Beijing doctor.

She'd been in the U S for a while, but she'd studied at the Beijing.

Dr.

Wong graduated from as well first graduating.

First graduating class.

Yeah.

In 1962, he graduated and she probably graduated not too long

after probably the late sixties.

And she's like, oh, there's this guy speaking down at Santa Cruz.

He's down in Santa Cruz at what is it?

Five branches.

That was, that still is down there.

I think in Santa Cruz.

And she's like, you've got to go, he's speaking this weekend.

You've got to go hear him speak.

So this was in 1998.

I went down to Santa Cruz and saw Dr.

Wong speaking.

It was like one of those weekend classes you pay for.

And a couple of friends.

Who all studied together, all went down there, a guy named CT Holeman, but he's

written an interesting book recently about trauma and Chinese medicine.

Another bad.

In fact, he's, he's going to be on the show.

You listeners listen, NCT home and coming up real soon.

Well, he was there that first day I met Dr.

Wong.

And so it was another guy from Israel named I'm most Eve and the most

would be another really interesting guy to interview by the way he

works in cardiology and Israel.

Anyway, the three of us went down.

And we were like, whoa, this is fascinating.

And the thing that fascinated us and those of you who might've read Dr.

Wong's book, the thing that's fascinating about him is that he takes ideas from

Chinese medicine that we see maybe in the book or in other textbooks, or do you

hear your teachers say, and he just takes that idea and runs with it and deepens it.

And.

It's not like anything he says is completely never heard of new.

He takes things that were kind of gray and then clarifies them and deepens

them and connects them in a way.

So he had this great ability to take lots of complex ideas from different

parts of the history of Chinese medicine and kind of create a way of thinking.

So palpation is one of the big things we're talking about, but yeah.

One of his great gifts to Chinese medicine really was this way of seeing

that he brought to Chinese medicine.

It kind of flexible moving system that allows you to integrate new information

or, or deal with difficult cases.

And so that was the kind of thing he was talking about that day in Santa

Cruz is, you know, he began with the kind of famous lectures that I

think are a big part of the book.

He and I worked on the the six channel T transformation lectures that I'm sure

you've heard also Michael, from him.

You know, he talks about tying and talks about the nature of TaiYin and the nature

of the spleen, the nature of the lung.

And most importantly, how together the lung and spleen are kind of one system.

And so we were just blown away by that because, you know, we'd been talking about

the lung channel and the spleen channel as if there were separate discrete things.

And he was blinking those together into systems.

That's what really cooked me.

I didn't study with him, you know, right at that time, but I definitely met him.

We talked, we had a great time that weekend were there for two days.

And then I went back, graduated and actually moved to in Sichuan

province and studied there for a year.

Studying herbal medicine, went back to Kentucky where I'm from and practice

there for a couple of years, got married and my wife and I were like, all right,

let's, uh, let's get out of Kentucky and go somewhere else and see what's,

you know, just kind of shake it up.

And our first year of marriage and we picked Beijing kind

of out of a hat, really.

And as we were preparing to go there, I called that teacher again, doctor.

In San Francisco and said, Hey, that guy, Dr.

Wong, do you have his number?

And she's like, yeah, I got his number.

And so we, we got division and I didn't even contact him until we got.

You know, called up Dr.

Wong and his wife answered the phone.

Shermaul is she's called though.

You know, she said, yeah, now any shop there's like, yeah, there's

this kind of like fumbling.

And then you hear Dr.

Wong's voice, which was this kind of booming, deep voice.

He was a pretty big guy, like

I said, uh, you know, , you know, you don't remember me, but here I

am, this guy you met in Califor.

W, you know, and he's like, Aw, oh, you know, you always would pretend he

knew you, even if he couldn't remember you, because I think, you know, he

met so many foreigners in the decades.

He taught abroad as well as in China, I was still thinking

I would be looking up Dr.

One.

So that I could get his contacts to get some great people to study herbal medicine

with, which is what I've done in Chengdu.

And I kind of fancy that I'd be specializing in herbal medicine for

gynecology and knew that he had so many good contacts and he's like, well, come

to my clinic, you know, uh, on Thursday.

And he gave me the address and actually, no, what we did first was

he's like, look, meet me at home high.

And you remember how high?

Yeah.

Hello.

Hi.

What'd you go to like a tea house or a place to drink?

Well, the only thing, you know, I've been in Beijing at that

point for like two or three weeks.

I didn't know much.

The only thing I knew was a song tingling.

Huh?

Yeah.

Right.

