Office Hours with Angelique and Toby, episode 3. Released April 25, 2025. 31 minutes.
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About this episode
In this early episode, Toby Daly and Angelique Britt share how each came to Chinese medicine. Toby recounts how a treatment from a wandering monk in Asia turned around months of digestive illness and led him to train in Chinese medicine and Saam acupuncture. Angelique traces her path from nursing in oncology, hospice, and mental health to acupuncture, sparked by Chinese herbal medicine.
Along the way they talk about hiring a third-party biller for insurance, a Saam treatment that stopped a patient's post-nasal drip during the session, the difference between ministerial fire and sovereign fire, ways to help needle-sensitive patients, using Western diagnostic knowledge as a safety net while forming a Chinese medicine diagnosis, and why self-treatment is built into Saam.
Topics
Insurance billing and hiring a biller
A Saam treatment for post-nasal drip
Ministerial fire and sovereign fire
Toby's path to Chinese medicine
Needle sensitivity: fewer points, preparation, distraction
Angelique's path from nursing to acupuncture
Western diagnosis as a safety resource
Self-treatment in Saam and a practitioner treatment exchange
Key terms
Ministerial fire (相火, xiang huo) and sovereign fire (君火, jun huo): two aspects of fire in Chinese medical physiology, the sovereign fire associated with the heart and the ministerial fire with the organs that carry out its functions. Usage varies across the tradition.
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. Hey Toby, how are you today?
Toby: Everything's going okay with is the league. What about you? How are you doing?
Angelique: Things are going pretty well here. Other than snow in April in New England, I'd say things are fine.
Toby: It's seventy five here in California.
Angelique: Rub it in. All right. Thirty six. Thirty six degrees here.
Toby: Double. Yes. All right. I was wondering if I could check in with last time we were talking, you were just starting to panel with insurance companies. I wonder how it's going. Bringing insurance into your brand new practice. How's that going?
Angelique: Yeah. So I was under the impression that I could do it alone. And I decided after maybe six weeks, seven weeks of trying to figure it all out, I went with a biller. So I'm on boarding with a billing company and I'm hoping that will take some of the stress away because it is far more nuanced than I had possibly imagined. Looking forward to that. It's not gonna be cheap, but pardon me. Where did I find the biller?
Toby: How'd you find that Billy?
Angelique: So I reached out to Maury West. I took her insurance billing course in the very beginning. She has different segments for different parts of the country. And I'm a very small clinic, so I don't think she's handling clinics of my size anymore. And so she recommended Family Billing Solutions, which is a small to midsized clinic, third party biller for acupuncturists and chiropractors. I'm not sure if they have another discipline, but it's owned by an acupuncturist and a chiropractor, so that's kind of neat.
Toby: That's great. W would you liberty to talk about like what the like what the billing ratios are, like how much to pay for a bill or is this something you can talk about?
Angelique: You know, I'm not a hundred percent sure if that's something that's in my contract that's allowed or not.
Toby: We definitely better not talk about that, Ben. I'll I'll try and ask you some other questions. Yeah. What percent of your patients are coming in that you that you're using that biller for their insurance?
Angelique: Percentage wise, it's probably just better just to talk numbers. I have seven patients right now that come in regularly that use insurance. And I'm seeing so maybe half. I guess maybe half because I'm seeing anywhere from eight, 15 patients per week. Now I've had a bit of a dip. And then recently the paper that I had interview with a few months ago, they re-ran the story in a different local newspaper. And so I've had a recent influx of new patients again. Calling this week, which is great. So I'm hoping to get up to thirty one patients per week total. That's my goal, my max capacity up by myself.
Toby: Okay. I was telling you, don't if you can have a new problem soon, they're gonna have too many patients. So right now you're trying to get b upload patients, but then soon you're gonna have to manage a whole bunch of extra patients. So i y it's never gonna be right there at 31. It'll always be forty five of people that have to get in that week to see you. So that's gonna be a new problem for you to have to manage soon. So I think in no time, especially if your newspaper ad your newspaper article keeps getting into I look forward to when it gets uploaded to Wall Street Journal.
