Chinese Medicine vs Western Medicine: Systems Thinking, Pattern Diagnosis, and Herbal Formulas

Michael Max [00:00:01] Let's say you're hungry, right? You, you have an emptiness in your belly. So what do you do? Right? You eat and you eat, and you eat and you eat at a certain point. The problem is not that your belly is empty, the problem is that your belly is full. So I think it's like this with solutions as well. We find a good solution. It helps us in that moment, but it holds the seeds of the next, I'm gonna say, opportunity to learn something about life in ourselves. I'm Chris Haworth, a grain originator and accountant living in Pocahontas, Iowa, and you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:39] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we sit down with acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner, Michael Max. If you had known me a few years ago, you probably would've guessed that during this interview, I would've been going hard in the paint on Michael. Like, why would you do Chinese medicine? Why not just do regular medicine? What is the purpose of doing acupuncture? When we have all this scientific research that says it does nothing? But I have to say, and you'll hear me describe in the interview, that over time I've opened my mind to a lot of things. Things that I thought were certain in the way that data worked, or how medicine was, or just the value of it being scientifically based. I'm more open to understanding the world from different vantage points, not least of which, because of how much I've seen it impact my own life. Now, I've never done acupuncture, and I don't currently attend to Chinese medicine. But by having Michael in here, we have a really interesting conversation about what is it? Why do people do it? What's going on with the mainstream medical system that people want to try these alternative systems? We're gonna get to the interview with Michael in just a moment, but first, the holidays are coming up and it feels weird to be doing a conversation about Christmas. But if you would like to be able to have your loved ones interviewed, telling about their life stories, about the things that went on in their lives, then we need to get that scheduled. And if you want, be able to watch it with them at the Christmas holiday season.

Vance Crowe [00:02:13] We have spent the fall doing some amazing interviews, including going to a farmhouse and waiting for people to hop off the combine during harvest and record their Legacy Interviews. So we could do an entire family tree. If you're interested in having me sit down with your loved ones, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. Alright, without further ado, let's head to the interview with Michael Max. Michael Max, welcome to the podcast.

Michael Max [00:02:41] Thank you, Vance.

Vance Crowe [00:02:43] Why is it called Chinese Medicine and not just medicine?

Michael Max [00:02:47] Ooh, that's a great question. There are people who would say that there is just medicine, whatever medicine, whether it's a witch doctor in Africa, or surgeon in the United States, or someone doing herbal medicine in Yan China. Medicine's just medicine. Medicine is a way of helping people through the problems that they have. There are all kinds of different flavors, all kinds of different traditions, methods, techniques. So it really may be, there is just one medicine, but it comes from different places. It has different roots, different ways of looking at the body, different ways of looking at the mind, the spirit. So Chinese medicine, call it that, because the medicine that I practice, which is acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, that's where it came from. That's, that's where it's rooted in. It's all over the world at this point.

Vance Crowe [00:03:43] When people say herbal medicine, you kind of think like watered down medicine. It's not like the molecule I'm getting in my, you know, Celebrex or my, you know, statin or whatever that is.

Michael Max [00:03:54] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:03:54] Is that right? Is it watered down medicine?

Michael Max [00:03:57] If you've tasted it, you'll know it's not watered down.

Vance Crowe [00:04:01] Okay, tell me more.

Michael Max [00:04:03] It it is pot. Okay. So a couple things. Number one, it tastes awful. So Chinese herbal medicine, it's not one herb, like here in the west, oh, I can't sleep. So maybe someone take, drink some camile tea or in the morning to get going. They'll have some coffee, right? Using one thing to get, to get a certain effect. Chinese medicine is more like a, a string quartet or a small orchestra where different herbs are combined together because you're looking to do something synergistically when people are sick or, or something's not working well. It's not just one thing. There's usually some kind of systemic process going on. And so Chinese herbal medicine attempts to address the various things that hold an illness into place. And so you use different kinds of herbs altogether. There is a, a thing that they say in, in China these days that western medicine is fast and Chinese medicine is slow. I think this refers back to your, your piece about is it, is it actually watered down medicine at this point? A lot of times Chinese medicine is used for chronic issues, and chronic issues aren't going to change quickly. Right? If they could have changed quickly, they already would have. By the time someone ends up in the office of an herbalist or an acupuncturist, something's, you know, it's really in place.

Michael Max [00:05:37] So it takes time to unwind it and change it. So plenty of people use Chinese herbal medicine for these chronic issues. That being said, it's very good for colds and flus and things like that. It's very good for digestive upset, food poisoning. So it can work extremely quickly as well in the right hands applied at the right time.

Vance Crowe [00:06:02] Tell me more. What does, what does that mean? That they need to be applied at the right time?

Michael Max [00:06:06] Well, if you're getting sick, the time to take the medicine is as you're getting sick. Not when you're laying in bed with a big fever and body aches and you can't move 'cause you're so exhausted. You wanna take that medicine two days before that point and then rest.

Vance Crowe [00:06:27] So when you're describing herbal medicine as a string quartet, mm. How does, how does, you know, I, I think of a regular western doctor. They think, Hey, we've got these blood readings, they're out of order. We're gonna give you a statin to try and bring that, that down. Or we're gonna try and bring this number up. Is that the way that your string quartet works?

Michael Max [00:06:50] No. No. So let's go with the blood readings of high cholesterol. Since you bring it up. You need to look at how and why is the cholesterol high, right? Different people have different constitutions. So you can see this walking down the street. Some people will be kind of skinny. If you actually check their skin out, it's probably kind of dry. There's other people more corpulent. They often have more moist skin, although sometimes there'll be people who carry quite a bit of weight. They also have dry skin. These are different kinds of people. Their bodies work in different kinds of ways. So the people that are very corpulent, they've got more fluid in their system. They often have a fluid issue. We see this in western medicine, especially with high blood pressure, where they'll give people diuretics to get the fluid out of their system. I'll look at a situation like that and think, okay, how can I help their body metabolize fluids better so that, so that their blood pressure will go down or maybe their cholesterol will change because there's a better balance of all the various viscera in the body.

Vance Crowe [00:08:02] And what do you have at your disposal to make that happen?

Michael Max [00:08:05] I use these granulated Chinese herbs. They come from Taiwan. They're herbal, they're single herbs. And then there's also herbal formulas that have been cooked down into almost like an instant coffee kind of thing. You just put in some water stirred up and mix it. Much easier to take than the traditional method where you send somebody home with a bag of some bark and some twigs and some leaves and you know, maybe some roots, a couple of flowers, right? That these things are, and then you have to cook it up for like two hours into kind of a thick soup.

Vance Crowe [00:08:45] Yeah. I think when you're describing this, like a, a Westerner thinks of this and they think, which doctor or, you know, flimflam, right? It doesn't, it doesn't seem like this should work in our, in our way of understanding the

Michael Max [00:08:58] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:08:58] The body.

Michael Max [00:09:01] As Westerners, we should be skeptical. We should absolutely be skeptical. I mean, we didn't grow up with this. It's not part of our culture. It's not been part of our medical system. It's completely foreign to us as westerners. So it should seem weird. And I think people are rightly skeptical. I'm, I'm worried when people aren't, now you go over to Asia, where when you're a little kid, if you've got a, a stomach ache or you've got food poisoning, right? Your mom or your grandma or your aunt is gonna, they may not know medicine like a doctor would, but there's like a folk aspect to it. So they'll be like, okay, I'm making you a soup and I'm gonna put these things in it. 'cause that's going to help. And, and you grow up with it. Like, we grow up with chicken soup here. They grow up over there with their own version, except it's got some herbs in it.

