Welcome to Destiny.
Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
This is Thanksgiving week here in the United States. So happy Thanksgiving from your friends at Destiny Earth Ancients and the special edition of Earth Ancients that we hear about occasionally. And I hope you have a chance to be with your family and your friends during this festive occasion. And it really is the beginning of the holiday season, the Christmas holiday season or Hanukkah. And you know, we're thinking
about the good year. We've had, the positive interactions, the new friends, and you know, giving thanks for all the good things that have happened. Hey, this is Cliff, your host of Destiny. And you know, as we settle into winter, not quite render yet. Winter is December twenty first, but it's getting cooler and the sun's going down earlier. I have to be very careful now because I need to get out at least three or four times a week
for a little hike. So if I if I wait longer than like three o'clock, the sun's is dark at five. So I got to get out early. And so that's critical to get some fresh air, at least for me, a guy who sits on his posterior for hours at a time, producing podcasts, editing podcasts and getting the word out about our guests. So anyway, happy Thanksgiving and on
where we go. The program today is another in the series of tools for transformation, and I wanted you guys to hear exactly the importance of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine as a complimentary healing tool when you are unwell, all feeling unbalanced, or perhaps depressed and filled with anxiety. And these are all normal conditions that we have in
our fast paced Western society. You know, if you're working all the time, you're not listening to your body, and you can get you can get run down, you can get fatigued, you can have little aches and pains, you can have migraines. There's a million different problems that you can deal with. And as a complimentary medicine, traditional Chinese medicine is a wonderful alternative to taking a drug or
depending on aspirins or painkillers. It's a subtle, holistic way to help ease your discomfort, ease the pain, and kind of help you move back into equilibrium, which is feeling better, having more energy, and reducing the aches and pains. And I'm really blessed with my current acupunctures. His name is John Cooco. We've had John on about three years ago talking about the traditional Chinese medicine, but today we're going to dig into it, and I'm gonna have him give
you an explanation for why it's so powerful. Why our ancestors not a few thousands years ago, five plus thousands years ago, incorporated these healing methods into their everyday activities, not when they got sick, but more likely when they were sensing that they were coming up on potential physical problem, perhaps the flu, other conditions that required some attention. It know that, and we'll hear about more about this today.
That not only has acupuncture been around for thousands of years, it doesn't rely solely on the wisdom of the Chinese. They have found mummies with various tattoos that are acupuncture points, and we don't really know what that means. It might mean that this person has a condition and these are markers that need to be adjusted and attended to for
them to remain pain free, illness free, or whatever. Acupuncture is extremely sophisticated, and it has to do with chi, the energy that surrounds us, but it's also in our body. And this is what's really fascinating, the meridians of the body. We talk about the lay lines of the Earth, these
energy fields, these energy highways. The body has meridians like the meridians like the Earth, but they are throughout the body, from the top of the head all the way to the body of your feet, and it's a super energy highway that runs.
Through the body.
When you manipulate these meridians with needles, with massage, with certain other types of therapy, you trigger healing, You trigger greater awareness, You trigger hormonal releases and other fantastic physical manifestations that your body is not only desires, but actually
can use for healing. And this is why these traditional healing techniques, although they're not really well accepted by the traditional medical allopathic community, they have more long the effects are much more long term and beneficial without taking a drug, without having to be surgically treated for surgery or radiation
or whatever. And once you hear our program today, I really recommend that you consider visiting your local acupunctures and if not, then perhaps if you're interested in alternative healing techniques, perhaps look into it a little bit by going to your Google search and punching in acupuncture benefits. Acupuncture is not only old thousands of years old, it looks to
be powerful healing technique. And I go in once a month for what I call a routine checkup, and so they'll John will check me and then we'll get on a table and I'll have my acupuncture treatment, which concludes with a short massage. And I got to tell you, once I have that, my week just runs better. The rest of the month until my next appointment just flows, just flows a lot better. So today's program is Meridians Acupuncture, an old world, forgotten medicine. And my guest is John coco.
Hey.
The seventh annual Grand Egyptian Tour is coming up. We have Mohammad and Nohah by him with us. We're going to be visiting Tennis, Egypt, which is very very old. We don't know what happened there. It looks like a catastrophic event happened. It has megalithic structures, statues, and some large pieces strewed around Muhammad. What do we know about tennis? What makes it so unique?
What we know about tennis unfortunately so little, but it is so little incompiliar with the importance and the greatness of Tennis, but for us it is very high level of information. Number one, what we know that Tennis was a great center of knowledge in Incia issupt.
It was the big city.
Receiving all the travelers and immigrants and visitors to Egypt from the northeast part of they come across Sinai. The second thing about Tennis that there was a massive size tembile or I can call it big town. We call it temble dedicated to Amonra. This temble or this village, if I can call it this way, was completely built
out of rose granite. From one You know what people don't know that there was more than twelve obelisks in Tennis, maybe more, but the remains some of them still in good condition, but all of them are laying on the ground. The one they took it to the Grand Museum, the one in front of the main gate of the Grand Museum is from Tennis, and the one in Tarry Square now is from Tennis. So there are about ten obelisks
or eight obelisks still there at Tennis. So the story is very strange because we expected even if the temple was in bad condition. We expected more ruins to see more cat ORed blocks, but we found only few. But we found the biggest. By the way, there are remains of blocks weighing more than two hundred ton and three hundred toon we found the foot of a statue. According to the dimension of the foot, the statue would be more more than fifteen hundred ton.
The foot is like a car size. Wow.
Okay, so we don't know what happened exactly. It must be something very strong hit tennis and hit that temple and it causes it caused great damage, like great exublusion happened inside the temple and caused that all the pieces are scattered on a distance maybe like three or four kilometers wide.
Amazing.
When people go to tennis, they're going to feel the magic and they feel the dips of the history of tennis.
Coman join us. It's gonna be April twenty eight through May tenth. For all the details and the itinerary, go to Earth Ancients dot com Forward Slash Tours. It's been a while since we had John Coco on the program.
