So like, for example, let's talk about the Taiyang channel system. Like how do we understand what the system is? For example, we say the lung, what does the lung do? We say governance cheat. And we know that through respiration, like moving sheet outwards and downwards helps regulate the movement, outwards and downwards. And the same time we say that the, the lung channel like Dr. Warren loves to say governance of the rhythms of the body. How does it govern? The rhythms is probably also through its functions of respiration or like, uh, Dr. Allen would have patient centered. They would have like, um, heart palpitations, and sometimes he would not use the heart channel, but instead if he found a change at lung nine and he thought it was related to the lung channel, he might just use lung nine to treat the heart palpitations. And that's related to the lungs relationship with regulating the rhythms of

I'm Michael max. And this is qiological, you know, what's kind of an old song on our business. That we learned from our patients. And usually I've taken that to mean that we learned from either our successes, if we're paying attention or from our failures, which usually means we haven't been paying attention sometimes though a patient will say something and it completely stops me in my tracks. I mean, it totally stops the internal dialogue in my head. I catch myself in a moment of surprise. I don't know if that's the right word, but it's definitely a moment that causes me to pause. And I had one of those moments the other day, a patient of mine who had been on a whole collection of medications for blood sugar, for pain, for depression. You're probably familiar with these kind of lists. She came in after a, not short stay in the hospital for some completely inconclusive testing. And here's something you might not know. I know. When patients go into the hospital, they're usually taken completely off. Most of their medications. That's not something that I was aware of. You know, a lot of times we hear that you're supposed to titrate down on things, but often people go cold Turkey when they take them into the hospital. So anyway, by the time I saw her, she'd been off the antidepressant for two weeks and off the blood sugar meds as well. And here's the interesting thing. Her blood sugar was better without the medication, much more stable. And while there were some feelings at times of anxiety, it was totally in line with what you would expect if you just spent a week plus in the hospital and nothing to show for it, except some shrug, shoulders, too much jello. But here's what got me, as we dug into it a bit about how she'd been feeling and how the issues that brought her into my office are resistant to biomedical diagnosis and what all that can do your state of mind. She says that. Oppression and struggle are not the same. Did you get that? Can you catch the nuance here? Notice how this person does not conflate difficulties with depression, that there can be difficult feelings, but they're in line with what's actually unfolding in life. And then they become part of the landscape. It's something to be included, something to be worked with, not something to be medicated away. I hear things like this from patients and for me, it's a sign of deep health. They might be struggling with something that's difficult, maybe even something that's life-threatening, but that kind of presence to oneself, that recognition that they are in a difficult time in difficult times are not something to medicate away, but rather something to be engaged with with a kind of willingness. Wow. You know, for me, it's a reminder that a person's junkie can be strong. Even as they're dealing with complex and troublesome issues, you'll probably not find a definition of junky in our books, on medicine that described this kind of situation. But, you know, I think it's something that you have to learn from your patients. And I've got a word here from my buddy, Jason Robertson.

Hello, this is Jason Robertson, coauthor of applied channel theory in Chinese medicine with my teacher Wong GE I have some insights into palpation and an area that I find very useful and checking for low back pain. And I'll say more about that a bit later.

Hey everybody. I've got John Chang with me, John Chang from Beijing, China. John was a long time student of Dr. Warren chewy and unlike many of us who first learned to TCM style acupuncture. Dr. Wong was John's primary influence. We're sitting down today for a discussion that touches on his apprenticeship with Dr. Wong, along with how he uses palpation in his clinical work and his involvement with years of videos and lectures and patient treatments that they recorded over the years with Dr. Juan John wanting bowel. Qiological welcome to qiological. Thanks,

Michael. It's great to finally have this discussion, this conversation.

I know, and I'm in St. Louis you're in Beijing. Thanks to the internet. We're just hanging out and having a cup of tea. Phenomenal.

Yeah. And it sounds like you're right beside me. Let's just crazy.

You know, I'm a geek for sound and, uh, fortunately there's some pretty good tools that are mostly reliable these days. So lucky for us. Definitely. Hey, what's beaching. Like right now

we had some heavy rain the past few days and it's tons of rain, but it all cleared up blue skies like perfect sunlight. It's not that hot. It's amazing. It's amazing. Right now the past

few days on occasion, you see a blue sky in Beijing. It is, it is a wonder isn't it? It is

either than the, in the past winter, like the government does something amazing with the pollution that they, that we have blue skies for like three or four months straight, like just clear blue skies, like perfect weather. Like, cause sometimes I was comparing like the air quality to other like cities like Paris or like. And it was sometimes better than those cities. How do they pull that off? Well, it's a sad story, but they, um, and the, around the surrounding villages around aging, a lot of people usually use coal heating. So they got rid of the coal heating and changed it to natural gas, which is great. So like there's less pollution, but then what happened is I think they ran out of supplies for natural gas. So then some people in the villagers were like freezing throughout the winter, but for people in Beijing were like, oh, this is amazing. But then we always like added another sentence, but it's too bad, you know, it's terrible. What's happening in the villages, but they stopped that project. They stopped like trying to do that. So maybe next year I'll get, once again, all the, you know, the facilities set up, it'll be a bit better, but they, you know, they've done so much in the city too. Just like stopping, like in the hotels, they used to have those coal heaters. Um, the stop, those too. So everyone has electric heating now. That's an amazing, phenomenal.

Okay. Well, anyway, man, it's been a while since I've been to Beijing, we can catch up about that later. Let's let's get into this here. So we all have some kind of inciting event or experience that somehow brought Chinese medicine to our attention. I'm curious to know what your as was.

I'm trying to think, thinking about that since like, you know, you we've been attached. Like I started thinking about it, like, how did I know about Chinese medicine? Like, how was I exposed to it? Or because I grew up in a small town in Canada, just near Toronto, about 40 minutes away from Toronto by car at the time, like very few Chinese people in our town, like in our school, my brother and I were the only Chinese kids there. I wasn't exposed to too much of Chinese culture aside from, with my grandmother. Um, I, I guess obviously my parents too, but the only thing we knew when we're growing up was just like Chinese food. Like that was the only thing we knew about, you know, Chinese cultures is driving every weekend to like the neighboring city. There's this city there called Markin. So we'd go there every weekend. And that was our, like going to have this great Cantonese dinner. That was our best meal of the week, every week for my childhood. So I didn't know much about it, but then, but my dad is a Western medical. And he was interested in acupuncture. So I think he had studied acupuncture in Taiwan for about a month. Like he didn't want those probably like crash courses, like 200 hours of like medical acupuncture. And then he went back to Canada and started, uh, using acupuncture in his clinical practice too. So we actually used me as a Guinea pig for a while, but I didn't, I forgot about that until like, maybe just a few months ago. I remember once my dad also, he, he was with all these other Chinese Canadian doctors had this own little, uh, medical, like a little association of Chinese getting doctors and they, once they invited. Uh, doctor from Russia, Chinese medical doctor from Russia to give a lecture on Chinese medicine. And my dad brought me along. How old were you at that time? Maybe 12. I just remember this maybe like a few months ago too. I was just like, oh, I totally forgot about that. My dad said a Russian doctor says a Russian doctor, so I was expecting, you know, like, like a Russian guy. And then we, we show up to this room and like, I guess someone's clinic. And it was just a Chinese guy and I was like, what? So I guess he was like, I didn't, I didn't click in until maybe now that I've been in China, that he's probably, uh, someone from the mainland who went to Russia to work as a Chinese medical doctor

here at Russia's not that far away from there.

