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“We’re part of this flow of life—and to get back to harmonizing our mind, our spirit, our body involves being in nature and being connected with all of those things,” says Jonny Suarez, doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, who joins Mental Health in a Modern World to reveal how the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine illuminates the path to true mental, physical, and spiritual health.

Jonny Suarez shares how his childhood obsession with kung fu films began a lifelong pursuit of the ‘warrior monk’ archetype, leading him into Chinese martial arts, holistic fitness, and a deep dive into Eastern healing. On the podcast, he unpacks how traditional Chinese medicine views the body not as a set of disconnected parts, but as an integrated system linking mind, body, and spirit—and why this makes it so radically effective for addressing chronic pain, emotional distress, traumas, and mental health challenges where Western medicine falls short.

He reveals how Chinese medicine’s focus on harmonizing and strengthening the body contrasts with the Western pharmaceutical tendency to block or suppress symptoms; why early life experiences—like the birth process and the mother-child bond—reverberate through adulthood in surprising ways; and how practices like time in nature and “shaking Qigong” restore balance lost to the overstimulation of modern life.

If you want a mind-expanding look at the connections between ancient wisdom, modern suffering, and true healing in the age of anxiety, tune in to this week’s Mental Health in a Modern World episode with Jonny Suarez.

5 Key Takeaways

Immerse yourself in these powerful ancient principles and rediscover harmony in your mind, body, and spirit.

1. Spend intentional time in nature to ground yourself and disconnect from overstimulation and devices.
2. Practice simple body-shaking Qigong daily to clear stagnant energy, rebalance your system, and return to center.
3. Prioritize nourishing connections—whether with loved ones or through self-care rituals—to build vital Yin (restorative) energy.
4. Address your health holistically: focus on strengthening and harmonizing your body’s systems, rather than just suppressing symptoms.
5. Create pockets of stillness throughout your day to counter the fracturing of your attention and reclaim clarity of mind.

Choose one to begin today and start your return to balance.

Memorable Quotes

"We're part of this flow of life and to get back to harmonizing our mind, our spirit, our body involves being in nature and being connected with all of those things. That also means time away from devices. So go into the forest where you don't have reception and spend some time out there."

"The yin anchors the yang. The yang, if it did not have yin, would just be all over the place, lost and ethereal and blasting out. There's nothing to ground it. The yin is what grounds the yang."

"I feel like the low-hanging fruit is what we should go for, which is the easiest things we can begin to change in our lives or support that just start inching us closer to maybe working on the deeper stuff."

Connect with Jonny

Website - https://unifiedfma.com/

Resources Mentioned

Shaking Qigong (General reference; video resources available on YouTube) - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=shaking+qigong

Paul Chek’s Holistic Health and Nutrition Courses - https://chekinstitute.com/

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

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Mentioned in this episode:

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We're part of this flow of life and to get back

to harmonizing our mind, our spirit, our body

involves being in nature and being connected with all of those things. And so that

also means time away from devices. So go

into the forest where you don't have reception

and spend some time out there. In a world moving faster than our minds were

designed to handle, Mental health is becoming one of the defining challenges of our

time. Welcome to Mental Health in a Modern World with holistic

health practitioner Greg Schmaus. After overcoming severe anxiety

and OCD in his own life, Greg dedicated the past decade to

helping others heal through a fully integrated approach to mental health,

combining lifestyle coaching, psycho-emotional healing, mindfulness,

and archetypal work. Over the years, he's facilitated thousands of

sessions Guiding people back to peace, clarity, and a deeper

connection with themselves. Each week, Greg shares powerful solo

insights, conversations with leading voices in holistic healing, and

immersive live coaching sessions that take you inside the healing process

itself. New episodes every Friday. Follow the show and start

reclaiming sovereignty over your mind in a modern world. Here's

Greg. Johnny, welcome to the podcast, man. Thank you,

Greg. Great to be here. I would love to

just start by offering our listeners a little bit of your background,

cuz you have a really diverse background in your professional work.

So I'd love for you to share a little bit about that journey so people

have an understanding of who Johnny is. Absolutely. I believe

it all started for me, as far as my journey and like what

the driving forces were, were kung fu

movies. And,

you know, watching these movies when I was young,

there was this like just deep connection with the archetype of

the warrior monk, the healer monk. And there was

just this draw that I, this, you know, pull to that,

experiencing that or feeling like that's something that I need to do.

That later developed into studying Buddhism. Yeah. You know, Chinese martial

arts at the age of 14, 15, 16. Kind of getting into

Chinese martial arts at that point, being very much into fitness.