The song family, the famous sisters, one who married Chiang

Kai-shek one who married Sonia sin.

Okay.

And the other who is some big official in a communist party, man.

Talk about family dynamics.

There's another great book by the way, that soon dynasty as O N G read it before

I went to Taiwan to totally set the stage.

Oh my God, what am I getting into?

Isn't that a great book by Sterling Seagrave song dynasty.

It's on the show notes page folks, if you want to get a little glimpse

of history, this one's great.

Yeah.

It's very readable full of all kinds of interesting gossip about

early 20th century and mid 20th century Chinese history, good books.

So we both were, and I was influenced on that, in that I remembered that I was

kind of still fascinated by that story.

So I was like, all right, so I'm tinglings house is near home.

And it's still preserved and you can still go into it.

It looks like a house frozen the 1980s.

And anyway, I was like, meet me in front of house.

I was standing in front of song Shandling's house.

Dr.

Wong pulls up in a little tiny white little boxy, 10 can car that he had.

And we went and had had noodles, noodles.

Perfect.

Of course we had noodles.

We had lots of new together and he's like, yeah, what are you here for?

I was like, well, I want to study gynecology.

And I'm interested in herbs.

He's like, oh, I know some people.

And he's like, well, but you could also just come to my

clinic, uh, you know, Thursday.

And then I was like, all right.

I figured that's, you know, a way to get in and get to know him and

maybe see what contacts he had.

I'll have to admit.

I wasn't necessarily interested in Dr.

Wong at that point.

But then, I mean, I liked him very much as a person and I love the

lectures he'd given, but I didn't know that what he had to give to you.

You didn't, you didn't know your destiny was looking in the face.

I didn't know it.

And, and so, uh, I went to the clinic and he had just retired like the year before.

So my timing was perfect and that, you know, just the year before he quit working

in, in very busy clinics and was kind of trying to figure out the next step.

So he was working in a private clinic of someone who knew.

And he had like four patients a day or morning or something.

And so we would see a patient and then he'd pull out this famous book

that said BG button on the front.

It just said notebook, you know, in Chinese, on the front, this

old brown book that, that has been secured by his wife now.

And he would open it up and start giving lectures from it.

And then I was like, whoa, this is really good.

And I started to, of course, write it down.

Then I started recording it and it was probably a few months into that

where I met you, Michael, through Andy.

And then that just set off a year there studying with Dr.

Wong, recording his lectures and then reaching out and contacting other,

uh, former teachers like , who was a teacher of mine in San Francisco.

And he's like, I was like, you've got to come study with this guy.

He then got groups of students from the United States to come.

And we would arrange entire two week courses where Dr.

Juan would speak all day.

I mean, he was really, I remember attending some of those.

I mean, I was there to study Chinese medicine, of course, primarily herbal,

but also looking for acupuncture.

And one of my great disappointments in studying acupuncture in a place

like Beijing was how much incredibly poor acupuncture I was running.

Some of it was, you know, it was just the fact that a lot of the

acupuncturists are forced to see so many people, but yeah, Dr.

Wong was, you know, that was one of his great background themes in his life

was that the, the state of acupuncture in China has fallen and the types of

diseases we think we can treat with acupuncture is become radically narrowed.

And, you know, since the Ming dynasty, he would say, and, you

know, he was a great believer in expanding the scope of acupuncture.

And he was a living proof that it worked too, of course, watching

his cases well, and he also would take more time with people.

It takes time to palpate.

You know, he would say that the reason he started palpating is because the tricks

or the points or the secret points or the extra points or the magic points that

teachers who had told him or other books would, would show him didn't work on.

And so what do you do when all the tricks and all the magic things

you learn in your classes or whatever you're doing, don't work.

You've got to have something to fall back on.

And that was where palpation began.

And that was probably the 1970s where he really got into distal

palpation below the elbows and knees.

And then from that started to kind of collect patterns in his mind of, you

know, when you start to find changes in this area on the lung channel,

it might be this type of dynamic.

And really what it was doing was again, back to kind of a way of

seeing, and I'm using the word seeing kind of broadly, not just with

your eyes, but with your mind, Dr.

Wong's way of seeing involved this dialogue with his hands and a dialogue

with his mind and the very careful interplay of questioning during

patient interviews, like you said, slowing down, but the things he

felt on the channels would totally inform the questions he was asking.

And so for those listening who are interested in this kind of work, the key

is that the palpation doesn't have to be some separate thing that you do that adds

another 20 minutes to your treatment.

What it is instead is very early while you're talking to patients, get them

lying down as quickly as you can.

