Forty five years is a long time to have a practice. Especially when you consider that the average American marriage isn't even half that number, and in this day and age people change jobs like they change their hair style.

How do you stay interested in something for decades? How do you change with the times? Work through the areas that you don't yet know, and let the practice itself give you insight into how you work?

If you've read more than a few books on Chinese medicine, the fingerprints of Dan Bensky has certainly been on at least one of them. In addition to his medicine practice, he's been involved in both the translation and editing of books on Chinese medicine since 1981. He has taught and lectured widely over the years. And is one of the founders of the Seattle Institute of East Asian Medicine.

In this episode I sit down for a conversation with Dan with an eye toward the long arc of practice and how while our work centers on patient care, it involves a whole lot more. 

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 dead structures, but rather from living systems with their

complex mutually entangled interactions.

Welcome to qiological.

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

pertinent to practitioners and stupid.

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.

Hey friends, before we get into today's conversation, I want to

remind you that geological is coming up to its first anniversary.

And for that anniversary show, I'd like to have one of you join me.

So if you've been listening to the show and you've been thinking, Hey, I'd like

to be on qiological or I've got something that I'd like to discuss, or I've got

something that I'd like to share, send me an email or better yet record your voice.

Send me the idea that you'd like to talk about.

And I'm going to put all of the good ideas into a hat.

I'm going to pull one out and have one of you on the show.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing from you and having one of you.

Join me here on the show.

Hey, y'all welcome back to chill.

Logical.

You probably already know my guests to.

And if you haven't met him in person, you certainly been touched by the books that

he's helped to publish and bring to us, or some of the many lectures that he's given

on tape over the years, or in person, Dan Bensky has been around teaching us,

helping us with our Chinese medicine since there were Westerners doing Chinese

medicine here in the United States.

So I don't really need to give him much of an introduction.

You probably already know this cat, but I want to say this, Dan, as long

as he's been doing Chinese medicine and it's been a long time, one of the

things I found interesting about this guy is that he is the perpetual student.

I was fortunate recently to be in Nanjing, China, where I got

to spend a little time with Dr.

Kwan Kwan, who is the author of the 10 kief formula families.

And Dan also happened to be.

Nearby at that point.

So I suggested, Hey, why don't we get together?

Let's have dinner, we'll go hang in Dr.

Hong's clinic for a day.

You know, it's wonderful to be able to walk into a clinic with

someone as seasoned as Dan is.

And the, the students, you know, it's so easy for us, the more that we get to

know what we do and feel confident with it and get some experience under our

belt to think we know a thing or two, but there's always room to learn something.

And so I'm really happy to have Dan Bensky here with me today to talk

about Chinese medicine learning and the long arc of practice.

I mean, it's one thing to get a practice up and going.

It's another thing to keep yourself interested and

motivated for 40 plus years.

Dan, welcome to qiological.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Michael.

Yeah.

So.

Uh, here a few months ago with John O'Connor.

We were, uh, talking about the early days of Eastland press.

Yeah.

That was like an old guy shooting the breeze,

old guy shooting the breeze.

I'm not quite as old as you, but I'm getting there.

I'm working on it.

Yeah.

One of the things that I wanted to get into with this conversation actually

has something to do with being an old guy or an old person in a sense

you've been at this a long time.

And I wouldn't say I've been out a long time, but you know, after

20 years, it's not a short time.

And there's so many conversations that I hear these days about people starting

off in practice and how you start and how do you get your business going?

And, you know, just getting your feet under you.

Those are really important questions.

Those are important issues to resolve, you know, and you got to resolve.

If you're going to have a practice, but it occurs to me that the stuff that gets us

started is often not the stuff that keeps us going and the stuff that might keep

us going at one point, isn't the stuff that keeps us going on another point.

So you've been at this, I don't even know how many years you've been at this

about four, the 5 45.

That's

probably significantly older than many of our listeners here.

I suspect

too.

I'm

a little curious to know to start with how'd you get started

with this Chinese medicine stuff.

I mean, a lot of folks, you know, it's like, oh, I always wanted

to be a doctor or something like.

Was there.

What got you going?

What, what sort of opened your eyes to this?

I mean, I, I don't suspect you learned about it in high

school.

No, no, I'm the opposite.

Actually.

I got interested in east Asian culture as a young boy by accident.

And that's another story, but just by accident.

And so I went to college of university of Michigan, primarily

in my own mind to learn Chinese.

And after a couple of years, it was pretty obvious that, uh, if I was

going to learn Chinese, I had to go to someplace where people spoke Chinese.

So this is 1972 and that meant Taiwan.

And, uh, after I'd been there couple months, I got super ill.

I had very, very high fever, 103 hundred and four.

Uh, I was, uh, coughing up stuff that.

Like from a bad science fiction movie, I was delirious.

Uh, I was very, very thin.

I lost a tremendous amount of weight.

I had gone to see a local physician of Western medicine, and then I'd

even gone to see a kind of Canadian missionary MD who had given me a whole

slew of antibiotics and stuff like that.