And then that kind of later took me down this path of

fitness, holistic health, very similar

journeys that you've been down. And

through my journey in Holistic

health world that started to just

open my eyes to this is my path in life, and helping people

with health and fitness like led me there. The question that

kind of kept coming up for me that was kind of this driving force is

why are some people getting better out of the game or

improving or reaching their goals, and some people are not? And

just constantly having a curious question in my mind is what kept.

Leading me down this path of you know holistic health.

So later, through several

courses, you know, with Paul Jack going through all his

very nutrition courses, functional medicine courses,

I just realized this is my path. I want to

now really kind of like solidify this and move

forward with a better framework. For thinking about

holistic medicine and what I currently had, and that's where

intuitive felt right to go to Chinese medicine school for me

because I had already been studying the Western sciences up to that point.

And this is my path, and I really want to

round holistic pro. You know what really calls to me is

it's Chinese medicine as a experience of Chinese martial arts and

having this. This early urge towards the warrior monk

and the healer monk. That's what led me on that journey. You know, so I

got my doctorate, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and

it's really been now over 20

years of practice from starting as a really, I would say, personal trainer

and more holistic approach to being a doctor now and

seeing patients in my practice with all sorts of issues, but

mostly chronic pain, chronic illness. I think it's

so cool how even going back to childhood,

you see almost like this breadcrumb trail that

at first, like, you obviously don't connect the dots, but then later on in your

life, like, you're like, oh shit, like, I could see like the seeds were

already there, you know? And it sounds like you had a lot of

that going back pretty young. Yeah.

It's like, I didn't know why I was going the direction that I was going.

And now when I reflect back, I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah.

So one thing I'd love to kind of unpack a little bit

is number one, what are like the key

principles of traditional Chinese medicine

and how does the approach from,

you know, a value standpoint, just lens of perception,

differ from more, you know, Western or conventional

medicine? You know, so what are the key principles and how does the approach

differ? Yeah. So I would say some of the

key principles, like just the way that Chinese medicine

looks at the body is we could say in

garden versus— this is one of the analogies that's actually used in

some of the books, but like Western medicine oftentimes

looks at the body as these Parts and these segments, and

that become you know highly specialized and isolated in those

particular aspects of the body, the cardiovascular system,

brain, or the gastrointestinal system. So there's a

lot of separation segregation in

conventional medicine in order to get

down my nature. But for Chinese medicine,

it's. You know, it's looked at it as an

integrated, uh, systems and also connected

with heaven and earth that you're

part of, uh, that, that, that the human being is part of the

circuit and that circuit includes

spirit and matter. That's kind of like

conceptually, like the big, big differences.

Uh-huh. Tendent how Chinese

medicine goes about how to like treat

or its approach. One of the things that I think is very distinctive

from Chinese medicine, Western medicine or conventional

medicine, is the concept of

tonifying, strengthening, or building

the body. Because if you look at

mechanism of action of medications,

80% of the mechanism of actions are to

block, downregulate, or inhibit some aspect of

physiology. So very rarely you

find medications that actually improve, optimize,

harmonize, that like they don't have, really have those mechanism of action.

And then obviously with surgery, it's removing something, cutting something

out, right? versus Chinese medicine is

how do we harmonize? How do we optimize? How do we

strengthen and improve the system so that it heals

itself? Right.

I remember when you and I were driving up to Mount Shasta, we were having

that conversation and it really blew my mind about how

almost any medication, whether it's antidepressants,

anti- Fungal, antibiotic,

anti-inflammatory. It's just antihistamine. Everything's anti,

right? You know, everything's an inhibition. Everything's, and

you know, you wonder like, well, if you're creating like

a road closed sign here, that traffic has to be

redirected somewhere else. Yes. So I'd love for you to kind of speak

on that. Like what happens when you're constantly

redirecting the flow of energy You know,

kind of like you're creating like detours, like throughout the whole

system. Like what's, what's happening there? Yeah. So a perfect

example of that is actually diabetes.

Yeah. So in type 2 diabetes,

high blood sugar, high insulin. And

so the concern from the conventional

medicine standpoint Is that, and this is true,

that as your blood sugar is going higher, blood sugar is getting

oxidized into flames, and that is now inflaming and they're

working. So this is where we get into the complications, and

we're getting this like kidney failure,

eye problems, you know, tiredness, the heart

disease, cancer, all these things. And so

the Mm-hmm. You know, some of the things that they're giving, um,

insulin is meant to

take the high blood sugar that's in the

system and try and target it to cells out of

the bloodstream. Now, the problem there

is that the person can get to that place

before, you know, there had to be something going on

before Or the blood sugar got high. And what's typically happening

is, is that they're just over-consuming food, and

specifically in carbohydrate or sugar being the biggest culprit.

