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 them serving them. And our part in, uh, 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. Listening to these conversations with. Petitioner's that go deep into how this ancient medicine is alive and unfolding in the bladder in clinic. Before we get into the show today, I've got a question for you when you think about, and I'm using air quotes here, business, what is it that comes to mind for you? I suspect you might've just had a visceral reaction just from hearing the. Anyway, chew on this. And later in the show, I've got a little Chinese lesson that might help you to expand your definition of business Well, everybody welcome back to chia logical. I am really thrilled today to be bringing you a show live on tape from Nanjing, China. I am here today with Dr. Wong Wong and some of his. Uh, doctoral students at the international Of Nanjing university of Chinese medicine. And we're going to have a little discussion about Dr. Wong's methods and get some of his history and bring you some of his latest thinking on using the classic formulas, the Jing Fong in Chinese medicine, I'm joined today. First of all, by Dan Ang, who is helping me with translation today. Dan, welcome. Good to have you here. And there's also around Evan and mark gearing. Those of you that are frequent listeners to geological we'll recognize those names because these two characters have been on the show before. So here we are with Dr. Kwan. Uh, this show is primarily going to be done in English. Although of course, we're going to have to do some translation back and forth. So please bear with us through some of the Chinese I'm going to edit it as best as I can to make it as Englishy as possible. And please enjoy the show with. gender and we would say, make war with timeline. Darrin can't be

cheap. So it's only you can't be institutes and we all should.

It needs these. I do social Disher hall leader learn when she was sure. Gurn Mancha. I know that you did your master's thesis on the monkhood group. And I'm wondering what the influence of the thesis and the influence of your study of the manga doctors has been on your thinking and on your practice.

What the source along when mung her iPad, uh, shin Chan, if I tap,

uh, his master's thesis was on the, among her current. Establishment and the development of the manga Monaghan current, and it gave him a very deep impression. And one of the main things was that these among the doctors were not just people who wrote books, they were very clinically oriented. Um, so it really, one of the main impressions that it gave him was that it taught him that. Research in Chinese medicine is not just about, you know, theoretic, theoretical and academic things, but it really has to, you know, clinic is what comes first.

Communist Suna and Outerknown sender

Ypsi. So they were in the Southern part of, uh, John SU province. They were, uh, these Monga doctors. They, they knew how to do, you know, they were generalists. So they knew how to do an internal medicine. Why could I go, would roughly translate as surgery and dermatology. They knew how to do, you know, that throat diseases and all kinds of different things. They knew how to do acupuncture too. Um, so they, they were they're really generalists. So they would see a lot of patients in a day and they had to be really practical because ethicacy was their bread and butter. So only if. Only if you can really see patients effectively treat patients effectively, um, Kenya really be a good Chinese medicine doctor.

Just,

just do one in, ShaoYin say, dad, there you go. You go, you go, you go one year.

So that is the main thing that, uh, that the man had doctors, uh, influenced him where there is this idea. That clinic is number one. Um, Dr. Wong says he is a, primarily a clinic, a clinician.

So, correct me if I'm wrong in this, but it sounds like what you're saying is that our clinic and our patients are really our greatest teachers. No. Okay.

being Lynch's woman.

That's right. Know, our, our patients are very important teachers and you know, a lot of our experience is learned from our.

My experience has been in the beginning with studying Chinese medicine. That there's some things that we learn and it helps us to get started. It gives us, it gives us a place to begin, but very often we learn by the things that we do. Sometimes in English, we like to say things like getting it wrong as part of getting it right. And so in the process of becoming a good practitioner, we have to become comfortable with being wrong about what we do. And then we have to learn from our mistakes and learn to improve them. My question is how can we in the midst of a moment of being wrong and maybe feeling very anxious about it, still be able to keep our wits about. So that we can learn the lessons that we need to learn from our patients.

Uh, she said hadn't Humphries either being, and she showed the beam.