Yeah. So he he'd give this lecture on acupuncture and he did like some massage therapy. And then he did that kind of like the band, like the cracking the neck. And then like, he was like any volunteers for this and then no one put up their hands. And my dad's like, you go ahead. And he just pushed me to the front. I just ran the doctor, just, I was like, what the hell was going on? And he just said, I crack anything on my neck. So that's my only exposure to Chinese medicine.

No. Well, no wonder you suppression that memory.

Yeah. And then, uh, I guess I think growing up in Canada, there are two things. There's one thing. Uh, cause you know, a lot of family members like my dad and my grandmother, both medical doctors. So part of me was when I was growing up was thinking about becoming a medical doctor, but then there's also as influenced by my grandfather. Who's from Shanghai. And when we were growing up, he'd always tell us this fascinating story about China. So there's always a part of me that wanted to get back to my roots and just come to China, travel, like learn the language. Cause there always felt like something was missing. Like especially like growing up in a small town, you always feel like you're not really part of that. Right

now, did you guys speak Chinese at home? Did you pick up Chinese as you were a kid or did that come later?

My mom is. She grew up in Taiwan and Taipei, uh, but her parents are from Beijing and then my dad is from Shanghai, so he grew up speaking Shanghainese, and then he moved to Hong Kong. So he speaks Cantonese and Chinese. My mom was like, my mom would sometimes speak to us in a mixture of Chinese and our Mandarin and English. Well, my dad would just speak to us in English. So my brother and I, we just got into the habit of just speaking to them in English and then listening to my mom, sometimes speaking to Sebastian, very simple Mandarin. Like, did you eat today or how was your poo? She would ask, actually ask us on a daily basis. Of course.

Yeah. Yeah. What took you to China? Did you go to study medicine or you were just going to like, go check it out?

Yeah. I just finished university and Canada and then I was tired of school. I was just like, want to get out. I was like for about five. Yours. I was just dreaming of going to China. Like I was just waiting for that time to finish university and just go to China. I remember my grandfather, the one I was telling you about who would tell us all these stories about his childhood in Shanghai, he was like, why are you going back to China? Like, why are you going there? And he's like, I left China to accept this life where you guys went to Nanjing study. Chinese taught some English on the side and I just loved it. I just loved being in China. What year was that? That was 2002.

Okay. So you're not judging, you're studying Chinese. How'd you get to Beijing?

Yeah, that's a good question. Do I have some friends in Nanjing and they all moved to Beijing and then because my grandparents are originally my other grandparents, my maternal grandparents are originally from Beijing. So I have some relatives there that I'd never met and there's a draw to Beijing. Everyone said, if you wanted to learn Chinese, you should go to Beijing. Like it's like, you should go to Beijing because they speak the best.

Well, if you want to chunk paging plot.

Yeah.

If you want to, if you want to talk like a pirate, go to Beijing.

Yeah. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I was like, okay. BJ and sheriff. So I went there and I loved it. Like I fell in love with this city. It's it's an amazing city.

It is, isn't it?

Yeah. I used to like ride my bike from like ding Shan park, like the Gullo area, the drum tower area to the forbidden city, like right beside the favorite part of city that there's that park, the, um, the junction park. I love that bike ride. Just like password, all these old, like architectures dating back to like the Ching dynasty or Ming dynasty, like the forbidden city and like watching Shan pirate bay high, like high, like all those places I love.

When I was living there, my reward for working hard was studying is on Sunday afternoons. I would go get myself lost somewhere.

Where's your favorite place to go to?

I mean, I would just go to different places. I'd like, look in the map and go, where have I not been? And I would just like ride there directly and then kind of like wander around to get myself a little bit confused and then start writing back. And what I thought was the direction of home and stop and continually ask people for directions as a way to practice my Chinese. Here's what I learned. A lot of people in Beijing have a really crappy sense of direction and they'd be like, you want to go where? And they'd either say, I don't know where that is, which might mean they don't know, or, oh my God, there's a foreigner and I'm terrified. Or they would just tell me anything to make me go away. Right. So they give me like, oh, well you go over here and it's over there and over there. And sometimes I'd be like, no, that's like totally wrong, but. It was, it was always a good adventure. Anyway,

what was your favorite district to walk around it? You

have that whole, whole high area,

just like getting lost

and just going and getting lost in the Hutong. I mean, I would just like head out to who tongs and take photographs and just, just wander around. Oh yeah. There was an area just south of a tenement

10 min area.

Right. And, and was like south of it. I forget the name of it, but it was, it was old. It was like old. Right. And I would just go wander around in there and then, you know, talking to Jason, remember he mentioned a book, uh, midnight in Beijing. Oh yeah, yeah. Right. Which I read fascinating story of a horrific murder and it turned out that that area I like to wander around and it was, it was sorta close to where that book happened. Yeah, but I would just, I mean, I was just walking around to anywhere I would, you know, the whole thing was just phenomenal. I mean, Beijing's huge. And, and I'm going to put in a quick plug for Jason's book. Not only because it's got great stuff about acupuncture, but because he talks about his wanderings around Beijing as well in that book, I mean, you'll get a great tour of Beijing at the turn of the century from a point of view. It's pretty

good. Yeah, definitely. What year were you living in

aging? I was in Beijing, like 2002 to 2003. I think I left in the early part of 2004. Something

like that. That's when I just came to, I think I came to Beijing in 2004.

Uh that's when I was there. And then, and then I was back there again for a few months and then, uh, you know, back to the states. So, but I ended up with a wife in the deal, so

that's perfect.

Yeah. Yeah. I met her in China years ago. Anyway, tell us about how you got involved with Dr. Wong and got involved in medicine.

