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 chia logical. I'm Michael max, the host of this podcast that goes in depth on issues, pertinent to practitioners and students. Of east Asian medicine, dialogue and discussion have always been elemental to Chinese and other east Asian medicines. Listen into these conversations with experienced practitioners that go deep into how this ancient medicine is alive and unfolding in the modern clinic Hello, everyone. Welcome to qiological. My guest today is winter Jade. Forest. Winter Jade has been practicing shiatsu since 1975 and teaching it since 1977, she's served the profession by helping to form and launch the American organization for bodywork therapies of Asia. And from 1995 to 2006, she served on several different committees of the NCCA rom. She has studied with master practitioners, both in Asia and here in the west. Practicing bodywork has led winter Jay to realize that healing happens on many levels. And so starting in 1980, she embarked on apprenticeships with healers from four different cultural traditions, Caltech Shinto. Cherokee and Russian, all of which is woven into her work today. We're sitting down for a discussion of what I'm calling handcrafted medicine and getting a shot Sioux practitioner's perspective on the body channel's points and the practice of medicine. Also acupuncturists often pride ourselves on how we use our hands to better understand and help our patients. I'm delighted to have this opportunity to share some tea with one of our colleagues from the shiatsu side of the house. I know for myself, it's easy to give more weight to the theories in my head than the sensing in my hands. And so I'm looking forward to a discussion around touch sensing and how to engage our work from a fuller sense of embodiment, winter, Jade. Welcome

to qiological. Thank you, Michael. How are

you? I'm doing great. I've been so looking forward to this conversation.

I am too

with a little bit of background. I mean, you basically been practicing, studying and practicing shiatsu since I graduated from high school. That's a long time. It is

a long time. I'm not sure. I like hearing that, but okay.

A little background on some of the influences that have brought you to where you are today.

Well, um, first of all, I just want to say that when you were doing the intro, all of those things that you mentioned at that time, I was known as Lindy Ferrino winter Jade forest. Oh my goodness. Sorry about that. Okay. Um, winter Jade forest is my Cherokee name, which I was charged with using a couple of years ago. So. I now go by that name, but many people would know me still as Lindy free. Now not everyone has been in my life when that change happened. So I wanted to say that. And then the influences in my life, I guess you mentioned a lot of them, first of all, she adds to itself happened. I guess you would say as an excuse to get out of the house, because I was in a very strange time in my life where I had gotten divorced and my mother died at both ends of the same week. And I w it was intense really. And I went home to take care. I'm the oldest of five children. The youngest is multiply handicapped, or was she has since died, but with a rheumatoid arthritis and the meds they gave her for that made her blind. And there's just a lot. So I went home to take care of her, and I found out very abruptly. So I just left Boston and went back to Connecticut and I ended up sort of the way I tell the story. Now I say I was living in my mother's house, wearing my mother's clothes, taking care of my mother's children and dealing with my mother's husband, who of course was my father, but everybody was projecting my mother onto me because it was a huge. And, um, it was very, very hard on me going through a divorce and all like that. And, um, I realized I needed some therapy and the therapist who was recommended to me live two and a half hours away in New York city. And, uh, so I kind of liked that I would have five hours of driving this thing. Yes, exactly. I would get out of the house and doing this made me realize that really, if I could find something to do in New York that could not be found in Hartford, Connecticut, where I was. And I could tell my family, I just have to do this. That's spending a little more time away just a day would really be the thing to save my sanity. So I started looking around and I found this book on shiatsu. There was a school right there in New York, and that's how I started. Now of course I call it divine Providence, but it really, it just grabbed me from the very first class

to find Providence. No, that often seems a lot like the world fallen completely apart.

