Office Hours with Angelique and Toby, episode 14. Released December 2, 2025. 30 minutes.

About this episode

Toby Daly opens with sad news about further Chinese medicine school closures, and he and Angelique Britt talk about the financial pressures behind them and why enrollment matters. Angelique is looking at a dedicated moxa room and a lower-cost way to capture or filter smoke, and the two name the clinical role models who shaped their practice in pulse diagnosis, herbs, gua sha, and patient care, including Sharon Weizenbaum, Arya Nielsen, Heiner Fruehauf, and Volker Scheid.

Angelique describes a patient whose sudden pain during treatment led her to check vital signs and send them to the emergency room, and Toby considers a possible Saam diagnostic connection. Toby shares a case where gua sha helped a needle-sensitive patient, and they close with keeping intake interviews focused without making patients feel unheard.

Topics

Recent Chinese medicine school closures
A dedicated moxa room and smoke filtration
Clinical role models
Learning thresholds after graduation
Sudden pain during treatment and when to send a patient to the ER
Gua sha for a needle-sensitive patient
Keeping interviews focused while still listening

Key terms

Moxibustion (灸, jiu): warming acupuncture points by burning mugwort (Ai Ye, 艾葉) on or near the skin.
Gua sha (刮痧): scraping the skin to raise petechiae, used to release the exterior and move stagnation.
Saam acupuncture (舍岩): a Korean Buddhist monastic acupuncture tradition that treats imbalance on one channel system at a time, using combinations of the five transport points.

A note for listeners: this is a conversation between licensed practitioners, offered for education, not as medical advice. Patient details have been kept general to protect privacy.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the published audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors in names and terms.

Welcome to Office Hours. Whether you're new to the acupuncture profession or have been at it for decades, this is the place where we discuss all things Chinese medicine and more. Join Toby Daly, a seasoned acupuncturist of the Saam tradition, and Angelique Britt, a nurse-turned acupuncturist who is brand new to the field as they explore topics in and around the world of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. There's something for everyone here. Drop in anytime.

Toby: Hey Angelique, I want to start out this week with a little bit of sad breaking news about Chinese medicine education field. Yeah, AIMC, which is the school of Berkeley by me, announced today that they're closing. They have a campus in Berkeley and a campus in Austin. I think they originally had there was another Austin Chinese medicine school that closed already. So they had transferred over to the AIMC in Austin, and now that one's closing as well, too. So this is It's roughly eight schools that have closed in the last two years. So it's yeah, it's sorry to start out with a little bit of sad breaking news. But I again, I don't I'm not sure about that. I just keep watching this unfold. I'm not quite sure what to make of it or what to do. But I just wanted to let you know about that news I just saw today.

Angelique: What why is this happening? Do we know? Is it all financial?

Toby: I think it's it's all financial. I think COVID really hit the schools hard, right? People didn't apply during that time. I think enrollment was down, and then I think just be that cost of a degree translating over to how much you'll make actually practicing. I think that ratio is just a tough thing to do now. So yeah, but I mean this is This is disconcerting for the profession, right? Because the institutions themselves are fading at a pretty rapid clip. Yep.

Angelique: That's pretty frightening. Where did you hear this? Which source are you using? Because this didn't come across any of my news feeds.

Toby: Well yeah, I don't know, but I am like on faculty at ACCHS, which is the Oakland School, the last standing trans medicine school in the Bay Area, which seems crazy. But anyways, so they had an announcement for AMC students saying that they'll they'll help sort them out as they as they move over.

Angelique: Well, way to start the show off with a bank.

Toby: Yeah, sorry about this, but again, I don't I don't know. Again, I'm so concerned I love this profession so much. So I'm just concerned as you know, again it seemed like some anomalies and now it seems like it's just definitely pattern as it's going through school after school.

Angelique: And it's interesting that you say that because I have a student that is interning at my clinic and they go to the New England School of Acupuncture and they have mentioned that the first year cohort is pretty big, like one of the biggest that has been in the school. I think it might be close to sixty if I'm remembering correctly. It was a big cohort. Mine was only forty.