And just start palpating the channels below the elbows and knees while

you're asking them how their week went.

And then you find something on the stomach channel and you ask about, you know,

how's their digestion, are you fine?

Something on the Sandel channel and you check the trapezius muscle up above.

This can be musculoskeletal.

This could be internal hard channel.

And I'll ask about dreams.

So watching Dr.

Wong he's like Merv Griffin, you know, he's like interviewing a guy, you know,

every patient, he would have him sit back.

He, in his case, they wouldn't be lying on 10.

He had that great big desk he'd have with a little thin like tissue paper papers

that they'd always write on prescriptions.

Surrounded by, you know, the acupuncture needles, you know, cotton balls

and, and, and, you know, you'd have everything there at his desk and the

patient would be sitting there and he'd be kind of kicked back, interviewing

them and then reaching forward and palpating while asking questions.

Yeah.

You know, it's so different.

So often.

Are thinking, oh, we have to get through this like set of 10 questions or whatever.

And we do that as if it was disconnected from the rest

of what we're doing in a way.

Right.

We're just asking these questions.

But as you say, Dr.

Wong he'd have these conversations, but he was informed by what

was happening under his hands.

He was really attentive.

It seemed to me that what he felt is often what would guide the question.

I think some people who've been interested in Dr.

Wong's work, missed that point and that, you know, I'm a very heady person.

I love being in my head.

I love theories and thinking.

And so it, it, it it's my own weakness as well.

And that you get really interested in the fantastic theoretical clarification's

he makes and six channel descriptions and the nature of the points.

And then you kind of skip over the information on palpation.

And without that, you're not getting it.

You know, it's come to me slowly that that's a crucial part of

this, but you're exactly right.

It is.

It is this idea that as you're palpating a channel and the more channels you

palpated begins to remind you of more and more patients to where it's in your

subconscious, almost that you start with.

Perceive patterns in the channels from palpating more and more people,

you know, it's hard to explain this, but you kind of enter into

the meta patterns of the population you treat by palpating the channel.

It's like, oh, this reminds me of that person and that person and that person,

and you even, this is even intuitive, you know, it's not, you're doing it.

We're building up this vocabulary, a palpatory vocabulary.

Yeah.

And patterns.

Yeah.

Seek patterns in the population.

One of the other things that I found with this is that there are certain points

I've gotten to know certain points.

So intimately, for example, lung six, I don't know what it is

about lung six, but me and lung six were really tight these days.

And it's one of those points.

When I go in palpated it, number one is easy to find.

At least for me, it's easy to find.

And that thing is all over the.

You mean, it moves up and down the channel a bit, it moves up and down

the channel by a couple of you, son is you're paying attention.

Yeah.

And that's the lung six and it, and it can be used for so many different things.

But again, if I hadn't felt the changes in the channel, I wouldn't

know to put my attention there and see how does this play with everything

else going on with this patient?

Well, if you don't mind just taking a small diversion, I'm interested.

Tell me.

What you perceive as the personality of lung six, what are the types of things

you notice when you find changes there?

What is it you think about when you, you see stuff there?

How do you use it?

First of all, I want to talk about what I feel under my hands.

So there's often an area that feels like a nodule or it's kind of gummy,

or it's like stride aided in some way.

Those are three different things that are going on.

Obviously it's useful for respiratory issues.

That's plain old textbook acupuncture.

Right.

I see it useful in a lot of digestive issues, especially having

to do with the large intense.

You know, via that in young correspondence.

And I find it useful for emotional issues that have to do with grief

that have to do with, uh, certain issues of self-esteem and boundary.

It often shows up in patients who have asthma or some kind of breathing issue

could be allergies and an issue with a parent where they're never good enough.

Dr.

Long love to get into point categories, cleft point place

things get stuck in the channel and yeah, something in the chest too.

So not just lung, but kind of the upper burner stagnation of a variety

of psycho-emotional to physical or even mouth of the stomach.

Dr.

Wong also talked about, and I've noticed, especially on the left-hand side, lung

six sometimes gets changes in people with.

You know, cause it's like the, you know, the lung channel coming up from the

stomach, through the mouth of the stomach and you find stuff right there too.

And you find it more on the left side a little bit more on the left.

Yeah.

So, but that's being, but what you said about large intestine channel digestive

issues, you know, you might remember Dr.

Wan loved to say that the large intestine channel is not just the

large intestine, but also includes in his mind through palpation and

treatment and his own expense.

The area kind of from the stomach up.

So the, you know, the esophagus and the upper aspect of the digestive tract

from the throat down where to have large intestine channel changes too.