Well, you heard my story. It was falling apart. Um, but it came right back together. And through this particular school is how I met Masa Naga who invented Zen shiatsu, which is the basis of the work that I do. And he would then come to New York city every year for intensives and spend some time. And because I was a teacher in that school at that time, um, it was my job along with colleagues of mine. Pauline Susaki was one of them who is also famous in the shiatsu world. Uh, we were charged with. Uh, taking care of muscle Naga outside the classroom. So getting him to the restaurants, uh, getting students to come so he could tell more stories and explain more his work. And I think that we got more out of those dinners over, uh, booze and food and, uh, like that than we did in the classroom, it was really wonderful. And because Kishi was his number one protege at one time. Oh, how she brought Kishi over as well. And I was immensely impressed by this man. He was very young at the time. I think he was just in his twenties and. He was something special. He really was. And I couldn't tell what it was, but because of the way I felt about him, I moved to Europe. He was living in Paris at the time when he came to our school in New York city. And I thought I was going to be moving to Paris, which made me quite happy to study with him. But by the time I got the money together, he had moved to Germany. So that's where I went and I spent two and a half years living in the same house with him. We did it traditional Japanese style and studying. So I had access 24 7 and he was indeed amazing. I don't, he was no longer doing shiatsu when I met. He was working off the body at this point. And he had developed his own thing that he called Seki. And even though I don't practice Seki it, I would say that Kishi is my biggest influence on my work, the way he thought about things, the way he respected the human being, the quality of touch, all of these things. He is my main influence. And, um, and then when I came back to the states, I couldn't find anybody to equal him in the shiatsu world or anything like that. So I do like studying, I do like having mentors and, um, I began looking around and I found grandmother river, who is a Cherokee. I guess you would say medicine person, they say priests, whether you're male or female. And I do have a little bit of Turkey and meat, not enough to get on the rolls, but, uh, enough to be accepted by grandmother river. And I studied with her apprenticing for seven years and learn Cherokee medicine, which is a healing and many other practices from the Cherokee way. And I found that studying in this way from a culture that's closer to my own, really brought home what I'd been learning about Asian medicine, the cosmology of it. It really made it stronger in me. It was so interesting. And then also with this Russian shaman, uh, whom we call Dr. Gregory, he's no longer going by doctor. He was a doctor in Russia, but he isn't here in this. He taught. I think the biggest work that I got from him was the work he did on chakras, which I still use to this day. And being able to, I guess you would say not incorporate really, but somehow inform just the idea of the energetic system that made a big impression on me and his, his look into it was very different from the way the Indian culture looks on it, not the native American, but India, India. And I really resonated with that. Um, it's very strong. It kind of develops your own cheat by doing the practices he gave. And so I would say that those are my four biggest influences in terms of people.

I I'm curious this piece about Gregory and the shockers. I often have patients ask me about their shocker. Uh, all I know about chakras is it's a part of all your Vedic medicine. It's part of Indian medicine. And I suspect it kind of matches up in some ways with the way Chinese medicine practitioners look at things, but I've not gone into it in any depth to have any kind of sense of how these things might be hooked together. It sounds like you've been able to have some different influences that gives you some insight into this. Is that, is that the case?

I think you're right. I have to say that what I learned about chakras is not at all. I are Vedic really. It came from this Russian tradition. And I think that the learning about chakra is, is more about cosmology than just medicine. Just like you could say that the cosmology of Asia filters into the medicine, but it isn't the medicine. And I think it's like that. And what I have used the Shakar work for is mostly my own personal development, my own, what I call bumping up of my energetic field so that I have more of my energy. More of my field is strong for working with clients. I don't particularly infuse it.

Yes.

In fact, when I teach it, I call it chakra. Chigong. Yeah, that's right.

Can you tell us a little bit about

it? Sure. What do you want to know?

I just like, well, um, as a, as a practitioner who gets asked a question about how does this match up with shockers? And since I don't really know the first thing about chakras, how about just shocker and the Meridian system 1

