Plenty of people seek out acupuncture in particular as they have heard a few needles in the ear will break their cigarette habit, or cause their appetite and cravings to completely transform. We’ve all heard stories of someone’s cousin who got needled once and never smoked again or they lost a lot of weight. But how many of these people have you seen get these results in your clinic?

Often patients seek out Chinese medicine for weight loss, weight control or smoking cessation. Many of us don’t have training in dealing with addictions and it can be a challenge for the practitioner to know how to approach someone who suffers from a troublesome life habit, is not sure if they really want to change it or not, and furthermore has a lot of experience with failing to live up to the image of the life they want. Do they need to be pushed, like in the now popular boot camp, gently supported, encouraged and educated or perhaps they need something else?

In this episode we discuss some ways of opening up this kind of difficult conversation with our patients. And bringing some reality to the situation, which can be helpful in changing expectations and a patient’s experience of themselves in our Internet world that constantly promises quick fixes 

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

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

itself separate from the phenomenon that it seeks to understand our

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

It arose from observing nature.

And our part in it east Asian medicine evolves not from the examination

of debt structures, but rather from living systems with their complex

mutually entangled interactions.

Welcome to chia logical.

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

pertinent to practitioners and students of east Asian medicine, dialogue and

discussion have always been elemental to Chinese and other east Asian medicines.

Listening to these conversations with experienced practitioners that go deep

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

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to qiological today.

I've got Zander con with.

Zander is an acupuncturist in the Seattle area.

In fact, he's recently moved back to Seattle at the time of this recording

is just about to go into working with Jason Robertson and his clinic.

He's been following Jason and studying Dr.

Wong's palpation methods.

Uh, we talked with Jason earlier.

And Dr.

Wong earlier in Zander, I know is, uh, pretty psyched about going in

and deeply getting into that work.

As I think a lot of us are Dr.

Wong's work is amazing, but our topic today is talking about weighty matters,

talking about issues of addiction and how we talk to our patients about that.

Zander has his own personal experiences and struggles with

addiction, both in eating and tobacco.

And we talked about the weight loss and eating aspects of his journey

back on everyday acupuncture, actually way back at the beginning of everyday

acupuncture podcast, episode number seven, you all can go check that out.

Yeah, it was a long time ago.

So Zander I'm psyched to have you here on qiological.

Well,

Yeah, I'm psyched to be here, Michael.

Thanks for having me back in

the times that we've had with talking with each other, I'm

always struck at how you have a way of just putting your finger right.

On certain issues that a lot of us feel kind of uncomfortable with, you know, and

especially around issues of addiction.

I mean, tobacco is one thing, but issues of weight.

I don't know about other practitioners, but I find, I wouldn't say, I said

I tiptoe around those, but I just often don't know how to even approach

my patients using words like weight and using words like addiction.

I'm really happy to be talking with you today about that, because my suspicion is

there's a lot of us in practice who are looking to help people with these issues.

And we don't exactly know where to begin, or even if we begin, we're not

sure how to sustain that conscious.

I would agree with you.

And of course, as all of us have, I've had my fair share of, you know, awkward

moments with patients, you know, not exactly sure what they want to talk

about, what I want to talk about.

If I feel like I'm pushing them into someplace, they don't want to go.

It's a tricky subject.

Yeah.

So I'm glad we're here talking about it.

Cause I think, I think I have a few ideas that I've been cultivating over

the years that I can offer that, you know, it's nothing I've perfected.

I am still very much developing my approach to talking about

difficult topics with patients.

But I do think that I have a few ideas that might be helpful and maybe a

resource or two for practitioners who are wanting to do that work more, but not

exactly sure how to shift their mode of thinking that might be useful for them.

Well,

why don't we just begin with that?

Can you tell us a little bit about where you started with talking with patients

about these and where you've come to at this point, we can get into more details

later, but give us a little overview on where, where you're at right now.

Yeah, sure.

You know, so, like I said, I mean, I I've had plenty of experiences where somebody

brings something up and I noticed it bring up an awkward resonance within me.

And I don't go there even though the patient is willing to, uh,

which are not fun experiences.

And I try to do my best to reflect on those after that treatment or

that interaction with that patient.

And I've had, of course on the opposite side, plenty of experiences where I'm

trying to get a patient to go somewhere where I can see clearly they need to get.

In terms of, you know, just thinking about some aspect of their life that is clear

to me, but maybe not so clear to them, and they're totally not ready to go there.

And, you know, it's kind of a clinical disaster.

So walking that fine line while also doing service to your patients and

helping them, which is what they're paying you for is, is a challenging thing.

And the umbrella piece of advice, there's always.

Caveats to this, but this is the advice that I try to remind myself of.

And when I, when I talk with other practitioners or friends, um, who

are practitioners about is just let the patient initiate their work.

You know, if they want to talk about.

Quitting something or changing some deep lifestyle habits that they struggle with.

They will tell you, they might not tell you the way you think they're going to

tell you, but they will tell you in some way, the more clearly they speak about

it, the more clearly you can speak about it, because they're obviously comfortable.

You know, again, that comes from my lesson, learned of if someone.

Clearly talks about something that makes me uncomfortable.