So, you know, you're saying not, you know, maybe something to do with

not opening, not speaking, you know, something stuck in the throat too, and

also just inflammations in the throat.

Tracheitis those kinds of things too.

So what you said about striatum changes at lung six, those are the

ones that are kind of deviating towards the pericardium channel.

I had not paid attention to that aspect of it.

I'll look for it next time I run into it.

Yeah.

Anyway, so this is the kind of thing Dr.

Wong loved to do his students of his, we would ask questions

just like what you just said.

We would, you would say that to Dr.

Wong.

And sometimes he would say, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And other times he would just say you could see him too.

I don't know.

Maybe he was always willing to say maybe, but then maybe six months later.

You would hear him having seen a few patients where he noticed

what you were saying was valid and he saw get clinical results.

He would weave that into his own way of describing the channels.

He was constantly collecting and evolving information.

And that's the great thing about palpating is points then like long six.

Uh, we don't have to be, you know, stuck with what they say in the textbook.

When we start finding changes there and paying attention to

patterns, we can expand their use.

But the, the key is not because, because lung sex is a cleft point, it should

do this no matter what it's, when you find changes there, then you start to

consider what might be happening in that.

And it opens up a for me, a very personal relationship with the points.

I mean, like you, I love the heady stuff and I love the theory and the

way it all hangs together is beautiful.

But I can't tell you how many times I've needled somebody thinking,

Hey, this is a great point for them.

And then I go check some other things and go, yeah.

Great idea.

Proven wrong by reality.

Exactly.

Well, that brings up two of Dr.

Wong's favorite quotes.

One of his very favorites is we have to use theory to explain

reality, not to create real.

I love that one.

And the other one, that's very connected to what you're saying right now.

And you I'm sure you've heard him say, use this metaphor.

He loves metaphors of all types is that acupuncture points are like friends and,

you know, you have to get to know friends and over time you get to know them better.

But also there are different types of friends we all have in our lives.

There's certain friends that he would say, you know, like they, you both love Italian

movies in an Italian movie comes in town.

You're gonna go.

Yeah, but that's kind of it like when it's not Italian movies,

you don't see them so much.

And other friends that are like, they're the people you see every

week, your kids are the same age.

You go have dinner together.

You might go out and have beer together.

You might, uh, you might go gardening together, go hiking together.

Like this is the friend who does everything.

And so, you know, sometimes I would say, you know, Dr.

Wong, you haven't, I haven't ever seen you use, you know, that point before I noticed

in your small intestine five or something, he's like, ah, you just haven't seen the

situation where it's, where it comes up.

And that would be like, you haven't, you know, the Italian movie hadn't come in.

Yeah.

So you haven't seen that come up yet, but a point like lung five,

that was his best friend lung.

Five's the guy you'd have dinner with on the fly and text and say,

I'll meet you in five minutes.

You know, it's like in lung six is like that for you.

Then it's like, that's your, one of your Jack of all trade points.

That's broad, useful in a lot.

We, we, we know each other, well, you know, each other well, and he

loved that metaphor points being like friends and, and, you know,

like friends, there's just, you have different types for different things.

Yeah, that's great.

You talk about Dr.

Wong and he was always inquisitive.

He was like always studying.

He's always putting things together.

And as I recall, he had like a massive library.

What were some of his favorite go-to books for looking stuff up?

That is, uh, an interesting question.

And is related to what I've been trying to do for the last couple of years.

Is researching this concept of clinical reasoning and Chinese medicine.

How does an experienced practitioner, you know, approach a patient and

how can you educate new students to use the, you know, to get better

at clinical reasoning and basically without losing the wisdom of past.

And that research I've been doing, one of the big questions was exactly that.

Okay.

Dr.

Wong, which texts are formative to you, which texts have been most important to

informing your own clinical reasoning, your own way of seeing in the clinic

and that not just texts, but also which teachers were important to you.

I would ask him and, you know, Dr.

Wong mentioned he did have some teachers that he found

were very influential on him.

But as you may remember, Michael, his favorite answer to that question was

patients were the best teachers for him.

He'd be like, no, it's not.

There was no, he had no lineage that he came from with this great teacher.

He would, you know, that was an interesting question.

Why, why he didn't and maybe that's related to what you said earlier

about acupuncture and Beijing having kind of atrophied a bit.

He just didn't have anyone that was crucial to him.

He had many teachers who gave him ideas.

I'm certain, but there wasn't one, but then texts.