And, uh, didn't work.

And so I'm kind of hanging out there and, um, I believe it was my landlady though.

I'm not sure.

So I should go see like a Chinese doctor and I was like, you mean

like that folk medicines, if they like still do that, right.

Hey, you gotta be kidding me.

So I didn't have any other choices.

And anyway, the story I want, I just went to a guy down the street.

It was a unimpressive to me in many, many ways.

And he's dirty, you know, the shop was dirty, had like walrus penises

and stuff like that laid out.

And I didn't know what they were, but I do that.

And, uh, you know, uh, he's this shoveled, he goes into the back room

with me, which is even dirtier and, uh, takes my pulse for a long time.

So at that point I thought, you know, maybe I should just lend them my watch.

I wonder what he was doing.

And he gave me what I thought looked like yard waste that had the

only things I know it had in it.

It had punk high and it had time place.

So it had like this big, you know, a bunch of yard waste and, uh, Insect pain.

So I took it back and, uh, I went back to sleep.

I was so tired from the expedition and my, I think my landlady again, brewed it

up for me and looking at like this, this looks and smells like the river sticks.

Right.

You know, like you have to be one desperate son of a bitch, this stuff,

and you were, and I was, and I drank.

And then, uh, when I woke up, I felt a little better.

And within, uh, I, I guess they gave me three packets.

I felt completely fine except for being tired.

And so I thought, oh, this is something I should look into.

And so I spent the.

About 2, 7, 8 months, uh, banging on people's doors.

I met Ted Kaptchuk around that time and we ended up going to Macau, uh, after

I think maybe, maybe talking to around the a hundred people in Taiwan, uh,

w unsuccessfully for lots of reasons.

Uh, and so that's how I got interested.

So my interest is very, um, personal on a certain level, but I'm very,

very sure at the beginning, I thought, you know, all this gen bla, all this

diagnosis and philosophy will, that's all fun, but that must be nonsense.

And, uh, the, once I figure out what the real active ingredients are, then we can

like do something real with this stuff.

So I think that's a completely Petra around 180 degrees,

but that's how I got into.

And, you know, I mean, this is just a one last old guy tidbit, you know,

when we were in Macau, this cultural evolution is still going on in China.

And I would say the vast majority of people who knew us, uh, were quite

convinced that the reason that we were CIA agents and that this was a

very, very bad cover, you know, and that, I know that some people thought

that cause they, they would tell me like you, CIA people are stupid.

Who would ever believe you'd be here studying Chinese medicine that's list.

That's like stupid.

She'd come up with a better cover than that.

So, um, yeah, that's how I got interested.

That's pretty fun.

But yeah,

I am often surprised at at least for me, how often

I'm wrong about something.

You know, my first impressions about something or wasn't quite

in the dire streets that you were.

But I had some issues that eventually took me to Chinese medicine and it

took a friend of mine, badgering me to like, go try acupuncture because,

you know, I mean, I lived in Seattle.

I, I, I thought I was an open-minded kind of guy, but it just didn't make any sense.

It was too far fetched.

I had nothing to hang any sort of conceptual concept on as to how it might

be

helpful.

That was one of our problems was, you know, in the seventies, someone

like would tell us something, we had no way to evaluate.

It was almost to the point, Michael, we think, oh, this person's what

this person says makes sense.

That must be wrong.

Right.

You know, studying Chinese medicine shouldn't make sense because

we own the main thing about it.

Uh, so that was a tough tuffle that went on.

I mean, that's uh, um, so it did take awhile.

Well,

that, that might explain why, especially in the beginning of studying

Chinese medicine, it's really confusing.

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, it really, it, it really doesn't make sense.

And it's a complex subject.

I mean, Chinese medicine, it's not, you know, it's not like one integrated thing.

It's, it's like all these different aspects.

Right?

All these different traditions, all these different pieces, you know, it could

be anything from a scholarly tradition, you know, to some guy who's learned

how to use external herbs really well.

And he can treat, you know, people that fall down and break

bones and stuff like that.

Right.

I mean, it's all over the place.

Not particularly integrated, like our Western mind would like to put

it right.

I think that's one of its strongest points.

It's got incredible amount of flexibility because you can use all sorts of

different approaches and viewpoints.

To kind of, uh, figure out what you can do that will help this

particular person the best.

I would agree that

it's one of the strengths.

I think it also makes it really hard to learn.

And, and especially at least I've found, you know, it's almost like in the

beginning you need, uh, a scaffolding, like when you're building a building,

right, you need some kind of framework.

So you can get the job done at a certain point.

When the building is built, the scaffolding comes down, you got a

building and it seems that there's a lot of scaffolding type theories and

ideas, you know, ways of approaching Chinese medicine that get us started.

But I'm not sure that's what takes us the long way down the road.

I mean, it's like sometimes you come up to something.

Yeah.

Maybe it's a little different than I thought or how I was trained or what

the, yeah, I think there's a couple, maybe

even one level deeper issues.

Michael.

One of them, which is I think really important.

And it took me a long time to hopefully learn is that certainly our medicine

has nothing to do with being right.

