Even when speaking in our mother tongue we often misunderstand each other. Due to our biases, perspectives, and background it is easy to overlay our story on just about any situation. Add in that we are dealing with translation between language and culture; it gets even trickier.

In today’s conversation we explore the use of “upper, middle and lower” class herbs. This does not mean that upper is better; it means each medicinal has an affinity for more formed or less formed aspects of a person. “Upper” does not mean better, nor “lower” mean worse, these are simply demarcations on where a particular herb will be effective. It’s our job as practitioners to choose the right tool for the right job.

Listen in to this conversation that cautions about conflating “upper” with “better.” And goes into how Chinese medicine can be used for acute and emergent conditions that some doctors used to treat quite well before the advent of emergency rooms. 

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

Being able to see when something is the right fit and having the skill

to not only recognize it, but then enact the right treatment is key.

And the less we know the easier it is to be convinced.

We're right.

Hi, I'm Michael max.

And this is qiological a podcasting pal of mine says that when you begin

a podcast, you've got two things, your integrity and no audience.

And really when you think about it, starting an acupuncture practice,

any business for that matter, you start with the same situation.

You've got your integrity, which includes some kind of vision

for what you want to share.

And no audience, we start from nothing.

It's kind of a Dallas thing.

When you think about it, right?

the Dow gives rise to the one creates the two that produces the three that gives

us the 10,000 things in our modern world.

We're constantly striving to get something.

We do this in order to get that we struggle.

We strive plan and plot, and then the world just shows up as it does.

It's one of those chewy paradoxes that I find myself constantly tripping over.

I find this showing up in my clinical work as well.

I'm trying to air quotes here, do something to help my

patients often without all the information that I really need.

And sometimes that's because they don't tell me, but more often it's because I'm

too busy thinking or planning to really listen, spending a little more time with

the nothing pausing for a moment to feel for the clarity before the mind settles

in on the story that becomes the treatment plan, spending a moment in that liminal

space between knowing and not knowing.

So one of the most challenging parts of my day, we need to know to do our work.

And it's helpful if we're also familiar with our own process of going from

not knowing into knowing in today's conversation, we get into knowing

the levels of which Arabs treat, what condition, and perhaps become aware

of the biases we carry concerning the upper middle and lower classes of herbs.

I hope that you'll enjoy this conversation with Andrew Mnuchin had as much as

I did it really illuminates the deep sense of observation that comes from

being attentive to the transformations of yin and yang and how that can

help us to focus our treatment.

Hey folks, welcome back to qiological.

I'm delighted to sit down with a guest who 10 years ago, I sat down for over

tea in Beijing, and now today we're sitting down over T across the internet.

I've got Andrew Mnuchin head with me.

He and his wife have created the association for traditional studies.

He teaches medicine that he was exposed to over as long tenure in Taiwan and China.

And in particular, he's had an opportunity to study with a

number of the , the old doctors.

And so he has had the opportunity to drink from a number of

different currents of medicine.

There's a bunch of information over on his website that well you'll find

the link to it over on the show notes page, along with other pertinent

information from our conversation.

Today, we're sitting down for a discussion about herbs and perhaps a few other topics

as well, depending on how the time goes.

But in particular, we're going to get into this idea of Sean, John Shaw, the

upper, the middle and the lower class or herbs, you know, so often we think

we should be doing the upper level work, but the thing about our medicine,

it really tells us that we should be working where we need to be working.

And so we're going to get into a discussion here about herbs in

particular, the lower-class Andrew.

Good to see you, man.

Welcome to qiological.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be back with you.

And first time here on qiological.

So, you know, our medicine is, it comes from another place in

another time, in another language.

And I think sometimes we get tripped up with the language piece

and I don't want to get into this.

About the different classes of herbs?

Well, that's a great topic.

As you know, when we originally talked about this, we had this other topic that

we may never get to today, but, uh, just at that time, uh, my wife, Julianne,

who, you know, we've the two of us have been, you know, unfairly pigeonholed.

I'm supposed to be the acupuncturist body worker, and

she's supposed to be the herbalist.

And of course she's a fantastic practitioner of physical medicine

and I've been practicing herbs longer than anything else, but she was

online in one of the chat groups and an exchange happen that we watched.

And, uh, it was so astounding to see what was being said and how non-inclusive

or how, I don't know what the term is because you can't say it's sexist, racist.

It's.

Medicinal list.

I don't know how to say what I'm trying to say, except that there was this

idea that it could only be one thing.

And this is it.

And the lack of understanding of the breadth of our medicine and the meanings

of what it was coming from is huge.

Uh, one of the things that we were talking before we started filming is this idea

of this upper practice of medicine.

And that idea that this, the superior practitioner treats no illness or

when there is a non illness and the idea that we should be using these

refined herbs, the herbs that lighten the body and help the spirit and.

That's great, but that implies a misunderstanding that that is

better because of shaoyang seeing mean to mean superior in English.

And what I, for me, translation is a really, really, really big issue.

Uh, I, you know, I got to China, I got to Taiwan in 86 and by 88, I was

doing a lot of translating for the Chico and practitioners of Dahlia.

And as we say, the Dallion practitioners and my Tigie practitioner and, uh,

Chinese medicine, and I was just translating like crazy translating,

interpreting live for classes.

I was helping them produce manuals.

I was helping them produce teaching materials.

And then I decided after.

I don't know how many years to spend six months studying the issue of translation.

And I didn't translate again for 10 years, that shock of realizing that

I was responsible for a huge amount of well-intended misinformation

because of my misunderstanding of what translation can be.

And I had so focused on one area that regardless when I talk about

it, I talk about the shape of an hourglass and an hourglass is wide

at the top and it funnels into one small little spot, and then it goes

through the hour glass and then it funnels wide again on the other side.

And when we pick a word like upper shaoyang, we put that right

at that, at that crux spot where it goes through the hourglass.

And so above his Chinese shaoyang and below his English upper, and as we push

it through, we say, okay, Shaun means.

But what we're missing is the breadth of what shaoyang means in Chinese, in

so many contexts and so many usages.

And then once we pick a word in English, when we translate, we are so beholden

to all of the extra meanings, it has an English that we may attach to it.