Toby: So again, maybe that's maybe that'll be good for any institutions that's helping up to withstand all this. As the demand for Chinese Besting continues, maybe th those schools will have more enrollment. So that's may be a really positive thing for the remaining schools.

Angelique: Yeah. We'll hope so. The can all keep closing. Okay. There we are.

Toby: Right. Right. Okay. So I just started like that. But the actual the so the so I just saw just before I came on here. So I just want to get that out there. But actually one of the things I wanted to ask you about what last time you were talking about doing moxa and trying to figure it out at your office. I wonder if you figured that out yet. I know a lot of people would like to do mocks at their at their office and we're going to the season, so I'm wondering if you any steps forward on that, moxa at your office.

Angelique: Slightly step forward. I know what I can do is just enacting it at this point. I'm waiting on a lease agreement before I make any further investments into the space. But a colleague of mine has investigated a I don't know if it's a fumigation machine or if it's some sort of air filtration, but it's by Vivor. And she tested it out because she also has to be, she's trying to get a space and wanted to prove to the le the landlord that she's trying to get the space from. That the box of smoke can be handled so that it's not a nuisance to others in the space. And apparently it's quite effective and it's only a few hundred dollars. So I'm looking into that for the room, one of the rooms that I'm gonna have in my space. I'm not making the move just yet. I want to make sure my lease is solid. But that will be the plan is to have a designated moxa room and use that probably in the smaller of the rooms that I have.

Toby: It pulls the smoke out.

Angelique: That's what I understand, yeah.

Toby: And then vent it to the outside or

Angelique: I don't know where it goes. If it goes inside, I don't think it vents to the outside. Did not look she sent me a screen like a screenshot of the device, like the w the advertisement image of it itself. It didn't look like it had piping and such. She had gotten a quote on one that was much, much more expensive. That it reminded me of it reminded me of the something like the once ler from the Lorax would have like one of those machines, even if the Dr. Seuss story. Like that's the image in my head. It was like a once or machine. Thousands and thousands of dollars. But this one looks like it has some sort of internal capturing system. I don't know if it's a filter or what. So I've got that on my deck here waiting.

Toby: Okay. W once you get that and once you've tested it out, then give us a report back 'cause that would be that would be good for people to know.

Angelique: It might be a couple of months down the road.

Toby: That's fair. It's bas yeah. It'll be getting warm again out of moxa season. Yeah.

Angelique: Well, I do have the infrared lamps as my substitution. And I have the I know it's not the same, but I have the Moxabom, which I could use with the heat lamps as a substitution in the interim.

Toby: How is that going, that moxabom?

Angelique: I haven't used it much, frankly. So I'll tell you when I start using that.

Toby: Okay. I was thinking about for this conversation. I have like a whole bunch of role models for certain aspects of Chinese medicine. Do you have something like that you're you're always trying to like emulate certain people that you know and parts of Chinese medicine?

Angelique: Sure. Well, one of them is you. Yeah. One of them is definitely you with herbal medicine. As I've been learning from Sharon Weizenbaum, I've been using a lot of her skills and hoping to have the results that I've seen her have. In terms of classical things, I need to study more of the classics to find like a classical person to be like, I want to be like that person. Those are like my top two. I kind of keep my circle small. How about you?

Toby: That's it. Okay. That's nice to be in that circle. Yeah, I always had I always thought I wanted to be able to be able to diagnose. I had a really good pulse reader, pulse teacher for the Shen Hammer tradition. And I always thought, I wanted to be able to pulse read like that. For Dr. Wu, right? She's so good at interacting with patients and getting into like the core diagnostic thing. So I always thought I wanted to be like that. Rethinking in Chinese medicine, dry. Trying to think of through the different lenses of Chinese medicine. I feel like Jeffrey Wen is a great master of that, to being able to take on different personas from different eras and try and think through that. I think that's valuable. And for herbal medicine, Heiner Fruehauf is my main person for formulas. And then I think I mentioned before I'm I'm taking Volker Scheid's class. So like individual herbs and how to modify formulas. I think I'm I'm learning quite a bit from him. I'd love to be like that kind of level. And then my My teacher, the monk, right? He was the most successful acupuncturist I know. So I was always trying to emulate that. I was just thinking about this. I'm always thinking about how we don't get much from textbooks for Chinese medicine. And we always have like clinical role models. So I was just I was thinking about for you. Yeah. I think I think it's really valuable to have people that you want to be like in certain aspects of it.