Vance Crowe [00:09:57] So, talk about these herbs. What, what are they, do you, you have like a wall of all these granulated herbs at your store? I

Michael Max [00:10:05] Do, yeah, I do. The clinic that I used to have in Seattle, I had jars of the herbs. 'cause I would, I, I just use the raw herbs that's a little bit heavier of a lift here in the St. Louis area. I found in, in the time that I was in Taiwan, that the herbal, the, the granulated herbs are strong enough. They're potent enough to get the results that I'm looking for, and they're easy to take. Why

Vance Crowe [00:10:34] Have herbs and things not been turned into just regular medicine? Why, why isn't Pfizer and Bayer and all of these companies just turning these herbal medicines into things you could pop?

Michael Max [00:10:45] It's a great question. I think they're attempting it. The thing is, with pharmaceutical medicine, you're usually looking for a molecule or you're looking for one thing that's going to make a specific change and some specific biochemical.

Vance Crowe [00:11:03] In order to be able to even get it through the fda, A of course you have to know exactly what that molecule is and Yeah.

Michael Max [00:11:08] And how

Vance Crowe [00:11:09] It works. You have to think, you know how it works.

Michael Max [00:11:10] That's right.

Vance Crowe [00:11:10] Yeah. Okay.

Michael Max [00:11:12] We are dealing with so many different constituents inside of a Chinese medicine formula. Good luck figuring out which one it is. My suspicion is it's not just one thing. It's a number of things that are working, again, in consort together. I don't think we have the capacity to figure that out. I mean, maybe AI will help us somewhere down the road, but that, that's a tough one to figure out. Yeah, I

Vance Crowe [00:11:39] Mean, I think that in the West we definitely have this illusion of figuring things out. I mean, I can remember it's not that long ago where people would say, calorie is a calorie is a calorie, right? And, and like nutritionists and I've been to nutrition conferences and

Michael Max [00:11:54] They

Vance Crowe [00:11:54] Basically lay it out like, we understand everything. It's proteins, carbs, and fats, and we can break it down this way. But if that were true, then we could hand somebody like, here, eat this and you will be fit and healthy and, and it'll all work. But it doesn't, it breaks down. And I think that oftentimes looking at nutrition as like a one-to-one or highly rationalist model is the same thing as trying to understand the economy and being like, ah, I know this causes this. It is one thing. And this is exactly right.

Michael Max [00:12:25] Complex, interactive systems. I don't think we'll ever completely understand them. It's like, it's like weather systems or economic systems, like you just mentioned, economic systems. These, these are very complex multi inputs. I think our human mind likes to try to simplify and understand things and, and where we can, we like to, and sometimes a simple idea contains a complexity behind it. Like a, like a fable or a what? I'm trying to think. Remember what we say in English? I can remember it in Chinese. I can't remember in English all of a sudden. But like a, like a little phrase that means something. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:13:05] An idiom or something.

Michael Max [00:13:06] An idiom. Thank you. It could be a few words, but like the idea behind that few words is profound, but all you need is those few words. So I think we often like to simplify 'cause we think we understand it. Or maybe it, it seems more graspable. Let's go back to the thing about nutrition. A calories is a calories is a calorie. Yes. And the way fat is metabolized is different than how a carbohydrate is metabolized is different than how a protein is metabolized. And let's talk about the digestive system of the person doing the, the metabolizing. So it, it's not just the calorie, it's what kind and then what's happening within the person.

Vance Crowe [00:13:51] And even as something as simple as what order, you know, I started looking into blood sugar, right? Yeah. And diabetics have figured out

Michael Max [00:13:57] Fascinating, isn't it?

Vance Crowe [00:13:58] I take a little bit of vinegar and I can eat a carbohydrate and my blood sugar doesn't spike as much and therefore I can do, I'm eating the exact same foods, but I can control my blood sugar. So there that therein lies the why The calories a calories a calorie is misleading. I mean certainly maybe that's what it takes to move whatever it is. One gallon of water, one degree centigrade or whatever that calor equals. Yeah. But in the body, once you start having the complex system, it's so funny because there was such a long period of my life where I was so certain we were just on the edge of knowing basically everything. And then the older you get, the more you're like, I don't, I have no idea. Do you, do you have some good ideas on how to fix this problem? 'cause I don't know how to fix this problem.

Michael Max [00:14:43] You know? I think there is something about aging and recognizing that this is more complex than I imagined.

Vance Crowe [00:14:52] Yeah, I think when you're young, you need things to be simple because it's the only way you can grasp onto this entirely complex world. And so you overly simplify things, but as you get older, you're like, it doesn't, it only helped me for a little while to a certain point, to oversimplify things.

Michael Max [00:15:09] It kind of runs you into problems. I mean, have you noticed this? That whatever solution, no. Let me, let me, let me go a different step. Whatever problem you're facing today, the problem you're facing is probably something that was previously a solution at another point in your life.

Vance Crowe [00:15:28] Oh,

Michael Max [00:15:29] It was a good solution.

Vance Crowe [00:15:30] It was

Michael Max [00:15:31] A workable solution. It got you from here to there and down the road. But it seems to me that almost any solution over time

Vance Crowe [00:15:42] Can become the problem becomes

Michael Max [00:15:43] The problem. This, I mean, this gets into Chinese philosophy. The whole idea of yin and yang. You've heard of this, certainly.

Vance Crowe [00:15:49] Tell me everything go on.

Michael Max [00:15:50] Well, oh God, I, everything yin and yang is this very basic concept that there is a duality that we live within it. Things are dark or things are light, things are hot, or things are cold, things

Vance Crowe [00:16:02] Are ordered, or they're chaotic.

Michael Max [00:16:03] They could be ordered or chaotic. They could be wet or they could be dry. I mean, you look anywhere in life and you're gonna run into the duality. There's y yin and yang. There's this idea with yin and yang that as you add more yin to something, it eventually will become yang. Which, you know, it's, it's kind of like an, when I was first studying Chinese medicine, you know, you look at that taiji, that yin yang symbol, and, and you can see that, that there's these two like fish swimming together. But when you put motion to it, the idea is it's not just an idea. Lemme give you a very simple example. Let's say you're hungry, right? You, you have an emptiness in your belly. So what do you do? Especially if it's thanksgiving, right? You eat and you eat and you eat and you eat at a certain problem. At a certain point. The problem is not that your belly is empty, the problem is that your belly is full. Now you need to relax and digest and let your belly empty. So I think it's like this with solutions as well. We find a good solution. It helps us in that moment. But it holds the seeds of the next, I'm gonna say, opportunity to learn something about life and ourselves.

Vance Crowe [00:17:29] Yeah, that's probably correct. The opportunity part of that. Yeah, because it's that, that's exactly right about the, when you think you have everything figured out. I remember before I had kids, I was like, oh, I've figured out the exact diet that works, right? I can eat this much protein, I can eat it in this regimen. But if I tried to keep that system going

Michael Max [00:17:46] While

Vance Crowe [00:17:47] Raising children, first of all, they, there's no chance they would eat that at that way. No. And like it just wasn't gonna work. So you had to come up with a new problem. Whereas a couple of years ago I was like, solve the problem. It's over. Yeah. I've got it for the rest of my life. Yeah.

Michael Max [00:18:00] All solutions are temporary

Vance Crowe [00:18:03] And that hurts, right?

Michael Max [00:18:05] Well, it can,

Vance Crowe [00:18:06] It hurts. You want, you wanna find solutions that work for good.

Michael Max [00:18:12] For sure. I mean, there is that tendency. Absolutely. It helps when you realize that they're all temporary. It's good. It's got a shelf life. It'll be good for a while.

Vance Crowe [00:18:24] Yeah. And change is the only thing that, that we know for certain is always gonna be there.

Michael Max [00:18:28] Pretty much.

