Over the Moon with Ramona

Mar 10, 2024

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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.”

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