He is the owner of Coca Wellness in Berkeley. He is my acupuncturist, he's excellent, and we want to continue on with our theme of tools for transformation, because we're all fixated with allopathy, which is your traditional i should say, conventional doctor and in that environment, and I want to expand on the acupuncture process and what it means when you go to a traditional Chinese medical doctor, the benefits of it, and perhaps more details that will make you
understand why so many people find it just the way to go. So, hey, John, good to see it. Man, thanks for joining me again.
It's an honor. Thanks brother.
Talk a little bit about your background when you decided to become a acupuncturist. What was the motivation for you to do this kind of work?
Wow, that's that could take a long time. It was the short version, oh man. Okay. The short version is I traveled and met medicine people along the Silk Road. Not really, but did a Fiji in Australia walk about, and in Fiji I met a medicine man who told me I was a healer. And I could go into that in depth, but basically, there are people who can tell you what you should be doing, and sometimes you just need to listen. So family comes from healers. Different
kinds of healers, herbal healers, spirit healers. And they wanted me to be a white coat doctor or a preacher, and they wanted me to go into seminary and h yeah, but yeah, you know, and the spirit calls you, you got to listen. So then I got into traveling around and chasing volcanoes and finally found the Big Island. And when I got to the island, I was home. I found my fire. Wow. And so now I'm here in Berkeley, California, hanging out with you. Very cool.
Yeah, And I've been with John I think at least three years, maybe more, and he's a miracle worker when it comes to all kinds of health conditions. When we speak about the history of acupuncture or traditional chin medicine as a whole, how old is is acupuncture? How how far back does it go?
Oh? Wow? Okay, So let's let's just theoretical, because maybe I was there, maybe you were there, but we're just guessing, okay, and this is from documented evidence. So the first question is how old is medicine itself? Right the beginning of time, people start breaking bones, burns, you know, in caves. So I would say formal acupuncture. Is that what you're talking about, you're talking about like Pudney.
Yeah, I mean what we think of traditional Chinese medicine. I read, you know, different aspects. Some people say it's twenty five hundred years old, some people say it's five thousand years old, and yeah, I'm just curious, what are your what is your feeling on? When the what the inception when someone began to discover these meridians that we're going to discuss today.
Well, uh, there's a a master of Japanese acccuncture named Shoodo Denme, and his idea is that the people who were seamstresses putting needles through thread on people to actually fit their clothes right. So someone actually probably punctured someplace on the body and someone felt a nerve sensation, achieved sensation, and then they started paying attention to that. That's one idea.
Another idea is that people were already seeing these channels, these lines and so energy lines, and there's certain people who can do that. It's very rare. I know, I'll just full disclosure. One time I tried doing some mushrooms and I could see these channels and mainly because I'm doing this work twelve hours a day. But it's it's
in my field, right vision field. And basically, if you're a Rishie and you lived in the mountains and there were there were no distractions, and you grew up this way and you were fostered from a very early age because someone saw your gifts and and then you know, you were the person that everyone brought anyone who was sick to in the mountains, that person probably could see these subtle energy lines, right, and so it wasn't like something where we had to experiment or find scientific evidence
for that. It was it was plain as day. Now, there are other ideas such as the points came first, and if you have these acupuncture points first, before needles, there were actually maxa or scarring techniques. So we were in the cave. Going back to the cave, and basically
you're caterizing different areas where there's a lot of pain. Right, Let's say there's a lot of nerve pain in a place and you actually put some fire, a fire stick, you put you put a branch into the fire, and then you put that right into that place that hurts, and oh the pain went away. Hum hmm. Okay, So that's an idea, right, I mean, that's that's pretty primal, so I think that's legitimate. We also know that there is the tattoo uh man in in the in Europe, right,
what's his name, the the ice man. He had tattoo lines uh.
He had markets for what could be acupuncture points. So what of that marketunc points he's thought to be He thought he's about to be three or four thousand years old, back.
Guy at least, yeah, at least. And this is not in you know, China, this is in your eur Asia Europe, right, Yeah, So basically I don't think that China can take claim to own this or to have started this. However, we do know that the Egyptians, you know, we're doing piercings in the ear going back at least five thousand years They were doing surgery. They were doing cataract surgery at least five thousand years ago. So I believe that this
is at least five thousand years old. And it took until about twenty two hundred BC when they started writing this stuff down, compiling it's that's written. We have this evidence. It's in the Inner Classic then Agen and so in the Lingshu, all these points. Everything has been documented, organized analyzed, and so it's at least twenty two hundred years old, but the oral history is much older.
So you're saying that the documents that we see of illustrations of the body with these needle points, these points on the body, that's about that's that shows up about twenty two one hundred BC.
Now about two hundred BC is when it was written and compiled in the Qin dynasty. You've heard of the Yellow Emperor. Maybe saw the movie Hero, Yeah, if you saw that, Jong Emo and a great movie has jet lie in there, right, and basically it's all under heaven. Right.
So there were these warring states periods and they were fighting for hundreds of years, centuries, and finally there was an emperor that united all the kingdoms in China and also burned a lot of the histories, but also compiled a lot of the science and a lot of that was put into these texts. So we have evidence from the Malongdi tombs, we have we have a lot of evidence from that time period that this medicine is at least twenty two hundred years old.
And when they were documenting the techniques, what was the application for all illnesses or were there specific illnesses it was good for.
Yeah, so you know people come to us mainly for pain, right, right, pain, stressed neurological disorders, kind of cological disorders, et cetera. But back then, you know, this was the cutting edge medicine, right, this was state sponsored medicine. I mean like they would get the smartest people in all the lands, have them basically go through tests and find out who were going to be the ones to treat the emperor. Right. So that's the stuff that's written in these texts. So it
was used for everything. And remember acupuncture is only one of the eight branches of Chinese medicine.
Yeah, give us the full spectrum. It's acupuncture, herbs, bodywork.
What else? Right? So the first three or the heaven heavenly branches, right, So there's meditation, there's diet and movement diet, right, and so those three are the most important because if you actually can do those things, you don't need anything external. Right.
