Qiological Podcast
Michael Max
Acupuncture and East Asian medicine was not developed in a laboratory. It does not advance through double-blind controlled studies, nor does it respond well to petri dish experimentation. Our medicine did not come from the statistical regression of randomized cohorts, but from the observation and treatment of individuals in their particular environment. It grows out of an embodied sense of understanding how life moves, unfolds, develops and declines.
Medicine comes from continuous, thoughtful practice of what we do in clinic, and how we approach that work. The practice of medicine is more — much more — than simply treating illness. It is more than acquiring skills and techniques. And it is more than memorizing the experiences of others. It takes a certain kind of eye, an inquiring mind and relentlessly inquisitive heart.
Qiological is an opportunity to deepen our practice with conversations that go deep into acupuncture, herbal medicine, cultivation practices, and the practice of having a practice. It’s an opportunity to sit in the company of others with similar interests, but perhaps very different minds. Through these dialogues perhaps we can better understand our craft.
Medicine comes from continuous, thoughtful practice of what we do in clinic, and how we approach that work. The practice of medicine is more — much more — than simply treating illness. It is more than acquiring skills and techniques. And it is more than memorizing the experiences of others. It takes a certain kind of eye, an inquiring mind and relentlessly inquisitive heart.
Qiological is an opportunity to deepen our practice with conversations that go deep into acupuncture, herbal medicine, cultivation practices, and the practice of having a practice. It’s an opportunity to sit in the company of others with similar interests, but perhaps very different minds. Through these dialogues perhaps we can better understand our craft.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Oct 6, 2026 • 1h 43min
481 Revisiting the Genius of Dr. Manaka • Oran Kivity and Co.
We often think good treatment begins with certainty: first identify the pattern, then decide what to do. But in the tradition of Dr. Yoshio Manaka, treatment itself can be the means of discovery. The practitioner learns by engaging the body directly and paying close attention to how it responds.In this conversation, Oran Kivity, Marian Fixler, Brenda Loew, Stephen Birch, and Paul Movsessian reflect on studying and practicing Manaka-style acupuncture. They describe an approach in which the body’s structure emerges through palpation, immediate feedback, and ongoing adjustment—not from a diagnosis fixed in advance.This is not acupuncture as the application of a preset protocol. It is a disciplined way of paying attention: using touch as both diagnosis and treatment, testing small interventions, observing what changes, and allowing the body’s response to continually reshape one’s understanding of what is needed.
Sep 29, 2026 • 1h 41min
480 History Series - Searching for the Dao of Medicine • Volker Scheid
Volker Scheid, an anthropologist, historian, and Chinese medicine practitioner, explores four competing visions of medical practice: syncretic discernment, devotional trust, poetic innovation, and evidential precision. He examines how mythology shapes medical identity, how Chinese medicine exchanged ideas with Buddhism and statecraft, and how Western medicine narrowed its once-open horizon.
Sep 22, 2026 • 1h 38min
479 Consciousness, Ghosts, Magic & The Inexplicable • Neil Theise
Liver pathology draws curiosity as both a clinical discipline and a lens for encountering the unknown. Its practice of looking without preconception speaks meaningfully to how we meet the mysteries at the edges of a life.In this conversation, we visit with Neil Theise and explore the relationship between diagnostic training and beginner's mind. We look at how staying present with what's in front of us reveals more than what we already expect to find.We also discuss the difference between dying as decline versus dying as transformation, and the nature of end-of-life visions as glimpses of a wider consciousness. And we look at the deeper role of simple presence, an invitation our loved ones are so rarely given.Listen in for a discussion on consciousness, attention, and acceptance, and what it means to stay open to the extraordinary within the ordinary currents of caregiving and loss.
Sep 15, 2026 • 1h 11min
478 Often Confused and Having Fun • Linda Kim
Confusion is often treated as a problem to solve on the way to a real answer. But in the clinic, it may be closer to the beginning of the process than an obstacle to it.In this conversation with Linda Kim, we explore what it means to practice acupuncture with curiosity rather than certainty. We discuss why diagnosis may be something revealed through treatment—through palpation, real-time feedback, and the willingness to be wrong and adjust—rather than something that must be figured out in advance.We also discuss constitutional nature versus compensated presentation, how playfulness loosens the rigid thinking that blocks perception, and why the most obvious thing in the room is often the most important.