You know, he was a huge fan of, of course the nature thing and the Nanjing, uh,

the Jean, the systematic classic, but another, a couple other interesting texts.

The gen job's this young Jean, the classic of nourishing life,

which is a Ming dynasty text.

And that text is actually available for the Chinese medicine database.

So you can get that, uh, from, you know, Jonathan shells, Chinese

medicine database, and he has a great version of it in that it has, I'm

pretty sure the original Chinese.

And the translation next to each other of that main dynasty text,

which other people don't have it's in a, it's in a few volumes.

And what Dr.

Long would do in classical texts was kind of triangulate.

He would read, you know, one text that would say, oh, this point

is, is good for treating this and this and this condition maybe.

And then he would read another text that would talk about that.

And then from that he would kind of triangulate.

All right.

If this text is saying that headaches can be coming from a lack of clear young

coming from the middle burner, and then certain times people use Ren 12 for him.

Then Ren 12 has this function of moving upwards and bringing

clear young to the head.

And so he would triangulate multiple texts in a way of getting at the physiology, the

physiological effects of certain points.

And the decision on gene was one of those he would use to triangulate.

I think that texts has lots of discussions of this point can

be used for this condition.

And he would compare that with other texts to try to triangulate the functional.

Another really interesting text that I just got from him just a

few months before he died, that he was like, this is another text.

It was very influential on me.

And it's interesting.

I have not.

I'm just beginning to look at it, uh, recently, and this one isn't

translated yet, but it's a chain dynasty texts by tongues on high

and tongues on high, uh, was the originator of the concept of Chihuahua.

She transformation.

And we think of Chihuahua as being some classical concept that came from

the nudging or something Chihuahua, it actually really originated more in

the late 18 hundreds or 19 hundreds as a Chinese medicine interfaced

with the idea of steam engines.

And so she was first came up and the idea of creating steam powered engines, and

then it has influenced Chinese medicine.

So they're there, you know, there isn't this concept classically,

although we often use it in describing classical physio.

Yeah.

You know, this is so interesting.

It's like here in the modern time, we look at our brains and we think computers, you

know, we look at our body and our joints and we think, oh, a machine was levers

and pulleys and it it's, it's fascinating how, whatever the sort of technology

of the time is, it becomes part of the metaphor of, of who we are as beings.

Yeah.

Of course, then that points to the great difficulty of many of us have perceiving

what the heck the classics are talking about because the metaphors they're using

are drawn from a place and a time and a culture and a technology that is gone.

I mean, forget foreigners and modern Chinese people have the same

issues with these classical texts.

And so it is, it is a real challenge for us to try to get back into that way.

As much as we can and then bring it forward to because we can't live in that

way at this time for better, for worse.

So, you know, how do you create a bridge between the way of

seeing that existed then?

And the way of living that we have now that still gets clinical results.

And that was the other thing about what was really important to Dr.

Wong was not just going through these classical texts and finding really cool

ideas because it's this young gene, there's these crazy discussions about.

You know, hitting yourself in the back with a piece of wood to

remove a ghost from your upper arm.

You know, maybe it would work, but maybe it just knocked the shoulder

black in a position or something.

But, you know, there's all these things that, that maybe aren't

really clinically effective.

So what he would do is like mine, the classics go through the classics

and, you know, try to as much as possible, see really what they

meant and then bring it forward.

And if it didn't work clinically, then set it aside.

If it did work clinic.

Then he would weave it into this thing that he eventually started to call

Ching law issue, which I translated as applied channel theory, but it was, you

know, if you translate that directly apply, channel theory is not perfect.

As you can hear gene laws, the channels and issue the study of medicine.

So the medical application of the channels, and that's why I kind

of translated is applied channel theory, but applied as the word.

In other words, if it didn't work clinically, he would talk

about it sometimes, but he would set it aside and not.

Yeah, well, this is where that triangulation is.

That he would do would come in.

So helpfully, because he'd look at things from different angles.

You know, one of the things I remember him talking about, and this was a real

eye-opener for me, because, you know, back then I'm thinking, oh man, if I could

just understand the classics in this old stuff, I, you know, I really have a down.

And, and he said, you know, there's a lot of ideas that have come

and gone in Chinese medicine.

And some of them were pretty good and some of them were pretty squirrely.

And you know, you'll still read about.

Because the Chinese are cultural pack rats.

They're not going to throw anything away, but they'll just stop using it.

It'll be part of the history, but it's like, oh, it's up here on a dusty shelf

because yeah, that, that was goofy.

No one uses it.

And so to be able to ascertain what actually is helpful and what actually,

and what is not, is really, really important, don't believe it just because

you read it in an old book, right.

