Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hi everyone and welcome to the Nervous Herbalist, a podcast for Chinese medicine practitioners who like herbs and want to learn more about their function, their history and treatment strategies to use in the clinic. Let's get into it.
So Travis C. And I are taking a regular summer break that we do every year, but we wanted you to have something interesting to listen to while we're away.
So we're reaching into the recording archives to bring you some interviews we did when we were students at ocom, the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine.
As I'm sure many of you know, OCOM closed its doors in August of 2024 because of declining enrollments and complications from sort of post Covid economic recovery in downtown Portland.
And like so many alumni, watching OCOM shut was a heartbreaking event for me and Travis Cunningham. On a lot of level, of course, the loss of a top tier Chinese medicine school is a blow to our profession. And the leadership that steered that ship was enmeshed in basically every level of Chinese medicine governments across the country you could imagine.
But the deeper, I think, more personal loss, the thing that so many of us feel so acutely still is the loss of the OCOM community.
The faculty, the staff, the students, the alumni, everybody was the sort of ongoing manifestation of the college's legacy and its spirit, you know, as a place where smart and compassionate people could gather to be medicine nerds, to help patients, to experience, frankly, the deep and complicated worldview that Travis Cunningham and I are always talking about on this show. And the loss of that is still reverberating, I think, throughout the community.
The interesting thing about sitting down to go through some of our recording archives for this show, sort of these placeholders between transitions, was really a kind of bittersweet experience. It was sad, of course, that OCOM is gone, but amazing that we as students had the opportunity to build a show that we called River Map Radio, and to speak with faculty and teachers and community members and even some students to get an idea of what, you know, Chinese medicine was like from all these various points of view.
So the interview we've got for you in this episode is one we did nearly 10 years ago with two of our professors, Michael Barletich and Greg Livingston, and listening back to our discussion with them, to organize the content for the show and listening to all the details of this specific episode was such an amazing step into the glorious past, truly the deep and amazing, glorious past of ocom. And I hope that all of you enjoy hearing them talk about terminology, about herbs, about treatment, about history, and about in many of the ways, sort of how the Chinese medicine world that we experience today, sort of where it comes from in the US and how did we get here?
This recording is one of TC&I's first attempts at podcast report recordings, so I will apologize ahead of time for some of the sound quality and the transitions.
It was about a decade ago, so I beg your indulgence on that topic, but I think the content's worthwhile and it's a good listen, so I hope you guys enjoy. We'll of course be back from our summer break in August and we'll have a whole new fourth season coming out for you guys then.
The content is going to be great. We've got a whole new host of disease topics to look at. We've got theory, we've got herbs, we've got broad spectrum topics. We're going to have some guest speakers. So we're really excited to hop into the fourth season of the Nervous Herbalist and we look forward to sharing that with y'. All. So keep a lookout for fresh episodes in season four coming in the third week of August, and until then, enjoy these trips into the past.
Thanks a bunch. We'll see y' all soon.
Welcome River Map Breeze welcome to River Map Radio.
River Map Radio is a student created and student executed production of OCOM Student Media.
This show was made possible through the support of the OCOM Student Association, OCOM faculty and staff, and with the participation of student volunteers.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: Welcome to River Map Radio. I am your host Travis Cunningham. Today we will be discussing the forms and functions of Chinese medicine with our guests Michael Berletich and Greg Livingston. Michael Berletich is a licensed acupuncturist and a Chinese medicine practitioner. He earned two bachelor's degrees from Humboldt State University in 1992 and his master's from OCOM in 2005. Michael has more than 15 years experience studying Qigong, matt meditation, massage, and herbal medicine. He is currently a doctoral resident pursuing his degree at OCOM and maintains a private practice in Portland, Oregon focusing on ptsd, autoimmune conditions, and chronic, difficult to treat diseases.
Our other guest, Dr. Greg Livingston, is a licensed Acupuncturist who earned his Master's in Traditional Chinese medicine from Five Branches Institute in 1997. Dr. Livingston then traveled to China and earned his Doctorate in Chinese Medicine Clinical Fundamentals from Jiajiang Chinese Medical University in 2009. Dr. Livingston is one of the few Westerners to have completed A Chinese medicine PhD in China entirely in Chinese and to be licensed to practice Chinese medicine in China, where he spent more than 10 years as a student, teacher and clinician.
