It’s easy to think there is one way to take the pulse, and natural to fall back on the habits that formed early on in our learning to attend to this vital aspect of diagnosis and prognosis.

Pulse is something our teachers help us to orient toward, but it is our experience and patients who help to understand and learn to trust what we feel.

In this episode we have a research scientist’s eye view of the pulse. And how outward beauty is an expression of inward strength and balance.

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

First of all, I went to a slippery and wirey school.

Everybody was slippery and wiring and clinic maybe once in a while somebody

would say, oh yeah, that's thin and wirey.

Well, there's so much more than that.

In fact, I tell my interns don't think about the quality.

That's not what it's all about.

It's about the flow through the Oregon systems.

That's what good health is.

It's the Tigie symbol.

Hey, it's Michael.

And this is qiological.

I'm not sure why this topic comes up so often in my clinical conversations

lately, but for some reason I've been reminding my patients about the wisdom

from that great classic on enoughness.

No, the one I'm talking about right.

Goldilocks and the three bears, you might see this in your practice too.

You know, there's the people that say load me up with needles as if

Maura was glitter or they think they should be a certain way in life,

but that's kind of like Goldilocks trying to sleep on too hard of a bad.

They think they are too much of this or not enough of that.

And what they miss is that there's this sweet spot of just enough.

I'm not sure where you're listening from, but as American skis, we tend to think

that more and better mean the same thing, unless it comes to weight or waistlines.

When we tend to air in the other direction, the Buddhist tradition

holds that we are generally either in a state of desire.

I E gimme more or state of aversion.

This is where we are reactively ruled by dislikes or third state, which is

not caring or not noticing there's not much to react or attached to in that.

I suspect there's another state of being, and it's the one that I call

enoughness where things are just right.

Not only just right, but unlike the state of not noticing, we actually do notice.

We notice that we have enough.

We notice that things have a rightness.

We are attentive to the pools of desire and aversion per in a sorta state

of grace where we are utterly fine with how things are in that moment.

The world is enough and we are too.

It's a bit rare in my experience.

And especially in clinic, people often seem like they need to

bring air quotes here, a problem.

Otherwise there's no reason to go see the acupuncturist.

Sometimes people need to be reminded that they're actually doing okay,

that there are things working, right.

Even in the midst of many things going wrong.

This is not to take away from the problems.

And at the same time, it's helpful to notice what resources are.

Strengths.

They actually have.

I think it's helpful to notice enoughness when it shows up, try

it out in your clinical work.

I mean, after all, almost everyone knows about Goldilocks and the three bearers.

Once again, I want to remind you all that.

I love getting postcards from wherever you happen to be listening to qiological.

You know, I sit here at this microphone at the moment.

I'm looking out at fall colors, but it's hard to know who's on the other end.

My voice is actually making it into your earbuds.

So if you think about it, I'd love to get a postcard from where you are getting

them every now and then in the mail.

It makes my

day.

So keep those cards and letters coming from.

Hey friends.

Welcome back to qiological.

My guest today is Martha Lucas.

You may know of Martha.

She does the maid cen may wrong.

The made, send facial rejuvenation.

In addition to that, she does a lot of work with pulse.

Those are two really interesting subjects to get into.

So, um, as with really everybody that I have on the show,

delighted to have her here.

Martha, welcome to qiological.

Thank you.

I'm happy to be here.

I

often start with folks acupuncture.

You know, none of us grew up with this stuff.

At least most of us didn't grow up with it.

What is it that got your attention at some point that led

you down this red brick road?

I'm a research psychologist.

So I started out my career in medicine, in Western medicine.

I did research in hospitals.

My specialty was heart disease.

And what I studied was thoughts because we, in my training as a behaviorist,

think of everything as a behavior.

So what I was studying was how these, and it was men at the time perceive

the cause of their heart disease.

Did they think it was their behavior that they didn't eat right, or

exercise or did they think it was just something like, oh, it was just fate.

And then I studied how well they did in their rehab.

But as I was working with them and realized their surgeons

were great mechanics, I wondered what else is happening?

What beside the mechanical device of the heart.

Keep life going on.

So I studied Reiki because I feel like that's kind of the mother of the

laying on of hands medicine and went through several different kinds of

classes, actually tonal alignment.

Then I learned color puncture, which is acupuncture.

Like you use acupuncture points, but you put color on them that you use a

colored light with different colors, but the teachers didn't explain why you put

red on LLI four and yellow on SP six, which is how I looked at it back then,

because I was a research psychologist.

I had knew nothing about Chinese medicine.

So when you gave me a list of these points with a color, I'm a researcher.

I want to know why

we want to know why.

Exactly which really, I mean, wouldn't any clinician want to know why.

You would think so, but I seem to be the only one

who kept raising my hand saying, why am I putting in green here?

Why am I putting yellow there?

And they would always say, because Dr.

Mandell says so, well, I'm sorry, but in my practice, I

can't say to a patient, oh, Dr.

Lucas, why are you doing this?

And I say, well, Akilah said, Dr.

Mandel said, that will not cut the mustard.

Right.

So I went to Chinese medicine.

Really to find that out.

I didn't even have the intention of becoming a practitioner.

I thought, you know, if I can understand how this color

thing works, that'll be good.

I can be a color puncturing and that'll be that orange or I was wrong.

And I'll tell you what completely changed.

My life was meeting my post-diagnosis mentor.