It isn't, isn't that a lesson for those of us trying to study

this medicine in the 21st.

And a difficulty because that's the really exciting thing about practicing

Chinese medicine now, isn't it that we're finally getting people outside of China

who have decades of clinical experience and we're really coming into our own now.

And I don't think we have to have this insecurity.

It's just if it starts to work, but we also have to be open to evolving and

changing and not be dogmatic about yeah.

It's in an old book.

It has to be true.

It's the real dilemma for us, but I think we're coming through that

in the last decade, especially the Chinese medicine is achieving some

sort of, not maybe maturity, but it's a little more sophisticated.

Outside of China and then, you know, non-Chinese texts and

that kind of thing as well.

And that was another big influence on Dr.

Wong, by the way, another type of triangulation that happened with

him the very last week I saw Dr.

Wong.

This was just a few, you know, in last August when I was there in Beijing with

him, you know, in his last month he was, uh, you know, Jonathan Chang and

other doctor long's the princesses.

And I went to visit him.

He not been well, but he sat up in his bed and his voice was strong.

Looked at Jonathan and I, and he said, look, I want to say keenly to walk.

I want to say something from my heart.

And there were a couple things.

The, I think one of the main things he was trying to say in that, in that visit

was that what we're trying to do and what he's calling shingle, you should apply.

Channel theory is as much as we can.

Get back into the minds of the people who were writing, you know, the formative

text of Chinese medicine, not just in the Han dynasty, but in the, you know, the

first thousand years of Chinese medical history and try to see what they were

saying and try to practice and try to, uh, perceive our patients in that way.

First.

It doesn't mean we have to only live that way and then, then take that

and evolve it in the modern era.

But he was saying that a lot of modern researches, you

know, what are the channels?

Are we looking at fascia?

Are we looking at electrical conduction system?

Or what were they, what were those things called from Korea, the bond

tubules or something like that?

Something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's like, that stuff is really interesting, but, but again, does

it improve our clinical effects?

You know, we should take seriously the stuff that's in there, because if we

can perceive in the way they do, we may not need to reinvent the wheel.

And, you know, I'm paraphrasing, I, I translated more of exactly what he

said in a, in a, in a small Memorial that we wrote for the journal of

Chinese medicine that I can give that to you to put on this podcast.

But the other thing you said, and this is more connected to what we were just

talking about, and it was almost an aside, but it was in that same conversation.

Part of what really got him into looking at the classics was one of the very

first trips he took outside of China.

He, I think because he was recognized as a pretty good teacher, early on, was sent

by the Chinese government in late 1976.

To teach some doctors there acupuncture.

And he spent like three months in Greece, by the way, at that time, TCM

is we know it didn't even exist yet.

It was being developed, but he was teaching from the kind of

textbook mainland Chinese stuff.

And they were kind of interested about, you know, nerve conduction,

you know, theories about acupuncture and that kind of thing.

And then one day he's like, kind of, I'm sick of this.

I'm going to just talk about some stuff from the non-GMO.

And he gave her an afternoon lecture on some different difficulties

from the Nanjing and all the doctors came up afterwards.

Like, this is what we want to hear.

This is the stuff we're really interested in.

And he, and this was, you know, again, him telling me this and the last weeks before

he passed, this was a major influence on.

And that it started to stimulate my own thinking back in this direction.

So, you know, Dr.

Wong was having his mind in the classics and sleeping on this little

cot and this room full of books, which I think you saw as well, Michael.

Yeah.

He was surrounded by his library and he'd get up at two in the morning.

He was such a nerd and read and get up and think and drink tea, you

know, and like write things down to like, oh, I gotta write that down.

But also he was super influenced by the, the foreign students who, that he taught

and those who came to China to study with.

And it became this kind of circuit of being influenced by the west as well.

And that, I mean, he was straight up about that.

He didn't deny that, that the students who came to study with

him from outside of China got him going and got him interested.

So, you know, we had this apprenticeship ceremony, I don't know, about six, seven

years ago, the assistant, I think I might have this wrong, but the assistant, uh,

minister of health for the department of health in Beijing got up and spoke

and he's like, We in China need to be careful because a guy look at the,

you know, look at these apprentices.

You know, there are a lot of them are not from China.

We have to watch out because if we're not careful, you know, Chinese

students are going to have to go abroad to study Chinese medicine.

And this, again, connects to what I was, what I was just saying is that

we need to now be willing to step up outside of China and, and have

some confidence in the training.

We have the clinical experience we have.