Currently, he maintains a private practice at the OCOM Clinic in Portland, Oregon, specializing in internal and general family medicine with a focus on Chinese herbology.
So with that, let's turn our attention to the discussion.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: So thanks for being here, guys. Really appreciate you taking the time. Our first topic is one that most students find as we begin to study Chinese medicine, we encounter these different terms that often sound very similar, but they actually represent different ideas.
And one of the more controversial distinctions in our medicine is the idea of TCM versus ccm, traditional Chinese medicine versus classical Chinese medicine.
And so we want to go to Michael first on this one. What do people mean when they're using these two terms? And what does the distinction. Distinction mean that they're trying to express here?
[00:07:05] Speaker D: I think it's difficult to say what people mean. I think first and foremost, there's Chinese medicine as a marketing tool. It's convenient to have different kinds of Chinese medicine. You can have tcm, you can have ccm, you can have five elements, you can have Tarahar, you can have lots of different things so that you can specialize in areas and get people involved in different areas and get them excited about areas. I think Chinese medicine itself is what we're talking about. TCM is ultimately a term that kind of comes out of the PRC's attempt at Mao's time, historically, to create a system of medicine. It had, from my understanding, been previously slightly eradicated from the culture with this Western influence coming in. And Mao needed something specific that was like, Chinese and part of his triangle with the other red countries in the communist bloc. And so Chinese medicine was one of those things. And they also had a billion people living in countryside that needed access to health care. So, you know, gathering all the people together and putting them in a room and saying, you can come out when you have the system, then something like that, TCM evolved, but that's really just a reflection of something that already existed.
I think what people mean other than a marketing tool of saying, we have ccm, you have tcm. Other than that, I think what people mean or what I mean when I say that, which is much easier to talk about, is, is something that roots itself in classical text, in classical thinking, in thinking that is more ancient than something that was kind of amalgamated together in the 50s, so to speak, and is kind of what we're seeing now as a reflection of that.
[00:08:47] Speaker C: Would you say that TCM isn't rooted in the classical texts?
[00:08:51] Speaker D: No, of course. I think that it is.
I think the tcm, of course, is rooted in the classical text, but it doesn't necessarily need them in order to function. For instance, here we don't have any classes in classical text that people are reading. You go into TCM theory, you hear about them, oh, as the Neijing said, as so and so said. But you don't actually look into them, we don't actually open them up. And I think if you were a classical practitioner, you would not even study without looking at those. You would, your teacher would say, read these. And when you've read them, when you have some questions, come and answer me, ask me, and I'll give you one answer and probably 10 more questions for you to go figure out. Right. I think that's more of how it was.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. And Greg, where do you stand on the distinction between these two terms?
[00:09:41] Speaker E: So my understanding is that tcm, well, in China there is no term tcm, so I've only run into that term here in the west. And I think what it's referring to is, I would make one slight distinction in that it's really a curriculum. It's not a style of medicine. It's an entry level medical degree curriculum in China. So in 1956, the first Chinese medicine universities were established in the PRC, a standard curriculum. And of course they wanted to have medical licensing exams and all that kind of thing, so they needed a standard curriculum. And that's what was developed. And of course, because of the political atmosphere at the time, it turned out to be what it is.
So especially early on, things like dialectical materialism, Marxist Leninism, those kind of things actually appeared in the texts, like sort of saying, oh, yin and yang is essentially the ancient dialectical materialism.
You actually see that in some texts from the early 60s, or even maybe some texts from the late 70s, early 80s.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Just to clarify, for anyone wondering about the term dialectical materialism, it's basically a philosophy based on the writings of Karl Marx that stresses the interconnectedness of the natural forces in the world.
[00:11:16] Speaker E: So, but in any case, tcm, in my mind anyway, what I think it's fair to say is really just an entry level medical degree education. No one ever said that it's a style of medicine.
And in China, no one says, oh, when you finish school, you should take these textbooks and practice from them. So everyone goes on and continues to study.
And in regard to classical texts, I think Michael's point is valid that what people say, CCM in this country or in the west, focus more on classical texts. And in TCM colleges in the west we focus less on that. That's probably fair to say, but it's not the same in China.