Jim Ram holds, oh, you

studied with Jim Ram.

I did.

I did.

I, it was the only time in his regrettably short life that he taught a full

semester, long class at a school that was extra, extra money, extra time.

Not that I'm type a or anything, but I signed up.

Wow.

Yeah, he's an interesting cat.

I've heard of him.

Cause I used to live in the Seattle area and he's almost like a ghost, you know,

like you hear the name here and there.

Yeah.

I heard he was an amazing pulse status technician.

Oh yeah.

He was a master.

I mean, he was very, very, very humble.

So he would never describe himself as that.

But for me, he totally changed my life because as with most schools, our

school didn't teach Paul's diagnosis.

As a research scientist, I have to use a model that I know

works, that I can see changes.

And that's what I teach.

I can feel the pulses, uh, see what's happening, the, what the

imbalances are and then see whether inserting needles works or not.

I don't have to take it by faith.

Like.

Opening the dynamite with gallbladder 41 sand gel five.

Doesn't always work.

I mean, how do you know it works well, you don't, unless

you can feel a black diamond.

Right?

Wow.

I followed him until his untimely death and I am forever grateful.

He made me the diagnostician that I am today.

So it

was the pulse that really flipped it for you.

Yes.

Yes.

Because as I said, as a researcher, you just can't take things on

faith.

I wouldn't take it on faith either.

It's like, how do I know that this needle is doing what I think it's doing?

In fact, uh, jeez.

I mean, when I first went to acupuncture school, it's, it's funny.

I, I wasn't sure I was going to graduate and be a practitioner either.

I wasn't even sure I was going to get all the way through it

because I was just curious.

In fact, I wasn't even sure I wanted to be a practitioner because

I mean, I had a really nice, lovely middle-class high-tech job.

You know, life was good.

But I was curious because the dang stuff had helped me.

And I remember in that first, maybe six months, we'd read about the stomach

channel goes here and the spleen channel goes there and these points do this.

And I'd be like, really?

I mean, it's in a book.

So someone put it in a book.

So what big deal is a lot of stuff you can put in a book.

So what, but then I'd be in clinic.

And I like put a needle in a, in a place and the patient would go, wow.

I feel that down in my toe.

Right.

I put a needle up in their knee and they go, I feel it in my toe and

I trace the channel and they'd go, how did you know where that was?

Oh, oh, maybe there's something here.

Right.

And obviously there is something there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So talk to us a bit about pulse.

It's sort of a gold standard kind of thing, right?

Like, you know, we're all like, oh, the pulse it's, it's the most

important thing I know for myself, pulses often, no pun intended kind

of slippery thing to get ahold of.

Well, and that's why I call my book beyond slippery and

wirey, because first of all, I went to a slippery and wirey school.

Everybody was slippery and wiring and clinic maybe once in a while somebody

would say, oh yeah, that's thin and wirey.

Well, there's so much more than that.

In fact, I tell my interns don't think about the quality.

That's not what it's all about.

It's about the flow through the Oregon systems.

That's what good health is.

It's the Tigie symbol.

It's the Tigie symbol.

It's the infinity symbol.

That's what the perfect.

Balance of health is.

So when you have a goal like that in your treatment, my goal is to

make the pulses feel like that.

Then I know whether or not my choice of acupuncture points worked or not.

And I think that's for me, what, every day in my practice, I am still amazed at the

use of acupuncture points and what certain ones do and what certain combinations do.

In fact, I have some acupuncturist says patients, and once in a while, they'll

say, huh why are you using that?

I haven't used that since I got out of school.

And so it's a little teaching moment for them.

When you

talk about beyond slippery and wiring, you're looking

for the feeling of the flow of the chief through the Oregon's.

What does that mean?

What does that mean?

If someone's got their fingers on someone's room?

Well, first of all, you have to keep all your fingers together.

There's no more of that lifting up and feeling, oh, what

does the kidney feel like?

What is the spleen feel like?

You don't do that.

That's that's counter intuitive to try to feel flow.

So basically what it means is that you can feel the kidneys support the spleen

stomach, support the lung large intestine.

So you can feel the water supporting the earth, supporting the metal.

On the other side, feel the same thing.

And then you get the sense that each side is supporting each other,

just like the five elemental flow.

So you're

looking to see if there's any disruption, any little backwash, something

that's not going smoothly from the church.

So that's fun.

Yes.

Or is there a block somewhere?

Is there a naughtiness somewhere?

Meaning that the energy is getting stuck in that one location and

then the goal is figure out, okay.

I can feel that block well before I'm going to feel any flow.

I need to release that block.

For example, if I'm treating someone with fertility issues and their Dima is

blocked, well, it would be pure silliness to start trying to find the lower jaw

start tonifying the kidneys and do the rent because why their Dima is blocked.

Nothing good is going to happen from that.

You're going to make them worse.

Right?

Exactly.

What's a

block time.

I feel like

for the most part, it feels like on the left side that the kidney

poles isn't flowing into the liver.

So it's like your fingers.

It's like, there's a little wall between your fingers.

That's where I first look for it.

And sometimes it's so blocked that you can feel that same

sensation on the right side.

And the thing is then you don't have to keep feeling the pulses

like, oh, what else is happening?

Because everything is going to change in the polls is

when you open up the dynamite.

So it's literally a block, literally the energy, not moving past your

fingers into the next sector.

So with the di have you got a few different ways that you like to

approach getting that thing to open up?