Angelique: Sure. And I guess you could add Arya Nielsen to that in terms of gua sha, because I have Yes. I love gua sha and to be able to gua sha like her.

Toby: Okay, yeah. Especially yeah, people get into that their whatever really re resonates with them. And then yeah, if you can if you can emulate that. Like Brian Leforged, my pulse teacher for the Shenhammer pulse, he was so amazing at some of the things he could do. So again, it was just always it's always motivating when you can see something like that. It's not just in a textbook. It's like in a clinical situation, you can see how they can respond to things well.

Angelique: Especially for pulses, that's still mystifying. So mystifying to me. I have patients ask me, you know, like, what do think that means? And I'm just like, God. I usually preface to be like, you know, I'm still pretty novice level at this, but and then I'll give them my impression.

Toby: But yeah, I mean I th I think that takes time. I think did you ever have experience with the Shun hammer pulse system? No. Okay. That's maybe worth it down the road or something like that. Cause it's nice in person. You spend an entire weekend or, you know, several weekends if you get really into it. And you're feeling and then you'll have the teacher feel and then tell you and then you'll tell the teacher and then they'll say, not quite bad. And then just checking the different levels with someone that's done it, you know, ten thousand times is Anyways, it was really valuable. And then you come out of that weekend and then you go back to your clinic first thing Monday morning, you're like, Whoa, you know, you can really feel pulse. It's like going to like basketball camp, right? And then you come out, there's a much better basketball player, right? Same thing with pulse reading, it's like bulse pulse reading camp. So definitely

Angelique: You need that. I definitely do. Yep. Sign me up. I feel like there's thresholds into this medicine that we cross. And I didn't realize it until crossing them. But it's like there's this the threshold into starting the education itself and meeting all of the challenges of learning this new system of medicine, all of the theories, the foundationals, the points, all the things that and then there's the threshold of graduating and getting your license. And then there's okay. So I'm that's like shutting the door on school, and then you're Crossing a threshold into practice and learning what that's actually like on your own. And I feel like the door is kind of cracking open to the next threshold, which I think is a deepening of the medicine, a deepening of the practice of refining of skills, of finding more people in the world, like more role models, more mentors, like kind of allowing the expansiveness. To enter more fully because I still, you know, just I'm a year in December. Like I'm still in this little small circle of figuring out the world that I'm currently in. And so sometimes these questions that are broader and so wonderful, it's like, my God, that's right. That's that's something else I can look out to and look forward to eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later. But yeah, the list of CEUs is long. That's definitely on them for me. That's great.

Toby: What other CUs are you thinking about?

Angelique: I would love to go and do a live class with Arya Nielsen to learn more about Ga Shaw. I really, really love Gua Shaw. Anything herbal medicine related, doing maybe even studying with Heiner Fruehauf. He's really talked to me a lot, inspired me to look more into the formulas that he carries and they're pretty awesome. I'm also having like what's the word I'm looking for? Buyer's remorse, maybe, of carrying another company's patents because now I have to get rid of all of those now. And like as I circulate in some of the classical pearls. I would love to know, like do more of the extraordinary vessels into the extraordinary vessel treatments. I touched on in my doctoral program the different channel treatments, like the divergent channel treatments and the low channel treatments. And I don't know that I would be able to realistically do some of those in the clinic, but it would be neat to experiment somehow. Yeah. It's like, and I would love to do more of the classics, like eventually down the road, learn to read. Classical Chinese. That's like a big goal. A big one. Once I'm, you know, I don't know, five, ten years from now, maybe really delve into that. Maybe sooner, who knows? But that's another kind of nerd interest that I have to be able to do some translation or at least reading of the actual original text. It'd be a neat thing to do.