It only has to do with being helpful and that if you want to be right

all the time, then you're going to force your patients into some

kind of, you know, Procrustean bed.

You're going to try and force them into some one set of theories so that you

can be right and you won't help them.

So I think that's a real hard thing.

Most people who want to study something want to be right.

And is Willy not about being right.

You know, you can spin all these theories that show how right you

are, but if the person doesn't get better in effect, you're wrong.

So I think that's one thing that was hard.

And another thing I think that's hard is that we, in the we're trained, I

believe the think that precision and accuracy are the same, but lots of

times in east Asian medicine, they're completely different that the accurate.

Ideas are kind of murky.

They're not really set in stone.

They're not so clearly delineated.

And, uh, so if you make something very, very precise, you do from

kind of violence to where they don't actually understand it.

And this was, I mean, brought home to me when we were in Macau.

This happened to me all the time though.

We would talk about because most of our classmates in Macau

word, The daughters and sons of people who did Chinese medicine.

So, you know, they would be talking about, they weren't surprised they weren't.

So we about like dampness, they all understood.

They all knew what damn this was, but we would try to get some kind of

very precise definition of dampness.

It was always well kind of like that.

And so I think that's something that's a.

I don't know, expand your mind or make your mind more flexible,

but to get to the point, and this is something that, you know, this

struggle and this, uh, appreciation of these issues, they don't go away.

There's still stuff that you have to work with.

No, I have to work with every day.

Like what's going on with this patient?

You know, how precise do I want to be?

How okay.

Am I with like, oh, my initial hit on them is wrong.

You know, it's very common.

I know in, in the acupuncture, in the moment and in herbal medicine over time

where you have to work by this doing the test, like, I don't know, what's one of

these two or three things, so I'll try one of them and we'll see what happens.

I mean, I think one of the problems that, uh, younger practitioners not

only but get into is, oh, it's one of these three things I'll do so treatment.

That's all of them.

Yeah, that's not going to help.

That's not going to help.

And then you, don't not at all.

And so you just pick one and you know, you have a reason, maybe not a strong

one that pick one or the other, but you have to be, oh, that one was wrong.

Okay.

That person made them worse.

Good.

Now know, it's not that one.

Let's try the next one.

And I think as long as you're open with your patients, it's fine.

I mean, and, and I, I'm gonna certainly, you know, uh, know lots of, uh,

practitioners have more experience than me and for longer periods of time and

they still work that way sometimes.

So if your goal is to be right, you don't want to do that because it, you

know, sometimes you're going to be wrong.

But if your goal is in the end to help the patient, you know,

that's just one way to do things.

Yeah.

The point

that you make about the talking to your patient about.

I have found that this is, is really helpful if I am really

clear that I'm not clear, but I'm also clear that it could be this.

It could be that.

And I let them know the situation, not like I'm the guy who got all the answers.

Of course, people are looking for doctors that have the answers, right?

I mean, we're under a lot of pressure because people want answers.

We'd like to have them if we can, but there's, you know, when people

come into our office, they're probably used to not having answers

or they wouldn't be in our office.

Right.

Exactly.

I've already looked for help.

Hasn't helped.

So I find if I can get a little bit out of my Mr.

Smart guy mode and be straight with the patient, I'm not sure what

this is, but I've got a few ideas.

It could be this, it could be that I'm going to choose one.

We're going to go in this direction and if I'm wrong, here's

what you can expect to happen.

Right.

And if I'm right, you're going to get better in these other ways.

Often people will get on board with that, but I have found

that it's taken years of God.

I don't know what it is.

Maybe just sitting with people to be able to sit in front of a patient

and go, I don't know, and not take that as a place of stopping, but

actually as a place of starting.

Yeah, no, I think that's right.

I mean, that's, I mean, part of my soldier and in mainstream medicine

that the push be in the opposite direction, you know, and they always

talk about patient compliance.

I hate that word.

Uh, why would they, why would they comply with us?

Who are we that make them comply?

So I always talk about patient cooperation because they're

the people with the problem.

Right.

And if you, I think.

Any socioeconomic background, you bring them in like, here's, what's going on.

Here's how I understand stuff.

Uh here's what's going, here's, let's try this.

How does that sound?

And, uh, I don't give them too many details about how they'll feel bad

if it's wrong, because that primes the pump for them to feel that.

But I just tell them it's an experiment, you know, we'll do this for three days,

five days, whatever, if it's herbs.

No, if it's acupuncture, the palpation helps us know right away.

But the herbs that doesn't work that way.

So, uh, uh, I don't remember any people are excited there.

They like to be as they should.

They like to be part of the process.

They're not just some, uh, on the, what's the word.

They're not some passive recipient of my munificence like, they're the

people with the problem they have.

And again, one thing that.

From our medicines very clearly is that it's the patient's response to what we do.

That's the treatment.

Now what we do so we can bring them in, is it helps them.

And it also makes it easier for us.

So that's a, it's a good situation.