Well, I first do the traditional thing,

gallbladder 41, San gel five.

And then I feel again, and if it's not open, I do gallbladder 26 because one of

its functions is to modulate the dynamite.

Then you might have to go to physical, like diaphragm area points,

local, more local points to see.

And sometimes it's an emotional blocks.

So I talk to my patients a lot about, oh, you know, I'm, I'm doing this and

I'm not feeling this change very much.

So is there something going on that you're not expressing?

And then maybe you have to do something like Ren 14, 15 long one

to get that energy that's stuck in the middle expressed better.

Is

there.

A difference in what you feel in the pulse between an emotional blockage

and a more, shall we say physical

blockage?

Yes.

They may feel the same in the beginning, but if you do quote unquote energetic

point to release that knot or that block, and it doesn't go away, then

you're probably looking at something more physical, physical blocks, like tumors.

They don't go away in the polls when you treat it energetically because

it's part of the physical body.

I

mean, this dye blockage sounds pretty easy to feel.

I mean, I, I suspect people that are listening to this go, oh yeah.

I, I think I've felt that the other day, or maybe it'll go into clinic later today

and, uh, and recognize that are there any other images from the pulse that,

that tend to show up on a regular basis?

Some things that people could look.

Well, there is a lot of anxiety right now with teams

in the U S or the world, maybe.

Uh, and so I think what we feel a lot of also is that the spirit pulses,

so the, uh, there in the heart, small intestine is not flowing very well.

Sometimes there, the liver is blocking the energy into there.

Sometimes the heart pulse is kind of short.

Uh, it might feel a little scattered.

And so a lot of times we need to help people through their emotional stagnation.

I'll call it.

Sometimes I tell people they have a greater capacity for joy, because I can

feel that their spirit isn't very open.

I often feel something sort of the opposite.

I often will feel an excess sort of a flooding scatteredness to that

certain Paul's on the left side.

If I was feeling that I would number one, any sort of imbalanced

feeling like that means that other organ systems are suffering because there's

that, isn't what normal feels like.

Normal would just feel like a nice, smooth, young Indian flow in that sector.

I think with people like that, if you were to talk to them, I think probably

how they feel is a little bit overwhelmed.

They're still not expressing themselves in a smooth way.

So maybe they're holding on to emotions.

I asked almost everybody that are you pretty good at expressing your emotions

or do you tend to hold them in or maybe it's in a woman who needs to have a good.

Yeah, well, you

know, men could use a good cry a lot of times.

Well,

they could, yes.

Men could use a good cry.

They w when I ask men, are you pretty good at expressing your emotions?

I have to say probably 90% of the time they say, well, no, not really.

I what's the point.

Why would I do that?

Oh,

so, you know, I tell them, you can do it in your car.

I mean, the important thing is to get it out.

You don't have to say it to your boss.

You don't have to say it to your wife.

The important thing is to get it expressed out of your systems so that

you don't keep yourself stagnated.

So for people that have not taken your pulse class, but they

would like to expand their thinking about the pulse, or maybe just expand

what they can feel with the pulse.

Have you got any suggestions on some territory they can kind of wander

into, as they're working with their patients, some, some different

ways of approaching the pulse in terms of getting some information.

The first thing would be keep your fingers together.

That that idea of lifting and feeling one organ system at a time is just silly.

Once you realize that good health is the flow of young Indian through all the

organ systems, it's kind of silly to pick up your fingers and make them separate.

And you have to go deep.

You have to feel down, down, down deep toward the bone level

to feel the person's core.

Gee, what's going on down there in their original, energetic strength.

When somebody just barely puts their fingers on the pulse.

Uh, feather, there's so much information you're missing.

So if you think about keeping your fingers together, feeling for a flow,

I know this is kind of blasphemous, but forget about the qualities.

Just forget about that and try to feel the, is there any flow

going on under your fingers?

That's what life is.

It's a flow.

That's what the Ty G symbol is.

It's a flow and believe it or not, when you get that flow going, all those

qualities you worried about are gonna go away anyway, because you've balanced

the young and the, and sometimes not.

I mean, I see cancer patients, scleroderma patients, people with

some serious chronic illness sure.

Is the flow of their cheek going to be perfect.

No, they're at the end of their life.

There, they have scleroderma.

They have some dread disease, but the fact of the matter is

some flow is still happening.

Even toward the end of life.

Young and yin might be separating, but there's still some flow there.

I remember when first being taught pulse, we were

taught to just pay attention.

Where's the energy.

Just, just go into the pulse.

And is it more at a surface?

Is it more lower?

Is it, is it way deep?

You know, what's it feel like?

Does it have a tune?

Does it have a rhyme?

That kind of thing.

You know, later we, you know, we learned all the various qualities and things

that you've got to know for the test.

It's nice to hear you talk about this in terms of just pay attention to

how things are all working together.

It's kind of a relief actually.

Oh, good.

And I'm glad to hear you say that because as I said, I, my school focused on

clearly just on the, the texture, the quality, there was nothing about flow.

I learned all of that from studying with Jim.

This is very helpful for me every now and then, I mean, often

enough that it gets my attention.

I will feel something in the pulse.

And my first thought is what's that.

Right.

I mean, there's something in there.

It's like a fish flicking, its tail.

There's one.

I've got a name for it.

I call it the ringing pulse.

I mean, it feels like a bell is being run in a particular position.

There's one that feels like something flapping in the wind.