And the body, in its, you know, infinite

wisdom, the way it works, it's going to use up

whatever blood sugar it can right away because it

knows that if it gets too high, it's going to inflame the system. Yeah. So

preferentially, the body's taking the glucose into cells

and using it to create ATP energy. But

when the cell itself gets too full with

energy, then it closes its doors.

Because again, the body is wise in saying,

okay, if I pack my liver cell or an eyeball cell full of

glucose, if I let it pour in, it's going to damage the

cell and I'm going to lose the function of this cell. So I'm not

going to pull in any more glucose. We're going to leave it outside in the

bloodstream because I'm willing to sacrifice the

arteries and the stuff that the blood's touching a little bit

versus the organ itself. Yeah. So our body already knows, it's already

doing a layer of compensation to protect.

But what conventional medicine does, what I don't And again,

as well, I understand that it's kind of like trying to buy time for people

in a way by using this medication. So in a way, it's sort of helpful,

but it's shoving more glucose into the cell,

which over time will create other complications and problems in the

body. You can't just like block one function or push one way

with a medication and not expect some kind of reciprocal action to

take place of what's going to go on.

Hmm. One of the things that was coming up for me is,

I guess, if you do compartmentalize the body

into all these isolated systems, then

you treat one and you might see success

in that one by blocking something or inhibiting something, but

you create problems in 7 other systems. But since they're

isolated, you can perceive that as a win, right?

You don't see like the losses over here because you're not bridging the connection

between the two. So you're kind of checking the box as like,

oh, that's a win because we achieved this over here, even

though this is happening over here. And I'll give you a

perfect example. This morning I had a patient, a new patient,

and she's got kind of a weakness of getting sick all the

time. And she Basically got referred to me because she wants to

improve her immunity. And so she sent me her previous blood work

and I saw high blood sugar and high

triglycerides. And because she has high

triglycerides, she also had a little bit of high cholesterol. So the doctors gave

her a statin, lower the cholesterol, lowers the

triglycerides. But the glucose

and the A1C was still high. So again, on

one end, we're like controlling the cholesterol and triglycerides,

but on the other end, there's still high blood sugar going on. And I

told her, look, high blood sugar will suppress the

immune system even at moderate levels of being high.

And so I was just telling her the cholesterol medication is

masking that issue. Like, yeah, your cholesterol is lower,

but blood sugar's still high. It's not fixing the immune problem.

And now the other problem being on a statin is, is it suppresses

enzyme pathways that produce CoQ10, which is

an antioxidant for the system, which is also important for the immune system. It's a

perfect example of that. Yeah. And so

I'd love to transition into,

um, mental health. You know, it's a primary focus

on this show. And so how would you say if we kind of

start broad and then we'll kind of hone in on a few specifics,

how does traditional Chinese medicine

approach mental health? And how does that differ from a lot of

like the, you could say conventional psychiatric approaches that

you've seen with your patients as well? I think a good

place to start in understanding Mental health

and how would we address it is the first framework and how we look at

it. So we have in the acupuncture system, we have

meridians or channels, and they can be classified

into sort of 2 categories. We have the

8 extraordinary vessels, which are

the channels that control the flow of energy

for development. Of the human being as well

as the mental, emotional, spiritual side, the

consciousness, just the development of the human being socially.

So the 8 extras are at the root

of mental, emotional, spiritual development and being

suppressed. And then the other category

is of the meridians is the 12

primary channels or the 12 primary meridians. Okay.

Which are basically controlling the day-to-day

functions and circulations of organ systems, but

are also very closely tied with the

expression of our emotions as well, and how

they're holistically integrated with those organ systems. And

so I'd love to unpack the

8 vessels a little bit more, because it's something I really

don't know much of myself. Myself. So could we go into that a little bit

deeper? Yeah, absolutely. So the best place to start is

how it all— think of like embryology, you know,

from birth, right? First there's nothing.

First you are nothing, which in Taoist

philosophy would be wu qi. So wu

qi is pure potential, pure consciousness, pure

creativity, right? Not materialized yet, right?

But mom and dad come together and you are now a

little embryo. And then

Tai Chi is formed and that's where yin

and yang is. And as far as the extras,

the Du channel and the Ren channel are forming.

So the Du goes up the spine in the back. And

it's the Yang channel, and the Yang channel is

associated with activity, growth. And then

the Ren channel comes down the front of the body, is associated with Yin and

material substance. And so

the first 2 of the 8 experts, that's how they're

developing in embryological terms, is because

in embryology, you know, your spine, you've got 2 The spine and

the gut tube are all growing out of each other, and that's basically

yin and yang forming, and that's the du and the

ren. We can get into a little more specific about

how those things are relating to emotional, mental, spiritual development, but

that's the first 2 as far as development goes.