0 1, right. Well, um, there, there are a couple of things that I would say to a client who has a question like that. One is that I would say it doesn't always work to mix systems until you really know each one very intimately, and then you can make some of those. Um, I dunno, even what you would call it. Connections, I guess, for my own self, I know that my colleague Pauline and Saki, she did put certain meridians together with certain shock rows and the way she did this was by. Oh, I don't even know how to say it, I guess, looking at, or, or just putting together the function of a shakra, uh, and seeing what Meridian functions in that same way and made those correlations. I have to admit that I don't do that. I don't see anything wrong with it. I think it probably works. If we're talking about function than whatever system you use to get to that function is fine. And if you use more than one together, ma you know, maybe that's fine. If you know what you're doing, it's not the way I work, but I would be able to say to someone, if they asked, does my blah-blah-blah symptom have anything to do with chakras? I would be able to say yes or. You know, in this way or something like that, the way Dr. Gregory taught chakras, he did it also in the, in terms of human development. So he would say, for instance, the first chakra is like the first seven years of your life. He would say the first chakra is like the child, the baby, who doesn't really know the difference between himself and his mother, that at this point of development, there is no differentiation. And so I am is a way, and a day of Judah who is a famous Shakur person, I am is the, is the sort of definition that she gives to that chakra. And this kind of means from Dr. Gregory's point of view, that everything that a child feels is part of the. Right. They haven't differentiated yet at the second shocker. That's the stage of development where you begin to realize that somebody else has different feelings than you. And you begin to imagine what they feel like. So this is the point in a child's life. When they start drawing things in and giving the drawing to somebody, their mother, or their father, or picking flowers and giving them, you know, where you have the understanding that the other, uh, exists at the level of the first chakra, you take care of yourself. You, you have the right to be, so you eat well. You, you sleep well. You do, you do all the things that take care of your health, make you survive and thrive at the second level. You want to do this for somebody else as well? You want to make sure that they at the third shocker level, this is when you are branching out and learning about your institution. So your churches, your communities, your institutions, your schools, all of that. And you begin to care for more than just another. Then you have the group at the fourth level of the heart chakra. This is where you love the whole world as it is, you can't help, but just love it. At the fifth chakra, you are developing your, what we would call psychic sense, but this also started at the second chakra because at the second chakra, when you started imagining that somebody else would have another feeling and being able to feel what it's like for them, that starts your psychic development. This chakra is much more so at a spiritual level. And then your six chakra is where you can see your future and manifest it. Here's seven chakras where you connect with the divine. And these are lessons in normal development of a human being. And so it's important from his point of view to develop your first three chakras. First, they call them the shakras of matter to make sure you have a firm foundation for a more spiritual, heavy life.

I'm really taken here by how looking at these shockers is not just a look at cosmology, but it's also a look at human development, right? Macrocosm microcosm. It's a, it's a lovely connection. Great. Well, thank you. I didn't realize we were going to get into this piece of it here, but, uh, you brought up shockers and I, again, I get that question on a regular basis. So this, this gives me a way of orienting toward it a bit. I, you know, I've had a suspicion, I've got some different friends that are shiatsu practitioners and, uh, and some of them practice Chinese herbal medicine. And some of them, I mean, I love the conversations I have with them because they've got this other way of thinking about the medicine often because they have a real ability to sense and ability to put their hands on people and, and to, to make sense of what they feel in a way. That's a bit extraordinary to me. I know that, that my training and I think a lot of our, our training, uh, when we first started approaching this, especially for acupuncturists, we have all these theories and we have all these models in our head and all these ideas about how things are supposed to work. But it seems that there's a real difference. And especially if you've practiced for any length of time, you'll find that the ideas in your head don't necessarily match what's going on with the person on your table. And so I'd like to get a little oh, yes, yes. I'm sure. I bet we've got a bunch of listeners going, oh yeah, I know that one's due. So I'd like to get into the experience of the channels in the points from a sensate point of view, as opposed to, from a book learning point of view, once you get your take on, on the channels and how you basically, how you interact with them, can you feel them and how do you learn to feel that and the points do you work out of, you know, an idea of, oh, this point does that, cause this is what we learned about say spleen six, was there something that you're getting through your hands and, and through your experience that leads you into a point Hmm.