I've got all my own images and words for some of the oddball stuff that I feel,

you know, and I take it as all right.

There's something here.

It's, you know, it's up to me to figure out what it is.

Some of these things I've been able to pin down to.

Oh, there's an issue with the long or there's, you know, there's

an issue with this or that.

Oh, they're not sleeping, but a lot of times I won't know what it means.

All I know is there's something weird right here.

And hearing you talk about paying attention to the flowed.

No where the flow it comes from.

And nowhere the flow goes.

This gives me a clue into how I can continue to inquire into some

of this weird stuff that I feel

good.

And I talked to the patient a lot.

One of my specialties is dealing with old emotional trauma, or sometimes what I

like to call the relinquish meant wound, especially in people who've been adopted

or who are premies, because there's a, there's a depth of deficiency in the

spleen stomach sector that I swear, I feel in every single one of those people.

And you know, you don't start out by saying, oh, are you adopted?

Or were you not nurtured as a child?

But my patients know I'm feeling something.

So they're curious.

So let's say, oh doc, how's it going today?

Or what is it you're feeling?

Why are you, why are you spending so much time right there?

And then I usually start with a very, uh, non.

Scary question and say, so how's your digestion.

And you know, I'll get back something like, oh, as long as I don't

eat dairy or greens, it's great.

So of course I say, well, it's not great.

Then that's a sure sign that it doesn't work very well at all.

Then I'll say, well, you know, did those start in childhood?

And this and that.

And the other day it just happened where a woman was like, no, you

know, I had a kind of a, leave it to beaver, kind of a combination,

leave it to beaver, but a little bit of an army brat kind of childhood.

And I said, okay.

And we're just talking.

And suddenly she starts to tear up.

And she says, you know, now that you're talking about that my mom had one child.

Then she had twins and then she got pregnant with me right after the

twins and was not very happy about it.

And I always kind of felt like I was just that extra kid.

Just happened to be there.

Well, there it is.

There it is.

And that that's something we can change with acupuncture.

We can change that kind of lack of nurturing or feeling that lack from

the beginning, even in utero with acupuncture, because we're not putting

anything in or taking anything out.

We're just taking the stress from a block Dima and feeding

it into those other sectors are taking the overwhelming fullness.

You feel in the heart and moving it back down to the middle.

So there is such profound work we can do for people that it's pretty amazing.

People often ask me, what did you put on those needles?

Because they're so used to hypodermics and they're thinking we're

putting something into the system.

And of course the answer is I've put nothing in.

All the needles do is invite something within you to come forth.

It's so antithetical to our usual Western way of thinking.

Right?

Well, I tell people, I show them a picture of their imbalances and

because I write it down for them, and then I show them the Tigie symbol.

And I say, this is my job.

My job is to make your energy go back to balance like that.

Because at some point, unless from the moment of conception, you are out of

balance for some reason, which some people are, your body knows balance.

It just has forgotten because of all the stresses are physical

illness or emotional problems.

And it's my job to remind your body how to do that.

So I can send you on your way and your body knows how to balance itself better.

What

kind of pictures do you draw for your patients

of this to help them understand.

The fingers are three different sectors.

So I draw two lines and I show them, you know, here's where, what

we call the kidneys are, here's your digestion, your nurturing

center, here's your immune system.

And I just, it's just the little graph that I draw.

And I write if the poles is going back and forth, I write little

arrows kind of going back and forth.

And or if it's that relinquishment wound pulse, I draw an arrow going

downward and it gives them a picture of what's going on with themselves.

And it gives them kind of an aha moment.

Oh yeah, I can, I can totally see what you're talking about.

And then I show them the balance young and young in, and they get that idea that, oh,

that's, what's my body supposed to feel like just everything flowing and feelings.

I would

suspect is kind of a way to check your diagnosis in

a way to when you feed it back to them that way, if they shake their

head and go, oh yeah, that's me.

Sure.

That's probably a good sign.

If they look at you, like, what are you talking about?

What do you do if they look at you?

Like you've grown a second head.

Well, you know what I do, I always believe.

Jim was a fairly brusque kind of, you know, so I've heard.

Yeah.

Not mean, but there were times where I felt like I was going to cry a little bit.

Um, you know, I tell people I'm a recovering Catholic and

I don't like to be yelled at.

And one time I showed him a picture of a knot in a gentleman's

prostate area and the pulse.

And I said, well, Jim, you know, I think I felt this.

And he said, what do you mean?

You think you felt it?

You either felt it or you didn't feel it.

Why did you draw it?

If you just thought you felt it?

And I'm like, oh, okay.

Okay.

I felt it.

I felt it.

I felt it.

And so I believe myself, you know, because sometimes as I said in the

beginning, if I'm, if I'm kind angling toward, you know, I'm not so sure

your childhood was very nurturing.

Well, you just met.

Maybe you're not going to blurt out.

Oh yeah.

My dad was an alcoholic and you know, my home life was a mess.

But then at the second or the third treatment, they'll come and say, remember,

you asked me about something, something, well, actually I was thinking about that

and this did happen when I was seven.

So sometimes it just takes a little building of trust.

And as I said, I always believed myself.

I feel like sometimes people aren't in touch.

They don't want to say anything.

They don't know me yet, but I always trust my own diagnostic skills.

How did you come to that?

How do you learn to trust yourself with something as subjective as the.