So the education in China is not the same as the education here.
First of all, it's a five year degree in China and it includes one year of. We call Yi Gu Wen, which is classical medical Chinese and extensive study.
Not exhaustive, but it would be extensive study of classical texts. There are classes in all the major classics, Nijing, Nanjing, Shanghan, Wen Bing, and then there's.
Which is study of the various scholars throughout history.
You study Li Dongyuan, Zhu Danshi, Ye Tian, Shi Biancheng and Hua Tuo. And you study all of these guys, not in depth, but you learn a little bit about each of these people, the books they wrote, their, their most well known theories, and you even spend a fair amount of time studying Chinese medical history. So what we have here in the west and what you have in China is not the same.
[00:13:13] Speaker C: So TCM is kind of a Western term for what the Chinese created during the Communist revolution to sort of consolidate.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Information so that it could be taught.
[00:13:25] Speaker C: In a medical setting and then in a university setting. In a university setting, yeah.
[00:13:32] Speaker E: It's a standardized Chinese medicine education curriculum essentially with Communist, Marxist, Leninist overtones. Because they said, okay, you know, like for example, I think it's Sun Simiao said that hangman's noose has a specific function, whereas just the rope before you hung somebody with it doesn't have this function. That kind of thing. The communists were like, well, okay, we're not going to teach that in our curriculum. No one burned the book.
You can still read about that.
No books were burnt by the communists. No Chinese medicine books that I'm aware of were burnt by the communists. Quite the contrary, actually. They published them all. Probably before the revolution. It was harder to get your hands on classical texts than it is now. I'm almost sure of that now. They're readily available.
So no one burnt books. It's just they chose to teach certain things and not to teach other things. And clearly their bias is reflected in that. But they didn't prevent people from studying other things.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: So you're saying that that standard of education was meant to be like a starting point?
[00:14:47] Speaker E: It's exactly a starting point. Just like this is what you need to know to get a license. And then just like here, OCOM is what you need to know to get a license. And then you can spend the rest of your life educating yourself. I mean, Even now, after 20 years you know, I'm constantly studying and learning new stuff every day, so there's no end to it. Any entry level degree is just that, just enough to get you your foot in the door. You're not a danger to your patients, hopefully. And, you know, you have some foundation on which you can, you can move.
[00:15:25] Speaker D: Forward in the sense that you have enough knowledge to function. And then from there you try to evolve your skill to a higher and higher level. And I think that what Greg's saying is you wouldn't use that term TCM inside of the prc, Right? It's a tool or a brand that is now used in the west to encompass Chinese medicine. And because people recognized that there was more to Chinese medicine than just that from the west, people in the west recognized there was more than that. Then they said, well, that isn't enough, so let's create another brand. And that other brand is CCM. Or that other brand could be Worsley's 5 element. That's a complete brand and a whole system in and of itself, and they have whole schools dedicated to just that. I think it's a convenient thing for people to get stuck in. But if you look even in tcm, like Greg was saying, that idea of that initial practitioner, that low level practitioner, that's the same thing that we are basically creating now. And those terms come from classical perspectives. Gotcha. Right, Cool.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: So our second topic that we want to talk about is a specific word that appears in one of the ancient texts, and that is the word ling. And ling is translated in the ling shu as spiritual pivot. So I'm guessing that the word is translated as spiritual.
But I'm wondering if we can elaborate or just clarify what that actually applies to in medicine. And Michael, I think we want to go to you again first on this one.
[00:17:05] Speaker D: I think that's a lot longer conversation than could ever exist in a podcast of this nature. But I think if you went into the dictionary and looked up that word ling, now it might have the word fairy next to it, like elf or fairy or something like this.
And if you looked at the actual character in Chinese simplified script, you it would make no sense whatsoever what it meant in some ways. So when I look at that character and I try to translate it, I think of it, I look at the complex character, the original character, which is a picture of rain falling, and three Mao's. And three is an important number in Chinese medicine.
Heaven, earth, human being, like the number three. The Dao Te Ching says, from three, all things then come forth from that Three is then the interaction of yin and yang. Not just yin and yang, but the interaction of those things. So everything is generated from that.
And then there's a picture of somewhat of a cross. It's a bar on top, a bar connecting that to a bar on the bottom, and two figures standing in that.