Then the 3rd is the Chong Meridian

or the Chong Qiang. Which is the central channel.

So it's right in the middle of the body. And then we have the Dai,

the Dai Mu Wei. Well, let me back up. The

Chong is actually where we start to

develop the self because

we also call it the sea of blood. Mm-hmm. The sea of blood

is what also holds Shen. Which is

spirit, which is consciousness. When the Chong forms

and the sea of blood forms, we are now bringing spirit

consciousness into the body. Then Dai forms.

The Dai, this also referred to as a belt, then it

circles there because the Du, the Ren, and the Chong are

running up and down. And then the Dai is encircling it,

kind of belting it all. Mm-hmm. And

the, the Da is where essentially the dimension of

space and time kind of come in, the perception of that. We'd say the

10,000 things. So that's 4.

5 and 6 are referred to

as Yin Wang and Yang Wang. And

this is where Yin and Yang are actually being expressed. Okay.

And we begin to get to take expression in your life in some way. And

then we have Yin Chao or Yang Chao as

the last 2, 7 and 8. This is where it actually is

materialized form, the final

steps or expressions of Yin and Yang.

And they all have different associations as far as like

things they're associated with. But the, the 8 Extras,

One of their primary functions is to control, we say, the

cycles of 7 and 8. Hmm. And the cycles of

7 and 8 are developmental cycles,

both physically and emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

You're— I know you're familiar with the chakra system and how the chakra

system refers to 7-year blocks of

spiritual development. Frames, things

that we're supposed to go through. Chinese medicine has the, basically the

exact same thing. The 8 Extras are controlling

development of them cycles of 7 and 8 as we go through our

lives. Therefore, not only the physical or mobile

development of the body, but even the psycho-emotional development.

Beautiful. And I love how traditional Chinese

medicine weaves together the

medical, spiritual, and

biological development. And it's almost like you were like telling a

story. Yeah. I felt like you were storytelling

and seeing like how all of this kind of like

emerges as a story that reveals

itself through biology or how spirit kind of like

reveals itself through the biological vessel. Really beautiful.

So now I'd love to apply

these principles over to mental emotional health.

And so how can you build that bridge for us initially?

Yeah. So

let's talk about the Ren and the Du

since those were like the first ones. So let's let me

say a little bit more about that, starting with the Ren,

and then I'll kind of link it into how those can

play into emotional mental issues.

So with the Ren, Ren Mai or Ren Channel,

Ren Meridian—they're all synonymous kind of terms—and the Ren is

the expression of earth.

Basically, it represents the ability to. Bear and endure

being a human being. Yin is

substantial in stillness, like substance and stillness.

It's that which is activated at depths and

doesn't really manifest on the surface. These are all just kind of

associations where I think it's important. It represents also the

most earliest life issues and enriching it

in this embrace of the do, which we call. The bao

chong, which here is— there's no physical structure for this, but it's like

close to where between the anus and the, uh,

tail, like there's a, you know, dimple there of

some sort that goes in, and that's where

they originate from. Yeah. The Ren have to do with

primal connection to safety and quality. So

people may Feel cut off from this and feel

unsafe in the world is kind of representation of that. When we

feel nourished inside, we feel, um, a desire to nourish

others. So that's very much to do with it.

And then openness, receptivity,

connection to others is very much related to the Ren.

And the Ren also has to do with our feminine.

So all the, uh, feminine energy, whether you're male or female,

All that feminine energy is expressed in the Ren

channel. Can we pause there for a sec? Um,

I really love how you laid that out and what was coming up for me.

I'd love your insight on it is

it feels very much related to like the root chakra

and our connection to the earth, our connection to a sense of, like you said,

safety, security, And, you know, when you think about

the modern world of technology, of

overstimulation, of devices,

it's very kind of airy. It's very up here.

And so I'm wondering if a lot of people's

connection to that ren and root energy is

either— would you say it's deficient? It's compromised?

It starts right at birth when you're

born and connection between mom and

the child, that it's Ren channel to Ren channel,

'cause they're, the baby's outta the stomach. And that's, that really

starts that whole developmental process.

Just the physical and energetic process of

being chest to chest with mom is

develop that. So, you know, step one, if you

didn't get that or enough of that, you may be having

issues with that in life.

