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. 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. Hey friends, before we get into today's conversation, I want to remind you that qiological is coming up to its first anniversary. And for that anniversary show. I'd like to have one of you join me. So if you've been listening to the show and you've been thinking, Hey, I'd like to be on qiological or I've got something that I'd like to discuss, or I've got something that I'd like to share. Send me an email or better yet record your voice. Send me the idea that you'd like to talk about. And I'm going to put all of the good ideas into a hat. I'm going to pull one out and have one of you on the show. So I'm really looking forward to hearing from you and having one of you. Join me here on the show. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to qiological. I am very excited to be sitting down for a cup of tea. Well, across several times zones, but still sitting down for a cup of tea, which have been Wells. So Ben Williams is an author. She's a translator. She's done amazing books for our profession. One of which her newest humming with elephants. Oh my God. I'm not here to plug stuff. You guys got to go buy this book. I'm very excited that we're going to sit down. We're going to, we're going to talk about the book. We're gonna talk about some other stuff. And they're talking about what's in the book. That's even better and Chinese medicine in general and maybe some Chinese language. And you know, I'm not exactly sure where the conversation goes because when you start exploring a thing about resonance, who knows where to go. So being welcome to qiological.

Well, thank you for having me. It's a total pleasure and honor.

I'm so excited about this. So I'm curious. I, I want to start, I want to go back in time a little bit. How is it? Because you know, again, this book of yours is gorgeous. I want to know. How it is that you so fell in love with the Chinese language and Chinese medicine, way back.

You want to go way

back as far back as we need to

go. It was, I was in high school and my family, everybody in my family is doctors, biomedical doctors. My, both of my parents, my sister went into medical school, my uncles and aunts, my grandmother was one of the first practicing pediatricians in Germany, female, her husband, everybody. And when I was 18, I wanted to get as far away from that as possible. So I w and I have a dad who knows everything because he's a very famous doctor. So it was like, okay, I'm going to do Chinese because he doesn't know anything about China. And I love traveling and I, and for whatever bizarre reason, I love dead languages. Actually started out studying Latin and Greek, and then I just, there's been so much research done in Latin and Greek and everything is translated. So classical Chinese is just a wonderful field and I absolutely love translating reading, understanding, engaging with the classical texts. So I guess I'm a nerd, total nerd nerd, and it's okay. It makes me, me, me, me, me happy to spend 12 hours sitting there and reading the nudging. So, and then I, I got into east Asian studies and then I had this wonderful professor in medical anthropology who was just fascinated with the fact that I can speak Chinese and I have access to, to these, these medical texts. And he really opened my eyes to how medicine can be such a powerful window into the COVID. So that's how I got into studying medicine, really as a way of trying to understand Chinese culture. And then, so I got my PhD and then I started teaching at a, at a Chinese medicine school in Tucson. Um, and I love teaching practitioners because you guys or writing books for practitioners, because compared to a normal, you know, university, when you were a history professor or literature professor or something, you guys actually really care about my work and you take what I produce, whether it's gynecology or pediatrics, or even, you know, the, this new book coming with elephants and you make a difference in, in your patient, I believe. And that's the feedback I get that my work makes a difference in alleviating suffering of all your patients. So lucky that I'm in this field, it's like, how could I be

anywhere else? I'm delighted that you're in our field because your works. Yeah. It's the old stuff and digging things out of when you N when, I mean, I, I can speak and I understand some modern Chinese it's rough, but you get into that classical stuff. I mean, they don't even have punctuation for goodness. Say.

Well, they have particles. That's where grammar comes in. Can I make a plug for classical Chinese grammar? Well, it's just that in my mind, classical Chinese is you can just do the etymology and ignore the grammar, which is how I started learning classical Chinese. But you know, the, the shoots of the, the, the empty words that when you, when you learn classical, or when I learned classical Chinese, when I lived in Taiwan, that's where I started studying classical Chinese. They would just talk about the empty particles. Oh, these are just the empty particles that you'd kind of wave off. And that's just not true. These are, these are the equivalent of punctuation marks and they give you, I mean, there is a stretch there there's something where a sentence can have so many different layers of me. But at the same time, it's also very clear. And the more you know about classical Chinese, the more you can be very clear, whether something is a proper or potential interpretation or it's not. And these particles are really important in, in understanding that so they're

not empty. They actually are sort of like signposts. They help you to orient to the, to the text now. Well, you know, maybe it will come back at some point and do a super nerdy, like introduction to reading when Yan, when or something that would actually, oh man. You know, I don't know how many of our listeners would be into that, but I bet there'll be a few geeky ones. We could we'll come back to that.