Well, these are some really good questions and I don't know that my answers are going to be very helpful for what you're asking, but I'm going to, I'm going to tell you how I practice and what it feels like to me. So one of the things that I have to admit a self-disclosure here, I have forgotten most of the theory that I've learned about points because I don't use them. I use the Meridian as a whole and a. I sometimes limit that. I don't remember that information because sometimes a point really calls your hand and you just have to be there. And I can think to myself, man, if I could only remember what this is, I might have a fuller idea of what I'm doing on this point, but I don't. So I can't help you with the point information. So sorry. Um, and that's mainly because my ma main influence in shiatsu is from us Naga who extended the Meridian system. He himself was a scholar. He, um, wanted to practice psychology, uh, which he studied from a European model. And when he tried it out in Japan, it didn't work because people wouldn't just open up and talk. And what he discovered is that if he would touch them and do some shiatsu on them, that would start them talking. So from that, he started putting together what he had learned. And his psychology courses, he had a PhD in it. So he, he was very learned and what he knew of the, I hesitate to even say medicine. Um, but I guess I would have to what he knew of the medicine and the meridians, and started putting together more of the psychology than say we have with the five elements or whatever. But what he did then was say that the most important thing was your hand because there will never be an instrument. This is actually not only his idea, but in Japan, it is believed that the sensitivity of the hand can never, ever in all of time be matched by any kind of machine. And so it is the perfect instrument for diagnosis and also for treatment. So the emphasis is on what you feel and how you learn to feel basically is by wanting. And trying to write, really wanting to see, okay. When I feel that, the way I learned was I asked a lot of questions of my classmates. So when I put my hand on a Meridian or on a place, on a point wherever you want to say and felt something at all, like I would just ask, do you feel anything there? And then I would, if I thought it was pain, I would ask, is it painful? Sometimes they would say yes. And sometimes they would say no. And what I learned by getting the answers to these questions was how to train my sensitivity. So after X amount of time, I learned the difference between something that felt painful, that wasn't in something that felt painful and was, and I then started asking questions. Oh, does that feel. But not really hurt. And they would always answer. Yes. So over years of doing this and I still ask my clients 40 I'm, I've been practiced over 40 years now. I still ask my clients because I want to make sure that I am training my sensitivity at a certain point. You really pretty much know a lot without asking. And what I have used the philosophy or the cosmology or the understanding of the meridians for now is to train how I touch. If I get somebody whose diagnosis comes up and either, or the element, uh, you know, young, I know that either they need nurturing or they're too selfish and I will apply my touch accordingly. I will either give them. A big hug for an hour as I'm running all over their body, or I will try and stimulate their, um, generosity a little more. And that is the beauty of the hand is that you can touch in all kinds of ways. I often in a classroom, I'll just tap my student on his shoulder and say in front of the whole class, by the way, this is a demo, just tap them on the shoulder and say, oh, it's so great to see you. How have you been and how good that feels, and then do the same tap and say, what are you doing coming into class late and see how different that same punch feels. Right? And I think that this is translatable without the words. And so that is about the sensitivity of the hand. And, and that's how I use my treatment. That's the big, broad stroke. Of course, I know a little bit about what meridians do what and where they're going to be more influential, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but the broad stroke is this is about relieving suffering, which to me, I make that sort of Buddhist difference between pain and suffering.

I am. Well, first of all, I'm struck you talk about using the meridians more than the points. And I can remember when I was in acupuncture school early on, I can't even remember the teacher or the class, but they were talking about some very ancient texts that have been dug up. And really those texts didn't have much to say about points, but they had everything to say about meridians. And so I think that is also a part. Of the discussion over the years, there's points, there's meridians. It's like, where are we putting our attention? There's, there's different ways that we can re you know, interact with these things. When, when you, and

to say something about that, Michael, what I, I learned that because needles were a later development than the hands, of course, that points became important with that because the needles themselves, depending on which metal they were made of could have a different effect. They go into the body, you don't put needles all the way along the Meridian and because their influence or their effect is so much stronger in a certain way, you only need a few points. And so they looked for the points that. Most indicative of this or that they, by experience, it was all empirical. But if you're using your hands instead of needles, that it is more effective. This is what I was taught by shiatsu teachers who of course have their own prejudice, that if you're using your hands, it's, the whole Meridian needs to be used. You can't do it with just a few points. It's a different tool. It needs a different application. All right.

So if you're working with say the gallbladder Meridian, you would literally go head to toe. Is that, is that the case? Yeah. I

mean, section by section, I wouldn't run it from gallbladder one to gallbladder 44, you know, you can do any part of it at any time. It is after all holistic medicine and he one point touches the whole. So. But yes, I would probably do every bit of that Meridian. And because I do then shiatsu, that Meridian exists for me, even in the arms, because all 12 meridians are both in the arms and legs and Jetson.

Yeah. So you really look at it as a great Merde and you would look at the tie in as being spleen and lung, for example.

Yes. But in this NGSS system, both lung and spleen are in the arm. It's not either, or, oh my goodness. Yeah. Literally 12 meridians in the legs and 12 in the arms. So they're meridians between the classical meridians

meridians between the meridians. Yeah, that's right. Oh my goodness. That sounds vastly more complicated.

Doesn't seem so of course, after. It must've Naga found these meridians in ancient texts. This is the kind of scholar he was in studying the classics in Japan. He decided to learn old Japanese so that he could go back further. That's like trying to study Chaucer and old English. Right. Um, and then that wasn't good enough for him. So he learned Chinese and then he learned old Chinese, and he really went back. And in the oldest texts, he found this system that he refined and made into Zen shiatsu. So before the advent of needles, the gallbladder Meridian did run everywhere. But once you have needles and you only need a few points, what they did was then just show on the, on the Meridian maps, the strongest part of that channel, that was all they needed. So there's that

it's, I mean, the history of our medicine here is fascinating. It really is. Hmm. You mentioned a little earlier in this conversation that when you put your hand on someone and you come up, you were saying earth, and in this case, is this someone who needs a big hug or is this someone who needs to have their generosity stimulated? What a, what a great diagnostic parameter. That's what I'm thinking. How, how do you come to your, I'm gonna use air quotes here. How do you come to your diagnosis? How do you get a sense of who someone is, where someone is and what they need?