So around the time, I think it was 2005, 2006. Around that time, I'd be learning Tai Chi. So through that, obviously it got me deeper into Chinese culture. Like I was saying earlier, I was interested in studying medicine, but then the longer I stayed in China, I started thinking, why do I try and Chinese medicine? I don't know why I came up with that. But it seemed like it was a good blend of like learning about Chinese culture and blending some form of medicine. Around that time, I was just, I had a roommate and I was just telling her about these, this idea of possibly saying Chinese medicine and her first week in Beijing, she ended up knowing more people that made she's like very outgoing person. So it turns out like she had a meeting, a person who was studying with Dr. Wall and they became very good friends. So she was like, oh, you should study with my meet my friend's teacher, Dr. Wrong. And I was like, oh, I'm sure the person who introduced me to Dr. Ron is a student from New York. She's a Chinese American Sandra. And she actually a student of. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't pronounce that. Your team's last name. So I'll just say your team, your team G he's like, well, I'm Dr. Mine's senior students. He's a brilliant practitioner is very intelligent practitioner to Dr. Rahman would always say, oh, his is a good brain is a good brain. So Dr. Ron loves, loves your team. I end up going to Dr. Wong's clinic for treatments, and that was my first exposure to meeting doc crawling and. Like acupuncture treatments in, in China. So I remember walking inside it and like, and the doctor would just send it out and feel very comfortable in his clinic. Like had a very like warm feel to it. He gives you this very comforting feeling. You have a lot of confidence in him. Like it's very good, I guess, bedside manners as a practitioner. So I just have like sat down. He's given me the checkup. He did the two 19 treatment on me. Tell us about the do 19 treatment. Do 19. There's the point doctor on uses to treat problems with like, uh, neck issues or back problems, because it's a very good point to relax all the muscles along the, a lot of the spine. So doctor says a country problems relate to the Taiyang channel. So like the Taiyang channel seniors, but also the duke because they do vessel part of its collaterals includes the tie out the fuck. Taiyang there's an interesting story of how Dr. Aun discovered this point. He went to the north Eastern part of China once because a student had just opened up a clinic there, invited him to go up there to treat patients over. When he went there, there's the patient came in with, he was like using this one arm crutch and walked into the clinic. He had a really big limp and the, the patients that, that he's working from stressful, he had the stroke, but since he's recovered from the stroke, but the only issue is that he's, he has, um, sacrilegious syrup, like mainly with his walking. And he said that it felt like on the bottom of this, it's either his right foot or left foot. I can remember. I felt like there's this nail just stuck in the bottom of his foot. So he knew that this patient had received like multiple treatments that other acupuncture clinics in, in the Northeast, if you've ever been to a hospital, China, you know, like when they it's very common protocols just to stick a lot of needles into the patient and like, you know, they just so many different techniques. Right. So, um, doctor, I think he, because he knew this patient already received a lot of probably local noodling noodling along probably legs or the Yangming all these points. So he was just like, okay, cause he's already doing a palpation by that time. So he said, okay, I'll just start palpating. The two. Cause he knows he was a stroke. So he's like, you know, maybe there's something I can find on the head. So he's just started popping the scalp, just working his way up, the two vessel. And then we're right around. Once he got closer to the top of that, he found, felt this really big lump at, uh, he later said was two 19. By the time he didn't know what it was. He said, what is this thing? So, and when he pressed on it, he was like, is it sore? Is it sore? Like Simon sweat? And the picture is like, oh yeah, my foot, it feels better. But that nail doctor was like, okay, I'll just nail this one and see what? So when you need it. So whatever doctor needles, Scott points, he kneels like, uh, he takes one part of his one thumb to press on the point where the needle was inserted. So where the point is acupuncture point is and rubs the scalp downwards. It's kind of like massaging the point while the needle is in the point. And then at the same time, he asked the patient to do certain movements, to like, like for example, strain their back and through that helps like relax all the muscles on the do vessel. And then the, like the seniors of the vessel, you can say it helps raise the young key along the duke festival upwards. And through that, you know, Yankees spreads outwards from the duke vessel, warming the surrounding muscles and tissues, all that all the way up. So then talk to a needle that point you had the patient strain his back and he's doing the wrapping technique. And he said, okay, stop your foot. And so the patient was stomping is like the foot that had like the, the feeling of the nail in it. And then after doing it, the patient's like, oh my God, the pain is gone. Doctor was so busy. Like there are all these people lined up to three patients. So he said, okay, just go outside and walk around and do a few laps and just walk around the yard and then just come back in 20 minutes. So he's busy treating all these patients and I'm like, the guy came back and then he was like, waving the crushes and aware. And it's like, oh my God, I'm fine. I'm perfect. So then through that, then jump towards like, what is this point? So then he had other patients like similar kind of symptoms. So we started using it more and more. And then over time he's he started treating it, using it to treat low back pain. So I think at one point he was calling it like the back pain point. So he thought it was like a special point, like a, not part of like, you know, the normal channel points. So an extra point. So he started kneeling it on a lot of people and it started getting better and better then over time he started to realize, you know what, I actually think this point is due 19 holding. So then it like, so he goes to this huge discussion on how to properly locate the point and how to needle the point and be like stimulus point and how the patient should also do that kind of method. That kind of technique to also strain their back while he's like, uh, massaging the point. And he used that to treat a lot of patients from like patients with like back pain. Uh, but it has to be related to the Taiyang channel or the do. So if it's like back pain or neck pain relate to the shaoyang, then he might use other points, like on the shaoyang channel. So I remember once there's this guy from Columbia and came in and he's like, well, I have this back pain for two days. I don't know what to do. I probably the channel is not talking to changes the needle do 19. And then did that stimulate thing, had the patient strain this back and immediately he was like, oh, I feel so good. And the documents that stand up then, you know, move around. And then a guy is like, I guess he's like Columbia, south America and started like picking sips. And he's like, he was dancing around the room, dancing around and he was loving it. And then like, he left his fine after.

Well, you know, this is such a great example of, you know, using your sense of inquiry first, putting your hands on somebody. It's like, what do you know, what's here? You know, what anything going on here? And then finding something and well, you know, Hey, there's something here. I wonder what this means. I wonder how we might be able to work with it. I mean, it's a great way to learn from your patients about how the body works and about how things show up.

I think doctor always says that his greatest teachers are ours patients. Like I remember there always be students would come here and like talk to him. Who did you study with and Dr. One and be like, you know, he did there while he was in school. He did study with, there were a lot of famous teachers at his school, but he always says like, you know, like his greatest teachers were like his patients. And then obviously he also did a lot of research of the classics because like his patients were his greatest teachers. I'm sure a lot of people feel that the same way. Right.

Absolutely. That's totally the case. You know, the thing that I remember about Dr. Wong, that was very endearing and I so appreciate this about him. He'd run into things and you go, this, this wasn't working. And I remember him talking about like working with different things. He'd say, you know, it took me like 15 years to figure out that, you know, this, I didn't get good results doing, you know, whatever XYZ, you know, I think about it and think about it. And I read and you know, and then eventually I started to notice something in clinic. And realize, oh yeah, actually this is, this is how you use this point. Or actually, you know, you don't treat it this way. You treat it that way. And it would take him years to figure this stuff out. Right. He was very transparent about that.

Yeah. I loved it. I love to have a, he loved the process of learning too, of like testing things out, figuring it out. But he wanted to have like complete, like, I wouldn't say mastery of that point, but like a really strong familiarity of how to use that point or how to treat that specific disease. And then once they grasped it at a good grasp of it, then he would start talking to them about it. But he never talked about things. If he just had a literal idea, maybe I'd like one treatment and it worked, he wouldn't be like, Hey guys, look up. And he's like, you would never brag about it. Like he wanted to get a really firm grasp of it before actually sharing his experiences with.

So from the beginning for you, you have been working with a palpatory based type acupuncture. Is that, is that right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So you were, you were learning from Dr. Wong at the same time you were going to like regular Chinese medicine school at some point

to backtrack again. So I remember when I, after that treatment, like, I really liked the treatment doctor one did on two 19 on me. I loved it so much that I went weekly for weekly treatments. And then I remember just sitting after my treatment, I just sit in the waiting room, just listening to lecture to all of these American students that were there. So like, I that's, when I met like a FIM, I met Jason, I met Nissa, like all these people, like it was a really amazing experience just to hear every lecture. And then like, I didn't understand what he was really talking about. Like the depth of it, like the theory. It was fascinating. And so then later I, I remember asking Dr. I was like, Dr. I'm interested in studying Chinese medicine. Do you think I can do it? And then he asked me. Immediately just asked me how old are you? And I said 26. And then he said, yeah, you can study it. I still don't know what he meant by that, but I was like, okay. And then he's like, where do I go? Where should I go? And he's like, go do that Beijing university of Chinese medicine. That's where I went to school. So that's what I did. And I remember walking into the campus and being like, because it's a small campus. Right. So I remember walking there. I was just like, I can't believe I'm going to be here for like five years. I remember he called me once, like before, right around the time the school started, he was like, okay, first study, study really hard. Your first year, get the foundations of Chinese medicine. Like it's about that good foundation, Chinese medicine. And then after your first year, then you can come to my clinic and start studying with me. So that's what I did.

How lucky for you?