Most say that's the pole connecting heaven and earth. So like the Tai Chi, that pole that. That is connecting it, and then two pieces, people often attributed to females that are shamans or whatever that word means. So as soon as we start talking about, we have to then use words that aren't properly defined.
So then they are singing to bring about rain. So for me, then I think of that term because there is a term called shen in Chinese medicine which means spiritual as well.
And you can see points, ling dao, for instance, on the heart channel. And you can see a point, shen dao. So the spiritual path would be the translation of both of those points, but they can't mean the same thing because there's two different words that shen and ling. So I think of shen, which is a picture of the light of stars. I think of that as spiritual. That is the spirit itself from heaven down.
Whereas I think of ling as spiritual from earth up, Up. And it's the way I usually phrase it would be. It's your birthright as a human being to have access to the spiritual realm, and it requires your action and your participation and you vocalizing and engaging at a central place with nature itself. And that is how I define spiritual from the ling perspective versus the shen spiritual perspective. So then ling shu. Well, first, your question is somewhat limited because you're asking about the ling portion, Right. But the shu portion is almost more of a harder to define word than ling is for me.
[00:19:54] Speaker C: Yeah, so what? Let's go into that.
[00:19:56] Speaker D: So ling, then, meaning spirit shu is often translated as pivot, Right? This connection between two things here and there. So how is a person connecting to spiritual forces? That's how I define ling versus Shen, which is just spirit.
It doesn't need you in some participatory relationship. So that's how I see ling in that sense. So ling shu, that spiritual pivot. And if you look at the ling shu portion of the Nei Jing versus the Su wen, the basic questions that ling shu is about a lot of action, doing stuff, how to needle, when to needle, where to needle, what to needle, why to needle, these kinds of things. And so I think, you know, you look at that like chapter eight. When you needle, you should be rooted in Spirit. And so again, a complex issue, but just solving Ling, I think it's your birthright as a human to have access to spiritual function, forces, power, relationship.
[00:20:57] Speaker C: Would you say that that's an essential component of our medicine, the medicine that we practice?
[00:21:03] Speaker D: Well, the medicine we practice is a reflection of nature itself, and nature has a physical and energetic and a spiritual piece to it. And so there's no way it can't be connected. I think to go back to our original question, when Greg was saying they just chose what to do teach, they didn't say you can't learn it. They just. What they chose to not teach was a lot of the stuff around that.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:29] Speaker D: And from my perspective, they chose not teach that because you can't have one people that have a lot of free thinkers in it. You have to kind of limit those things in order to have the hegemony of like, we as one.
So I think you eliminate a lot of the spiritual things and the esoteric things.
Mao himself was much more into those things, but not for everybody, just for himself, I think, you know, more so.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: So, Greg, how do you understand the term ling in that context? And what's your relationship to this topic?
[00:22:02] Speaker E: I would agree with what Michael said. I think ling as we can translate as spiritual or divine, sometimes ling shu also gets translated as divine pivot. But ling in a modern context also.
First of all, let's back up Ling, this character actually has many different meanings, just like most Chinese characters have different meanings.
And so what the ancients meant by ling in this ling shu, I'm not an expert, but certainly you can't go back and ask the ancients what they meant by it.
[00:22:34] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:22:35] Speaker E: But ling also means kind of like agile and adept.
For example, we say means the person's very clever, smart, adaptable, capable. And again, I'm not suggesting that that's a proper translation of ling in the context of ling shu, sort of what you're getting at, I think what you're looking for is about the spiritual component of Chinese medicine.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:23:01] Speaker E: And certainly that is a major component of Chinese medicine.
And I think even in Communist China, that wasn't completely ignored. It's just that they tried to make it more scientific, I guess, which I'm not suggesting that that was a good thing or a bad thing. I think it was just that was their approach. It's like, let's sort of boil this down to the sort of quote unquote reality or like modern reality. It's like, in other words, there's the seven emotions, and they're linked to the organs. And this is how their effect on qi and that kind of stuff, they didn't completely erase that aspect from Chinese medicine. But certainly the more really esoteric or what I would consider far more esoteric stuff, they didn't include that in the curriculum, but that stuff's definitely in Chinese medicine.
So things like ghosts, possession, hangman's noose, for example, which is something that a lot of people like to mention, that's a really obscure thing.
