Chinese medicine practitioners are all too familiar with the common pathology of "Liver Qi Stagnation/Constraint." Partly related to feminine gender norms in both China and the West that force women to suppress and deny their anger, it results from the inability to let the liver Qi flow freely. In light of the palpable tension in the air these days, which is erupting into violence all too often, whether locally, nationally in the US, or globally, Leo and Sabine consider the root causes and possi...
Jun 25, 2025•47 min•Season 4Ep. 6
What do we (as in Leo and Sabine) mean when we say with great urgency and earnestness that postpartum care can heal trauma for multiple generations into the past and future? Why is there such a gaping hole in our modern culture's attention to the deep exhaustion, isolation, dangers, and need for intentional recovery from childbirth? How can medical professionals utilize the many tools offered by Chinese medicine to address this hole, from diet and medicinal formulations to acupuncture and moxibu...
May 27, 2025•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 5
Today's episode, which could also be called "the mother and child within each of us," explores the healing power of the heart through the joy that Sabine experiences when caring for her fluffy baby ducklings and goslings, or when sharing them as a healing tool with her community, old and young. Leo's direct observations and questions pierce right through to the heart of the matter, past any rationalizations: Why and how can we facilitate healing in ourselves and our communities? In this case, th...
Apr 28, 2025•53 min•Season 4Ep. 4
Let's talk about exercise, strength training, aging, and, yet again, the need for careful calibration. In today's conversation we explore the sweet range between taxing the body, enabling it to work harder, and building strength, on the one hand, and resting and honoring a more Yin approach to life, on the other. As the counterpoint to our dominant culture, which celebrates productivity, youth and physical prowess, and caffeine-fueled Yang-type accomplishments, many Chinese medicine practitioner...
Mar 29, 2025•52 min•Season 4Ep. 3
For this episode, Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms explore how to find joy, practice self-care, and show up in meaningful ways during dark times. Starting with learning from animals and babies, somehow they keep coming back to resonance, rhythm, and movement, as the key to avoid getting stuck and immobilized by overwhelm. From dancing to drumming and swimming to swirling, they try to bring some lightness to the conversation, in addition to some useful tools, like the gentle life-giving penetrating breez...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 4Ep. 2
What do kindness and joy, swimming in cold water and sharing food, euphoria and resilience, coping mechanisms, COVID, community, compassion, and connection have to do with each other? How do we sustain our work and find joy in the face of suffering? Is it possible to make suffering lighter, without making light of suffering? What is the role and meaning of celebration when LA is burning and the roundups have started? How do each of us find the strength to keep going? Welcome to the Pebble in the...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 4Ep. 1
In today's episode, Leo Lok and I are joined by Jack Schaefer, a practitioner of both Chinese medicine and Daoism as a living practice. In his role as one of the most active, passionate, and committed transmitters of Daoism in the West, he is the cofounder of Parting Clouds Daoist Education, along with his partner Josh Paynter. With Jack's help, we explore the connections and differences between the material compiled by Sun SImiao in the seventh century under the heading "nurturing our nature" y...
Dec 31, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 3Ep. 8
How do you not only treat somebody successfully in the moment, but truly alleviate their suffering and get the effect of your action to stick, whether you use herbs or diet, needles or touch, or whatever? In medicine, farming, cooking, or any other area of expertise, how do we balance the need for detailed technical know-how with the cultivation of intuitive wisdom, embodied sensitivity, and even personal growth? In the midst of the plethora of tools offered by Sun Simiao in his writings on long...
Dec 02, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Are you feeling the turmoil of the world reflected in your own internal storm of emotions? Do you feel like you are drowning in grief or exploding in anger, tired from rumination, rattled by fear, or giddy with joy? Do your emotions sometimes keep you from being the powerful force for peace and justice and love and beauty in the world that you want to be? Or do you simply sense the potency and urgency of the current moment and want some company in riding this wave? If you are a sensitive person ...
Nov 16, 2024•51 min•Season 3Ep. 6
At the end of the day, what does it mean to “nurture our true, innate, genuine, heavenly nature” and how is that related to healing and personal growth? When is the last time you have consciously savored each breath as an opportunity for transformation and restoration? How does fear hold us back from health and joy by literally tying up our precious Qi in knots that impede its free flow and healing power? And how do we untie those knots and encourage flow when we get to the end of our rope? Welc...