Vance Crowe [00:18:29] But it's crazy because I was actually just thinking about this this morning. Change takes so long in natural systems that it seems almost like it's not happening, right? You look out on the trees and you're like, Hey, it's, it's the end of September. Shouldn't these leaves all be changed? This should all be different colors. It's not happening. And then you're gonna wake up one day and you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, all the leaves have changed. They're all but it, it happens slowly and then all of a sudden

Michael Max [00:18:58] It's hard to notice things moving slowly. And yeah, by and large nature is, well, let me just shift this for a moment. Had a patient the other day, her phone wasn't working, something was going on. She's like, ah, this phone, it never works. And it's like, actually no, that's not true. That phone works 99.999% of the time. The only time you notice it not working is when it isn't. 'cause it's always working. So yeah, our solutions are working, nature's working. Whatever is going along well. It's very difficult to notice. This is probably why a gratitude practice of some sort can be useful. So that you, you can notice the absolute miracle of what's actually going. Well, let me ask you a question. What does perfect health feel like?

Vance Crowe [00:19:54] Ooh, you certainly would have energy. You would, you would be rested and you would be lacking pain. And probably those two things lacking pain and, okay,

Michael Max [00:20:15] So there, there's some aspects. Perfect. Health feels like nothing at all.

Vance Crowe [00:20:21] Okay?

Michael Max [00:20:22] You need to move and do something. You move and do it. It's time to sleep. Your body knows how to go into rest. It's time to get up. Your body knows how to, how to wake itself up and be alert. Perfect health feels like nothing. You just live your life. The only time people have a health issue is when they notice something is happening. My knees hurt, my head hurts. Menstrual cycle is off. I mean, whatever it is, digestion's not good. It's only when we notice something that the health isn't in optimal shape.

Vance Crowe [00:20:54] So as a practitioner of Chinese medicine, how is your health?

Michael Max [00:20:59] Well, I'm 66 years old, so I've got some wear and tear on the system, right? There's issues, some of which are age related. There are some issues because of how I eat and I like to eat that way. Could I change and make it different? I probably could, but you know, I get a certain enjoyment from living the life the way that I do. So occasional heartburn, I can live with it. 'cause that chicken parmesan was really good,

Vance Crowe [00:21:26] Right? I mean,

Michael Max [00:21:27] There's all kinds of trade offs.

Vance Crowe [00:21:29] Yeah. So you also practice acupuncture? I do. Which brings in concepts like meridians and, and energy flow. What is the step one to have a skeptical westerner approach? Acupuncture.

Michael Max [00:21:46] Mm, step one. Well, if it's something that you would like to use or attempt to use for some kind of health issue that you have, I would say take that, that skepticism along with an open mind and find a practitioner that ideally somebody recommends to you or, I don't know, it's the internet age. Maybe you find a, a website. You like how they present themselves, right? There's that too. There's a lot of ways to find a healthcare. However you find a healthcare practitioner for your teeth or your hands or whatever, you know, do the same thing for an acupuncturist. Take your skepticism with you. Don't, don't go in believing that this is gonna help me go in with, I wonder how this might be helpful to me. And then see what the acupuncturist has to say. Some things can be treated pretty well quickly. Some things take time. Sometimes things resolve extremely fast. But it's rare. But often enough that you'll hear stories. People tell stories of, oh, I went to this acupuncturist and I stopped smoking immediately. Or I went to this acupuncturist and I was, you know, pregnant on the next cycle or something like that. And sometimes the results are really fast, but usually it's going to take some time because what, whatever issue that you've gotten yourself into, it's taken time to get there.

Michael Max [00:23:27] It's probably gonna take some time to get to get out of it. So the idea of, I'm gonna do this once and see what it does, probably not enough. You want to give it like three to five treatments.

Vance Crowe [00:23:41] So what's going on when you're putting needles into somebody? What, what is the practitioner trying to do?

Michael Max [00:23:49] That is, this is a $65,000 question, isn't it? I hope this is not gonna sound like a cop out. You press me if it sounds like one.

Vance Crowe [00:24:13] Okay.

Michael Max [00:24:13] Okay. It's hard to explain from a western point of view because acupuncture is a part of Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine's a part of Chinese philosophy and a, and a whole other way of looking at the world that doesn't quite seem, see the same divisions between mind and body as, as we do in the western world. So it's hard to explain from a western biochemical physiological neurological point of view. We can talk about traces of what acupuncture does. You can see how things work on an MRI. Or you can see what is it, electrical changes on the surface of the skin. I mean, there's different things that you can measure with western technology to see what acupuncture is doing. I'm gonna say those are traces, those are signals of what acupuncture is doing. There's a phrase in Chinese medicine about acupuncture. Mostly what it does is it moves and it transforms the Qi Q, which is basically impossible to translate into English. People call it energy. That's like saying water's wet. It, it's, it's not, it's not a great translation. My sense of this is that it helps the body fall into, I'm gonna say a greater sense of coherence with itself.

Michael Max [00:25:56] It helps people to reach a place of quietude where things shift. I'm not explaining it very well. I've been at this for 25 years. This is the hardest question.

Vance Crowe [00:26:14] Well, so maybe as you're standing over somebody that has an issue, pick, pick whatever issue that you think acupuncture does well. What is it that you are focused on? Where, what are you trying to do with those needles? And what are you, what is the, what is the way in which you're trying to bring that mind and body back in concert with itself?

Michael Max [00:26:37] Okay, that's helpful. That's a helpful question. So these meridians and, and people have seen the charts with the lines and the, and the points. You've probably seen 'em too. Oh yeah, yeah. It's part of the popular culture at this point. Those meridians are attached to organs. The organs in Chinese medicine have roughly the function that you would see in western medicine, but they also have more function than that. So my job as an acupuncturist is to take whatever things someone has going on and try to understand it through how the organs with their different functions are interacting with each other. Where they're working together in harmony. Where they might be in some kind of conflict where one might be strong and the other one might be weak and, and therefore things aren't working in the right homeostatic way. So I'm looking for where there's literally strength and weakness where things are flowing well and where things are blocked based on the organs, based on the meridians. And then choosing points on those meridians that will have an influence to make a change and bring the body into a greater state of balance and coherence. When things are working well together, they just work. Lemme give you an example. We have a storm come through. It knocks out power. What's happening with the power grid?

Michael Max [00:28:10] Well, wherever you are, you don't have it now what? Well, we don't have air conditioning. God, I hope it comes on in the next few hours. We're gonna lose all the food in our refrigerator. Similar thing with acupuncture. If there is electricity, literally electricity knocked out somewhere, my job is to reestablish that flow and then things take care of themselves. Again, we're looking at an integrated complex system. So if, if there's one part of this system where there's a particular blockage and you take that away, everything else just works. It is like truing the wheel on a bicycle. If the wheel's a little bit off catone, catone, catone cat. But if you tru that wheel so that it spins on its center properly, you can just drive your bicycle. Is that helpful?

Vance Crowe [00:29:11] Yes. As you're learning this, how does one begin to get a sense for where those meridians are and if you are allowing that, that connection to occur?

Michael Max [00:29:26] Well, some of it is, is very didactic. And you get it outta books and you read about the pathways of where they start and where they go and where they end in the different points, the influence of the different points. There's all that. I mean, you've gotta learn, you gotta learn the map, so to speak. And then, you know, the ancient Chinese, they didn't have MRIs and blood pressure machines and you know, all the fantastic tools that we have. I mean, our modern medical system is, especially with its diagnostics, is nothing short of miraculous. You put someone in MRI and see what their liver is doing, right, or what their lungs look like, or if they have adhesions or lesions on their, you know, nerves or something. Chinese didn't have that. So they would look at external representations of the body and use that as diagnostics. And so there's a couple things in particular that we would look at. And one is like the skin, the color of the skin, the luster of the skin. Some people have like a red cast to their face. Some people have a green cast to their face. Those mean different things. The tongue, and, and this is fascinating, the tongue changes dramatically and is, is a reflection of a person's internal environment. So a normal tongue is pink, has a thin white coating that basically means unremarkable, like nothing to see here, move along.

