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Qiological Podcast

Michael Max

Acupuncture and East Asian medicine was not developed in a laboratory. It does not advance through double-blind controlled studies, nor does it respond well to petri dish experimentation. Our medicine did not come from the statistical regression of randomized cohorts, but from the observation and treatment of individuals in their particular environment. It grows out of an embodied sense of understanding how life moves, unfolds, develops and declines.

Medicine comes from continuous, thoughtful practice of what we do in clinic, and how we approach that work. The practice of medicine is more — much more — than simply treating illness. It is more than acquiring skills and techniques. And it is more than memorizing the experiences of others. It takes a certain kind of eye, an inquiring mind and relentlessly inquisitive heart.

Qiological is an opportunity to deepen our practice with conversations that go deep into acupuncture, herbal medicine, cultivation practices, and the practice of having a practice. It’s an opportunity to sit in the company of others with similar interests, but perhaps very different minds. Through these dialogues perhaps we can better understand our craft.

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28 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 27 min
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Episodes 28

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#481
Today · 1 hr 42 min
481 Revisiting the Genius of Dr. Manaka • Oran Kivity and Co.
We often think good treatment begins with certainty: first identify the pattern, then decide what to do. But in the tradition of Dr. Yoshio Manaka, treatment itself can be the means of discovery. The practitioner learns by engaging the body directly and paying close attention to how it responds. In this conversation, Oran Kivity, Marian Fixler, Brenda Loew, Stephen Birch, and Paul Movsessian reflect on studying and practicing Manaka-style acupuncture. They describe an approach in which the body’s structure emerges through palpation, immediate feedback, and ongoing adjustment—not from a diagnosis fixed in advance. This is not acupuncture as the application of a preset protocol. It is a disciplined way of paying attention: using touch as both diagnosis and treatment, testing small interventions, observing what changes, and allowing the body’s response to continually reshape one’s understanding of what is needed.
#480
September 29 · 1 hr 41 min
480 History Series - Searching for the Dao of Medicine • Volker Scheid
A tradition can feel like a single lineage, but some histories reveal a wider terrain — one that spans discernment, devotion, and the slow accumulation of who gets to call something new. In this conversation with Volker Scheid, we explore four competing visions of what good Chinese medicine practice actually is, from Zhu Danxi's cultivated discernment to Zhang Zhongjing's devotional authority, and how each answers the challenge of bridging limited tools to unlimited patients. We also touch on why every historical claim carries its own mythology, and how the arrival of Western medicine reshaped what these traditions were even allowed to become. Listen in for a conversation that brings historical rigor and clinical insight to a tradition modern practice still draws from.
#479
September 22 · 1 hr 38 min
479 Consciousness, Ghosts, Magic & The Inexplicable • Neil Theise
Liver pathology draws curiosity as both a clinical discipline and a lens for encountering the unknown. Its practice of looking without preconception speaks meaningfully to how we meet the mysteries at the edges of a life. In this conversation, we visit with Neil Theise and explore the relationship between diagnostic training and beginner's mind. We look at how staying present with what's in front of us reveals more than what we already expect to find. We also discuss the difference between dying as decline versus dying as transformation, and the nature of end-of-life visions as glimpses of a wider consciousness. And we look at the deeper role of simple presence, an invitation our loved ones are so rarely given. Listen in for a discussion on consciousness, attention, and acceptance, and what it means to stay open to the extraordinary within the ordinary currents of caregiving and loss.
#478
September 15 · 1 hr 10 min
478 Often Confused and Having Fun • Linda Kim
Confusion is often treated as a problem to solve on the way to a real answer. But in the clinic, it may be closer to the beginning of the process than an obstacle to it. In this conversation with Linda Kim, we explore what it means to practice acupuncture with curiosity rather than certainty. We discuss why diagnosis may be something revealed through treatment—through palpation, real-time feedback, and the willingness to be wrong and adjust—rather than something that must be figured out in advance. We also discuss constitutional nature versus compensated presentation, how playfulness loosens the rigid thinking that blocks perception, and why the most obvious thing in the room is often the most important.
#477
September 8 · 1 hr 29 min
477 Shen, Emotion, and Ghosts • Henry Tarazona