Nov 01, 2024•57 min•Season 3Ep. 5
How do we decide in each moment on the best path towards píng 平 (“equilibrium” or “balance”) in the spirit of Chinese medicine? How do we calibrate our responses to external factors and decide between action and non-action? What do we use (and teach) as criteria for this process of actively cultivating or passively nurturing our True Nature? How do we promote an ever-growing self-awareness in our multiple roles as individuals, family and community members, and healers? Today’s episode on “The Sw...
Oct 03, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 3Ep. 4
How can we get better at listening to our body and aligning with the Dao? How can we compost harmful emotional energy into life-giving Qi in service of physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation? How can we use the tool of curiosity as an antidote to judgment and thereby change the flavor of our inquiries? How can we complete our nature through a hundred daily actions while at the same time allowing our spirit to settle in stillness? How can we steer away from exhaustion towards not just ...
Sep 03, 2024•58 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Are you curious about the theme music for Season Three of our podcast and the sharp contrast to the obnoxiously gregarious Mexican accordeon music of the previous two seasons, which, I must admit, are a reflection of my own German heritage and decades spent in Hispanic culture? Do you recognize Leo’s beautifully serene voice and grasp the meaning of some of the words, but can’t quite catch what the whole passage is supposed to say? Are you fascinated by Leo’s multicultural background as a person...
Aug 04, 2024•49 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Welcome to the first episode in Season Three of the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast. For the next few months, we shall consider a variety of perspectives on “Nurturing Our Nature” 養性: Cultivating health and longevity from ancient China to today. This project is inspired by two things: First, Leo Lok's and my research in the volume on this topic in the seventh century text Beiji qianjin yaofang 《備急千金要方》 (Crucial Formulas to Prepare for Emergencies Worth a Thousand in Gold) by the famous medical...
Jul 10, 2024•58 min•Season 3Ep. 1
This episode, titled "What Do Love, Qigong, and Christ Consciousness Have to Do with Healing," is the second half of our conversation with Cynthia Li, a biomedical doctor in the Bay area who specializes in functional and integrative medicine. She is also a practitioner of what she calls “qigong consciousness healing” or “collective field qigong” and the author of two books: “Brave New Medicine: A Doctor’s Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Disease”, and “Mingjue Awakening: Teachings o...
Jun 20, 2024•58 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Cynthia Li, our interview partner for this episode, is a biomedical doctor who I have been dreaming of asking questions for several years now, ever since our mutual friend Michael Lerner introduced me to her work. She is a biomedical doctor, specializing in functional and integrative medicine. She is also a qigong practitioner who studies and performs what she calls “qigong consciousness healing” or “collective field qigong.” She is the author of two books: an incredibly honest and courageous bi...
Jun 06, 2024•54 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Today’s episode titled “Relax! You are Okay!” is the second part of Leo’s and my conversation with Cara Conroy-Lau, a Kiwi with a Chinese mom now practicing Chinese medicine and Buddhism in Canada. For this portion, we focus more specifically on the female perspective, both on the giving and on the receiving end of caring. I really appreciate Cara’s insistence on approaching Chinese medicine more light-heartedly as a playful exploration, as part of her culture, family traditions, and just life, ...
May 22, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In today’s episode on “Olives and Porridge,” Leo Lok and I are talking to Cara Conroy-Lau. Cara is a beautiful global border-crossing practitioner of Chinese medicine and Buddhism who has ended up in Canada at the Clear Sky Meditation Centre in Cranbrook, after growing up in Singapore, New Zealand, and Japan. I loved our conversation for how it revealed Cara’s courage and humility and dedication to her healing work, both within herself and in her community and family. Here are some of the questi...
May 08, 2024•55 min•Season 2Ep. 5
For today’s episode on “Living and Teaching the Way of Yin,” Leo Lok and I are once again joined by Kris González, Chinese medicine practitioner and herbalist, whose personal experience of motherhood has been influenced by her Korean mother and her Mexican mother-in-law. In addition to her clinical practice, she is also an educator offering evocative courses on topics like embodied menstruation, holistic breast care, the alchemy of perimenopause, spirit-heart-womb transformation through the soma...