Angelique: Yeah, that'll be a nice problem to have.
Toby: Yes. Yep. National you get international exposure for your clinic, that'll be great.
Angelique: Yeah, so exactly. People coming all over the place just to see me. Yeah. That's wild. I know that happens to you though.
Toby: Yeah, a little bit. Yes, a little bit. What about this last week or so? Any really memorable clinical successes? This
Angelique: Possible. Week memorable cases. There's one patient that I've been treating pretty consistently, and I would have using SOM. And she's just a super responder. So she came in with the start of exterior pathogenic factor invasion. So she was kind of like kind of had like the rhinitis thing going on. She's kind of drippy goofy. And she was I basically I treated her with stomach channel and she said that her nasal, like the post nasal drip stopped immediately, like on the table, which is kind of neat. Yeah. And so I'm waiting to hear from her if the constipation that also came with this particular symptom cluster also resolved itself. Yeah.
Toby: Yeah. Supplementing stomach sometimes that's an amazing one for rhinitis for sure, right? That wet, dry dynamic. And then also because supplementing stomach is so descending, right? Sometimes that's really great for constipation. Is it like short term constipation for that patient or is it chronic?
Angelique: Chronic. It's a chronic issue. Okay. That had resolved itself. She had gone on a vacation last week and had spent some time with her son at like a spa. And so her digestion regulated. But then as soon as she got home, she became constipated again.
Toby: That's i that's interesting in itself, right? That's so that'd be fantastic if you can start to train her body to descend regularly every day. I have a question for you, if it's okay.
Angelique: Yeah, of course.
Toby: What is ministerial fire?
Angelique: Mysterial fire. It is our primal young energy that resides at Ming Men.
Toby: Great. What's the difference between ministerial fire and sovereign fire?
Angelique: So sovereign fire is what comes in from above into our body and ministerial fire is what is kindled below post heaven.
Toby: Great. How do you apply that clinically?
Angelique: I'm learning how to apply that clinically by paying attention to the ascending and descending functions in the body and the pathway of the Xiaoyang pivot, mainly through herbal medicine. So for example, if someone has a Xiaoyang block, there's often a symptom that's worse with stress.
Toby: Great. What's an example of doing that?
Angelique: And there might even be rashes and pivot areas like between the fingers and toes and the groin and the armpits. Like an irritability. That would be like a something like Xiaoyang blockish. Sometimes there's a better taste in the mouth. And then you'd use a formula like Xiao Chai Hutong, if we're being generic, to kind of unblock that pivot because then the sovereign fire is getting stuck. Before it can pivot into the ministerial fire. And so it's creating a lot of these constraint symptoms, if I'm understanding correctly.
Toby: That's great. Yeah. I was wondering if you remember that. And then that's great that you're actually using in clinic. I'm in a class right now with Vulcan Scheid, and he's talking about the history of fire throughout all of Chinese medicine. And he's talking about how different clinicians they flipped ministerial fire and sovereign fire throughout the centuries. They'd be talking about ministerial fire and then the same person would be talking about sovereign fire, but they're talking about flipping exactly the things. This is his quote, you know, he's a great historian of Chinese medicine. His quote, fire is a mess in Chinese medicine. Yes, because everyone just constantly flips those terms and doesn't use them you know consistently throughout the centuries. So it's great. This lecture itself has been fantastic because yeah, that those two terms were always so confusing for me. And I think that makes sense. Different clinicians are talking about sometimes using the opposite term for that for that same process.
Angelique: It's a mess.
Toby: But I think that's a great way of thinking about it, right? Sovereign fire from the outside, ministerial fire from the inside. For the psalm system itself, we consider sovereign fire having the actual heat and then the ministerial fire having all the luminosity of the fire, right? So the brightness of the fire having to do with ministerial fire and sovereign fire having to do with the actual the actual physical heat. Okay. I'm gonna ask you something else, okay?
