A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond

Frolicking Fish: Our Vision for Adding Joy, Love, and Curiosity to Chinese Medicine Education

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:30:00 -0700

What do you see missing in Chinese medicine education? How can we, Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms, with our unique combination of skills and resources, best support you as part of our beloved Chinese medicine community? What is the right and ethical balance between academic education, joyful entertainment, curious exploration, and creative play? And last, but not least, how can we harness the wonders of technology to create a community that spans continents, languages and cultures, medical and religious paradigms, and millennia of textual resources?

A tall order this is, indeed, but we had fun tossing these questions around while we are in the final stages of building our new project, the "Frolicking Fish Community." In this podcast, we are inviting you to join us for a brainstorming session, in the spirit of integrity, connection, curiosity, and play.

Of course we hope to entice you to join our community and give us constructive feedback on the answers we are looking for.

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Frolicking Fish Community

New Year's Joy: Whales, Spring, and East-West Transmission in Pregnancy Care

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:00:00 -0700

Happy new year of the Yang Fire horse to everybody!

In this conversation, recorded on the eve of the Chinese New Year, Leo had set out to share his excitement about the work that we have been doing on our upcoming course on "Nurturing Pregnancy." Sabine got distracted right at the beginning of our recording session by two grey whales passing by and then returning to feed outside her window, as the biggest (literally!) and most amazing sign that spring is truly arriving here on Whidbey Island. So this podcast meanders a bit, between Sabine's attempt to share the joy and love of a spring day, Leo's desire to share some insights on pregnancy care with Chinese medicine, and our serious contemplation of the challenges in this specialized field that Western practitioners of Chinese medicine encounter:

We discuss the very unfortunate lack of access to the precious primary sources, historical and contemporary, that reflect the top quality of care that is common in East Asia. Then we explore the difficult clinical reality for practitioners in the West, surrounded as they are by a culture that considers both traditional Chinese medicinal treatments and acupuncture either as dangerous or as ineffective. We lament the unnecessary suffering resulting from the fact that patients in the West are reluctant to lean on their Chinese medicine providers during this tender period, when there is so much Chinese medicine can do! This stands in sharp contrast to China, where pregnant patients often turn to traditional Chinese medicine for addressing common pregnancy symptoms as a safer and more effective alternative to biomedical treatments. Inspired by our close collaboration these past few months in building our upcoming course on "Nurturing Pregnancy," we truly want to help our listeners see the clinical potential in this area as a very potent path for alleviating suffering and sharing "tender loving care," which is ultimately what all of our work is about.

May we all spread the love!

Nurturing Pregnancy: Modulating the Center

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:15:00 -0700

Most attention in the medical care of pregnancy focuses on preventing miscarriage in the tender first trimester, on the one hand, and on preparing for a smooth and safe labor and delivery in the last trimester. But what about the middle?

In this episode, Leo and Sabine delve into over 2000 years of medical literature on this topic in China to look at the therapeutic potential of the middle trimester in pregnancy. We start out by zooming in on the two formulas for the fourth and fifth months of pregnancy cited by Sun Simiao "in case of injury to the fetus/pregnancy," analyzing their key ingredients title for the intended treatment strategy: "Modulating the Center Formula" and "Making the Center Peaceful Formula," respectively.

We then explore ways to achieve these goals by more accessible and possibly safer means, such as by substituting maiya (sprouted barley), breath work, and daoyin to facilitate the free flow of Qi through the channels.

Lastly, we take a step back to discuss the unique challenges of caring for not just one but two bodies during pregnancy, as two distinct constellations of Qi, which in turn are interacting with the external environment as mediated through the mother's body. It gets pretty complex but then again, "shaving off mounds and filling in sinkholes," as Zhang Lu puts it so succinctly in his commentary on the formula for "modulating the center" (tiaozhong) is actually not rocket science. It truly is our greatest joy and passion to show practitioners at all levels that you've got this and there is truly something that every one of us can do to support our pregnant friends.

The slippery slope between discernment and judgment

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0700

As we all know, when somebody passes judgment on another person, regardless of the validity of that judgment, it will close the door to effective communication and connection. At the same time, one way of defining any healer's role is to serve as a guide who helps the patient on their path back to health and balance. And an important aspect of most clinical sessions, at least in the context of traditional Chinese medicine, is to discern the patient's current condition and determine the causes of any imbalance or deviation from perfect health, so as to choose a therapeutic intervention that will address those. In this process, it is all too easy to slide into judgment. To complicate matters further, one could argue that in some cultural or social contexts, such as Sabine giving critical feedback on the homework of her classical Chinese students, judgment may even be a necessary part of a person's role.

Have a listen as we explore the slippery slope between discernment and judgment in an effort to understand and promote effective practitioner-patient communication. Using diet as just one example, we realized the importance of aligning the practitioner's goals with the patient's needs and wants and the power of practicing from the heart and cultivating compassion.

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Virtue-Power: Traditional Chinese Medical Ethics

Playing with Qi and Other Tools of Self-Care

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0700

We start off this episode by exploring the meaning of "tiao qi" 調氣, which is the title of one of the chapters in Sun Simiao's volume on Yangxing (self-cultivation and longevity). Inspired by Sun Simiao's writings and our work in translating and teaching this material, we start within this context of yangsheng but end up exploring much broader clinical practices. We reject the judgmental tone of "regulating," as a translation of "tiao" 調, in favor of the playful curiosity and flexibility of "modulating," "calibrating," or "playing with." As a side note, it delighted both of us to discover the significance of embodied experience and of discernment rooted in the five senses as we have both been practicing this art of calibration in the tradition of Sun Simiao's teachings over the past couple of years.

To understand our own and patients' behaviors that get in the way of healing disease, avoiding suffering, and improving wellbeing, we then looked at the difference between inability and unwillingness to "do what is good for us." But we quickly got more nuanced and changed the direction of our inquiry: To avoid judgment, which is a dead end in useful communication between any two people, we considered searching for obstacles and blockages instead. Could this perhaps be meaningfully expressed in the concept of "Qi stagnation," since this concept goes beyond just physical lack of flow, to include mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions?

In the end, we discussed the unaddressed need for specialized training in Chinese medicine so that practitioners can more easily slip into the role of skillful communicator and coach. At the end of the day, what practitioners need, beyond technical expertise, to truly help their patients, are the qualities of equanimity, patience, and more than anything, loving kindness...

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Yangxing — Happy Goat Productions

Confucian Willfulness?

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0700

In today's conversation, I asked for Leo's help in exploring Confucius' teachings on social cohesion, authority, and the creation of harmony in self, family, society, and the world, on the one hand, and on ethics, on following our "mandate from Heaven," and standing steadfast by our values, on the other.

What does the classic Confucian pair of virtues, ren "Humaneness" or "compassion" and yi "justice" or "righteousness," mean in today's world and how can we possibly use it for guidance in this moment?
Does it change Confucius' message on hierarchical relations when we realize, as Sabine reminds us, that Confucius did not address his teachings to those in the lower position (servants and common people, women, younger men, and children) but to the elite men in charge, or in other words, the rulers, elders, and male heads of households?
Most importantly, how did Confucius himself respond in situations where the men in power above him did not act in accordance with the values he held? And how do we apply that to today?

Whether you are a person who grew up in a traditional Confucian household and culture or are somebody who is looking at traditional East Asian culture from the outside in, we sincerely hope that this conversation is helpful. Right now, it feels to me that Confucius is once again relevant for this dance between self-realization and service to others, through the prism of personal cultivation. For more details on Confucius' original teachings and some literal quotes from the Analects, please read this article by Sabine:

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Confucius and Willful Peacekeeping — Happy Goat Productions

Shades of Love in Buddhism

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700

In today's episode, I got to ask Leo to speak more specifically about the different kinds of love that are found in the Buddhist teachings. Together, we were able to explore how I can make sure that the deep love I feel for my daughter, to use the example closest to my heart, does not turn into a suffocating blanket of mutual needs and wants, as conditional love between parent and child does all too often.

Instead, unconditional love can become a powerful generative and regenerative force of healing, when it rests on the solid triple foundation of compassion, well-wishing, and equanimity. This same spiritual foundation can also save us from getting exhausted and disabled by sorrow, whether caused by a personal loss, by us witnessing the suffering of a friend or patient, or by our response, as empathetic beings, to devastating global news.