And without even realizing we'll use the other context that it

might also have in Chinese Dao fish on our main coming facial Mang.

Once we give it a name we've lost every other possibility.

So what I stopped translating, as I kept realizing by giving something

a name, I had lost the breadth around it, and then people would

put their own breadth around it.

And there's a wonderful book for anyone out there who is doing any translation

or starting to work in that field.

Please read a language thought and reality by Benjamin Lee Wharf.

That's an old book.

That's been around a long time.

That's a classic that is as classic as it gets.

And in this field, if you can read that and a few other books that we can stick

up in the liner notes, uh, where it will really help people understand that there's

no right or wrong, except thinking we're right and heading off in a direction

because we think everything else is wrong.

Uh, all that to say.

So we have this idea of upper and superior the word in English and.

In the nudging.

If we're talking about doctors, Shanghai, ShaoYin that's correct.

We have an upper doctor, a middle doctor and a lower doctor and a lower

doctor does not imply less skilled.

We'll leave that alone.

But what we really need to understand is that it also is talking about

the Sensai or the three levels.

Shaoyang drone, shower, Tinder.

Heaven earth and the human.

And when it comes to herbs, that's what we're really talking about is

not a hierarchy of superiority to inferiority, but to where it's affecting,

what affects heaven, the spirit, a lightening of things, what affects

the human deficiencies cold warmth?

Have we gotten weak?

Have we gotten too strong?

Are we having too much insomnia?

Are we too sleepy?

Whatever's going on?

And then earth that which is strong and powerful and comes from the earth.

And there's absolutely no differentiation of better and worse when it comes

to the shaoyang drone shot of herbs.

So we're, we're really talking about location.

There's not a value judgment, better worse top of your class, bottom of your

class, or what, what really talking about here is where does the resonance.

Exactly and a tangibility that is when we're working with the

spirit, enlightening, the body, we're working in a very, in a way

that has to get in and percolate without affecting too much the body.

Otherwise it would affect the body and not the spirit.

And when we're treating an illness, we have to affect the body.

And then if our herbs are too light, it doesn't actually treat the problem

and understanding that it's it's.

I always use the word level of intensity, but intensity in English, again,

implies a superiority inferiority.

And to shake that with translation is very hard.

Um, but if we can just grasp that idea of upper middle lower is not

better and we shouldn't strive to use upper herbs, one of the great things.

And I think that if people.

Have that context, but then if they would just read or listen to the translation

of the Shanghai and preface, but John drum, James preface, is it just, it

helps set the stage of helping erase.

A lot of the foolishness of we have as practitioners.

Uh, he it's, it's on our website and it's available out there.

You can find it in so many places, but it's still not given.

It's the most important part of the whole Sean Highland.

But with that, we can really grasp, ah, I am fooling myself.

I'm having desires.

I am thinking something and it's not true.

It's like that hour glass, it's an incorrect translation of my own self.

And with that, we need to look at it because where it all got going was.

The comment led to a comment about using sure go and the idea sure,

go is somehow dangerous for us.

Or that Maha is somehow dangerous or foods is now the fire school or whatever.

They're calling themselves in English that these people are doing special

or very strong medicine and how we should be using these light herbs

or amounts are too too strong.

It really is a misunderstanding of medicine because what really

got me going is I read this and I thought, you're kidding.

I can go to my local supermarket and I can go to aisle seven.

And my eight year old can buy extra strength, Tylenol off

the shelf checkout, go into the parking lot and eat the entire box.

If you want.

Now we're raising a smart eight year old, so he's not going to do that.

But what people are missing is that's an over counter of the medicine from

aisle seven that anyone can buy.

And if you flip over the box and read taking more than four in a 24

hour period can cause liver failure, we accept that it's on our shelf.

We trust absolutely anybody to walk into a supermarket and buy something of

that level of strength and intensity.

And yet people are scared of Chicago and they're making comments, oh, you

shouldn't use this, or you should do that.

The idea that somehow Chinese medicine is so strong, it will

damage the young of a child grow.

And yet we give them Tylenol.

We give them aspirin.

We give them NyQuil.

Uh, the idea that mock long is a very dangerous substance.

It could give someone a stroke and yet people are carrying epinephrin

pens, which is a thousand times stronger and absolutely needed

in the moment that it's needed.

That's exactly it.

And even more is pseudo ephedrine is a hundred times weaker than epinephrin.

So you have in its raw form, Mormon tea.

I mean, the Mormons will drink it.

It's it's bringing empty it's Morgan tea.

Uh, you have this herb and then there's an extract for it, which

many people don't realize is in.

So they say I'd never prescribed.

And so we have a Chinese medicine practitioner who would never use and

yet they have terrible allergies and they're using allergy medicine that has.

So I, you know, just the, I don't want to use the word.

How do I S I'm trying so hard to be nice.

Julianne made a sticker, said I had to be nice.

Um, but is it, is it in front of you right now?

Are you looking at a sticker?

I'm looking at the sticker.

I have a sticker and it says behave, but you know, the, the ignorance of people

who are making comments about the herbs that are critical to this medicine,

should we choose to treat disease?

And that those same substances are in products that they have take,

and people can buy over the counter.

And that there are substances that are, life-saving like an epi pen

that you and I can stick an epi pen in our thigh and go through the

experience and not have a stroke.

And yet people are concerned about using.

Now misuse of anything is a problem.

Of course, we know this reminds me of an older conversation in a way, right?

It's the conversation between like the wind being school in the

Shanghai in school in a way, right?

Cause the one being folks, you know, the southerners, you know,

Hey, we're more delicate things like food, some offline, you know,

we, we can't tolerate that stuff.

We're more sensitive.

Well, you know, it's true to a degree, but what a lot of people, I always like

to point out what the one being school is.

You have the school, you know, it's a little bit like the spleen school.

So you've got lidocaine in the spleen school.

And if you look at people who say, oh, I'm a spleen school person and they

look at their formulas, they don't look anything like we don't men's formulas.

We don't end did not use a lot of fooling.

He uses a lot of aromatic in lights.

When you look at his herbs, it doesn't match our current thinking

of every person needs surgeons' atop.