They're not the one who's uncomfortable.

Maybe you're not ready to go down that road,

even though they are right.

So I try to spend time, uh, once a week or maybe every other week in counseling,

which I find also really useful.

You know, counselors also sit down and talk with people about

difficult things all the time.

And so I'll even sometimes talk about what happened in the clinic with my

counselor and, you know, we can look at what made me uncomfortable about it.

So just kind of a side note, but I do find that to be useful, but yeah, you know,

so being mindful of our own prejudices as human beings, As practitioners, you know,

obviously we spend a lot of time thinking about health and how to be healthy.

That are a lot of our patients don't.

So it's easy to walk into a treatment space and think that, you know, what a

person needs to do and you might be right.

You might not be right, but setting that stuff at the door and just trying

to be present with a person where they.

Listening to them.

If they initiate wanting to work on quitting smoking or an eating disorder or

anything else, you know, they'll do that.

And then that's a really good signal to pay attention to that.

You can go there.

I mean, there's one thing, people coming out and going, I've got this eating

issue and I want to do something about it.

I suspect that's a much easier way to start the conversation.

What about the people that are kind of hinting?

That they might be wanting to make changes around this, but they're, you

know, they're, they're a little skiddish.

Would you put that on hold?

Would you wait and see what about the folks that are hinting,

but they're not really saying.

I sort of cautiously move forward with those people.

I think I put my toe in the water, so to speak.

And you know, if, if I'm clearly, uh, responded to with like, oh Nope,

too much too fast, leave me alone.

Then I take my toe back out.

You know, I started talking with some of my patients who I've done more of

this work with around food and tobacco are the primary addictions that I see.

Um, I know there are other clinicians who work with.

More serious drugs or things like that.

But so one of the things that came up as a theme when I was talking with my

patients, and also I realized that I had done this a long time ago, sort

of unconsciously was this question of, and I'll actually ask this now.

And it's sort of a nice way cause you don't really have to say, do you think

you're addicted to X or do you think you have a problem with addiction?

But I ask patients now, can you see your life without.

Oh, and I start.

Yeah.

So as I discussed this with some of my patients who were willing to talk about

it with me, knowing that I was going to record this podcast, I realized that

this is a real theme for people who are ready to take on some kind of addictive

process with some kind of success are people who can see themselves.

Not defined by that thing.

So let's take tobacco for instance, when I was a smoker for years off

and on late high school and early college, early twenties in hindsight,

uh, as I went through my training at seam formerly asylum, I realized

that I always had, I always saw myself living a life without tobacco.

I always, I always knew that that would be there at time.

I didn't know when, I didn't know how it certainly was not easy to quit.

I mean, it still took me 17 times or whatever the average is for tobacco users.

You know,

the average for tobacco users to quit is 17

times.

I don't quote me on that, but it's it's I know it's above 10.

I'm pretty sure it's above 10.

Uh, it took me it's yeah.

I mean it, the number of attempts, you know, I mean, that's the whole, I quit,

I'm gonna quit and then you quit for three days and then you try it again.

And it's, it's a big deal.

Yeah.

So, so it's not necessarily that, that.

That vision of myself as a non tobacco user made it an easy thing to do, but, but

I did quit, which has been an interesting thing to sort of shine a light on over

the last few months, because you know, my current addiction, which you and

I have talked a lot about, which I'm still, you know, I still kind of lapse

in and out of all, the time is sugar.

You know, now that I've seen this kind of clearly asking myself this question of,

can I see my life without eating average?

And I do not have a vision of that.

So that's, that's an interesting, and, uh, you know, I'm still

kind of chewing on that.

Uh, no pun intended.

That's, that's an incredible litmus test.

It really is.

It really is.

Since you

brought up tobacco, I want to go down this for a moment because this

is an area where I find that I have been incredibly not helpful at helping.

I mean to the point where if someone calls and says, do you

do acupuncture to stop smoking?

I often will just tell them no.

And the reason is because even though I've written a lot of stuff about it on

my website, and even though I look at it as a process that people go through,

it's not just a needle goes in the ear.

And you're going to quit.

And even though when I get people on the phone and they go, can I

use acupuncture to stop smoking?

And I'm very clear with them.

I'll have a conversation and say something to the effect of, well, do

you want to quit smoking or do you want the acupuncture to make you stop smoking

and then go on with the acupuncture?

Make me stop smoking.

Okay.

Not going to happen, not going to happen.

You're not going to happen.

It's you know, I mean, I'm just very, I'm just like super clear with them.

It will not make you do something you don't want to do.

And sometimes they're really grateful.

They go, wow, thank you for being honest.

And, and they'll go their way.

And then other times people will come with.

Anyway, and again, I'm very clear.

This is a process.

This will take time.

You're going to go through anxiety.

You're going to go through cravings.

There's going to be this.

There's going to be that we can work with these things.

And yet, after a week and a half or two, they're gone in my experience,

I've not been able to help.

In any kind of way that, that makes me think, you know, I got

any business saying that I might be able to help you with this.

Yeah.

You're not

putting it on your business card.

No.

And, and, you know, I don't even want people thinking that acupuncture is

going to be helpful if, if the truth is, is I, I actually am not helpful with.