With the support of community, we can find love and joy in that delicate dance between attachment and liberation.

From Wittgenstein to Wenyanwen: Classical Reflections with Paola

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 07:00:00 -0700

In this conversation, Leo and Sabine feature our friend Paola Campanelli, an international practitioner and graduate of Sabine's 2-year classical Chinese training program. Together, we explore Paola's journey from philosophy to sinology to Chinese medicine, from her native Italy to China and Taiwan and ultimately to her current home in southern Germany. We discuss Paola's challenges and insights gained through studying classical Chinese, in a range of topics as wide as Paola's life experience, from German philosophy to language acquisition and the importance of grammar, to poetry and the power of beauty and song... We also touch on the value of collaboration in translation and the potential for future projects in a collective of translators that has been Sabine's vision for her Triple Crown Classical Chinese training program. If you want to know about Leo's relationship to Italian opera, make sure you listen to the end for a cliff hanger that I personally cannot wait to find out more about.

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Triple Crown Training Program — Translating Chinese Medicine - Dr. Wilms' 2-year training program in classical Chinese, starting every two years in September

The Joys of Reading the Chinese Medicine Classics

Sat, 23 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0700

In this episode, we (Sabine Wilms and Leo Lok) invited the Spanish practitioner and teacher of Chinese medicine Manu Moreno to share with us his personal journey of learning, practicing, teaching, and translating Chinese medicine. Manu generously introduced us to his childhood experiences, including his struggles with dyslexia, guidance from dreams and past-lives experiences, and connection to his family healing tradition, all of which eventually led him to drop everything and move to China. There, he immersed himself completely in the language and culture and ended up studying Chinese medicine in a rare combination of an institutional education and personal lineage transmission.

Our conversation explored the importance of cultural immersion, the challenges of learning classical Chinese, and the role of traditional teaching methods in understanding the complexities of Chinese medical texts. We discussed how to strike a balance between the need for modern interpretation and our shared commitment to honoring traditional knowledge, and briefly contrasted Manu's two experiences of learning classical Chinese: First as a student among fellow Chinese students in China, and then as a participant in Sabine's training program in classical Chinese for Western practitioners.

If this episode has whetted your appetite for learning classical Chinese yourself, you may want to consider enrolling in Sabine's two-year intensive training program that starts September 11, 2025 with the "Foundations" course. Find out more AT HER "TRANSLATINGCHINESEMEDICINE.COM" WEBSITE.

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Triple Crown Training Program — Translating Chinese Medicine - Dr. Wilms' 2-year training program in classical Chinese, starting every two years in September

Chanting for Protection

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:15:00 -0700

In this conversation, we get pretty personal! In an honest exploration, we look at the intersection of Sabine's personal experiences, Leo's healing practices, and the power of intention. Specifically, we discuss the Surangama mantra and its protective and healing powers, and then consider the general impact of community healing through chanting and other ways of being present with a suffering person. We also briefly touch on ethical issues in practicing and training and transmitting intention in performative healing rituals like exorcism and chanting in the modern clinical context.

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Shurangama Mantra in Sanskrit

Harnessing Anger for a Better World

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:15:00 -0700

Chinese medicine practitioners are all too familiar with the common pathology of "Liver Qi Stagnation/Constraint." Partly related to feminine gender norms in both China and the West that force women to suppress and deny their anger, it results from the inability to let the liver Qi flow freely. In light of the palpable tension in the air these days, which is erupting into violence all too often, whether locally, nationally in the US, or globally, Leo and Sabine consider the root causes and possible treatments. From a slightly different angle of cultural norms preventing men from accessing and expressing grief, how can we prevent such broken-heartedness from turning into violence or despair, and instead redirect this energy in righteous action, strength, and constructive acts of creativity? How can we stop the vicious cycle of trauma and violence in service of a better, kinder, and more tender world where we have learned to harness the power of our emotions constructively, instead of destructively?

The Power and Perils of Postpartum Care

Tue, 27 May 2025 00:15:00 -0700

What do we (as in Leo and Sabine) mean when we say with great urgency and earnestness that postpartum care can heal trauma for multiple generations into the past and future? Why is there such a gaping hole in our modern culture's attention to the deep exhaustion, isolation, dangers, and need for intentional recovery from childbirth? How can medical professionals utilize the many tools offered by Chinese medicine to address this hole, from diet and medicinal formulations to acupuncture and moxibustion, massage and sound healing, as well as by educating and empowering the patient and their supporters? What can each of us do to help the world rediscover the magic and bliss of childbirth and the precious first moments, days, and weeks of a newborn baby's life? And last but not least, what is the significance of Leo's insistence on "pampering," as opposed to just "care," and why does this phrase bring up painful emotions for Sabine and many of the participants in our info sessions that we have been running this past month?

The deeper we go with this project of "postpartum pampering," the more aware we become of the importance of this topic. Please take a listen and then join us in thinking about it, talking about it with your communities, and, if it touches you as it did us, do something about the current lack of it in global culture but in the US in particular.

Thank you!

And if you care to learn more, join us for our course on Postpartum Pampering starting on June 1! FInd out more ON OUR PUBLIC INFORMATION PAGE HERE.

The Healing Magic of Ducklings

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 00:15:00 -0700

Today's episode, which could also be called "the mother and child within each of us," explores the healing power of the heart through the joy that Sabine experiences when caring for her fluffy baby ducklings and goslings, or when sharing them as a healing tool with her community, old and young. Leo's direct observations and questions pierce right through to the heart of the matter, past any rationalizations:

Why and how can we facilitate healing in ourselves and our communities?

In this case, the answer is delightfully simple, at least for Sabine and for those human beings who, like her, melt at the sight and sound of a baby falling asleep when enveloped by protective mama energy. And truly, it doesn't matter whether that "mama energy" is produced by the actual mama or by any human (or non-human) with a parental instinct.

Strength Training Part One: Medical and Cultural Perspectives

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 00:15:00 -0700

Let's talk about exercise, strength training, aging, and, yet again, the need for careful calibration. In today's conversation we explore the sweet range between taxing the body, enabling it to work harder, and building strength, on the one hand, and resting and honoring a more Yin approach to life, on the other. As the counterpoint to our dominant culture, which celebrates productivity, youth and physical prowess, and caffeine-fueled Yang-type accomplishments, many Chinese medicine practitioners tend to advocate for more of a Yin approach, in the tradition of the historical scholar-physicians' writings. But that is not all there is to Chinese medicine, past OR present! Listen in as Leo Lok and I discuss traditional Chinese perspectives on strength training and exercise...

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Work and Play in Dark Times

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 16:30:00 -0700

For this episode, Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms explore how to find joy, practice self-care, and show up in meaningful ways during dark times.

Starting with learning from animals and babies, somehow they keep coming back to resonance, rhythm, and movement, as the key to avoid getting stuck and immobilized by overwhelm. From dancing to drumming and swimming to swirling, they try to bring some lightness to the conversation, in addition to some useful tools, like the gentle life-giving penetrating breeze that showed up in Sabine's Yijing reading the night before.

So they invite all of you to be curious, conscious, and perhaps a bit more cautious about the effect that the information you consume has on your precious life energy. Speaking from her personal experience, Sabine questions the usefulness of exhausting her Qi by pouring it into holding tension in her shoulders.

Let's just say: It’s time to shake things up a bit around here and approach life with the irresistible smile of a babe in a game of peekaboo…

Welcome to the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast, where Season Four explores the Power of Kindness to bring you medicine from the sweet spot between Heaven and Earth, inspired still by old and new stories from China's healing traditions but really going wherever... Your hosts are Dr. Sabine Wilms, philosopher-poet, nerd, and goat herder, and Leo Lok, Resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives.

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Love, Joy, Cold Water Swimming, and Resilience

Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:15:00 -0700

What do kindness and joy, swimming in cold water and sharing food, euphoria and resilience, coping mechanisms, COVID, community, compassion, and connection have to do with each other? How do we sustain our work and find joy in the face of suffering? Is it possible to make suffering lighter, without making light of suffering? What is the role and meaning of celebration when LA is burning and the roundups have started? How do each of us find the strength to keep going?