Long before Chinese medicine took the form we recognize today, healers drilled holes in skulls to release demons. Philosophers debated what the universe was made of, while a wandering doctor read pulses instead of casting spells. In this conversation with Henry Tarazona, we trace that lineage from the wushi shamans through the Hundred Schools of Thought to Bian Que, often called the father of Chinese medicine, and ultimately to Sun Simiao. We also explore Sun Simiao’s “13 Ghost Points,” which turn out to have far less to do with ghosts than with pattern differentiation expressed in language patients could understand. Finally, we unpack shen—a concept that “spirit” never quite captures—and consider it instead as the seat of cognition, emotion, and the body’s own governance. Listen in for a conversation that moves between ancient battlefields and modern clinics, superstition and evidence, and the long effort to explain what's happening inside us when nothing else makes sense.
#476
September 1 · 1 hr 15 min
476 Beyond Normal: Reading Blood Work Through a Chinese Medicine Lens • Jessica Parker
Reading blood work well means resisting the urge to sort everything into simply normal or abnormal. But what happens when the real diagnosis lives in the relationships between markers, not the markers themselves? Dr. Jessica Parker is an acupuncturist and lab-work educator who teaches practitioners to read blood panels through a Chinese medicine lens. In this conversation, she joins Michael to explore the gap between conventional ranges and true optimal health. Listen in as they trace her path from a formative year in Hangzhou, where East and West medicine shared the same pharmacy shelf, to teaching acupuncturists to read cortisol, cholesterol, and thyroid markers as stories of stress and imbalance; how spleen-chi deficiency hides inside ordinary lab numbers; and why cortisol has been unfairly demonized online.
#475
August 25 · 2 hr 29 min
475 The Practice of Seeing- Ming, Hidden Jing and Original Face • Anita Chopra & Angela Hunt
In this episode Qiological celebrates its ninth anniversary. For nine years new conversations on East Asian medicine and methods have appeared in your podcast feed each Tuesday morning Anita Chopra, our guest from episode 429, joins us again not just to discuss face reading, but to give us a demonstration of how she uses severeal of the basic maps that chart the face. We’re also joined by Angela Hunt, the winner of our drawing to appear on this episode and receive a face reading. Listen in for a conversation that touches on mentorship, practice building, being authentically who we are clinical work, a bit of Qiological’s backstory, and reflections on the journey that has brought the podcast to its ninth anniversary.
#474
August 18 · 1 hr 11 min
474 Character, Nature & Fate, A Manual of Polestar Astrology • Gregory Done
As astrology draws curiosity as both a spiritual practice and a lens for self-understanding. Its symbolic language of image can speak meaningfully to our modern linear life. In this conversation, we visit with Gregory Done we explore the relationship between fate and free will, and how inherited ancestral patterns shape our character, our challenges, and our sense of purpose. We also discuss the difference between astrology as dialogue versus fortune telling, the nature of "ghosts" as unresolved generational trauma, and the deeper role of inner nature as a freedom untouched by fate. Listen in for a discussion on ancestry, symbol, and resolution, and what it means to work toward wholeness within the currents of one's own life.
#473
August 11 · 1 hr 11 min
473 Right Tradition for the Condition, Combining classical Maps in the Treatment of Long Covid • Brendan Kelly
A diagnosis can feel like a single label, but some conditions reveal a wider terrain — one that spans immune response, cultural rhythm, and slow imbalance over time. In this conversation with Brendan Kelly, we explore long COVID through the lens of classical Chinese medicine, looking at how frameworks like the Shang Han Lun's cold-to-heat progression and the Wen Bing's epidemic theory make sense of a condition with over two hundred possible symptoms. We discuss treatment not as a single formula, but as traditions blended and matched to where a disease has been and where it's heading. We also touch on why epidemics are never purely individual, and how a culture's own excess heat may shape its susceptibility to illness. Listen in for a conversation that brings clinical experience and classical theory to a condition modern medicine still struggles to treat.
#472
August 4 · 1 hr 8 min
472 Art of Medicine • Bonnie Wright
Much of what happens in the treatment room never makes it onto an intake form, yet it often shapes the outcome as much as anything measurable does. In this conversation with Bonnie Wright, we explore what she calls the art of medicine, the intuitive, relational sense of truly knowing the patient in front of you, and how the body's structures act less as separate parts than as one continuously adapting whole. We also touch on what gets lost when certainty crowds out listening, and why the most useful insights often arrive in the things we weren't looking for. Listen in for a conversation that moves between anatomy and intuition, structure and change, and the practice of staying open to what doesn't yet fit.
#471
July 28 · 1 hr 15 min
471 History Series: Nature is the Primary Curriculum • Judy Worsley