If you meditate, if you have the right attitude, if you are someone who eats in harmony with seasons, you don't eat too much of anything or too little of anything, right, and you move with the chi that you're in the field that you're in and you keep circulating your blood your chi, then you'll live a long, full life. So those are the top three, and those are three things
that you can learn by yourself anywhere. You can go to YouTube right now, or you can find a teacher, or you can just walk in nature and just know that it's in your DNA, right, So those are the top three. Then there's functue and astrology. And what's interesting is functue, which is not something that's really like in the purview of a lot of Westerners, but it's just part of life for people in Asia, right. This is
environmental medicine. And what we need to think of is how do we survive and thrive with other beings in harmony and how do we flow so we don't waste our time and energy, right, And that's how you live a full life. If you're a candle that burns too fast, you know your wax that just spills out right makes a mess, right, And so this is really important. Functual. We'll talk a little bit more about this when we go out. I can show you some of the functual
of our clinic. And then astrology, which I think a lot of your viewers listeners are really into I'm sure you know. Of course, if you ask some scientists, they'll say it's just random variables, and people want to believe what they want to with biases, right. However, I really believe that it's important to look at the big cycles,
the cosmic cycles, right, not just the individual cycles. So if you look at, for instance, the Chinese zodiac cycle, we're in the snake gear this year, right, and a lot of people, i'm sure have gone through a lot of internal work sloughing off a lot of the shadow stuff, right, unveiling what's underneath the surface, right when we mold this this skin. So that's that's a Jupiter twelve year cycle. And it also coincides this year with a I think a big solar flare cycle as well. So it's been
a very intense, intense year. We just had a G four storm last week, right, So you know, these things all matter and they influence us. So ninety nine nine percent of who we are is from the Sun, right, and the rest is from this planet, and we just don't give that enough credit, right, So that's FUNCTU. And then if you keep going through that, so those are things that we all share. Then we go to the
personal stuff. Right. So we've done five branches. The other three other things you think of when you come and you pay money to see someone like me, Right, that's the body work, that's the herbs, right right. And so basically the acupuncture is the lowest branch. So the branch that is most invasive is acupuncture, which is actually very un non invasive. We barely put these needles in people. And what we're doing is we're guiding chi through the body.
We're just speaking to the body and reminding it that actually there's something there that could be internally released or tonefied, nourished, stimulated in order for there to be harmony and balance in the body.
Find to find chi, John, What I mean this is a huge thing.
Uh? What is chi? And how do you manipulate it? Man? These questions?
I told you, I told you to be ready, buddy.
Yeah, okay, So the best way for me to explain she she is functional, she is relationship. I have a teacher who passed years ago who said she is time. All right, So I'm just gonna show you right here. Let's turn this around, all right, So this is a tests have been and you see that steam coming out, Yeah, that's chi from the right, from the teapot, that's yeah. And you see that that's that's that fire, that's young. And you see the water in there, yes, fire underneath water.
Great chi. Okay, So we drink a lot of tea here you can see right here. That'll be the next time we talk. And actually I should drink some tea. So what does she Chi is like steam engine energy? I mean, you know, what happened was a long time ago in eighteen hundred's. These French guys, they they were introduced to acupuncture and Chinese medicine and energy medicine. It was really popular at the time, so that was the language. And so what they do is they translated chi into energy.
It made the most sense. Okay, But she is more than that. And that's what I mean by that because actually, if you see the character of chi, it's it's actually this, it's the steam that's cooked coming off cooking rice. Okay, So when you think about that, it's it's it's invisible, but it's also visible. You saw the steam.
It is like life force. Would you say, like life force of the body.
Uh So, Prana you know numa prana. These are very similar terms, right right, And yes it does enliven activate our own our own processes so that we can keep living for sure.
Right, Okay, Now I want to jump into the meridians because this is a huge part of the traditional Chinese medicine practice, and we know that the earth has meridians. It's not necessarily accepted by traditional archaeologists, but if you talk to older traditional people like the Maya or the current Egyptians, they know about it because it was handed down to them. The meridians are the body are an energy super highway. Talk about the meridians just for a second.
Tell us about the meridians and why they're important.
Yes, So I like what you said, super highway of the body, right, Okay, So there are also these blue lines, you know, those little roads that are on the map, right, Those are also channels too. There are so many different ways for that she that steamed that I just showed you for that to travel through the body, and it
travels through open spaces. Those open spaces could be vast blood vessels, it could be interstitial tissue, could be factial lines, It could be through the nerves, right, It could be through any space where there's an opening, and as we know, we're mostly empty space. Right. What you're seeing right now, when I'm seeing you know, these it's just like electrons separated by almost an infinite amount of space. But basically she runs through all that and it also activates it.
So let's start actually with feel old sort of stuff. Okay, So the first thing is that these channels are not like two dimensional things that you see on a chart. I mean, you can see that they look like straight lines. Right. We talked a little bit about this because what I think inspired this conversation was us talking about lay lines, right,
which is also controversial because no proven them. However, there have been a lot of there's a lot of evidence that there's a lot of electromagnetic energy in these sacred spaces and also in mountains Haleakala, you know, Maui, the Big Island. I used to live on the Big Island. These these five mount volcanoes have an enormous amount of energy that are coming to the surface. Right. One of them, Kilauea, is spewing right now. It's extremely active, and you know
there's a lot of energy there. It's obvious, right, So it's the same thing there that there are these nodes or points in the body where a lot of energy is coming up. And we can see this obviously in
places people go. They go to the Himalayas. There's a lot of ideas that potentially the Atlanteans when the floods happened, they went to the highest places in the world to keep this information alive, right, Rudolph Seiner said that, And so basically we have you know, all these places, the Nasca lines, you know, these these places where people have actually created these huge I mean for they've they've worked on these for decades and even centuries. Yeah, and why
like why in these spaces? Why did they carry those those huge stones to Stonehenge? Right? Like why that's space? Right? So absolutely, what we're doing is we're mapping what's happening outside of us, what we can see outside of us, also with what's inside of us. And basically there are going back because you're talking about ancient times. There are
names of these points that are all geographic. And as an example, bladder sixty, which is on the ankle, it's close to the lateral malliolas and that's called kunlan Okay. So Kunland sacred mystical mountains in a western part of China. Did you say.