Um, in Xinjiang too, we use a hotter diagnosis, which is an abdominal diagnosis. And there are, uh, just like in the classics. There are areas of the abdomen. Connect to, or however you want to say a Meridian, right. An Oregon system. And so I still use that. We essentially out to there's something called Ko Jitsu, which is somehow akin to excess deficient, but not exactly the same. Once I studied with Kishi, he did his, how to diagnosis off the body. You can come up with only one Meridian. You don't need to kill any Jitsu or an excess deficient. And you run with that. So I do still use abdominal diagnosis. I do still use the meridians as the basis for what I'm doing, but, you know, I've been in practice so long that everything gets more complex, the more, you know, the less, you know, as you know, so yeah, I like the broad strokes and then just bringing it down into the physical.

You were just talking about, uh, co and Jitsu being roughly the equivalent of shoe insure excess and deficiency. How

are they different? Well, I think the main difference is that, okay, when I learned Chinese medicine, I learned TCM. I know that the classics that people are going more back to the classics now in the acupuncture schools, but I learned at TCM and in TCM, you're really diagnosing for symptoms. And in Cohen Jitsu, you're not really diagnosing for symptoms. What you're looking at is what about the personality of this patient is going to help, um, that any particular thing let's pick a tight shoulders that tight Childers could actually. Because we have 12 meridians everywhere, tight shoulders could actually show up in any Meridian. It doesn't have to be small intestine or a gallbladder or something that's right there. And so you're not really diagnosing the symptom you're diagnosing, what does this person need to fully express their energy? So it's a little bit different. It's not that different because the symptoms fall right into that. But the orientation, your mindset is a little different, I would say,

oh, it seems, it seems vastly different. It seems vastly different. And I mean, I'm not sure about your practice. I know in my practice and I suspect for a lot of practitioners, their practice people come in. I don't think they're necessarily looking to express. A deeper expression of themselves. I mean, that may be in the background. Actually. I suspect that's always in the background. That's just called being a human being, but it's just, but so often when people come into our practices, then went, there need to be better. They want their uterus to be more fertile. They want their head to be less achy. They've got, they've got to something they want to get rid of, or they're lacking something and they want to get it. And you know, in many ways the, the I'm gonna use air quotes here. Again, the practice of medicine, we make certain promises, I'm going to help you with your this, or help you with your, that. And then sometimes they realize that there's something behind the shoulders. There's, there's a part of them that maybe recognizes, oh, this is a place where I can. It gets some help with expressing myself better

for I'm so glad you're saying this, Michael, because I've been doing this for so long. I forget that in our culture, we still make a big difference between mind and body. Oh, we

absolutely do. I have people get off my table and they feel better. Well, I don't know if I'm actually feeling better or if it's just in my mind, I'm thinking and I'm thinking where's your mind.

So I, but I'm so glad you brought this up because the way I speak about the medicine, many people would go to the same place that you went, even students. And then they stop paying attention in a certain way to the physical body that the meridians are all about. Energy and energy is different from the physical. And for me, that is just not true. So all that stuff that I said about expressing oneself, your own health is part of yourself. Your body is part of yourself. It's not a whole mind. And so of course, I'm going to address the symptoms. And of course, people who come in with a knee problem, I, myself, if I come in with a knee problem and you diagnose my stomach and, or spleen meridians, which are perfect for knee problems, and then you work them like their energy and not the matter of my physical knee, I really get upset. I don't think there's a difference between. The physical and the mental. I think that when we, when I'm teaching shiatsu in the broad thing I teach, um, that we, that we are within a, a kind of, I like to call it the luminous egg. That's from Carlos Casteneda back into, I love the luminous egg and that within that luminous egg, we can say there are four layers, the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual, but most people will look at it. There's the physical body. And then all these layers outside of it, it's not true for me. And so when I talk in the broad strokes, my hand is on a person's body. I'm feeling their physical nature. It's not all in my head. And I don't expect it to all be in their head. What I really do think is that what we think shows in our bodies, what we feel shows in our bodies, how we relate to God shows in our bodies, how we relate to our family shows in our bodies. And that is what I am touching all of that, not just a painful knee. And so when I'm talking about expression, I really do mean the whole thing.