And with the one big school, it's the same thing where we miss that.

If we open up the one being Taliban, many of the formulas are

all Shanghai learned formulas.

In fact, the very beginning you've got grade your tongue in there,

you've got by Hutong in there.

And so the one being was not new formulas.

It was.

This is a whole new set of illnesses.

And here are formulas that will work in these circumstances.

They came from the Shanghai, Linda came from the past, and here's some

ones that we're adding because we need to clear some really toxic heat that

he was not dealing with right now.

But you know, the, the issue of course, is that idea.

And then the one being, once you got past the, those epidemics that were going

on, so you get to the later Ching and then you get to the Republic of China.

All of a sudden those one being formulas become, you know, in chow, sad and songs

you in and all of these gentle ideas when that's not what the book is talking about.

And today we have Shanghai, Hanlon scholars, Shannon Lynn practitioners, and

they're writing nine grams of glacier.

And that's not what the Shanghai Lynn was talking about.

I mean, it's 45 grams of wager and 45 grams a mile long when

you get into the real dosages.

So in which case we have.

What we think it means and therefore a practicing and what it really means.

And that brings us right back to this upper middle and lower level of

herbs, because in the end, there's 365 herbs in the Shendong buns.

And that number is not because they're only was, we have to realize that

they were picking that because the shoe or the love of math or calendar

skills was very big at the time.

And so we have to think, what herbs did they not pick for the, for the shutdown?

Bunzl.

I mean, there was a huge amount of herbs being used.

They pick these.

And what people miss is that the category of herbs that has

the most is the lower category.

It's a hundred and twenty, a hundred and twenty, a hundred and twenty five.

And so if we were to look at it without an idea of English, superiority,

inferiority, we would say, gosh, that category has more herbs than the others.

It must be more important.

Well, sort of like the Shanghai one, right?

What's the biggest challenge.

It's the Granger chapter.

It is, and it helps some ups, such a breadth of treatments.

Uh, you know, what's so fantastic about that whole, whole huge line

in the Taiyang chapter of all the uses of wager is that it's wagered.

But in the meantime, don't miss that the illnesses progressed.

Now, you need to use by hotel.

Now you news by who, with wrenching, here it is, but Hey, here's

here's childhood and child who shows up in the Taiyang chapter.

That's where you have the huge run, not over in the shaoyang chapter,

where everyone thinks they'll find it.

And so that understanding of context and those lower herbs are the context

of treating illness and disease.

And if we miss that, if we don't understand that that's also a medicine

that if we stretch our medicine so that if we had a football field and everybody

is operating from the field goal to the 20 yard line, we just need to turn on the

lights and say, you know, from 20 to 50.

Is a whole other set of this field that no one's walking around in.

And then from 50 to the other end zone is a whole other field.

And it doesn't mean one area of the fields better than the other, but let's

include because otherwise we end up with a whole lot of medicine being practiced

that can't be called medicine because we can't tackle the big diseases.

Maybe you can tackle a certain realm of it.

And this is the thing to me.

That's so fascinating about Chinese medicine, because

we often talk about that.

We don't treat disease well, I mean, of course we're treating disease because

otherwise, why would people come to us and why would we spend all this time studying?

But there's this other aspect of it where we're really looking at some principles

and we're trying to understand what is actually going on, because if you

just look at the disease and go what herbs or what formula treats, quote,

headaches, or stomach upset, or, you know, whatever it is that someone

came in with, we're going to miss.

That there are principles involved, which is why you can have the warm

disease school using a bunch of Shanghai.

One formulas, because it's not about this formula is better,

or this formula is worse.

It's about, there's a process going on here and we're are trying to

understand these changes between.

Heaven earth in person.

That's so well put, uh, the biggest thing is that people join a school.

And again, I'm going to, I'm looking at that note saying behave and

I'm about to misbehave, but I've really come to believe, download

exactly, you know, muskrat, muskrat.

Uh, I've really come to believe that people join a school wittingly or

unwittingly so they can do less work so they can study less work, less hard and

just follow something somebody else has done because every school was created

by people who were reading all of the books and sweating through everything.

And we're reading the nudging and the Nanjing and the Shanghai.

And now what's called the gene quais and going through Cincinnati

and going through the wide tie.

And if, depending where they were in the time period, sweating their way

through every commentary and saying, gosh, here is something I'm seeing

and I need to write about this.

And then people come along and they just read that person's.

And they say, I'm just going to follow that.

And don't bother seeing that that person was saying only in context.

Uh, and that idea of, as you said, trying to get wrap our head around

what we're seeing right now, if it's different from the past.

And, um, you know, what I always try and point out is that we think

there are different thinkings.

But when we talk about yin and young people, miss the fact that if we were

going to put it into English, we must understand yin and young are not nouns.

And that has killed us in English translation, unit, younger adjectives.

And if we look at the actual pictographic character it's in

is the shady side of a mountain.

And young is the sunny side of a mountain.

That's what pictographs likely we're looking at.

We're looking at a mound and the sun, or we're looking at a mound and the shade.

So when we talk about union, yeah, we must realize that we're

not talking about union young.

We're talking about the.

And then the adjective is the sunny side of the mountain or the

shady side of the mountain, but they're adjectives for an object.

They are themselves are not nouns.

Well, there's something else that just came to my mind.

Let me just toss this.

'cause when you first said union young or not nouns, I went you're right.

Holy smokes.

The verbs.

Well, I guess people will end up writing in and with Lee with examples of them

being nouns, adjective, herbs, and, you know, I think that that's the whole

point is that we can't get stuck in that hour glass of poking it through into

one, meaning, well, even, even more than that, there's this pluralistic view.

You can look at it as a noun and that will open up a certain aspect of reality.

It will give you a particular perspective that you'll be able to work within and

you'll be blind to everything else.

Likewise, you can look at it as an adjective that will

open a different perspective.

If you view it as a noun, you're looking at something else.

I don't think any of them is more right or wrong.

They're going to give you a different lens.

To understand and see different things as a result.

And that's huge.

And that's why lately my rants, you know, I I've been teaching so much

that there's a, a group of people that, uh, I chat with that are, if

something comes up, I will email with them or they'll email with me because

they've been through all the programs.