Angelique: Okay, I'm ready.
Toby: Great. Last time we were talking about you starting a auricular clinic as a drop in thing, anti-stress thing, especially with recent economic changes internationally. How's that going? Have you been able to implement that yet?
Angelique: No, my plan is to do it at the end of May. I wanted to get through my doctoral courses before I started.
Toby: Great. For your doctorate program, do you have to do a capstone or something like that?
Angelique: Nope, it's just it was clinical hours. So we went to Asheville. We were supposed to go twice, but we only ended up going once.
Toby: You only went to Asheville once because of the hurricane, is that right? Okay.
Angelique: Yeah, the hurricane on the hurricane in the fall kind of knocked out our opportunity to go the first time. Yeah, I think some of the feedback I had been getting about episodes are people just curious about who we are. And so I was wondering if you might be interested in giving a brief synopsis of who you are and how you came to acupuncture and why you chose to continue with Saam versus what you might have learned in acupuncture school.
Toby: Yeah, that's that's really reasonable to see the perspective you and I are both bringing to our discussion. I think that's that's really reasonable. When I was I was traveling, it's almost thirty years ago now, I was traveling in Asia and I got really sick, sixty pounds less than right now. I'm like one ninety, six foot four. So like one thirty, right? Real skeletal, really sick. I had GI problems for six to nine months, right? Just Daily diarrhea, I was really sick. And so I was traveling at that point in northern India, and I ended up meeting who ultimately will be my teacher, a wandering monk. And he and I traveled together for several weeks, and he kept saying to me, Wow, you're you're not doing very well, right? I was always like running off to the bathroom and I, you know, I just I just looked really unhealthy at that point. And so he kept saying, I'd love to help you with my needles. And at that point, Like my background's all science and my grandfather's a Western medical doctor. I just didn't I didn't think little pieces of metal in my body would do anything. Finally I thought, he's such a nice man. I'll I'll let him feel like he's helping me. It's it's not gonna do anything for me. It might hurt a little bit, but it's not it's not gonna really change my body at all, anyways. So I laid down and he put four points in my body and I got up from that treatment and I had a full meal in three desserts. Something I definitely couldn't have done for six months. So it was such a dramatic change for me that it really, really, you know, I was so completely thinking it would do nothing and had such a powerful effect, just these four pieces of metal, that I just became absolutely fascinated with the system. So I studied a little bit more with him and then I returned to the US, enrolled in Chinese medical school at ACTCM in San Francisco. Did four years training there and then Did a little bit training in Chengdu. And when I when I went to visit Chengdu, I went and met with my teacher some more. He trained me further in the Saam system. And then when I was licensed, I started doing what I learned from school. But then my teacher came to visit a couple of times and then trained me a little bit more in the Saam system. So for me, I feel so lucky, right? Since I'm Irish. I don't have to do what my grandfather did, what style he did. I feel so free. I can just do whatever I think helps patients best. And from my experience, the system that work helps patients the best is the Saam system. Again, I got exposed to a lot of different systems in school and at other times, but I feel like far and away the Saam system has the best clinical results for me, you know, that I can bring to the patients. So that's exclusively what I do now for acupuncture when patients come to see me.
Angelique: And how do you handle the folks that identify as sensitive to needles? Because I understand you use fairly sizable needles for some.
Toby: Yeah. I think I think it's probably self-selective, who pati what patients come to see me. They tend to be really sick and with really recalcinate disease. So if they're needle sensitive, their calculus that they have to make is they're already so sick, a little bit of needle pain that they seem to be okay with, especially if we can get quick clinical results. I had, you know, dozens and dozens of needle sensitive patients, but something about just the four points of the SOM system and just how I talk the patients through the treatment, they seem to even really sense needle sensitive patients, they seem to accept four points. And especially like I said, if you can get quick clinical results for them, needle sensitive patients quickly forget about the needle pain and start focusing on the changes that they're experiencing in their body. A little bit like my experience, right? Like I quickly was realized, my digestion so changed and things like that. Of course, those four points were uncomfortable, but you Quickly forget about that when your body responds so well to something, you start focusing on the clinical results rather than the needle pain. So it seems to work all the all my time practicing, I just have one patient that just wouldn't come back, you know, it said, the needles are just too painful. I can't come back. Everyone else comes back again because it's the ratio of the needle pain to clinical change. Everyone feels like that's that's a good bargain.