I'm really curious, um, I'd love to hear your thoughts

on this with the— we could say maybe

over-medicalization of the birthing process

and how much that impacts that

ren energy and therefore

whether it's rates of anxiety or nervous system

issues, like later on in life, like you said, like right from the

start, like the moment of birth. So I'd love for you to

touch on that and whether you've seen, because I've seen this quite a bit in

my work, adults that are struggling with certain health challenges when you

really track it back. Yeah. A lot of times there are certain birth

traumas that maybe weren't perceived as traumas

because a lot of these things have been normalized.

Um, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and even clinical

experience with some of that. I wouldn't say I cracked

it that closely, but like definitely have made

insane associations with some patients. 'Cause I have

everyone kind of write the narrative for me. when they come

to see me. And I do specifically state, from

birth till now, tell me, tell me your story.

Yeah. And it is important. Sometimes they don't know,

but we're trying to fill in the pieces. So sometimes I have to ask their

folks. So sometimes they just don't have that information. So that's part of the

dissociation. And other times we do it and it kind of lines

up. It's like, yeah, I was in the NICU, you know, for like

weeks and basically didn't If it wasn't with mom and dad

for weeks, you know, so then, and now they're dealing

with, you know, anxiety. They've always had it their whole

life. Right. Ever since they were little, they said, I can't remember at home. I

didn't have anxiety as a child. And

so what would you say with this Ren energy? What

are the most common symptoms

that you might see with a deficiency or imbalance there?

So it'll typically be

physical manifestations can be sexual or reproductive

symptoms. So anything for females

related to like pain during intercourse

to, you know, very disrupted menstrual cycles.

And for men, it can be Impotence,

premature ejaculation. So basically everything out front.

So, so we have on the front, we have the sexual organ function,

which is where it starts to come out. And then you have digestive

functions. So even digestive dysfunction can be

manifestations, any kind of digestive symptoms.

Respiratory things. So lung or

sinuses can, can be part of it. And then

hormonal, because

the rent is controlling these

cycles of seven and eight, and that can

a woman's supposed to get her period at a certain point. And

in Chinese medicine, the females are on the

cycle of seven. So at second

cycle at 7:14:14,

this, their Tian Wei comes, which is their

heavenly essence, which is essentially their measure current, put in a very

eloquent way. And that can be disrupted. That can

come much earlier or later as a

representation of when disharmony is

thwarted. And so,

um, when you see that, are you usually treating it with

herbs? Um, are there certain practices?

What's usually your approach to bring that back into balance?

Yeah. So herbs and acupuncture

would be the 2 main things. I would say those are the things I

use pretty much the most. There are specific treatments for the

Ren Shao and for these deeper energetic dysfunctions.

Mm-hmm. And there, there is this whole system of

8 extras acupuncture treatments that

are meant to target those energetic

dysfunctions or imbalances that are occurring at some point in

our life, whether it's due to like poor birth or some sort

of trauma we experienced later in life or something that

disrupted These energetic developmental

channels, these 8 actions.

And so the yang one you said goes down the backside.

Oh, up, up the backside. So can you talk about that a little bit and

what you might find as imbalances,

dysfunctions when, when that channel is out of balance?

So the Du is, like I said, related to the yang.

And so indications actually could be

asthma, like difficulty urinating, uh,

poor circulation, uh, because the Yang

sort of driving the circulation. This Yang is this like

pushing force.

Mm-hmm. Uh, general lack of

just vitality, energy, thriving development.

can also be seen as slow development in children

as they're growing up and having neurodevelopmental disorders.

Anything related actually to the central nervous system, because it goes

into, essentially goes into the brain at the top. So any central

nervous system disorders or brain disorders, developmental disorders.

Oh. Yeah. Is kind of an expression.

The Du channel dysfunction itself.

So is, is the Du

channel, which is interesting, it's like doing,

like it's yang. Yeah. Would that

be more of like the sympathetic nervous

system and the Ren would be like the parasympathetic system?

100% correct. Because on the Du channel,

There is where your kidneys are. You know, you have adrenal glands that sit on

top of the kidneys, and the adrenal glands are

producing adrenaline and cortisol, which are like

energy-based kind of hormones. And again, they sit close

to the spine as far as where they are on the body, so they are

more posterior or on the back of the body. And

in Chinese medicine, they call that the life gate or the

Mingmen, which is the gate of fire and gate of life. And so

when the Du energy goes up, that

it's part of that, that kidney energy,

adrenal energy is what's also driving the Du

or the Yang energy up.

Yes, it's with that energy.

I remember when we were in Mount Shasta and you were teaching

Qigong, there's something that you said that was really beautiful. It was

Something like the, the power of your yang

is dependent on like the depth of your yin, something like that.

What was that statement that you said that was, for me, it was really,

really powerful, really simple, but— Yeah, I think

I really just dovetailed on what Mike said, 'cause Mike

heard that, I think, from somebody else, but— Well, I'll

give you credit for it. Yeah. But I've heard that too.