We have a common language, which I feel is so important when I'm working

with people for a long time, is that I know we have a common language and.

If we can just reach a place where we understand that

inclusivity is what's important.

It's not that this is better than that.

We just have to widen, spread and include.

So, uh, I include treatments where people put in needles and leave the patient

alone for 20 minutes with nothing to do.

And I include working on someone in a way that would be construed

as extreme, dry needling.

And I work in a way of what might look like Reiki.

And I work in a way of, it looks like good old fashioned way now.

And it's the idea that there's not one or the other, it's just prep and being able

to see when something is the right fit and having the skill to not only recognize it,

but then enact the right treatment is key.

And, uh, the less we know the easier it is to be convinced we're right.

You know, that can be such a big problem is that we want

to be more rights than help.

Yes.

And, you know, we, I mean, I was in China for 28 years and I never

thought I was returning and with the three children and the visa

laws, making it harder and harder.

And the international schools reaching an incredible cost where it was cheaper for

me to, for us to move back to the states and for me to fly 10 trips a year to

Beijing than it was for us to stay where we were living in the mountains outside

of Hong Jo, that idea of, of isolation being over there and in it was great.

And we had no idea what was happening here and then suddenly we're here and we

think, okay, all right, Facebook, if it's banned in China and you know, our internet

is so bad that we couldn't use a VPN.

So who knows now, all of a sudden we have access to these chat groups

and people are saying, oh my child, my one-year-old has pneumonia.

What do you suggest?

And everybody's pouring in all these suggestions and thinking.

That's kind of crazy.

You don't know what other symptoms they have or someone saying,

oh, patient came in with this, the tongue, the pulse is this.

And then there's 30 million suggestions come in for formulas

without any breadth of slowing down.

But there seems to be this idea that that's a linear line.

Oh, this pulse is this illness.

This is the earth for this.

And when we're really wrestling in the clinic with patients who can die,

who are dying, who have acute illness.

And I was lucky when I got to China, I was in Taiwan in 86

and I got to Beijing and 87.

And it is important to know that in the eighties, most people were still.

At 11 in the morning, salaries were incredibly low.

People were smoking in the hospitals and the doctors were drunk before lunch.

Lunch was at 10 30 in the morning.

It's really hard for people to understand what it was like in those days.

So restaurants opened at 10 30 in the morning for lunch, and most people had

lined up at 10 40 and they were drunk.

And so nobody would go to a hospital for anything serious, unless

they really had a connection.

And you can guarantee that the doctor or the surgeon was going to be sober.

And a lot of people now will say, oh, that's not true.

I'm sorry.

I was there.

I was in the hospitals.

I was shocked at what I was seeing in terms of the irresponsibility.

Once you got out of the special clinic for the cadres and into the people's clinics.

And when that's a reality.

And you have an illness.

You find those last doctors who were born and educated prior to 1949 back

when they were really dealing with life and death illnesses, who knew how to

set bones, who knew how to deal with a very serious life or death diseases and

formulas were written for the day or two.

And that's it.

And I was with them and people were flocking to see them because they

were scared to go to the hospital.

And it's interesting.

What has a front has a back and what has a back has a front and the

culture revolution, just wipe the heck out of these old practitioners.

So that when I got there, it was like being in a desert with a couple

of Palm trees in occasional places.

But what people miss is when there's only one little Oasis for a thousand

miles, everybody goes to that away.

And so even though I did not have the breadth of doctors available to me by

1987, that people would have had prior to the cultural revolution or even

1979 when David Eisenberg got there.

Uh, but when I got to that Oasis and I found that one of the last living

doctors who could do this medicine, they had patients that were unbelievable.

I mean, my first day with Dr.

Shear was a young, a young man.

He's about 21 from the countryside who had stuck his hand in a corner.

And it had been chewed.

So he'd lost four of his fingers and part of his hand, and this is,

this is already the nineties, so it's better, but still terrible.

And he, uh, was told they were going to amputate at the elbow or maybe

the shoulder, because they were afraid of a bone marrow infection.

Now he's from the countryside.

He has no education in his village.

If he is an amputee, most likely his child will be born without an arm.

Uh, there is that level of superstition along with a huge level of knowledge and

the countryside, especially in those days.

And so he wasn't going to get his arm chopped off.

Next thing you know, on my first day with Dr.

Shear in terms of being his medical student, was having to

unwrap the bandages, examine the wound, put the medicines on it

and track this patient and that.

And when that's your exposure to this medicine?

My own, my own exposure is, you know, if you read enough of it, you'll

see that I had a motorcycle accident and I broke the bones in my foot and

they were set with Chinese medicine.

It was the most painful experience I ever had, but I was walking two weeks later.

And that understanding that this medicine has an acuteness to it and

a speed to it, and it's not polite or pretty, you know, the best thing about

having a person like of the foreigner.

Who's all excited to be your intern.

When you're an old doctor, is you have someone who's happy to wipe

the poop out of the old guy's pants.

And you know, when you're cleaning bedpans for a doctor and you're

helping set a Coxix by sticking your finger in someone's rectum before we

understood gloves, that were a good idea way back when, uh, it's, it's, it's

really hard to get excited about upper IRBs being like a superior medicine.

When really the person had a broken Coxix and you had to slide your finger

in there and set the coccsyx with your finger on the inside and outside.

And, and when that was my exposure, I had no idea that there was this

against newness of a medicine being practiced to that level of strength.

And it's been shocking to be told that what we do, isn't Chinese

medicine or the martial arts.

I practice isn't real martial arts, not Chinese martial arts, because it

looks different and it's like, ah, help.

You know, that, that just widen your belief and accept me.

I accept you.

We all accept each other and realize there's a breadth here

that all should be welcome.

And no one should be told that's not right.

Especially when we don't have any experience in that realm.

We don't see people who put their hand in a Cornhusker

because they're not coming to us.

I think any of us that are practicing here in the way.

We're not going to see these things.

Number one, we don't have any training.

Number two, if someone came in with their, with their hand mangled, you

know, I mean, we we'd call 9 1 1, right?

That's that's the, uh, that's the thing we do.

So we, we don't have any experience with that.