Angelique: Okay, that makes sense. Are you able to, if I may ask another question on the same thread? Anything. Are you able to kind of give us those of us who aren't quite sure how to explain the system and the potential for discomfort to someone who either doesn't know about it or is self-identified as needle sensitive, like need serents needle sensitive? I've got a couple of them on my roster that just can't tolerate larger needles. And so I haven't even considered using some with them because I'm sort of following in your footsteps and using the same size needles, which are 40 by 30s for patients.
Toby: Yeah, it's not an essential part of this tradition, right? It doesn't you don't have to absolutely use thick needles. I've trained a couple of monks in this tradition and they're using just Tation and they're getting some decent results, but I think it's gonna help you so much more to evaluate your the response to treatment and like say your point's a little bit off. Since we're only using four points, we really got to make sure all four of those points are active and telling that point to do something. And the thicker needle really helps you with that. So it's not essential, but it's just so much more helpful. I think if you're absolutely needle sensitive patients, they're they're not gonna tolerate a thicker needle at all, then I think I think it's fine to do smaller, thinner gauge needles, but you've got to expect the results not to be as powerful and then the response on the table not to be as strong. So again, that for the Saam system it tends to be very powerful. So we got to evaluate right away. So if we have a little bit less power. It's gonna be harder to evaluate the response to treatment and things like that. So I think that's a that's a that's a difficult thing to navigate. For me, I just I just use the same fake news for everybody. Like I said, only one patient said they just wouldn't come back. And you know that patient and I had a great conversation about it, right? They felt like they just wanted to come to acupuncture just to relax and it wasn't very relaxing the needles. And I said, okay, I mean there's so many other acupunctures out there. So it ended up being a great conversation. But for me, That my real interest is trying to change really significant pathology and try and change that rotation for the patient and have them really feel better. So losing that one patient and being able to help so many others, I feel like that's a that's a good ratio. Talking through the patients, like you know, a lot of times I'm I'm thinking about what I do right for really needle sensitive patients. I say, well, let's just put one needle in and see how it goes. Usually that goes, you know, again, in their mind, it's gonna be a gigantic problem and we insert that one needle. Maybe it's a little bit uncomfortable, but usually it's okay. And then we do two needles, it's okay, three needles okay. And then I said, Well, we just this is the end of the treatment, this fourth needle.
Angelique: My other related question about Som is when you're doing an intake with somebody who has no idea what the system is, how do how what's your lead in? How do you what do you say to them? 'Cause I have this I have this impulse to warn them about the potential for pain, which I know is not great. I wanna do it. I don't always, but I want to. I what do you do in that situation?
Toby: Yeah. I mean, a lot of my patients, if they're referred from other patients, right, then they know that there's there's gonna be just four points they might be uncomfortable. So I think yeah, people are so self-selective to come see me. So I may not be a great person for that, but I would I would definitely advise somebody not to talk about the needle pain. Talk about, you know, the potential for treating that, right? You know, the again that's patients really there for clinical results. So if you can demonstrate some clinical results, then you don't have to talk about the needle pain and the patient's not going to really focus on the needle pain. They're going to really focus on the clinical results. So like a little bit like that patient you were talking about before, right? If you can really like on the table treat rhinitis and then chronic constipation and then that gets resolved with just a couple points, then that's even if those points were uncomfortable for that patient, they just Put that completely aside and they really, you know, that they're just they're just the thing that sticked in their mind is the clinical results. So I would be really reluctant to talk to the patients about how the needles might be painful. And one other thing too, always like if you can prep the point a little bit with your fingernail before you put the needle in. Sometimes that seems to help really well to just to kind of ease it. Fingernail, fingernail, fingernail and then needle seems to patients seem to accept needles better that way. Okay.