Uh, so all of us run into that, that issue sometimes. Um, we always, you know, whether it's a complex disease that we're treating or, you know, the patient comes back in the second time, the second visit. And it turns out that while we did it didn't work, or there was a bad result, then we can feel nervous. Um, but what we have to do is we have to keep trying and keep, uh, you know, keep trying to learn from that. You know, each patient Dr. Vaughn believes is, is a new. Topic in our learning. So, uh, every single patient that comes in the door is completely new for us. Um, so we need to research and we need to keep the spirit of always researching and learning from these experiences. Uh, he's suggesting to experience. Two methods that we could use to kind of try to learn more about situations like this that are difficult, a clinical situation that are difficult. One of them is we can read cases, uh, reading case studies from previous doctors, famous doctors, and the more reread we might find some that have connections to these cases that we're seeing ourselves in clinic. Um, and that can be very useful and give us some kind of new ideas what to do on this. Suggesting that he has is you can talk to colleagues and teachers, especially colleagues and teachers that are experienced and they can offer you ideas as well. And maybe you hadn't thought of them.

So, yeah. Was, it actually was a case, just all mushy, so many, they could be time, something like the look.

Oh, so he believes that studying case studies is very important in studying Chinese medicine, Dr. Hong himself in the past, he's called. Numerous case studies. He, he would copy them down from famous doctors, from his teachers, even copied his own case studies. Um, and he thinks that everyone in Chinese medicine should be studying case studies is a traditional method of studying Chinese medicine is a very important one.

So you still answered just totally, totally, totally changed. Yeah.

So this comes back to the idea that you can't, you can't get away from the fact that the medicine is primarily clinical in nature. So you can't leave. The clinic cases are clinical, you know, by definition.

And he said something to say on that topic of focusing on clinic. My impression like with studying with Dr. Wong, there's many different ways to study DJing fan, but when we're. Studying Fung, Jen, the formula pattern and y'all Jang, the hood pattern. The diagnosis is already the treatment. So once we've established a clear formula pattern, that's already the treatment. We went already know which direction we're going to go in in that sense. And that's so it's very versus there's some, as many different ways, as I said, like many different theories out there. So it's sort of, for me, Doing that cuts through that. A lot of the theory to make it very, um, easily, um, applicable.

Good

to go. the Yeah.

Uh, so. Uh, Fung Junger formula presentation is, uh, it comes from a bunch of cases basically. Um, so there's clinical cases and if you study enough of them, then you find common characteristics among those cases, and that can be put together into a formula presentation. Um, that's, that's really what a formula presentation is. It comes from these cases and he believes that the ShaoYin. Is actually, you could look at it as a case study book. So even though the case study is in there, they're kind of written in all different kinds of ways. Uh, but it's really, you know, a, basically a bunch of clinical experiences in a book. Uh, Dr. Kwan, I was wondering if, uh, you've been working on any new formula families or formula categories.

Uh, Quanisha

two 80 in New York, a nigga

Hmm uh I guess.

So when he wrote the 10 key formula families, Uh, there were 10 formula families that he mentioned it was foods that by. Taiyang and Wangan. And since then that was around 1995 and it's been more than 20 years already. So there are of course, a bunch of new ones that he's kind of thought of or developed, and he gave some examples. So there's gun Sal format, formula family could include formulas, like can tell she has in tongue drew guns, her tongue, God, my dad's all town. Gogan formula family could include formulas like gun, tongue, uh, Gogan, chin, Anton and Don gray formula family. Good have Dunway shaoyang son Dunway son dungaree, SUNY tongue, et cetera. He also mentioned a D one formula family, uh, uh, shunt Chiwan Fonzi to Hong town, CGRP, Hong Taiyang, et cetera. And there's a lot more. He said

I ain't hung up.

my family saw y'all shaoyang

formulas, family. Okay.