Welcome to the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast, where we now, in Season Four, explore the Power of Kindness to bring you medicine from the sweet spot between Heaven and Earth, inspired still by old and new stories from China's healing traditions but really going wherever we feel pulled. We are Dr. Sabine Wilms, philosopher-poet, nerd, and goat herder, and Leo Lok, our Resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives. We start out this new season with what might strike you perhaps as an oddly celebratory offering, given the dark times we are currently experiencing at least in the US, if you follow the news. But it is the New Moon and the New Year of the Yin Wood Snake, of medicine and poison, of shedding skin and old self to make room for growth, of going deep into the mysterious darkness underground, of transforming and healing and honoring rest in cold Yin stillness until the Yang heat of the rising sun and spring Qi shall empower us to rise up, like bread, like singing, like kundalini energy. This episode is on “Love, joy, cold water swimming, and resilience.” Don’t blame me for this one. It was Leo’s idea to record right after I come home from one of my bitter cold naked ocean swims, to catch the euphoria flooding my system, share it with you, and explore it a bit. I have no idea if any of this makes sense to you, but if it brings a smile to your face, like swimming does to mine, and makes you want to pursue your own ways of lowering your stress level, finding joy, and restoring your equilibrium, heck yeah, it’s worth publicly exposing my quirkiness here. Desperate times call for desperate measures! My love goes out to my friends in the fires of LA, in the immigrant community in Tucson, and in all the other places where the doodoo is hitting the fan and where some of you are doing the damn hard work in the trenches. May this conversation somehow make a tiny bit of difference in your healing work by lightening your load! Let the tears flow and then crank the music and dance your heart out, not in spite of but because of it all!

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Finding your True Nature Through Living Daoism

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0700

In today's episode, Leo Lok and I are joined by Jack Schaefer, a practitioner of both Chinese medicine and Daoism as a living practice. In his role as one of the most active, passionate, and committed transmitters of Daoism in the West, he is the cofounder of Parting Clouds Daoist Education, along with his partner Josh Paynter. With Jack's help, we explore the connections and differences between the material compiled by Sun SImiao in the seventh century under the heading "nurturing our nature" yangxing 養性, and the living engagement with contemporary Daoist teachings in Jack's community of practitioners.

Here are just three of my personal take-aways from this conversation (and I sure hope my simplification here is not misleading!):

The meanings of "xing 性" and "ming 命" were never static and changed depending on the time, place, author's background, and rhetorical context. While Westerners always look for single terms to translate deep Chinese concepts like these, we may be better off just leaving them in Chinese to avoid misunderstandings.
Compassion and the effort to alleviate suffering and be of service are the key to ethical cultivation and thereby transforming our karma.
Wuwei does not mean sitting by the river meditating or "anything goes," but rather, if I may try to summarize here, spontaneously aligning with the Dao, which is the outcome of a lifetime of conscious and intentional cultivation, both ethical and physical.

You will have to take a close listen to see if this shallow description correctly represents Jack's and Leo's deep pearls of wisdom.

Enjoy! And thanks for listening. And then please share this podcast and episode if you liked it, and join the conversation over on our Facebook page.

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Sun Simiao's Secret to True Healing

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 21:15:00 -0700

How do you not only treat somebody successfully in the moment, but truly alleviate their suffering and get the effect of your action to stick, whether you use herbs or diet, needles or touch, or whatever?
In medicine, farming, cooking, or any other area of expertise, how do we balance the need for detailed technical know-how with the cultivation of intuitive wisdom, embodied sensitivity, and even personal growth?
In the midst of the plethora of tools offered by Sun Simiao in his writings on longevity, from diet to alchemy, breath work to movement exercises, sleeping positions to seasonal prohibitions, and ethics to sex, can we find an underlying principle, and if so, what is it?
How do we train ourselves, our colleagues, and future generations to dance the dance of Yin and Yang and find the sweet range between too little and too much?
How do you learn, apply, and teach self-calibration, and why is compassion essential in all of this?
Ultimately,what is Sun Simiao’s secret to personal cultivation in the pursuit of health and healing, or in other words, to “nurturing life” (yangsheng) or “nurturing our heavenly/innate/true nature” (yangxing)?

Welcome to the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast, where we share old and new stories about China's healing traditions and about medicine in Heaven and on Earth... ...and in the sweet spot in between. I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined, as usual, by Leo Lok, Resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives. With this final episode, titled “Sun Simiao’s Secret to True Healing,” we now officially finish up Season Three where we have been considering a variety of perspectives on “Nurturing Our Nature” 養性, to explore cultivating health and longevity from ancient China to today on the basis of Sun Simiao’s writings. Stay tuned for what comes next!

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Harnessing Emotional Energy

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0700

Are you feeling the turmoil of the world reflected in your own internal storm of emotions?
Do you feel like you are drowning in grief or exploding in anger, tired from rumination, rattled by fear, or giddy with joy?
Do your emotions sometimes keep you from being the powerful force for peace and justice and love and beauty in the world that you want to be?
Or do you simply sense the potency and urgency of the current moment and want some company in riding this wave?

If you are a sensitive person and have access to news, no matter where you are in the world, it may be a bit of a challenge right now to maintain a steady state of calm centeredness. Join us as we explore how to not drown or explode in our emotions but channel them into action. And as a special treat, if you listen all the way to the end of this episode, let Leo's beautiful healing voice wash all over you and cloak you in a mantle of support and compassion.

Note: This is a spontaneous offering, not following our regular monthly schedule. We just feel an urgency to try and perhaps ease a bit of suffering with this conversation.

Every Breath We Take

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:15:00 -0700

At the end of the day, what does it mean to “nurture our true, innate, genuine, heavenly nature” and how is that related to healing and personal growth?
When is the last time you have consciously savored each breath as an opportunity for transformation and restoration?
How does fear hold us back from health and joy by literally tying up our precious Qi in knots that impede its free flow and healing power?
And how do we untie those knots and encourage flow when we get to the end of our rope?

Welcome to the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast, where we share old and new stories about China's healing traditions and about medicine in Heaven and on Earth... ...and in the sweet spot in between. I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined, as usual, by Leo Lok, Resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives. With this last episode, titled “Every Breath We Take,” we conclude our Season Three where we have been considering a variety of perspectives on “Nurturing Our Nature” 養性, to explore cultivating health and longevity from ancient China to today on the basis of Sun Simiao’s writings.

Today, we contemplate the different elements of healing, from intellectual knowledge to intuition, to laughter, to surrendering and adapting, and to calling in the support of our family lineage, community, and even divine and celestial forces. In this challenging time full of tension, discord, and instability, we hope that this episode brings you joy and laughter and encourages you to let your Qi flow a bit more freely. We are all in this together, after all!

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Subscribe to my newsletter!
Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

The Sweet Spot for Calibration

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:15:00 -0700

How do we decide in each moment on the best path towards píng 平 (“equilibrium” or “balance”) in the spirit of Chinese medicine?
How do we calibrate our responses to external factors and decide between action and non-action?
What do we use (and teach) as criteria for this process of actively cultivating or passively nurturing our True Nature?
How do we promote an ever-growing self-awareness in our multiple roles as individuals, family and community members, and healers?

Today’s episode on “The Sweet Spot for Calibration” is part of Season Three where Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms consider a variety of perspectives on “Nurturing Our Nature” 養性, to explore cultivating health and longevity from ancient China to today on the basis of Sun Simiao’s writings from the seventh century.

In this episode, we uncover yet another layer in the wisdom found in Sun Simiao’s work. We start out considering the relationship between the three teachings of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Rather than seeing them as competing schools, we discover their power as a thick braid woven from three different yet beautifully complementary strands in early medieval China. Stay with us, if you want to find out how this braid helps me decide whether to watch the sunrise wedged in bed between my dog and cat in dreamy stillness or to get up and vitalize my qi and blood in the crisp fall air with an invigorating qigong session under the magical maple tree! And last but not least, Leo always reminds us to find joy and curiosity in this calibration process!

Additional Information

Subscribe to my newsletter!
Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Finding Balance Between Stillness and Action

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 10:00:00 -0700

How can we get better at listening to our body and aligning with the Dao? How can we compost harmful emotional energy into life-giving Qi in service of physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation? How can we use the tool of curiosity as an antidote to judgment and thereby change the flavor of our inquiries? How can we complete our nature through a hundred daily actions while at the same time allowing our spirit to settle in stillness? How can we steer away from exhaustion towards not just sustainability but restoration?