The only time that I've ever really heard that someone has

had a few needles in there.

Aaron stopped is, um, the stories that somebody will tell me of

someone who has a cousin of someone that they, that they know that they

heard of.

Right.

You've never met anyone like that or, or, or heard it from a colleague.

Right.

That's

right.

That kind of thing.

And same here.

Same here.

I've never had a colleague who's like, oh yeah, I'm really good

at helping people quit smoking.

I have colleagues who love working with addiction patients and want

to have that dialogue with people, but no, one's like, oh yeah.

Acupuncture by itself.

At least in my experience.

Yeah, I would agree.

Yeah.

There's that story out there that acupuncture will do that.

But in my experience, I just might not be that good of an acupuncturist,

but in my experience, or at least not that good of that kind of

acupuncturist you were saying, this is one of the things that you work with.

So what are some ways that I might actually be able to help people with

this I've had the same experience you have?

So, you know, if any, if any practitioners are listening to

this episode, wondering what the secret point is, I don't have that.

I would not stay.

Emphatically that acupuncture is the best modality to receive

for addiction of any kind.

Let's circle back to that, because I think it has a role to play for

people who are in the process of learning how to look at their lives.

Like how can I visualize my life without blank?

I do think acupuncture has a role to play there for people who are

doing that work in other arenas, you know, with whether that's meditation

or psychotherapy or friends or.

Spirituality or whatever.

And that, that kind of brings me to something that I learned about through,

um, wonderful Buddhist podcasts that I listened to with some regularity.

And I know you're somewhat in a Buddhist community.

I don't know if you've heard of audio Dharma or Gill Fronz Dale.

No, I haven't.

So audio Dharma is the podcast from the, I believe it's, it's an

insight meditation center, but.

Meditation center in just south of the bay area in Redwood city, California.

Oh.

And

my dad goes there

to that center.

No kidding.

Really?

I don't know if it's that center, but I know he goes to a place in Redwood city.

Yeah.

I'm uh, I'm I don't know, man.

I don't know if there's only one, but I believe that it's associated with spirit

rock, which I don't know if that's the name of the center, but I know that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So Gil Fronz Dale, I believe was one of the founders of spirit.

Um, you know, obviously I'm a member of this community without anyone

in the community knowing, cause I just listened to the podcast.

Uh, so I hope someday to go down there and sit with them and maybe

do a retreat or something like that.

But, but I've been listening to Gill, uh, and his podcast in specific for

probably going on a couple years.

I mean every now and again, there's podcast episodes that I

don't care too much about, but I have just found in general.

A wonderful teacher and has a very kind and loving way of simplifying

things and talking about them.

That that's really helpful to me.

So, so I was listening to this episode actually last fall and the episode title.

And I want to link this to your show notes page.

Yeah, I think this would be really useful for any practitioner, uh, Chinese

medicine practitioners who are interested in working with addiction more, um,

to listen to this podcast episode.

And the podcast episode title is cultivation versus letting.

He talks in there about a lot of wonderful ideas that I think are

useful, but he talks in there a bit about the idea of renunciation, which

comes from the Pali word and a comma in his opinion, a better translation

for that might be letting go or going out to, to move out from being COVID.

It's sort of the gestalt of that poly word.

That's,

that's really different from when I think of renunciation

in the way that, you know, it's come to us through the Western

traditions.

I, every episode I've ever listened to him, when he mentions the word, the

English word pronunciation, he does it with some sort of warning to the audience.

Like I know you're not going to like this word because we have

a very sort of Judeo-Christian.

I cannot let myself have.

Yeah.

When we think about renunciated something and in large part, when

we think about quitting anything, that's not quote unquote good for us.

We renunciate it in our sort of Caucasian way.

Right.

Oftentimes just sort of like, okay, I can't have, I can't let myself

have this thing, his translation of that original PolyWorks.

More to, to go out from being cooped up.

And I actually thought that was super interesting from a Chinese medicine

perspective, because you think about the character you for constraint is all about

being cooped up and stuck in the brambles.

Right.

And then when we shou we dredge it open and we machete our way out

and we're like, yes, ah, we feel.

So I love this, this concept for thinking about addiction and th

this podcast episode in particular, he's talking about the idea.

Sometimes our cup is so fall and we just need to let go of things.

And, you know, you've, you've had that before where you're like, I just can't

have this date tonight, or, you know, a friend, a friend date or whatever.

Cause I'm just, I got to go home and I got to go to sleep or whatever.

But I think the more useful thing that he talks about in this podcast episode

for the purposes of our conversation is this idea around cultivates.

And basically his idea is that if you let go of everything too quickly

and you have nothing to replace it with, that's going to be really hard.

Oh yes.

Exactly.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yes.

One of the things that I thought about at least with tobacco is first

of all, there are some things about smoking tobacco that I would put in

the camp of these are good things.

And most people go smoking tobacco, Goodwill you out of your mind and go,

yeah, well, you know, first of all, It's a deep breathing meditation.

How often do people do that?

Secondly, it will give you an opportunity, especially if you're in a

work setting, you've got five minutes of don't mess with me right now.