So back in the day, when he was just kind of developing his, his thoughts about China's medicine, his, his thoughts were not as, as refined as they are now because it's been a long time. They were kind of course, and kind of unrefined a little bit. And now they're kind of more refined. Uh, but his, his, his basic model of thinking about Chinese medicine is still relevant. And that is,

which is a fun being So

his basic, uh, way of thinking about China's medicine is still relevant and that can be kind of summed up in a triangle of formula, uh, disease and the person, the three aspects of, of looking at things. Should I leave

to go to mean the damn beats on that?

So that the 10 key formula family's book from a long time ago, it has sold quite a lot of copies by now. It's been reprinted a bunch of times and originally he wanted to revise it, but then he decided he was just going to keep it the same. It's he's going to keep it the same. And his new ideas will go into new books. Uh, so they have, they have a bunch of new books now, and one of them wants, he, that he mentioned that, that I guess they're working on is a. It is called a gene Fung formula presentation textbook. And it goes a lot deeper and into formula presentations. And it's a lot more refined, uh, in what it covers

the email wall. How does that change or

and because he's still getting better and better every day, he's, he's always researching and learning and getting better himself. So.

Dr. Wang. Some of us that have studied with you are familiar with this triangle of person illness and formula for those who might be new to your work. We're listening to this podcast for the first time and hearing about your methods. Could you explain a little bit about this triangle

waddling song or can be not just things found, being ran.

When he's a clinic, he looks at things from three points. It's the formula, the disease and the person. And these are things that are, they're not abstract, they're real things, um, that have a basis in reality. And they're also relatively objective and they're relatively distinct from each other. So we can talk about them in. And think about them in clear ways. The first thing is formulas. So what does formula mean? It basically mostly refers to classical formulas, uh, like and the classical formula is kind of in their original form. The, the ingredients, for example, a greater tongue. If you take one out, then it's a different formula. Um, if you modify the dosages, then it's a different formula. He gave a couple examples. The one that I remember is, uh, so gentle on tongue. If you, if you increase the dose of shaoyang in the formula, then it's not quite your tongue anymore. Know gentlemen. Huh? When he talks about formula is he's talking about the original formulas, not. Not something that's been modified in some way. So it's a very clear idea of what a formula is being there,

being some digest. So sushi that you got so an attorney, if a cheap at the time way.

So then we come to the second point, which is disease. Uh, so a disease is an important concept when, with regard to diagnosis, Diseases can mean ancient diseases. So diseases as defined in ancient times. So that might include like deficiency, taxation, or blood impediments, um, water amassment, blot amassment these kinds of traditional terms, but from a modern clinical perspective, what we see more. Of usually is a modern disease categories. So like diabetes, hypertension, uh, heart and heart attack, heart failure. Hashimoto's those are the ones he mentioned. Um, so what he's interested in, in, in is what formula is, can treat this disease or what diseases can be treated by a certain formula. He is. In the relationship between formula and disease

handling the and big

Uh, so a lot of people just stop there when it comes to diagnosing, they want to know, you know, what, what formula is can treat a specific disease and then that's it. But we want to go a step further. And that brings us to the third point, which is the person. What this means is what kind of person can this formula treat or what kind of formulas can treat this type of person? So this is very important. So Dr. Long has come up with idea of the formula person, which means, uh, it basically means, you know, what kind of person kind of specific formula treat

Canada.

So as far as. Determining, what kind of person we're looking at? This is he's referring to things that we can actually see with our eyes and actually feel with our hands. So objective things. Is this person fat or thin? Is the person tall or short as the person dark complexion or light complexion? Uh, are their muscles developed or are they atrophied? Is the, is the spirit, you know, excited or kind of subdued, you know, there's the face sallow and withered kind of, or, or is it. Bright red. And when we, we also have to feel the abdomen is the belly. Is it big? Is it or. Dan and flat is the pulse floating or sinking. Um, we also pay attention to the person's past disease history, and also their family history of diseases. And we want to get a sense of what symptoms do they get easily. Like if they're exposed to cold or wind, what happens to them? What foods did they like? What foods do they react to? What's their sleep lag? What are their bowels like? And, and through the four pillars of diagnosis. The, uh, visual observation, listening and smelling the questioning and palpating. We take all that information together. And then we kind of paint a picture of a person