Michael Max [00:31:03] But some people have purple tongues and some people have red tongues and some people have red tongues with more red at the tip in like little, little pale standing up. And they're also red. And some people have no coating on their tongue. Some people have thick yellow coatings on their tongue. And all of those are a kind of indication of how the internal environment is out of balance. We match that up with the pulse. And I know this is gonna sound wacky.

Vance Crowe [00:31:37] I'm with you so far, you don't have to worry

Michael Max [00:31:38] About this. I'm thinking of our listeners out here.

Vance Crowe [00:31:41] Well, they're all sitting there wondering, what color is my tongue? And should I go look in the mirror? And if they're driving down the road, they're probably looking in their rear view while, yeah,

Michael Max [00:31:48] Don't do it while you're driving, but do look at it when you get home. And then maybe look at your spouse's tongue or look at your child's tongue or look at, at the tongue of a friend and, and just look for the differences. I'm not gonna go into what they all mean right now 'cause that's, that's beyond the, the scope of what we're doing here. But look, and you will start noticing differences. I, I think that's the key point. You ask how I learn it. You look and you start to notice differences. So you can notice differences in the tongue, differences in the skin, differences in the pulse. And I'm not talking about number of beats, I'm not talking about quantity. I'm talking about quality. Is it fast or slow in relation to their breath? Is it thin? Like it just wants to disappear, you can barely find it. Or does it feel like a piano string under your fingers? There's all these different ways that once you put your hand on a person's radial pulse, you'll start to notice things. And these given acupuncturist a clue as to where there's a blockage, where there's too much of something, maybe too much fluid in the body or where there's not enough of something. And then you start looking at the relationships, oh, this organ helps that organ and this organ's weak so that organ's weak also strengthen this weak organ over here by helping out the one that nourishes that organ. So there's a whole set of relationships and, and you begin to tune your senses and your palpation and your eyes to those kinds of things.

Vance Crowe [00:33:30] I'm very drawn to this idea of noticing things and patterns, right? And I, and I think like that's something that gets stripped out when you're like, all right, we're just gonna look at this one value, or we're gonna look at this blood panel and we're gonna look at it from this snapshot.

Michael Max [00:33:48] Because

Vance Crowe [00:33:50] I mean, everything is interconnected and you can take that to like some absurdist degree, but particularly with your health, being able to observe, you know, I've seen it, my wife is a physical therapist and she practices a very specific kind called movement systems integration. And you begin to realize like, oh, that ankle pain is connected with your, the way you're sitting during the day or the way that your, your glutes are working or you know, something that you might think has nothing at all to do with how, how are your, your toes splayed inside of your shoes Yes. Is impacting yes,

Michael Max [00:34:22] Your

Vance Crowe [00:34:22] Ankle. But we, we don't practice this in, in the western world. We're very much more one-to-one. Let's find the one mode of action and the idea of having a practitioner look at you, you know, just, just the very act of having somebody look at you is different than most of our medical system.

Michael Max [00:34:43] So I would say that those diagnostic exams are kind of a way of looking. It's one way of looking. And you're right, it's a snapshot. Snapshots can be very, very helpful. But there's also a movie, the work that your wife does that's more like a movie, the work your wife does. I mean, to me, that that totally rhymes with what I do. People come in, they got sciatica, their hip hurts, and the pain goes down the back of their leg. Not the side of their leg, but the back of their leg as an acupuncturist. And maybe for your wife too, that might mean something. Hmm. Sciatica going down the side means one thing, sciatica going down the back, that means something else. And yeah, the way you treat the hip might be by getting the ankle to work better. And then the platform is more stable and you're not torquing certain muscles, tightening up certain tendons. And so the glutes can relax. It's a very Chinese, it's very not Chinese medicine. It's very acupuncture. Well, Chinese acupuncture is Chinese medicine. It's a very Chinese medicine, acupuncture idea.

Vance Crowe [00:35:52] You mentioned that herbal medicine, acupuncture are integrated with Chinese philosophy. Tell me more about this, this integration and the philosophy you're learning along the way.

Michael Max [00:36:03] I'm, you know, I can recommend some guests for you that could talk about that more. I, I know in a very cursory way that it's, that it's integrated. But look, there are people that study Chinese philosophy and Taoism and, and things of that nature, and they could speak more to it. I'm more of like a practical applications guy. So I, I know that the philosophy is a piece of it, but I'm no expert on the philosophy.

Vance Crowe [00:36:32] One of the things that rocked my world in the last I probably a year, about a year ago was my wife. She is always testing the, the limits of like, what does she know and kinda what was she taught. So, so she pushes into areas that I'm, I will roll my eyes about. And, but she's like, well, you know, my patients are using it with another practitioner. Why wouldn't I learn about how this works? Right? And the one that rocked my world was cupping. Yes. This was one where I was like, this, I, I've heard from everybody. I know when Michael Phelps was doing it, they were like mocking him about it. And then I watched a video with her about like a different way of looking at the, the way your body works. And it was basically describing that it's pulling your, the different layers of tissue apart from one another and allowing them to glide more cleanly. So my wife ends up taking a class, we end up doing cupping. She does something on my back. It was unbelievable. It, I I was shocking.

Michael Max [00:37:33] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:37:33] How much it solved my back problem. And then we did it so much I started to feel like I was getting car sick. And that's because the toxins be,

Michael Max [00:37:41] Well you can also overtreat people. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:37:44] So,

Michael Max [00:37:44] So here's something to consider, sitter. I mean, I think one of the most profound books that we read to our children is Goldilocks in The Three Bears. I really do. Because when it comes to treatment, and it sounds like what might have happened for you, I mean, we will talk about toxins in a second, but what can happen when people get too much treatment? It's more of a dose than their body can handle in that moment. And then it's not helpful. Right. Remember we talked about yin turning into y So like, too much of a good thing is not a good thing.

Vance Crowe [00:38:24] Well that was exactly, it's too much. Because I was like, now let's do my legs, now let's do my arm now. And then, and then you start to be like, whoa, this is too much. Yeah. Now I still love it, but I do it as a dose as opposed to a let, let's, it's not, it's not massage therapy where you're like, oh, let's do an hour of it. It's like a much smaller dose.

Michael Max [00:38:42] Yeah. Dosing is important as a friend of mine likes to say more is not gooder.

Vance Crowe [00:38:47] Yeah.

Michael Max [00:38:48] Right. The cupping is really cool because it, it does, it, it restructures the tissues a bit and it's doing it under the influence of a vacuum. Right. So you can do a lot of good work by pushing into tissue and moving things around. Right. That's what massage basically does. Car, I dunno actually, I don't, chiropractors work a lot with bones, but I think they work with muscle as well. You can do a lot by pushing. But when you allow the tissues to float and you create more space between the cells, something really interesting happens. Especially in areas of stagnation. You probably had some marks show up on your back where she did it, right?

Vance Crowe [00:39:33] Yeah.

Michael Max [00:39:34] Okay. So what, and some people call it a bruise, but it doesn't heal like a bruise. It's actually not a bruise. It's, it's pulling stagnant blood out of the tissue because the vacuum helps all the, all the cells, all the fibers in your muscles, they expand a little bit and so it brings new blood and fluid into that area. And then it pulls out any old stagnant blood and fluid. And that's what you're seeing come up to the surface where the body then metabolizes it away. There's something very pleasant about having your tissue expanded. It's, it's a kind of weightlessness, you know, you can push on a knot in your back where you can just kind of dissolve it by taking away the gravity. Yeah. It's really, it, it's an incredible thing. And again, i I I wanna point out, dosage is important. Same thing with acupuncture. We see images all the time on the internet of people having all these needles in them. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:40:39] Look like a porcupine.

Michael Max [00:40:40] It's not the way it works. You put too many needles in people and, and you overtreat them, they get tired, they don't feel good. Their symptoms might get worse because you've actually taken something away from them rather than give them something. So dosage is important. The right needles in the right place and then no more. This is why the pulse is useful, right. If the pulse feels good to you and then you put in two more needles and the pulse kind of fades away, you wanna pull those other needles out.

