233 Teaching, Learning and the Music of Medicine • Etienne Simard

“The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo,

because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp

of man's body and reduce it to harmony.”

― Francis Bacon

Music and Medicine have a lot in common. In the deepest sense, medicine is a kind of performance. Like mastering musical instruments and tones, Chinese Medicine is only effective when it moves through theoretical and experiential cycles of learning. This includes lessons from teachers, hands-on experience, reflective observation (what went wrong and what went right in treatment), and conceptualization (why things happened the way they did).

In this conversation with Etienne Simard, we noodle over the idea of finding the right instrument and tone to help people as both a teacher of Chinese Medicine and as an acupuncturist. We talk about using the needle like you would use a melody to interact with somebody’s Qi, presence in practice, and learning on the job, among other topics.

Listen into this discussion on the confluence of music and medicine. Both are different yet so alike.