Yup.

Or even at home five minutes, don't mess with me.

I'm stepping out for a cigarette.

And what do you do if you no longer have that moment of deep breathing meditation?

What do you do if you ha, if you don't have that way of going, you know what,

right now, just please don't mess with me.

Just give me five minutes.

Yeah, I'm not arguing that cigarettes are healthier than cell phones,

but I was just talking with a friend of mine recently about how I see smoking

as being far less common, a habit than it used to be, especially in the cities,

in the Northwest where I've lived.

And I think that it's like cell phones are fulfilling that, that void for

people they're like, well, I don't, I don't need this hit of tobacco.

Cause like, you know, I can.

You know, tune out with my Facebook feed for 10 minutes or whatever,

which is, which is interesting.

I mean, when I was a smoker, I was before I had a smartphone.

So yeah, like you said, it would be 10 minutes.

I didn't have to work.

I could sort of like space out and look at a tree and smoke a cigarette.

So I mean the tobacco part wasn't particularly helpful.

A lot of other parts of it where, so,

and this is something that's interesting about addiction that

somewhere within that addiction, somewhere within that problem, there's also this

nugget of something that is worthwhile.

There's actually something in there that we're trying to get at.

But we just kind of missed the mark and, but we keep trying to get it,

but we just keep missing the mark or maybe it gets, we hit the mark for

a second, but it slides right off.

Yeah.

When I slow down and notice myself really craving sugar, what I'm really

wanting is some kind of connection.

And that's either connection with myself, like taking a walk with, you

know, that not taking my phone with me.

My, my really, uh, if I do that, I might completely forget about wanting a cookie

or it might be connection with loved ones.

I think there's always some, something we're needing deep down that

there's nothing wrong with at all.

And we sort of get some kind of neurochemical wiring mixed up

over a period of time that that leads us to believe we'll get

that need met through, you know, something that is maybe less yeah.

Not hitting the mark.

I want to circle back and just kind of like reiterate this piece that

I've been thinking about a lot.

And again, this is new for me, so I haven't really deployed

this in the clinic, so to speak.

Um, and eventually at some point I want to come up with like a handout

for people, you know, maybe there's like a tobacco handout or a, or an

overeating handout or something like that.

I'm not sure, but some kind of way of more easily kind of communicating

to patients, this idea that.

If you desperately want to quit smoking and you're not cultivating something

else first or at the same time as you're letting go of an old thing, that's

going to make it a lot harder for.

And what thing would you like to cultivate?

So, you know, for me, with quitting smoking, walking was a huge thing.

And even at a time, for a time, I got to the point where, where, you

know, I would take a walk as a rule.

I had to take a walk before I smoked a cigarette and it could even be like

five minutes, but I was cultivating alongside this, this old addiction

that I had to tobacco this new habit around just gently moving my.

I think that was part, that that idea was definitely part of what enabled me

to let go of that habit and that, and that could be volunteering that could

be spending time with your family.

I mean, it could be playing music, it could be doing art.

It could be, it could be your work.

It could all kinds of things.

It could be all kinds of things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The thing about this that I find just beautiful is so often when we think about.

No quitting an addiction.

It's this cold Turkey, bare knuckled.

I'm getting rid of this.

I'm going to somehow white, knuckle it through into something else.

I don't know what this something else is, but you know, but if

I'm, if I'm a good person with willpower by God, I'll get there.

And what I hear you talking about is really beautiful and really gentle.

I love this idea of, okay, I can have a cigarette, but I

got to walk for five minutes.

And in the process of going through that, it's like, I've

got the thing I'm letting go of.

I got the thing I'm moving into and they're actually kind of hanging

out side by side for awhile.

I hadn't thought that that could be useful.

It's usually like, it's this or it's that, but what if you have both

of them as you're going through.

Uh, phase change that doesn't take, you know, a day or two, right.

I quit immediately, but you know, it might be months it's

a phase change that's months.

Okay.

I mean, depending on what the person's going through yet, I

just wanted to interject this idea that comes from, um, Gabor, Montay.

Uh who's who's um, great book.

Uh, I've been recommended now by a few people in the realm of hungry ghosts.

I just started to read it.

So I am still working my way through.

Have you read it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, his lectures on YouTube also mind blowing good stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he talks about the idea and then I'm sort of paraphrasing my dad here

who has a 25 year plus habit of making me read books that are good for me

and that I don't want to read, but, um, you know, he talks about, uh,

Gabor, Montay talks about it in a.

Via my dad.

I'm telling you this, this idea that if you set a rule for yourself, that

okay, before I have a cigarette or whatever it is, I'm going to breathe

for five minutes or take a walk for five minutes or do whatever.

Call a friend for five minutes, whatever it is.

And then you still have the cigarette five minutes later, learning how to

rewire your brain to consider that a win.

Okay.

Yes.

Yes,

exactly.

Yeah.

And, and you'll probably will almost even enjoy the cigarette more after

that win, because you're like, okay, I try on for five minutes

and sometimes you might decide not to smoke the cigarette who knows.

And then, you know, a week or two later, you make a 10 minutes, but yeah.

Re wiring re

wiring for what's a win.