By seeing the changes by putting some needles in saying to myself,

you know, I think this is, uh, I think I need to open their spirit a little bit and

put some needles in and then it changes.

So as a research scientist, I say to myself, wow, actually

those points just did that.

Or I, I still like to experiment.

That's why I use so many different acupuncture points because I maybe

feel a pulse and think, oh, wow.

I don't know where to start.

So I think, well, I'll try this.

And I really do say that to myself.

I really do say, oh, let me just try this.

And it works or it doesn't work.

Then I know I'm.

If it works, then I'm like, oh yeah.

All right.

I'm I'm good.

I was totally right about that.

If it doesn't work, then I say to myself, Hmm.

So they're wrong about that combination doing that?

Or, or, you know, that combination kind of did a little something, but

didn't make it quite as balanced as I want it to be constantly testing.

Yes.

Yes.

Every patient is a little research project.

For example, I had a priapism patient years ago.

I did some kidney yang and kidney in points.

And I was giving that, showing that case to someone and

one of my peers or students.

And, uh, she said, well, wait a minute.

It was priapism.

Why would you do kidney young?

And I said, because the kidneys are out of balance, the person has

a history of childhood nephrosis.

So he's got a history of the kidneys misbehaving somewhat,

and I have to get it balanced.

So I don't just use the young or the Inn.

It's important to use both.

Sometimes most of the time, actually

as human beings, we have incredible sensing abilities.

Once we let ourselves in on, we can feel these things.

We can have access to these levels.

You know, maybe we can even have a peak into someone's early childhood

and enough respect not to say anything directly, but to hold it over the

course of a period of time until, until they're ready to say something about it.

Right, right.

I mean, I may still treat it.

I have to treat what I feel, but if they're not ready to say anything

about it, then I that's fine.

And you know, honestly, that's why pain.

Isn't one of my favorite things to treat because if someone comes in with shoulder

pain, but it turns out that it's an old, emotional trauma, that's not allowing

the energy to flow in the small intestine channel or the large intestine channel.

They don't want to hear that they came in for shoulder pain and, uh, you know, some

people do, some people are like, wow, you mean really something that happened in

my past could be affecting that channel.

And there four eventually lead to pain.

Yes, actually that is how the body can work.

But if they're not ready to hear that and they just want their pain

fixed, then I can do that too.

I'm still going to, in my mind treat the old issue.

But I don't have to talk to them about it if they're not ready.

Cause I'm not a psychotherapist, I'm a research psychologist,

a research scientist.

So I don't do psychotherapy.

Yeah.

I don't do psychotherapy either.

Although I get accused of being a therapist by my patients all the

time, because we'll be sitting exactly what you were just saying.

They come in with a shoulder in a Scot trouble.

I work on their shoulder and maybe they bring something up that actually does

have some emotional content or they bring something up that is actually getting

to what the issue of the shoulder is.

I didn't bring it up.

They bring it up.

All I do is get curious and inquire about that.

And then all kinds of other information comes through.

And so often people come in with a busted up body part and they find out

there's all this other stuff going on.

And it's not something that I'm pushing them toward.

It's not something I'm asking them to do.

I just hold a space that it can come up.

If at once.

And that's

beautiful.

I mean, I say that's how Chinese medicine can help people be more, the spiritual

InTouch person that they were meant to be is because we allow them to see

how all of those things are connected.

Yeah.

And sometimes just dial down the reactivity enough that they can

notice, oh, this is connected to that.

Huh?

How about that?

That's right.

You know, I could go on and on with you about the pulse, but I

want to get into the other piece of what you're doing, which is the

mates end, the facial acupuncture.

You you've got this deep curiosity about how things work.

You're so lucky to run it around halts.

Cause you got to, you got a piece of pulsing lineage that not many people have.

Where did the mates encompass?

Well, because I already had a career.

I, when I went to Chinese medicine school, I was, I probably was 40 ish.

And I don't know, right at the beginning of school, somebody said,

or there was something in class about how Chinese medicine can help you

maintain your youthful appearance and help take lines and wrinkles away.

Now, the first thing is Chinese medicine is a preventive medicine.

So we start seeing you as a child, we help prevent the flu we help.

Or if you get a cold in school, we help you get over that more

quickly and see you for your life.

Then yes, you're going to age more gracefully because it takes a lot out of

someone to have the flu for six weeks.

So that's the first thing I thought was, oh, wow, this is great.

You can stay healthy.

And you're going to age more gracefully.

Then I started to think about, Hmm, what's this deal with the

needles and the face and the skin.

So one of my peers and I started to just kind of.

Oh, we started to just fool around a little bit with needles

in the face and try to think about how that would all work.

And then I did some research into the classics and realized that

in the old, old days they did, what's called multiple needling.

So started experimenting with putting more than one needle in a point,

and then did the modern medicine research into where wrinkles start,

what's going on with the skin that we begin to sag and get wrinkles.

And it turns out in my classes, the students all laugh, but I call the

thirties the decade of decline for your skin, because that's really when things

start to go downhill with the skin.

So again, if you want to prevent lines and wrinkles, the time to start getting

needles in your skin is in your third.

So you can maintain that look, instead of trying to go backward when you're 60.

Cause it's easier to prevent the lines and wrinkles than it

is, make them go away, frankly.

I mean, that's just true for anything with medicine, right?

If you can, if you can avoid having a problem, that's the best way to do it.

Exactly.

But that's an educational thing.

