TREATMENT

5 Keynotes of Eastern Medicine

(translation notes from Chinese classics are my translations from the original texts)

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Holistic Perspective

Eastern Medicine fundamentally holds that the body, mind, and spirit are an interconnected, mutually interdependent whole. This perspective is eloquently described in the Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine): "The body is an integrated whole; its parts and functions cannot be understood in isolation but must be seen as part of the entire system." Said another way - we can never discover the true meaning behind all the words in a book, by microscopically analyzing a letter in one of its words. 

Dynamic Balance (Yin and Yang)

The philosophy of Yin and Yang underpins all Eastern medical practices. Health is perceived as a dynamic balance between these complementary forces, with illness arising from their disharmony. As the Dao De Jing notes: "The ten thousand things carry Yin and embrace Yang. They achieve harmony by bridging the two back into one."

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Emphasis on Prevention

Eastern Medicine prioritizes maintaining balance to prevent illness rather than reacting to disease. There is a phrase in Chinese Medicine that illustrates this idea:
"To treat disease after it has appeared is like digging a well after one is already thirsty or forging weapons after the battle has already begun."

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Individualized Treatment

Each person is seen as a unique reflection of universal principles, necessitating treatments tailored to their specific constitution, lifestyle, and environment. Eastern medical texts stress: “The ‘wind’ of life moves differently in every person; what balances one, disturbs another."

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The Body as a Microcosm of the Universe

Eastern Medicine holds that the human body is a reflection of the universe. This perspective suggests that understanding the natural world—its rhythms, patterns, and laws—can illuminate the workings of the human body. "Heaven and Earth are within us. The interplay of the elements governs both the macrocosm and the microcosm." – Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic). This understanding shapes diagnostics and treatments, aligning human health with the broader forces of natural and cosmological environment.

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Acupuncture

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One of the most interesting things about acupuncture is in the consideration of how it creates an effect that is able to promote or initiate change within the physical body. I often tell people that after more than 25 years as a professional clinician, that I am fairly certain about only two specific things in my life. The first of these is that acupuncture really does work - which is to say that it does indeed create and/or precipitate change within the physical nervous system and thus systemically throughout the physical body.

 

It may also be worth mentioning that I haven't always known this.  When I started out, I liked the idea that it could be true - I had an adolescent affinity for the philosophy and an aspiration for the fullness of its 'worldview' but I didn't, couldn't, really know if it worked or not. It was only after thousands of treatments provided that I began to see and trust the effects for what they are - not because I necessarily wanted these effects to be, but because they happened whether I wanted them to or not. 

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I remember a case of insomnia from one of my first several years in practice. This man, in his early 30's, had been suffering from an inability to fall asleep since he was about 12 yrs old. He was tall, wiry thin, with a haunted look in his eyes. He told me that he would often go 2 or 3 days without sleeping more than an hour and that this pattern, over many years had deeply and negatively affected his life, work and relationships. For me, at this time as a professional, this was a difficult case. I sat and listened to his story and wondered what could be going 'wrong' with him to create such an irregularity. I asked him what he had already tried and he told me 'everything' and that nothing has really helped. I sat back in my chair, really not certain that I was the best person for this case. This seemed like it was a really big deal. This person really needed help, he was obviously not well, not looking well, not feeling well. He was on the edge of tipping over into someplace very dark and I sensed that his visit with me was his last ditch effort before something broke inside him. 

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I invited him to get up on the table - got him comfortable lying on his back and asked if I could examine him to see if I could find out what was the matter.

 

There were several things I noticed right away. 

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His tongue was deeply red, crimson almost, stiff and very red at the tip - there was also a long, thin, deep crack down the center of his tongue all the way to the tip.

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I asked him about his blood pressure - he didn't know. I checked it, 143/90. 

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I asked him, do you sweat at night? He said yes. For how long? Since I was a kid. At what age did it start? He was unsure, maybe 12. 

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When did you start puberty? He was unsure, maybe around the same age. 

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Did the insomnia also begin at this time? He thinks it does. 

 

I check his radial pulse - pulse diagnosis is a core part of the diagnostic process in Chinese Medicine and there is a specific position along the radial artery on the left that can, when examined carefully reveal valvular issues in the heart. Expertise in pulse diagnosis takes time, experience, and practice. At this time my technical skill in pulse diagnosis was fairly low - I got by on the broad strokes, but nuance was still far beyond me. Thankfully, in this case, the irregularity was fairly easy to perceive. 

 

Have you ever had your heart checked? 

 

No. 

 

Have you ever had an EEG? 

 

No. 

 

Any sense of palpitations or arrhythmia? 

 

I don't think so, I'm not sure. 