falling being then possibly your son,

Joe. In this triangle of, uh, formula disease and person, we've mostly described two relationships, the relationship between formula and disease and the residence between formula and person, uh, the relationship between formula and disease, it mainly tells us is this going to be an effective treatment? And is it going to be effective very quickly? The relationship between the formula and the person. Mainly tells us is it's going to be safe. And also is it going to be very precise? So those two relationships, the relationship between the formula and the disease and the relationship between the formula and the person are two very important parts of tartar. Mark's thinking

we're going to take a little break for a moment. I hope you've been enjoying this podcast conversation. It already gleaned something useful from it. So back for a moment to this thing about business and how you. You know how you define something profoundly colors, how you view it in Chinese. The word for business is made up of two characters, Shung E Shung. It means to create like the shaoyang cycle of the five elements, E means meaning it's made up of the characters for sound and heart. It's the same E as the spirit of the spleen. And it's also often translated as significant. Show him, he means business, but you can also read it as making meaning or creating something of significance. So the next time you have your tail in and out about business issues, consider that your task is to create deeper meaning in your work or generate something of significance.

So in that triangle, there's still one relationship that we haven't talked about yet. And that's, what's the relationship between the disease and the person. So that means what kind of person could easily get this disease or what kind of diseases could this person easily get? Uh, so that's an important subject of research as well. Dr. Hong is researching it. He's still learning more about it. Um, he's researched more the first two relationships between the, the, uh, the ones that we just talked about between the M formula and the disease and the formula and the person, uh, but this third relationship between the disease and the person is also very important. We need to learn more about it

now, because then you may air

uh, so as you may have noticed these three things, the formula, the disease and the person, they're all real things with no basis. In actual reality, we can see them, we can feel them they're objective. So his triangle of the formula, the disease and the person, it emphasizes the objectivity of the information that we're talking about. So for example, The formula. We're not talking about methods in Chinese medicine, for example, like, uh, strengthening the spleen or tonifying G or tonifying the kidneys. We're not talking about methods like that, which are kind of, you know, different people might have different interpretations of what that actually means when it comes to, to clinic the formula. In this triangle, it actually means something that you can see. It's a bowl of medicine in front of us, or it's a, you know, it's a bottle of medicine, something like that. So it's something, you know, actually has a basis in reality, the, the disease also, it has to be something that is not. Too vague. So for example, like aids or diabetes or something like that, there there's internationally recognized standards of diagnosis for these things. So it's relatively, you know, it's, it's recognized widely. And if you say that in, if, say the name of some disease in Japan or in the U S or somewhere else, then it doesn't matter where you are in the world, then people know what you're talking about. Um, it's not something like kidney deficiency. Every person might have a slightly different idea about what that actually means. So some people, when you say condensed efficiency, they might think of hair loss and low back pain, or somebody else might think of poor sexual function. So it means kind of different things to different people. And then for people also, you know, the, the third part of the triangle, the person, like he already mentioned. It's things it's characteristics with the person that are objective and easily recognizable. Like is the person fat or thin, you know, dark or light or, you know, et cetera, objective things, no matter what

city hire so many, no number. ego. You answer

so. In the study of classical formulas, there's an important concept. That's called the correspondence between the formula and the presentation and the formula presentation. When you take those two words, formula in presentation, some people ask Dr. Huang. Well, you've talked about formulas. Why don't you talk about the presentation? Cause he hasn't met. Uh, that as a concept yet. Well, he just explained that if we take this triangle and we take, if formulas is at the top of the triangle and disease and person are the two lower corners of the triangle, if we take those two lower corners and we squish them together into one, that means taking disease and person, and kind of squish them together into one concept together, those things make up the presentation. Therefore his, his philosophy also fits. With this concept, the traditional concept of formula presentation correspondence. Um, so th this presentation is objective. It means what proof do you have, you know, in clinic? Um, what kind of person is it? What kind of diseases? It, so for example, with greater tongue, um, the greater tongue person and, you know, the, the list of Quakertown diseases, it's not just one disease that greater tongue can treat. It's a bunch of them. So he has a concept called not sure exactly how to translate this, but the, the, uh, it's like, um, a map or like a. Of diseases that belong to any particular formula, it's like a chart or a map or something that tells you, once you look at it, you can see what kinds of diseases in general can this formula and treat.