And then I guess the other thing that got me interested in fertility, Or young ShaoYin was that I was, I ended up being a farmer. I had a biodynamic farm in New Mexico, and farming is all of your doing it the way I like to do it. It's all about fertility. I was raising goats and apples and, and herbs, and it's, it's, you're working with soil and its fertility. And then I was kind of a bad farmer. Right. And then I was going to all these conferences teaching about young shaoyang and fertility and reproductive medicine. And at some point I just put the two together that nurturing life and fertility in the medical sense. And in the agricultural sense, it's the same. And that's really where I feel like I have this life where it all fits together, where everything I have had all these bizarre experiences in my life. And that's, you know, part of like music, I'm talking about resonance, humming, it's all about music. I'm a violinist. It's like everything. All the experiences in my life have kind of come together in, in making sense. At this point, it's been a long time. Other people figure out what they do when they're 20 years old. I'm

not sure how many actually do. I know some folks that at a very young tender age, they knew it. I got a younger brother age, like 11 or something. I'm going to be a musician. That's it, he's a musician, you know, but most people that I know, and maybe it's just a crowd I run around in. We're not so sure. And there's, you know, there's a phase here. There's a phase. There you go. In this direction, you go in that direction. And if you're lucky to live long enough, Maybe it comes together with a certain coherence where you can look back 30 years ago. I can see how that stream from Baghdad is alive right now, but it's, it's it takes living into it. Yeah. Yeah. So resonance actually. All right. So of all the chapters of the Hong Dean aging, why this one? Oh, dear.

Um, well, I taught a class with, with dark, the wonderful most esteemed doctor lawyer at NUNM the national university of natural medicine in Portland, Oregon. It was the third year in a three year series on classical texts. So it was kind of the crowning achievement of their education in, in class. Texts, which is the cornerstone of their doctoral program. And the third year is all about the naming. So Dr. Long and I, and we had a classical texts committee. We got together and we, we created a curriculum for, for the chapters that are, that we all considered the most important in the making for beginning practitioners. And it was, and then the class has kind of evolved and Sue and five ended up being a class that just ended up taking an entire semester. An entire course of 12 weeks to cover. And originally I was going to do well originally I was going to do, I think, textbook for classical Chinese, and it was going to have Sue one, one from five and then a bunch of clinical chapters in it. And then I was like, okay, this is way too much. It's going to get way too long. So we're just going to do Sue and one through five. And then I ended up just doing soup and five because I just kept going back to it and quoting it in all my teachings. I just refer to it over and over and, you know, really the resonance of, of yin and yang. I mean, that's that's, to me, that's the, so the foundation of the medicine that kind of makes sense to be a much bigger

project. It still might be. You never know because plenty big enough, but there's other books.

It's just such a rich chapter and it has a history of wonderful commentaries. So what do

you particularly love about this chapter? I

think it's the ideal, it's the perfect introduction to the, to the foundations of our medicine. It just, you know, it, it's about, you know, young and it's about the correlation between the macro, the resonance. And it's more than a correlation. It's really about the real, the interrelationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm. And it just lays it out. It starts with the very simple thing where it talks about the weather, about the clouds and the rain, and then it brings it to the level of the flavors. And, and then it goes into the body. I mean, it just covers everything. In very, in a very succinct way. And it's, it's just to me, it, this chapter is so deep and that's why, why have, I mean, I've camped this, I've been working on this book for like five years and I've candid so many times and said, I'm not touching that. And you know, I don't think anybody can ever create a perfect translation of and five because it's, so it's kind of like the loud. So it's so deep and complex that I'm going to give you one perspective on it. And one possible way of reading it and you can create another way. That's just as beautiful and profound and accurate as mine. There is no right and wrong, or maybe they're there. I mean, no, there are ways that you can read it that are, that are grammatically wrong.

So there are ways of doing it wrong. And there's also many ways of doing it right.

There's no, I don't think one English version can ever, and that's why I ended up with all these commentaries and all these discussions and all these, like in my book, I have all these notes where I'm choosing to translate it as this. Right. But it could also be read as this. And that's based on, you know, 1500 years of commentary tradition. And I believe that I'm not smart enough with a blank slate to go and read the naming. It's a text. That's very corrupted. That's from a really ancient time. That's really, really difficult. There are passages in there that, that I really don't get. So I'm not an enlightened Sage. So I think it's crazy for us or maybe not crazy, but I think it's arrogant to throw out 1500 years of commentary. And I really wanted to give readers a sense of the depth and, and the contributions that generation after generation, after generation of scholar, physicians of these incredibly educated wise experienced people have added to, to an understanding of the aging. Because I think a lot of times that gets lost in the English translations.