Vance Crowe [00:41:12] So tell me about your training. How did you get into this world?

Michael Max [00:41:16] Chinese medicine? Bad luck.

Vance Crowe [00:41:19] Bad luck. Bad

Michael Max [00:41:20] Luck. Yeah. I had some health problems

Vance Crowe [00:41:23] Oh, okay.

Michael Max [00:41:23] That I'd had as a, since being a kid and western medicine didn't help me. I tried all kinds of other alternative medicines. Nothing ever really helped.

Vance Crowe [00:41:34] Can I ask what the ailments were?

Michael Max [00:41:37] Chronic dry cough.

Vance Crowe [00:41:39] Okay.

Michael Max [00:41:42] Yeah. And very easy getting colds and then hard to get over them.

Vance Crowe [00:41:48] And So you went looking for solution?

Michael Max [00:41:50] I did not. You didn't? A friend of mine badgered me to go get acupuncture. How old were you? I was in my, either late twenties or early thirties.

Vance Crowe [00:42:01] Oh, okay. Yeah.

Michael Max [00:42:03] So

Vance Crowe [00:42:03] You'd been living life for a while. I, I,

Michael Max [00:42:05] Yeah, I've been living life. I figured this is just how my body works. Anyway, he recommended it. And in the first treatment that didn't change, but what I found was I was sleeping better and I found that my digestion hadn't been working as well as I thought it had. 'cause all of a sudden my digestion is working great. I hadn't noticed it wasn't working well. I became less irritable. It was weird. It was very strange. Eventually, my lungs also have changed and I just started using acupuncture as my own healthcare. 'cause it made a difference. And it, and it actually feels really good. And then I got curious about it.

Vance Crowe [00:42:54] And how did that curiosity look?

Michael Max [00:42:57] I started reading books. I asked my acupuncturist like, I'm curious, how does this work? And she handed me a book web that has no weaver title of the book. One of the first books written to, you know, in English about Chinese medicine

Vance Crowe [00:43:10] Web that has no weaver,

Michael Max [00:43:12] The web that has no Weaver by Ted Capic.

Vance Crowe [00:43:14] Okay.

Michael Max [00:43:14] Yeah. And I attempted to read it and could not understand anything they were talking about. It was just a foreign language except in English. The concepts were just too weird. But I kind of kept at it. And I don't know, I I, I think I read some other books as well. Again, didn't really understand them, but I was, I was super curious about it. Like, what is going on here? And at one point I realized I wanted a, a different job than the job I'd been doing. I had a nice job in high tech and it was all well and good, but I, I was feeling restless for something different. And this idea of acupuncture kept knocking in the back of my mind. I was not understanding it, but I wanted to. And I knew there was something to it, but I had no idea, you know, what it was, how this stuff worked. And a friend of mine suggested, well, you know, you could go to school and, and see if you could learn more. And if you like it, you could have a new career. And if it turns out that it's not for you, then you've just learned something more that you're interested in so you can't really lose. And I thought that was good advice. I thought that was really good advice.

Vance Crowe [00:44:44] Was it good advice

Michael Max [00:44:45] Here 25 years later, talking to you.

Vance Crowe [00:44:49] So you go to school, how did you choose your school? Were you in particular or were you just like, eh,

Michael Max [00:44:55] I lived in Seattle. I was gonna go to school in Seattle. 'cause I had a, you know, I had a home, a wife, a life. You know, I'm not, I'm not shutting down my life to go learn this. I'm gonna learn this while I'm doing the rest of my life. And there were two schools at that point and a third one that was about to open up. And I went and interviewed at all of them. And I went and got treated at all of them just, just to get a sense of it. And ended up choosing the new school because it, it was very much based on an apprenticeship model. They had you in the clinic from the first day and the other schools would have you in the clinic sometime in your second year.

Vance Crowe [00:45:39] And what was school like? Did you enjoy what you were learning? Was it a, a renaissance period in your life?

Michael Max [00:45:47] I don't know if it was a, I wouldn't say it was a Renaissance period, although I would say it led to some great adventures and wonderful opportunities that, that maybe gave me a a, a renaissance period down the road. In the beginning it was really hard. You're learning a whole different language. And I, I, I can remember one, one moment, this was just a few weeks into it, and some classmates and I are studying herbs. We're learning herbs and acupuncture at the same time, which was unique to this school as well. And, and there was a moment where I was just at my wits end like, you know, I don't know if any of this makes sense and, and I'm having a hard time understanding it. And I was just in a real, a real snit about it, kind of going on a tirade in this, in this classmate of mine pulls out a little post-it note that like the really little ones, right? 'cause we're taking notes on it, on pages. And he just, he writes the words on there, things take time. He just like wrote that in blue ink, right? Pastes it on the book. Right. Calms me down. Like things take time. And I got home and I, and I took that and I posted it on my wall.

Michael Max [00:47:21] And by the time I finished acupuncture school, you could barely see the words that said things take time. 'cause it had faded. But I think it might've been one of the greatest lessons at school. That things take time and you need some patience and you need some iteration and a dose of trust perhaps. Like, my rational mind is, I don't know if I'm ever gonna get this, but there was a part that was, there's something here. I wonder what it is. How does this acupuncture stuff work? And you asked me that question a few minutes ago and I I still don't think I have a great answer for it. I, but I still have that curiosity and I can see how it works and I know how to use it to help people.

Vance Crowe [00:48:11] Yeah. There's a certain amount of humility that you'd have to have to be able to practice in this way where you're like, I know that it works. I've seen that it works. I can see how what I'm doing impacts people. But to not have a grasp on a clear answer for some people would be very difficult.

Michael Max [00:48:36] I would say you can get a grasp on a, on where to start. 'cause it's often a process for sure. There's a way to get a grasp on where to start and to be comfortable and confident in that. But where you start and where you end can be two very different things. And, and so quite often in the course of treatment, I have an idea, oh, I think this is what's going on with them. I think this would be helpful. We talk about giving people a diagnosis. Oh, they got this diagnosis. So we treat it like this. I think of it, I think of medicine more as having a hypothesis. Oh, I think it's this, I'm gonna treat it as such. And then their reaction to what the herbs I gave them that they took or the acupuncture that they experienced their reaction to that will give me the feedback to say, yes, it's down this path. Or maybe it's down this path over here. Or Oh no, that was completely wrong. We need, we need to reconsider this completely.

Vance Crowe [00:49:40] There's something in western medicine where people feel a lot better when they can name what their

Michael Max [00:49:50] Disease

Vance Crowe [00:49:50] Is.

Michael Max [00:49:51] Yeah. So this is the human mind grasping for certainty. And I've, I mean, I see all kinds of weird stuff. 'cause I'm an acupuncturist. No one's coming in my door for something simple.

Vance Crowe [00:50:06] Oh, that's interesting.

Michael Max [00:50:07] Right. Why would they, okay. They, they probably already use western medicine or physical therapy or chiropractor or whatever. It's been handled.

Vance Crowe [00:50:15] So they're coming to you as a, as a last resort or as a, as a i I don't know what else to

Michael Max [00:50:21] Do. I don't know what else to do. And sometimes they have a diagnosis, but sometimes they don't. It's like, I've been through all these tests, I've been to all these doctors. Nobody can find anything wrong. I, but I have this problem. And sometimes through the, you know, lenses and filters we use with Chinese medicine, you know, I can see a way that I might be able to help them. But you're right, people want to know what the diagnosis is. There's a certain wanting to grasp at, there's a deep need for a sense of certainty. And, and I think this is just innate to being a human being. There's a deep need for a sense of certainty. And without it, it's hard for us. This is probably why we see so much anxiety these days. The world's very uncertain and we grasp at, we grasp it that I've had people say, look, I don't, I don't know what my diagnosis is. I don't care if it's cancer. I just wanna know what it is.