Yeah.

Wow.

I think that's pretty, pretty useful as well.

And it fits into this idea of cultivating, cultivating a new way of being yeah.

Yeah.

Especially on the internet.

You'll see that it's like, okay, here's an instant, you know, in three days,

10 days, 21, whatever, we're going to bootcamp your ass into a whole new life.

Right.

We know it doesn't really work that way.

Yeah.

My suspicion is in our particular culture, you're either doing

this thing in your success.

You know, or you're not doing another thing, you know, and that's successful,

but to do both of them simultaneously in the spirit of cultivation, that

just kind of short circuits that either, or that so many of us have,

that's just inherent in Chinese medicine.

Right.

It's it's never either or in Chinese medicine.

It's, it's young.

It's the Ty G it's.

Everything is flowing into something else and transforming it.

Yeah.

So, uh, so I'll have to report back to you once I start, you know, having

more patients who are wanting to work with things like this that are

challenging and, you know, I'll have to let you know how that work goes.

And I think of course so much is dependent on the individual.

We are certainly all different and all capable of taking on

different things in our lives.

And I mean, I, you know, I try to remember that when I have patients.

I think they need to do something, but they're not going to do it.

And realizing that, you know, that person might not do that in this lifetime.

And that's not really my problem, you know?

Well, it comes back to what you were talking about at the very beginning

of this conversation, which is you listen for the patient to initiate that.

I want to make this change.

And really until we're invited to enter in with somebody and help them with

something it's really kind of senseless to try to make any kind of change at all.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, in my personal experience, I want to

feel safe with my practitioner.

I've been to plenty of practitioners, um, over the years who I've felt

not welcomed to talk about my struggle with either food or tobacco

or my weight issues in the past.

And that's not a person I'm going to go back to

from the point of view of a, of a patient or a client.

How does that show up to you that the practitioner isn't

isn't on the same wavelength with

you?

Oh, I mean, I think sometimes it can be as subtle as just eye contact stuff.

Like I w I tend to be a pretty straightforward guy, so I tend to

walk into an appointment with somebody regarding my health and tell them, okay,

this is where I'm coming from, you know?

I used to be really overweight.

I used to eat like this.

I used to smoke and I'm really working on changing those things.

And I've made a lot of progress, but I want your help to kind of

keep going in that direction.

I mean, I've never had someone flat out be like, you know, say

something up to us, but I think just, just listening, listening to

your patients and really making them feel heard and, and safe to say what

they need to say about themselves.

Yeah.

I'm not saying I've done that always perfectly as a clinician either.

I mean, I think it's, I think it's a skill.

I know.

I know for sure.

I have spent years doing it unskillfully as a practitioner.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think we all, I think we all have, because we never know

what's going to walk in the door.

We never know what's going to trigger our own prejudices.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And until we've been through it through many iterations and

noticed how it hasn't worked.

Do we start to cotton to it.

And remembering, I think that, like, we tend to be prejudice about

the things that we have dealt with ourselves that we don't want to look at.

It.

I've definitely treated patients, unconsciously prejudice about their weight

issues, because I had weight issues.

I think that's just a part of the game and really being able to hold space for, Hmm.

This thing is making me awkward right now and not just sort of like abandoning.

When you're talking with a patient, because they'll they'll know that they'll

know that that happened and they'll end, they'll politely not come back right here.

You know?

Hopefully, hopefully it'll be polite maybe.

Yeah.

Maybe, maybe, hopefully it wouldn't be polite.

I think often people do politely not come back.

You know, people, no show or they disappear.

Yeah.

I think it often is a polite.

Thank you.

Now I want to come back to this cultivation thing for a while.

And again, I'm really struck.

I'm really sitting with, and I, and I'm curious to see how this plays in

clinic for me here in the next few weeks, now that you brought it to my

attention, that it's possible to have two things apparently opposite each other.

That can be happening at the same time, but with an intention of

moving from one toward another.

I mean, I love that idea.

And the reason that I love it is because often there's some kind

of feelings that are in that gap, usually uncomfortable feeling.

You know, and so often addictions are because we're trying to Sue in some

sort of an uncomfortable feeling or uncomfortable situation, a quick hit

of tobacco or a really you're not quick hit or Facebook, or, you know, do I

have any messages, you know, that'll, that'll trip you up some dopamine.

Uh, you're just talking about the cell phone.

So there's so often there's this gap that people sit in practitioners,

sit in at patients, sit in it where something uncomfortable has happened.

And you'll want it to be different, but you want to give up the way that

you've been using to make it different.

And you're not sure how to make it different, you know, without that

quick hit of something, how do we, how do we do this cultivation process?

How do we sit in this, in this terrible gap of I'm feeling anxious, scared?

I mean, whatever it is long enough to let something else shift and come into play.

Uh,

the, the main thing that comes to mind is just gentleness.

You know, being really kind with yourself that, you know, if I'm going to start

waiting five minutes and just breathing before I smoke a cigarette, every time

that sometimes I'm going to make it two minutes before I'm like feeling

horribly anxious or angry or sad or whatever, and I'm just going to light up.

And then I might even be pissed at Michael max.