Bladder at the ankle, so you would put a needle in that meridian that would affect the bladder.
Actually, that's true, it's so wow. Yeah, so basically the whole body. You said, a super super highway, like a super conductive highway. But we have these channels that run through I'm sure everyone has seen these acupuncturer charts. And what we can do is we can actually work the extra to work the internal. And that was the genius of the ancients, was that they were saying, do less harm, right, do no harm, to do the most, do the most that you can from the outside to work the inside.
So you don't have to surgically invade somebody because you actually do harm when you do that right. It's like if I had a teapot and I cracked it right now, that crack is going to be there the whole time. Even if I fix it, even if I try to, you know, glue it together, put gold on it, whatever, that crack is still there.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves and will return shortly with my guest today, John Coco, discussing ancient medicine traditions and acupuncture. Will be right back. My guest today is John Coco. He is a Chinese medicine doctor who specializes in a variety of ailments and health concerns. He is located in Berkeley, California, and he is he's describing today the history of traditional
Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Is it disrupting the energy, John, Is that what it is? It's like fractures the energy when you cut something open like that.
Absolutely. Absolutely. There's there's emotional trauma, there's karma trauma, and there's also physical trauma. Right, So we try not to
hurt people at all. And that's what's amazing about acupuncture and Chinese medicine is first, do no harm, right, and that goes back to Hippocrates, right, So if you can do not do anything that is going to actually make the patient worse, right in the long run, Okay, because maybe they'll get over it if they're twenty years old and they're you know, a soldier, if they're an athlete, But when they're fifty sixty, that's when they actually see
that right unravel. So let's go back to Kunland bladder sixty and this point, for instance, is named after the most one of the most sacred mountain ranges in China. It's a mystical looks like a big snake that runs through right the land, and there are hundreds of mountains actually, so why that one, right, We have all of these points that are actually named after different areas that are geographic rivers valleys. As an example, this really famous point here.
You know this L four which is used for headaches. Do you know that point? No, it's right here. It's it's right between the thumb and the index finger. Okay, okay, very famous for headaches. Other pain too, Okay, it could be used for gynecological pain, mestural pain. And that one's called joining valley, right, and so Hogu. So basically all of these points are they're named after these geographical sort
of spatial areas externally. But the thing is that the Chinese didn't see a difference between our bodies and the landscape outside of us. We are part of nature, we're one with nature, right, and that the names of nature items exactly right. And so that's the beauty of it is actually seeing that what health really is is being in harmony with nature, including space and time, especially the seasonal changes. Right, So people get sick, especially when the
seasons change. We saw this the last few weeks, right, Yeah, colds and stuff when cold damp, Right, we said arthritis. That creates a lot of arthritis, a lot of allergy kind of stuff. Cold, all this comes out all the old stuff. Right. If you had an old back pain, right, all of a sudden, it's like, oops, out that came back. Why did they come back? I didn't do anything. It's
the seasonal shift. And so that's again when there's a crack in the pot, that'll show up when there's condensation, right, when there's when there's any different kind of shift, that's that's stress is what causes the pain. And so the pain is just telling your body, Hey, you know what, there's something to deal with here. It's not a bad thing. Yeah, it just means you're not actually changing flowing with the season. It's so funny to hear.
What you're saying, because if you look at the conventional medicine approach to problem areas of the body, they're like, Okay, we got to cover this up. We're going to give you a drug so you have less pain, but not necessarily address the causation, but maybe the causation. It's it's just so different when I think of what you do and compared to my Kaiser physician, who's a great guy, but their training is to to cover up stuff with potent drugs that are toxic.
Yeah. Well, I mean sometimes you need that, you know, as an example of there's structural impingement and there's something that I can't do you know anything about that? Right? If you have a major bulging disc, right, you need some painkillers. You don't want to walk around with that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. You need surgery if it's really bad.
So yeah, there's benefits to all the different practices, but I'm just saying it's just much more challenging when you're taking a very strong drug.
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, the problem is this is that you know, when we say what western medicine were allopathic medicine, you know this contemporary modern medicine, it's only been around for one hundred fifty years. Yeah, you know, so think about that a point. That's a really good point. Yeah, and one hundred and twenty years ago or so, the reason why they're the primary medicine we're using in America is because they actually went out and tried to exterminate all
the other different kinds of modalities out there. If you look at the history of it, the eclectics, the natural paths, the homeopaths, right, the osteopaths, the chiropractors.
Why were they trying to eliminate the other ones?
Just it's called a big business. It's called oh capitalism, profits, profits, Yeah, that's right. I'm maybe on again show with this. I'm just telling the history. This is a fact. Yeah, everyone could read this, but basically that's that's what dominated and they won. Okay, so you know, now ostiopaths work in hospitals, right, Chiropractors are seen as quacks according to the allopaths. You know, they don't like them. So acupunctions, we don't. We don't
fight with the alipaths. We actually do allopathic type of medicine, right, and so you know, we haven't so far had any problems with them. But homeopaths are quacks right because they do the law of similars and mentetismals. Right. Yeah, you see what I'm saying. It's like there's not enough room in this this allopathic world for other types of modalities or even other kinds of thinking, right, the mactricity thinking.
So, I mean, I think of acupuncture, your traditional Chinese medicine as complementary, yes to the altopathic. I mean, and I think more people should be thinking of it like that. But I don't want to spend a lot of time on that because we can we can talk forever about that. How did they manage to discover all these points on the body and and relate them to earth features? Which is just mind blowing because how many points are there?