I want to come back

to this, this thing about being wrong for a moment,

because for me, this has been a key element in my learning over the years.

I remember the first week in acupuncture school, we had Dr.

Mark going over a case with us.

And actually I think most of our teachers went over some cases and they went over

cases about how they got it really wrong.

That's what I remember.

Yeah.

And I

suspect that a lot of us, regardless of where we go to school,

we hear, we hear these stories, right.

And we really appreciate these practitioners.

That can give us that view.

Oh, here, here's what I thought.

Here's how I was wrong.

Here's how I turned it around.

They're great stories.

We love to hear them, but in that moment of being wrong in that moment, when the

wheels have just come off the bus to the treatment and we thought we knew what

was going on, and now we're face-to-face with someone and like, bang, I don't

know that's being in that as opposed to hearing a lovely story about it are

two really, really different things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you got any,

what are your thoughts about when you're in those moments of, yup.

This is not working and I don't know what to do.

So, um, I think I have a few thoughts that I've experienced with this.

So, because I think if you put yourself out for people who are in deep trouble,

It's not going to work certainly right away all the time, if you expect

otherwise, you're, uh, it's silly.

So one thing that I think is really important to remember, and it's very hard

for us is that it's not really about us.

So we're just conduits for whatever kinds of treatment or ideas we come up with.

So it's just the same way when you treat someone and you get fabulous

results is also like, not about you.

It's just one of those things that happen.

So that's, you want them, you want more of the former than the

latter, but, so that's one thing.

And then I think for me, my first thought is this is maybe a personality.

Quirk is okay.

Can I think quickly what I did wrong?

What I either did wrong by I did something wrong or I missed something.

And then the next thing is, okay, well, what, what can I do

now that will help the person.

And usually it's going to be something really simple.

Right.

You know, are they really the pleaded?

Are they really stuck?

Uh, do they need someone just to hold their hand for a bit or do I

need to let them just do their thing?

So I think, uh, and then if I figured out, oh, what I did that didn't work,

I can go back and restart at that point after things have settled down.

Does that make sense?

But I think the first thing is like, okay, what's, what's wrong.

And then what is the simplest thing I can do to like stabilize the situation?

And I think for me, the realization that it's not about you and not

about not about me is a very thing.

That's very calming both for me and the patient.

I'm not in a tizzy.

Uh, I'm just very real.

I'm not, I wouldn't say relaxed, but I am quite called because it's just, this

is something that happens sometimes let's just relax and figure out where the Gulf

from there, where for me, I think, oh my God, I'm like an idiot then I don't know.

I wouldn't know what to do.

And that I would communicate that sense of a disease to the patient.

Who's already has enough problems without that.

So that's, I think that's what I, I, I, you know, some of these would

fit when you push things and you say, I'm just going to do this.

It's like, oh, that is completely wrong.

And you have to like stabilize things and start over again.

You know, your, your point

too, about.

When it goes really well,

of course

not to own that too much as well.

I mean, it's really easy to it's really, it's easy to go.

Oh yeah.

I kind of got this dialed in and now I know what I'm doing and I'm competent.

I'm worth the money and, you know, blah, blah.

I mean all the noise in

our head.

Right.

It's all the same.

But

I find when I, when I start thinking I really know

something and I got it down.

I am

asking for trouble.

Indeed.

It does.

If I can not take in the oh, Michael max.

You're so great.

You fixed my back?

Not let it puff me up.

I think it does help to be a little calmer when it's like, oh my God.

Now what?

And also it's yeah.

I mean, it's almost

like a meditative practice

outweigh, correct?

I mean, it's, it's real.

It's you do, you do what you do sometimes of the things junctures just right.

You have, you know, fabulous results and sometimes not.

And, uh, Neither w I mean, if you never, if everything goes haywire

all the time, you probably are in competent, but if it never goes

haywire, then you're not trying, you're not really, uh, help you're missing.

You're not helping some other people that you should be helping.

Yeah.

As I was saying earlier, there's stuff that gets us started in our practice.

You know?

I mean, we have to learn how to be business people.

I've been doing this about 20 years when I graduated, actually, when I went to

acupuncture school, I knew that when I got out there were not any jobs for this.

I mean, these days it's different.

There are some jobs, but when I got out, I knew I was going to

have to make my own business and you know, to be a practitioner,

you've got to figure out business.

You've got to figure out how you are with patients.

You got to got to figure out a lot of stuff.

All those are essential.

And they're like the it's like learning differential diagnosis in a

way it's basic tools you need so that you can become a practitioner, but

after 10 or 15 years, there's other stuff that, that becomes motivating.

And I suspect after 20 or 30, there's other things that become

motivating in your practice as you look back on 45 years.

So they're kind of true.

Any sort of trajectory or sort of waystations or points where you notice,

oh, my practice was like this, but now it's turning into something else.

Um, kind of makes sense.

I don't know if my practice has changed all that much.

I mean, I think the thing that I think is crucial in order

to maintain a practice is.

Continuing interest in your patients and in the work that you do.