Toby: Yes. Chinese medicine is like a bottomless bucket. So you'll never fill it and then be bored, right? There's always so many things to go through. So it's exciting, especi especially at this part of your career, right? It's really exciting because you have so many different paths to go down.

Angelique: Exciting and overwhelming for that very reason. Yeah. Because it's it's endless and bottomless. And it's like, which way do you go? It's like you have infinite paths you can take. So yeah, feeling that acutely.

Toby: Yeah. I'm trying to think about how I navigated that. I think like clinical gaps I saw when seeing patients, that made me want to go and fill them. So anything like that, there's certain things that really resonate with me. Of course, I want to try and get more, but anything I felt really weak at. So I recognized early on, right, that huge gap for me is herbal medicine, right? There's just so much to know. You know, the main formula set we have 10,000 different formulas in it. And then I use a couple of formulas not in that set. So I mean it's just so vast what you could possibly do. So mostly that's that's where I did my in school, right? We had like s different sister schools in China. I went to Chengdu because the herb school, right? And then I just, you know, probably seventy five percent, eighty percent of my CU classes are herbal medicine because I just feel like that's just something that again, it just Always get a little bit better at that. And then especially seeing patients, especially when COVID came up and things like that. I think that really showed a huge gap I had in my herbal formula knowledge, right? Because like it was it was mostly theoretical, those really severe respiratory things that we're seeing. I just I just didn't have much clinical experience with that. So again that just made me double down on things. Yeah, I think That again, thing that you're you're really interested in and resonates with you. But also I think as you as you just start seeing more and more gaps in your clinical knowledge, I think that's gonna really draw you in certain directions. Yeah, that's again, it's exciting but overwhelming. I completely agree.

Angelique: Yep, definitely. Do you have any interesting clinical cases from the week?

Toby: I don't have anything super interesting. I did want to say something else from the week. Though just this first part of this week, I was teaching in Chicago and one of the participants in the workshop six months ago, I taught them the intro to some and this is like a practicum class that we're doing. And one of the participants in there said, I was asking how everything's going with the Jingwells and everything. And he said he had one really good experience with one of those patients. He's like, you know, put a ging well point. It's like, gosh, how was that? And the patient said, It's fine. It's totally worth it for the magic. And I just thought that would that was such a sweet thing to say. So I wanted to say that today. What about you? What about Clinic League? What's what's been going on with you this week?

Angelique: I had an emergency again. Had a patient come in that I see fairly frequently for GYN issues. It was a second visit this week. They came in not really feeling well. Had some symptoms of a urinary tract infection, like some emotional things going on. And so I usually treat them with some exclusively, but this time because of the emotional component, I was I felt drawn to do a return to center treatment, which I learned in school, kind of cribbed off the Japanese acupuncture students. It's basically it's a midline treatment to help bring

Toby: I don't know that one w what's the point?

Angelique: It's do twenty yin tong, C V twenty two, C V seventeen, C V twelve, C V and stomach thirty-six bilaterally as the grounding point with the whole intention of bringing a person whose like Shen is scattered kind of back to their center. I think it's also called the chakra treatment. And so I did this, and then about I don't know, half an hour or so into treatment, they pressed the call button. I cannot stress how amazing having a call button is for patients. So press the call button. And so I came in and they said they felt like they had gotten like punched in the stomach. Like around C V fourteen area. And so essentially what ensued is a lot of pain all of a sudden that happened in that area. It wasn't from the needles or anywhere that I had needled. I was appropriate because that was the thing is like, did I puncture something? No, I didn't puncture anything. In order to appear as though they're having like a panic type situation. But the fact that they're having, you know, central midline pain, I was really concerned about a cardiac issue. So I took a blood pressure and a pulse and the pulse oximetry and The blood pressure was slightly elevated. It wasn't dangerous, but it was slightly elevated. And so I tried to convince them to go to the emergency room. And initially they refused. But then ultimately they allowed me to call family. And the family came and picked them up and took them to the emergency room. And they're they're totally fine. They had a urinary tract infection. No idea what caused this pain, but they're okay now. But that was another moment of like, okay. I'm gonna be calling nine one, you know. So it was it was a little nerve wracking, but I was able to stay calm during that time. I think that's like the most important like thing that I've learned from nursing is like even in the midst of something that's really scary and I'm kind of scared, just to maintain calm because people can feel that. And so the last thing they need is me freaking right. Don't add to the freaking out. So yeah, I was I was grateful for my ability to take vital signs and kind of know what to look for, you know, know the danger signs. I wish they had gone to the emergency room a little faster than they had gone, but They went and ultimately were okay. Wasn't a hard thing. So that was the most exciting thing of my weekend or my week rather.