Practicing acupuncture for over fifty years asks us to trust intuition and stay open even when the path ahead isn't clear. But what happens when a life's direction comes not from planning, but from being pulled toward what you love? Judy Worsley is a five element acupuncturist who trained alongside J.R. Worsley for decades, helping shape this medicine's growth into the profession it is today. In this conversation, she joins Michael to explore the tension between certainty and surrender, and how following what feels true can become its own kind of guidance. Listen in as they trace her path from a free-roaming Florida childhood, through law school and a hitchhiking trip across America, to a chance encounter that changed everything; how clarity differs from having all the answers; why difficult moments deserve to be revisited rather than carried; and what it means to spend a lifetime devoted to this work.
#470
July 21 · 1 hr 18 min
470 Wen Bing Anatomy • Kerri Westhauser
As chronic, hard-to-treat disorders become more common in clinic, many practitioners are returning to Wen Bing theory for answers. In this conversation with Kerri Westhauser, we explore lurking pathogen theory and how deep-lying evils help explain complex conditions like lupus and POTS. We also discuss why tonification often backfires in chronic disease, and the importance of venting, regulating, and mobilizing Shen to keep the body's pathways open. Listen in for a practical rethinking of the Wei and Qi levels and how to locate disease that has gone into hiding.
#469
July 14 · 1 hr 21 min
469 You Don't Know Before You Know • Shaun Goodman
Not every point sits in the textbook. Others only appear when the body decides to show them. In this episode we visit with Shaun Goodman, longtime practitioner of Dr. Tung's acupuncture, a Taiwanese system built on its own map of the body. What begins as a question of pronunciation quickly opens into a wider conversation about channels, diagnosis, and the discipline of looking closely. We explore the palm as a diagnostic tool, the logic of treating through the thigh and shin rather than the familiar fourteen channels, and why some of the most effective points have no fixed name or location. Why not-knowing deserves patience rather than anxiety. And how a chance discovery from French auricular medicine gave Shaun a way to find points no teacher was there to point out. Beneath the technique is a simpler idea: that what looks like magic is really just a system, once you learn how to see it.
#468
July 7 · 1 hr 36 min
468 The Challenge of Chinese Medicine • Alex Jacobs
As acupuncture and Chinese medicine face regulatory pressure and institutional change on both sides of the Atlantic, many practitioners are asking what it takes to preserve the tradition while still being taken seriously as medical professionals. In this conversation, we visit with Alex Jacobs, CEO of the British Acupuncture Council, we explore the relationship between tradition and regulation, and how this balance shapes education standards, professional identity, and public trust in the medicine. We also discuss the value of holding contradiction in clinical practice, the difference between the "disciple" and the "heretic" as two complementary ways of learning, and the deeper role of listening and the heart in diagnosis. Listen in for a discussion on regulation, lineage, and mastery, and staying rooted in the Dao of the medicine while navigating the demands of practicing it today.
#467
June 30 · 54 min
467 History Series, Rebellious Empirical Scientists Pt. 2 • Bill Prensky & Gene Bruno
Part Two How does a profession begin? Not on paper. Not with licensing boards or schools. Often enough, it starts with a handful of curious people who become convinced there's another way to do things. Part determination, part serendipity, and perhaps a good measure of luck. Bill Prensky and Gene Bruno were there before acupuncture had a place in American healthcare. In the wake of the Vietnam War, student protests, and a generation questioning nearly everything, they walked away from academic research that no longer made sense to them. Their Tai Chi teacher, Marshall Ho, introduced them to Dr. Kim, who reluctantly agreed to teach a small group that in time became like family. What followed is equal parts history and improbable story: treating patients at the Crossroads of the World, translating across languages, creating lecture series just to afford tuition, traveling with their teacher, and helping establish the first legal and educational footholds for acupuncture. Listen in to this conversation on trading a graduate education for a study that didn’t have a syllabus, credentialing or degree, helped acupuncture to find its footing in America.
#467
June 30 · 1 hr 40 min
467 History Series, Rebellious Empirical Scientists Pt. 1 • Bill Prensky & Gene Bruno
