Sports medicine acupuncture is one of those phrases that sounds neat and tidy. But, what does it actually mean?.

In this conversation with Darren Maynard, dig into the complexity and methods that fall within the world of orthopedic and musculo-skeletal medicine. We explore what it means to be bilingual in clinic, and the value of being able to hold a Chinese medicine diagnosis and a Western ortho assessment in the same set of hands. We’ll discuss why “sports” doesn’t mean “athletes only,” how palpation is a key to effective treatment, and why training means more than a few weekend courses—especially when needle depth, safety, and confidence are on the line.

Listen in as we take a look at the turf-war issues of dry needling, and what it means to have acupuncture “integrated” into the larger medical care system. And how Chinese medicine principles allow for nuance that results in better clinical outcomes.

Some concepts in Chinese medicine don’t need more poetry. They need a hands-on palpable marker, and a willingness to admit, “I think I get it… and then the light changes and I can’t see it.” That’s the territory we’re in with the Ming Men—the so‑called Gate of Destiny, the fire that isn’t just heat, the thing we can discuss over the centuries and still not be sure about when meeting it again on Tuesday afternoon in clinic.

This panel conversation is an attempt to better understand the Ming Men. Not by flattening it into one definition, but by tracking it from different angles—textual, palpatory, alchemical, ecological—and seeing what stays consistent as the perspectives change.

Anne calls it an activation power that wants to move freely, so a person can occupy their whole existence without leaving corners uninhabited. Thomas brings it straight to the table: put your hand below the navel, check the relative coldness, watch what happens to breath, warmth, and the eyes when things begin to organize. Zev keeps widening the lens—ministerial fire as warmth and life, as clinical strategy, and as a reflection of the larger world we’re burning to keep ourselves comfortable.

This is delightfully open-ended conversation on the Ming Men, one that helps to guide our focus not by providing answers, but by exploring enlivening questions.

We no longer pretend the gut and the mind are separate; we know the interconnections are vast and rich. Furthermore, their communication isn’t a hack—it’s a relationship that responds to your input, and it’s something you can actually touch.

In this conversation with Henry Tarazona, we hear about his unlikely path into Chinese medicine—his love of tuina, and how he uses it to affect organ function and biochemistry. We’ll discuss Liver/Spleen stress dynamics and the quietly radical clinical power of moderation in improving digestion, along with Henry’s thoughts on the gut–brain axis through the lens of the vagus nerve and the Chong Mai.

We also touch on what it means to learn medicine in a more traditional way, where you rely on memory, repetition, and learning to see what is in front of you.

Listen in for a conversation that mixes together old style learning with both traditional and modern ideas.

Sometimes the people who shape us most aren’t the ones who formally taught us anything. They’re the people in a potent moment who say something that we hear with something other than our ears— it sends us down a path we hadn't noticed that was right under our feet.

In this conversation with Haunani Chong-Drake, we explore the edges of mentorship—not as a program, credential, or transaction, but as something serendipitous and unexpectedly catalytic. The kind of connection that doesn’t give you answers, but instead changes the questions you’re asking.

Listen into this discussion as we explore the difference between teachers and mentors, why confidence is earned long after graduation, how expectation management can make or break a career, and why Chinese medicine has a way of working on the practitioner as much as the patient.

This is a conversation about the relationships that remind you to not give up on yourself. How to stay in the game when things get hard. And the unavoidable fires of development and learning as a practitioner.

Often enough, medicine evolves not through the accumulation of answers, but instead by posing annoying questions. The thing about learning, it usually carries an element of disruption.

In this conversation with Peter Eckman we follow him in his journey of sleuthing out where JR Worsley learned his medicine. But, it’s not just a story of where Worsley got his stuff, to set the stage we have to go back to the shaman practitioners of a time before history. Then come forward through the pantheon of Chinese doctors of the past, and then into the modern age where colonialism opens the door to acupuncture making its way into the West.

Peter’s book, In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor details a story that goes from East to West and back to the East with a new Chinese language edition. What better place for a discussion like this than in a History Series conversation?

There’s a moment, in the slack tide between one flow and another, when a potent stillness arises, and the possibility of a new direction arrives with a feeling of invitation. It’s like standing on the threshold of a dream.

We share this conversation with Gregory Done as we metamorphize from the Wood Snake to the Fire Horse. What’s in store as we enter a year of unmitigated Fire? Where is caution advised and where do you double down with the creative energy of the Horse?

Listen into this conversation as we explore time-as-qi, what a dramatic handoff between years can do to the psyche; cautions around giving free rein to the unbridled “sovereign fire” of the Heart, and how discipline shapes intensity into something useful.

If you’ve felt the past year pulling you inward, you’re not alone. In this conversation we discuss the natural inclination to come back out—into action, into contact, into the bright problem of more momentum than you’re accustomed to. Saddle up!

In clinical work pattern and intuition inform each other, treatment decisions arise somewhere between what we can measure and what we can only sense. This episode investigates that in-between space, where “knowing” as a human and the patterning of Large Language Models merges in uncanny ways.

Vanessa Menendez-Covelo has been a guest on the podcast and recently she’s been exploring the ever changing frontier of AI, as both a former computer scientist and actively practicing acupuncturist.

Listen into this discussion as we explore how AI “hallucinations” might be creative sparks of fertile imagination; what a tongue-reading machine in a café might mean for diagnosis; the uneasy line between health equity and surveillance; and why shame, not ignorance, may be the real barrier to better care.

What if “failure” was just expectations being uncomfortably rewritten by reality?

In this conversation with Neal Sivula we discuss the experience of failing forward—what it actually looks and feels like when you’re a practitioner, a clinic owner, and a person who cares. How to navigate the employee who doesn’t show up the way you hoped, the power outage, or the appointment someone forgets. And the uncomfortable moment when you have to hold a boundary, especially when you’d rather not be the hammer.

Neal has found a few steady anchors: the micro-business reality of “one day at a time,” and the quietly radical skill of addition by subtraction. Sometimes the way forward isn’t adding another technique. It’s stopping something. Simplifying. Doing more with lessing.

There’s also the importance of tenderness . Neal works with older animals and the humans who love them, he leans on the practice of accompaniment—staying present when things are hard, not avoiding the difficult moments, but instead inhabiting them. It makes a difference.

Listen into this conversation for how failure teaches, and what it asks of us when we’re the ones doing the learning.