So back to the mind and mind body for a moment, I mean, even our English language, we've got a tough time with this because when we say there's a mind body connection, we're already presupposing a disconnection. We're already presupposing things that are related, but not necessarily connected or things that are vastly different,

which in fact seems to happen.

Yes. Well, and it's easy to focus. Well, I think there's all kinds of historical reasons for it, you know, with our culture, which I don't even know if I want to get into at the moment. In fact, I don't want to get into at the moment, because what I'm really concerned about is when people come to us or we're working with folks and w I mean, sometimes they're coming in because they've got that busted up knee and they just want to need to get better. But sometimes maybe they've got a busted up knee and their life is kind of busted up. They're not realizing it. Um, but the knee is what gets their attention and that's what brings them in. And, and we, as practitioners have this idea that we actually are vastly connected between that Xi level and something that's very much, you know, the meat suit for lack of a better term. And as a practitioner, Where and how to best intervene. I'm going to know there's practitioners out there that say, you know what? I don't care about physical symptoms. I'm just treating the spirit level. That's all I'm doing. I'm just treating the spirit. Body will take care of itself. Spirits what's most important. And then you've got other people they're like, I don't really care about a person's psychology. I'm just going to fix their dang knee for those of us that are somewhere in the middle. How do you know where and when to work at these different levels that are all inner penetrated and connected that way.

Yeah. That's, that's the tricky part. And, um, that's the part where I think the practitioner has to always be developing herself because you can't treat what you don't understand. And so if you want to go into those higher levels, you have to try. At those levels yourself. And that is really what led me to all these indigenous healers because their physical medicine is connected to their spiritual medicine and that, and I think that division that we, um, industrialized peoples make between body and spirit or body and mind that doesn't happen in those indigenous cosmologies. And that's why I went there to train myself. And it is a huge development. I mean, I've been through immense crises of, I don't know, self esteem, um, self knowledge, uh, all, all kinds of things. It's serious. It's serious to go into those higher levels. And I don't think people who aren't willing to do that work to really let their own egos break down in scary ways. I don't think they have the right to be saying things like I only care about the spiritual level if they haven't been there. But I think that we do in our culture think that there is this sort of hierarchy and we want to go for that higher level without realizing, because as Americans we're quite spoiled, we really don't. Um, we like instant gratification. There's no doubt about it. And you can't go there with instant gratification. You won't get there. It's a lot of work. And as far as I'm concerned, it's the only game in town. It's a lot of fun, as hard as it is, but the idea that we are there's this whole new age thing, right. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. Okay. If that's true, then let's deal with that physical experience. Let's see how spiritual it can be.

What I think I'm hearing you say is that there's really no breakthroughs without breakdowns.

Yeah, I think you're right. I never would have put it in those words, but I, I may just borrow that from now on.

Well, I think I know in my clinic and I suspect in most clinics, we're seeing people that often are in the middle. Uh, some sort of a breakdown if they didn't feel like things were somehow coming apart, they're probably not seeking out our help. I mean, why would you go to a shiatsu practitioner or an acupuncturist? I mean, especially an acupuncturist weirdo with a needle. Why would you walk in there if you didn't have something going on? That was troublesome. I mean, once you rather go out for coffee with your friends. Yeah.

Not only why would I go in there if there wasn't something troublesome, but why would I go in there if the doctors couldn't fix it? Because my insurance will pay for the other stuff. If that doesn't work, that's when we get the people. Yeah. When everything it's, when it's really breaking down, when

it's really breaking down. I mean, I feel like I often see refugees of the. Conventional medicine system. There are people that are fallen through or they've been, or they're people that have been insured or, you know, really maybe, you know, earlier I was talking about the promise that medicine gives, you know, I mean, medicine, I think all of us in this trade, we're making kind of a problem. We're making a promise. I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you with your suffering. And when that doesn't get delivered on people, go looking in other places, they walk in our doors. I'm going to move into this just a little bit further here. This is, uh, such curious territory, you know, so often, and especially with medicine, especially these days with evidence-based medicine and research and you know, all kinds of stuff on the internet. People think there's a map, you know, there's, there's a way, you know, if I do a, B, C, and D, it's going to get me to resolve, you know, acts that I'm looking for. Um, but often when people come and seek us out for health problem, they've, they've actually wandered into foreign territory. The usual reliable maps for navigating life, no longer match the reality of what their days look like as they unfold. And it's in times like this times of a breakdown that might lead to a breakthrough, but we don't know, but in times of a breakdown, maps don't work. And it seems like a compass is more useful. Something that helps us to navigate in those spaces in between where we're literally off the map of how we make sense of the world. How do you help your patients? With discovering and learning to orient with something more like a compass in a, in a time where maps are unreliable.