 

I take out my stethoscope and listen to his heart - I think to myself while I’m listening to the thump-thump that I'm not that good with this, but there is an echo around the aorta, I think...

 

I ask him, any shortness of breath? 

 

Not really. 

 

Do you exercise? 

 

No. 

 

Do you get out of breath when going up stairs? 

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Sometimes, but only if I'm really tired. 

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I tell him, I think I see where the roots of your insomnia are coming from. 

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Really? Where, he asks me? Can you fix it?

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I think the aortic valve in your heart is the problem, I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with it but I feel a lot of pressure and inflammation in this area. The heart is a very sensitive place, irregularity in the movement of blood through the heart will eventually set off system wide instability that can present with things like insomnia, anxiety, mania and several other conditions along these lines . Given that this issue hasn’t yet presented with any real heart related issues like palpitations, irregular sweating, shortness of breath, etc it may not be something that requires a big surgery to resolve.

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What do you mean, he asks me?

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This was likely present when you were a little kid, you may have even been born with it, but it wasn't serious enough to really gather anyone's notice or attention. When puberty set in, the increased metabolic activity in your system aggravated the area in your heart around this valve. It is possible that the valve needs to be replaced - its also possible that I can help regulate the amount of electrical activity into this region and essentially cool it down.

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Can acupuncture do that?

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I laugh…that’s a good question - there is certainly a historical precedent for this.

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Have you ever treated something like this before, he asks me?

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No, but I have studied the cases of others who have and can use their guidance and knowledge to help us here today.

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Ok, so what do we do? 

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Well, today, we need to clarify whether the valve, itself, is busted or whether the electrical information controlling and effecting it is the problem. 

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How will you tell the difference?

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Through your pulse - I tell him. Your pulse is a way of discovering how the electricity in your nervous system is effecting the circulation of the blood and fluid in your vessels. Your tongue presents the picture of how that electrical information has actually affected various systems and tissues within your body. Your tongue is telling me that there is a lot of constriction, stress, pressure and inflammation in your heart. Your pulse is telling me the same thing. If the problem is in your nervous system, then I should be able to shift it somewhat here today - this shift is immediately apparent as a change in your pulse. If your pulse can change, then the problem isn’t in the valve, it’s in the nervous, electrical information effecting the valve. 

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Ok, so how does acupuncture do that? How does it make a change.

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Acupuncture affects the brain and all the networks that comprise the geography of the brains ecosystem.  Acupuncture leverages the innate connectivity in those networks, or the lack thereof. All of acupuncture, its possibilities and its potentials affect the brain and the potential ability to affect the brain in terms of plasticity.  

 

Something we know about your heart (and every other organ) is that if I take your brain, spine, and nerves out of your body, your heart won’t keep working. Everything will stop. Without the electrical system comprised of these three, none of the fleshy bits do anything at all. Think of your nerves, all those little strands reaching out into the various places of your body as the externalization of your brain, outwards, into the space that is your physical world. Each little nerve is actually an extension of your brain. Acupuncture leverages this network connectivity and uses specific locations and combinations that empirically have the ability to organize the brain into more ordered and balanced interactivity across the various regions and hemispheres that are its geography.

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The traditional language of acupuncture can be somewhat confusing in this way, but acupuncture worked thousands of years ago, and still seems to work today. Human beings thousands of years ago still had functional nervous systems comprised of a brain, a central canal and a network of electrical filaments that moved sensory information to and fro - it doesn’t matter that one human being lived in China and another lived in North America the inner workings of events remain the same. The cultural language from different places, especially across centuries and even millennia, can serve as a veil to an otherwise synthetic truth, but only until we really look at it and see it for what it is. 

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Qi, for example, can be seen as the electro-magnetic energy moving through the entire nervous system. Different parts of a physical system have different 'qualities' of electricity in circulation - this was classically talked about giving Qi different names and functions. For example, heart qi is specific to the electricity or electro-magnetism in and around the heart. While electricity must be present in all areas, regions, tissues and organs, the type, amplitude, intensity, frequency and magnetic spectrum of that electricity is going to be different in different systems, organs, and locations. Without qi, there is no life. With qi, there can be life. When qi is moving resistance free, meaning it lacks unnecessary impedance, then the flow of electrical information from the brain into the organs and tissues is carried out in such a way that health can be ‘realized.’ When unnecessary impedance is affecting the flow of qi (or electricity), either locally in some region or even as an overall state across an entire system or ecology then somewhere, something is going to go wrong.  