Toby: Do you think something about that point combination exasperated that?

Angelique: I mean it was right on the midline and they had pain right on the midline, like between C V seven and C V twelve. It was like right there. Right in like where the this what is it? The it's like the subcostal substernal angle. Goodness gracious. Right where the xiphoid process is. It's like right there. Yeah. So maybe I mean I think if there it was emotional component, it's possible it was moving, you know, in the C V channel. Yeah. What do you think?

Toby: I'm not sure. Always I mean, bedrock diagnostic thing is always the Saam system. So I always think about this midline having to do with the heart and urinary bladder. So especially with that bladder infection, you know, could be being reflected there.

Angelique: So what do you mean? Say more about that?

Toby: For the sound system, you remember this between the xiphoid and the umbilicus is a reflection area for the heart and bladder channel system. That line on the abdomen is reflecting those two. And so we always palpate that. If it's cold and hard, then it's more bladder excess. If it's soft and warm, that section, then more heart excess, especially with the bladder infection component. I could see something being reflected in that area.

Angelique: No kidding. Okay. I had not thought of that. And because I have the cold hands, I'm not an abdominal palpator in this particular season of the year.

Toby: That's really hinder that's hindering your water.

Angelique: No, it's hindering my work. I need to need to work on that. Okay. That's interesting. So and this is somebody I usually do some on all the time. So I could have supplemented bladder potentially.

Toby: Theoretically, yeah, that might have been a good thing. Especially, you know, just from my clinical experience that, you know, for actual bladder infection, using supplementing urinary bladder to flush that area out and to cool that fire in the bladder, that tends to work be pretty successful. You know, a lot of times I think, you know, initially I would also prescribe herbs at the same time. Now I'm pretty confident about that. Again, if the diagnosis is correct, sometimes herbal medicine is not needed. That just supplementing bladder. Yeah.

Angelique: Just

Toby: Which nice to do, right? It's nice to do because it's it's it's better than antibiotics on the system. But you we use harsh, clear, damp heat herbs. And if you can avoid doing that and using just with acupuncture, I think it's great.

Angelique: Yeah. Well, it's a good learning moment for me. It's one of those things like now I'm not gonna forget it for sure.

Toby: I mean it's always just pattern after pattern after pattern and then everything gets a little bit easier.

Angelique: So you've seen you've seen somebody present like that's had the urinary issues, it's come up to like the mid epigastric region?

Toby: Yeah, yeah, th this will present on this line, either on palpation or the patient will report it.

Angelique: Kidding. That's fascinating. I'm a little embarrassed. I didn't think of it. That's great. It's good to know.

Toby: Yeah, just so many layers of patterns, right? And then also es especially, you know, a little bit of a urgent clinical situation, right? It's it's easy to get a little bit off your diagnostic game. So that's understandable. Okay.

Angelique: Thanks for your insights there. Noted. Sorry for later.

Toby: Okay. What about other interesting things from this week?