Vance Crowe [00:51:23] Isn't that

Michael Max [00:51:24] Weird?

Vance Crowe [00:51:24] It is weird.

Michael Max [00:51:25] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:51:26] I'd even take a wrong answer as long as I believed it over not having an answer.

Michael Max [00:51:31] Yes, that too. So yeah, there's something about that human desire for certainty. I, and of course as practitioners we all, you know, we wanna be helpful to our patients. We want to be certain that what we're doing is going to be useful for them and for sure we do the best we can. I think that's true of any doctor of any tradition. The thing about medicine is sometimes you, sometimes you're right, you're on it, sometimes you're not quite right. So there's a lot of learning to live with uncertainty. Not to say that you're careless 'cause you don't wanna be careless, but like making some room for uncertainty, some possibility it can be helpful.

Vance Crowe [00:52:21] You spent time in Taiwan and also in China. Mm. Studying under actual practitioners that are, that are doing this in their home culture. Tell me about what medicine is like in China and Taiwan.

Michael Max [00:52:39] They're a little bit different in China, it's, it's, it's very much more based in hospitals and that kind of thing. At least when I was there in Taiwan it's, it's somewhat in hospitals, but a lot more independent practitioners. I mean, this is almost 25 years ago now. So I, I don't know the current status of things, but when I was in Taiwan, you had a lot of herbalist or acupuncturists working out of a storefront. There were no appointments. You don't get an appointment to see a practitioner. You go, you take a number, you sit and wait until your number's called and then you see the doctor. And if you go in the morning, you'll, you'll be seen before lunch. And if you go in the afternoon, you'll be seen before dinner. Right. They got so many, so many, so many tickets, you know, for the day. And you go get help that day. There's none of this like, oh, I'm gonna there see the acupuncturist in two weeks. 'cause that's when they can see me. You go and you take a number and you hang out and gossip with the people around you. And it's very social kind of thing.

Vance Crowe [00:53:52] Is it seen as an alternative in the same way that it is here?

Michael Max [00:53:57] It depends on the people. You know, there's a lot of western medicine all over the world. It's, you know, it's everywhere. Probably the primary medicine throughout the world is, is western medicine. Depending on a person's upbringing, depending on, you know, what medicines they've used. For some folks, yeah, they'll go to see the, the Chinese medicine doctor first or for certain issues. They'll see the Chinese medicine doctor. Other issues, they'll see the western doctor. It's, I would say it's more integrated into the society, but it, that doesn't mean that the Chinese and herbal medicine, I'm sorry, Chinese and western medicine are integrated together in Taiwan. They're not so much integrated together, much more so on the mainland. They got a whole thing where they tried to integrate the two. But in Taiwan when I was there, it was more like two separate systems that people could kind of pick and choose a la carte.

Vance Crowe [00:54:55] Yeah. I've heard the Chinese government making declarations that they want to preserve and protect Chinese medicine because it's, it's a part of their heritage. And I think that was shocking to a, to Americans, you know, I was in diplomacy school at the time and, and the general thought was like they're trying to preserve some form of, of like witchcraft or their folk medicine,

Michael Max [00:55:19] Which

Vance Crowe [00:55:20] Seemed I, you know, the, the type of thing a graduate student would roll their eyes about.

Michael Max [00:55:25] Right. Again, if you haven't experienced it, it's easy to look at and think it's witchcraft. Had someone talked to you about cupping back

Vance Crowe [00:55:41] At that point, I would've pulled my eyes. You

Michael Max [00:55:43] Would've the back Yeah. Would've been like, that's ridiculous. That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. But hey, I suspect you've had plenty of experiences in your life where you thought this thing doesn't hold water, that's a dumb idea. And then some years later you're actually doing it.

Vance Crowe [00:55:59] Yeah. There's something truly about the aging that we talked about before where you become far more comfortable being like, I don't know, I don't know how, at least me, I was a much more certain person before and, and but also have a strong degree of skepticism of, of a lot of things. Like I think there's a way that you can balance it as an adult that, and maybe it's kind of that idea that there are things that I no longer feel like I have to have an opinion on.

Michael Max [00:56:28] Mm. Where

Vance Crowe [00:56:28] I'm like, I don't, what

Michael Max [00:56:29] A relief.

Vance Crowe [00:56:30] I don't need to feel strongly about this. I can, I can, you know, if that works for them, great. Whereas when you're younger, there's a definite pull to have an opinion on everything. Or at least there was for me. Well,

Michael Max [00:56:40] I still have plenty of opinions, I can tell you that. But I can also tell you this, that thing about, I don't know, which is damn uncomfortable. Especially when you're younger. I think in practicing acupuncture for the time that I have, I've, I've had the great good fortune to become a bit more comfortable with. I don't know. And I don't know, doesn't mean I don't care. And I don't know, certainly doesn't mean I give up, but I don't know is a fantastic place to begin. 'cause you're, you're like open, what is this? What's here? What am I actually seeing? What am I actually doing? Much like you run these podcasts, right? You bring this, this very delightful sense of inquiry to the conversation and acupuncture very much is a conversation of inquiry.

Vance Crowe [00:57:41] Tell me about that experience of somebody walks in, you know, pick whatever their ailment is. How does that experience go for them

Michael Max [00:57:50] Of not knowing No. Of

Vance Crowe [00:57:52] Of, of visiting you in the club. Oh,

Michael Max [00:57:54] Of visiting me.

Vance Crowe [00:57:54] They in, they, they don't know what's gonna happen.

Michael Max [00:57:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:56] They've got this issue and they're like, I don't know, I I the other ways didn't work.

Michael Max [00:58:01] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:05] You check their pulse and look at their tongue.

Michael Max [00:58:08] Oh, for sure. I do. I work different ways at different times. I used to do all my physical assessment before I even talk to them just to, just to see what their body says. It's like, I don't even read people and I still don't do this. I don't read people fill out that health history form. I never read it before they come in. I'll read it later, but I don't read it when they come in because if I read their health history form, I'm going to start getting some ideas about what, what might be going on with them. And that's gonna close me off to the possibilities of what else might be going on, right. Because now I got my own mind chatter going, you know, I got my own experience, which is helpful. Experience is really helpful, but it can blind you if you're not careful. So sometimes I do, I just do the physical assessment first, but more often these days I just sit down and talk with people for a while. Who are you? What, like what brings you by today? I often start with that question, what brings you by today? I wanna hear what they've got to say beyond main complaint. Like what's going on? And, and we just talk a bit much like we're talking right now. And of course the story is going to weave into the problem that they've got or the concern that they have. I think it's helpful to first look at people and, and, and just listen to them.

Vance Crowe [00:59:46] Yeah. Most people go, I say this all the time, most people go most of their lives having hardly anyone listen to them at all. Maybe, maybe never. And the very act of being heard by somebody that's like there to help you radically changes people. I, I see it every day when I'm doing the, the Legacy Interviews because

Michael Max [01:00:05] Oh, I bet you do. Yes, of course.

Vance Crowe [01:00:06] You know, people are telling their story Yes.

Michael Max [01:00:08] About,

Vance Crowe [01:00:09] About their lives. Yes.

Michael Max [01:00:10] And

Vance Crowe [01:00:11] Normally when you're telling a story, somebody's waiting for their, for you to stop talking so they can answer their own question that they've just asked you. But our questions just keep going and going. And people get a sense of, oh, this person's really listening to what I'm saying. And you watch how much that changes the demeanor. It it's powerful. It's

Michael Max [01:00:31] Powerful. So you and I it sounds like work in quite similar ways.

Vance Crowe [01:00:37] Yeah. I mean, and you had said before we got started, you have a master's degree in psychology and I asked you, you know, what's your orientation? And, and you described it being on family systems, but really what you learned was just to just shut up and let people talk. I I find that exactly accurate.