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It is simple enough, really.  Electricity (or Qi) is life. It animates all the fleshy parts into activity and the control center for all this electro-magnetic activity is centralized and organized in the brain. Not necessarily in one region of the brain or another, but in how all these regions and network bundles communicate with each other. How easily they reach and relate, how readily they bridge the gaps and spaces that exist in-between them. 

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I have a good sense of where your problem is - your body is being quite clear about this today. What we need to figure out today is whether we can change it or not. If the valve is really broken, what I do today isn’t going to do anything. If the problem is in your brain or peripheral nervous system (which said another way, is an issue with your qi) then acupuncture is very good in making corrections along these lines…

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While this story doesn’t end here, what happened from here, at least the details from here may be somewhat burdensome given the purpose of sharing this story with you - a purpose to which I might state is ultimately to illustrate in some ‘real’ way how acupuncture works. This case can clarify a core truth in how different medical perspectives determine how we approach a problem needing our attention.

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That being said, you might be wondering, well what happened? In truth, I don't know. I saw this person only one time. I treated him that day, shared with him my discoveries and recommended that he follow-up with me - but I never saw him again.

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Some 4 or 5 years later, as I stepped into one of my treatment rooms, I met a young woman.

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Hi, I said - how are you today?

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I’m ok, my head is killing me, but I’m ok, she told me.

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I see, I said. Want to tell me about it, I asked her.

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Well, I got your name from a guy I know, he said that you really helped him.

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Whose that? I asked.

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You met him a few years ago, he had been suffering from insomnia and you told him it was because of his heart.

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At first, I didn’t remember him and I said as much.

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Well you only saw him once, but whatever you did changed his life.

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He got better? I asked, still hazy on the details of the case.

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He did! He tells everyone that you cured his insomnia.  He wanted me to say hi and to tell you, thank you.

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And then, all at once, I remembered - I remembered who this person was, and what we had done that day in his treatment - I had a million questions.

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Wait, I said. I remember him now - Wow, he really got better!?!  Do you know any of the details?

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She laughed, I don’t know him all that well. We work together and my head has been hurting a lot lately. He told me to come see you, that you’d know what to do.

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Well alright then, I said, internally resolving that I might never know anything more about it, I let it go and moved on.

 

Lets see what's going on with your headaches...

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Chinese Herbal Medicine

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The history of Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) can be traced back more than 5,000 years, making it one of the oldest and most well-established systems of medicine in the world. ​ Over the centuries, the knowledge of CHM expanded and evolved, with the addition of new herbs, formulas, and theories. Some of the most notable texts in the history of CHM include the "Huang Di Nei Jing" (黄帝内经), or "The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon," the "Shang Han Lun" (伤寒论), or "Treatise on Cold Damage," and the "Wen Bing Xue" (温病学), or "Theory of Warm Diseases." These classical texts laid the foundation for the principles and practices of CHM, which have been refined and developed over the millennia.​​

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When I first encountered Chinese herbal medicine as a young teenager, I was drawn to its poetic descriptions of the human body and its interactions with the natural world. But in those early days, I couldn't really understand how a handful of dried roots, leaves, and minerals could achieve what modern interventions sometimes could not. It wasn’t until years of practice, of watching people transform in front of me, that I began to trust the inherent wisdom encoded in these formulas.

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One case stands out in my memory as an appropriate example of its efficacy—a man in his late 40s who came to me stating he suffered with a 'relentless fatigue.' He described waking up every morning as though he hadn’t slept, his energy levels dragging through the day. Blood tests and medical exams had shown nothing conclusive, leaving him frustrated and resigned to feeling this way indefinitely. As I listened to his story, a picture of imbalance that had slowly taken root over many years started to take shape in my mind. His tongue was pale, swollen, with deep grooves etched into the sides of his tongue.  His voice was faint and low as if the basic energy of speech was almost beyond his capacity.  He was always cold, and his overall pulse was very deep, weak and thin.

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I prepared a formula tailored to his condition, something that would gently encourage and potentiate the amount of electricity getting into his adrenal and thyroid glands. These herbs, which were classically known as 'tonics' have a powerful activity to balance and enliven the hormones that regulate the electrical potentials of the cell membrane, especially targeting the cells of these two endocrine glands.   The herbs worked quietly, steadily, like a light rain soaking into dry earth. Within weeks, his energy began to return. By the second month, he reported feeling “lighter,” as though a weight he hadn’t even realized he was carrying had been lifted. Watching him reclaim his vitality was a reminder of the quiet power these medicinals hold—not in forcing change but in creating the conditions for the body to heal itself.