So a couple of times in the last five or six years, I've met people who do

acupuncture, who have, you know, whatever counts as successful practices who

tell me that their practice is boring.

And, uh, you know, you know, me pretty well, Michael, so I just

tell them, oh, well then you should, you should get another job.

So if you find that this kind of work boring, uh, you shouldn't be

doing that because there's nothing, there's nothing boring about it.

You know?

So I guess what they were telling me is they had these protocols and the hell, all

these people with low back pain and they do basically the same thing on a low back.

And, um, you know, that's just like, that's like something that's just,

that's, uh, maybe it works for making a living, but it doesn't work for the

patients and it doesn't work for you.

So I think, um, that's one thing.

The other thing I think that's, I find, uh, because I know I, I did go though

osteopathic school, which in the United States is like a Western medical school.

And I kept up with some of my classmates and I think over time

they have become more judgmental, uh, in their work and, and as people.

And I think one of the huge things that, uh, practicing this medicine has done

for me is it's made me a less judgment and it's still, I'm still very judgmental

person, but much less judgmental.

And also I think they, as a rule, like people less than

they used to, like people.

And I like people a lot more than I used to like them.

So I think as you kind of just interact with people at this level, it does

lots of beneficial things for you.

And that's, I think a big, big deal for me.

I mean, I don't know if you, you know, we wish first maybe when you went to style,

we used to, we had this really small place and the first time we did interviews for

prospective students, uh, they wanted to use my room as the, my treatment.

And it just didn't work because in the treatment room,

I don't judge people at all.

I just try to figure it out.

What I could do.

We had these people come in and we're doing the interview.

And I say, can you just lay down on a table here for a second?

I need to check your pulse.

Like I know, said we have to do we have to do the interview someplace

else because I've been trained, you know, like in this room, I don't judge

people, you know, they're, they're, uh, one of my osteopathic teachers told

me, like, you know, in the treatment room, there are no bad patients.

There's only bad doctors.

And then the class inside the classroom, there are no bad students.

There are only bad teachers.

When you go outside the room, it's, it's a different scene.

But in the room you have to have this kind of mentality to do the work.

Something that took a lot of.

Repetition for me to get, but I did get that I'm in my private life.

I'm as judgmental as anybody else, but in my clinic life, I'm not,

it's, uh, quite the astounding to me.

And I think that lack of judgment kind of helps you get better results.

Because again, it gets back to trying to figure out how to help

the person versus trying to show the person that you're right.

I mean, but you know, I never argue with patients about,

oh, I want them to do this.

They don't want to do it.

I will like, well, here's the reasons I think you should do it.

So I don't want to do that.

Okay.

You know, I mean, uh, the, the taken to extremes, I don't know if you get

this in your practice, but I often give people with back pain, some kinds of

exercises, and sometimes they'll come back and they'll go, oh, I'm sorry, Daniel.

I didn't do the exercises.

And I'll like, you know, move my back around and go, oh, I don't

think you should be sorry to me.

My back is fine because it's like, it's not about my, bag's not about me.

It's like, you know, it's your back.

You don't want to do it.

Okay.

So I think that, uh, that kind of interest in people and, uh, that keeps

you going and, you know, they, they teach you so many interesting things

and you hear all of this stuff that you never heard about, or they tell

you things that are exactly what you heard about that you thought were BS.

That's one of my fears, one example is I had a patient.

This is maybe 20 years ago.

He was late sixties with Taiyang.

Insurance salesman or insurance, a mid-level insurance executive

and the, we, you, yeah.

These different problems.

And I often, when I do a intake for the first time, the last thing is

to say to the person, well, is there anything you think might be interesting

that you've never talked to any other health care practitioner about?

And he said, oh, well, you know, I have this, he looked really sheepish,

but it looked like, well, okay.

You know, like I have the sense that like, in my abdomen it's feels like this.

Like I have a tree that's trying to grow there, but it can't

cause it's like inside a box.

I said, oh, we have a word for that in Chinese medicine.

It's called Quinn.

Right.

And here's the character, it's a tree inside a box, but this

guy, you know, I think his only interaction with Chinese culture

was he had chop suey once or twice.

So he was like, nah, but he had this exact same feeling.

So like sometimes when you just let people talk, they will tell you things

that you're like really that's real.

That's real.

So, uh, I think that's something.

The other thing I think for me, that is a big change in my practice,

which is, this is embarrassing to talk about what, talking about

how you were wrong before is.

When I first came back to the states.

So I came back to the states in 76, you know, people would say to me,

well, when you see your patients, then you don't talk to your patients.

I go, I don't need to talk to my patients.

Like I can feel their pulse.

I don't like talk to them.

Why we, like, why would I do that?

Right.

So that's like, no, that's not, that's not the way it works here.

So I had to change that.

And then when people would ask me to describe what I found, I would say

something like, this is incredibly embarrassing, but I would say,

well, we have like a half an hour.

So I can either give you a treatment in a half an hour, or I can explain

the diagnosis in the half an hour.

It's up to you.

And that'd be so often, I'd have a person say, well, I'll pay for

half an hour of explanation than a half an hour of treatment.