Uh, we don't have to have this insecurity and that even includes to some degree

fluency in the Chinese language.

I mean, I think we need to be very aware of core concepts in Chinese

medicine and really look at single characters and as much as we can, or,

or listened to teachers who know the language, but on the other hand, we

really need to learn from our patients and get our own clinical flooding too.

And the circular influence from the west, it was a big, big part of what Dr.

Wong had to say this.

And some of his last discussions with me, so much of his influence and so much

of what he learned and what he had to teach was by working in the circles.

Yeah.

And one of the things about Chinese medicine for me, I mean, initially

early on, I remember being at acupuncture school and one of the

absolutely frustrating things about it was all this circular thinking.

That was going on it, which is very hard for a westerner to do.

Right.

Cause we're, we're looking for cause and effect and there's a straight line.

And you know, we, we know that in China, the straight line is not the shortest

distance between two points, right.

Things are very circular and, and it occurs to me too.

And I've been at this almost 20 years now and I feel like it's

finally sinking in that when I think about the work that I do.

Without bringing in my Western mind without bringing in, you know, science

or functional medicine or, you know, other things that I've, you know, looked

at, cause it's caught my attention.

But when I really hang with the Chinese thought and the Chinese ways of

looking at things, it's like speaking a foreign language to the body.

I mean, it's really like speaking a whole different language.

And if you're actually, you got your hands on people in your thinking,

and you're feeling the channels as something alive and present and

communicative, it's a whole different experience than coming up with this.

I've got this idea in my head about these things that, well, maybe they

exist, maybe they don't and that's yeah.

Again, palpation is a way to get to that place, right?

I mean, you may not, you're not going to have.

But the more you do it, this what you just said, gradual accumulation.

And that was Dr.

Wong's.

You might, you know, he would talk about the function of the channels in the body.

And one of the major ways that he described the way the channels are

functioning is they're irrigating.

They're gently like taking the roots of the, of the structures of the body

and gently bringing fluids to them and very slowly with rhythm irrigating.

And that, that was also the way he.

You know, he would irrigate his students.

He wouldn't, he wouldn't download all the information

in a two day seminar, you know?

It would be like, you know, my metaphor was almost like his way of teaching

was like a painter who'd work over here for a little while and get the tree,

the details of the leaves of the tree.

And then the next week he'd be up on the sky, like painting the clouds and

slowly over time a picture would emerge.

And I think KA what you just described that way of seeing that your, that

that happens on our good days.

Not every day.

Of course, I wish on the good days where the channels are there and they are alive.

You get better and better at that slowly.

And again, you just got to start palpating and being okay with the fact that it

may, it's not going to be like that.

You're not going to be like, oh, I got it.

I mean, certain musculoskeletal conditions, maybe you can find changes

easily, but that, that deeper level of, of feeling the channels and just

being with them in the present is a slow motion accumulation for those

listeners who might be new to this and thinking they'd like to, well,

pun intended, try their hand at it.

Other than reading your book.

What would be some ways to begin incorporating palpation in a, in

a way that they can start to get this information, they can start

to build their own relationship with the channels in the points.

You know, I, I have been traveling around trying to teach Dr.

Wong's way of seeing and palpating now for over 10 years.

And one of the things I've noticed that at first, I didn't notice this,

but as I've been teaching more.

It's the opposite of what I just described.

Dr.

Wong's wave teaching.

Right.

But the slow accumulation, you know, I have to go in and two or three

days, try to teach people something that they can come away with.

And it's not a gradual accumulation.

And I tend to probably download too much information on people, overwhelm them.

They think this is really cool.

They get really excited about it and then maybe even do it for a

while and then quit because it's too much to integrate all at once.

Because that have that problem in teaching that I've noticed,

I've come up with this advice.

And if you're interested in this way of doing things, the best way to start is to

simply get patients to lie down a little more quickly than you normally do instead

of sitting in a chair, talking to them.

And then while you ask them about their week, run your medial thumb along all of

the channels from the wrist and ankles up towards the knees while talking to them.

Just start palpating.

Don't try to integrate all of the chief transformation concepts.

Dr.

Wong describes don't even necessarily, uh, use the palpation

for your diagnosis at first.

Just think of what you're doing is massaging the channels to open

them up a bit before you needle.

That's it you're just, and even tell the patient you're just your,

your attitude is I'm massaging the channels to open them up before.

Not even using it as diagnosis at first, uh, because one of the

main ideas that comes from Dr.

Long's thinking, and this is more than we have time probably to get

into is that as you're going along the channels, you don't necessarily

just treat everything you find.