I was recently talking with a fellow who, who I'll have on the show here in the

near future, Eric Karsner and he's been writing some really interesting stuff.

He's are you familiar with him?

He's actually spent a lot of time in Beijing.

Not yet.

I'm looking forward to tracking him down.

Yeah.

There's there's an article I can share with you where he was talking about

how Chinese medicine became the slow medicine, because well, for, and he

talked a lot about Republican era, China, Chinese medicine is where you went.

If there was a problem, cause guess what?

Western medicine wasn't going to help you.

And there were lots of Chinese docs in the Republican error that

were treating epidemic issues.

They were treating the kinds of things that you're talking about.

The medicine that we practice that really none of, well, I mean, you've had some

exposure, but most of us have had not had exposure to working in that realm because

the doctors aren't there these days.

And so we say the medicine's not capable of working like this, but

it really just might be that we're not capable of working that way

because we don't have the training.

Yes.

And, and that's what, when I was ranting about it, as I just said, you know,

understand that, I understand that this level, this style of medicine

is not currently that available in, let's say the United States, uh, it's

not quite true across the board, but let's just say that even if we could

practice it without seeing it done.

We wouldn't really know what to do and you know, it's fair, but it doesn't

mean that we should say we shouldn't, that it doesn't exist or that's wrong.

And more importantly, when I teach, uh, because of this, I've,

I've really tried to become Mr.

Tangible in the last six or seven years and trying to make

this a very clinical medicine.

And, uh, I say to them, I'm going to teach you things.

You're not going to be able to use in your practice, but I just want

you to understand if you are hiking with your family and you are three

days into the woods, and one of them breaks a bone, or one of them

starts hallucinating because they ate something that got into their food.

Then.

Do you know what to do, and you may never have seen it done, but I

am going to teach you what to do.

Should you be there?

And all we have to do is end up in a native American reservation where

there's very little access to medicine, and there's an audience there.

Who's very happy for you to practice a different level of medicine.

And all we have to do is spend enough time with people who are

outside the insurance system.

And as long as it fits in your scope of practice in the state, you are in et

cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as CYA.

There's a lot of people who can take a level of acute medicine

because they can't get any other medicine or they would be bank.

And the system has created opportunities for people to practice as much stronger

level of medicine, should they desire.

And most of the people coming into Chinese medicine these days are not

looking for that level of practice.

Uh, what I went on the ramp was I understand that I respect that I am

thrilled because there's a lot of patients that I can't, or I'm not going to be able

to see that need a level of medicine.

I'm not interested in practicing right now.

I'm very interested in demonstrating a tangibility of acuteness of

treatment, a very serious illness.

I'm going to fail the patient who needs that more, um, spiritual, or if

we use upper incorrectly in the way it's currently be used upper practice.

When you say upper, you're not saying that it better, you're saying it's lighter.

You know, if we're looking at like, exactly.

Then then we're talking about a more shun level than a CI level or a DJing level.

You got it.

And I, 100% want people to know that I do not think what I do is

better or Julianne does not think she would is doing is better.

We just don't want to be ostracized for practicing a breadth of medicine.

Other people are unfamiliar with it.

I've never seen, I'd like to hear a little bit more about some of the things that we

are capable of treating that we might not even know that we can treat my goodness.

Uh, what is it that I heard someone say is, uh, I'm chief many

words from the long-winded tribe.

So you're going to have to be careful on that one.

Uh, I have a lot to say on the topic and, uh, I have

actually spent most of the last.

Years teaching in Europe, uh, because over there for the majority

of countries, you have to be an MD.

And now these are MDs who have been in a hospital, seeing people die and

are dealing with a level of illness that most people who practice over

here, I've never even seen, uh, let alone, had to wrestle with.

And then over there, the biggest difference between an MD practicing

Chinese medicine and an MD here who gets into acupuncture is over there.

They've let Western medicine go and they're doing Chinese medicine full

time because they believe in it.

They like it.

They're interested in it.

Uh, whereas here it's for different reasons perhaps, and that allows me

when I'm over there to have a discussion on treatment that I can't have in

this country, because over there I'm talking to an MD and the ability to

handle incredibly acute pneumonia.

The ability to handle broken bones without pins, uh, the ability to treat truly manic

insanity behavior, where you are having to tackle and chase someone down and

hold them down without a nest, the sizing them and giving them a ton of lithium

and putting them on drugs and hoping that in two or three years, whatever

imbalance happened has done it by itself.

You know, those are all areas of medicine that we are very good at that

extreme and that, you know, Juliana and I have treated, uh, that people

don't get a chance to see over here or.

Not allowed to see, which is fair enough.

I completely respect that there are some laws over here and we

need to pay attention to that.

And I completely understand that studying in China with the old doctors

who did have the right to treat those diseases and treating migrant

workers, uh, who had access to nothing else, we saw a level of illness.

That's not possible in many places.

Uh, but at the same time, just understanding that the medicine

was designed for acute disease.

It was for trauma.

It was for influenza.

It was for epidemics.

If we're not careful, we're going to think that these incredibly wise,

long bearded people drinking tea were on a mountain and they put together

a yin and yang and five elements.

And that's not it.

Chinese medicine was born on the battlefield.

When you look.

In the trenches, it was warring states, period.

It was spring and autumn period and people miss the fact that

that was the size of those armies.

600,000 people moving across a land, forget a battle, just 600,000 people

moving across a land in winter, summer, winter, spring, you name it, cholera,

dysentery, frostbite violence, falling off a horse, you name it all going on.

And how do you keep these soldiers alive?

How do you keep things moving forward?

How do you stop them all from getting food poisoning?

Because the food is up and refrigerated and it's been cooked

for days or something has gone wrong.

How do you stop people from eating bark?

Because they're starving.

How do you stop people from any of those things?

Or how do you treat them when they have, and that's where

this medicine really got going.

And they had this level of extremity and then they stopped and said,

Hey, here's some patterns because when you have hundreds of years of.

And very smart people looking at it, you start seeing patterns and then they were

able to extrapolate, and then they were able to mix in these ideas and have the

theory that now has become esoteric to us.

It so obvious when you are dealing with people of extreme illness in

the, I guess, what would it have been maybe the early two thousands?