Sep 8, 2026 • 1h 29min
477 Shen, Emotion, and Ghosts • Henry Tarazona
Long before Chinese medicine took the form we recognize today, healers drilled holes in skulls to release demons. Philosophers debated what the universe was made of, while a wandering doctor read pulses instead of casting spells.In this conversation with Henry Tarazona, we trace that lineage from the wushi shamans through the Hundred Schools of Thought to Bian Que, often called the father of Chinese medicine, and ultimately to Sun Simiao.We also explore Sun Simiao’s “13 Ghost Points,” which turn out to have far less to do with ghosts than with pattern differentiation expressed in language patients could understand.Finally, we unpack shen—a concept that “spirit” never quite captures—and consider it instead as the seat of cognition, emotion, and the body’s own governance.Listen in for a conversation that moves between ancient battlefields and modern clinics, superstition and evidence, and the long effort to explain what's happening inside us when nothing else makes sense.
Sep 1, 2026 • 1h 15min
476 Beyond Normal: Reading Blood Work Through a Chinese Medicine Lens • Jessica Parker
Reading blood work well means resisting the urge to sort everything into simply normal or abnormal. But what happens when the real diagnosis lives in the relationships between markers, not the markers themselves?Dr. Jessica Parker is an acupuncturist and lab-work educator who teaches practitioners to read blood panels through a Chinese medicine lens. In this conversation, she joins Michael to explore the gap between conventional ranges and true optimal health.Listen in as they trace her path from a formative year in Hangzhou, where East and West medicine shared the same pharmacy shelf, to teaching acupuncturists to read cortisol, cholesterol, and thyroid markers as stories of stress and imbalance; how spleen-chi deficiency hides inside ordinary lab numbers; and why cortisol has been unfairly demonized online.
Aug 25, 2026 • 2h 29min
475 The Practice of Seeing- Ming, Hidden Jing and Original Face • Anita Chopra & Angela Hunt
In this episode Qiological celebrates its ninth anniversary. For nine years new conversations on East Asian medicine and methods have appeared in your podcast feed each Tuesday morningAnita Chopra, our guest from episode 429, joins us again not just to discuss face reading, but to give us a demonstration of how she uses severeal of the basic maps that chart the face.We’re also joined by Angela Hunt, the winner of our drawing to appear on this episode and receive a face reading.Listen in for a conversation that touches on mentorship, practice building, being authentically who we are clinical work, a bit of Qiological’s backstory, and reflections on the journey that has brought the podcast to its ninth anniversary.
Aug 18, 2026 • 1h 11min
474 Character, Nature & Fate, A Manual of Polestar Astrology • Gregory Done
As astrology draws curiosity as both a spiritual practice and a lens for self-understanding. Its symbolic language of image can speak meaningfully to our modern linear life.In this conversation, we visit with Gregory Done we explore the relationship between fate and free will, and how inherited ancestral patterns shape our character, our challenges, and our sense of purpose.We also discuss the difference between astrology as dialogue versus fortune telling, the nature of "ghosts" as unresolved generational trauma, and the deeper role of inner nature as a freedom untouched by fate.Listen in for a discussion on ancestry, symbol, and resolution, and what it means to work toward wholeness within the currents of one's own life.
Aug 11, 2026 • 1h 11min
473 Right Tradition for the Condition, Combining classical Maps in the Treatment of Long Covid • Brendan Kelly
A diagnosis can feel like a single label, but some conditions reveal a wider terrain — one that spans immune response, cultural rhythm, and slow imbalance over time.In this conversation with Brendan Kelly, we explore long COVID through the lens of classical Chinese medicine, looking at how frameworks like the Shang Han Lun's cold-to-heat progression and the Wen Bing's epidemic theory make sense of a condition with over two hundred possible symptoms. We discuss treatment not as a single formula, but as traditions blended and matched to where a disease has been and where it's heading.We also touch on why epidemics are never purely individual, and how a culture's own excess heat may shape its susceptibility to illness.Listen in for a conversation that brings clinical experience and classical theory to a condition modern medicine still struggles to treat.
Aug 4, 2026 • 1h 8min
472 Art of Medicine • Bonnie Wright
Much of what happens in the treatment room never makes it onto an intake form, yet it often shapes the outcome as much as anything measurable does.In this conversation with Bonnie Wright, we explore what she calls the art of medicine, the intuitive, relational sense of truly knowing the patient in front of you, and how the body's structures act less as separate parts than as one continuously adapting whole.We also touch on what gets lost when certainty crowds out listening, and why the most useful insights often arrive in the things we weren't looking for.Listen in for a conversation that moves between anatomy and intuition, structure and change, and the practice of staying open to what doesn't yet fit.