Angelique: That's good advice. I haven't quite wrapped my head around the best way to do it. You know, there have been folks that I said, I this four needles. I'm gonna try it. It's just four needles. We're gonna do one side of the body. And you put the first needle in, they're like, whoa. Yeah, all right. Yeah, I'm okay. Wow. And I was like, Yeah, it's it's like, you know, what was it? I was I had some like real good quip that I said. I can't remember what it was. Something like not like big risk, big reward, but something along that line, like of You know, big sensation, big reward or something like that. And that happened a couple of times when I haven't warned people.
Toby: Yeah. I think that's a that's a great way of reframing it. One of my patients he coined the phrase no pain and no Chinese medicine and that's that's sometimes true. Especially if we want to get a strong reaction for the patient's body. We have to use points below the elbows, below the knees. These are the strongest points in the body. So yeah, some of these are uncomfortable. Yeah. I think I wouldn't it seems like I don't get that reaction very much, and I'm not sure why. People aren't like, whoa, I mean, nobody likes getting needles, but usually people aren't like, whoa, I'm not sure what I'm doing different, except for maybe everyone's like self-selecting. They know it's going to be strong needle sensation when they come to see me. So they're already kind of prepped. But I wouldn't advise you to tell people that this is gonna be real strong or even hint at it, right? Yeah. Even hint at it, right? Might not be great because again, and then Sometimes I like I distract pa especially needlephobic patients, right? I distract them with a sensation and then talk to them about something when I'm needling, right? To kind of get their mind off the focus on the needle too. So yeah, I feel like there's lots of distraction things, you know, physical distractions with your with your palpating hand, right? You can do and then also just talk to patients about maybe something else while you're needling. Yeah. Again, we want to help the patients. So if we can make the uncomfortable part of it a little bit easier, that I think that's reasonable to do. Okay.
Angelique: Thank you.
Toby: Yeah, sure. What about can we talk a little bit about your background coming into this? Do you want to start with nursing or maybe even a little bit before that, why you got into healthcare in the first place? Sure.
Angelique: I got into healthcare. I knew that I've always had an affinity for wanting to help people. You know, I was the friend that listened to all of those things. I was also the kid that was always making plant potions in my backyard as a kid, you know, mixing all the dirt, the pine sap and flower petals and all of that together. So I had an interest in plants as well. And then as I grew up, I maintained that interest in plant medicine and sort of studied it off and on. For a very long time, like starting in my early twenties up until present day. And I went into nursing school because it was a practical way that I could get an education and a job that would pay well. I grew up with working class family. And so definitely was it was drilled in my head like you gotta go to college, you gotta get a good education. And I knew I liked taking care of people. And so nursing felt like a good fit for me. And so I did that right out of high school. And then I worked for I've been a nurse now. What's this year? I've been a nurse now for twelve Twenty almost twenty two years. And so the majority of that was spent in oncology and hospice, with a larger portion of that being in hospice care. My first job was on the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona. I moved out there and I lived on the reservation behind the hospital for 14 months. And it was there that I was exposed to end of life care and was like that resonates with me. Like I think I can do this. So when I came back to New England, because there's no place like home, I got a job on an oncology unit and then I worked per diem. For a hospice. And then I kind of have flipped back and forth. And then the last the last period of my nursing practice was in mental health while I was during school because after doing 17 years of hospice care, I felt like I needed to have a little bit of a change in trajectory. But my foray and acupuncture school happened via a local herbalist that I was studying with. Who teaches all different kinds of herbal medicine. And so had an intro to Western herbal medicine and an intro to Chinese herbal medicine. And it was during the intro to Chinese herbal medicine portion that I really lit up inside, like this is so cool. Like brought out the five element chart and was going through all of the, you know, the Shang and the Ku cycles and started talking about organ relationships. And I could see immediately like the some