Yeah. I didn't know how lucky I was though. Like I'm so like ignorant of Chinese medicine. I didn't have nothing because talk about the first real Chinese medical doctor I met. Right. So then I thought everyone did help. I thought everyone was like, doctor I'm very meticulous, you know, like feel for points, you know, use these point bear combinations. I thought that's all, everyone practiced in China.

So what was it like for you to be in like, you know, a regular student clinic at the school where they didn't work that way? What was that like for you?

When

Dr. Ron was going to school like that his major was Chinese medicine, and then they studied everything, right? Like herbs, acupuncture, massage therapy, everything in a six-year program. But now in China, it's differentiated into either you do, herps like internal medicine or you do acupuncture in Tijuana for each field. You will study everything in Chinese medicine too, but there's just more of a focus right. In either herbs or acupuncture. So I ended up studying Herb's. That was my name. So in the student clinic was studying with just following a of herbalists like in the gory tongue, they weren't like Dr. Walter was just like, he's very good at describing what he's doing, explaining. He loved teaching students. First of all, he loved to explaining the theory why he was doing what he's doing and explaining it to them. Very clear, my students could learn something. So I would go to the clinic and like, you know, they would just do post-diagnosis mainly and, and then ask questions. And then they see a lot of patients, but they do would leave. Like, not really knowing what just happened. Like I had no clue what I, what was happening, but I thought it was interesting just to see patients, but I don't think I learned much those times during the school clinic

times. And you didn't have a huge amount of acupuncture training in this school. You were mainly doing herbs. You got your acupuncture from Dr.

Yeah, I really enjoyed my experience at the Beijing university of Chinese medicine. I thought getting the foundations and Chinese medicine was essential to actually understanding Chinese medicine, but then at the same time, like finding as much time as I could to spend time with Dr. Ron, like I would go to two times a week at first, sometimes three times a week, just skip classes just to study with them because I realized, you know, like he's a very special doctor. That's why I realized that the more I spent time with him. So I realized that was a very like unique time. And I thought that the time with them would be very limited too. So I was like, I got to take advantage of this because in my back of my mind, I thought I might go back to Canada eventually. So I have to like take advantage of this experience with him. But I thought it was a really good balance of like, I thought I needed what I was learning in school. Also I a study, which I wanted to get, like to understand how to treat patients. I like to diagnose patients, you know, this, a central setting with that.

Well, you know, in, in a student clinic, it sounds like you were mostly an urban clinics. I was wondering what it would be like to be in an acupuncture clinic where maybe they're, they've memorized patterns and they've memorized point protocols. And, you know, that's what they do

when you study Chinese medicine, uh, the universities here, you first, like for the first year or two you're at the school click the gray tab. So it's like, um, outpatient kind of place, you know, this very simple, just, you know, the doc, the patients come in, the herbalist writes a prescription and that's it. But the last few years of your training, you end up going to the hospitals, more the TCM hospitals. And that's a completely different thing because then we ended up, especially the last year or two were mainly in the inpatient wards. So in that case, it's mainly a lot of it. It's like Western medicine and some Chinese medicine depending on doctor. But then once we, in our final year, once we'd start doing some rounds, like the last year and a half, we do rounds in the different departments in the hospitals. So I think I spent like maybe two months or six weeks in a acupuncture, outpatient. And I thought it was really interesting for me. It was interesting to see how they were treating patients, the teacher there, she was really nice and she had really good like needling techniques at that time. I already spent like three or four years with Dr. Wan. So I thought it was interesting just to see how she was diagnosing, just using more like song food diagnosis. How was

that for you? Were there some things that you learned that were useful?

I just like seeing patients, like, I think it's just very useful as the students would be exposed to as many patients as possible. And just to see what other people are trying to see if it works or not. And I thought it was interesting, but she was like, you know, have a patient with, uh, like parsley and then you think it's like, like heart and kidney is not communicating. Then you use like hard seven kidney three or something like that. Or it was interesting from that point of view to use like it's on food diagnosis and not using any palpation. And, but you know, for if they have patients with facial paralysis, they would use points according to the, you know, the child pathways. One thing I remember very clearly though, like why. You should use a childhood patient and why channel placement for palpation is very useful in a clinical setting, because then the hospital is Chinese patients, especially the older, like if you're a Beijing or if you have the Beijing Cuco, you can get, uh, you have healthcare, right. The free healthcare, or it covers like the national health care, which covers a large percentage of your treatments. So people could come for frequent treatments like daily. Some people come every two days, one lady would come every day for her needle. And then Bagwat like, thirds are coming on her, but there's this one lady I remember she was coming every day for shoulder treatment, shoulder vein, like frozen shoulder. And for like two weeks for the entire two weeks, I was there like every day. And then I thought like, this treatment must be working so well. Like she goes, she's coming every day. So I asked her like, by like the second week I was like, how's your shoulder? Like. I was like, you mean it's better? Was like, no, it was exactly same as it was when she first went there, she had nothing changed. And then that floored me. I was just like, cause the doctor, like every time the patient would come in, like, cause the doctor was really dizzy. Right. She'd be talking to the patient and then need only the patient, like all pretty similar. Obviously it was like, like her diagnosis was occurring within like a minute or two minutes. Like it was so quick, the patient's laying down. She was like, oh you have this, this how's, this how's your sleep today. Okay. How's that? And then like, uh, so this patient has shoulder pain. I was like, oh my God. Cause like, by that time I started like three or four years with Dr. I was like, if this was Dr. Wong, he would've known within like within two to three treatments. If the treatment's not working, he would've repopulated the channels and refund because his approach changed his approach and then probably would have used other points or other channels. So that was shocking for me actually,

you know, it's useful to get a, a different point of view that way.

Yeah, it was, I think I was lucky. Like the doctor I followed with it at that school hospital was, I thought she was actually very nice. And it was, I learned a little bit, I think I know there were other doctors there that did other techniques where they would just needle points along their entire, like, if it's a Yangming channel issue, they would need to like the majority of the Yangming channel points, just like a line of needles along the yummy channel room. But I don't know the theory behind it, but

I don't know. That sounds a little bit like carpet bombing.

Yeah. But then I just, then I, you know, the more I was exposed to other clinical practitioners, the more I realized how lucky I was to be sitting with Dr. Yeah. You sort

of lucked out. How do you go about developing a palpatory language? How do you go about getting your hands on people and learning to make sense of what you're feeling. I mean, this is this, isn't something that you pick up in a book. This is something that you pick up in your own experience and being able to pay attention in a particular kind of way. How do you go about developing that kind of thing?