Joints? More than a thousand? Yeah, so there's a saying that every place in the body is a point. Okay, However there are nodes right, just like in music, right when you when you have a certain like a guitar and you you play you know, the third, the fifth, it sounds different right on an octave. So basically we have I'm going to turn this around just to show you a chart here, oh your chart? Yeah right, okay, So these are different types of microsystems, right, here's scalp.
This is the hand, and then this is the ear. And what's really interesting is when it comes to ear acupuncture. Is this is an inverted fetus. Okay, So here's the head, right, and then you got the feet up here in any of the internal organs, okay, all of these have been mapped scientifically proven that if you stimulate this point, it also has a correspondence with the internal organ and tissue. Okay.
Now what's really interesting about this is that traditionally in China they had some of these mapped out, but they didn't have all of them mapped out. And it was a French medical doctor named Nogier who actually created this map. Wow, okay, and you just saw it and you know this is pretty cool, right, But there are a lot of systems is Chinese, French, German, so it's not just one system. So this is this is a holographic image of what's
happening inside our whole body. And we have at least thirty two of these, which we call monclises, right, little little areas of the body that represent the whole like a fractal body. You know, you guys know a lot about fractals, because I'm sure you're your listeners are really into physics, right and so yeah, but basically what is above is what is below what is within is what is without, and it's all archetypal. So let me turn this around here.
So is the is the meridian flowing like this cheat energy like a liquid or is it like electricity can be compared to electricity?
Yeah, so let's let's let's go past electricity and we'll start talking about fields, okay, because we know about electromagnetic magnetic fields, all right, and you know about Alex Gray, I'm sure, oh, the painter. Yeah, so yeah, right, so this is this is that our clinic, and we have these up here so that people are reminded of who we are. And you can see here the channels. Okay, right, you see some of that electricity coming off of the aura, right, you see the chakras. And then here this is a
little beyond that. This is a third body right here. This is what some people see, for instance on d MT as an example. Right, So we're going from the electromagnetic we're going into the more subtle energy into this cosmic archetypal fortex right, And so all of this is happening in everything, including this planet. And let me just
show you here. This is what the Chinese saw. This is called an aging two and This is a copy of something that's in the White Cloud Monastery in Beijing, right, and you can see here this is actually the energetic functional blow of chi ching Chi and shin, which is fundamental essence. That's steam and then spirit. You can see the Daoist right going up to the high mountains.
Yeah, so are you saying that we're each a little power plant of energy, like where we have our own energy system or are we deriving it from the environment?
Is that powering us? Yeah? Good question. I don't think it has to be either. War. You know, when you eat food, what are you doing beating the engine? That's right, you're putting some fuel in your body. So this is something I say to almost everyone who comes in, especially in the winter. Winter, no raw cold foods.
Okay, why in the winter, no raw or cold foods, because you want to keep the fire burning.
I guess yeah, it's that you saw that tests have been that tea kettle. We need that steam, we need that heat that young. So if you're putting something that's that's in the fridge, like some salad or whatever that's been in there, and you're putting that inside your body, your body has to generate the energy to break that down, right, So you're wasting energy. So when you put something that's that's that has fire inside of it and you put that into your body, your body as a vessel becomes
a container for that energy and you generate energy. Okay, it's the same thing if you go out to outside and you sunbathe, or if you hug a tree, or you go down to the ocean and you just put your like, your whole body and you immerse it into this incredible wave, right and all that energy goes right into you, right through you. So those are ways that you can generate energy. There's tontric sex, there's just breath work. I mean, there's so many ways that you can do it.
And going back to sacred spots, sacred locations, those are places that some people go and they stay there to regenerate their energy, to heal sacred waters, sacred churches that were built on pagan sites right where we say maybe lay lines were formed into you know, a place where people miraculously healed. Why because all of a sudden, all this energy went inside of them and healed them. I mean,
I do believe that. Right there are wells, there are pools, you know, so in Chinese medicine, when we talk about these channels, they're actually translated as water sort of vessels. Okay, places that water flows, and so let's talk a little bit about these points. There are seventy two channels, but we look back, we look at twelve primary channels, eight extraordinary channels or vessels. And in these vessels, these eight
extraordinary vessels are much more like reservoirs. They're underneath, they're deeper, and the primary channels are more superficial.
When you say channels, you're talking about the energy flow.
The meridians, Meridians. We're talking about the Meridians, right, And so going back to all the stuff we're talking about what she is, right, it's that steam that Yang and the yin and the intermarriage between Yang and yin creating this sort of steam, right, that itself flows through all of these vessels. And if there's a place that's stuck, then there's this function down down that way. There's pain because your body is trying to tell you there's something
there to look at. So pain is a great teacher, something wrong with it. Unless you can't you take care of it, then it just becomes a pain in the butt. Right. So going back to the field, we are this field that is reflective of the whole the whole universe, right, all the fractal archetypal imagery that you see throughout the universe. And it looks like a sitting Buddha if you stand. If you stand that Buddha up, then all of a sudden it has all these little fractal sort of things
coming off it. That's part of us. To these nodes. They turn into our head, our arms or legs right our fingers or toes, and all of these channels are also they're just lines that connect with the internal part of our being into those organs. Okay, so you can look at the channels and you can see that. You can look at the charts that just showed you. The thing that's really interesting for me is actually that these
lay lines. I know, it was a thought of theorized as straight lines and then that's been kind of debunked. But actupuncture is not the same either. It actually is more like a snake. Right.
Oh really, they're not like straight line meritian pathways or all over the place moving like this.