We're suggesting I wait five minutes, you know, who knows, you

know, I'm encouraging people and myself to be kind with ourselves

and make a lot of space for that.

And I think, I think it really depends on the person.

I mean, I think some people have more capacity to sit with something that

feels uncomfortable than other people do.

And if you have a patient who really doesn't seem to be

someone who would be coming to.

Sitting well with anything challenging or uncomfortable, you know, maybe counseling

is really a good option for them.

If that's, uh, if that's something you can suggest, um, because I think any

kind of, sort of mindfulness based, you know, Hakomi type counseling can be

really useful for that because you're learning how to sit with something

uncomfortable with a professional who can, who can make that a little easier

than you just doing it by yourself.

And I think us as Chinese medicine, people are not trained to do that.

Uh, nearly as well where we're not really

trained to do counseling.

Right.

Right.

Well, I mean, I can encourage a patient to breathe.

Right.

And I can encourage a patient to feel their anger if, if

they want to talk about that.

But, but I don't have the skillset to really work through the

nuances of what that brings up for somebody or the scope of practice.

Of course.

So, you know, gentleness, but you know, it can be tricky,

gentleness and kindness.

Now, here are two traits that most Americans wouldn't know much about.

Maybe I'm being a little bit assumptive here, but when I think about.

Growing up in this country.

And I, and I think about, uh, you know, the qualities that are considered

good to have any human being.

I don't often hear gentleness and kindness.

And in fact, when I hear gentleness and kindness, I often think about

weaknesses, something that comes to mind.

I'm not saying kindness is weakness.

I'm saying that, that a practice of kindness, especially toward ourselves,

that seems really counter intuitive as an American to the point where

I'd go kindness toward myself.

What are you talking about?

I'm just going to the, the thought of, you know, your average, you know,

Midwest person that I'll sometimes see.

And I, if I were to suggest, be more kind to yourself, I mean, they might look

at me like, what are you talking about?

Can you give us a glimpse into some kindness practices?

What are some ways that we could show a bit of kindness to ourselves or ways

that we could suggest to our patients to show a bit of kindness to themselves?

Uh, at the risk of sounding repetitive in a specific instance

of somebody trying to sort of rewire their brain around an addictive habit

that, you know, if you're suggesting to them as a, as their, their health

practitioner and then lots of cases where the only person who's that person's

health care practitioner, that they take five minutes to breathe or walk or

whatever, before they engage in that.

You know, when you suggest that suggest that you're not going to do

this perfectly every time, you're not always going to make it to five minutes.

And while I say count the five minutes as a win, even if you

light up that doesn't mean you need to count two minutes as a loss.

If you've been smoking for 15 years or 20 years, this is going to take

time and building up some version of yourself where you can see yourself

without blank, um, is going to take time.

And if you really want to quit, you have to be patient with yourself.

I'm sure there's a better way to say that to people.

Well, I don't know if there's a better way.

What I know for myself as you've just brought it up and

it raises a question for me.

And the question is how can we help people become more kind to them?

Yeah, well, that might be the question of the ages, man.

I mean, look at, look at the culture we're living in right

now and the culture of America.

I mean, it's been, it's been pretty toxic if we could learn how to

teach that and we could all learn how to be more kind with ourselves.

We'd probably be in a better place, but I don't think it's an easy thing.

And I mean, you know, I, one thing you said popped into my head when

you were talking about that was just suggesting that, you know, I don't know.

MLK was some sort of sissy, you know, I mean that, like, that was a

massive movement, you know, or Rosa parks or Gandhi, or, you know, any

of these people or the Dalai Lama or

I mean, these people have stood up for themselves.

But they didn't do it in some sort of overly strong, violent kind of way.

They didn't do it in a violent way, but they did

it in a very strong kind way.

Didn't think if you're going to ask me an example of strength in

kindness, that those would be the people I would suggest, you know,

or even maybe Colin Kaepernick.

I don't know.

I don't know the guy, you know, the guy who knew.

The guy who started the kneeling and the right,

right, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyone who knows me personally is probably laughing that I brought that up.

Cause they know I'm not a sports person, but you know, I mean, I

don't know if he's a kind guy, but it wasn't strength through force of will,

you know?

No, it was, it was, it was strength through, uh,

being quiet through these things.

Nelton was quiet.

So I dunno.

It's a good question though.

I know what you're talking about.

I know those patients where it's like, I can't talk to you like this.

I can't talk to you like the Seattle hippy guy.

That I can, you know, the way that I can talk to my friends, but it's, it is,

it is a challenge with some patients.

So it's a good, it's a good question.

I have, I have to keep thinking about that and working with,

yeah, well, I do too, you know, again, at the risk of being repetitive, it

it's something that you said that came up and it resonated very deeply and strongly.

And I'm wondering how I might be able to use that in my own

practice in terms of helping people.

Not by, oh yeah.

I'm going to help you quit this thing that you hate, but I'm going

to help you transform this thing through more kindness to yourself.

If

you asked any patient, do you really just want to give this up?

Is that really all you want?

Or do you want to be, I mean, that's a good question.

Like if you had asked me when I was 21 or I don't remember 25, I don't

remember exactly, but you know, do you really just want to quit?