Uh, I went through a period where I was organizing a lot of hospital programs

in Beijing and the reason behind that.

And so typically us is we were trying to organize programs where you could

see how not to do the medicine.

And so you have these old doctors who would lecture to these Westerners that

I would translate, and it would go right over their heads because they

hadn't seen 60 tongues and pulses a day.

They hadn't seen these herbs or points thrown at a patient again

and again, and not much changed.

And so we ran these programs in the hospitals with the best doctors we

could find, of course, but they were able to, then you have this exposure

of, oh, when I'm in my clinic.

And I say, oh, the tongue looks a little dusky or the tongue is black.

That's not what they're talking about.

They're talking about nephritis when the tongue is pitch-black or the fur on the

tongue, that level of severity is what they were looking at in the old days.

And they go, ah, tongue black, you know, they weren't hedging and

hiding about like a gray scale field.

They were talking about something very serious and, you know,

that's, I said, that's why I like teaching in Europe because all of

the MDs there have seen all that.

And they just didn't understand a way of understanding the body to

understand the mechanism behind it.

One of the things that we face in our modern world is the coming

end of the antibiotic error.

And, and I've heard teachers that I've had say, you know, it it's up to us

and, and especially you younger folks.

To really learn our medicine and learn it well, cause there's going to come a day

when people have acute pneumonia and the antibiotics aren't going to help them.

So, and I think anyone who's paying attention knows that we're

sort of teetering on an edge here and really when that particular

system of medicine no longer helps.

Right.

We're going to be in a difficult spot.

So talk to us a little bit about something as simple, seemingly simple

as treating an acute pneumonia.

Well, I mean, it is so simple in the fact that all we really have to do

is pick up the Shanghai Hanlon and we can go to shaoyang loan town and,

or we can pick up the Bensky book and pick up and look up the shouting long

tongue and realize that when they say.

Three grams made a Leon that that was a mistake and that's been

acknowledged now and it just hasn't made it into popular culture.

It's 15 grams per Leon in the Shanghai Hanlon 15.55, three is something.

And everybody now knows that is paying any attention.

But the problem is that so many people learned it at three, that they're afraid

to prescribe more than nine grams of wager as opposed to 45 and Julianne in

her online herbal training courses does such a wonderful job of elucidating

that and then showing what the herbs look like in a formula when you fill it

at three grams or at 15 grams a Liam.

And when you see what 75 grams of.

Bandshell looks like, and when you see what 45 grams of Matawan looks like,

and when you see the fact that she should at Porsche has gotten such a bad

rap, um, we're not even gonna go into that one because that also sparked,

I mean, that was on the internet and people like, oh my goodness.

And, uh, no, which part of the plant is toxic?

No.

How long you're taking it for.

And most importantly, remember that Tylenol will kill you if

you take too much in a day.

So let's not give sheen a bad rap here when you're using it for

one or two days to save a life.

Right.

So when you see what those dosages look like, and then you see the acuteness of

pneumonia, of someone whose lungs are so full of water, they can't breathe.

They've got cyanosis they, you mean they are literally, you're watching someone

die and they look like they're dying.

That makes sense.

You look at that quantity.

And that illness and it matches.

And when you fill it at the dosages that are in the current textbooks and you look

at what's in your bowl before you cook it, and then you look at the severity

of the illness, it doesn't make sense.

It's magic.

At that point, we are asking a great deal of very little.

And if we take that and then we make it into tea pills and the box, the

bottle says eight pills, three times a day, and we look at acute pneumonia.

We're going to kill our patient by not treating them correctly.

And then if we go even further, I mean, we've gotten so far away from intensity.

I, I keep a, a, um, a patent of cold.

In, uh, in my clinic, not for any other reason than the directions on the back.

And I love those people, whoever they are, you have my thumbs up.

I think you're the best thing in the world because the directions say

take three times, whatever it is, or forget everything you've ever been

told and take a lot of this really frequently until you get better.

And they're the first people to come out and say, Hey, you're not going to

get better on the dose, on the label.

And I mean, I just, I, I just, I practically cried

with joy when I read that.

And I said, finally, because you know, the more acute illnesses, the more we

have to either be using lower herbs to circle us back to our original topic or

Julianne is really, really good about stressing that we can use a middle.

Or even an upper herb as a lower earth by changing dosage.

So induce and tongue or in just the ginseng decoction

gen sinks and upper earth.

But when you're saving a life, it's at 60 some grams and

that's 67 grams of a ginseng.

And the old days that had some Juju to it, not the stuff that we have today.

And so the ability to take an upper herb and use it as a lower herbs and a lower

herbs to use it as a middle or upper herbs, and then realize that there's,

there's just a level of intensity of how the body's going to cathartic.

We respond to these things and that's really what defines the usage.

And, uh, you know, the best thing about having practiced most of my

medicine in China is that you didn't have the same fetters that are.

And with that you did see, I mean, people are so scared of sugar and I'm, and that's

simply because they've never seen it.

And, you know, Dr.

Lee home, shaoyang whom I spent the last six years with before in the

clinic, that was the last person I spent six years within a clinic.

He would routinely use ninety, a hundred and twenty two hundred

and fifty grams of sugar.

And he would use it for long periods of time.

And none of that, he was using it to treat oh, His absolute favorite

use for that amount of sugar was for teenagers or people in their

early twenties who had gotten sick.

And their parents had decided they were deficient and had so loaded

them up with ton of fires that their pores had become sealed.

And they had so much trapped heat that with any exercise going up or down

stairs, they would suddenly become exhausted and have heart palpitations,

which would then be seen as, oh, look, they can't get up a flight of stairs

and their heart's beating very wildly.

They don't have, they don't have enough cheese, you got it wrong.

She, then you got to boil up some poor turtles and then you got to do,

I mean, the, and you know, and the problem with sudden wealth in any.

Is that we would have these people coming from various parts of Southern China with

so much money from the factories because of Walmart and target and everything else.

And these poor kids, you have this 17 year old covered in acne exhausted.

And it was because he had so much trapped heat inside his.

It's also critical.

If someone is dealing with lupus, that's flaring hot or fibromyalgia,

that's flaring hot as opposed to cold.