Welcome to the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast, where we share old and new stories about China's healing traditions and about medicine in Heaven and on Earth... ...and in the sweet spot in between. I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined, as usual, by Leo Lok, Resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives. Today’s episode on “Finding Balance Between Stillness and Action” is part of our Season Three where we consider a variety of perspectives on “Nurturing Our Nature” 養性, to explore cultivating health and longevity from ancient China to today on the basis of Sun Simiao’s writings and in preparation for the course we will be teaching on this topic this fall.

Listen in, as we discuss some of the gems from Sun Simiao’s introduction on the topic and their application to Leo’s clinical practice and Sabine’s current physical issue of an overworked body. We follow Sun’s lead to pursue the sweet spot in between too much and too little, between action and non-action, between exposure to and protection from seasonal change, between activity and rest, between Yin and Yang, and between innumerable daily acts of virtue and quiet contemplation. Reading this powerful synthesis of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism that comprises the core of Sun Simiao’s brilliance, we ask for his guidance.

Additional Information

Nurturing Our Nature Course
Subscribe to my newsletter!
Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Singing as Yangsheng

Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Are you curious about the theme music for Season Three of our podcast and the sharp contrast to the obnoxiously gregarious Mexican accordeon music of the previous two seasons, which, I must admit, are a reflection of my own German heritage and decades spent in Hispanic culture? Do you recognize Leo’s beautifully serene voice and grasp the meaning of some of the words, but can’t quite catch what the whole passage is supposed to say? Are you fascinated by Leo’s multicultural background as a person of Chinese descent from Malaysia, so vividly reflected in his singing, from Chinese lullabies to Indian love songs to Krishna and Malay nursery rhymes? Or do you just feel a warm and fuzzy sense of elemental stillness and well-being and want to know more about the origin of this musical gift and how that might relate to the role of music in yangsheng and healing?

Well then, listen to this conversation between Leo Lok and myself on “Singing as Yangsheng.” It is part of our Season Three where we shall consider a variety of perspectives on “Nurturing Our Nature” 養性, to explore cultivating health and longevity from ancient China to today on the basis of Sun Simiao’s writings and in preparation for the course we will be teaching on this topic this fall.

Additional Information

Nurturing Our Nature Course
Subscribe to my newsletter!
Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

The Balanced Person Doesn't Get Sick

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 06:00:00 -0700

Welcome to the first episode in Season Three of the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast. For the next few months, we shall consider a variety of perspectives on “Nurturing Our Nature” 養性: Cultivating health and longevity from ancient China to today.

This project is inspired by two things: First, Leo Lok's and my research in the volume on this topic in the seventh century text Beiji qianjin yaofang 《備急千金要方》 (Crucial Formulas to Prepare for Emergencies Worth a Thousand in Gold) by the famous medical author Sun Simiao. And secondly by our preparation for a course we will be teaching on this potent topic starting in September. In this podcast season, and the course, we shall both present early and medieval Chinese writings and practices authentically and, at the same time, make sense of this material in our personal lives and in the contemporary clinical context.

Our first conversation on this topic in the present podcast episode, titled “The balanced person doesn’t get sick” 平人者不病, starts with a critical exploration of the topic of yangxing in general, and specifically of the meaning of xìng 性 (“innate nature”). As usual, we try to balance the presentation of generalized default ideas with a more nuanced and textually rigorous way by differentiating between specific texts and contexts, authors, periods, and even passages within a single text.

To demonstrate the importance of this approach, we look at the role of the emotions, and joy in particular, in self-cultivation and how this might have changed between the Han and Tang periods, and between the authors of the Neijing and Sun Simiao. Fortunately, our background in Chinese medicine can help us make sense of the complicated linguistic material by grounding the textual evidence and abstract ideas in the concrete physiological responses in the body, through pulse, Qi flow, complexion, the shine of the shen, and other markers.

At the end of the day, we can evaluate the effect of any emotion by asking: Does it bring us closer to the ideal of píng 平, the healthy state of balance and dynamic equilibrium, or does it take us away from that? For this reason, we titled this episode 平人者不病 “The balanced person doesn’t get sick.” Isn’t this phrase from Suwen 18 a beautiful way to describe the essence of our medicine?

I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined, as usual, by Leo Lok, Resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives at the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast, where we share old and new stories about China's healing traditions and about medicine in Heaven and on Earth... ...and in the sweet spot in between.

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Nurturing Our Nature Course
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Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

What Do Love, Qigong, and Christ Consciousness Have to Do With Healing?

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 12:00:00 -0700

This episode, titled "What Do Love, Qigong, and Christ Consciousness Have to Do with Healing," is the second half of our conversation with Cynthia Li, a biomedical doctor in the Bay area who specializes in functional and integrative medicine. She is also a practitioner of what she calls “qigong consciousness healing” or “collective field qigong” and the author of two books: “Brave New Medicine: A Doctor’s Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Disease”, and “Mingjue Awakening: Teachings on Pure Consciousness, Collective Field Qigong, and Energy Healing.”

In preparation for publishing this interview, I listened to our conversation again and took five pages of notes, which I find impossible to condense into a paragraph for this introduction. I really hope you take the time to listen closely.

Cynthia has such a beautiful healing presence and deep deep wisdom about healing, from her religious upbringing to her professional training, personal journey through suffering and healing, and Qigong practice. All these strands come together in her work of creating this healing cosmic consciousness space of oneness, or physiological coherence or Christ consciousness or, ultimately, unconditional love and peace and happiness, merged hearts, total acceptance and endless creativity.

And to add the cherry on the top, Leo was able to connect Cynthia’s descriptions to some beautiful Buddhist concepts, from Nirvana to descriptions of breath cultivation to the Buddha’s command to stop the discursive, differentiating, analyzing mind and embrace emptiness. You are in for a real treat!

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Looking for the Root, in Medicine, Qigong, and Religion

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 12:00:00 -0700

Cynthia Li, our interview partner for this episode, is a biomedical doctor who I have been dreaming of asking questions for several years now, ever since our mutual friend Michael Lerner introduced me to her work. She is a biomedical doctor, specializing in functional and integrative medicine. She is also a qigong practitioner who studies and performs what she calls “qigong consciousness healing” or “collective field qigong.” She is the author of two books: an incredibly honest and courageous biography of her own intense healing journey published in 2019 and titled “Brave New Medicine: A Doctor’s Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Disease”, and the recently published “Mingjue Awakening: Teachings on Pure Consciousness, Collective Field Qigong, and Energy Healing.” I hope you note down these titles and get a hold of both of them when you are finished listening to this podcast. I find them incredibly relevant to many of the most salient conversations in the field of Chinese medicine as practiced in the West. The links are also in the shownotes.

This episode is the first half of our interview with Cynthia, with the second half to follow in two weeks. It seems to me like this whole conversation circled around Cynthia’s quest for the root: for the root causes of her patients’ conditions in her medical practice, for the root in her own healing journey, for the root in her qigong practice, and, in an unexpected turn, for the root in the Christian teachings she received from her Chinese parents. Most importantly, in the context of true healing, she suggests that we track down the sometimes hidden threads in each of our lives, including our traumas, that lead to our true inner work, in a playful way, like a scavenger hunt.

Being both a traditionalist and a scientist who appreciates long-term observational study, her work seems to dance between the pursuit of the true, enduring essence and the creative manifestation and application thereof in the moment, whether she is looking at her medical or qigong practice, her life journey, her spiritual interest in Christ consciousness, or the authentic transmission of her teacher’s wisdom.

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Relax! You're Okay!

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Today’s episode titled “Relax! You are Okay!” is the second part of Leo’s and my conversation with Cara Conroy-Lau, a Kiwi with a Chinese mom now practicing Chinese medicine and Buddhism in Canada. For this portion, we focus more specifically on the female perspective, both on the giving and on the receiving end of caring. I really appreciate Cara’s insistence on approaching Chinese medicine more light-heartedly as a playful exploration, as part of her culture, family traditions, and just life, rather than as “A THING” (in the sense of a big, serious, very special intellectual endeavor that we all have to get stressed out over). Her training in a Buddhist lineage of direct teacher-student transmission has taught her to just relax into her spiritual practice and leave the ego at the door. As a result, she experiences a “heart-to-heart transmission of joy, confidence, peace, clarity, humanity, and humanness,” as she puts it. In the context of what she calls the “healing friendship” with her patients, she reminds us of the therapeutic effect of food and encourages us to “be our own grandmother to ourselves” and rely on our particular culture’s traditional comfort foods to alleviate the heaviness of human suffering. When Leo asks Cara about the emotional entanglements that women often experience when caring for and worrying about others, Cara introduces the notion of nervous system attunement to establish connection, which she balances with the Buddhist realization that each of us is responsible for our own karmic journey.

