I still remember the moment when I realized that the character for Listen in traditional written Chinese was composed of the characters for Ears, Eyes, and Heart. Twenty two little strokes that unambiguously describe what is required to genuinely listen.

Deborah Woolf has spent the past year teaching a course on basic Chinese for East Asian medicine practitioners. And while the content of her course is of interest to me, in this conversation what I’m more focused on is what it is that she’s learned in the past year from teaching this material.

Often enough at the beginning of a sea change, you don’t know what’s coming next. You’re already part of a current, a flow, and while you can steer within current, you’re caught up in a flow that is beyond your capacity to fully understand.

In this conversation with Malvin Finkelstein we take a trip in the Wayback Machine to 197xx and his first encounter with acupressure, acupuncture and the potency of nutrition. We visit the early years of acupuncture education, the challenges of making a living when most states did not offer licenses to practice acupuncture, and crafting of standards and valid testing that would become the foundation for licensure.

The transport points are rich in story, function, connection and seem to have a capacity for engaging qi in profound ways as it flows from the tips of the fingers and toes, up to the elbows and knees. Lou points are particularly interesting as they both connect yin and yang channels.

In this conversation with Sean Tuten we investigate the capacity of the luo channels to act as a first defense against overwhelming experiences that come from the outside. How they both protect against and can storage pathogenic influences. More importantly, the kind of treatment that removes these obstructive influences.

East Asian medicine is a nature based medicine. And nature… nature is weird, and mysterious. And as much as we like to come up with “Laws of Nature” they are more like approximations. Useful for sure. But you’re asking for trouble if you confuse the map with the territory. And with nature, the territory is always changing. How do you keep your senses open and unencumbered with habit and belief? How do you stay present to what your patient might need in this particular moment? How do you wisely use knowledge in such a way that it doesn’t become dogma?

In this conversation with Edward Neal we discuss understanding nature’s patterns through East Asian medicine, the impact of technology on human consciousness, and how the Nei Jing helps us to map our way through nature and healing.

The story of the blind men exploring the elephant is alluded to often enough that it’s easily dismissed as cliche. And yet, the profound truth of how our senses and meaning making influence of our mind are worth pausing to consider.

In this conversation with Jason Robertson and Stephen Brown we consider the 理 Li, the patterning or connective coherence that runs through creation. As acupuncture and East Asian medicine are pattern languages, this concept touches on the core of our work.