Probably hardly anyone historically ever used that medicinally. But anyway, it's in there.
So those kind of things definitely exist in Chinese medicine. And whether or not they're clinically effective, I make no judgment. I think that probably they can be. And certainly a lot of those ideas, for example, ideas about possession, what people were talking about, you know, a thousand or two thousand years ago, and what we are thinking about those things now is, first of all, not necessarily exactly the same. And then the other thing is that it's possible that because in ancient times, their understanding of.
Well, let's just say they didn't have modern science. So things to ancient people that. To modern people, we have what we would consider a rational explanation for certain things.
To ancient people, those things could have looked really strange or. I don't want to say magical, but like possession, for example, because people sometimes present with some symptoms that looks like. Like they're possessed. Like, we saw this patient in the doctoral clinic, and Michael and I were both there. This patient has parasitic infection. I think Lyme in particular, but probably other stuff as well. And at one point, she was so unaware of her. What was going on that she walked to one of the bridges here in Portland, and then all of a sudden, sort of came back to reality, and she had no idea how she got there, what she was doing there.
[00:25:46] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:25:47] Speaker E: Right.
[00:25:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:48] Speaker E: So this for ancient people would be like, whoa, this person's possessed for sure.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:54] Speaker E: And so, you know, okay, we can say, okay, that's a sign and symptom of, you know, parasitic infection or something. And ancients might have said, oh, that's GU syndrome. Gu is kind of also kind of parasitic thing, but a kind of possession.
So I don't know. I think that.
[00:26:09] Speaker D: But you can even. But just to interrupt there, you can even see science now looking like. I was just looking at an article where it's talking about biofilm really creating, like, autoimmune conditions and Ms. And these kinds of things. And you see patients with parasitic infections, the parasite, something that's living in them is literally detoxing. Itself and pulling, pulling their energy, their life force energy, their whatever chi, their shen towards itself. And so that's where, like Greg was saying, that's where that line of science and something that seems strange to. Seems normal to us, but strange, strange in people, really. That line starts to blur in some ways, I would think too.
[00:26:53] Speaker E: Yeah, but I think also you can take a modern perspective to analyze those things, but with the caveat that you try to avoid reductionistic thinking and avoid the idea that you need a modern explanation.
That I think sometimes people feel like they need a modern explanation. Actually, you don't need a modern explanation. Maybe it's nice to have it. You should be aware that maybe your explanation is wrong and that whether or not you have an explanation clinically, it probably doesn't matter. You just use Chinese medicine principles to make a diagnosis and apply treatment. And it works whether or not you have a modern explanation or not. Chinese medicine functioned perfectly well without Western medicine for over 2,000 years. And just because we have modern science, Western medicine now, doesn't mean that we need any. It.
It's perhaps nice if we can make some connections between these things, but it's certainly not necessary. It's not clinically necessary, but.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: Michael, you wanted to say something else?
[00:28:03] Speaker D: Well, I was just going to say like that whole conversation really. And I think it's perfect to hear the two of us talk about it in a way, because for me, the reason why I can say that about Ling has very little to do with my understanding of Chinese medicine. It actually has a lot to do with how I was taught prior to even coming to Chinese medicine school. Like I lived with, studied with, watched, whatever you want to say, a bunch of different types of Native American healers. And when you watch them do things, there is no way that you can scientifically explain things that happen from that. You couldn't. There's no scientific measuring device that will show you why someone singing over somebody allows them to walk when they previously were wheelchair bound or whatever it is that's going on that's unexplainable. If you ask them, they say, I didn't do anything. The spirit did it. So for me, coming into this medicine with that and also as an environmental scientist originally watching nature, when you run nature and spirit together on that level, there's something that I feel I see better. My original degree was ethno ecology, so it was looking at people in their environments and how they lived in them and how the environment infused the people.
And so when you look at China, Zhonghua the middle earth, basically how people there in an indigenous setting were building this up then it seems to just make sense to me in that way. So then that's how I interpret those things. And you don't need anything from modern times to be able to utilize the medicine other than someone to make you needles, potentially.
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:44] Speaker D: And even though that's not necessarily necessary.
[00:29:47] Speaker C: Right.