Later on in the conversation, we also consider the holes in the transmission of Chinese medicine to the West. Especially in the context of gynecology, so much of the healing work happened behind closed doors, within the family as part of traditional practices, and beyond the written word. We ask ourselves: What would Chinese medicine look like in the West today if we were to plug the holes left by this lack of cultural transmission not with biomedical theories and practices, as Giovanni Maciocia, Bob Flaws, and the other early Western pioneers of Chinese medicine have done, but with the embodied wisdom of Asian grannies?

In the very end, Cara offers a glimpse of an answer in three parts: First, she speaks of her mother’s transmission of a nonverbal quiet presence of “You are okay. You have a right to be here.” Then she mentions the acuity of her Chinese female relatives about food and what is good and not good for the body. And lastly, in terms of menstruation, it’s as easy as “Just let it flow!”

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Olives and Porridge

Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 -0700

In today’s episode on “Olives and Porridge,” Leo Lok and I are talking to Cara Conroy-Lau. Cara is a beautiful global border-crossing practitioner of Chinese medicine and Buddhism who has ended up in Canada at the Clear Sky Meditation Centre in Cranbrook, after growing up in Singapore, New Zealand, and Japan. I loved our conversation for how it revealed Cara’s courage and humility and dedication to her healing work, both within herself and in her community and family.

Here are some of the questions that Cara shared some pearls of wisdom about, which I believe are relevant not just to those of our listeners who happen to be female, of Asian descent, or medical practitioners: How do we tease apart the individual strands that made us who we are today, or in other words recover the precious ingredients that went into the melting pot before modern life took the stick blender to it? How do we heal the cultural ruptures and broken transmissions to link us back to our maternal lineages and recover what she calls “knowledge that is in our bones”? How do we overcome decades of internalized racism and attempted assimilation to the dominant White culture, to share something as simple as hot water and goji berries on a first date with a fellow Asian woman? Inspired by Cara’s life history, our conversation ranged across multiple fertile intersecting identities, between being White and non-White, colonizer and colonized, female and non-female, straight and queer, Chinese and non-Chinese. When I asked her at the very end to reflect on the influence of her maternal Asian heritage on her current practice of Chinese medicine, her answer was as simple and profound and powerful as her healing work, from what I can tell. To find out what her answer was and what all this has to do with olives and porridge, you’ll have to listen to the podcast!

Additional Information

Clear Sky Meditation Center - A Space For Inner & Outer Growth
Cara Conroy-Lau's website
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Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Living and Teaching the Way of Yin

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 12:00:00 -0700

For today’s episode on “Living and Teaching the Way of Yin,” Leo Lok and I are once again joined by Kris González, Chinese medicine practitioner and herbalist, whose personal experience of motherhood has been influenced by her Korean mother and her Mexican mother-in-law. In addition to her clinical practice, she is also an educator offering evocative courses on topics like embodied menstruation, holistic breast care, the alchemy of perimenopause, spirit-heart-womb transformation through the somatic womb path, and sacred vaginal ecology, to name just some of her juicy offerings. Check out her gorgeous website “Thewayofyin.com” to get a sense of the beauty she weaves into being in her corner of the universe.

In this second half of our conversation with Kris, we considered a Yin approach to Chinese medicine. How do we shift out of the heady, Yang space and the intellectual models of Chinese medicine as currently practiced and taught in the West, into the sensorial, embodied experience that serves as such a potent alternative doorway to healing? How can we manifest a more expansive, softer, deeper, gentler, and less rigid healing practice that aims to lean into and support what feels good rather than fighting what is wrong? How can we express the Yin way of weaving community and nurturing health instead of the Yang way of solving problems? Ultimately, how can we change this extractive culture of ours through the authority and power of our medicine, to restore the valuation of Yin in all aspects of society, from menstruating and giving birth to cooking and caring? What a conversation! Oh, I am really happy that I get to share it with you and hope that this will in turn inspire you to engage in similar conversations with your community of family and friends.

Additional Information

The Way of Yin - Nourishing Life Wisdom
Traditional Chinese Gynecology
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Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Yangsheng By and For Women

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 00:15:00 -0700

Welcome to Season Two of “The Pebble in the Cosmic Pond” where we focus on 2nd generation immigrant Asian voices by, for, and about women in that sweet spot in between traditional Asian wisdom and contemporary Western embodiment.

Joining Leo and myself for our third episode on Season 2 is Kris González, Chinese medicine practitioner and herbalist, whose personal experience of motherhood has been influenced by her Korean mother and her Mexican mother-in-law. In addition to her clinical practice, she is also an educator offering evocative courses on topics like embodied menstruation, holistic breast care, the alchemy of perimenopause, spirit-heart-womb transformation through the somatic womb path, and sacred vaginal ecology, to name just some of her juicy offerings. Check out her gorgeous website “Thewayofyin.com” to get a sense of the beauty she weaves into being in her corner of the universe.

I first crossed paths with Kris when she consulted with me on the classical Chinese perspective on women’s health and on yangsheng, so that is naturally where our conversation with Leo started. It was really interesting and moving for the three of us to explore the fertile intersection between Kris’ personal lived experience and her professional training in Chinese medicine. I feel like this has given her a special angle that is rooted firmly in a traditional Asian perspective, emphasizing dietetics, living in harmony with the external cycles of the seasons and internal cycles of the female body, and yangsheng (“nurturing life” or, as she put it “providing wellness instead of treating disease”). Kris is such a beautiful spirit, internally and externally, and Leo and I walked away from this conversation feeling very lucky that she so generously shared her way of being in the world with us, and through this podcast also with all of you, our dear listeners. May her deep commitment to helping women experience the cycles of their bodies fully and with ease, in harmony with the cycles of the seasons and the cosmos, inspire you as well to explore the power of this approach in your own life and clinical practice!

Additional Information

The Way of Yin - Nourishing Life Wisdom
Channeling the Moon, A Translation and Discussion of Qí Zhòngfǔ's "Hundred Questions on Gynecology," Part One — Happy Goat Productions
Traditional Chinese Gynecology
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Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Attuning and Releasing with Ramona

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0700

In Season 2, titled “Over the Moon?”, we feature the voices of second-generation immigrant Asian women on female health. We explore the creative sweet spot in between the traditional Asian kitchen table wisdom that they have inherited from their mothers and aunties, and their personal and professional experience in contemporary North America.

In this Episode two on “Attuning and Releasing,” we continue our conversation with Ramona Deonauth, a Chinese medicine practitioner of Indian heritage in San Diego who is finishing up a doctoral dissertation on menstrual education at Yo San University in Los Angeles.

Now we get to dig a little deeper into current menstrual education in the US: What are some missing pieces that traditional Asian cultural and medical paradigms might be able to provide? What is the effect of non-existent or harmful information on menstruation not just for menstruators but for their family members, partners, and society at large? How can we celebrate and elevate currently emerging young women’s intuitive voices and cross-cultural universal experiences to fundamentally change the way in which especially young women experience menstruation in a positive direction? And on the other hand, how can we address and prevent, instead of normalize, menstrual pain and provide much needed medical, emotional, and social support? We walk away with Ramona’s insistence that menstrual education must be improved for ALL humans, not just women, and Leo’s teaser for a future session that “fertility is not an on-or-off switch.”

Additional Information

Channeling the Moon, A Translation and Discussion of Qí Zhòngfǔ's "Hundred Questions on Gynecology," Part One — Happy Goat Productions
Traditional Chinese Gynecology
Ramona Deonauth's bio and website
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Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Over the Moon with Ramona

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 12:00:00 -0700

Once again, Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms are here to bring you old and new stories about China's healing traditions and about Medicine in Heaven and on Earth... ...and in the sweet spot in between.

In a special twist for Season 2, evocatively titled "Over the Moon?", they focus on second generation immigrant Asian voices by, for, and about women's health, as the sweet spot between traditional Asian wisdom and contemporary Western embodiment. And yes, they do realize that they need help with this theme since both Leo and Sabine are first, not second, generation immigrants in the US (he from Malaysia and she from Germany), and he is a guy and she is not Asian. That’s where the interview partners come in.