So the way I learned it was mainly just through just like observation, just spending time with Dr. Wrong. I think you just, somehow you absorb it over time. Like if you see I'm treating so many patients that you absorb certain things that you, you realize about, he's paying attention to when he's palpating the channels. And then like over time, you know, this was like a nine year period of time. That things start to make more sense over time. And that's when, once you start applying it in your own clinic, then things start to click a bit more. The first thing first step is to just understand what are channels, right? And then once you have understand what channels are, and then you just start to Pele in those spaces that Dr. Warren talks about, he likes to call them the channels are in the folksy, like in the crevices and the spaces between the different tissues. So as long as you're palpating in those like channel space, And you've put all of your attention into like your, we use our thumbs when we probably aren't you, the tips of your thumbs over time. Like the more you do it, you will end up quite immediately to a lot of people can, you can start feeling changes, right? Like novels or like lumps or like sticks or like grainy feelings. What's great about Jason's book that he did with Dr. Wong is just reading about the channel chief transformation and just continuously reading. and what happens when there's a pathology and they, you start to see different patterns, I think, hello, this is Jason Robertson. I hope you're enjoying the show. As I said earlier, I want to talk a bit about one particular area that you can palpate to get some insights into low back pain patients. Uh, as some of you may know if you've seen the book that I worked on applied channel theory with my teacher wants you. You there's a lot in there about palpating, the distal channels to get information about things that are upstream in the body. And often with low back pain patients for me, I have difficulty differentiating between Taiyang and shaoyang type, especially those two for low back pain, hip pain patients. I think, you know, And so I'm palpating down on the distal foot, you know, between bladder 65, going back towards bladder 62. And in this area, I want to say just a bit about one point at the moment. You'd be 63. And on quite a few patients with back pain, you'll find what feels like a road bump there. Like your thumb will go over a thickening, kind of a with Dr. Wong called a law. So a collateralized nodule there, but it's a road bump is another way to put it. And it will almost always be on the same side as their complaint. When you find that, then take your hand up and check their sacroiliac joint and that area. And if those two are lining up, then you're probably on to a Taiyang type back pain. So if that kind of information is interesting to you, we have lots more like that in the book that Dr. Wong and I worked on applied channel theory in Chinese medicine, and that comes from Eastland press and you can get it at. So I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. I love hearing Michael ask his curious questions and let's get back to his infectious curiosity.

Yeah. So for those who don't have the benefit of having hung out with Dr. Wong, and maybe you want to start introducing some channel palpation into their work. Talk to us a little bit about how, how they might get started. I mean, you were talking about really knowing what a channel is and then how you approach it with your hands. Could you give us kind of a, a channel palpation 1 0 1 from, from your point of view,

like what I've accounted? So many students, like people who have been using dark bronze techniques, some people would read-write Jason's. And then there was started trying it out in their clinical practice. And some people are, I think there, it did figure some things out about how to do palpation. They did a good job. Like a lot of people, they end up taking like seminars with Jason or like your theme or like Nisa or any of the other students. Cause usually when we do seminars, we do like hands-on, our practice is really teaching how to feel the palpation, because I think that's very useful. Like what I found that when I was studying this, just having Dr. Wrong, like tell me like, this is an audio and like, feel it and that you feel it. And you're like, Aw. Then it makes sense. First of the most important thing is to understand what our channels, like, we have to understand what are these spaces that we're palpating. Cause I think in Chinese medicine, at least when I was in school, I had some teachers that said channels do not exist. Right. They're just a name like recently I met a bunch of doctors and I asked what are channels? And they're like, oh, they're, you know, this is a place where and blood flows. And I said, so, um, can you feel these channels? So like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't feel. Then, how do you know that there are places where the blood flows, like where is the champ blood flowing? And there's just an abstract concept. And then I was just starting with, well, you know, based on the doctor wants an understanding of the channels, basically, which is based on what he like from his readings of the classics, like the aging of the link shoe, you know, you know, we say that the chancellor on the spaces. So once you get this idea, it's a very simple concept, channels are in the spaces. So once you start putting your hands or you can use some people like using their index fingers, we always use our thumbs, but once you start gliding or into those spaces and just going up it and just like, same, like an even pressure, just gliding up along the channel space because are feeling certain changes and fascinating. Cause over time, like the more you do it, you start to record certain patterns like you realized, for example, uh, when you're traveling along the London, Like, obviously like people with like lung channel changes and they might have problems with like respiratory issues, right? Like cough or things like that. But some people we find like, if you feel a lump around lung six, not everyone, but some people, if they feel a lump around lung six, sometimes they have like hemorrhoids. Like the patient might never tell you about that. But once you feel that lump, sometimes I ask the patient, do you have hemorrhoids? And were like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. I just had a patient today where I asked Laura where that happened. Like she was like, yeah, I'm like, I'm pretty healthy. Overall. I just had poor sleep. And I had pal theater challenges. She had changes on every channel so that once, while you're palpating, you start to feel more changes. And then you can start asking like related questions and then you get confirmation. So it was quite interesting where like that patient, she had all these lung channel changes, but you know, this big lump that lung six. And I was like, oh, so do you have hemorrhage? She was like, yeah. Yeah. And like feeling changes long are like, for example, pericardium channel and like a big lump around TC four. I was like, do you have a feeling of pressure in your chest? Oh yeah. Pressure in my chest. So you always feel these really interesting things that I, it really makes like the theory of Chinese medicine, but easier to understand. That's why I found like he started palpating people because actually you feel like a person, I was like spleen deficiency, and then add spleen three. You can feel like sometimes it's like a deep, like empty depression. Some people might have a little naughty all there. And that's fascinating where she

find that. I mean, these are fascinating things. And I was talking to Jason the other day and he, he was mentioning how, when you're down at the feet, if you palpated around you be 63 and you find a, he calls it a speed bump. Often there's an issue in the sacroiliac joint. Right. You can ask about, uh, back pain and that kind of thing. So it sounds like you've got a number of places where you'll you'll palpate. You'll go, oh, there's something here. And for you, that means something right. The lung six with the hemorrhoids pericardium, six chest pressure. Are there any other, I would say, you know, big, heavy hitter things that like stand out to you. Oh, if you feel this inquire

about. But Dr. Always says when, when we do pal channel palpation, usually we're palpating like friends for diagnosis. So when we're doing that, we usually are palpating from, for example, the arms, like on this, the hand in channels we've helped. They usually just from the source points to the Hersey points. So from like lung nigh to lung five on the young channels, uh, we usually help a further down, for example, from large intestine, uh, three. And we'll probably up to the large intestine 11 on the feet. Usually we palpate, like for example, the spleen channel from like spleen three, up to spleen nine, like the liver channel from liver to up to liberate. So usually we go, the furthest, we go is up to the, to the elbows and knees. But Dr. Wise says, he says sometimes some people try to focus too much on each individual change and what he likes to do, he likes to look at things like big picture. So for example, say you populate a person's channels and they only have lung channel changes and spleen channel changes who sat at the setback and think for. How has the challenge he's transformation of the lung explain like the TaiYin channel system. How is this related to the patient's, uh, condition? So I'll give an example. Like recently I had a patient who was from France. She was a horseback riding coach. She's been horseback riding coach for like 30 years. And she, she looks like a cowboy. Like she had like strong hands, like huge hands, like, and like, just the way she walked. Like you could tell she like spent a lot of time, spends a lot of time outdoors, like really strong lady. And then, uh, but she had all these drunk pains, right? Like shoulder pain, knee pain, ankle pain. So even though I was treating her joint pain, she had, at the same time I populated her her channels and she had all these like long channel changes and spleen channel changes. Like, so I was asking questions that we usually ask like, oh, like, uh, do you have bloating? You know, like, cause we say the tiny town is related to dampness. Right. So. When I found all these, like, changes, like bloating your stuff. It's like, no, do you have heaviness in your legs? No. Say all these centers, like then what could her problems be? Like, why are these she has, why does she have all these like tiny town changes? Like, like all these lumps, like from like spleen six, all the way to splay nine. So why does she have that? So then I asked, because we know that the Taiyang channel is related to, in terms of the external climactic T I guess, how do they say it in English? So that the little tea, like climactic tea or some people say environmental GTA. I think

you could say it either way.