Exactly. It's something that we talk about in Chinese medicine all the time. The

yin anchors the yang. And so

the yang, he did not have yin. Yang would just

be like all over the place, lost and ethereal and

blasting out. There's nothing to ground it. Essentially, it's like lightning

that's looking for a place to ground and it's just chaotic.

Right. pure chaos. It's not organized. The yin

is what grounds the yang.

And so as an expression, like

ADD or just distractibility, that's an

expression of like yang being all over the place and unable to

ground through the qualities of the body.

And so you cannot fully express

Your yang energy if there's not enough yin energy

grounded, and so you'll be much more

distracted, much more just your energy is all

over the place. When you cultivate enough yin

to to ground the focus, to ground the energy,

then yeah, you can be laser focused. You could be more efficient,

very centered, very with that energy. It's not

lost. It's not escaping, essentially.

You know, this, I love how we are able to kind of tie this into

the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Because a

lot of people, at least now with a little bit more

kind of research and talk about, you know, how

nervous system challenges are at the root of a lot of our health

challenges, especially like mental, emotional You know, and

how if we don't have enough parasympathetic

activity and we're always in that like fight or flight state, our

psyche's always in a state of survival. And so we're always perceiving through

the lens of fear and security. And so we're always

looking for the proverbial lion or tiger that's chasing us.

So it sounds like this is a very similar, at least at the

foundation. Yes. Very similar kind of

approach. So I'm always considering balancing

these forces, the yin and yang forces in somebody's

body, whether it's related to mental,

emotional, or physical benefits.

Beautiful. And so, you know, the other piece that

you mentioned is the 12 standard meridians.

I'd love for you to just, we don't have to go through all of them,

but just kind of touch on what those are and the

function of them. Yeah. So the

12, um, channels, um, in the body are

associated with the various organs and then they

have repairs. Okay. So

the best place to start, I think, is the, um,

The liver and the gallbladder, because they're paired organs.

And his liver is actually called the

strategist, and

it's the part of

who strategizes our life path, and it's part of

controlling our life path. And then the

gallbladder, being its paired organ, is called

the minister of decision. And

that's what actually executes. Her cold black energies were executes

decision in your lives.

For somebody who is maybe like very fickle, you know, like

back and forth and like has trouble making decisions about things and

what they should do in their lives, much we say

weak cold black. So they're

gonna The in the twelve channels are

controlling the day-to-day flow of these organ systems,

but they're also very much related to how we're

expressing ourselves in our lives and the emotions associated with

that. The liver is also

associated with wusha ni, anger, frustration, or

resentment. And so this can come up

either as you. you're having actual physical

liver problems, and then that's creating, say, liver

heat, and that, that generates anger,

frustration, resentment in your life. Or the other way around,

where you have anger, frustration,

and now you're actually creating physical

liver problems. So it's a, it's a two-way

highway. Yeah. So the emotion can create physical

challenges in the organ and then physical challenges in the

organ can create imbalances or challenges emotionally.

For the, another one is

the heart. The

heart is paired with the small intestine, but then there's also

pericardium is the sac

that's house that kind of is outside of the heart, case of the heart.

The heart, we say, is associated with joy, but

really the heart, Chinese medicine would say,

houses the germ, houses consciousness.

Mm-hmm. The pericardium, we say, ambassador of the

heart, is the expression of joy.

Oh. In our lives and love.

The, the heart itself, how does the consciousness, how does the ship—

as far as some of the issues

that could present there, actually, as somebody who is

easy to be super giggly

and, uh, Just not serious.

At times, like, just very sort of very

physical, very glee all the time.

You can actually sometimes hear it in their voice, like laughing all the time when

they're talking in some way. This is that Chinese lesson they tell

us to pay attention. How do they speak? Are they kind of

laughy all the time? Do they have this like deep groaning? Hmm.

Kind of sounding their voice, like what's the sing-song nature to their voice,

and what is that potentially pointing to? Organ systems

or a vocal state. And so

somebody with that giggly kind of expression, we say,

man, we have weakness of the heart,

Qi, not enough Yin, not enough Yin to

ground energy. So it's kind of like

So with these organ pairs,

like you said, the heart and small intestine, the liver

gallbladder, I think one is like the lung and the large intestine. Like,

so do you have one yin organ and

one yang organ in these pairs? Is that how that works?

So they're called the Zang and the Fu. The Zang are

all the yin-based organs. So Liver, kidney,

heart. So those are, you say, dense.