Well, look at your body. Yeah, so if you see your body, you see the contours of the muscles, the fascia in between those, that's where she runs, right. Okay, So there's a there's a principle in functua. So in function, there's this idea that things that are straight lines, energy goes in and out. If you ever go to a Chinese restaurant, first thing you come in, you're gonna see some kind of barrier maybe you know, maybe a fish tank or something. Why do you think that is? Okay,
the energy to go out? Oh, you want to keep the energy in. So yeah, you people, people are bringing energy in and you want to store it and contain that energy. Ah okay, okay, So let me just show you again our our clinic here. This might be demonstrative. Okay, right, okay, hey lala, all right, so we're kind of winding through and you can see here. Oh yeah, okay, all right,
so just already here all right. So this is a series of paintings by our friend April McMurtry, and she puts together the Moon Calendar and Moon Journal every year. It's my Moon Calendar, and that's what it's called. And if you see right here this is these are every month of the year and this is a calendar that's depicted in a painting. And do you see the snake that runs through that? Yeah? Yeah, So these are different snakes for different seasons and different flowers and so. And
you see the al chemical triangles right right, it's really brilliant. Well, that snake right there is the same thing that's running through that's the chie that's running through here. And when we built this place out, I brought in my friend Manya Butterworth, who's the owner of the Golden Gates School Functual, and he advised us that we need it to have
this sort of slithering effect. Yeah, and you can see that right if we went straight through, all the ergy would go in and go straight out and just like it be a long corridor like a tunnel. And now here you have the moongate. So half the place is on the sun's side or outside, and then we walk into the inside. Ay about you, there's an.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves and we will return shortly with my guest today, John Coco of the Cocoa Wellness Center, and the details on traditional Chinese medicine.
We'll be back shortly.
What child is this? Who late to us on May's lafe is slee thing who may just green with anthem sweet while ship shocky.
My guest today is Chinese medical doctor John Coco coming to us from Berkeley, California, and we are learning about the history the tradition of acupuncture and how the Riadian system works. Yeah, I see the I see the intention. That's cool.
So she is the same way, okay. Basically she runs not in circles but in spirals and in waves. Okay. And if you do chigong you know this as well.
Mm hmm.
When you when you move like this, okay, there's flow. When you do straight line kinds of things, you get tired. There's resistance right right, And it's the same thing in politics and everything. If you if you try to do everything straight with in this order, there's gonna be some resistance. Yeah. So you got to be like a snake and you gotta flow. And that's that's actually the lesson of this year.
Expand a little bit on when you first see somebody and they say to you, John, I have upset stomach all the time. I have digestion problems. And you will hear that it's like a brief history and then you do what do they call it? A pulse reading? Talk about that because that's really critical for you as a practitioners to understand what is happening, What is that? What does the pulse reading determine?
Yeah, well that's a good question. So what's interesting about the diagnostics, right, is that the most complex and most important diagnostic that we use is actually the pulse reading. And why that's person to what we're talking about today, is that the pulse itself, that radio artery, that's another snake.
So think about the blood flowing through there in waves, right it it undulates, And what you're doing is we're actually writing that we're listening to the wave pattern, the waveform, and we're able to discern at different levels which organ systems, which tissues are dysfunctional, and which ones are functional right
inside of a patient. And so through the microcosm of a couple of inches on both sides of the wrists, we can actually feel in the time and space continuum the shift in that patient at that moment.
So talk about where you're you're placing your fingers over the inner part of the wrist, right right, And so then you're you're you're kind of moving your it's almost like you're manipulating that area to get a full I want to just say, charge or an ability to read what's happening and what do you trying to do sense when you're doing that.
Yeah, So you know what's interesting is that, like when you see somebody's face, Okay, it could be a stranger, not even someone you know, and you know there there's over thirty muscles in the face, right, so when we see that, we can already tell Okay, this person's upset, they're in a good mood, they're happy, they're they're angry, they're free, I mean, whatever it is, right, Yeah, so you know that's a visual representation of what's happening in them.
The Chinese actually saw they did face reading, they did palm reading, right, they did all these kinds of ways of reading the internal landscape through the outside. Again, we just talked about this. You can treat to the outside to work the inside, and you can also see the outside, and you could listen to the outside to listen to the inside. Right. So when we're feeling this radial artery, and then there's a lot of ideas around this one is that you could also do a lot of other
kinds of diagnostics. But we were trying not to be invasive again, right, we're not trying to cut people open, we're not trying to put radiation in them. What we're doing is we want to listen to what's happening in the most sincerely respectful way. Okay, all right, And and so one of those ways is can I, you know, listen to the pulse by your hand. Okay, you don't even have to take off any clothes, right, It's it's amazing. And so this this goes back again twenty two hundred years.
It's all written right, very very very sophisticated pulse readings. And this is not owned by the Chinese. Okay, Galen, the Roman physician, he had over one hundred kinds of pulse readings as well. Oh interesting, is that incredible? So different parties the.
World has different readings, as though you're suggesting.
Absolutely, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arivedic practitioners in India you know, which later went to Tibet, you know, and the Chinese they were all doing this and we we have this historical evidence. Right, So again, this is not something that the Chinese invented. Like the Chinese didn't invent moxibustion, they did not invent cuppying. Right, companying comes from Africa, right, mock sebustion, scarring techniques are at least from eagypt and
before that. So I would just want everyone to look into their own traditions wherever they come from, and dig deep, and you'll find that we're all very similar, and we all actually have almost everything that we're doing. As far as in Chinese medicine, there's also a precedent in Africa and other parts of the world because it's that old.
Right, So somewhere there was a foundation that spread out to these other parts of the world, and each country enhanced and improved the technique and made.
It their own. It sounds like, yeah, well, so one thing that Chinese did is they again, they synthesized it. They're very good at synthesizing, keeping what works and throwing awaight what doesn't, right, I mean completely eliminating exactly.
Hey, talk about the training that you receive to apply the needles to the meridians, because you don't push the whole needle into the arm or the leg or the body. It's a very light penetration. Talk about that, because that's really critical, isn't it.
Yeah, so let's go back to the principle of do no harm and also to do the least invasive thing to create the most efficacy. Right. So the style that I practiced mainly is a Japanese style that I that I studied from a few different doctors. And so the Japanese especially are very good at being efficient. Right. They're also the best swords people as far as well, some of them with blades, like they say, you know, they're
famous for their their blades. And so acupuncture needles are like small blades, right, and so they make really good needles. This is what we use here. They make Oh absolutely, the needles we use are the best, and they cost four times more, but it's it's worth it, and their tensile strength is much better. They don't hurt, you know, So it's really important that acupuncture doesn't hurt. Okay, you might feel like a little sting, that's no big deal.