So that's a great transition into our next topic, which is about herbs and specifically their connection between form and function in Chinese medicine. So we're explained that certain herbs work on the blood because they're red or peach kernel shingren. You slice it open, it looks like two lungs. So it works on the lung.
And they're very like. If you were to take a Western scientist and tell them that that's why we use this stuff in Chinese medicine, they would look at you like you're crazy. But is that enough of a reason to use them? Would you guys say?
[00:30:27] Speaker E: Yeah. So that's called signatures of the herbs. Right. So some white things have an affinity for the lung and black things for the kidney. And things that are, for example, shaped like a kidney would perhaps go to the kidney.
So it has to do with color and shape and also different parts of the plant, aerial portions of the plant maybe having more of an affinity for the upper portion of the body or twigs, stems or, sorry, twigs and those sorts of things. More going to the extremities as if our extremities are more like twigs. I think that's probably, and I'm not an expert on this, but I think that that has been a major factor in the investigations into substances by the Chinese that they look, they looked at that and got a lot of ideas from that. I'm not sure though, that that's the only way. I kind of doubt it's the only way people investigated herbs, but I just imagine that that might be a jumping off point that you look at something, oh, that thing is red.
So probably maybe it goes to the blood or go to the heart.
And then the next step is actually experimentation. Right. Try this thing out on yourself, try it in the clinic, try to figure out what it does.
And so I think that probably most herbs have undergone the combination.
I don't know that anyone would rely 100% on the signature to determine the function of an herb.
So that's the first thing. I think that probably, you know, both methods looking at the signature of an herb and then also actual clinical effect to determine what an herb does.
That's probably both were done.
So that's the first thing. But then I think though that actually maybe, Michael, you want to step in here and I'll sort of.
[00:32:32] Speaker D: Well, I'd say, you know, I totally agree. The law of signatures is clear. You can see it referenced in older texts. You can see it any people, As I said before, Chinese were one astute observers of nature.
And so when you look in nature and you watch nature and you, you know, this is a major problem in Chinese. I mean in the modern versus Chinese classical perspective is no one is busy observing nature.
If you walk down the street, everybody's looking down at their cell phones. I mean, driving here Today, I saw 20 people waiting on the bus. No one was looking at anything other than their phone, you know, so it's, it's just we don't look out at nature, so we don't see nature. And so since we don't see it, we don't understand how someone could go, this is like that why a mountain represents the lung or why the ocean represents the kidney. But to ancient people those things were self evident.
Not just the Chinese, you know, why do the Aborigines or the Native Americans or the Andeans or whatever, say the rocks are living or the plants are. I can communicate with the plants, you know, so this, this kind of thinking is inherent in that study. But I wouldn't say that's the only thing that mattered. That was just gave them the foundational route with which to say now we can take that information and utilize it with confidence. Nature is here. I also think not only were they more better observers, but they were also better listeners.
Being able to hear nature itself. If we can scientifically prove that nature has some type of consciousness, which is science is on this cutting edge. And you look at quantum physics and you look at quantum mechanics and you look at all of the things that are out there in nature and the interconnected of us and the actual intercommunication of that and the ability to see that. And just because we can't potentially measure it exactly the way we would want to, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. So when you see all of that, the ability to listen, if there is less distraction in the world, less bombardment of EMF and all of this stuff, could you hear things differently? There's plenty of stories in every tradition of the world of people being able to communicate with nature itself. And so I think that piece of signatures, let's test it and use it and also let's listen and see and observe what happens on a very acute level that's what I think formed that herbal medicine more than I don't think people are like, well, you try it. Okay, well, Bob died from trying it, so I'm not going to try it. That must be poisonous. I think that is a little, that's almost as fanciful sounding to me as the plant said, don't use me under these conditions. I would think that makes more sense to me than thinking that people just randomly tried and well, they died so I shouldn't or they didn't die, so I will. Yeah, it seems almost to make more sense than the other way to me. But that's just me.
[00:35:39] Speaker C: Very good points observation. Greg, did you have anything else you wanted to say on that point?