Well, one of the really delightful things, I remember when I was first in acupuncture school and reading through, I mean, we had unsold at that point. I remember the, the Nanjing in particular you'd have each of the difficulties and then you'd have pages of commentary, pages of commentary. And there were people that were talking to each other across the centuries. In fact, they were not just talking to each other. Sometimes they were arguing with each other, vehemently arguing and disagreeing across the centuries. And I love.

And I think that the Nanjing is actually insurance. Nanjing translation is a wonderful contribution and of all of his books. That's my favorite book, I think. And it is, you know, the language is not that easy to, it's not pre digested to make it appealing to modern clinical practitioners.

You're looking for the answer. You're not going to find it in there. I'll tell you that it's a hard book to read. It requires attentiveness. Yeah.

It, it, it requires a really great interest and nerdy bend. And part of what I'm hoping with my book is that it's a little bit that I'm, I'm a writing for practitioners. That's with this book, my other books, it was like, you know, my pediatrics, I know it's it's for really advanced practitioners and I don't sell a lot of those books. And I know I don't try and push it on people. I'm very clear that my pediatrics book is not appropriate for a beginning practitioner because I know it's not pre digested there. Nobody's holding your hand. It's just seems to me, Meow is throwing these formulas EDU, and they're very powerful formulas and they would be really dangerous to apply if you, if you don't have the proper training. But what I'm hoping with this book is I really want to show a broader audience of Chinese medicine practitioners that the classics are relevant to contemporary Chinese man. Because I believe they are. And that's what I get in my, you know, many, many years of teaching at these conferences or when I do these one day or weekend seminars is, is, you know, an, uh, work like insurance is, is so it's so academic and it's scholarly. And it's just, if you don't have the proper academic training, it could turn you off just because it's so thick. And like you said, there's commentary and then there's the next commentary. And it, it, so I was, I was really struggling and that's kind of how I started out with this book and, and then I just completely scrapped it all and started from scratch and rewrote. I rewrote that book like five times in the way that I hope that it makes it, I want it to be, I want to show a normal Chinese medicine practitioner that the classes are relevant. Well,

I think you have a very interesting way of showing that it's relevant. You use the term pre-diabetic. And I would say your book is completely non pre-digested. It's more like a prebiotic

in this

crazy bubble. No, no. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a phenomenal bubble. Your instructions in the beginning about read it slowly along with naps and walks and cups of tea and, you know, walking by the water. So, I mean, I think of it as like sipping whiskey and talking to friends, I think of it as something that I come back to really like a book of poetry, there are ways that you have in there of giving us something, but you don't nail anything down. It's not like, oh, here's the thing. And here's what it is. And you read this and get it. And now you're going to understand it. It's more like you weave these questions. You bring in these various influences, you hint and tease at different kinds of things. You're bringing some comments from people across the ages. I find that I get done reading a section, you know, and it's only a couple of pages and it's like, that's enough for today.

So that's, that's that makes sense to me. Yeah.

And sometimes I go back the next day and reread it again. Or sometimes I'll pick it up a week later and read certain portions of it again, because it leaves me with a sense of inquiry. It leaves me with a sense of, I mean, I feel like my perceptual field is a little bit different. My thinking process is a little bit altered after reading. Good.

I mean, I, I, I don't like giving lectures even though that's, that's what I, you know, do a lot of the time for living. I, my favorite classes are, and the, in a way, the book is a way to replicate this wonderful seminar. That was like, that was the treat for me to get, to teach these Neijing classes at NUNM because I put the students through such a hard time in the first year of study, memorizing the characters and learning the grammar and, and, you know, and we read Confucius, we read the great learning. We read louds and drums and poetry. And I, I throw all the stuff at them and I make them struggle very hard with classical Chinese. And then in the second year they get the Shanghai um, which is more clinical and it's much easier and more straightforward. It is right. I mean, there are formulas, there there's symptoms. And then it's, it's that one, the grammar is fairly straightforward, but in the third year you get to the Neijing and it is such a, it is such a fun book to explore in a class over the course of 12 weeks. And the idea, you know, that we had a different student prepare section each week and then we would get together and discuss it together. And it was just such a fun class. I love doing it. So in a way, the book is a way to, is about replicating that format of doing an advanced seminar, where everybody comes, where you bring your experience and your knowledge and you, your work to it. And, and then I engage with you. And, and I don't think it can be a one way street where I know everything because we're, we're, we're talking about literature that was created. I believe. Bye enlightened beings. I mean, by say the sages, right? This is what the, the yellow emperor was the Sage. And he's talking about these teachings from this ages that were thousands of years before that. So who am I to tell you? Well, it's over my head. It's over your head. We don't, I firmly believe that we don't have the understanding of, we don't live integrated into the macrocosm the way these people did, because we are separated through central heating and air conditioning and electricity. We don't grow our own food. We, we don't have the connection to nature. We don't have the knowledge of the stars that the cycles of the stars. I'm trying to understand tides here. Cause I live on a beach and I can only do this walk that I love to do when the tides are certain. When they're are low and they have to be incoming or outcoming. So I am trying to wrap my head around stars and moon and, and tides, and it's just mind boggling. And I think there's just so much that we don't know that they knew they had a different kind of wisdom. And I