So that is incredibly arrogant and stupid idea that I have.

And so I've come now.

I believe very, very strongly that if I cannot describe what I think

is wrong with the person in a way that anyone can understand in a, in

two minutes or less, it just means that I don't understand that either.

So if I can't get past the jargon and everything to have a, you know,

average person to understand what I think the Chinese diagnosis means, it

means that I don't understand that.

So now, you know, I explain, I w whether they want to know, or not almost every

patient, I'll spend a couple of minutes, like, okay, in from our perspective,

this is what's going on with you, because I think that's very important,

again, as part of that, you know, cooperation, bringing them on board.

Uh, we're not doing this exotic wacky stuff.

We're doing stuff that everyone can understand.

So that's an example in my practice where I've changed as bothered as much

as one can change in one little thing.

And it's a big deal.

I think the actually, uh, have people understand that this the

east Asian medicine, isn't some whatever esoteric, deep wisdom, it's

really about people interacting with their bodies and the environment.

Right?

I mean, that's what it's all about.

And

we should be able to explain it in those

terms.

If you're going to explain it, explain it the sense that it's, you know,

I have to say every so often, I'll tell the patient what I just said.

And then it's like, oh, I can't do it.

I cannot explain to you in two minutes.

Oh, I guess I really don't understand this as well as I, as I should.

So that, that happens back to the drawing back to the drawing

board that happens every so often.

I'm going to take

a short break here.

Toby, daily's got some helpful information about treating wind cold with food.

Hi,

Toby here again.

I hope you're enjoying the conversation in the show.

And speaking of conversations, you can have a conversation with

your patients around how they can use food as medicine with the

Chinese nutritional strategies app.

I use the app to answer the question.

What foods can I recommend for my patients with a wind cold pattern?

The answer drawn from the Chinese medical classic texts are alcohol,

black pepper chives since.

Garlic fresh ginger leaks, licorice root mustard, greens,

onion, Rosemary, and scallions.

The Chinese nutritional strategies app has diagnosis patterns like wind

cold in this database of more than 300 common foods, along with their

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The database is searchable by any of these criteria and sorting through it allows

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is available@chinesenutritionapp.com.

Now let's listen to the next half of the show.

So

one of the things that I found helpful about doing that myself

is often patients will have really disparate things going on with them,

things that seem really like they don't hang together and it's confusing to

other doctors and it's confusing to them.

So.

And sometimes our Chinese medicine way of looking at it and our way of thinking and

working will bring these pieces together.

So they might actually see

that

a fall they took when they were 18, that did something to their

hip, might have something to do with a menstrual period that changed around

that time, you know, and that might have something to do with headaches

that showed up three years later.

And because we can see these Chinese medicine offers us the possibility

of seeing how some of these things might be interrelated with each other.

And sometimes people are quite astonished to hear.

Wow.

How did you think about that?

And I'm thinking, well, it's, I didn't think about it.

You know, there's this way that we have.

That gives us a particular perspective.

Exactly.

I think find, get, get help from hearing that as well.

And also, I mean, I think one of the other things is if you can explain

things, if people understand why you want to do what you do, you know,

they're, they don't have problems brewing up herbs or doing different

kinds of things because they, okay.

I have this problem.

These things are gonna change in this way that I understand.

Uh, okay, let's go.

So I think the cooperation goes up quite a bit when the PE people are

not passive receptors, but active participants in their own health.

Again, there's lots of variation and personality.

So some people don't want to be active participant.

And you have to be able to figure out how to interact with those people a little

differently, but by and large, the people who come to our offices by the time

they get to us, they're pretty active.

They want to be active participants in helping themselves.

I've got a question about some

Chinese.

Okay.

You're up for it.

Sure.

We'll find out.

So Chinese is such a funny, slippery language.

There's a lot of terms that we're given in acupuncture school and they sound great.

And they're interesting and they're poetic and they're really hard to understand.

So let me give you an example.

Okay.

The three treasures DJing, she and ShaoYin

right?

Yes.

23 years ago, I was introduced to these.

I'm still working out.

It's just what they are.

Well, Michael, I think this gets back to that, um, precision versus accuracy

thing that I, we were talking about earlier in the podcast, that if you

want a very, very precise definition of any of those things, that definition is

going to be not helpful and inaccurate.

That they're all kind of murky ideas because they're real and

they're about life and everything about life is a little murky.

And so I think if you, uh, look at them in different ways, you'll get a sense

of, oh, that's what this is about here.

And if, from my perspective, if that's what you have versus some something

that you can write in a very precise way, you probably have a better idea.

So I think we have a sense of this.

You have to have a very clear idea, but I'm going to, I'm going to say actually

what you want to have is a very murky idea and that murky idea gives you again,

the flexibility to understand and apply these ideas in different circumstances.

Because I think part of Chinese ma I mean, again, maybe precision is

the wrong word here, but Chinese is a emblematic language and things.

Uh, so like this idea of emblematic ness goes through everywhere.

It's like this, get off the language, but you take the pulse someone's pulse.