So she Fung Halldor and Shaw render Ching shoe GaN, Tom, and being harsher just a few moments ago. You were talking about. That you're still researching. You're still doing some research and some exploration on the relationship between person and disease. And one of the things that we hear a lot about in the west, I'm not sure if this is true in China. So I'd like to ask you, but one of the things we talk about a lot in the west is that the emotions often play a very big role in the ways that people get sick or the kinds of illnesses people get. Some times

Sydney. You're had a change.

Uh, so yes, absolutely. They're related a person is a living thing. It's a person has a moods and a person, you know, has, has their, their own personal psychology. So that's a main point of ours and clinic is, is looking at that relationship in the mood and, and, and what's going on with a person, uh, as far as their health. So he gave an example of the formula dot chai. Hutong, uh, the Tai Chi who tongue person is typically, they. Have a bad temper there easily. They're very tense. Their abdomen is tense and, you know, they might be tense psychologically, too. They might easily get kind of wound up about things. So, and then when they take that child tongue dacha, Hutong the formula. They often feel more relaxed. Are

you doing shoes? You've been in lots of ways. The sense of being are lots of Uh, either 10 home. He

gave another example of the formula, bunch of hope, a tongue. So that's this person is, tends to be kind of a hypochondriac. They all. Are thinking, do I have this disease or do I have that disease? They might complain of something in their throat or them. I can explain of some feeling on their skin. Like their skin might be, uh, itchy or, or numb or something, or they might have kind of some, you know, gas in their abdomen or something. And they have all these different complaints. But when you do tests on them, nothing comes back positive. Like they're, they're on paper. They're fine. A lot of times with this person, uh it's it's

being was the saw mill its own yard. You'd sit down.

so this is not to say that there's necessarily like a one-to-one relationship between certain types of moods and certain formulas. It's more complex than that. Uh, you have to look at the person. So he gave an example of anxiety. So anxiety being one, you know, category of, of psychological issues. If it's a child who person, or if it's a bad chat person or a sick wagered person or a Taiyang person. They might all take different formulas for, for their, their anxiety, even though the anxiety itself might be similar. Uh, so for example, a child who person might take for example, anxiety, a punch-out person might take bunch of hope, a tongue or one downtown, a graded person might take and adopt one person. You might give them

So, Michael and I were discussing this question recently and it's, it's basically there's two parts first. It's been many years since you've written the chalet farm, the 10 key formula families. What are some of the things that you believe about Chinese medicine now that you don't, that you did not believe? 10 years ago. And also, how has your view of using formulas and treating disease changed over these last 20 years?

Ta-da you answers some, you thought the function meal? Yeah. It's only, you

Well, first of all, he answered the question as saying that as far as the big things go, the big ideas that he has about Chinese medicine, the main directions of his thought, there haven't been that many big changes. Um, he also mentioned that that Chinese medicine is also like a life experience. Uh, it's like a. It's like a lifestyle culture, uh, for Chinese people. For example, when, you know, when they get headaches, they might take certain formulas like c'mon foods, decision tongue, or, or, or we'll go again. Taiyang, it's, it's a, it's an experience of the Chinese people. That people know about. There's also the, you know, the habits the Chinese people have of taking your tonic medicines, like tonic, herbal medicines. Like they have these things called which are like tonic jelly type things and drinking hot water and not drinking cold water is also like a Chinese cultural thing that has to do with, you know, it's based on Chinese people's experience and, and has a cultural element. Um, he also mentioned that there's differences in this, like for example, Mongolian people might think that drinking. Drinking milk tea is, is healthy for you. And then southerners might thinking that, uh, drinking cool tea is, is healthy for you. Um, it's it's like a lifestyle culture.