think that books like this, they're not how to manuals. Yeah. I mean, they really are looking ISIS spec to crack our perception open in a certain way, because then you can start to learn some things, but it, it requires a different stance so to speak. Does that make sense?

I love the crack open our perception. It's about cracking open the idea. And we know what's right and black and right and wrong, and this and that. And yes and no, I love drones. I mean, drugs is my hero. And I just, I think that's the piece, which is really challenging for a, for a medical practitioner, right. To be in the face of not knowing

because yes, exactly. This is a very curious paradox. I was going to say, especially for Chinese medicine practitioners, but that, that, that may not be true. It may be for any medicine practitioner. We do want to know there's a lot that we should know. We should be very schooled in what, the stuff that you're supposed to be schooled in. Right. And people expect to get some help from us. And, you know, we better, we better show up with some goods. That's only fair. And at the same time, so often patients come in. And the truth is we don't know, and that that's not a stopping place. That's the starting place. And how do you navigate when you don't know that? To me is a very profound and powerful question that I suspect all practitioners have to face in being any kind of a doctor.

And it's some, it's one that I have thought about very hard because my dad was the first person in Germany who did, who treated aids? Who did he went to Seattle to learn about bone marrow transplants? I, all the stuff that I know nothing about, he was a director of an internal medicine hospital and he did all these cutting edge things. And a lot of his patients must have died and right, because he, he was doing things that they didn't know what they were at the time. And I had. Uh, boyfriend and I was talking to my boyfriend's dad who was also a doctor. And I was telling him that my dad drives me crazy because he knows everything and he has this and it is so hard. My, I am totally like my dad, my dad and I are like, we are, so I am so close to him and we drive each other nuts, but he is so opinionated and he knows everything. And it was another old retired doctor who had to point out to me that, that, that is that's that generation of biomedical doctors. They have to know everything because if my dad started questioning his treatments, he, and, and you know, the doctor, biomedical doctors have a really high rate of substance abuse and suicide and, and all of the stuff. So I think in Chinese medicine, we, I'm hoping we are much more honest about. That we don't know because in Chinese medicine, there are so many ways in which you can address. There is no one right way, and that's so hard for students. And I think it's really dangerous this in biome, it's one of those things and I, I'm not an anti biomedicine person at all. I think all medicine, all doctors are healers and do the best they can. And, and, but in biomedicine, there is this, this huge pressure that the doctor is the authority and the doctor has to know. And because of that, I think it closes inquiry. And it's really hard on people's heart and mind, because if you're a doctor, you must know that you don't know, but you can't doubt yourself if you're a very famous biomedical doctor and in a way, and I'm not a practitioner, I don't see patients, or I say I'm a practitioner of Chinese medicine, but I'm not a clinical practice. I do practice Chinese medicine every day, all day long, just in a different way. But, um, in a way, if you're a doctor and a patient comes to you, you have to be the authority.

Yes. And sometimes that authority sits or stands with you at the edge of, well, we don't know. And then how do we find out where do you move? What's the next step after? I don't know.

Yeah. And how do you make, how do you make peace with

that? I think that's a great question. How do you make peace with that?

Yeah. And that's where, to me the classical texts, that's the big contribution in the classics and also in the philosophy that the true knowledge is in not knowledge, the Dow that can be Dowd the way that can be walk is not. Constant doubt, right? The Dao that can be taught anytime you've seen. That's not the real doubt.

Yeah. From the very beginning, we're in deep water with this stuff.

I see it as my job to just kind of open the curtains, be like, well, and part of it is that I've spent the last five years teaching beginning Chinese medicine students and kind of really opening their eyes day one. They had me for the beginning, Chinese history and culture class for beginning classical texts. We did a Chinese culture, immersion retreat. They got a whole lot of Sabina. And, and part of that is embracing this, this other way of thinking and honoring. You know, and you have to have knowledge and you have to have systematized textbooks and you have to have licenses and board exams, and you have to have exams if you have an institutionalized medicine. So we are Tiny's medicine is in this weird place where at least at NCNN or NUNM it was, it was, it was always this tension between on the one side we teach, you know, what they need to know and what can be tested. And the board exams, we teach them knowledge. That's that's graspable, and, and you need to be able to communicate to patients and to colleagues. You have to know. And at the same time, when you are more advanced at. When you know enough, you have to know that you don't know

we're going to take a short break here and find out from Toby how you can nourish yin at the same time that you've got dampness there's foods to do that.