The pulse is an emblem for everything that's going on in the person and all

these different ways of talking about it are just ways of understanding that.

So we talk about the ShaoYin.

You can talk about it.

There's know, first of all, it's, there's more than one thing called ShaoYin.

That's very, very clear, you know, they, they have thought about the

whoosh on and then the ShaoYin and then you look at the character, the

character has a sense of expansion to it.

If you pick the character apart, but if you try to say, oh, it's like,

you know, I don't know what to say.

It's the activity of the frontal cortex.

That's the ShaoYin that would be taking this argument to absurd

levels, but that's just not helpful.

That's not really going to help you deal with it and help people know the

tongue has shown the eyes, have tion.

Uh, they have shunned disturbance, which, you know, again, we've

talked about this before.

Sometimes that's just.

The practitioner doesn't like the patient.

So they say the patient has done disturbance and that's not correct

diagnosis, at least not of the patient, maybe of the practitioner.

So I think that's what I would say to this issue.

That if you kind of get a sense of, oh yeah, it kind of works here.

It kind of works there.

That may be what's going on.

Even, you know, that's going to be more useful than trying to have a very precise,

uh, you know, the, she is these five things, 1, 2, 3, and that's just not

that's, that's not what it's about Ellie.

That's what, that's not what Chinese is about, but it's also not what

living things are about in the way that we appreciate them to death.

The answer is that in any way is fine for your.

But it brings

up this other question, which is how do we know when we're

sort of within the, you know, fun way of what a character is about and

fun way is, uh, like range scope.

How do we know we're in the fun way of, of a character and not just making shit up?

Cause it's, it sounds nicer.

We want it to be so are we just have this idea?

Well, I mean, first of all, this is hill.

Cause from my time studying at the UDaB here, we never, you should

never really think about characters.

You should only think about words.

All the characters are words.

They are a way of writing down words.

They're not ways of writing down concepts.

That aren't words they never, ever, ever have been that.

Okay.

So that's like the first thing.

And so, and so it's Chinese.

What the family is, what the kind of is not determined by us.

It's determined by the people who've been using these words and the words change

over time for the last 2,500 years.

So if you say, oh, I have this idea that this character means this.

And no one in China has ever really realized that the

character really means this.

That's just bullshit.

That's like, that's like the definition of like, no, not you can't say, oh,

this word, another language, no one in that language has really understood it.

I understand it.

You know, cause I'm sitting here drinking coffee, it's making it up.

So I think that's my understanding of that first thing.

It's you know, so when you just like, if you take the etymology of an

English word, you can see where things come from, but they come from words.

They don't come from abstract concepts.

And the Chinese writing has always been about words, not about from

philosophical concepts, you know, maybe the gua of the Egypt, the

hexagrams, that's a different thing.

Uh, but we've talked about even the words that used to describe them.

They're words.

Uh, they're not, they're not of, so you start, you know, I've, I've

had people telling me, oh yeah, no one in China really understood this

character, but I understand it.

And it's lot, like, what are you drinking?

It's a Chinese word.

You can't like, say I understand,

you know?

Well,

and of course, in, in like you were saying words also change

over time, that change with context.

Sure.

And again, lots of characters or write more than one word.

Like, and again, I don't know what the, I mean, we have a word in English mean MEA.

Well, it has that spelling reflects different words.

Like what do I mean, don't be mean to me, those are not really the same

thing, but they're written the same way.

And the same kind of thing happens in Chinese.

That there's a word that has a certain sound.

There's another word that has a similar, a similar sound.

So they'll use the same way, the right.

That even though they don't necessarily have any meaning connections

that does happen sometimes too.

And then you've got the words that are written the same,

but they have different meanings.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's a complicated subject that you, but, uh, because it is written, uh, not

in as characters or as, not as phonetics.

You have all this other level, some certain level of Chinese

poetry is visual, right?

You can't have visual real poetry in, in English.

So there's, there are advantages and disadvantages to any kind of a writing

system, but the Chinese of course, near and dear to my heart has lots of

really interesting things about it.

But you just can't sit around and think about, oh, I wonder this

character looks like that to me.

So that must be what it really means.

That's just hilarious.

But

you know, at the same time you can look at a character.

You know, one of my favorites is ting, listen.

Yeah.

And it tells you how to listen.

You know, it's got an ear, it's got eyes, it's got a heart.

I mean, it's built

into the character.

Well, also me, I'm another main lender which works on all sorts of different

levels, which, uh, may, maybe not for the, anybody is the word Shung for safe.

In our culture, we're about Sears, right?

We call this the sear, right.

But Shung means the hearer.

It's very clear the character.

And it's also clear if you look at ancient Chinese philosophy, that there were the

person who could hear things, was the person who was the Sage, not the person,

not the senior and not the visionary.

So that's a difference in, uh, and that has lots to do with the

basics of Chinese medicine as this residence, what she probably some

aspects what she originally was about.

So you can look at the characters and you can see that, oh

yeah, it's written this way.

That part of the etymology is visual.

Not you.

