Qiological Podcast

There’s a moment, in the slack tide between one flow and another, when a potent stillness arises, and the possibility of a new direction arrives with a feeling of invitation. It’s like standing on the threshold of a dream.
We share this conversation with Gregory Done as we metamorphize from the Wood Snake to the Fire Horse. What’s in store as we enter a year of unmitigated Fire? Where is caution advised and where do you double down with the creative energy of the Horse?
Listen into this conversation as we explore time-as-qi, what a dramatic handoff between years can do to the psyche; cautions around giving free rein to the unbridled “sovereign fire” of the Heart, and how discipline shapes intensity into something useful.
If you’ve felt the past year pulling you inward, you’re not alone. In this conversation we discuss the natural inclination to come back out—into action, into contact, into the bright problem of more momentum than you’re accustomed to. Saddle up!

In clinical work pattern and intuition inform each other, treatment decisions arise somewhere between what we can measure and what we can only sense. This episode investigates that in-between space, where “knowing” as a human and the patterning of Large Language Models merges in uncanny ways.
Vanessa Menendez-Covelo has been a guest on the podcast and recently she’s been exploring the ever changing frontier of AI, as both a former computer scientist and actively practicing acupuncturist.
Listen into this discussion as we explore how AI “hallucinations” might be creative sparks of fertile imagination; what a tongue-reading machine in a café might mean for diagnosis; the uneasy line between health equity and surveillance; and why shame, not ignorance, may be the real barrier to better care.

What if “failure” was just expectations being uncomfortably rewritten by reality?
In this conversation with Neal Sivula we discuss the experience of failing forward—what it actually looks and feels like when you’re a practitioner, a clinic owner, and a person who cares. How to navigate the employee who doesn’t show up the way you hoped, the power outage, or the appointment someone forgets. And the uncomfortable moment when you have to hold a boundary, especially when you’d rather not be the hammer.
Neal has found a few steady anchors: the micro-business reality of “one day at a time,” and the quietly radical skill of addition by subtraction. Sometimes the way forward isn’t adding another technique. It’s stopping something. Simplifying. Doing more with lessing.
There’s also the importance of tenderness . Neal works with older animals and the humans who love them, he leans on the practice of accompaniment—staying present when things are hard, not avoiding the difficult moments, but instead inhabiting them. It makes a difference.
Listen into this conversation for how failure teaches, and what it asks of us when we’re the ones doing the learning.

The path that connects can’t be seen when you’re looking forward, but there are values, hunches—and maybe even whispers from the future—that nudge us onto the path that matches our spirit and heart.
In this History Series conversation on Qiological, we take a trip in the Wayback Machine with Misha Cohen to the early days, when her interest in health and wellbeing crisscrossed paths with Chinese medicine—an unconventional grandmother, a sudden onset of back pain, and the goings-on at Lincoln Hospital quietly setting the stage for her later work with AIDS and cancer patients on the other side of the country.
Misha’s curiosity has kept her at the leading edge of weaving Chinese medicine and biomedicine together—without flattening either one. In practice, that means clearer thinking, better collaboration, and a steady reminder that acupuncture and herbs often fill a hole in the modern medical system.
Listen into this conversation for a glimpse of what integrative medicine can look like when it’s practiced with an eye toward honoring the value—and the real clinical power—of Chinese medicine.

There comes a time in midlife when the body’s signaling becomes a bit disordered. Energy dips without explanation. Sleep thins out. Recovery takes longer. It’s not that the system has failed—it’s that the signals aren’t as attuned as they used to be. Something in the conversation between stress, hormones, and resilience has gone a little quiet.
In this conversation with Mark Brinson, we explore what happens when hormone replacement therapy and Chinese medicine are used to complement one another. Mark shares both clinical and personal insight into how modern, well-monitored HRT has evolved—and why, when used thoughtfully, it doesn’t override the body so much as restore missing information. From a Chinese medicine perspective, this opens the door for acupuncture and herbs to once again regulate, refine, and integrate, rather than constantly compensate.
Listen into this discussion as we explore hormonal signaling and receptor responsiveness, why balance can sometimes reach a ceiling without additional support, how acupuncture can smooth the transition into HRT, and what it means to practice medicine that restores communication rather than chasing symptoms. This is a grounded, nuanced look at aging—not as decline, but as a shift that asks for better listening and a more open mind about how, and when, to intervene.