But it shouldn't be sharp ever. Yeah, and if you feel like a deep achiness, that's great, there's nothing wrong with that. That's actually good heaviness, Okay, all right, So how does accupuncture work. There's these sea affarent sensory nerves and we're stimulating them. And this is all the Western medicine science. This has all been proven over forty years ago.
And basically that goes through the spinal cord and connects with three different parts of the brain and sends signals through pertaining tissues and leases and door fins.
Oh my god, I didn't know that they had it had been analyzed to that level.
Oh yeah, yeah, of course. And for sure in America we got to figure it out. Yeah yeah, other people got PhDs and this kind of stuff. But you know, it's if we're asking the question does it work or if it doesn't work? If that's the old stuff, you know, Yeah, The question now is how, like you said, how do we work together with the dominant models that are out there. How do we help the most people in the best ways.
And I really believe that Chinese medicine can do that because it's very good at doing the stuff that Western we say Western medicine is not good at, right, which is like outpatient care as an example, right, or preventative health before you even get into the hospital. Right, If you could if you could fine tune your car so it never has to go into the garage because the engine block broke right, blue, right, you want to get
these tune ups right. So that's that's how acupuncture could be very helpful.
Yeah, but let me ask you this, So, do we have an idea of the thickness of the meridians? And I asked that because as you're pushing the needle through the skin to pierce the meridian, is it you're training to pierce it completely? Or because sometimes when you're putting the needle in my on my arm or my body, I can actually feel it when it connects with the meridian.
It's like a little.
Dull ache almost. It's really weirdly, really weird.
Right. So one idea is to think of the needles are not just going inside the body. They're also little antennae that are connecting to your aura or your field outside of your body. Very cool, This is another way of thinking about it. Yeah, right, cool. So what we're doing is we're like lightning rods. We're putting lightning rods in there so that you can also connect to what the reiki guys call universal chi or universal key. Yeah. Right, So that's going in there too. And I'm not doing it.
I mean, like I put the needle there, but you're just connected to the universe, right.
And you're talking about surrounding energy passing through the needle into the body.
Right. Wow, it's not just the material. It's not just the material needle going in there. And remember it's also conductive, right, these needles as well, that's why it's made of iron. They used to be made of stone and fish bones and other things. But you know, it's very interesting because there were silver needles, gold needles back in history. The different alloys, the different things that you use also have
an effect. And you know, people out there who are listening, you know who do crystal healing, would have you know there's a Pizzo electric effect. Everything has some sort of frequent and see, and you just got to find the right ones for the right place. So you've.
Met somebody they told you they have a problem. You have done the pulse reading to get a sense of where the influxes are, the problem areas are, and you apply the needles the acupuncture. How long did the needles stay in the body.
Yeah, So you know we talked about space can talk a little bit about time as well, right, so usually about thirty minutes, twenty five to thirty minutes. Okay, really, and this is very interesting because there's actually a cycle, a time cycle that it takes for the chi to run through all of the channels, all right, and it's about twenty five to thirty minutes.
So it's coming from the outside of the body through the needle and passing through the meridians to the going you're saying, it cycles through the whole body.
It cycles through regardless of acupuncture, if you're having acupuncture or not, just being alive and breathing. Yeah. Right, So within twenty four hours they're fifty cycles. This is what the classics say.
Okay, this is so amazing, John, because I've never heard this step before. It's like, you know, these cycles and the time period for it to completely pass through the body. That's amazing. It's totally amazing.
Well, it's amazing when you think of this sort of twenty five to thirty minutes as the amount of time that they've studied for people to watch these cartoons and TV shows, right, I mean, you know, with commercials and everything's about twenty three minutes. But basically you know, and then you do three of cycles of that, you have ninety minutes and that's pretty much, you know, what a lot of people can handle as far as attention span.
You know, now it's thirty seconds, but you know that thirty minutes is a really important sort of time rhythm for people. So if you're gonna and also look at you know, sleep cycles, they're ninety minutes, right, So it's I think it's really important to pay attention to you know, space and time. And going back to what we talked about with that snake running through with functue is also to use your body in that same way, don't you know,
do straight lines for everything. Don't try to just like power through everything, you know, be a little bit more subtle and things will be less resistant on the other end.
Yeah, you know, it's amazing. I was researching this before this interview. And you guys also can work with emotional and psychological issues or as they call it, pain. And I don't know where you would place the needle for somebody who has deep depression, but I guess it's it's kind of opening the body or connecting the body with these subtle energy fields to relieve blockage.
Is is that the thinking? Right? So let me get as an example for someone who's depressed. Okay, obviously, if someone close to them died and you know, they should go through a morning you know, traditionally it's three years in China and Korea to mourn. Oh yeah, I mean this is very important because Confucia is understood. You know that if you don't have these rituals, people walk around
depressed for their whole lives. Oh yeah, right, So what you do is you you create an altar, a family alter and every day you light a candle, you put some fruit, whatever it takes to remind remember them. And after one year, you have a big party and you remember them and you know, you mourn and cry and you do this for yourself, not for them. And then after three years it's it. That's it. You don't have to do this every single day, right, you don't have
to because your psyche got it. It's like, okay, you know, I mourned, and then you just do the annual thing. So yeah, I think it's really important that we remember time and rituals as well.
Totally as we come to the end of our time together. John, can you give me an example of somebody who is open to these healing modalities, but once they use it in a complimentary fashion, in other words, they have their regular MD, they've been, they've had. Let's go back to the person who has digestive gostro intestinal problems and the doc says, well, you got reflex, acid, reflex, something like that, and they're given medicines if they came to you, what would be your compliment to that.
