Sometimes the most interesting things happen when we stop trying to confirm what we think we know. In clinic, certainty can close doors—but curiosity opens them. There’s a kind of listening that goes beyond the intellect, a way of paying attention that allows discovery to unfold on its own time.

In this conversation with Dan Bensky, we explore the art of noticing. What it means to let medicine be a call and response rather than a performance of knowledge. We talk about the practitioner’s stance—one that values modesty over mastery, sensation before interpretation, and the quiet skill of finding something you weren’t looking for.

Listen into this discussion as we trace ideas of Tong and connection, the dance between palpation and perception, the discipline involved with not-knowing, and how true competence might simply mean being willing to check yourself.

This is a conversation for anyone who’s ever paused mid-treatment and thought, “Huh… that’s odd.” Because sometimes, that moment—the one that unsettles what you thought you knew—is where the treatment really begins.

The 1970s were a turbulent time—streets alive with protest, classrooms charged with new ideas, and an entire generation questioning the stories they’d inherited. It was a decade of upheaval, but also one where curious opportunities arose. For some, those opportunities led not to politics or protest, but to the quiet pulse of a medicine few in America had ever heard of.

In this conversation with Gene Bruno, we wander through those early days of acupuncture in the United States. From campus strikes and existentialist lectures with Angela Davis to finding himself in the second class of Dr. Kim’s students, Gene’s story carries the spirit of curiosity and rebellion that shaped an era. His path was less about a plan and more about following questions—whether that meant bringing acupuncture into UCLA’s pain clinic, or rediscovering forgotten traditions with horses on California racetracks.

Listen into this discussion as we explore acupuncture’s improbable foothold in the counterculture of the 70s, the razor’s edge moment when the profession nearly became the sole territory of physicians, and how veterinary acupuncture was reborn in America before returning to the world stage.

Ever wonder if being human is less about mechanics and more about patterns? Not the kind of patterns you memorize in a textbook, but the ones that repeat like spirals in a sunflower, or the way a thought can shape the body before we even realize it.

In this conversation with Rory Hiltbrand, we wander through the field of being human—where Daoist numerics, fractals, and the golden ratio intersect with medicine and daily practice. Rory draws from both classical Daoist thought and his own clinical experience, weaving geometry, physiology, and spirit into something that feels both practical and mysterious.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the body as a field and the mind as its knower, how intention can be grounded in embodied experience rather than wishful thinking, why ministerial fire might look a lot like the nervous system, and the curious ways symmetry becomes a treatment strategy.

What I love in talking with Rory is how ideas that seem abstract at first end up grounding us in clinic. Patterns that echo through heaven and earth can also help us know when the best time to treat is simply when the patient is on the table.

Sometimes old books get treated like sacred relics. But what if the Nei Jing isn’t a mystery text at all? What if it’s closer to a well-worn how-to manual — a guide for the hands, a companion for the clinic?

In this conversation with Ethan Murchie, we explore the Nei Jing not as a theory to be memorized but as a craft to be lived. Ethan comes to this work through martial arts and manual medicine, where following the qi, unwinding entanglements, and listening through touch are daily practice.

Listen into this discussion as we consider what transmission really means, why clinical knowing often comes through the hands before the mind, and how the classics find their life not in libraries, but in the repetition of practice.

Ethan’s reflections remind us that medicine can be steady, humble, and deeply human — a craft that reveals more each time we return to it.

The face tells a story, etched in its lines, the color of our skin, and the expressions we carry. These are not mere physical features; they are a language—an ancient map that, if we learn to read, can reveal traces of our life’s journey, ancestral gifts, and the yet to be resolved challenges holding us back. This wisdom often goes unnoticed in a world focused on external appearances, but it is there if you know how to perceive .

In this conversation with Anita Chopra, we journey through the landscapes of the face, and the unexpected twists of fate that lead us to our Ming—that essence that makes us grow. Anita’s approach is a tapestry woven from her personal journey and professional practice. She listens to the body's narrative, honors the lessons from her mentors, and uses her unique skills to help patients find their golden path.

Join us as we explore the power of being truly seen, the profound wisdom of accepting ourselves, how our life's path is found in a glimmer on the periphery, and the courage it takes to become the person you were always meant to be.

Here in the West, acupuncture often feels like something foreign, something patients approach with curiosity but no context. “I don’t know anything about Chinese medicine,” they’ll say. And most of the time, that’s true. We didn’t grow up with an uncle who prescribed herbs or a parent using needles to ease the illnesses and injuries of childhood.

For Wei Dong Lu, medicine wasn’t foreign at all. He grew up inside it, part of a family where healing was daily life. At sixteen, during the Cultural Revolution, he was told to learn a “practical skill.” His classmates were sent to carpentry or sewing. He was handed needles.

Listen into this discussion as we trace the path that took him from Shanghai to Nebraska, from teaching at the New England School of Acupuncture to practicing oncology acupuncture at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

What you’ll hear isn’t just the biography of one practitioner, but a story about how medicine travels—how it bends and blends to circumstance, how it adapts to new settings, and how something essential continues to move through it all.

Ever notice how our bodies have their own climate? The heat of fire and cold of water aren’t just metaphors, they are elemental forces that don’t just live in the weather—they’re playing out in our patients’ bodies every day.

In this conversation with Roseline Lambert, we explore her work blending Saam acupuncture with Japanese palpation methods, and how she’s been experimenting with heating and cooling as clinical strategies. What began as curiosity has become a set of questions for her hands, and a more finely tuned sense for how temperature sketches the contours of channel health and pathology.

Listen into this discussion as we talk about how observation and palpation guide treatment, how listening closely to patient language reveals diagnosis, and why heating and cooling formulas might unlock clinical puzzles where standard approaches fall short.

Roseline brings the improvisation of a musician and the hands of a cartographer to her practice. Her story is a reminder that our medicine grows not just from what we’re taught, but from how we follow the questions that arise in clinic.

Some things can’t be seen—only felt. The texture of presence, the quiet shifts in atmosphere, the way the body speaks before words arrive. In the clinic, it’s not always the protocols or point prescriptions that lead the way, but something quieter. Something more fluid.

In this conversation with Felix de Haas, we meander through the tactile world of East Asian medicine—through pulse, palpation, and the subtle feedback that unfolds when you listen with your hands. Felix shares how Chinese medicine didn’t just appear in his life—it found him. And how the most meaningful parts of practice often live in the places we’re still learning to trust.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the idea of 通 tong as communication and opening, the felt shape of qi, why protocols eventually fall away, and how clinical insight often begins with not knowing.

Felix brings a lifetime of experience, sense of history, and a willingness to stay curious. This conversation is for anyone who’s ever wondered if the body might be whispering more than we’re used to hearing.