Well, let me just say that the definition of medicine from a Cherokee point of view and probably other native American points of view, your medicine is the gifts that you have been given by creator at birth for the purpose of helping all the people. And so your medicine is what you develop. You, you might learn herbs, you might learn to work with gems. You might learn all that stuff, but your medicine is really your talent. You're a special gift. And so when you're talking about helping a client with their, um, you know, compass, my colleague Pauline Susaki, she used to say the maps that were given are just maps. They aren't the territory. Once you're in the territory, it's different. And, um, we've all noticed, as we said at the beginning, that practice can be very different from theory. So what I love about having learned this medicine, this Asian medicine is that it comes from an entirely different perspective that our own cultural heritage. And so when we learn it, we really sort of, I don't know if you can say open our brains, develop our brains. I don't know what happens, but some kind of expansion happens in the way we view the world. And so I like using the theory in these cases to say to a client, do you know, in, in Asian medicine, the Meridian, I, and I don't name meridians by organ names because. They just go right to, oh, if you say bladder Meridian. Oh my God. If I got a bladder infection or something like that, say heart, oh my God, I'm going to have a heart attack. So I don't use those organ names, but I will say the Meridian that's coming up for you. They talk about it. This in such a way. Does that make any sense to you? Does that resonate at all with you? And then let them start talking. So for instance, we have this idea of worry going with the earth element, but from Zen shiatsu point of view, there is worry, which is real worry. Like where's the money going to come from to pay my bills this month? And then there's the thing that spins around in the head. Oh my God, I'm never going to get it. Well, duh keeps you up at night. And a Masa Naga puts that more in with fire that it's an emotional response and a busy mind, more than a real worry. And so. If people will say to me, I'm I worry all the time. I do ask them about that and that, and most of the time they're not worrying, they're spinning their own thoughts and I can talk to them about that. We can start to unravel those things. So this is like my, my particular talent is to see the medicine in a certain way that I can apply it to my client and I'll work with it that way. It I'll try to open up their own minds to different ways of looking at their life so that they have more options. And that also goes with physical, that also helps physical healing being a little softer with yourself.

This is the first time that I've heard of worry as having kind of a firelight aspect to it.

Well, it doesn't worry. Doesn't it's that people identify. What they're doing in that fiery way, that running of the thoughts that restless mind, they identified, they call that worry where it's not, what worry is from Asian medicine point of view.

Are there other ways that people talk about worry that might actually be the influence of a different Oregon,

uh, besides fire or

whatever? Um, I'm just wondering if there's something, if someone comes in, they go there, they're worried and they express it in a certain way and you go, Hmm. Actually that's a liver issue or, Hmm. Actually that's a kidney issue.

Well, I could think of how it could be a liver issue. Like if they say I'm worried, I'm going to hit somebody. If they say another word to me, that's clearly not worry. That's clearly anger. Right. So, yeah, I think all of those things that the, that the way we express in words makes some kind of indentation on our emotions or on our spirit. And if we can clear those messes up, I think it makes it a little easier to see your way through

to your healing. And it sounds like you, as a, as a practitioner who spent time listening both with your hands and your ears and your heart, maybe even more. You're able to suss out when someone says something, it's like, oh, this is this Oregon system. Oh, this is this element. This is the involvement of, of this particular Meridian.

Yeah. Particularly if I've gotten that other one in my diagnosis. Right. That's another tool that we have. I've already got a diagnosis. So if they're calling it something else, I can be pretty sure that we need to straighten some stuff out.

Wow. I'd like to move into some, I guess, technical in a sense. I, at least I think of it as technical. I'm curious to know. Okay, your take with your experience on things like the extraordinary vessels, he had extra meridians and things like the divergent flows, that divergent channels. Uh, is there anything from the shiatsu side of the house that, that has something to say about these? I know that with, uh, Japanese acupuncture in particular, there's a lot of attention given to the extraordinary vessels. And I'm curious to get your take on these

well, I mean, I work primarily with the primary meridians and, um, I will work a little bit with the sinew channels a little bit, and I'll, I'll work with the divergent. Uh, extraordinary vessels, but I think they can all be accessed through the primary channels, particularly the divergent channels and the extraordinary vessels. They don't have points of their own, they share points with those primary channels. And, um, for me, I have to say Michael, at this point in my practice, I am not very technical anymore. I I've practiced for so long that the technical part, I can't not be technically. Um, do you know what I mean? I can't, because I've done it for so long. Nothing else happened. It's it's like, if you wanted to go into the kitchen right now, you would just get up and walk. You don't have to practice the technique of walking anymore. You can't not walk there. If you want to go

there, you already know how to ride that bike.