And honestly, the treatment of auto-immune diseases, flaring

hot is it's very easy to treat.

We treat it all the time in our clinic with gal and and understanding

that the level of severity has to be matched by dose and for cold patients,

when it manifests as cold, then you have to understand how to use foods.

And you have to know when to use juror foods versus Shung foods.

And you have to know how to use

If you have access to mock long, if it's legal for you.

And once you understand that a lot of these diseases that seem

recalcitrant are really easy to treat.

And one of the nice things about being we're in Asheville, North

Carolina, and it's a small town, so everybody knows everybody very

quickly, but it's a liberal town.

So everybody's willing to accept.

That may not be acceptable in small towns elsewhere.

And a lot of the MDs in the area have come to realize that things are going

on in our clinic that they'll say to their patients, you are looking at

serious steroids, or you are looking at having to have infusions for your

lupus, or you are looking at having to have serious rounds of antibiotics.

I'm going to prescribe him next week.

I give you seven days.

Go see these people, see what happens, and we make enough changes for these people.

If you understand dosage and correct diagnosis, and the understanding of this

young drone shot, upper middle lower herbs of the Chandon buns down, how to

massage upper to lower, lower to upper, et cetera, we're getting, I mean, it's not

like we're creating, treating everybody.

I mean, I, I try so hard to be a low-level doctor.

If I can get six out of 10 better, I'm thrilled when it comes to what's going

on out there, but we're making a big enough difference that we are being

given a seven to 21 day license for a lot of patients who are looking at

really nasty medicines or procedures.

Uh, and the doctors are saying, give these people a try.

We do not understand what's going on, but people keep

coming back and not needing it.

So go find out, and this is great.

You're getting a seven to 21 day license and.

It should work within that period of time.

Not six months.

Oh, well, yes, exactly.

And the biggest thing that I try and tell people, because it breaks my heart.

When someone comes in and they say, oh, I've been trying Chinese

medicine for two years for my back.

And I think owl, you know, I mean, if that was my mechanic and my car,

wasn't better than two years, I'd have fired that mechanic a long time ago.

And what I say to people is that when they come to our clinic, we

expect a tangible shift very quickly.

And then if it hasn't shifted, we expect to have a conversation on

how to change what we do to shift.

And I'll tell them that I can't make you a hundred percent better tomorrow.

But what I can say is in seven to 21 days, it's like taking a long

hike at any moment, you should turn around and see how far you've come.

There is no way for us to have six months of no progress.

And then on six months in one day, you're suddenly cured.

That's not how medicine works.

And so if I'm pulling you back from a very deep.

You should notice dramatic difference very quickly.

And then we have the slog of getting you all the way out of the hole, but

along the way, at any given moment at day seven, at 14, at 21, we should see

such a tangible, obvious difference that it merits continuing that it

merits you spending money on something that's not covered by insurance.

It merits you taking the time to come in here at Meredith the time cooking herbs.

Uh, and that's what the doctors in our area have come to say is

like, listen, we see a change.

I give you more days.

We don't see a change.

This is dangerous.

Do that.

And I, you know, one of the best things about having worked with that

old generation of people who were all practicing in the Republic of China

before communism and socialism came, is that if you bad mouth, the young

Chinese would bad mouth Western medicine, ah, you know, a total nature tall.

And I was like, Hey, the head hurts.

Treat the head that footnote.

And they'd say, don't you dare Western medicine.

Doctors used to be.

And all of the old doctors I met and I met, I studied with just a few, but I met

pretty much every last surviving, famous doctor in the eighties and nineties.

And all of them had tremendous respect for the old Western medicine doctors

when they were kids, because these are people who could diagnose by

palpation by listening, by looking, they were making formulations for you.

And they said, don't you blame Western medicine?

Western medicine is just like Chinese medicine.

It's changed.

What the old people were doing is fantastic.

What they're doing now, looking at paper and not even looking

up at you, that's wrong.

And that freedom of being like, oh, wait a minute.

Western medicine is great.

Chinese medicine is great.

It's just, do you happen to have a great practitioner in front of you or not?

Yeah.

Do you understand your medicine and are you working at the place where a

person needs to be met and worked with?

So yeah, I mean, it's very easy for us to go.

Oh yeah.

How can you tell, you know, the good level doctor?

Well, you know, you got a headache, you don't treat the head.

Wow.

Sometimes you do.

If someone that comes in, if someone comes in and then got headaches, well,

I mean, they might have some emotional and spiritual, whatever spiritual means.

That's, that's such a slippery slope.

I don't even know where to go with it, but if somebody has

emotional issues, okay, fine.

That's, that's a piece of the problem.

But if they came in because their knees hurts, how about we

get the knees feeling better?

Amen, brother.

I just, it is so tough when I'm told that someone has seen someone and

they said, well, you know, they, my practitioner told me my pulses are better.

I was like, well, how do you feel?

I feel the same.

Well, then you pulses, weren't better.

The pulses.

When the books talk about pulses better, and the patient doesn't

feel any different, 24 hours later, the patient feels different.

There's no like the pulses feel better in six months later, you get better, but

that's not how this medicine ever worked.

All of the old books are talking about acute medicine

and shifts that happen quickly.

Uh, and, um, you know, I I've already translated.

Uh, in a video lecture, 239 lines of the Shanghai loan, where I'd go through line

by line character by character explaining absolutely everything of the original.

And then I also translate chunk Logies, uh, um, Chuck, John Woo's original

commentary, the first person to comment on the Shanghai alone in the UN dynasty.

And then I'll bring in some of jungle G who is where that Republican level, Dr.

Republican era doctors, who really was a tremendous Shanghai, Outland

scholar, and every single character.

I translate with an eye towards clinical application.

And you just, when you read it that way, and you see that you realize

that they were talking about very fast shifts, they were talking about you

do this, and then something changes.

And, and when we grasp that and we match those lines where the line is,

the patient has the exact same pulse in three places, one they're getting better.

One they're going to die.

And one, we have to change the formula because something.

It's the St Paul's.

And so people who are like, oh, you can diagnose by Paul swell.