Michael Max [01:00:53] Yeah. I I did learn that there, I have also found over time, so I mean there's some real scholarly traditions with Chinese medicine and, and very logical ways of thinking about it and using it. There's a whole scholar tradition that goes back hundreds of years and you can work that way. There are people who work that way, that work really well. I don't, my brain doesn't work like that. So, well I, first of all, it's hard to remember a lot of stuff and secondly, theory to me is interesting to a point. But beyond that, I just, I completely lose interest. Other people can just run with that and, and really work with it. What I have found is that if I am patient enough and, and I am thinking in my Chinese medicine way of thinking, right there, every response somebody gives to me, I'm, I'm running it through my Chinese medicine filters. But what I'm really listening for is them in some way to say to me, here's the problem I've got and this is what I need. And if you hang out long enough, often enough people will tell you why they're there and what they need. It's often not the thing that they wrote on their form, but if I can find out why they're there and what they need, then it's very easy to give it to them.

Vance Crowe [01:02:24] Why don't they just know?

Michael Max [01:02:25] Because we don't. We're mysteries to ourselves. I don't know why we don't know. I,

Vance Crowe [01:02:34] Yeah. There, I, I agree. I, I saw in your blog, which by the way, I'll, I'll include a link on it to the show. Your blog is great. It's a whole bunch of little vignettes of, you know, something that maybe takes two to three minutes to read and they're fantastic. But you in there mentioned Stephen Prescott's, the War of Art. Ah, talking about resistance. Stephen

Michael Max [01:02:55] Pressfield,

Vance Crowe [01:02:56] Pressfield

Michael Max [01:02:57] Pressfield, war of Art. Oh my God.

Vance Crowe [01:02:59] Yeah.

Michael Max [01:03:00] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:03:00] And, and the, the entire idea that there are voices in your head, reading him led me to a whole series of philosophy. I knew nothing at all about,

Michael Max [01:03:10] But

Vance Crowe [01:03:10] Coming to the conclusion that I am not actually the master of, of my mind. Like there are voices and ideas and concepts and desires that, like, I may not give into them, but I certainly can't silence them. I certainly don't have the ability to just be like, alright, everybody, we're just listening to me today. And even the very question, who is me? Right? Yes. Is, is one that's hard to know, right? Because there are these voices in your head that say, let's go this direction. No, let's take a break and go that direction.

Michael Max [01:03:45] Well, the Buddhist would tell you, there is no me in the middle of it. It's all a conglomeration we're made up of, mostly not us, including our thoughts. I've spent a little time with meditation. What I've learned through meditation is most of the noise going through my mind is simply noise going through my mind. Most of it's not really worth paying attention to. Some of it is, but most of it isn't.

Vance Crowe [01:04:20] What has meditation been like for you? How do you practice?

Michael Max [01:04:23] Hmm. Mostly just a breath. Meditation. Focus on the breath. Notice when a thought comes in. It might be 20 minutes before I notice that I'm thinking, you know, I mean, at the end of meditating, it's like, I've been thinking the whole time. I haven't thought about my breath at all.

Vance Crowe [01:04:45] Hmm.

Michael Max [01:04:46] But mostly for me at this point, meditation is just a way of having 20, 25 minutes a day where I just don't argue with the world.

Vance Crowe [01:04:58] Oh, that's a very interesting way to put it. That I just don't argue with world. I

Michael Max [01:05:01] Just don't argue with the world. I have thoughts. I just notice I have thoughts, I've got feelings. I notice, I have feelings. I have thoughts. Oh, they was giving me feelings. I notice. Just watch, just watch a pass. Like watching class

Vance Crowe [01:05:15] Pass by. That is so good. That is so good. That is exactly like the idea of resistance, where you're like, oh, that is exactly what I'm doing. I am arguing with the world as my thoughts. Just, you know, cycle through.

Michael Max [01:05:28] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:05:28] Or don't. Right. Or don't, when you're a zombie and you're just like, you know, going through life and you're allowing things to, to put you in a coma.

Michael Max [01:05:36] Mm.

Vance Crowe [01:05:36] You know, or, or you have these emotions that allow that, that you let just, you know, they're the one in charge and the, and every, all the thoughts go away. But it all really is a, an argument with the world.

Michael Max [01:05:48] That's a, that's a really interesting point you make, that we can have these emotions and we get entangled with them in such a way that the thoughts go away. That is a way to stop the internal dialogue. You get all caught up in an emotional experience of something.

Vance Crowe [01:06:06] Oh, one of the most painful experiences or realizations that I had, because it, it stripped me naked, was anger is usually fear, or it's usually something that like, I don't want to face that I'm messed up somewhere. Yeah. And that, and that, like my anger is just a cover for me to point that at somebody else. And when you realize that, when you really realize it, now you are stripped naked because there's a whole bunch of stuff where you're like, if I'm feeling angry, what is the fault that I have to accept that I, that I wasn't willing to look at before and and fault may be even too strong

Michael Max [01:06:46] As I respond? Well, in some cases it might be fault.

Vance Crowe [01:06:48] Yeah,

Michael Max [01:06:48] Right. Blame is, you know, it's easy to blame someone else for us being uncomfortable in some way. But the fear piece I think is important because that one's difficult to tolerate and difficult to face, easy to put anger on top of it. And instead of, I mean, anytime we gaze into fear, man, we're, again, we're looking at the unknown. We're looking at the abyss.

Vance Crowe [01:07:11] That's right. Fear is the unknown, isn't it? It always is.

Michael Max [01:07:14] Well, not always. Okay. So, I mean, think of a a time when you've had, you've been on a great adventure, like where you headed? I don't know. Woo-hoo. Great. That's very exciting. But the difference between anxiety and the difference between excitement might simply be the story you're telling yourself.

Vance Crowe [01:07:35] That's right. That's right. I think anxiety is an interesting thing because I think that there is a much closer link between anxiety and depression than most people recognize. Mm. And anxiety makes you feel like you're hyped up and you're, and you're worried and depression, you feel down. But both of them are really around some sense of not knowing what to do next, or not knowing where the next, like how things are going to play out.

Michael Max [01:08:06] And

Vance Crowe [01:08:07] So I have observed, at least in my own self,

Michael Max [01:08:10] That

Vance Crowe [01:08:10] I, I can, I could, the, the an the difference between anxiety and depression is just the story I'm telling myself. And, and I don't know if it's a choice, but it's certainly, they are very, very close cousins when they seem like they're direct opposites.

Michael Max [01:08:27] That's, that's powerful. And having, observing that in yourself, recognizing that, oh, these two things are really closely connected and I have some influence over it via how I'm responding or what I'm thinking.

Vance Crowe [01:08:45] I would think that the relationship with somebody like you is different than a regular doctor in the sense of the amount of time you spend with people.

Michael Max [01:08:55] Yeah. I spend a fair amount of time.

Vance Crowe [01:08:57] Tell me about that time, because it's, you were describing that somebody already knows what, what they, what's wrong with them and what they need. How do you create the space and have the patience to make that happen? Are you asking them questions? Are you sitting quietly? How does

Michael Max [01:09:14] This work? Well, well, first of all, I create, I create the, the time in the space. So the first time someone comes to my office, ask 'em to plan an hour and a half. 'cause I, you know, I need to get to know them a bit. And then I want to have time to do a treatment. Yeah. Just create that space and then have a conversation.

Vance Crowe [01:09:39] People, when they're doing the Legacy Interviews, if they get it for their parents, oftentimes mom or dad is nervous about doing it. And what, and like, will be very resistant to the child giving it to them. They'll be like, oh, I don't know. I don't, it's not for me. I don't. And what I found is if you just give a person a chance to describe what they're concerned about,

Michael Max [01:10:02] They're

Vance Crowe [01:10:03] All the concerns go away every single time they go away. And it's like, I'm sure there'll be a time when that's not true, but, but most of the time people just need to put their fears or anxieties into words. And once they do, they realize like, oh, it's actually not that big of a concern. But until you put 'em into words, is very difficult to, to deal with them.