Yeah. Right. So I don't concentrate on the technical aspects. So for me, the extraordinary vessels, the divergent vessels, the primary channels and the senior channels, they're all particular ideas. Like the senior channel. The idea is basically the sinews, right? The, um, you know, I, I don't know, releasing stuff from the surface, all that kind of thing. The primary channels, they're about making connection with the mind body, at least from essentially that's a point of view. And even from a five elements, point of view, there's that connect. And so, you know, when I work on, I work on levels dependent and I'm calling all those different levels of channels, right? Those levels, the sinew level, the primary level of divergent and extraordinary level. I work on them basically by what I am thinking and what I am trying to transmit, I guess you would say to my client, for my client, I am using the places where I feel access to those levels. They might not be the points that are on the maps because I'm in the territory. Now, the map isn't as important. And as you know, nobody has 365 points on one side of their body all the time. Right. Those points are those maps show what points usually come up. For most people for majority, but nobody has all those points all the time. And sometimes the points that show up are not on the map.

Oh yes. I, I think anyone that's practice for any length of time, at least if they're putting their hands on people, you know, I mean, there are folks that just measure. I mean, there's even people I pull out a ruler and you know, we'll measure and go to the points there, but I'm thinking for the people that, that put their hands on people, you can feel after a period of time, if something's there or not.

Right. And I believe that the same is true, that you can feel what's there. So you can feel if what you're accessing is X level. If it's primary channel, if it's divergent and then what happens is your intent changes. According to what you're trying to access, what you're trying to influence. I have to say, I think what we're doing really is influencing. I know there are a lot of people who, um, feel uncomfortable with putting any of their own intent into things, but I'm not one of those people. I think that it's all about intent.

Tell us more about that. I'm I'm I've, I've also heard folks talk about the importance of intention and then I've heard other people talk about simply being attentive. Um, I'm, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the use of intention in the work that you do.

W we could go back to the simple example that I gave of, you know, just as a little tap on the shoulder and what you say would that that's an example of intention. And so the touch feels. And another way of thinking of intention is I, I kind of think of myself as a cheerleader for my clients. That's another word that my colleague Pauline used to use. She's a cheerleader, but that's how I feel like if something needs motivation in the, in the flow of energy, my hand is on a place where it's a little sluggish or whatever, basically, as I'm touching and going, come on, come on, you can do it. Let's go, you know, that's intention for me and it, and you can't have that intention without attention because without the attention you never would have noticed. So they kind of go hand in hand

do that. That makes sense. And I'm thinking sometimes it's not, it's not just needles and it's not just, you know, your hand working on a point. Sometimes I'll hear a patient say something and there'll be a weakness in their voice. And I can tell that that there's. That there's something that's not filled out in them often a way that they express themselves in relationship with other people. And if they could just get a little more boosted up in that. So for example, if someone comes in and they've got an issue with anger and their issue with anger is that they can't express it. They can't set and hold a boundary. They can't let people know, Hey, you're on my toes. Get off my toes. That to be able to inhabit that part of themselves will dramatically change the field around them. And the way that people relate to them, which in turn can really shift all kinds of physical things that are going on. Um, and certainly the psycho emotive aspects like anxiety and depression, which people come into a lot, you know, come in with a lot in, uh, in our clinics.

Absolutely. I agree. Yeah.

Sometimes it's just the words. What's your Jade. I'm noticing the time here and we could probably go on for hours, but I, I strive to keep these to roughly an hour. Any closing thoughts that you'd like to share with our listeners today?

Well, I just want to say that those of us who are in this medicine, we do love these philosophical conversations about our work. I just want to say that this level of understanding that makes this so interesting to us also does come with developing the skill. And the more skillful you are, the more of the energy that you notice. And the more that that happens, the more interesting the work gets, and you never get tired of doing the stuff that. We're lucky. We're lucky people to have found this. I

have to say absolutely. Sometimes people ask me about retirement and I'm thinking, why would I do that?

Yeah,

thanks so much for your

time today. Thank you to Michael. It was lovely.