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Chinese herbal medicine doesn’t aim to mask or suppress a set of symptoms or override the body’s natural processes. Instead, it serves as a guide, helping the body remember how to function optimally. Each herb has its own unique personality—some are gentle and nourishing, others strong and invigorating—and when combined thoughtfully, they create a harmonious conversation within the body. The process is scientifically intricate and also artfully intuitive, requiring the practitioner to understand not just the medicinals but the case as a whole and the constitution and potentials existing in each client, at that time.  This medicine is inherently adaptive, meeting each individual where they are. Some formulas are like a gentle nudge, while others provide the robust support needed to face a chronic or deeply entrenched issue. 

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It’s easy to marvel at the complexity of Chinese herbal medicine, but its true beauty lies in its simplicity. Nature provides us with everything we need to thrive; Chinese herbal medicine is simply a way of tapping into that abundance. In an age where quick fixes often overshadow deeper healing, the patient, deliberate approach of this medicine is a powerful reminder of what it means to truly care for the body.

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Everyone's journey is different, but the principle remains the same: healing is not imposed; it is cultivated. Whether it’s a young child with recurring colds, an athlete recovering from injury, or an elderly person navigating the challenges of aging, Chinese herbal medicine offers a tailored, holistic approach. It’s a quiet, steadfast partner in the work of healing—one that has proven itself time and again to be both effective and enduring.

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Telehealth at The Phoenix Kingdom

One of the most fascinating things about practicing medicine in today’s world is the way technology can extend the reach of care, transforming what was once confined to a physical office into something immediate and accessible, from literally anywhere.  When I think about telehealth, I think of it as the natural evolution of what medicine is meant to be—responsive, thoughtful, and tailored to the unique needs of the individual.

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I’ll admit, telehealth wasn’t always an obvious path for me. Early in my career, the idea of meaningful care happening without direct, hands-on interaction seemed unlikely. I couldn’t imagine being able to truly connect, make an accurate diagnosis, and develop a sense of important next steps without sitting face-to-face with my clients. But, as the world has shifted and my practice expanded, I began to see the potential of this medium—not as a replacement for traditional care, but as an enhancement. A way to provide clarity, comfort, and actionable insight to those who need it most, wherever they happen to be.

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Let me share a story. A few months ago, I received a message from a man in his late 60's who had been struggling with an acute digestive disorder.  He told me over text that he got my name from some friends of his that were clients of mine and asked if I might consult on his case.  He was stuck in the hospital, and couldn't leave without his condition getting worse within a few days of returning home.  He had been in the hospital for weeks and wasn't getting better - in fact, he was slowly but surely dying in his room.  Each week he was losing more weight, getting weaker and losing hope that anyone had an answer to what was really going on.

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We set up an appointment to meet over Zoom and I listened to his story.  I couldn't take his pulse, of course, but I could examine his tongue and see his overall 'state.'  From this I could get a sense of things combined with his story of what had happened and the things that he'd already done and whether they had helped him or not.  He had seen multiple specialists and had a pile of diagnostic tests, but no clear answers. He was frustrated, defeated, and honestly, skeptical that anyone there was going to help him.  

 

In that session, I listened. I asked questions—not just about his symptoms but about his life, his routines, and the choices that had brought him to this point. Through this virtual interaction, I pieced together a picture that hadn’t been addressed in his prior care: a pattern of imbalance stemming from years of stress, poor sleep, and signals from other places in his digestive system that in themselves might not be seen as important, but when combined together would herald something serious and perhaps life-threatening.

 

Given that he was in the hospital and couldn't leave until he could eat on his own and keep from vomiting right after he ate- I recommended that they visit a pharmacy in the local area around the hospital and pick-up a product that I knew they would have in stock.  I recommend a dose to start with and told him that if I was right then he should notice a difference and a change over the next few days.

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I didn't hear anything from him for several weeks.  But maybe 4 or 5 weeks later he reached back out to me - this time with a completely different tone. He told me that his spouse and gone and picked up the product recommended and that he had started taking it, as suggested, that night.  The next day he didn't notice much difference.  By the second day he could tell that he could eat more without feeling nauseous.  By the third day he said "I woke up and told my wife I wanted a hamburger!"  Day 4 he was back at home.  He told me that over the past few weeks he was steadily more energized, eating solid food, gaining weight and in general getting his life back in order.  The issue wasn't completely resolved, there was still some work to do - the underlying cause was still going to need to be addressed - but he was better, better than he had been in many months. 

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Telehealth at The Phoenix Kingdom isn’t just a convenience; it’s a lifeline. It’s a way of bringing expert care to you, on your terms, with the same depth and attention that defines every aspect of our local practice here in central Texas. For those who have felt lost in the shuffle of orthodox healthcare systems, this is something different. It’s a way of reminding you that your health matters, your story matters, and real change is always possible—even from a distance.