Angelique: I have another patient that I'm actually seeing twice a week, also for GYN issues, but also has a lot of body pain, has really severe environmental allergies, and is she's just so deficient, just so, so, so deficient. And so has a ton of fatigue and the premenstrual syndrome slash menstrual time for her is horrendous. It's very severe. Liver cheese stagnation, like it's very dark, dark depression, gets a lot of pain, stagnant bleeding, the whole business. And I think like her clinical picture, the root is deficiency. And then she's got the excessasis on top of the deficiency. And so I just started she was taking she actually she used chat GPT to diagnose herself and give herself Chinese herbs. And it wasn't all that bad actually before she started seeing me, she ended up getting some tea pills and was treating herself with some success. And I was impressed. I was like, okay. But not for long term. Like it was definitely like one of the formulas is Wenjing Tong, you know, taken like on a you should take it on the short term. So she was doing okay with that. And so I started treating her. And we've been doing things stepwise with her. She's really needle sensitive. Like I haven't I wouldn't do some. I don't know that she'd be able to handle it. Super, super needle sensitive. So definitely very selective with points. But it took me a little bit, a couple of weeks actually, before I was like, I wonder if I should do gouach off of her. Like I kind of Intuitively was like, I really want to do this, but I wasn't sure even she'd be able to handle the sensation of guacha. And so I have been I started doing that for her, and it has been a game changer for her. Overall, fatigue has been better, pain has not been as present. This is the first full menstrual cycle, and she's coming up to the point where she usually is feeling horrendous, like sick. Like she gets like flu-like premenstrual symptoms and I the gua sha has been amazing. Like she comes in feeling a certain way and she walks out brighter. Like you can just see it in her face. And she also came in the last time that she was in with she'd had an exposure to environmental something. And so was really she felt her face just in so much pain. Like her nostrils and her nose was all on fire and she had a lot of pressure in her face. And I did a like a local treatment. And it wasn't a I don't think it was a gua sha day for her that day. So I said like a local treatment and regular acupuncture and she Walked out and she said she was gone. Like it was much, much better it was better. She's like completely in relief and she was like nine out of ten facial pain when she came in. Yeah. So I said Osher points. I didn't think she, you know, she like LA twenty, out of bladder two, and I think Tai Yong were like the main points that were really hurting her. So it was kind of fantastic. But the gua sha was amazing for her. It's like night and day.

Toby: What do you think it is about the gua sha like based on your other patients you're seeing, or maybe this patient, wha what's the mechanism? What's what's what's so effective?

Angelique: It's moving. It's moving. I think that's what it really is. And I think there's something to be said too about, you know, like on the Western med side, it's systemically antioxidant, anti-inflammatory. And so I think it systemically helps to de-escalate a very reactive system. Like just her system is very reactive to the outside. Like I think if I'm remembering correctly, like someone who might I think it might be part of Sharon. Wisenbaum's teaching. But it's like if somebody has a lot of external reactivity that sometimes that can be a sign that their Wei Chi is imbalanced or like weakened and they might need quasure tongue, you know, something like that to help strengthen Baying Wei to be able to withstand things coming in from the outside. I wonder I can't remember if it's it her or is a professor at school. Someone in that ilk had mentioned something like that. But yeah, just super reactive system, super stuck. I just think it's like a huge release for her.

Toby: The Gua Shaw facilitates that the releasing

Angelique: I don't think it facilitates like anything with the exterior. I think that's like a separate thing, but it definitely it's a huge release for her and should it let it's lasting like for the rest of the week. She's feeling much, much better. More than just with acupuncture. Like it was a marked shift. She was having some response from the acupuncture, not amazing, you know, like, okay. You know, like, all right, it's all right. And then adding this to it and it night and day. That's great. Yeah. I really love quasha.

Toby: It's nice to have a lot of tools on your toolkit.

Angelique: Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's a lot of work for me, you know, because there's your yeah. I got a good gouache arm now. You know, from doing this for a year for people. But yeah, I use it, I use it very frequently. And then there's the test that you do that I had didn't learn in school, but learned from Ariane Nielsen's book where you basically you press your fingers like into the into the upper back area. And if there they leave like, you know, white marks are lighter than normal skin tone marks for like that are obvious. Like if you can pull it away and still see your fingerprints, it's a sign of stuckshaw and it's a diagnostic for someone needing to do gasha. And I would say the majority of the people that I do guasha for absolutely have that ahead of time. Not all of them, because sometimes I'm like, you need it no matter what your skin tells me, but the majority of the time there's that sign there, which was really interesting.

Toby: That's great. How long does it take to do gua sha?

Angelique: Five or six minutes.

Toby: Okay, that's not too bad. Okay. So that's great. Big impact, five, six minutes. That's great.