[00:35:43] Speaker E: I guess I would just like to say that I think that law of signatures is very real. Even it sounds fanciful perhaps to modern people, but I think to ancient people who were more attuned, like Michael said, it's pretty self evident and it does pan out in the clinic. And I think in the end for me, all that matters is the clinic if this thing works in the clinic or not. And of course, okay, I would have to, I'd be the first one to admit that I'm the weak link in that equation there, that if something doesn't work in the clinic, that doesn't mean that that thing doesn't work. It's probably that I don't know how to use it.
But in any case, I think that in the end it's clinic that matters. And so red stuff does somehow have an affinity for the blood. Like Guizhi for sure goes to the blood. I don't know why exactly, but there's something about it. And whether or not it has to do with it being red or not, I don't really know. And like Hongdou, the red bean that clears some toxin from the blood, mildly invigorate the blood. Hong Hua also go to the blood and you know, like Honghua is very light and fine stuff. It goes to the Luo Ma, go to the small channels, you know, so there's something about the nature of herbs.
This thing grows in this kind of environment and it's this part of the plant and it's at this time of the year that you harvest it. And because of that it absorbs this kind of qi.
It really is like that. It's about qi, it's about absorbing some qi in nature, which plants and not just plants, because when we talk about herb, we're talking about substances, you know, plant, animal, mineral, that all these things absorb. Some Qi in nature, and they kind of refine it, produce some essence of that particular kind of Qi, and then that has a particular effect on the body, an affinity for a certain part of the body. I think that's probably the best way to look at it. That's not a modern scientific way. You can't explain that using modern science.
But again, this is where, who cares? You don't need modern science to explain everything. When things pan out in the clinic, that's enough proof for me anyway.
[00:38:20] Speaker D: Definitely. I think the clinical efficacy of things is where it's the most important.
You know, I agree with Greg on all those points, and I, you know, I think it's. Science is useful, and certainly it has created many great things that are very helpful to us. All of this equipment that's here recording us and beaming our voices to wherever they might end up is proof of that.
But I don't think we need science, science one, to prove that our medicine works.
Anything that's lasted two or three thousand years and is still viable and functioning is of course, already proven. From my perspective, it's just people that can only see science can't understand. So then that's fearful. They are afraid of that idea. And I'm not sure exactly why that is, but that's something that is out there. You know, I'm reminded of that movie the Notebook. In the movie the Notebook, your man James Garner is like this old guy and he's in the hospital and his wife has Alzheimer's, and she's playing the piano and she stops playing and he says, oh, I wish someone would turn the page. And then she starts playing a few minutes later, and the doctor says, oh, someone must have turned the page. And he said, oh, no, that's a different song. She's playing that from memory.
Well, the doctor says she can't but play that from memory. And he said, well, Doc, your science will only go so far. And then after that, there's God.
And that statement is just so great because science will take us very far.
But there's something that's mysterious beyond that, that every culture of the world understood thousands of years ago.
And those cultures, if you go to them now, the ones that are still left, that haven't been eradicated from the planet along with the nature that they lived in, which held the knowledge, if you go to those places, they still have that same knowledge. And so that knowledge is important, which is part of the reason why this medicine is so important from my perspective, is it's carrying some kind of lineage and legacy forward that is actually being eroded and lost very quickly around the world. And so getting people to come back to. To that and even science. Now you look at science, science is getting closer to Chinese medicine than it ever has before.
It's getting closer to a unified theory of everything, which the Chinese and other cultures already have.
But we don't want to see that because that's magic or mystical or weird, strange, fearful, primitive, something like this. And that's a very. That's a whole nother part. Podcast, probably we could have.
[00:41:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I had a couple of thoughts when you were going off. The first one was I wish we had time to talk about what chi is, which would be, you know, at least two more podcasts. And then I never thought we would be talking about the Notebook on the podcast, which is great.
But the thing that I keep hearing you come back to is what works in the clinic. That seems to be just like super essential. If it works in the clinic, then it's usable.
[00:41:31] Speaker D: You know, just to say that the thing, though, that Greg made a very salient point is just because I can't make it work in the clinic does not mean it doesn't work. I think that's a super important point. You know, I think, yes, what works in the clinic is important, but the medicine works. Whether or not you can make it work, or whether or not someone else can, or whether or not someone can prove it in a laboratory, the medicine works. I think that's just to throw that in on that piece.
[00:42:01] Speaker C: Great.
[00:42:01] Speaker E: You can't emphasize on that enough, actually, that when those things don't work, the first place to look is yourself.