Michael Max [01:10:26] Sure. And I suspect there are probably some folks as well that realize that it was a big concern and they actually handled it in a reasonably skillful way. Or maybe they didn't handle it in a skillful way, but they found some forgiveness. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:10:41] Yeah. When you're, when they're actually telling their stories. Certainly. CI mean, one of my favorite questions, and I I, this is something I've learned in the last year. One of my favorite questions to ask people, particularly if I don't know what to ask next, is

Michael Max [01:10:55] What a great question to have. Hang on, I'm gonna write this down. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:10:59] What was the lesson in that? Right? So somebody's just told you about something that happened to them that was really terrible. Mm. Maybe it was their own, through their own doing or through nature or through whatever. Mm.

Michael Max [01:11:12] And

Vance Crowe [01:11:12] You ask somebody what was the lesson in that? They, most questions you ask people, they have an answer right away.

Michael Max [01:11:18] If

Vance Crowe [01:11:18] You ask somebody what was the lesson in that, they'll pause. 'cause they're not asked that question very often. And they'll think for a little bit. And oftentimes what comes out next is truly authentic and you're having a real conversation at that

Michael Max [01:11:31] Point.

Vance Crowe [01:11:32] Yeah. But you can ask that about, just about anything and you'll find an interesting answer. Yeah.

Michael Max [01:11:40] Do you have, there's, there's another guy that I've listened to from time to time. Do you know who I can see his face? Jerry Colonna. You familiar with Jerry Colonna? Jerry Colonna helped to bring us the internet back in the late nineties. He was a venture capitalist who funded a lot of the startups back then that then imploded. And so that was hard for him. He ended up depressed, suicidal, he'd made all this money. He still had a lot of it too. 'cause he was a venture capitalist. But it was, it was hard for him that so many companies that, that he'd been funding and so many things had been working on all, you know, just went to pieces. And he ended up being suicidal. He told his therapist, he said, you know, put me in a, put me in a hospital. 'cause you know, I, I'm in trouble. And his therapist said, Jerry, you're rich. Go to Canyon Ranch. Right. Go do some work. Which he did. And, and now he's this like rockstar coach to entrepreneurs and startup people. He's got this very Buddhist bent. I mean, he went through a real transformation. And one of the questions that he invites people into is, how are you complicit in your own suffering?

Vance Crowe [01:13:21] Okay.

Michael Max [01:13:24] How are you complicit in this mess that you're in? Not at a finger wagging, you're a bad dog. What have you done? What have you gotten out of this that's actually not helpful to you? And you're realizing how it's not helpful.

Vance Crowe [01:13:43] That's a very good one.

Michael Max [01:13:45] Oh, it's hard

Vance Crowe [01:13:46] For self-reflection. Yeah.

Michael Max [01:13:48] Yeah, yeah. It is a good question. But it's a, you know, it's one I ask myself on a regular basis. Sometimes I just don't want to answer the question

Vance Crowe [01:13:56] Or Yeah. Even bring it up. Like, let's, let's, we'll bring it up later.

Michael Max [01:13:59] Bring it up later. It it, it's a helpful question because it it's part of that, what did you learn actually, maybe what did you learn is the other side of that. You know, how are you complicit in your own suffering? How are you, how am I complicit in the troubles that I've, that I'm facing at this moment? Gives us another place to stand,

Vance Crowe [01:14:22] You know,

Michael Max [01:14:23] Again, with some uncertainty and ideally some curiosity.

Vance Crowe [01:14:28] When you think about that applied to medicine.

Michael Max [01:14:31] Mm.

Vance Crowe [01:14:32] How does that apply to an individual? Would you, would you ask someone coming in with an ailment? That question?

Michael Max [01:14:39] I would certainly not ask them that in the beginning.

Vance Crowe [01:14:42] Okay.

Michael Max [01:14:42] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That, that, that is a question that maybe would come up somewhere down the way is, is they're getting a glimpse of, oh, I think I see how I have a hand in, in my troubles. That would be a fine time to ask that.

Vance Crowe [01:15:03] Yeah. After trust has been built. Well,

Michael Max [01:15:05] Not only after trust has been built, but as, as, as you begin to see that they're already asking themself that question, I think that's an okay time for a question like that, but not before.

Vance Crowe [01:15:23] So you've been practicing Chinese medicine for 25

Michael Max [01:15:26] Years.

Vance Crowe [01:15:27] 25 years, yeah. What does the future hold for you in, in this curiosity that you've found yourself pulled towards?

Michael Max [01:15:35] I don't, yeah, that's a good question. For the near term, I mean, continue to do what I do. 'cause I enjoy it and it's helpful to people. And I'm always learning something new. I mean, there's always something new to learn. And, and that for me is just an absolute delight. So there's that long term, I mean, it's hard to know. I've got a, a teacher of mine who retired a year ago. We've got this kind of archetype of a old Chinese doctor that they just practice until they die. Right. But this teacher of mine retired a year ago and he said he just woke up one morning and went, I, I'm done with this phase. After 50 years he was done. So will I wake up one morning and go, oh, I'm done with this face. I, I don't know. I suspect if I do, there'll be something else that's got my attention that I'm going to enjoy following. But the, the great joy of, of doing the work that I do is there's never a dull day. I never know what's gonna show up. I don't even know how I'm gonna treat a person until I've had a chance to sit with them. There. There's, there's no pro, I mean, you can practice in a protocolized fashion, but you don't have to. It's a, it's a very indivi this is the beauty of Chinese medicine for me.

Michael Max [01:17:10] And I think one of the reasons why people enjoy it, it's a handcrafted, individualized, individualized medicine. One size does not fit all. We have this idea in western medicine, oh, you have high cholesterol, everybody gets a statin, but with Chinese medicine and, and it's so weird that this would come outta Chinese culture, Asian cultures in general with these very homogenous, very collective, very group oriented type cultures. Here we are in the West, we're like wildly individualistic. But when you look at western medicine, it's like, how do we hit the top of the bell curve in these first two standard deviations medicine for the masses? And it's helpful, right? Like, you know, public health measures are great and have eradicated a lot of disease. There's a place for it. The thing that's curious about Chinese medicine to me is you have this culture of the collective that has come up with an absolutely fantastically individualized medicine for each person.

Vance Crowe [01:18:21] That is right. You, you contrast that with the data-driven medicine, which is all about averages and how many people work. That's, that's very insightful. Yeah.

Michael Max [01:18:32] It's cur it's just curious. I don't, I don't know

Vance Crowe [01:18:33] Why's It's a duality you wouldn't expect. Right. It's

Michael Max [01:18:36] A duality you would not expect. Right. Which, I mean, I suspect this is why you would enjoy your work so much. I know. It's one of the reasons I enjoy mine because unexpected things show up all the time.

Vance Crowe [01:18:48] Oh, I mean, all you have to do is ask, that's

Michael Max [01:18:50] All you gotta do is ask.

Vance Crowe [01:18:51] All you have to do is ask. Well, if people wanted to learn more about your clinic or read your blog, where would they go?

Michael Max [01:18:59] They would go to www yong kong clinic.com. I'm not gonna spell it, just put it on the show notes. They'll find out about me there. I've got a podcast, but it, it's for practitioners of Chinese medicine. So it's, it's pretty technical. But there are some episodes that are more on the philosophical bend. That's geological.com. Again, I'm not gonna spell it. You can put it on the show notes.

Vance Crowe [01:19:25] Great. Well man, this has been great. I'll have you back on, I wanna talk about sugar and all kinds of other stuff, so, we'll, we will have you back on.

Michael Max [01:19:32] That'd be a delight. Alright,

Vance Crowe [01:19:33] Mike, thanks for your time. Thanks for coming on. Yeah,

Michael Max [01:19:35] It's been a pleasure.