Okay. So we know that the tiny channels related to deafness, so, which was interesting. So that was like, okay, so you you've been living in France all your life, so which city are you living in? And she mentioned it as like, what's the climate there. Like she says, it's very depth. She's like, and she said, it's unbearably damp. And then she said, and I was like, oh really? And they said, when it gets really depth, then all of her joint pain gets. I imagine that. Yeah. So that, for me, that was awesome. I was like, that's perfect. So then, like, it's just shows that like, you know, the tiny channel, we say it regulates stiffness in the body. And for me, that just confirms so much of what we, they say in the classics.

Yeah. So, so in this case, it wasn't her digestive system necessarily. It's just a systemic issue with dealing with dampness happens to settle on her joints.

Yeah. Yeah. We have a Facebook agent, Jason shared, uh, one of his clinical cases about treating a person with, um, uh, demon, the legs, and then using like Yangming child points to treat that. But you know, usually when we see people with the demon, the legs, and we think it's a tiny channel, it's very clearly related to dampness, right? Like it's actually, you can physically feel and see the dampness. And if you populate the channels, you can feel changes too on like the tiny towns. So that case it can be very clear too. Right? So like there's so many things with, uh, uh, town hall patient that you can find that. Uh, once you think like big picture, I recommend, like, if you say, for example, tiny jails relate to dampness, like it's related to water metabolism. So if you ever see any patients with problems with like water metabolism, one of the channel systems that you can consider as the Taiyang channel, but we need to confirm is it actually the tiny child that's involved and we confirmed through

palpation because it could be the kidney channel or it could be the urinary bladder channel. I mean, there's different, right? So it's a way of dialing in where is that a DEMA coming from? And then

if you start thinking like what illnesses can be related to deafness and it's like a huge range of them, right? Like from skin disorders to like Adima to like, you know, like bloating, we say to digestion issues to like, um, like so many things I can find like gynecological issues, like so many things, but then at the same time grasping earlier is that sometimes like over time, the more you palpate it, then overtime you, based on your clinical experience, you start to notice certain patterns, like certain things, just stick out a bit more at certain. I wouldn't say it's like a, like a direct relationship, but sometimes you'll find that, oh, for example, Dr. Wong says the heart channel is related to the endocardium and the valves of the heart. So like, like mitral valve and tricuspid valves and also like the, um, the conductivity of the heart. So sometimes we noticed like people, if they have like, like a problems with like the mitrovalve, like mitrovalve like stenosis, or like, it's not like regurgitation, it's not closing properly. Sometimes you can feel like changes at like the heart seven area or something. Yeah. I've heard of people

that do certain kinds of pulse diagnosis. They'll diagnose it through the pulse, which is right, right in that

area. So like, those are like, sometimes we'll just help like that. And like, the patient might not tell you about this issue with their heart, but then once you feel that, and you're like, why do you have this like, really thick thing here? And then, then you ask, well, do you have a problem with like your heart? And like, oh yeah. Like, you know, you know, I like rubber, tired, uh, arthritis and like the heart, like when I was younger, So it's quite, it's quite fascinating. Yeah.

So you said when you're palpating in that area, it's kind of thicker,

I a counter patient with this issue for a while, but yeah, sometimes it felt like a thicker kind of like stick your FEMA. Doesn't like to use the word a terminology stick. He likes to call it more like spaghetti or a noodle, like a thick noodle in that area. I actually, my dad who has like, um, the heart muscle, he has like a hole, like in between the two chambers to the chambers in the heart muscle. So he actually has like that kind of stick, like a fixed stick actually on his PC seven. And doctor one says the pericardium channels relate to the cardiac muscles,

especially right there by the wrist is found.

So like, yeah. So I think over time you start to pick up things like, just like, for example, some people, uh, specialize more in treating certain issues like Dr. Wong has a student here and apprentice here, uh, Dr. and she specializes in doing, treating children with a channel theory channel system. So she has picked up so many, so much, like information, like knowledge, just based off of experience of treating patients with, like, for example, constipation, we see the different patterns of constipation. I think over time you start to feel similar changes on the campus and gradually you start to develop and understanding what these changes might. So it

sounds like what's helpful is just put your hands on people continually put your hands on. People, pay attention, look for

patterns. Yeah. And also just continually read about like what channel theory is like, what his challenge, his transformation. One thing I like to do, like much, whether I have nothing to do, like if I'm just walking around or I'm in like the buses or like somewhere, like you start to think about, like, we talked about the Taiyang channel system, the drain channel system, the shine Genesis and like the Yangming shaoyang Taiyang. So when, once you start thinking about the channels, like channel systems, and what I like to do is start to start thinking about why are there long channels and spleen channels put into the tiny channels? Why is the pericardium channel and liver channel paired into the drain tile system and so on and so forth. And then once you start to understand why they're put together, why they have this kind of synergistic relationship, I think things start to make a bit more sense, especially clinically and also helping you to interpret what you're finding is some

health patient. So when you talk about channel chief transformation and you're talking, I mean, when I hear you say things like the tie in the Dre in the Yangming, that kind of thing, I mean, you're basically talking about, you know, what, here in English we think of as like the six levels or the six confirmations. So when you say you're thinking about channel chief transformation, what do you mean by that? What do you mean about the transformation between these different levels? What are you thinking

about? So just again, I'll go back to the Taiyang channel system. So like Dr. Mani talks about the, you know, the channels, like he, he says the channels can not be separated from their related song or food. Right. Like they're inseparable, like the, the, the channels help carry out the functions of the, the Oregon. So the on for Oregon's are the source. Whereas the, uh, the channel systems that word, like all the physiological processes occur in the body. So like, for example, let's talk about the Taiyang channel system. Like, how do we understand what the system is? For example, we say the lung, what does the lung do? We say governance cheat. And we know that through respiration, like moving sheet outwards and downwards helps regulate the movement of T outwards and downwards. And the same time we say that the, the lung channel like Dr. Lori loves to say the governance of the rhythms of the body. How does it govern? The rhythms is probably also through its functions of respiration. And I think that's why, you know, like Chico works. Because it helps right. By all the organs, right? Like they're probably people practice, she go and then like, while they're doing it suddenly, like, you know, their, their stomach starts to girdle, right. It starts to make noises or like, uh, Dr. Would have patients and they would have like, um, heart palpitations. And sometimes he would not use the heart channel, but instead if he found a change at lung nine and he thought it was related to the lung channel, he might just use lung nine to treat the heart palpitations. And that's related to the lungs, uh, relationship with regulating the rhythms of the body. Whereas the spleen though, the spleen channel, we say that it regulates, you know, the transportation transformation right. Takes like the nutrients that the stomach absorbs and helps to spread these nutrients throughout the body. But then how does it spread these nutrients throughout the body? It requires like the lunchy. So the lung. It helps move all these nutrients throughout the body, to the skin, to the muscles, to all the different organs. So they have this very close kind of synergistic relationship. So what happens if there's something with like lung QI deficiency or spleen sheet efficiency? So is there a problem with like, um, the water metabolism? So probably with like regulating dampness in the body, then that can lead to a lot of issues. And a lot of, like, for example, we were saying earlier, like at DEMA to like eczema, to like respiratory issues, to like bloating to D uh, all of these things, even some, uh, gynecological issues like asthma amenorrhea, things like that. When you palpate you find changes on these channels and then you can regulate the tiny channel help with this movement, like moving along T and through that also moving like, you know, the spleen nutrients throughout the body too. And then once you help the tiny child regain its balance, then you know, things seem to fall into place.