Hi Toby here again. I hope you're enjoying the conversation in the show. I used the Chinese nutritional strategies app to answer the question, what single food can I recommend for my patients in order to nourish kidney in supplements planche and drained dampness. The answer drawn from the Chinese medical classic texts is millet. The Chinese nutritional strategies app has diagnosis patterns for millet as well as more than 300 common foods, along with their temperature, flavor actions, indications, notes, and seasonal recommendations. This database is searchable by any of these criteria and sorting through it allows the practitioner to compile a list of recommended foods and then share those recommendations via email. Whereas a hard copy with her. More information is available at chase nutrition, app.com. Now let's listen to this next half of the show

at a certain point. All of the knowing that we've acquired. And it's very helpful because we do get to pass the exam. We get to get a license we get to get started. I often think of that stuff is scaffolding. It's the stuff that lets us get started. It's this stuff, especially as Westerners, that allows us to have a different way of viewing the world, having a different way of viewing the body, having a different way of viewing physiology. We can begin to see into this other thing, but at a certain point, all that stuff that we learned and all those great things, our teachers told us, maybe not all of them, but many of them scaffolding that gets taken down at a certain point. And we're left with our experience and we're left with our inquiry and we're left with our not knowing.

And that's where you have, you're gradually replacing maybe that institutionalized knowledge with another scaffolding, which is your clinical experience,

which of course changes over the years as well. Yeah. And

I don't have that and that's where I, you know, bring in all the commentaries from the histories. But on the other hand, I have learned that my understanding of farming of irrigation of, and you're laughing, you're laughing, but I'm not kidding. I, I think that my, my experience flood irrigating and. Over many years and managing waterways. I mean, that's perfect for, for, for understanding T flow. It's exactly the same. They use the same language books and streams and Springs and blockages, congestions draining, overflowing spilling it. It's it's the same language. Yeah.

Microcosm, macrocosm. There you are. Hey. Yeah. I want to jump into a couple things from the book if we can. Okay. So I've got just enough Chinese to be dangerous. Oh no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to be speaking Chinese, but I just, I mean, there, there are some things that I read them and they just, man, it, it was like, uh, I don't know. I can remember when I first started studying Chinese and I had this incredible epiphany one day, I'm not kidding you. You're going to think this is hilarious. But the truth is I had this incredible epiphany one day when I took this piece of Chinese that I was given in school and I realized that I had it right side up. Right.

What

was it? I don't remember. It was just, you know, some basic terminology. Right. But no, no, no. It was like, it was like a sheet of paper with a bunch of characters on it. Right. And I just, I mean, just remember at one point going, oh, this is right side up.

Yeah.

Silly. But I can remember this incredible delight that ran through my entire body. When I recognized I have the paper, the right side up, it's a good place to start. So I was reading,

I know, I love taking the students to the guard. There's a wonderful Chinese garden in Portland and, and I love taking the students there and they would recognize characters fun. Isn't

it? It's so fun.

Yeah.

Anyway, so you've got this lovely little riff on change, BNY. Yes. And, and you talk about, I mean, BNY means change, but then you go into each one, you go into PN as being a certain kind of change. And why is being like the transformative, you know, rug pulled out from under your feet transformative kind of change for the listeners' benefit. Can you talk to us a little bit about the, what a BN type change looks like and what a Huang type change looks like. And maybe there's some suggestions from the book about how you deal with each of those particular kinds of processes.

Yeah. That's a deep question. I should've never agreed to this interview. Um, and, and really, you know, I, I struggled with translating these two characters forever and ever, and ever, because I used to have, I think, BN transformation and highest change. And it was just like, I just picked, I don't know if Wiseman picked them shoulder or somehow I just, and I always was, was kind of like, I know they're different. They're used in different contexts there. I know. It's so often that it's like, it's like DJing and my for check and vessel. We have these characters that, that they're different characters. And in English, they're translated with words that are kind of have the same meaning, but there is a real difference between using Jing and Mike, there are associations, you know, whether it's the flesh radical that the it gene versus the water radical and, and there, and you can go into all these examples where two characters mean the, or they're translated in English with one word, but they're really two different concepts. And if you translate them with one word in English, at some point, the reader gets confused because they're like, wait, this doesn't make sense because they're there. There's contradictions where in Chinese, there is a layer of specificity that. It's really hard to express in English and change is one of those concepts where the classical Chinese were really hung up on change because everything is cheap and she is always changing. And this appreciation for change. If you understand change, that's the key to being a doctor, a Sage, a farmer, a ruler, knowing change is no stock

broker for that matter.

