Qiological Podcast

The lines we draw define us. In the pursuit of "objectivity," modern medicine draws a sharp line between the observer and the observed—the doctor and the patient. But what happens when we intentionally blur that line? What is discovered when we move toward the subject rather than away from it?In this expansive conversation with Daniel Schulman, we explore what happens when acupuncture is practiced not as a technical intervention, but as a relational art. Daniel reflects on a lifetime of moving between worlds—science and spirit, objectivity and intimacy—and how Chinese medicine became a place where those apparent opposites could finally speak to one another.Listen into this discussion as we explore clinical intimacy, the difference between judgment and discernment, why knowing a patient is not the same as knowing their diagnosis, and how self-cultivation becomes an ethical foundation for practice. We wander through Saam acupuncture, Goethean science, deep time, and the quiet moments in clinic where something larger than technique makes itself known.

Good medicine has less to do with having the “right system” and more to do with the human being holding the needles. With the way we listen. The way we wait. The way we’re willing to not know… yet.In this conversation with Stephen Brown we trace his unlikely path from welding in a west coast shipyard—literally working with fire and metal—to becoming one of the key bridges between Japanese acupuncture and the English-speaking world.Along the way he unpacks how history, culture, and politics have shaped East Asian medicine in Japan, Korea, China and beyond, and why arguments about “the one true method” miss the living heart of the work. We wander through blind practitioners and palpation-rich traditions, meridian therapy, “scientific” acupuncture, dry needling, and the long-standing turf skirmishes between them.But repeatedly Stephen brings us back to the clinician’s interior: the courage to admit “I don’t know yet,” the discipline of returning to basics, the craft of letting the body teach you through touch, timing, and attention.Listen into this conversation on how Stephen refuses both magical thinking and rigid certainty. Instead, he points toward a grounded intuition born of repetition, body-based knowing, and genuine curiosity about the person in front of us. It’s a generous, searching exploration of what it means to practice acupuncture as a lifelong craft, in a world that keeps trying to turn it into a billable procedure.

There are seasons in a woman’s life that don’t arrive quietly. They come with a tremor, a shimmer, a sense that something deep in the architecture of who you are is being rewritten. It’s not collapse, but instead a reordering that can’t be ignored.In this conversation with Heidi Lovie, we wander into the transformation of menopause. She invites us to consider this transition not as a breakdown, but as a profound renegotiation between heart and kidney, ancestry and agency, biology and identity.Listen into this discussion as we explore how hormones shape our sense of reality, why perimenopause can feel like the caterpillar dissolving into goo phase of becoming a butterfly, how grief and sovereignty intertwined in midlife, and ways clinicians can expand their imagination beyond the default kidney-yin story. This is about expanding language, reframing experience, and recognizing the second spring as a time of creativity, clarity, and unapologetic self-definition.

Medicine finds its way into our lives not through textbooks, but by getting sand in our shoes, salt in our hair, and noticing how our hands long to be in the dirt—or on people.Liz Vitale didn’t simply move to the Oregon Coast. She rooted herself there among fishermen, surfers, firefighters, foresters, Latina moms, and retirees. Over time she became part of the village, not just as a practitioner, but as a neighbor, a volunteer firefighter, a customer at the grocery store and regular at the surfer pub.In this conversation with Liz, we explore what happens when medicine is not practiced from behind clinic doors, but amidst the actual people it serves. We talk about treating fishermen underserved by mainstream care, how not to impose our “Chinese medicine stories” on patients, how community softens judgment, and how sometimes medicine works quietly—by helping people first feel seen.Listen into this discussion as we explore how healing unfolds differently in rural places, why living joyfully may be part of the prescription, how treating everybody includes those who don’t agree with you, and how sometimes you find out how your treatments are working not from a clinic visit—but from the local pub, where someone shouts over fish and chips, “Liz, the herbs are working.”

We tend to think of eyesight as a technical problem—retinas, optics, refractive errors, clearer lenses. But eyes don’t just see—they interpret. They blur when the world feels too intrusive, or sharpen when clarity feels like safety. The eyes are woven through with story, memory, emotion, and the ways we've learned to look—or to look away.In this conversation with Dr. Marc Grossman, optometrist, acupuncturist, and lifelong investigator of vision, we explore how eyesight is more than biology—it’s biography. He's spent decades asking not just what eye problems are, but why they appear in this person, at this moment, in this way. His work lives at the intersection of physiology, psychology, Chinese medicine, and the soul’s need to see clearly—not just out into the world, but into one’s own experience and heart.Listen into this discussion as we explore how nearsightedness can emerge from emotional overwhelm, why some people develop tension in just one eye, how the optic nerve can reflect sensitivity and empathy, and why prescriptions sometimes don’t correct—but instead freeze—a moment in our story.This isn’t a conversation about fixing eyes. It’s about recognizing eyesight as a living conversation between body, spirit, and the world we orient ourselves toward. It reminds us that inquiry—not protocol—is often the most powerful medicine.