Apr 23, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Welcome to Season Two of “The Pebble in the Cosmic Pond” where we focus on 2nd generation immigrant Asian voices by, for, and about women in that sweet spot in between traditional Asian wisdom and contemporary Western embodiment. Joining Leo and myself for our third episode on Season 2 is Kris González, Chinese medicine practitioner and herbalist, whose personal experience of motherhood has been influenced by her Korean mother and her Mexican mother-in-law. In addition to her clinical practice, ...
Apr 09, 2024•50 min•Season 2Ep. 3
In Season 2, titled “Over the Moon?”, we feature the voices of second-generation immigrant Asian women on female health. We explore the creative sweet spot in between the traditional Asian kitchen table wisdom that they have inherited from their mothers and aunties, and their personal and professional experience in contemporary North America. In this Episode two on “Attuning and Releasing,” we continue our conversation with Ramona Deonauth, a Chinese medicine practitioner of Indian heritage in S...
Mar 25, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 2
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 the...
Mar 10, 2024•40 min•Season 2Ep. 1
In a special twist for Season 2, we feature second generation immigrant Asian women’s voices on female health. We explore the creative sweet spot in between the traditional Asian kitchen table wisdom on women’s health that they have inherited from their mothers and aunties, and their personal and professional experience in contemporary America. Before we get to interview these women in our official episodes, here is a little introductory conversation where Leo and I explore this topic and ask qu...
Mar 07, 2024•43 min
What is the relationship between your personal practice of yangsheng and your clinical efficacy? Is it important, or even relevant, for a practitioner of Chinese medicine to embody the ideas of Yangsheng? In other words, can you be a good healer of others if you can’t take care of yourself? Are the short lifespans of many historical and contemporary Chinese medicine practitioners due to their failure to practice self-care? Or could it be related to the Wounded Healer pattern, to the fact that th...
Feb 10, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Today’s conversation is inspired by Leo Lok’s ideal of “Bodhisattva Math,” which is a great reminder for us to focus on topics in Chinese medicine that have the most impact on alleviating unnecessary suffering with the least amount of effort! In this context, Sun Simiao reminded us already in the seventh century that food is essential for human survival but can be medicine or poison. As he put it: “Anything that contains Qi without exception has the potential to provide food and thereby safeguar...
Jan 11, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Medicine, like any other skill or knowledge system, needs to be rooted in both subjectivity and objectivity. By valuing either one over the other, we deprive ourselves of an essential part thereof. Can traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy help us find a more balanced way of making sense of the world than the cold, rational, evidence-based cause-and-effect thinking of biomedicine and modern science? As Greg Bantick, our special guest on today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond puts i...
Dec 13, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 9
What makes somebody a master physician? What can we learn from historical texts about some limitations and possibilities, strengths and weakness of Chinese medicine that are no longer visible in the modern clinical context, especially as practiced in the West? How can we acquire and transmit skills to adapt Chinese medicine more flexibly, beyond the now standard “perfumed, candle-lit privileged context of the so-called worried well” (in Daniel Altschuler’s words) in order to serve patients in di...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 8
How does the training and practice of Chinese medicine change depending on one’s location? What is the difference in patient expectations, scopes of practice, and lineage versus institutional training and licensing? And what is really behind this supposed contrast between biomedicine, perceived as instantly effective and ideal for emergencies and serious conditions, versus Chinese medicine, supposedly being slow medicine, for chronic conditions, and too often seen as a benign complementary treat...
Nov 13, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Catching up on the news this morning, I felt a strong need to do something so I got in touch with my friend and colleague Dr. Brenda Hood, whose tuning forks are magical. I just felt like the world had a little need for some of her healing magic, and she was happy to oblige. So here is yet another spontaneous recording session, created in response to the horrendous things happening for far too many of us locally, nationally, globally, and cosmicly. As the image associated with this episode shows...
Oct 23, 2023•20 min
Today’s conversation started out with an innocuous email I sent to Leo, requesting that we explore that aspect of any good healer’s practice that is challenging to speak about and analyze rationally, let alone measure, certify, or transmit. And yet, we all know how powerful a healer can be, not because of their technical expertise but because of something else. What is this something else? In today’s episode, we once again look at the Chinese medicine classics for insights. Our journey takes us ...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 7