of the connections with Western medicine. And then I could see, you know, how there were things that we could do in Chinese medicine that wouldn't be able to be done in Western medicine. And so I decided, all right. I'm I'm gonna have to do this. And so I didn't think I was gonna be able to until my kids were older. I've got three kids and they're all teenagers now, but back when I was exposed to this, they were quite little. And then the pandemic happened and I was like, if a pandemic can happen, I can go to graduate school. So my husband and I figured it out and I went to acupuncture school and now here I am and I learned about some acupuncture. From one of the acupuncture professors. There's actually two of them that did it at the Mingland School of Acupuncture that I'm aware of. And one of them spoke about it. And again, it was that same sensation of hearing about this system and lighting up inside. Like that seems really neat. And then meeting you at Sharon Weizenbaum's clinic, and then doing the class with you at NESA. And then here I am in my own clinic. And that's sort of the brief overview of it toward the end of my nursing career. Was at with acupuncture school, both because I still knew to work while I was in school, but also because I am very interested in using Chinese medicine to address mental health concerns. So that's a huge issue in our country and heavily medicated pharmaceutically. And so I was really interested in seeing what the system looked like from the inside. And so why not work in it to see how it does work? And so it was quite the education for sure.
Toby: That's great. I was thinking about too, it's so great you already had all that clinical work before you got exposed to Chinese medical theory. And then that just melded together in your mind. You could see you had again, you can match that clinical experience with all that theory. I think most people start that was my experience who start with theory and then you think, okay, we gotta put clinical work on that later on. I think that's so great. You already had so much experience, then you could just put it together. You could see the utility of it right away. I think that's really interesting.
Angelique: Sure. It's a double edged sword though, because when you have training from a Western, you know, point of view, I still find myself struggling with that brain when I'm trying to figure out Chinese medicine or finding myself sometimes being maybe overly cautious and having people follow up. Like there's a person that I'm seeing now that's having some neurological symptoms that are very reminiscent of multiple sclerosis, and they haven't seen a neurologist. And so I've kind of been like trying to guide them to see a neurologist, not pushing them for you know, for sure, but I just I find myself like I find like the huge one of the huge benefits of Western medicine is their diagnostics. It's like they can look inside, you know, see if there's something really wrong. And so that's my favorite way personally to use Western medicine. So I find myself leaning, you know, toward that edge of caution probably more with people because I know what I know. And I don't know if that's a detriment or a bonus really, but it's it's hard when you're trying to do diagnosis. From two points of view. I still struggle with it.
Toby: That sounds valuable, actually, your knowledge about that. Early signs of multiclerosis, that feels like that's a super valuable thing to do. What about can you think of any recent examples when you're trying to diagnose and like some of your training got in the way of your Chinese medicine diagnosis? Because I think for that example, I think that's just only positive. Anything that comes to mind that's it's negative when you're trying to diagnose.
Angelique: Only in that I have to undo the tangle. So once I saw potential multiple sclerosis in this patient, then I'm thinking of their neurological Western disease as I know it. And then having to sort of backtrack that to are they damp? Are they dry? You know, going through like the diagnostic instead of just being like fully docked and like this is what I this is what I think from a Western point of view. How do you kind of go back down the back alleys to get a better Chinese medicine diagnosis? So it's just sort of like a bit of reverse engineering that has to happen sometimes if I'm quick on the
Toby: Mm.
Angelique: I know what's going on Western medically speaking. As much as I can as a nurse and not a doctor.
Toby: Right. What about for th what about for that patient? What did you diagnose from a Chinese medicine standpoint?
Angelique: So I have not yet treated them with some because again, like this is a person who I'm kind of like, but they're a spleen excess person. So there's definitely a damp there's a damp phlegm, like a damp wind phlegm component to their presentation. Work in Chinese medicine like TCM diagnoses.