Okay, So I'll just backtack just a little bit. So back to the depression. Okay, So as an example, there are many reasons people could be pressed, but we we do need to have, you know, these communal rituals for everybody, and we need each other because when you're isolated, you become depressed. Part of that is that there's you know, the Heart Math Institute. If you don't have connection with other hearts, your heart goes out of synchronous, you know,
synchronicity with nature. Right, There's there's an important rhythm that we all need to share. So that's why you know, going to live music and dancing and you know, just just even listening to music, even if it's not live. I mean, all of that's important. You know, eating together all right. I think the pandemic was terrible. It was a terrible thing for all of us because it isolated us. So that was that was creating a lot of depression. And so going back to that same thing with food.
If if you have a problem with gourd as an example, usually it's the the she is going the wrong way that she should be going down. So how does that work? Well? You slowly? You slowly, why you're talking to people around you. You're not just like just getting all that food in as fast as possible. That's number one, right. Number two is you're enjoying your food right, and you enjoy your food more when you're other people. Number three of the food is in season right, so the cheese is correct
for that, it's processed correctly. All of these things are really important because if people eat the wrong kinds of foods, if they're inflammatory, they too fast, if they're not happy when they eat, that tends to create more issues that can lead to things like ocurd over time. But of course, you know, we diagnose every person in their own individual way.
Fantastic, Hey, John, thank you for the details on the acupuncture. You really enlivened me into understanding what it's all about. Give us some give us some details on the Cocoa Wellness Center.
What you guys are all about. You're there in.
Berkeley on Shattick, and of course you're seeing new patients all the time. But talk a little bit about your process.
Well, give you a little tour of the space. We have a space where we have events. Twice a month. We've been doing soundbathing with ear acupuncture. It's been incredible. So, for instance, people who go to soundbasts a lot have told us that they've gotten way deeper with the ear acupuncture. Also right and yoga, nidra and other things. One reason is that the vegas nerve. We all know about the vegas nerve, right, which is one of the twelve cranial
nerves and regulates the autonomic nervous system. And that one the only enervation, the only place that comes out of the body is through the inner ear. So you can stimulate the vegas nerve by pressing or needling the inner ear. Is that incredible.
So if you'll just put your finger in your ear and push.
If you massage, yeah, if you massage that area, it actually relaxes you. And I showed you. I showed you the ear the ear chart, right, yeah, yeah, it's huge. So whenever you massage this, your massage in your whole body. Okay, that's amazing. Just massage in your ear, pulling on your ear lobes. That wakes you up. Okay. And so it's really important that we do these things all the time.
We take care of ourselves. Okay. So yeah, at the at the clinic, we have fun, We listen to music, we spend vinyl, we drink tea, you know, and part of that is again creating community and communal ritual as well as doing all the work through other ways, not just the acupuncture, but yes, we do. We do herbs, we make raw herbs, formulas, we do uh tees, all kinds of teas including yeah you're master. Yeah, and and
you can get bodywork as well. So if you want to check us out, you could check out our website and we'll also have some of these charts up there, so you can see that under our resources page.
So Coco ko Kko wellness dot com. Right, that's right, Yeah, got it, perfect, John, A real pleasure, my friend, and I learned something I learned a lot today talking to you I'm glad that I kind of uh let you. I give you a heads up and said I was going to be pushing you, uh for the uh Meridians today, and I think I pushed and you responded very well. So I appreciate everything you You uh divulged all the secrets of ancient.
Well, I could say that the best way to understand the stuff is to go experience it. So just find a licensed acupuncture close to you and get a treatment, you know, and ask some questions. Yeah, great, hey man, appreciate it all right, thank you so much, Thanks Cliff.
I think I'm attracted to acupuncture because it's energy medicine. And I'm I mean, I mentioned that I became a reiki teacher, oh god, decades ago. I don't really do much of it anymore except for my friends and loved ones and myself. But I'm sensitive to energy and I react very well. And I think all of us have the same sensitivities. It's just that we get caught up in the Wi Fi internet bombardment of frequencies that is the TV, that's our computers and so forth, and so
we become numb. We become numbed to subtle energy, and I have always been of the sense that when you get when I get a acupuncture treatment, the effect comes to me later in the day, and when I get home, I usually sit on the couch or something and I'll pass out because it's just it's going to work. It's altering my energy system. And a lot of you might be going, well, this is bunk, but it's not. It really is important, and the effects are subtle, but they're profound,
especially if you're dealing with various illnesses. If you have a stomach problem, if you are have chronic science issues. It has effects on a variety of conditions. In fact, there is a clinic in the Bay Area where I live that helps women get pregnant as an acupuncture clinic. So if you go to look up acupuncture and find a condition that you're interested in, maybe perhaps you're dealing with a certain condition, see what the benefits are, and
use it as a complimentary medicine. A lot of people are like, well, I like my doctor, and I think he's a great or she's a great person. Well, the thing is they may be great people, but it's the education you need to be aware of. What is their education? Do they only know how to drug you, do they have anything else to suggest. Some physicians that are not associated with medical programs or clinics have more freedom to express self awareness and alternatives. They're more interested in suggesting
complimentary medicine like acupuncture, like chiropractic, like massage. If I didn't get a massage once a month, I'd be in serious trouble. I wish I could afford going once a week, but that'd be a little too much. But these complimentary medicines are made to kickstart the immune system, help you detox, and help you enjoy your physical body to a greater degree. So I hope you enjoyed John. I think he's a real great No only he's a good teacher, he's a
good practitioner. If you're enjoying Earth Ancient's Destiny and Earth Ancient Special Edition, please consider becoming a subscriber to Patreon for as little as five dollars a month. You can support the work we do here on this program, and
we have a ton of guests for your patronage. If you go to patreon dot com forward slash Earth Ancients and you register, we have a complete library that you can download as our thank you five, ten, fifteen, even twenty dollars a month makes a huge difference to our overhead. To become a subscriber, go to Patreon dot com, Forward Slash Earth Ancients. All right, that's it for this program. I want to think my guest today, John Coco, coming to us from Berkeley, California. As always, the team of
guiltour Mark, Foster and Favor. You guys rock. All right, have a happy Thanksgiving, take care, be well, and we will talk to you next time.
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