Everything sourdough baker. You have to know. I love to bake a cheese maker. I love to make fermenting things. You have to be able to look at your sourdough and read where the bubbles are at and know what the temperature of the room was when you started it. What kind of grain you used? If you use rice versus wheat versus white flour versus course meal versus flat ground flour, blah, blah, blah. It all, you might get a, the bubbles might look the same, but depending on the, all these other things, it completely changes how you're going to treat that sourdough. When you're going to, how much you're going to need it, how much liquid, how much other stuff you're going to add to it when you're going to put it in the pan, how warm you're going to bake it, does that make

sense? Which is why I'm so interested in the difference between Ben and at this point. I mean, it's really got me thinking, wow, we're always looking at change. I mean, eating right book. It changes. We know nothing stays the same, but you know, the question is it's like, what's the pace or the tempo or the quality or that's hype, because it's just my sense. If we've got a sense of what kind of change we're looking at, we can tune our treatments, match what that is. Yep. Okay. That's what, it's

all about that as a clinical practitioner or a ruler or whatever it is that you're doing, you're looking at the present. You're looking at what you got. You've got, you're taking a history, you're looking at the past and what makes a good doctor or a good ruler or a good farmer is to know the direction where the arrow is, where the dynamic, the dynamic that the shoe. The force, you know, whether it's going up, you you've got your present place, but it's really, if you know where it's coming from, you know, whether it's going up or it's going down and you also know how fast it's going, and then you know how you're going to interfere. If you need to do anything, maybe, maybe the body's on its way already to establishing this, this dynamic equilibrium. And if you're gonna introduce a really strong down draining formula, you're going to weaken a body in a way that's going to turn it into the other extreme. So, yes, so back to B. So I think that's that, that's the trick to being a good, a good doctor or good anything is, is, is understanding, change and knowing how to read the present. And that's what the Dow is. That's that's the core of the doubt is it's all change. So. I ended up, let's see. And I actually took notes because I knew you were going to ask me this and it's like there being a crop. But what I ended up for the book, I believe is alteration for being, and for transformation and transformation is a little bit of a, not the perfect translation. Maybe it is if you're a nerd. And if you read my commentary because literally transformation means you are transcending the form. Another way you could put it as metamorphosis. It's quiet as it is a sudden change. That is irreversible. And Ben, just, this is just in general, if you're trying to tease apart, the difference between these two characters, of course, knowing that in modern Chinese being a quad just means change. And to a certain extent they can be sometimes used interchangeably depending on. If you have a poem where one of them sounds better than the other, or you have a sloppy writer or, you know, just like in English, sometimes words are used very specifically. And my belief is in medical, technical literature. A lot of times this language was very, very specialized and it was used classical Chinese is so condensed that people used words very, very carefully. And we owe it to them in translation to not be sloppy and not to say, oh, it's troubled. Or, you know, it's like, it's whatever, it's a title. It's in the

ballpark. Yeah.

Curious is that, that, that they are very conscious. And when they use a word, like what they had, the association, which any person. Who has a PhD in Chinese studies or any traditional scholar physician will know, John's talking about why. And when you open a big classical Chinese dictionary, the first thing you get about the first definition you get about why is the way it is used in Johns and Johns, it was so important because John's is kind of the gold standard for beautiful literature. So John's had talks about, um, the transformation from the, from the big fish to the bird, which is a total change. That is that it's a transformation. There's something that happens that is irreversible. And a lot of times in the nature thing, why is used in a sense where there is with something is created? So it is, it is creative. It is it's, it's a kind of changed that that creates something new. And Ben is used. In the sense of day and night altering low and high tides, the changes of the seasons gradual change,

the more comfortable kind of change, maybe the kind of change. Oh yeah. This again, I feel like I'm getting nowhere kind of change, but you're like incrementally drip by drip getting somewhere for as often people come in, you know, with some horrible thing that happened and it's a ho you know, it's a hot type change.

This is where you come in with your clinical experience. And this is why I love having these conversations with practitioners with clinical practitioners, because you can take what I just told you. And I love team teaching that this way, where you take what I just said. And you're you come up with an example from clinic. So it gives me an example for where the real clinical difference.