Yeah. Any of the channels you could apply this kind of thinking too, you could apply this sort of inquiry

to definitely, definitely. Cause then what's like why I find it so useful is that once you start to like understand or try to think about it, like why they're in the system together and pair together in the system that helps so much clinically it's so useful that it takes time. Like, I would say that it took me a number of years to actually really understand it. And you have to use it on your patients. What helped with me actually like, um, like studying with Dr. Ron for all the, like the like four or five years at first. And then like, we may, we may, and I went to talk to this other American students. We helped them on compiling a bunch of his case studies. So analyzing those case studies was very useful for me. Like once I started actually sitting down writing about these case studies, like why Dr. Oz selected those boys? Why did he select those channels? Then things start to click that more. Yeah.

The case studies are great. So the jury in channel. To me is a little mysterious. It's. I mean, it's one of those channels where I kind of look at and I, and I kind of come up in my head and I kind of go tilt. It's one of those things. That's just, I don't know. I haven't really dialed it

in. And then I know, I totally know what you mean. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'd love to get your riff on the Dre in channel in the way that you just talked about the tie in channel. Of course, granted your idea about it may change as you get more clinical experience, but I'd love to get your take on it at this moment

in time. Okay. This is also basically, you know, all the discussions with Dr. All the lectures from Dr. Raza. I will simplify it very briefly. So Patreon channel, we say it's related to the pericardium and the liver, right? It's a pericardial channel of liver channels together. So the pericardium it's very important. Like how does Dr. Wong understand what the pericardium channel or what is the pericardium. So, this is also again where it goes back to when you're matching, you have to put your hands onto your page. It's a feeling things. So over time doctor, when I started to realize that the pericarp channel is related to the muscles of the heart and also related to the coronary heart vessels. So that's once he, he started having this understanding of the heart, like the pericardium as relates to the heart muscles and related to the cardiac heart vessels, that really changed his understanding of how I think how the drain channel works. Cause then there's another saying in like the chapter 10 of these spiritual pivot, the link shoe, where they say that, uh, the pericardium governs illnesses related to the vessels in the body. So Dr. Lime, like he would just say, okay, so the pericardium, we say it's really to the heart muscle. And then, okay. So if it's a pair of garners related to treating problems with the festivals, then we could say the pair of comments relate to this whole blood vessel system and the body. I remember a long time ago, I went to the, in Beijing, there's this museum of natural history. And they, this whole like, like a warehouse of like, of like just anatomy and then what, like specimen, I guess you could call it up like a body scan, no muscles, no bones, no nerves. And just the blood vessels. I just had that picture in mind. I was like, oh, and that maybe is that the pericardium channel system, does that include that? So what is the liver then? The liver chances and what is the liver? So for him, the liver is a place like, we always say it stores bladder, right. But for Dr. Ron, it's not like a passive storage of blood. What happens when the blood enters the liver and is purified, it's like filtered and purified and it's detoxified. And then we say the liver, because it's the general acid, then assign that blood to all parts of the. And how does that blood get transported throughout the body and needs the PA through the per card? And these, the heart beating of the pumping of the heart, Jesus force it throughout the body. What is even more fascinating is when document starts talking about the San Jiao, right? This the shaoyang, why is the shy, unrelated to the drain? The drain has more related to, like, we can say the purification by the feeling of blood, you know, that re maintain the quality of blood, but also moving the blood throughout the body. But at the same time, if that's an interior exterior parents trip with the shaoyang that want to understand the shaoyang is more late to this understanding of this NGO triple burner. Right? So for Dr. Wong, I'll just say very simply that, uh, for him, his understanding of the sand gel, that he believes is related to a lot, the memories of the body, like all the different connective tissues, all these different membranes, I guess people right now are really excited. And the TCM world about talking about the interstitium. So maybe that's that could possibly be included in the San Diego SIS. I don't want to say anything, uh, clearly clear kind about that in Chinese medicine, we say that Sandra is also the, like the pathway for source sheet, right. And the source she originates from the kidney. And then it has two pathways. It either goes to the Taiyang to the exterior of the body, or it goes through the San Jo and transports throughout the body for Dr. Ron, he always says, okay, so the sand gel is related to the membrane. And he was like, he always asked the students when they were listening to this class, he'd be like, so where are the memories? The memories are everywhere, right? There are over, around all of them, the muscles around all the different tissues of the body. So if this is where she's going to get like memories going all throughout all the parts of the body, all traps is in the body. But at the same time, which are the dreams related to like the pericardium is related to the best, right? We can say the shaoyang is related to like the cheap movement of tea in the body. Whereas the drain is related to like the circulation of blood, but also the maintenance maintenance of like. So that's why we can say why that drain and ShaoYin are paired together. It's kind of like a and blood kind of relationship

totally makes sense when you listen to it that way, doesn't

it. You know, this is over the countless discussions with Dr. Wentz, seeing him using a class, analyzing his cases, and then I'm on my own treating patients, not knowing what was going on, but just trusting what I was doing with palpation and overtime. You gather all this information and you start seeing the patterns you start saying, oh, this is a patient. You know, like we say, the drains relate to circulation blood, right. Main is the blood. But then what are some of the main illnesses that we see relate to the drain? It's like blood stagnation, right. Or blood deficiency. Right. And what's interesting when we talked about the drain, I forgot to mention is that we say the drain relates, which environmental cheat is it related to it's related to wind. But usually when we talk about wind in the clinical setting, usually when is related to like the Taiyang or Taiyang. Rarely do we see like external wind relate to the drain? I think,

oh no. We think we think of it more as an internal wind that comes from the jury yet. Right,

right, right. Right. So then that's what Dr. Is like, but clinically we see that a wind is usually that internal wind and the drain. So maybe we could say something's bled deficiency. Right. So people have like ticks or twitches or, you know, things like that. Or like moving pain, like that wind pain. It's quite interesting. So like for the, all, a lot of the illnesses we see relate to the drain. A lot of times it could be like blood deficiency or blood stagnation, uh, and even like a lot patients, doctors, and also Metro, a lot of patients with like varicose veins, he believes that the root of the problem with varicose veins is related to the drainage system because of blood stagnation. Yeah. Like just the blood disaster circulating properly. Or he also says that what we're saying early, right? Like the pear Carter's were like, let's the pop, like it moves the blood. So the blood is not moving properly in the body. At the same time, we said the pericardium was related to the vessels in the body doctor also pleasing. Or like we say that the. The liver governance, the sinews and the body. So you could kind of almost see like these, these blood vessels kind of like us in YouTube, like the varicose veins to like, like the valves in it. So he says it's related to the blood sick nation to