Absolutely.
[00:42:10] Speaker C: We do have one final question, which is, what do you think the most important quality in a Chinese medicine practitioner is in being a successful clinician? Greg, you want to go first on this one?
[00:42:23] Speaker E: Okay.
Just one quality.
[00:42:26] Speaker C: Yeah, one quality.
[00:42:29] Speaker E: One quality. Can I have a couple?
[00:42:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, do what you can.
[00:42:34] Speaker E: Well, first, I think humility is important partly for what we were just talking about, that you need humility to be able to examine yourself and to see where your. Where failings in the clinic might be your own. Your own shortcoming. And so you need humility to be able to look at yourself honestly. I think that's. That's hugely important.
If you can't look at yourself honestly, then you're liable to be deceiving yourself about what you're. You're doing. So that's, I guess, the first thing then.
Yeah, hard work.
I think that's the other thing. You have to love to study and study a lot.
And I think one of the ways to motivate yourself to do that is just to remember that it's all about your patience.
You're doing it for your patience, you're not doing it for yourself. You don't study this for yourself. Ok? You can study this so you learn how to take care of yourself.
It's fun.
There's some self cultivation aspect to it.
But I think in the end, at least for me, my motivation comes from knowing that I do this for my patients, that drives me to study. I study every day. So I think dedication to hard work for your patients, that would be the other thing. So humility and hard work, perhaps.
[00:44:04] Speaker C: Great.
[00:44:04] Speaker E: Two things.
[00:44:07] Speaker C: Michael, you want to give us a final word here?
[00:44:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I would. You know, I think the most important thing for me is an open, humble heart that is committed to both the lineage of the medicine and nature itself, which is unending and ongoing. And you're just picking up a thread in the stream and taking that and carrying it a small distance forward.
You can add some of your own flavors to that. You can just carry forward what's there either way. But that open, humbled heart that is always willing to self cultivate and be of service, I think that's fundamentally the most important thing. That's exactly what Greg was talking about, about. And that no matter who you are practicing this medicine, that's what's most important. And that's what draws people here to study, that's what draws patients to come, is seeking that. And you know, I think that's the hardest thing for students actually to understand because they all come in thinking it's something to do in their brain and really it's something that's in their heart. And the brain is important. You have to exercise it and you have to put a lot in there. But really it comes from the heart. And if the heart's not in it, the brain can't do it. It won't follow as well. And I think you have to be willing to again, self cultivate and change yourself, because the medicine will do that. I tell students all the time, you start as one person, you end as a different person.
In between, you're kind of schizophrenic. That's why it feels so crazy to most students all the time. And really it's because the lineage of the medicine is a living thing, like nature is a living thing. And as soon as you say, I want to be in this slipstream of this, the medicine starts working on you, and it starts finding all the impediments that you have within yourself that impede you from carrying that lineage forward, and it starts trying to work those things out for you. Because when you work those things out in you, you will be able to work them out in your patients.
And that's moving nature and the humanity forward in that way. So I think that's the piece that's the most important thing.
[00:46:20] Speaker C: Beautifully stated.
[00:46:21] Speaker E: One thing that I heard a lot in China from various teachers is that to be a good Chinese medicine doctor, you need wu xing.
Wu xing translates maybe as like, ability to comprehend things in my mind. It's like an ability to comprehend and make sense of abstract ideas, because Chinese medicine is pretty abstract. So you have to have a strong ability to take all of this stuff, including the really ethereal stuff that belongs to things like ling, and then more maybe mundane stuff, like remembering that some herb is salty and, you know, goes to this or that channel and has certain functions.
And then to take all of that information and use it in a flexible to be ling about using that information.
That's called wu xing. And all Chinese medicine doctors will say, to be good at Chinese medicine, you have to have really strong wu xing.
[00:47:27] Speaker D: Greg is right. If we have any, anything that we say that's of value today really is a product of our teachers that we were taught. So that's where it all comes from. None of this is really original in some ways, that's for sure.
Thank you both very much for having us.
[00:47:42] Speaker E: Yeah, thanks so much.
[00:47:42] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. It was fun, guys.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: We're so honored to have shared this time with you, and we hope you'll.
[00:47:49] Speaker C: Join us again soon.