And the Fu organs are the hollow-spaced

organs. So stomach, bladder,

gallbladder, lungs, large intestine, right? We say those are the

hollow-spaced organs or the Fu organs. It's yin and yang.

The heart is unique because it has this pericardium.

Paracord is still— so there is, there is this,

this parrot going on. And so when you

have, let's say you have someone come to you with anxiety or

depression or some kind of

emotional turbulence in their life, are you a lot of times

going to the meridian system, going to the organs

and seeing if you can kind of clear Some of those

systems up, and then you kind of see how their

psycho-emotional system responds.

Yeah, yeah. So grand anxiety would be

associated with the stomach, which we said is the home for

worry or anxiousness. And so a lot of

times there's digestion going on.

And you know, the beauty with Chinese medicine is that. You don't

always have to like go into the

psycho-emotional stuff. You can just work on

acupuncture and herbs and supporting those

channels and those meridians, and it can influence the psyche. It

can influence their mood, how they're expressing themselves.

And, um, so that's oftentimes where I'm starting

folks, even though may still point out

that, like, the idea of certain life circumstances and

things going on that's generating this anxiety and working on,

on a deeper level, this is a root cause issue. We can still

treat from this other angle and still support you. So it's like

we almost give you the energy that you need to outgrow

the issue that's really at the root, you know? And that's what I think is

beautiful. Uh, we're not always

going right to the root, you know, for it,

supporting quality, strengthening their systems so that at

some point they feel like they can take it on. Yeah.

What I love about this, um, and I'd love for you to kind of build

on it a little bit, is it's kind of like a

bottoms-up approach. A lot of times in mental health, it's

more of a top-down. But this bottoms-up approach is really

beautiful. And, you know, what was coming up for me is

in order for someone to

attend to some of the real root issues, like

let's say trauma, if you don't have much

life force in you, you're not going to have

the energy reserves to be able to do that work. Right.

And so by attending to, to these systems,

you're kind of creating almost like this reservoir of

vitality that the person can draw from when they

do attend to some of that deeper work. Is that

kind of what your approach is?

I mean, I feel like the low-hanging fruit is

what we should go for, which is like, what's the easiest things

Begin to change our lives or support that just start

inching us closer to maybe working on the deeper stuff.

I think, you know, in my practice, I do try to lay

out the big picture as far as like,

here's all the components I think are going on with your case. Here's

like root cause deep stuff, you know, say I'm kind of like pointing to

that, like this may be a significant right. But then here's like

easy day one stuff you can start with right away, already

supporting you and supporting physical, but will

strictly have an effect on your emotional

state and how you feel about beginning to approach the root

causes. Beautiful. And so

one of the, one of the most common

challenges that I see with people that

I've worked with is this overactive,

racy mind. Like they, like this mental

chatter, they can't quiet the mind. And so I'm

curious from a Chinese medicine

standpoint, this overactive mind that

doesn't settle, is there an imbalance, a

root cause? Or something going on in these systems

that causes the mind to kind of be in that

overactive state.

Yes. So it's associated, we

say it's green energy, earth energy. We

just call it pensiveness, right? Which is overthinking or ruminating on something.

It really is just, so again, about a

One is you're drawing all

your earth energy, the spleen, the digestive energy, and bringing it up

to the head. And you are, we can

say that modern technology has

fractured our attention so much. That's what it's doing. It's

actually like a parasite sucking our energy,

our earth energy up into the head. Yeah. and fracturing our attention.

Mm-hmm. Never had any of these things that, you know, as we were

human beings, you know, that we have now that are

pulling our attention in so many different directions, getting notifications and

pings and social media. And it's just, we now have

extremely fractured attention spans. And

that is, is sort of sucking away and pulling

away, we say, our earth And spleen

energy is digestive energy. Either somebody, let's say constitutionally,

has weak spleen, weak earth energy, and they have this kind of

presentation or monkey mind. And so

essentially it's like, you gotta work on your yin, your

digestive yin, earth energy, grounding, right?

Spleen, all of these things to help anchor the

monkey mind. Yeah. And how about, I mean, it's

not the other extreme, but someone who experiences, let's

say, severe depression. Like when someone's system goes

into more of a depressive state rather than that

kind of anxious energy, like what's happening from

a Chinese medicine standpoint there, if we go to the other kind of

polarity. So the liver is always involved

with depression. As we say, the liver controls the

flow of Qi and blood throughout the body.

And so if you're in more of this depressed state, you're not having as

much circulation flow of the normal energies throughout the body.

So we say that there's usually liver Qi stagnation going on,

or the liver is congested in some way.