For this first interview, Leo and Sabine get to chat with Ramona Deonauth, a Chinese medicine practitioner of Indian heritage in San Diego who is finishing up a doctoral dissertation on menstrual education at Yo San University in Los Angeles. Sabine has had the great honor to serve as one of her advisors for her super fascinating research project, which involved her interviewing young menstruators and professional providers of menstrual education from the worlds of nursing, public health, and Western and Chinese gynecology. For the last year or so Sabine has been so enjoying her monthly mentoring sessions with Ramona because Ramona has really powerful stories to tell and insights to share, sad and beautiful and inspiring. Doing a ton of listening and learning, she has been contemplating how to improve the experience of bleeding with the moon for young American menstruators.

Truth be told, Ramona is actually the reason for this theme for Season Two because the three of them had such a wonderful conversation, in perfect alignment with each other on the huge potential and power for this subject, that they knew at the end of three hours that they couldn’t stop there. And since Ramona has to focus on finishing up her dissertation, Leo and Sabine have simply found other second generation immigrant Asian women to interview until Ramona is done with her doctorate and can join them again. You will be able to tell from the first time Ramona opens her mouth that she is one of those human angels, motivated by her deep care for the young menstruators she has been encountering in her research and clinical practice. Leo and Sabine are delighted that this podcast might help get the word out about Ramona’s work and about the significance and potential of menstrual education from a Chinese medicine perspective, along the lines of Leo’s beloved “Bodhisattva Math.”

Additional Information

Introduction to Season Two on "Over the Moon?"

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 00:00:00 -0700

In a special twist for Season 2, we feature second generation immigrant Asian women’s voices on female health. We explore the creative sweet spot in between the traditional Asian kitchen table wisdom on women’s health that they have inherited from their mothers and aunties, and their personal and professional experience in contemporary America.

Before we get to interview these women in our official episodes, here is a little introductory conversation where Leo and I explore this topic and ask questions like “Where does traditional women’s knowledge on female health come from and how is it transmitted? How is it reflected, if at all, in the traditional literature of Chinese medicine, written largely by and for men? How do we plug the gaping holes in the male-dominated traditional literature as modern providers of medical education and medical care by and for women? Whether in the context of advanced clinical practice or daily yangsheng, how can we make space for the female perspective of the nurturer versus the technician?

Additional Information

Channeling the Moon, A Translation and Discussion of Qí Zhòngfǔ's "Hundred Questions on Gynecology," Part One — Happy Goat Productions
Traditional Chinese Gynecology
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Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Occupational Hazards in Chinese Medicine

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:00:00 -0700

What is the relationship between your personal practice of yangsheng and your clinical efficacy? Is it important, or even relevant, for a practitioner of Chinese medicine to embody the ideas of Yangsheng? In other words, can you be a good healer of others if you can’t take care of yourself? Are the short lifespans of many historical and contemporary Chinese medicine practitioners due to their failure to practice self-care? Or could it be related to the Wounded Healer pattern, to the fact that they started out with and were inspired by their own frail bodies?

Considering occupational hazards from a different angle, how do you meet a depleted patient without depleting yourself? What does a healthy or ideal interaction between the patient’s Qi and the practitioner’s Qi look like? Does the practitioner replenish the patient’s Qi, or is it a question of merely attuning the patient’s body, like tuning a piano instead of playing it, and leaving it up to the patient to replenish their own Qi?

For this episode of the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast on “Occupational Hazards in Chinese Medicine,” Leo Lok and I invited our dear friend Michael Max to join us. As the host of his famous Qiological podcast and a practitioner with decades of experience, he was the perfect conversation partner. Become a member of the Imperial Tutor mentorship to receive related translated passages and listen to the continuation of this conversation as the Imperial Tutorial episode on "Dealing with Bingqi and Avoiding Martyrdom."

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Qiological
Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
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Translating Chinese Medicine: Dr. Wilms' website for learning classical Chinese
Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Eating for Old Age: The Lost Art of Chinese Food Therapy

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 12:00:00 -0700

Today’s conversation is inspired by Leo Lok’s ideal of “Bodhisattva Math,” which is a great reminder for us to focus on topics in Chinese medicine that have the most impact on alleviating unnecessary suffering with the least amount of effort! In this context, Sun Simiao reminded us already in the seventh century that food is essential for human survival but can be medicine or poison. As he put it:

“Anything that contains Qi without exception has the potential to provide food and thereby safeguard life. And yet, if we eat it without awareness [of its specific effect], it can mean thriving or ruin.”

In this episode on “Eating for Old Age: The Lost Art of Chinese Food Therapy,” Leo Lok and I explore the potential and power of food in the contemporary clinical practice of Chinese medicine. To cite Master Sun again, dietetics is

“...the special method of lengthening the years and ‘eating for old age’ and the utmost art of nurturing life. Any practitioner of medicine must first thoroughly understand the source of disease and know what has been violated. Then, use food to treat it. If treatment with food will not cure [the patient], afterwards apply drugs. The nature of drugs is harsh and unyielding. This is just like managing soldiers. Soldiers being fierce and violent, how could you allow them to recklessly set out!”

You will see, there are some real gems that Leo shares with us in this episode, such as how to have your ice-cream and eat it too…

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Questioning Our Filters

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:30:00 -0700

Medicine, like any other skill or knowledge system, needs to be rooted in both subjectivity and objectivity. By valuing either one over the other, we deprive ourselves of an essential part thereof. Can traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy help us find a more balanced way of making sense of the world than the cold, rational, evidence-based cause-and-effect thinking of biomedicine and modern science? As Greg Bantick, our special guest on today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond puts it with his wonderful clarity: The act of failing to examine our filters is not benign, but dangerous, and results in problems like racism, cultural appropriation, and orientalism.

When we encounter perspectives of the world that make us squirm because they challenge our own beliefs and experiences, we have three choices in how we respond:

We can deny their value and write them off as “barbaric” or “superstitious”;
we can orientalize or exoticize them as “other” and then creatively interpret them in such a way that they ultimately confirm our own beliefs; or
we can accept the discomfort and embrace this challenge of getting our own world rocked as a chance to learn something new, and then we grow in that process.

The choice is ours!

For today’s episode, titled ““Questioning our Filters,” our special guest is Greg Bantick, a leading practitioner and international teacher of Chinese medicine with almost half a century of experience, who also happens to be a deeply committed practitioner of Buddhism with a beautiful kind heart and a deep well of wisdom.

I should warn you though: We end a bit abruptly and sadly, with us sharing a sense of grief at the huge loss of so many centuries of information and experience that can be found in the treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine. As our conversation explores, the misunderstandings and ignorance that affect the transmission of Chinese medicine into the West are due to two key factors: The lack of an open mind, and the linguistic barrier that prevents the vast majority of Chinese medicine practitioners in the West from even knowing what is out there.

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More on Compassionate Practice

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:30:00 -0700

What makes somebody a master physician? What can we learn from historical texts about some limitations and possibilities, strengths and weakness of Chinese medicine that are no longer visible in the modern clinical context, especially as practiced in the West? How can we acquire and transmit skills to adapt Chinese medicine more flexibly, beyond the now standard “perfumed, candle-lit privileged context of the so-called worried well” (in Daniel Altschuler’s words) in order to serve patients in dire need who may not have access to standard health care? Wouldn’t YOU want to try and to save a patient suffering from appendicitis with Dahuang Mudanpi Tang, rather than watching them suffer and possibly die as they wait for biomedical care in an overburdened or nonexistent system?

On a deeper level, is there a role for Chinese medicine as a tool to “re-humanize” (in Leo Lok’s poignant word) the people we touch by reconnecting them with their physical, social, and environmental bodies and helping them find peace and ease and comfort, rather than merely making their lab results and diagnostic tests conform to a standard value imposed by for-profit pharmaceutical companies? Can Chinese medicine, or any medicine for that matter, be a tool of resistance to our modern relentless pressure for maximum productivity and efficiency in our industrialized capitalist society shaped by corporate greed where doctors are left feeling like assembly line workers and cogs in the machine?