wow. How so? How would he treat

varicose veins? So the varicose vein patients we've I saw him treated, there may be not too many, like three or four. Uh, so a lot of people we had they'd have symptoms related to the varicose vein. So sometimes they have problems of like swelling in the legs. Like the legs would feel very heavy and swelling. So Dr. Ron was not a proponent of just bleeding the life vessels. Cause I think in China is very popular. There's some places where they just have people just stand on like newspaper and then just bleed all of the varicose veins and Gorge Veys and just let it, the blood just trickle down the legs. Dr. Ron thinks that doesn't treat the root of the problem. So for his patients, he would use like depending on palpation and again, it goes back to palpation. I remember very clear there are two patients. So one patient he found based on palpation. Yeah, varicose veins for a number of years. And doctor will mainly use the drainage channel system or during channel points and the patient had drain shallow changes. So I think he used points like liver eight and TC three. He might've used liver three, two, or liver five. I don't remember it, but it was, he would use like a same name, channel point pair combinations like PC three and liberate probably is the main point pair of combination he would use to help regulate the drain house system, help move the blood in the body and the patient over time, he got much better. Like he used to like take a plane and you have so much pain in his legs. Or he would go to like a place of high altitude. He went like Tibet arching high and he had pain. Like he wouldn't be able to walk for a long period of time. But after those streams, he was fine. But like the varicose veins were still there. Like you could see that there was still a fair cause phaser. And then Dr. Ron did say, they said, if this patient continues the treatments, cause the patient felt so much better. The symptoms bothering them were improved is like, I'll use like funneling. Um, firstly, I never saw use that for that another patient, they will also add varicose veins and her main issue was also like bloating heaviness in the legs, but she had mainly tying and drain channel symptoms or a channel changes. So he used like, again, PC three liberate as a main point pair combinations, but he added spleen nine. And again, her symptoms that heaviness in the lakes also got much better too. Um, recently I treated a patient also with varicose things like, and he actually had like one of those like, um, ulcers, like varicose ulcers on his like ankle around like liver four area. And he had it for about two years. He was getting Western medical treatment, but then he, it was related to like his varicose fancy, like he had varicose veins for a number of years. Like he was always going to very cold climate. So his blood circulation was really bad. So I remember I was just like health patient again has made liver channel change. He also had signs of like, we would say blood stagnation or like stagnation, the drain channel, and one very common symptom of if you have like stagnation and like the drain channel, sometimes stagnation can lead to heat. If there's heat, it can lead heritability or anger. So he had a lot of anger too, like at the tip of his tongue was bad. Cause entire tongue was like, purple. So I just thought that's like, let's say Ignation. So I just use based on validation, I use like PC three and liver eight as a main point. And I added like liver five to, and over the course of their treatments, like, uh, like once a week for a month or two a month or so like six weeks, he's like, oh my legs don't feel as bloated anymore. They actually shrunk in size. Like they used to feel like we were all like, oh my God, am I even the color of his legs? I changed. They're always, at first they're always this kind of like pasty yellow look. And then over time it just became a more pale, like as normal complexion. And then also he was like, and look at me, look at my foot. And we all looked at his face. He like in the past, like the veins, like the normal things on his feet, like you couldn't see. But over the course of the streams, they started to appear. So for me, that was an amazing, I was like, oh my God, like Dr. Mom is right. Like, like gold, like clinical practice now is to like, just prove everything I learned with Dr. Wong is right. And then like just testing it out and testing out. And then each time I do that, I'm like, oh my God, like, I'm reproducing what Joshua was doing. And for me, that shows like this is working, this stuff works,

works well. And then it lays a foundation. So as you continue to gather clinical experience, you'll find things on your own. I mean, we all do, right. So things that show up again and again, and we go, wait a minute. I, I I've seen this,

but there are two things. I remember when Dr. Juan was talking about his clinical practice. Like when he first started studying Chinese medicine, started using Chinese medicine. At first, he was treating patients based on the textbook methods. You know, the port protocols. Then once he found that it wasn't that effective, he started going back to the classics. He started memorizing a lot of those acupuncture. And then over time, like those, those Poincare combinations and those bones were useful, but not always useful, but he's like, there's something missing. Like maybe my diagnosis is not correct. Then he went further back to the classics and then he started reading about, you know, channel theory, channel palpation, all this stuff. And then he, he said in the 1960s, early sixties, he published one article for his hospital about the treatment of migraines, this one who was like in his mid twenties or something. But after that, he never wrote for like a 20 year period. He didn't publish anything else. Cause all he did was he, he just focused up for 20 years just researching and developing applied channel theory. And then once he had this firm grasp of it, is that okay now I can like, I'm confident that this works and I'm going to, I can share this with people. So like that's how patient he was to do. That is amazing because. In modern society. I don't think people would do that, right?

No, I, you know, I think so often you want to go to a weekend workshop and then on Monday you're like almost a master, you know? I mean, w w when I hear you talk about Dr. Wong doing this, and, and I've heard some of these stories too, and some of the time that I've sat with him, I mean, for me, it's very inspirational because Dr. Wong became a master, but he became a master by being a really hardworking journeymen for a long, long, long, long time. Your work it in, in, you look at the stuff that doesn't work yet. And, and you go back and you try to puzzle it over and you don't get it in a weekend and you don't get it in a year. In fact, maybe you start to dial it in after a decade. This, you know, it takes a long time to learn

this stuff. Definitely does. I remember I was talking to Dr. Wang's wife recently, we call her Shemu. She's just, he always, she always loves telling us, you know, Dr. Wan he never watched it. One TV show in his. The moment you go home, like you would just start reading. Like he was always reading. He always was reading something. And then she said like at night when they put the kids to bed, like if they lived in a really small apartment, um, he had two children's has two children and he didn't have like an office to study it. So he would take this like cutting board and put it over the sink. When I pull out his books and just sit there all night, just reading, just reading and researching, writing all into like the, you know, the early hours of the morning. He's like another student. She always has retails this story too. She's like talk to my mom, always told me that before going to bed, he'd have his book and he'd be lying down, reading a book. And then first thing you know, is just going to read and then go to sleep. And then he read something and he'd get more fascinated, more inches of books. So they stood up in the. And then gradually he sit onto the edge of the bed and gradually moved to his desk and just, just keep on reading until like three, four in the morning. And that was his day. And then he'd like go to sleep for a few hours to go back to work and like, repeat just like that, the curiosity in his wine and like never, just always fascinated by it. And I think Jason mentioned this also in like, in your discussion with them, like even up until then, like he was still thinking about Chinese medicine, all like constantly, like that was him. That was his life, his passion.

Well, I appreciate you taking the time today to share some of your experience, your clinical experience and your experience, getting to study with this amazing teacher that we had. It's so sad that he's gone and we're so lucky to have the time with him that we did.

There's one thing I wanted to add was that like, if it's not working, like if what I'm doing clinically is not working, I never blame the theory. I never blame hesitation or I never blame channel theory. I always blame myself for not properly. So then what I say is I have to like, maybe my approach was wrong. So I reevaluate my approach and they repopulate the channels. Now I've realized that if you really stick to it over time with each individual patient over time, if they're patient with you too, you know, over time, you can figure it out. And palpation is like your guide in the clinic. Eventually help you figure it out.

That's great advice, John. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Um, I'm inspired to get to clinic this afternoon and uh, I mean, I always love getting my hands on people anyway, but it's just, it's so wonderful to be able to have a conversation like this and just be reminded and reinvigorated about it.

I don't know if you know this, but like in August 5th is the one-year anniversary of Dr. Rollins passing. That's crazy. That's already been a year. As you know, it's inspiring for me that Dr. Williams knowledge can still be passed on to future generations and that people are still interested in studying this. One of the last few conversations I had with Dr. Long is one of his fears. He actually has told me that. I'm afraid that you're after, you know, but this will not continue. Like, like his legacy will not continue. Now. I kept downtown. I was like, don't worry, Dr. Long, like, there are people want to study this. People will learn this. And then he felt, he was like, just not as soon as I go. Okay.

That's great. Well, you're part of that and I appreciate your efforts.

Okay. Thanks. And, uh, yeah, thanks again. It was a good, it was nice talking to you. Um, hopefully you're gonna have more conversations in the future. I think we're gonna need to do this again. Maybe we can do it on the, you were saying at the topos where Badatu, we can have like a cup of tea. You can bring your microphone and we'll just sit on like this temple and just talk.

I love it. Let's get that figured out.