That's a big subject, but you're not just looking for points to needle.

This is not looking for usher points.

You're massage.

You're going along the channels as part of diagnosis before we've

even figured out what you're gonna.

But the way to begin to get towards that is to think of it as dredging the

channels, opening them up, feeling the spaces of the channels, better to help

your point location, and then maybe gradually integrating in this diagnosis

because one day you'll be palpating.

You'd be like, whoa, that's interesting that I have not felt on people and

those moments add up over time and become part of your diagnosis, but

don't try to do it all at once.

And people love having their arms and legs massage.

You're not going to, I mean, except for some people with fibromyalgia or something

where you have to go really light.

People love massage and you can do it while talking.

That's that's the advice I've come up with so far.

Yeah, I think it's really good advice.

So often we're looking to get some weekend mastery, you know, we want

to learn something where we're going to go back to clinic and it's

like, I'm going to rock this stuff.

Cause I learned it this weekend, but it, it certainly doesn't take a weekend

and it doesn't take a couple of weeks.

And in my experience it rarely takes a few months.

It takes seasons.

I love your way of describing it as a process of irrigation.

You know, it's this slow, gentle, like, you know, like a spring rain

that, uh, over time nourishes.

And as you said, circular, like Dr.

Wong would say, you know, in the 1950s, when he first was reading

the nudging, he was like, what the heck is it talking about?

It doesn't make any sense.

And then he read it again, six years later, like, ah,

this is what the aging means.

And then read it eight years later and be like, I had no idea what it meant.

It means this.

And so the palpation is a similar thing and that you, you get it at

one level and the longer you do it, the more you get out of it, it's not,

you don't reach an end with this.

It just takes on different levels and meanings over time.

You start to feel more.

Part of it is really physical.

I think the longer you palpate your brain, literally, intervates your thumb more

so that you actually can start to feel.

I mean, it's a physical change that happens in your thumb over time.

That takes a little time to gain the sensitivity as well.

Some neuroplasticity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jason, we could go on for a long time, but I've got to go see some

patients here in a little bit.

All right.

Um, I got to make a living qiological doesn't pay, but you could probably

put some kind of plug that people give you a little GoFundMe or something.

No, no, no.

I actually, I've got some sponsorship that helps with that.

So that's, that's kind of a nice thing.

Thank you so much.

Thanks to Amazon.

They're a big sponsor.

Actually.

I've got two different sponsors for the show.

These days there's supply houses out there that are happy to make sure that our

colleagues have this stuff to listen to.

So I've got, I've got a little part-time job here as a podcast host, which is

kind of funny, cause I'm basically a shy guy and yet I got a podcast

show go figure, well, I really, really appreciate you doing this.

And I was, you know, reading your introduction to

qiological on their website.

In a way.

It's what we're talking about today is getting into the way of seeing

and trying to educate people in this conversational way about Chinese

medicine from different angles.

And this is really, you know, important to sample that broad garden of Chinese

medicine in the 21st century that, that exists for students and other listeners.

So I'm really appreciate you doing this.

Well, it it's my pleasure.

You know, one of the things I've found over the years is at least

for me, my clinical work is, uh, you know, I'm kind of a lone Wolf.

I'm, it's just me and my clinic working when I lived in Seattle.

I'd often hang with you or Daniel, you know, a couple other friends

and, you know, we'd talk cases, we just talk, shop and get all geeky.

But.

You know, here in the Midwest, it's, uh, I'm a bit more isolated.

So doing the podcast was partly a way of reaching out for myself

to be connected to my community.

And what I've discovered is there's a lot of acupuncturists that are

kind of thirsty to hear the voices of experienced clinical practitioners.

Well, I guess it's the decades past you and I might become that.

Yeah, well, we're working on it, right?

I guess a good thing to maybe finish with Michael is one of Dr.

Long's favorite quotes.

Remember that one hard to translate perfectly in English without using

language we don't want to use, but the classical physicians aren't kidding us.

A lot of times the issue is just figuring out what the heck they're talking about.

Yeah, that's a great phrase.

That's a good one to close with.

I think we're in bullpen woman.

I'll got G I look forward to another conversation sometime soon.

I get up to Seattle every now and then.

All right, look me up.

Let's do.

All right.

All right.

So Jen, Hey, before you take off today, I just wanted to remind you that I'd love

to have your questions for other shows.

You have a question that you'd like to have on the show.

Have my guests noodle.

Please go to the website.

qiological.com.

Look for that red button that says, talk to me, leave me a message.