This episode of the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond is actually the second part of a conversation Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms had with Daniel Altschuler, on “Compassionate Practice.” It turned out that Daniel was the perfect person to help us find answers, due to his varied experiences of training under a traditional Chinese medicine doctor in Taiwan, followed by his work teaching and practicing in Seattle and his passion project of providing free healthcare to any and all once a year in a monastery in rural Nepal. I hope that you agree with Leo and me that Daniel is a rare treasure and wonderful example of just this “compassionate practice” that this whole conversation is ultimately about.

If you haven't done so yet, please sign up for my newsletter at HAPPYGOATPRODUCTIONS.COM/CONNECT to stay in touch. Also, please rate, review, and share this podcast wherever you can. Lastly, to hear the last third of this conversation, join my Imperial Tutor mentorship, where you can listen each month to the exclusive follow-up “Imperial Tutorial” episodes that drop every full moon, in addition to receiving all sorts of other benefits like weekly translations and live Tea Time Talks. Find out more and sign up at happygoatproductions.com/imperialtutor.

Additional Information

Open Hands Medicine - Daniel Altschuler's Non-Profit in Nepal
Daniel Altschuler's clinic website - Home - Acupuncture Seattle - Traditional Chinese MedicineAcupuncture Seattle – Traditional Chinese Medicine | Looking for Acupuncture in Seattle? Chinese Medicine, Cancer Acupuncture Specialist, Dr. Daniel Altschuler can help you.
Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
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Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Compassionate Practice, from Seattle To Taiwan to Nepal

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:15:00 -0700

How does the training and practice of Chinese medicine change depending on one’s location? What is the difference in patient expectations, scopes of practice, and lineage versus institutional training and licensing? And what is really behind this supposed contrast between biomedicine, perceived as instantly effective and ideal for emergencies and serious conditions, versus Chinese medicine, supposedly being slow medicine, for chronic conditions, and too often seen as a benign complementary treatment?

In today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “Compassionate Practice, from Seattle to Taiwan to Nepal,” my collaborator Leo Lok and I are talking to Daniel Altschuler. Having lived and studied Chinese medicine for many years in Taiwan, he has been practicing and teaching in Seattle for the past 18 years, and also travels to Nepal each year to treat patients there through his nonprofit. So he is the perfect person to give us some new perspectives.

For the second part of this conversation, join Dr. Wilms' Imperial Tutor mentorship.

Additional Information

Open Hands Medicine - Daniel Altschuler's Non-Profit in Nepal
Daniel Altschuler's clinic website - Home - Acupuncture Seattle - Traditional Chinese MedicineAcupuncture Seattle – Traditional Chinese Medicine | Looking for Acupuncture in Seattle? Chinese Medicine, Cancer Acupuncture Specialist, Dr. Daniel Altschuler can help you.
Subscribe to my newsletter!
Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. Wilms
Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)
Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Healing Soundbath for the World by Dr. Hood

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 17:00:00 -0700

Catching up on the news this morning, I felt a strong need to do something so I got in touch with my friend and colleague Dr. Brenda Hood, whose tuning forks are magical. I just felt like the world had a little need for some of her healing magic, and she was happy to oblige. So here is yet another spontaneous recording session, created in response to the horrendous things happening for far too many of us locally, nationally, globally, and cosmicly.

As the image associated with this episode shows, the sound of Dr. Hood's singing bowl symphony is accompanied by what she calls a "Healing Grid" created specifically for this recording. It consists of the following stones (and I hope I got this right because I am no specialist in fancy stones but just took quick notes while Brenda was explaining it to me):

Pink Himalayan healer quartz (top left corner), for healing
Green phantom quartz (top right corner), for communication
Labradorite (center stone in the very middle of the wooden structure), for processing, as the dark side of the moon
Tangerine quartz (top, left, and right sides of the wooden structure), for trauma
Lepidolite (large stone on the bottom corner of the structure), for calmness
Pyrite (below this bottom corner, on the cloth), for protection and bountifulness
K2 Jasper (three stones underneath the Pyrite), for protection and trust.

The healing grid is arranged on a rose pink cloth to echo love throughout the entire soundbath. The singing bowls are antiques from Brenda's personal collection, dating back as far as the seventeenth century. In Brenda's words, the sound produced by her bowls is filtered through all the healing vibrations of the stones in the Healing Grid, to create a certain energy to send out into the world.

It is Brenda's and my desire that this offering may bring healing and a moment of peace to as many people as possible. Please feel free to share this recording with anybody who you think may benefit from it, whether they are a fellow practitioner of Chinese medicine or your patients or community.

May you find some peace, love, rest, and support!

Cultivating the Ineffable

Sun, 15 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0700

Today’s conversation started out with an innocuous email I sent to Leo, requesting that we explore that aspect of any good healer’s practice that is challenging to speak about and analyze rationally, let alone measure, certify, or transmit. And yet, we all know how powerful a healer can be, not because of their technical expertise but because of something else.

What is this something else? In today’s episode, we once again look at the Chinese medicine classics for insights. Our journey takes us in several different directions, all in order to avoid the danger of literally going crazy from overintellectualizing and overanalyzing, which is an issue whether we practice translation or medicine or really any other art.

Answers offered in the classics include the healer’s and/or the patient’s concentrated or “unified” spirit shén (or 意 yì “intent” or 志 zhì “will”, in the sense of attention, in the clinical encounter. In addition, there is their cultivated presence as an ethical and “realized” human being, whether in terms of 德 dé “virtue-power” or charisma or presence, or in terms of wisdom and compassion, as the result of having gained 清靜 qīngjìng “purity and stillness,” by means of Buddhist or Daoist meditative practices of emptying and stilling the mind.

And if this hourlong conversation wasn 't enough on this topic, do you want to join Leo and me for the second half of this conversation, titled “Jiggling the Jing,” where we looked more deeply at the dangers and limitations of an overly analytical and intellectual approach and then, by contrast, at real mastery, both in ancient China and in contemporary practice? In that case, I invite you to join my Imperial Tutor mentorship to listen to the exclusive follow-up “Imperial Tutorial” episodes that drop every full moon, in addition to all sorts of other benefits like weekly translations and live Tea Time Talks. Find out more at happygoatproductions.com/imperialtutor.

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May Guanyin Ease Our Sorrow

Sat, 14 Oct 2023 12:00:00 -0700

This episode is a spontaneous response to the intense sorrow that I see so many of my friends in multiple places of the world experiencing right now, whether directly or indirectly. So I have invited my dear friend Leo Lok for a conversation about suffering, sorrow, Guanyin, compassion, and processing and transforming emotions. We invoke the healing power of religious maternal figures in both of our life histories, from the Virgen de Guadalupe in the American Southwest to the Bodhisattva Guanyin/Kannon all over East Asia, to the Virgin Mary in my native Bavaria. With their assistance, we explore what we each can do, as deeply sensitive human beings, with the sorrow that we are feeling, without either suppressing it on the one extreme, or drowning in it on the other. Ultimately, this is a conversation about being human and keeping your heart open, and about being of service in a world that makes that pretty darn difficult right now. May our conversation be helpful to you!

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Roshi Joan Halifax Meditation on Transforming Grief

Truth East and West and in Between

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 12:00:00 -0700

How do we cultivate the ability to hold two opposite experiences of reality at the same time and thereby somehow get closer to the truth in between? How do we overcome the limitations of language in describing the ineffable while still appreciating its analytic function? If we can use language in communication with others like multiple fingers pointing at the moon, to literally “round out” all of our understanding, how do we handle alternate voices that may not even be pointing at the moon but at the sun or at birds flying by? And how is this issue relevant to the transmission of authentic but ever-changing Chinese medicine to the West, and to its biomedicalization?

On a totally different note (sorry, can’t help it), what do you do when a person won’t stop singing? Is the Western mind different from the Eastern mind? Or are there different levels of truth and complexity to be found in any scientific and medical paradigm? And how do postmodernism, differential diagnosis, Daoist cultivation, authority, samadhi and Humpty Dumpty, and the “Six Warps” 六經 fit into this conversation? How do we express, cultivate, revise, and share our expertise with compassion rather than righteousness?

That is the topic of today's episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “Truth in East and West and in Between.” I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined today, as so often, by Leo Lok, resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives, and our resident Daoist sage Dr. Brenda Hood among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove that make up the core of our Pebble in the Cosmic Pond team.

Please remember to sign up for my newsletter to stay in touch. Also, please rate, review, and share this podcast wherever you can and check out the show notes if you want to learn more.