So liver is always involved. Yeah. Now,

oftentimes there could be, we say, deficiency on top of that,

that we say maybe somebody's kidney

energy or spleen energy has become deficient

and that's making it harder for smooth flow of Qi

throughout the body. So they're more likely to get into

a liver issue that's not

circulating the energy as well. So just easier for them to

fall into a depressive state. Yeah. state, that's sort of

how the organs are more represented in that.

It's so interesting because a lot of times you

hear this a lot, how a lot of people say

certain expressions of like certain cases of

depression are related to repressed

anger or anger that instead of it being

expressed outward is turned inward. And obviously, like you shared

earlier, anger being the emotion associated with the liver. I

never really made that correlation until

you just mentioned that now, that stagnant liver qi is

really associated. Yeah. And then the depression may

actually be repressed anger,

you know, so it may be starting from that place because

there's not enough energy to actually

experience and express the anger. So it's

first felt as depression. It's just lower level because there's not

even enough energy to deal with the emotions. So they're just flat maybe

until we say maybe more kidney energy, more spleen

energy, more energy comes in and then it moves

that liver energy. All of a sudden they're like feeling the repressed anger.

Yeah. And

The last kind of case

study that I'm really curious about is how does

Chinese medicine look at addiction? Hmm. Like when

someone's struggling with a lot of addictive patterning,

are there certain imbalances or certain deficiencies or

blocks that you might see from a Chinese medicine

standpoint? When you see someone that's in some

recurring pattern of addiction. Yeah. And

actually this actually comes back to the Ren channel, actually.

The Ren is understimulated. It just means that people are

having a hard time with connecting. So if they're having a

harder time with connecting, then they're looking for a way to fill

that connection with something. And so that's where some

addictions can come in. And so that is

actually one aspect of addiction is treating

the Ren and building that Yin and that Ren energy

for self-love. Mm-hmm. Because they're looking

for something outside of them to fill that void, right?

And so the Ren channel has very much to do with that.

And so, which is so fascinating

because you mentioned earlier how the Ren

also ties into birth and the Ren

to Ren connection with the mother. And one

thing that I have found, you know, over the years working with a lot of

addiction with clients is how much

their addictions track back to attachment

injuries with their mother. And so

I'm curious if those attachment injuries with the mother, how

that impacts the Wren. And then you have these

addictive tendencies as almost like an adaptation.

Yeah, absolutely. Beautiful. This,

this show being, you know, mental health in a modern world,

Mm-hmm. From a Chinese medicine

standpoint, what would your, you know,

even just a few simple or practical, like, recommendations

be for people that might be struggling

with their mental health or might be kind of caught

up in the overstimulation of our

tech-driven, you know, device-driven, fast-paced

modern worlds? Like, What would some kind of like key

recommendations be to whether it's to help ground, to help

build that like yin reserve, anything that you would

recommend for people? Yeah. So number one is just spending more

time in nature. In Chinese medicine, it's completing the circuit

between heaven and earth. You know, as the, the human being is like the

middle of that. So we're part of this flow of

life and to get back to harmonizing our

mind, our spirit, our body involves being in nature and

being connected with, you know, all of those things. And so that also means

time away from devices, right? Because that naturally

excludes those things. So go into the

forest where you don't have perception

and spend some time out there. So another good

practice, which would be, you know, what we do at the retreat,

And I actually give this to patients too, this original Qigong

and shaking your body. It's so simple. And I try and, you know,

give people simple things so that it's very

accessible. And

because we can get pulled in so many different

directions throughout our lives, because our lives are so busy, we lose

connection with the body or we take on and Certain

energies and emotions of people, surroundings, and things. So

it's like you kind of lose

yourself a little bit in the sea that we're kind of living in.

And so with shaking qigong, you can basically just stand in one place and shake

your body. I mean, anybody can find videos of it

online easily if you just look up shaking qigong on YouTube. But if you

just spend 5, 10 minutes just

shake, you know, one place, it can completely change

your state of being, both emotionally, mentally, and physically.

Um, so that you can kind of recenter, refocus, just figure

out, you know, where do I go next? What am I doing? Or do I

need to sit and just chill for a little bit? Uh, it's a great,

I say, cleansing and clearing practice to do at

any point because you can do it anywhere. Beautiful.

So more time in nature and do some shaking out there while you're at

it. Beautiful. And if someone would

like to either follow up with you, reach out to you, work with

you, where would you like to direct them? Yeah. So my

website is

unifiedsma.com, which is functional

medicine acupuncture, but unifiedsma.com.

And, um, basically you just click on the homepage discovery

call and, um, you just schedule it for a call

to, to talk and see what's going on, how I can help.

Beautiful. Johnny, thank you so much for coming on the

show today. Thank you, Greg. It's been awesome.