Angelique: Yeah. Very helpful. Highly recommend.

Toby: Okay. Do you want to move on to another topic? Okay. I was wondering too part of what we're doing in Chicago, we're doing like really focusing on the medical interview. And I'm wondering about how you're navigating that dynamic in the medical interview between like trying to elicit information and trying to give some space for the patient to spontaneously report stuff. How's that going for you almost a year in?

Angelique: That's going well. I think I had that skill down when I was as a nurse. I did visiting nursing and I only had an hour to be with the patient. And so I learned that delicate dance of allowing people to talk while at the same time interjecting and when you can to get the information that you need, not letting someone kind of take off on a tangent. There are certain circumstances and where I will allow on tangents, you know. People are going through it for whatever reason, have had some kind of tragedy, new diagnosis, something like that. Fine. Talk away, you know, I'll listen to you. But I have I've learned how to feel out when it's okay and how to kind of curve the conversation into the direction that I want it to go to. Right. And sometimes it comes down to just being like, I would love to hear so much more about this, but let's let's focus on like what's going on here. And then once you're on the table, you can finish telling me that part of your story.

Toby: Great. That sounds like a valuable phrase. Yeah. What about other things like that? Do you have any special phrases that you like to use?

Angelique: There's that one. There's I blame the insurance companies a lot. Like I'll say, I really want to hear about all of these other situations you've got going on, or like XYZ, because they'll, you know, tangents abound. The insurance company really wants us to focus on this particular issue for a few minutes. Okay, if we take a few minutes just to focus really on this, or they've got a couple of people who can who tend to be on the late side. And so I will say, you know, in the interest of making sure that you get a long treatment, let's really be like quick and dirty on this assessment. Let's just ask the questions and let's get just the facts, ma'am, and then we're gonna get on the table. Like things like that. Like Yeah. Yeah.

Toby: That's really great. One of mine that I really like to use too is sometimes especially they're going a lot, you know, like a long story or really too broad that I want. I'll ask them, what's the main theme of that? And that something about that pulls them back and then they a lot of times that's where I really want to know too. What's the main like energetic theme behind that? So that's nice to pull back and then sometimes it's valuable, sometimes not valuable, but t does tend to pull back.

Angelique: And sometimes I'll use action. So it's like they'll be talking and as I'm nodding, I will go over and start taking their pulses, you know, and like do the, you know, and start making like the space ready that I'm gonna start needling off of just to like give them the cue, like, okay, and we're moving on here, you know, for people who are still talking. And then I'll be nodding and sometimes I'll even guide people over to the table as they're talking, you know, as I've gotten to know them so that it's it's so them still listening, they're still feeling heard, and I'm still giving them the treatment they need and enough time so I'm not running over.

Toby: That's great. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice way to do it, just kind of moving along. We're going to the next phase of a Euro treatment. We're not talking about medicine anymore. We're gonna do some that's

Angelique: Exactly. And I mean there are still some times where I get stuck, you know. Sometimes you've got the ultimate talkers where I don't want to be rude and sometimes like my politeness can get in the way even now. But I'd say for the most part I can navigate pretty efficiently in the time that I've allotted.

Toby: It's great. I don't do any insurance, so I'm not gonna be able to use that one phrase.

Angelique: Yeah. I mean you could. No, you're right, you couldn't do that. I'm trying to think of something insurance adjacent that you could blame. We could blame your assistant. You could be like, you know, Stephanie really needs me out there in a few minutes. We're gonna have to really focus on this.

Toby: No, they're pay they're paying out of pocket, but Yeah. It takes a lot of heat for me, so I'm not sure if we can put more heat on her. So it's it's always great talking to you. Again, we just keep talking forever. Let's put this on the shelf for right now. Okay. And then I look forward to talking to you next time about some more things. I'm gonna I'm gonna try and start out with some really positive news about the profession. So I'll come up with something now next time I say sorry to start off a little bit dark, but it's happening. It just we sh we just need to be aware and then hopefully do something about it.

Angelique: All right then. Well I'll see you next time.

Toby: All right. Bye everybody.