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★★★★★

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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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482 The Conundrum of Singularity & Diversity in the Practice of East Asian Medicine • James FLowers

2026/10/13

Every tradition has an official story, and then it has the people who actually treat patients. In this conversation with James Flowers, a historian, anthropologist, and practitioner of East Asian medicine, we ask a simple question: where did the Saam organ pairs come from? The answer, it turns out, is surprising. That mystery opens onto what James calls the conundrum of singularity and diversity in East Asian medicine. We follow it from the Confucian kings of the Joseon dynasty, who declared prevention the best medicine, through the Japanese occupation and a century of rebellious Korean doctors, all the way to the treatment of Covid. Along the way, we weigh standards against clinical experience, consider who holds the authority to say what's right, and ask whether Saam medicine is Buddhist or Confucian at heart. Listen in for a conversation that moves between royal courts and modern clinics, canon and experience, and the lingering question of what medicine is and who gets to decide.

481 Revisiting the Genius of Dr. Manaka • Oran Kivity and Co.

2026/10/06

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 History Series - Searching for the Dao of Medicine • Volker Scheid

2026/09/29

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 Consciousness, Ghosts, Magic & The Inexplicable • Neil Theise

2026/09/22

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 Often Confused and Having Fun • Linda Kim

2026/09/15

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 Shen, Emotion, and Ghosts • Henry Tarazona

2026/09/08

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 Beyond Normal: Reading Blood Work Through a Chinese Medicine Lens • Jessica Parker

2026/09/01

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 The Practice of Seeing- Ming, Hidden Jing and Original Face • Anita Chopra & Angela Hunt

2026/08/25

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 Character, Nature & Fate, A Manual of Polestar Astrology • Gregory Done

2026/08/18

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 Right Tradition for the Condition, Combining classical Maps in the Treatment of Long Covid • Brendan Kelly

2026/08/11

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 Art of Medicine • Bonnie Wright

2026/08/04

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 History Series: Nature is the Primary Curriculum • Judy Worsley

2026/07/28

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 Wen Bing Anatomy • Kerri Westhauser

2026/07/21

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 You Don't Know Before You Know • Shaun Goodman

2026/07/14

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 The Challenge of Chinese Medicine • Alex Jacobs

2026/07/07

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.

Podcast reviews

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4.8 out of 5

258 reviews

★★★★★

Kjspk99 2026/04/23

Great conversation on 8 Ex!

This episode made so many connections for me. Things that didn’t make sense before, seem more natural now. Thank you Yvonne Farrel and Luke Adler

★★★★★

charles.cooper 2024/08/30

Pleasantly present

Conversations are always calming and a joy to listen to. I really appreciate how centered the host is in his own energy.

★★★★★

Chloe&Remy 2024/08/06

The best

Michael is a gift to our field and to the health of our society. Super grateful for his wisdom, humility and humor! Highly recommended!

★★★☆☆

clacicle 2024/06/23

Interview with Leo Lok on meditation

I though this was very interesting and the problem that has arisen as a result of mistranslations from Pali to Chinese to Japanese and then English et...

★★★☆☆

truenaturefamily 2024/02/16

Enjoy the conversations, but transphobic comments seem unnecessary.

Let me first say that there are a lot of conversations I have really enjoyed in this podcast. I am a wellness practitioner myself and really wanted to...

★★★★★

ABW1111 2023/10/16

Love this podcast!

Michael is an amazing interviewer and knows how to pull tons of knowledge from every guest!

★★★★★

micfie 2023/02/23

A podcast that deeply inspires me

Thank you, Michael Max & guests, for making such a helpful mind-provoking & heart-opening podcast for the East Asian medicine lover. As a longtime mas...

★★★★★

Trish K LAc 2022/11/04

With gratitude

Qiological is such a great podcasts, thank you for sharing these enriching conversations. Qiological includes many topics that I wish were discussed ...

★★★★★

wiggs5467 2022/11/02

Amazing conversations

Great podcast with widespread and inspiring conversations about Chinese medicine. I’m grateful for Michael’s humble and light hearted, poetic approach...

★★★★★

amazingalaska 2021/11/19

Love from, Alaska.

Beautiful podcast covering the relevant flows of Chinese medicine.

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