That's your way I challenge outages.

So the reason he brought that up is he has two, two fervent hopes for Chinese medicine. And as time goes on, he's more and more passionate about the passionate about these two things. The first one is he wants TCM to become something, not just for Chinese people in Chinese culture, but he wants it to go worldwide. So he wants it to be relevant to people all over the world. He wants it to be, you know, kind of more widely. So he wants his, his classes and his books to be translated into as many languages as possible. He wants everyone to be able to understand his second hope, which is, uh, he's equally passionate about and more and more passionate as, as every day goes by, is that he wants Chinese medicine to be systematic or, uh, yeah, standardized standard standardized. Um, otherwise it can't really go worldwide. Like he's hoping. And along with that hope of, of DCM becoming standardized. Is that goes along with classical prescriptions that are standardized. So Fon.

So Ching these,

so the word gene Fang, classical formulas or classical prescriptions, the first word of that DJing, it means. Standard or, you know, one of the ways that looking at it, it means standard or standardized. It doesn't just mean the classics, uh, in terms of like being specific books, but it means standardized because these formulas are standardized they're well-known so he, he now prefers to use the word In Chinese, you know, J I N G F a N G, instead of saying in English classical formulas, because then we can really get the meaning. And it also, that's a way of standardizing the term, standardize it in Chinese at Jing Fong and not call it all different things. So in summary, his two hopes for the medicine is that becomes world. It goes worldwide and that it becomes standard standardized. Just just to clarify that as a up

it's like I'm observing Dr. Wong over 10 years or so. It seems every year he gets better and better. And he's always learning from his experience as he mentioned before. But I also find that his. Diagnosis his diagnosis and his treatment gets more and more refined as well. So for example, where previously he might've used a bigger formula, like gingerly, ancho tongue. He might now use function tongue. So it's a much smaller formula. So it's like his formula is becoming smaller and smaller and smaller and more precise.

that's partially true. His, his view of it is that, you know, with a honking tongue, is that before, uh, you know, many years ago before he had fully researched, why don't she in tongue? His view of wanting tongue was not as broad as, as it is now. And more recently his kind of learn more things about that formula presentation. And he realized that for some patients, all of, all of those herbs in king jelly, shout-out on a bigger formula. Uh, some of them weren't necessary in some cases. So yeah, some of them became Huntington patients. He believes that, you know, he's, he's going a direction of using more original formulas, no unmodified formulas and smaller formulas and getting closer, closer, and closer to the way that. Uh, John judging would have used herbs in the past. He also started out just like most people using kind of miscellaneous formulas or, you know, late formulas from later later doctors and, and using theories like starting, starting with theory, uh, before prescribing medicine, sewing, starting, starting to think about things, uh, using theory first and then. But going to the methods is a traditional way of thinking in, in that, the way that I teach TCM these desks. So he started out that way and then he moved gradually more and more towards the direction of using our regional unmodified formulas, standardized formulas.

Ohio link, where you go into Shanghai, Sydney. shaoyang thought Thank you so much for taking some time today to talk with us. We've got just one more question. Before we close down here today, I'd like to know your ideas, your thoughts. On what health is, what does it mean to be healthy?

so health means you don't have disease. So that brings us to the question. What is disease disease in his view is suffering. If you can eat well, you can sleep. You can work, you can laugh, you have good social relationships. You can achieve your goals. That's health. Um, health is not, or he often likes to say, life is not. Life is a feeling it's not a number health. So health is kind of summary of all. This is health means you're comfortable. You can eat comfortably, you can sleep comfortably, et cetera. So Jean Fang is to make people comfortable. That's the goal of, of, of what we do.

qiological got a woman time. Dr. Juan, thank you so much for being here today,

but to say, yes, pump, farming the desert. when being

you're welcome. And. He hopes that everyone can learn Fang well using Fung well, and he wants everyone to know that gene Fang is not something that belongs only to the Chinese people. It's belongs to the whole world.