Is that all you want in your life?

Like if you just didn't have that, you'd have the life you wanted.

I can't imagine almost anyone saying yes to that.

Wow.

That is, that is one potent question.

Yeah.

Then I just thought of that.

So, I mean, that might be a good way to frame it for people.

Like what do you want?

Yeah.

You don't want to smoke anymore or you don't want to be overweight anymore,

but what, what do you want, do you want to be more engaged in your community?

Do you want to be more engaged in your marriage or your family?

To learn how to, you know, play water polo.

I don't know.

And, and land like explaining it to them that way, like, okay, well, let's

start to cultivate this whole thing and then start to ask yourself that

question, you know, maybe once every month you sit down and you journal

and you ask yourself the question, can I see myself without X, as I've been

cultivating, you know, Y and Z or.

I like that, that, that feels

useful.

It feels, I'll tell you how useful it feels.

I'm sitting here, you know, as we began this conversation, I was saying,

oh yeah, help people quit smoking.

I, I don't want anything to do with it.

I'm an abject failure at it.

And now through this conversation, this, this question has surfaced.

I'm not sure how it did, but it came through the conversation.

I kind of know how this stuff works.

I'll bet you in the next week, someone's going to call me and

ask about smoking cessation.

I'm going to try this question out and see what happens.

I'm really curious to see how that might change the conversation, how

it might change the encounter, how it might change, what they have to say.

No.

I, I, I feel like amped right now.

I, that that's exciting.

I'm excited to try this out and I hope you tell me what happens.

Well, I, I, I will keep you posted and, uh, you know, for our

listeners out here that are listening to this, if you just got kind of lit up by

this, well, then we're doing our job here.

Aren't we?

Yeah.

And please let me know, you know, I mean, if people want to get in

touch with me through my website and just even tell me if they have an

experience with this with a patient.

Or, you know, some other way they came up with talking about,

I mean, I would be, I would be really excited to hear about that.

Yeah.

We'll make sure your contact information is on the show notes page.

And also there's a Facebook page, uh, for qiological and

each episode has its own thing.

You could also like pop over there and leave a comment and

share it with our community.

That would be awesome.

Oh, cool.

That's great.

Wow.

We don't have an answer, but we've got a really good question to play with.

this is what I love about

this work.

I'm really glad you're doing this podcast.

I've really enjoyed listening to them.

I'm a few episodes behind while we've been moving up to

Seattle, but I'll catch up soon.

Well, you know, the great thing about the podcast is that, I

mean, you don't have to even listen to it in order and you don't have

to listen to any particular one.

You can just like.

It's like a buffet, you know, if there's one that catches your attention, dig in.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's pretty fun.

Wow.

How long have you been doing acupuncture by.

Uh, I think I'm in my fifth year.

Is that right?

I graduated Saigon

only sign on long enough that you don't remember

exactly how long you've been.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Four or five years, something like that.

Yeah.

So,

you know, I mean, there's so much that we learn in our practice

is things that we learned to do.

And then there's also the things that we learn to not do.

I'm curious, especially around the issues of addiction that

we've been speaking about.

Are there any things that you've learned not to do.

There's not any black and white thing where it's like, don't ever say

this with the exception of what I started out saying, which is, I think, I think

arguably it's almost always a good idea to let the patient begin a conversation.

They might do it in a very timid way.

They often will do it in a very timid way.

You know, it's pretty rare that someone comes in gung ho well, maybe

not super rare, but for me it's been pretty rare that someone comes in and

they're like, I'm here to quit smoking.

I mean, that's happened.

Okay.

And people aren't as ashamed of talking about quitting smoking, often as they

are about like eating, eating disorder stuff, you know, other than sort

of letting people bring it to you.

It's the gray area of really being aware of your own prejudices and not taking

out that awkwardness on your patient.

But that's a, that is a completely ongoing circular.

What

are some of the cues for you that you've got a prejudice and

maybe you don't even know you have a prejudice, but something the patient

just said, you know, or something in the interaction starts to clue you in,

Hey, maybe I've got something going

on here.

If I'm having a sort of normal day.

And I'm S and I'm talking with a patient who just came in and they bring

something up and I feel sort of fine.

And then they bring something up and all of a sudden, I don't feel fine.

I want to leave the room.

I want to go onto another topic.

I want to just sort of get them on the table and start needling.

And I like anything.

That's sort of like, I want to stop listening to you, but

it can be really unconscious.

Uh, I mean, I think that's where as practitioners, it's really important

for us to be doing some kind of internal practice where we're not

shying away from our own shadow stuff.

You know what I mean?

I think a lot of us do yoga or Tai Chi, um, or even meditation, but, you

know, and Gill from the, from spirit, rocket audio, Dharma talks a lot about

how, you know, a lot of people meditate and they're just sort of zoning out.

They're just blissing out.

And that's not really what meditation is about.

It's not about feeling.

It's about creating a holding space for, for whatever is in your experience.

So sometimes that might be blessing out, which is really nice.

And sometimes it might be sending loving kindness to people that you

don't feel so great about, but sometimes it's about I'm really angry right now.

So it has this line.