So you don't have to be a Latin scholar or a Greek scholar in terms of English

to see this have to be someone who could say, oh, it's not now sometimes

the parts of the character that we see were not the parts that were, you

know, like the moon and the flesh.

Those are that kind of thing happens.

I'll always 100% clear, but sometimes it is.

And I think this idea about the stage of being someone who is receptive,

right, who under, who kind of is in the vibe versus the person who has

seen things and directing things uh that's that has a, maybe a core value

in terms of understanding some of what that means, what that word means.

Well,

it takes you down a whole different rabbit hole, right?

When you start thinking about what a Sage is in terms of what aspect of this.

Perceptual frameworks

they're attending to that's.

Right.

And again, when you're talking about earlier, you know, we're not the

first people that, oh, look at that.

That's an interesting thing.

We understand that the people before no one that this has been written about

in Chinese for thousands of years.

So I think that's another way to tell that you're probably, you know, doing

something worthwhile, even though it may not be correct, but it's not

just nonsense making things up is where there's the tradition of people

thinking about this aspect of the word.

Yeah.

Well that is one of the great things about, well, Chinese medicine in

particular, you know, there's been discussions going on about this for as

long as they've been writing about this.

Absolutely.

Some cases maybe even long, maybe even longer.

Yeah.

I know that you've got a busy practice and.

I mean, you don't just practice, but you do translation.

You do editing.

I mean, you're involved in all kinds of stuff with Chinese medicine.

I'm wondering where you get the time or how you, I don't know if manage

is the right word, but how do you get so much done within a 24 hour

a day timeframe?

I'm going to answer your question in a different way.

I think the issue for people who go into practice is they have to have

some, they have to develop some insight into how they work for this goes to

the very basic issue of, I think, one of the binary issues of our practices.

Do you specialize or do you not right?

Do you focus on women's diseases or do you focus on ophthalmology or do you

just do whatever comes into the door?

And I think the, one of the main deciding factors of that has to be how you work

for, there are people that have, they, they see whoever comes in the door, they

get flustered or they get, they feel that they're doing everything to superficially.

It's not satisfying to them.

And those people like they need to specialize and they have to find

something that really, they want to dive deep into both on all levels.

No, they want to see those kinds of patients over and

over and over again every day.

But they want to read about that kind of stuff in the, our literature over

and over again, whenever they get a chance and they want to look in the

modern, scientific discussion of that kind of problem, they want to know

all of the that's, what they want to.

And if they do that, they'll have a long and productive career, but

for other people, like I'm the, I'm not, that's not who I am.

I'm a scatterbrain person.

And so, uh, I need to do bunch of different things, uh, because

otherwise I lose concentration.

So it's like I can concentrate pretty well for short periods of time.

Like my brother used to say, I have a fantastic memory is just kind of short.

So, so for me, it never really occurred to me to specialize in

that would give him my background.

Maybe I was specialized in orthopedic stuff or stuff like

that, but that's just not who I am.

I need to see different kinds of people.

Like my favorite day.

By far.

And I get them every so often is I will have at least one patient

from every decade of life.

I'll have a baby, I'll have a teenager, have someone in the

twenties, couple people in the thirties, someone in their forties

and their fifties and their sixties and their eighties and their nineties.

I have one, a hundred bill that would be like, that's my ideal day.

I don't care what the problems are.

Right.

But I like to see, like, I have seen like a 96 year old and a six month old in

the same day with everybody in between.

That's like, ah, that's like, wow.

That's like Nirvana for me as a practitioner.

And so in terms of the other things I do, it's the same thing.

Oh, I like to re like I have a, I feel maybe because of my, not

my age age, but because when I got involved in this medicine,

You know, I have an inflated sense of self.

So I feel I have a, I have a obligation to do what I can to promote things, to

do what I can to see that in 2050, in 2080 people in the west have the option

to get high quality east Asian medicine.

That's just something that I think I owe my teachers who took rotten

wood piece of wood, like myself, and, and worked at it for so long.

So the, uh, the writing and the lecturing and all stuff that comes from that.

That you know, other people, whether you have that or not, it's up to you.

Maybe most people don't have such an inflated sense of self, but,

you know, it's like, I need to feel to feel good about myself.

I need to try to do stuff to make this stuff available to more people.

And to be part of the Trisha, we are part of the tradition and part of

the tradition is handing it all on.

Like we have our own responsibility to add to the tradition.

And so they think in terms of my own personality, doing these

different things is, will the only way that makes sense for.

It's not a, not a decision.

It's just the way of being

just the way you happen to

be wired that way I happened to be wired.

And so I think if you're wired like me, you should do stuff kind of like,

and when you have your practice, you definitely should not try to

be a specialist in dermatology.

If you don't want to just look at rashes all day, uh, if you that's like you

do, then that's what you should do.

And you'll, you know, so I think that's, that's how I

would approach that, uh, issue.

Great.

Dan always enjoyable to spend a little time hanging out in the alley out 10.

Thanks so much for being on the show.

Oh, and that's always a pleasure to talk to you.