That's a great question. Yeah. Oh man. Wait, the tables just got turned on me. Exactly. Yes. Very good. Very sneaky, Ms. Well, okay, so let's, uh, let's take fertility for a moment. Fertility is often a situation where someone's actually looking for a wall. They're actually looking for a while. They want to transform from not, not pregnant to pregnant, right. That that's a type of a metamorphosis, but they're making this slow, incremental change. Right? I mean, maybe their periods are really a mess and you've got to get that cleaned off and, and maybe, you know, there's issues like, well, actually where the woman's fertile. I mean, the guys traveling all the time, they don't even have a chance to have sex. Right. So small and incremental BN type changes. Like, well, maybe the husband gets a different job so they can actually be together enough to create a family. Right. And of course, people go to IVF looking for a type treatment, right? So there there's situations where people are wanting it. There's something they don't have. They desire to have it. And they're looking to get in a hot type way. They call that success and we call ourselves good practitioners. When we give it to them, then there's the opposite. There's a person that's gone through a hot type experience and whatever they've gotten at whatever they have transformed into whatever they have metamorphosized into irreversibly turned into. They'd like to get rid of it. And so I have found in my clinical practice, it's helpful to know. Number one, what kind of change are they looking for? Are they looking for a BN type change or a water type change? Secondly, what kind of change are they actually in the midst of? Because that tells me something about their cycle of motives. So I've started taking this from reading your book. I started taking these two and, and bringing them into the clinic in a way where I just, I leave myself open to, I mean, to bring it in as a question really, is this, is this a BN process or a process that they're in and what's, what's called for, to help them with that. Does that answer your question? Does that help?

Does it, does. I mean, you readers are the ones that I think so. And, and I think that the example of pregnancy is a perfect example for it is a com and every process of change in a way is a combination of BNN. Absolutely. And that's where, and this is kind of what I love about this book is you talk about yin and yang and then there's young within yen. And then there's the yin within the young, I mean, there there's. You can talk about it at a, at a really simple level where, why is the creative change? So giving birth or getting pregnant that's conception. That's a, that's a quiet, that's a creative irreversible change, but at the same time, you're right. You can also see it in terms of all the little incremental BN changes that are taking place throughout this whole process. And what is the appropriate role of, of, of you in interfering, supporting, manipulating that

process? I'd love the way, use the word interfering. I don't often hear practitioners talk about interfering. I hear them talk about treatment. I talk to them, I hear them talking about helping their patients. I'd love that you use the word interfere, I think. And why do I enjoy that? Because it really makes me ponder for a moment about. What is it that I'm going to be doing with this person? Because if I'm interfering, I want to make sure I'm interfering on some sort of beneficial way, hopefully with as lad to touch as possible.

And I think my thinking on that has evolved based on studying since meals so much. Tell us more about that. That seems to me, I'll talks about this in, and of course I've had my head in gynecology and pediatrics, but also in his volume on dietetics, he talks about how food is just another kind of medicine it's it's it's drugs. And if you take any substance, even a cup of tea and introduce it to your body, unaware, you are, everything is CISO. Everything that you introduce into your body changes the dynamic of tea, the equilibrium, it's a dynamic equilibrium, and it's not a static. Perfect. Balance. It's, it's this, it's this. And I love that, that fluidity and that's changed and it's always, sometimes there's more young and sometimes there's more yin and that's the way it's supposed to be. And, um, sometimes it's appropriate to interfere. Maybe sometimes it's not because it's just that pendulum going back and forth. Um, so he talks in the volume on dietetics. He talks about how drugs are like soldiers. And sometimes we need to release the soldiers to the borders to protect the country. But a lot of times there is a risk when you release soldiers that they, then you let them loose and then they turn around and they, they run out of control and they might do more damage in your own country. Or they might do more damage than they might do unanticipated damage after they have protected your defenses from the outside. So, you know, you, you don't want to give somebody some really intense treatment, if you can just tell them to warm their feet at night or, or, you know, you, I mean, the idea is you want to create this equilibrium. And, and to me, that's really, that's what I love about, about the classics that there is this, it's not just about treating illness. And of course I have a privileged perspective because I don't treat sick people. So you deal with situations. People don't come to you generally, I assume. Um, they come to you when their equilibrium is pretty much out of whack.

So yes, I would say that's true.