Part One. How does a profession begin? Not on paper. Not with licensing boards or schools. Often enough, it starts with a handful of curious people who become convinced there's another way to do things. Part determination, part serendipity, and perhaps a good measure of luck. Bill Prensky and Gene Bruno were there before acupuncture had a place in American healthcare. In the wake of the Vietnam War, student protests, and a generation questioning nearly everything, they walked away from academic research that no longer made sense to them. Their Tai Chi teacher, Marshall Ho, introduced them to Dr. Kim, who reluctantly agreed to teach a small group that in time became like family. What followed is equal parts history and improbable story: treating patients at the Crossroads of the World, translating across languages, creating lecture series just to afford tuition, traveling with their teacher, and helping establish the first legal and educational footholds for acupuncture. Listen in to this conversation on trading a graduate education for a study that didn’t have a syllabus, credentialing or degree, helped acupuncture to find its footing in America.
June 25 · 2 hr 2 min
The Cost of Entry—Loans, Schools, and Sustainability • Bex Groebner
It’s not news that there are changes afoot in the world of education. You’re probably already well aware of the closure, over the past few years, of schools with a long history. There are concerns with loan debt that have been an issue since Obama was president. Most recently, the changes to student loans that not only fundamentally affect the acupuncture trade, but will change the landscape for graduate education in a notable way. In this conversation with Bex Groebner we untangle the intersection of education, accreditation, federal student loan programs and professional accountability. We explore how changes in funding will put financial pressure on schools that built a business model based on the higher loan caps of GRAD+ loans. How student debt affects those who are mortgaging their future on loans that many cannot pay back. Along with what could happen if the levels of student enrollment drop to the point where our accreditor (ACAHM) and certification organization (NCBAHM) lose the funding needed to sustain their business activities. Bex suggests that in an uncertain world, it’s best to have a back up, and that is a large part of the motivation behind her work at the Acupuncture Workforce Alliance. Most of all, she’d like to see an acupuncture education be accessible, affordable and within reach of anyone who’d like to learn this medicine so they can serve their communities, and be able to support themselves and their families.
#466
June 23 · 1 hr 30 min
466 Not Two, The Geometry of Heaven and Earth • Johan Hausen
Some teachings are preserved in books. Others are preserved in people. In this episode we visit with Johann Hausen, translator, publisher, practitioner, and long-time student of Daoist traditions in the Wudang Mountains. What begins with martial arts and Chinese medicine quickly opens into a wider conversation about cultivation, character, and the responsibility of carrying knowledge forward. We explore the foundations of internal alchemy, not as a collection of techniques, but as a lifelong process of refining oneself through everyday life. Why difficult people may be our greatest teachers. How attachment can hide in the things we love most. And why the real work often happens far from the meditation cushion. Along the way we discuss preserving traditional teachings, the role of books in a digital world, and Johann’s work translating and publishing texts that might otherwise be lost. Beneath it all is a simple but challenging question: what does it mean to become a better human being, rather than simply a more knowledgeable one?
June 18 · 1 hr 28 min
Deconstruction or Innovation • Valerie Hobbs
We tend to think of the acupuncture profession as something fixed and stable, but the reality is that it is always in motion. The practice of East Asian medicine in North America has been shaped by decades of effort—by practitioners, educators, regulators, and advocates working to create a place for this medicine in the American healthcare system. In this conversation with Valerie Hobbs, we take a historical look at how the profession bootstrapped itself into being. Along with how the creation of educational standards, accreditation, certification, and professional organizations, helped to give the profession the form it has today.. We also discuss some of the tensions shaping the present moment. Questions about educational requirements, student debt, declining enrollment, professional identity, integration into mainstream healthcare, and the uncertain future of acupuncture education. This conversation is an invitation to consider the forces shaping our profession and to consider how we might respond. Beneath the challenges is a recurring theme: the future of this medicine will not be determined by any single institution or idea, but by our willingness to listen, engage thoughtfully, and find ways of working toward our shared goals.
#465
June 16 · 1 hr 33 min
465 Fire and Water, The Fire Horse at Mid-Year • Christine Cannon
As the Fire Horse year reaches its peak, many practitioners are noticing shifts in both the environment and the clinic. In this conversation with Christine Cannon, we explore the interaction of fire and water through the lens of Wu Yun Liu Qi, and how these energies may be influencing respiratory health, anxiety, fatigue, and emotional resilience. We also discuss the importance of protecting Wei Qi, creating restorative space, and finding balance during periods of heightened activity and change. Listen in for a practical discussion on seasonal influences, constitutional health, and navigating the energetic themes of the year.

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