I, I recently had someone new patient come hurt, some kind of pain and I was just

explaining and giving her the rap about preventing, like, okay, once we get rid of

this pain, then I need to see you to just keep the pain away and prevent the pain.

And she said, huh, I've always just come for acupuncture.

When I have pain.

I never thought about it as preventing the pain.

It's so surprising.

Isn't it?

Yes.

Yeah.

So, so, so no one ever explained that to her.

You wouldn't think about that?

I don't think unless someone said those words, Hey, let's

prevent the pain in the future.

Instead of, I just see you every time you have the.

Well, we think about getting our cars service

for preventative maintenance.

You know, if you have a musical instrument on occasion, you got

to tweak the strings on it, right?

Yes.

Because things change with aging and things change with

the temperature and seasonal.

Right.

But our mindset about medicine, isn't that our mindset about we don't come to

R D I mean, once a year, we come to our doctor and say, Hey, I'm feeling great.

I'm just here.

So you can confirm that with blood work and listen to my heart, but we don't just

come in and say, Hey, I'm feeling great.

And I'm here to see you.

So that's the mindset even for at Chinese medicine is I have

a pain, I have a cold, I have a mostly it's pain I need to be seen.

So we have to educate people to start young.

Well, over in Asia, it is a little bit different.

I mean, I remember in my teachers clinic, women would often come

in after their period, just to just to, just to regulate that.

All right, just to harmonize.

Well, I tell my fertility patients, once they get

pregnant, I say, okay, you're not done.

You need to get treated during your pregnancy and you're not

done after you have your baby.

I know it'll be a little more stressful because you know, now you've

got this baby and you're busy and you need a babysitter or whatever.

I tell them they can bring their newborns because they sleep anyway.

But I, I clearly say you are not done.

You need to absolutely come after you have your baby.

I was

talking to someone the other day who used the phrase fourth trimester.

Let me help you with the fourth trimester.

That's

great.

Isn't it?

That's great.

It really rang a bell again in Asia.

They've got a thing called Zuora.

Yeah.

It's especially in Taiwan where the women take a month off, they eat

nourishing foods they're attended to they're cared for, they look to

build their blood in sheet back up because they just lost a lot of it.

Yes.

Yeah.

So that idea of a fourth trimester, that's something I think that

Western women could understand.

Oh, I think so.

Except that, as I said, I think there's so much going on after that, that once again,

self care kind of goes out the window.

So

back to the face, in addition to getting rid of lines and

wrinkles, looking more youthful and all that, what other kinds of changes

do you see happening for the people that come in for these kinds of treats?

Well, first of all, you always do a body treatment.

So it's with, with the maids and it's two treatments in that session.

So take the pulses balance the body, because I always explain to

them that the causes of aging are from the inside and the outside.

So, you know, I kind of point to my lower dantien and my digestion

and my breathing and say all of that needs to be regulated because

that's why partly, maybe why you're prematurely gray or premature wrinkling.

So you do that part and then we do the facelift or the neck lift protocol.

On top of that, because for one thing, I think prescriptions

work better on a balanced body than, than not, they feel good.

Sometimes their digestion gets better.

They're so relaxed.

They, I take the eye pillow off and they say, I can't believe how

relaxed I am with all those needles in how is that even possible?

Well, it's because I treated your body first.

I got the system balanced first.

So with our system, it's, it's really more than just a cosmetic treatment.

It's a full body treatment.

And that way you are accessing the energetics of the

channels that go in the face.

I don't really believe in just needling align or only needling the face.

I feel like that's Western medicine, that would be something

an institution would do.

We need to treat the whole body, like where what's going on, the imbalances,

why isn't proper oxygen and blood, getting up to the skin and, and.

You know, what's going on in the lungs that are, do they have heat in them?

And that's why your skin is so red.

So it's a combination of treating the entire constitution and.

Based

or the neck, it sounds like you're doing a

bit of differential diagnosis.

You're looking to see, is this issue coming more from a digestive function

or malfunction or is it because there's some issues with the lungs

or is there an issue with the fluids?

Are you doing some of that kind of or are you just looking more, a constitutional

level, you know, just overall.

No.

I, I always, when I'm doing the pulses, it's always a complete

D and D in terms of what Oregon systems are doing with, or without each other.

And fix that before we start.

And I mean, some people, I tell it, say in my classes with some people, if

you just make their digestion better, their skin's going to look better.

But if they're interested in more than that lines or age spots or wrinkles or

sagging, then it's totally appropriate to just go right up to the face or the neck

right on each spot should get enough blood moving

through that area that, that they was, those can lighten up or just.

Yes, because we're reinvigorating the dermis.

So when you get the dermis moving properly and having proper oxygen and blood flow,

then age spots can resolve themselves.

I mean, they're coming up from the deep area anyway.

So when you regenerate the dermis, uh, those sorts of things can be resolved.

Plus you do have to talk to people about what they're putting on their skin.

There's no doubt about it.

Again, it's Chinese medicine.

It's a partnership.

I'm not just going to put these needles in and you're going to go home and go

out in the sun and not put on moisturizer and think you're going to look fabulous.

So it's, it's again, it's a bit of a partnership.

People have

to take responsibility for their own self care.

Right.

That's a big part of Chinese medicine.

Yeah.

Do you use guash Shaw or cupping in your work with the facial

rejuvenate?

Not so much, uh, much more of a guash Shaw or then I am cupping because I feel like

the guash Shaw tool is a more precise, allows you to do more precise work.