Yeah. So you need to, and they have certain expectations. Of course they do to do something to make them feel better. Whereas I have my head in the classics and it's all about two-way being, you treat what is not yet diseased. You, you, you dig where you're thirsty and you are dealing with situation where you're in the middle of a warfare, the bore. And then, and this is a quote from that two and five to you. You're in the, you don't forge your weapons while you're in the middle of the war and you don't think you're well when you're

thirsty. So what that says to me is even when someone comes in and for them, it's some kind of an emergency or they wouldn't be coming in to see me. It's still really important not to forget that there's an equilibrium that can be found and to attend to the dynamic. Right. Attend to the dynamic because if the equilibrium can come of its own accord, or if it can be enticed in a, in a more gentle fashion. Well, I mean, there's a line to, you know, what is that line? I think it's from, uh, the day June, right? That, you know, the, the best rulers are the ones where the people say we did it ourselves. Right. All right. I've got so much more. I want to ask you. So I'm probably just going to invite you back for another time, but troll now you gonna have to start sending me, you know, I was just thinking I could send you some check, some great stuff from Taiwan recently. I'll send you some you'll love it. Oh, I'm totally drivable

with tea.

Okay, good.

You said you will. You were going to be up here. So, so we can do this in person. We can toddy by the beach.

Well, hello. Hi, Todd. You by the beach and I'll bring you some tea as well. Anyway. One more question before we get off here, we can have

the whales.

Um, I'm all for

it. It won't be humming with elephants. It'll be the spouting of the way. Oh one like a week ago.

Lovely. All right. I want to get back to your book again for just a second. I love the way that you work with the language. You're so thoughtful with it. You know, again, I know enough Chinese to be a danger to myself. And so sometimes I look at the words that you work with or the, or the, some of the ideas that you are knocking, right? You're like manipulating. And I just find it enticing. So I want to ask you, and it's

based on five years of rewriting and rewriting and rolling. Oh

yeah. Well, in all the years I came before that too. So let's not forget that

I love this chapter and I have so much respect and I really had a hard time publishing this book. It was very stressful because I just feel like it is so deep and it requires that kind of respect from anybody.

So you should drink it with a hot toddy or it read it with a hot toddy. Anyway, I want to get back to this question. So you were talking about the elements and you were talking about too, right? Like usually gets translated as earth, but in your book you say that you rather enjoy thinking of, to not as earth, but as soy. Right. And when I think his soil, I think it's something that's like something simultaneously in the process of rotting and generating new life at the very same moment. I'm curious. I just, I would just like to hear you riff a little bit more about what if instead of calling to earth, we did call it soil. What if we thought of it as soil?

I would've loved to do that. And it's kind of a perfect example for my struggles with terminology in this book. I don't want to have the book use foreign language. It was really important to me that this book is readable to your average, or maybe not your average, your average classically inclined Chinese medicine practitioner. That's I w I can't say. Even though that's the standard term.

I know it's so totally

wrong. I, I think I did dynamic agents. Five phases works better. The elements, I that's one where I've kind of, I'm on this mission where I just, I cannot get myself to say elements, even though I know that's what everybody uses with earth. The problem with earth is that in English earth has so many different meanings. You know, as in the planet earth, soil is much more specific and the meaning of that dynamic agent, it should be. So I love the fact that you picked up on that and that that's exactly the association that he should have. It's it's dirt. It's, it's, it's black, rich, fertile. It's th the stuff where, you know, a little bright green sprout comes out of, and it's alive with earth firms, and it's what feeds everything. It's it's the spleen and earth it's. I mean, the spleen stomach it's right. It's but I, I decided to stick with earth because that's just the way we know the five elements. And I felt like if I changed it to soil, it would, it would make, it would force people who are just in their training. They're they're just, so everybody's used to using earth as the, as the earth element, you know? So I just didn't want to be too

radical. Yeah. So you just, you just stayed with the, uh, the, the standard and that, but I got to tell you when, when I read it, when I read that. And you called it soil. The first thought that came to my mind was dirt and I, and I just laughed out loud. I was like, oh man, that's great. It's so humble. It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, no, it's dirt

and it's everywhere. And it is, it is what grows our food. It's it's, you know? Yeah, exactly. That's

really important. Okay. Well maybe people listening to this podcast will start calling the earth phase dirt or soil. I don't know. We, we, we might've started something here or not at any rate. I so appreciate you taking the time today and sitting down from me with a cup of tea and, uh, talking about this stuff, that's in your book again. I'm I'm going to plug it. I can't help myself. It's an exquisite read. It sits on my poetry's shelf, actually not my Chinese medicine shelf. Just, just so you know, it's gorgeous. It will mess with your mind in really delicious ways. So I encourage you guys to go buy a copy.

I'm getting feedback. And it was not an easy book. It was a lot more personal than my other books, which were mostly just translations. And I didn't know if it was gonna be. You know, useful. I don't know how, because I am in my world. I'm in my crazy bubble of classic. So it makes me

really happy. All right. Well thank you. And, uh, all right, so we'll do part two when I come out to Seattle.

Okay.