He uses all the time where he says meditation is the most.

Uh, ideal place to experience murderous rage, because which I love because you've,

you've, you've made a commitment that you're not going to act anything out.

Right.

Right.

And, and so, you know, I think as practitioners, um, you know, especially,

I think if you work with addiction or any kind of, uh, demographic where

you have hard stuff coming up, um, I think it's really important to

have some kind of internal practice.

Yeah.

You're delving into your own shadow stuff, because that's the

only way it becomes conscious.

So for me, you know, I meditate, uh, sort of, uh, sporadically,

intermittently, not for long periods.

And I go to counseling.

That's always a way for me to be sort of touching base with what's going on for me

personally, in my personal relationships.

So that can kind of hopefully keep doing a better job of keeping those things.

Spilling out onto my patients or, you know, or my more

people, people who are close.

Yeah, doing this work definitely will bring these things up in us.

You know, I've got friends that are therapists, and I know

that, you know, they're often in a, what do they call them?

Consultation groups.

Right.

Because you know, if you're sitting doing therapy with people, your own,

it's impossible for your own stuff, not to come up and as acupuncturist.

I mean, we're not doing counseling, but we're sitting with people that

are basically willing to take.

In many situations, anything that might be happening with them, you know, we

get to sit in a barrage of all kinds of stuff and our own stuff cannot

help, but get triggered at times.

Um, so yes, I would agree with you deeply that our own cultivation is

helpful and helping other people.

Yeah.

It's interesting you say that because I've actually had in

the last year, I think I had.

To patients who were, um, some kind of counseling career.

And both of them were like really surprised that our profession in, in the

Chinese medicine world does not require us to have a supervisor after we get out

of school because that's, that's required.

If you're in, if you're a psychotherapist that you have some, some supervisor where

you're discussing at least discussing your cases, Periodically weekly or

monthly or something, or for some period of time after you're out of school.

And most of the therapists I've talked to over the years who are really good

at what they do do that for their whole career, because they, they wouldn't.

I mean, they wouldn't do without.

And I think the same could be said for us.

Like, I mean, all of us should be discussing our cases

are complex cases with good herbalists and good practitioners.

You know, this is interesting.

And I hadn't thought of this until we're having this conversation right now.

You know, there's, there's a lot of talk in our industry about

people that five years out.

They're not in practice.

The severe attrition rate of acupuncturist and it usually gets blamed on, you

know, either school's not preparing us in some way or in particular, no,

one's taught us how to do business.

And we're such lousy business people that, you know, that's why we're failing.

I wonder if an aspect of this could be that, that, you know,

we are sitting in the middle of a lot of material, psychic material.

That we get bombarded by.

And if we don't have some way of dealing with it, I'm thinking back to

what you just said a few minutes ago.

How do you know when you know, stuff is up for you with someone you said,

well, I want to leave the room.

Well, some acupuncturists leave the room forever.

Yeah.

I'm just, I'm just wondering if this might be an aspect of, of why we're

seeing people five years out not doing it.

I would say that, um, at least during my time in Portland,

all of the practitioners that have.

Through the community and, you know, have a cup of tea with, or

lunch with or something like that.

None of them had gone to the school that you and I went to in Seattle.

They all, at some point commented to me, or we would have a discussion about

how isolating this profession is and how every single one of them, at some

point and myself included, it was like, we really need to be better about this,

like having a cup of tea together, and either talking about business or

talking about a case that we're studying.

Um, because, you know, otherwise you're alone with your patients all week and

they don't know Chinese medicine and it's, it's, it's lonely in that way.

I mean, we don't ha you know, we don't sort of go to work and have our

office chums that we sort of like, you know, kick it with during the week,

like a lot of people with their jobs.

And so, yeah, reflecting on sort of what counselors are required to do, and

some of them opt to do for a long time.

I think that makes a lot of sense for us.

And yeah, it seems like that would fit in.

The high attrition.

Yeah.

Well, you know, one of the reasons why I started

doing these podcasts yes.

Cause I was looking for community to talk with

and it's oddly it is so oddly comforting to me to be able to.

Pop on Michael Max's voice while I'm stuck in traffic and feel,

I feel like I'm like a Chinese medicine practitioner, not alone.

It's great.

Wow.

Well, well thank you for that.

I, I hope it's not just my voice, but, but for me, the real joy in this is, is, is

connecting the voices of our committee.

Yeah,

no, I know the whole show.

I, yes, not just you.

Wow.

I don't love you that much.

Wow.

Any closing thoughts before we say

goodbye?

You know, I think I just want to point people again.

I think if this podcast was interesting for you and the

stuff that we were talking.

Felt useful to you.

I can't recommend enough that you go over to that audio Dharma podcast

that we're going to link to call it cultivation versus letting go.

I think it might bring some stuff up for you personally.

Uh, but I definitely think it's a useful framework with which

to think about all of this.

And thanks for having me.

It's been really fun to talk with you about this stuff, and I'm, I'm excited

to be firing up the practice here in Seattle and, and starting to see people.

Yeah.

Well, keep me posted on that.

It'll be a lot of fun working with Jason.

Yes,

I will.

For sure.

All right, Zander.