What I will do is the patient can do that at home.

If they want to, I can show them how to do or actually Derma rolling either one.

And then they can do that at home, in between the cosmetic

acupuncture, treatment maintenance.

I don't like them to do it too much in between the actual protocol treatments,

because the body needs to respond to are accessing the collagen and elastin

matrix, but certainly in between their month long maintenance, if they want to

do a little facial gua SHA or something like that, that's totally appropriate.

You know?

So often people think if a little is good, more is gooder and yeah.

Then you end up with overtreatment the body doesn't have a chance to

respond to one treatment before it's having to deal with another.

Exactly.

And I'll say, let's see how this works for you.

Like they'll say, oh, well, can I get appeal?

It's the protocol is a 10 treatment protocol and they'll say, can

I get a appeal in between?

And I say, well, no, no, I don't want you to get appeal.

Let's see how this is working.

Let's see how Mason works before you go and try to do other stuff.

No, you're, you're a research scientist.

You want to take it step by step and see what each thing does, right?

It's true.

Yes, I do.

It's tough sometimes because I, sometimes I can found my own stuff.

Th that is an interesting thing.

I know in my practice are people who come in and they really want to know

what's the thing that's going on.

And what's the thing that's going to fix it.

And they're okay with doing one thing at a time.

And then there's others that say, bring the smorgasbord,

just make the problem go away.

Right.

And, uh, I, I tend to have that kind of mind too.

I want to know why something worked and why it did, or I want to know why

something didn't work and why it did.

So I, I, I can hopefully learn.

So.

Well, I just told a patient yesterday that cause you know, sometimes

I, we all experienced people come in and say, oh, one of my first questions, just

so I know how to approach the needling is.

So have you ever had acupuncture before?

Oh yeah.

I've had acupuncture before and it didn't work.

And I do not have a problem saying to people, well, acupuncture does work.

And sometimes what didn't work was you didn't go for enough treatments or

you didn't get treatments frequently enough for, for long-term enough.

Or sometimes there are some things maybe your practitioner asks you to do

in between treatments that you didn't do because acupuncture does work.

Now, there are poorly trained practitioners in every profession,

medical doctors, lawyers, everywhere.

And that could be a factor too, but I really focus a lot on

acupuncture works, so we need to figure out why it didn't work.

That last.

What would

you call a fair trial for acupuncture

for acute things?

I would say three to six treatments, and I'd like to see the person at least twice

a week for more chronic things, chronic meaning maybe between eight and 12 months.

Then we're looking more at six to 12 treatments.

And then for chronic chronic, like my nephrosis from childhood

patient, I see him once a week.

I've seen him for 15 years, once a week and his kidney diseases and

total remission just with acupuncture because he's not an urban guy,

you

know, that's impossible.

It's totally impossible.

Possible.

He's one of my biggest fans because he used to have, when he came to

see me, he, first of all, he smelled like a person with kidney disease.

He had that kidney disease owner and he had to take 10 days a month of

prednisone to keep it under control.

And he hasn't had to take prednisone in, I think I don't even know over a decade.

Wow.

So acupuncture, acupuncture

works in powerful, powerful ways.

I just want to jump back to one thing that you talked about a moment or

two ago about guash Shaw and Derma.

Rolling.

I'm not familiar with Derma.

Rolling.

What is it?

And how's it different from guash Shaw and from your point of view, how do

these two things work to be helpful?

Okay.

So Derma a Derma roller is one of those little rollers with needles on it.

So you can buy them like 0.5 0.75.

In theory, it's making little, uh, it's kind of like a seven star hammer needle,

but in a, on a roll or, but, and not.

Yeah, I know, but not, that's not as deep, like microneedling

is basically an electronic.

Seven star hammer needle, which I just, I had to go get one years ago a treatment

because I thought no way, no way.

Somebody's going to be like with, with that kind of a needle on your face.

But it is you have to be lighter caned up because it's so painful.

But a Derma roller is a much smaller, shorter needle version of that.

And so theoretically, you can roll it on your skin and

your skin's going to get red.

And you're going to make little tiny puncture wounds depending

on how deep the needles are.

But in order for it to have a lifting effect, you must needle into the dermis,

just doing topically in the epidermis.

It's going to give a little exfoliation.

It's going to make your skin kind of pain, just like wash will, but for

lifting, which is what I treat people for.

You must needle into the dermis.

You must.

Is stimulate the collagen and elastin matrix.

So I feel like Derma rolling and guash Shaw are a nice in between tools

to give your skin some freshness.

And, uh, you know, guash is not necessarily going to

exfoliate, but Derma rolling can.

So that's kind of the difference it's it's like is my goal just to freshen my

skin up a little bit like an exfoliant, or is my goal to go a little deeper

and inspire the collagen and elastin matrix to start being more firm again.

So you have

to get into the epidermis to do that.

Right.

You have to go pass the,

pass, the epidermis, you have to get into the dermis for that.

Right.

And you know what, honestly, uh, are you familiar with the Graston technique at

all?

Okay.

Yeah, it's um, basically guash Shaw with very, very expensive tools

and a lot of.

A lot more pounds per square inch of pressure than you would be willing to do

on your, your face or somebody else's.

Because they are also accessing the deeper skin and, uh, layers and fascia.

So I didn't realize that.

Okay.

That's, that's, that's helpful to know.