Toby: Yeah. Okay. So but that's great. I mean, it sounds like yeah, it starts to tangle, but you can tease it back apart. Again, that can be incredibly helpful for you as a clinician, right? Because again, as clinicians, our most valuable thing is our judgment. And so you've got so much experience from the Western side, that as long as it doesn't clash with your Chinese medicine diagnosis, I think it will only be beneficial.
Angelique: No, they just tussle. They tussle a little bit, you know.
Toby: Yeah. Yeah, it's really it's really different lenses, right? So yeah, I could see how they tussle a little bit. All right. Anything else you want to discuss today?
Angelique: What how do you feel? Yes, actually, there's one thing. How do you feel about self-treatment? Do you feel like it's as effective as being treated by someone else? Do you think it's more effective? Do you think there's a loss of that patient provider relationship? If for example, we acupuncturists were to treat ourselves with PSOM or another type of acupuncture, do you have a an opinion on that?
Toby: Yeah, I have some pretty strong opinions on that. So thanks for asking me about that. So this tradition is a monastic tradition, and it part of it is for monks to treat themselves. This is a wandering monks tradition. So they're out of the safety and like relative safety and relative comfort of a monastery. The monks are just out there in the wild wandering. So they need some way to treat themselves again to help other people. They've taken a bodhisattva vow to help other beings. So They try and treat other people, but also they have to maintain themselves. Especially they have no money, they hit they have only they're begging for food and things like that. So lots of health problems can come up. So the system's designed to be able to help for them to be able to treat themselves. Since it's all points below the elbows, below the knees, it's easy to give self-treatment. So that's baked into the Saam system. Self-treatment is part of it. And especially for new practitioners, I think starting with treating yourself, I think it's fantastic, right? Because you can understand. The discomfort of the needle, you can work on your technique on yourself. And also you can get a better somatic understanding of the response. Those four points give such a powerful stimulus to the body. It's nice to experience that yourself rather than just having a theoretical idea about doing for other people. So for the sound system, it's built in. And then I also did about a decade of training with Jeffrey Wen and he always recommended to treat yourself. And then if you can't figure it out, then go to other people. I feel like that's a good one two step thing too, right? Again, if you can resolve it on your own, that's such good learning. That's fantastic. But also, yeah, we have all these blind spots. I always think about it as we have a label outside of us, but it's really hard to read the label from the inside, especially so you can go to someone else, they can read the label so clearly and then they can treat you. But from his standpoint, you should always try and treat yourself first. And then if you can't figure it out, then go to other people. Thank you.
Angelique: That's helpful. When I've thought about when I thought about it, you know, time and resources and everything. Like I don't know how many acupuncturists actually get acupuncture themselves. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way in which we had some sort of giving tree to our own acupuncture community? Like when I thought about this, spend like we just had like one spot per week in our schedule that an acupuncturist that we knew could just take we would treat, you know, wouldn't that be great?
Toby: That's a great idea. Is there local acupunctures like in your area that's something feasible? That too.
Angelique: Of coordinate something like that. Yeah. I'm sure. I there's there's so many acupuncturists in my area. I just right now I don't have the bandwidth to be able to take that on. But perhaps down the road that might be something I could propose, particularly as I establish myself in the community.
Toby: That would be great. Especially you got to wrap up that doctorate program. And then yeah, that'll free up a little bit of time. All right. Well, let's leave it here today. And Okay. I think yeah. I look forward to our conversations going forward. It is it's been really rewarding for me to discuss so many things with you. And then I heard from a lot of people that listen to these discussions too, they're getting quite a bit out of it. So we better keep this going. Right. All right. Like usual. Yeah.
Angelique: Really good time.
Toby: Like usual, if you enjoyed this video, like it. If you didn't enjoy it, Angelique and I will do much better next time. Okay? Everyone, bye.
Angelique: Very well. Take care. Bye.