And two more things: If you can’t wait until the next new moon for the next episode to drop, you can always become an Imperial Tutor member to listen to the exclusive “Imperial Tutorial” episodes that drop every full moon, in addition to all sorts of other benefits. And second, my two-year-long Triple Crown classical Chinese training program starts this September 14 with the Foundations course.

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The Yellow Emperor's Broken Heart

Wed, 16 Aug 2023 10:00:00 -0700

What does it mean when the Yellow Emperor mourns and why might that matter to you? Does he “lord it over” his subjects and discuss medicine and needles because the exploitation of a healthy population yields more taxes? Or does he love and care for the people like a parent for their children and is heartbroken about their suffering? How do we read and translate a text like the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic that was compiled two thousand years ago but references figures from what was even then a mythological past of many centuries earlier? What tools do three experienced translators turn to when we get stuck and our “spidy sense” tells us that we are just not getting it? That our finger is no longer pointing at the moon but quite possibly at the sun? And how do we cultivate this spidy sense that alerts us that we may be misunderstanding a phrase or passage? A teaser: It involves a book called “Beware of Chicken”!

The process and pitfalls through which we find meaning in the classical texts is what we are discussing in today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “The Yellow Emperor’s Broken Heart.” I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined once again by Leo Lok, self-proclaimed Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives, and Dr. Brenda Hood, our resident Daoist sage, among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove that make up the core of our Pebble in the Cosmic Pond team.

If we have inspired you and you want to learn more, you can join my Imperial Tutor mentorship to listen to the more clinically oriented and EVEN NERDIER Imperial Tutorial bonus episode, released on the full moon on 8/30, and also receive some related translations. Or you can explore learning classical Chinese at "translatingChinesemedicine.com" by signing up for my free "Introduction to Classical Chinese" course, my membership, or join the new cohort of my two-year-long Triple Crown intensive training program, which starts on September 14 with the Foundations course.

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Dr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese Medicine
Triple Crown Training Program — Translating Chinese Medicine - Dr. Wilms' 2-year training program in classical Chinese, starting every two years in September
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Translating Chinese Medicine: Dr. Wilms' website for learning classical Chinese
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Food as Medicine

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 12:00:00 -0700

A quote from Sun Simiao (translation by Dr. Wilms):

“When a person’s body is balanced and harmonious, you must merely nurture it well. Do not recklessly take medicinals, because the strength of medicinals assists only partially and causes the persons’ organ Qi to be imbalanced, so that they easily contract external trouble. All things that contain Qi provide food and thereby preserve life. Nevertheless, eating them unawares has the opposite effect. The common people use them daily without awareness, and so they hardly recognize when water and fire draw near... For this reason, food is able to expel evil and secure the internal organs, and to please the spirit and clear the will, by supplying blood and Qi. If you can use food to stabilize chronic illness, release emotions, and chase away disease, you can call yourself an outstanding practitioner. This is the special method of lengthening the years and eating for old age, and the utmost art of nurturing life.”

Inspired by that quote, we look at the following questions:

How can we use food as medicine? How do we nurture essence? What makes food nourishing? How can we help our patients, friends, and family decolonized their experience of embodiment by rediscovering their innate ability to sense what is good or bad for the body, and for their jīng 精 “essence” in particular? What does that mean for immigrants in the US who are craving the taste of home? Lastly, what are some of the dangers of popular diets and fads, in particular the Keto diet and elimination of carbohydrates, or of nutraceutical extracts? What is the difference between a carrot and a carrot, and between losing weight and losing jīng “essence”? What are some of the other magical aspects of flavor or wèi 味 in Chinese, which the Nèijīng already mentions as the key to supplementing jīng Essence?

We have fun as we look at factors ranging from love and fermentation to refrigeration and round-up, and even Mexican Coca-Cola and, of course, German “Gummibärchen.” And as a special bonus, our conversation concludes with Z’ev’s favorite breakfast congee recipe so make sure you listen closely all the way to the end…

For today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “Food as Medicine,” I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, as usual supported by Leo Lok, our resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove. In addition, we are joined by Z’ev Rosenberg who you may be familiar with from Episode 2 of our podcast on the “True Medicine of Yangsheng.”

If this has got you really interested, check out my follow-up conversation with Leo Lok in the Imperial Tutorial episode on "Jing and Wei: Essence and Flavor," exclusively produced for the members of my Imperial Tutor mentorship. Find out more at happygoatproductions.com/imperialtutor.

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The True Medicine of Yangsheng - A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond
Can Kyoto's Buddhist Cuisine Teach us All to Eat Better? | Saveur
What is Macrobiotics? | Ohsawa Macrobiotics
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Responsibility Versus Fault

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 00:00:00 -0700

As just one example of the dynamic polarities, and the sweet spot in between, that we so love in Chinese medicine, this episode explores the difference between responsibility and fault.

How does our perspective shift when we consider placing or accepting responsibility as opposed to faulting ourselves or others in our attempts to explain outcomes that we do not like? Can we perhaps see responsibility as an opening to healing, to stepping forward into a better future, to repairing past damage, while fault keeps us mired in the past through toxic judgment and blame? What is the sweet spot between recognizing where there is room for improvement and slipping into a dead-end negativity? And what does any of this have to do with meditation, diet and lifestyle, karma, the spiritual marketplace, heavenly punishment, American litigiousness, Western and Eastern concepts of purity, and spilling hot water?

This is the topic of today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond on “Responsibility Versus Fault.” Our host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and Leo Lok, resident Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove, are joined by Dr. Brenda Hood and Josh Paynter, both of whom are practitioners of Chinese medicine and specialists in Daoism, Brenda with a PhD in Daoist philosophy and Josh as one of the eminent teachers of Daoism as a spiritual practice in the West.

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The True Medicine of Yangsheng

Fri, 19 May 2023 12:00:00 -0700

In this episode of "A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond," I am joined by my two dear friends Leo Lok and Z'ev Rosenberg. Both are experienced practitioners of Chinese medicine in the US with a strong classical foundation and shared commitment to not only practicing but also LIVING Chinese medicine.

It is fascinating to me to hear how they arrive at their shared ideals from very different backgrounds, as a New York Jew (Z'ev) and a Malaysian Chinese Buddhist (Leo). As usual, today's conversation takes us in some unexpected directions as we talk about

medicine as a living philosophy, both for practitioners and patients;
the meaning of life and death;
the embodied teachings of Zhuangzi to treat cancer;
the human role in "Harmonizing Heaven and Earth";
medical practice in the context of multicultural diversity, environment pollution, plastic surgery, and much more; and
the role of the intestinal biome, constitutional types, and the importance of the Spleen-Stomach school.

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The Circle and the Kite

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 12:00:00 -0700

In this inaugural session of the podcast, my co-conspirator Leo Lok and I introduce our new podcast by comparing it to two activities: flying a kite and completing a circle. Find out how we use these two metaphors to explore different directions for future conversations, such as:

the fertile relationship between oral lineage transmission and textual transmission, between Heaven and Earth, and between planting ourselves in solid ground and catching the wind of inspiration to fly high;
the parallels between Buddhist transmission from India to China many centuries ago and the current transmission of Chinese medicine to the West;
our vision of collaboration in the creative pursuit of academic and clinical knowledge;
the importance of honoring the "voices of our medical ancestors" (in Leo's beautiful phrase); and
the challenges in translating and communicating what is ultimately the inexpressible wisdom of the ancient Chinese sages.

As you can see, we have an endless repertoire of topics, to pursue and rope our wise friends into discussing with us!

If you liked this episode, subscribe to my newsletter at https://www.happygoatproductions.com/connect to get notified of new releases (coming to you on every new moon) and other offerings by Dr. Sabine Wilms.

To catch the biweekly bonus episodes released on each full moon for members of my Imperial Tutor mentorship, learn more at imperialtutor.com/membership.

Learn more about Leo Lok's "Voices of our Medical Ancestors" on his THINKIFIC page or stay tuned for a future episode on "Meditation Sickness and Qigong Psychosis."

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Just a goofy bonus thing

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 12:00:00 -0700

... to make you laugh...

Pebble in the Cosmic Pond Trailer

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 12:00:00 -0700

This is just a short trailer to introduce you to our podcast.

Here are some RESEARCH LINKS:

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