Well, does that mean we don't read the Sean Helen anymore because

the Shanghai man has the same pulse and the person's dying.

The person's living in the person got messed up by a doctor.

Uh, and we need to understand that everything is within

his breadth of context.

Like you said, we have to see it at the level of, of where

they are and the biggest issue.

And it's, I understand it's hard, but, uh, one of the things that I talk

about in the early lectures of the acupuncture programs I teach is that we

wouldn't expect a professional athlete or a professional musician to do well

on the pitch or in a concert hall.

If they weren't practicing on their own.

If the only time they touched a ball, relentlessly, relentlessly

practicing, and especially practicing the stuff they don't know.

So.

Not this stuff they love and they're not practicing the stuff they love.

They don't practice this stuff that makes them feel good.

They don't practice this stuff.

That's like, well, I like this piece.

I don't like that piece.

They practice this stuff.

That's difficult that they don't know that's exactly it.

And you know, most practitioners today, they don't actually, the only

time they practice medicine is with a patient in front of them, but they

aren't spending time with the books.

They aren't finding that suffer time of training.

And you know, I get it.

It's a professional athlete, plays a few times a week and we

have to treat patients every day.

Uh, I have three children.

Uh, I travel all over the world teaching I 100% know how hard it is to carve time.

But I also know that if I expect to practice at a certain level of

medicine, I have to be willing to give up a certain amount of my or

my spare time to get to that place.

And I think it's fantastic that people aren't going to work as hard as I am.

And I know that there's people who are working much harder than I am.

I just need to understand, I need to work to a place where I am comfortable

tackling an illness, as you said, and then meet the illness at the right place.

And when I get to the right place, did I practice the skills necessary?

Am I in shape?

Am I in shape for this?

Well, when you say, am I practicing at the right place?

This brings up a question that we don't have time for today, but I'd like to

invite you back to another episode to talk about it, because I think what we w w

where this goes for me is to look into, I mean, really, to look into something that

for me is very difficult to understand.

I, I get more curious about it all the time, and that is the issue of gene.

My suspicion is an investigation of Jinshi and Shannon, those dynamics will help

us to orient into where we need to be.

Does that make sense?

It does.

And I'm going to throw a teaser out there for whenever we get back together and

do that because, uh, uh, I do a major discussion on all of this in, uh, one of

the modules that I teach for the tangible acupuncture for internal medicine and

the Chinese body, where for clinical practices, how to awaken the UN sheet and

the UN she is the deepest place of cheap.

But before we can even get to the UNG, we have to see whether or not the illness is

even in that area or what's blocking it.

And so really we have to understand that the Chinese love their numbers.

We talked about that earlier and that there's layers of disharmony achieve.

And so we have the lower layer, which.

Everywhere in the body countless, and it can either be deficient or in excess.

And then we get into the numbers that are easier for us to grasp.

So we have the 12 channels and so an illness can be in the channel.

And if we read the classics, we understand that a channel illness, it

doesn't mean it's less annoying, but it's not going to be as life-threatening

as an illness, that's hit the zone.

They're very clear about that.

Being struck by a wind in the, in the DJing is very different

being struck in the tongue, right.

But we start with the number 12 or the 12 channels and what an

illness looks like, it's in there.

And then we looked down to seven emotions.

And what does it look like if an illness is in the seven emotions, and then

we have to go down to what does an illness look like if it's in the six

Fu or the idea of filling an emptying organs, and then we have to get to

what happens if the illness is in the zone and what does that look like?

Then we hit or what I call the three of chains.

Because that for me was something I talked so much about in the nineties

because Dolly in, uh, I've been pigeonholed so many things over the years.

In the earliest years, I was sort of the cheek old Dolly and Tigie guy.

And then I was the Bagua and this medicine guy, and then I'm now acupuncture guy.

And who do you know, it's just so silly to realize that there's this huge breadth

and everyone's just kind of aiming a flashlight on one spot, you know, like the

five blind people touching the elephant.

It's almost the nature of, of, of human perception.

It's hard not to just rely on the flashlights.

It is.

And you know, that's why all the religions stress acceptance, because

it's hard, you know, it's hard.

And if we understand that matrix of what does an illness look like if

it's in the DJing, cheer, shun, and what does that health look like?

Jinshi and then most importantly, can the jinky and ShaoYin function.

Well, if there's a disharmony in a different.

And that's where it gets.

A lot of fun is not, not only do we have to know where an illness is, but then we

have to understand that even if we want to tackle something like Gingy tion, if

it's being harassed by the seven emotions, if it's being harassed by a zone,

then that affects that transportation mechanism of the essence of three.

Well, it sounds like we've got plenty to talk about.

So, um, those of you listening right now, we'll be bringing you

more of this discussion later.

Andrew, thank you so much for the time today.

And, uh, it it's so invigorating and terrifying to be reminded that our

medicine can work extremely quickly on issues that, that we barely

can dream about because we just don't have the background, but, but

there's so much that is possible.

Really appreciate the work that you're doing and, and thanks for the time.

Yes.

And as I said, I just hope everyone out there.

I know we were supposed to talk about essences, she and spirit, and we

talked about everything else instead.

But to understand that I think all is great.

And just to understand that we really want that inclusivity and just

don't exclude us, let us practice the medicine we do, and we let

you practice the medicine you do.

And then we cross over and the world is such a better place because Chinese

medicine can be what it was, which is a full strength, full breadth medicine.

And we get a chance to learn from each other people doing things

we don't know how to do yet.

Oh, I'll tell you.

We'll end with this quick antidote.

You know, we're supposed to be like the really famous, strong Arab people.

And we had someone coming in for the lifelong, very strange allergic reaction,

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

We treating them sort of better.

Not better had periods had.

There was in Florida, got really sick, looked up an acupuncturist in the phone

book went, the lady gave her tinctures.

She puts some tincture under a tongue.

She's never had an episode.

How can I be arrogant about what I do when I sweated myself out with all of the

knowledge, 28 years in China, and some practitioner just squirted a Tincher in

this person's mouth and she got better.

It's a huge medicine.

And I can't wait to learn all of that.

I just don't want to be told I can't do what I am able to do.

Well, I look forward to talking with you more about that.

Alrighty.