Cause I thought it was just sort of a rebranding of guash Shaw

with, you know, super expensive.

It is in that sense, but they're not, it's a very, very

much more deep, deeply oriented in my experience, deeply oriented, uh,

pressure, I guess you could call it.

I mean, let's face it with Gosha.

You can watch YouTube videos about guash Shaw, where there's not even any

Shaw and you can watch YouTube videos of where the person is bleeding.

So I, like, I tell my patients who want to know, I'll say, well, you know, if

you're, if you watch one that the person starts to bleed, that's not how I do wash

up.

Yeah.

That would be, that'd be a bit excessive.

My wife, uh, who's Chinese does squash on a very Chinese sort of way.

I wouldn't say she makes me bleed, but a boy howdy.

She guash Sharlin Italia and get, gets into the.

I was teaching in class in Calgary a few years ago, and somehow

or other, these practitioners had never learned or experienced squash Haas.

So I said, oh, all right, well, let's take some time.

Cause I'm going to teach you how to do it.

So I was, uh, I said, look, I'm going to lie down.

And I want you to experiment with, you know, doing some guash on my back.

Oh my goodness.

They were like a feather.

And I kept saying, no, no, push hard.

They would push us.

Well, we don't want to hurt you.

I'm like, let's listen to me.

Put your whole body weight because they were so afraid.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I mean, it, it helps to be able to know the different layers.

A lot of times I think people are afraid of hurting somebody and,

but, you know, you can always just check in with your patient.

How's this feel?

What I've found is there's times I thought I was being heavy handed and

people go, oh, that feels so good.

So I'm like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to follow your lead on this.

Yes.

I tell people like your massage therapist says your, I say, okay,

look, zero is you don't feel anything.

10 is I can't stand it anymore.

It's so painful.

And you know, I tend to go kind of deep.

I want to get that muscle not out.

So if it's a seven or an eight, just say it, just say seven, say eight.

And I will know to back off.

And I hardly ever have anybody say that, no matter how hard I think I'm working.

Do you have some favorite kind of tools that you use for.

You know, my oldest ones are, I think they're Buffalo horn and

they have they're rectangular, but they've got the little notches that

you can kind of like go down the spine.

So yeah, though, that's just my it's.

Those are so old.

They're almost, they almost have sharp edges because I've used them so much.

Yes I have.

Yeah.

I'm always amazed when I, I sell little pain relief kits to my patient and

when I get up a new guash out tool, I'm like, whoa, that thing is kind of heavy.

In fact,

my need to replace a more, how do you clean your quad shot

tools?

I use a, um, kind of a medical, uh, gosh, of course.

I can't think of the name of it now.

I have those anti septic cloth.

Oh yeah.

I know.

Yeah.

I can't remember the name either.

I know what you're talking about.

Okay.

Martha, you seem to have your finger in so many different pies.

Is there anything else that you're working with these days?

I'm working on a survey right now for women

whose libido has disappeared.

And so I, I have my questionnaire ready and I will be, I'm trying to figure out

ways to get it to practitioners, to give to their patients, because what started to

happen was women in their thirties started telling me they don't have a libido.

They don't feel like having sex anymore.

And I started to think, you know, this is kind of getting bigger than, oh,

I'm 65 and I'm post-menopausal and I don't have any hormones anymore.

Uh, because when you're 30, you do.

So.

Yeah.

So I started.

I'm looking at it from a, you know, a physical standpoint,

a socioeconomic standpoint.

And then, uh, in my final paper, I want to write, um, write some

ideas from different perspectives.

What would Western medicine do?

What would Chinese medicine do?

What would we do in a psycho-emotional way?

And in February, I'm going to have the opportunity to, I'm doing a

pulse internship up in Buffalo and the owners of the clinic.

There were yes,

February.

'cause I go where I'm wanted,

you must be really wanting to go to Buffalo in the winter.

Well, I'm from the Northeast, so it's no big deal, but, um,

the, the clinic owners there also work one day a week in a clinic in Appalachia.

And so I am going to get to go feel pulses of basically an

inbred population and oh wow.

Theories in my mind about DJing are going insane.

And I'm going to be writing a paper about.

It sounds like you would like to get this survey out into

practitioner's hands, is that correct?

Yes.

So, you know, there's a lot of practitioners that listen to

qiological would you like for people to contact you to, to help out with

this?

Sure.

That would be great.

Okay.

That

would be great.

All right, then we'll, we'll make sure your contact information is

on the show notes page and, uh, get ready for a day lose because

there's a lot of people that listen

to this.

All right.

No, that would be perfect because as research, as you know, I, I don't want

to do a study with 10 subjects in it.

Yeah.

That, that, that would not work for your researching, uh, side of your brain.

Right.

That being said, though, let's not forget about the case study.

Okay.

Both Western medicine and Chinese medicine are missing a wealth of information

because we have that mindset that I just shared about, oh, I need a hundred.

I need a thousand subjects.

The case study in my PhD training, the case study was the first

research method that I learned about.

And we as practitioners have probably hundreds of thousands of case studies

that as long as we have in our mind.

Oh, well that didn't mean anything.

Then we're missing data points for sure.

Yeah.

Well, so often Chinese medicine is taught through case studies.

Yes, of

course it is wonderful.

Martha, anything else that you'd like to share with the listeners

before we wind this down?

I wish every practitioner absolutely adored what they're

doing and was invigorated by it.

That's what I wish.

I love it.