Office Hours with Angelique and Toby, episode 26. Released July 1, 2026. 76 minutes.
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About this episode
Heiner Fruehauf, scholar, practitioner, and founder of Classical Pearls, joins Toby Daly and Angelique Britt. He traces his path from a German family of nature-cure physicians and Chinese literature scholarship to Chinese medicine, explains what he means by classical Chinese medicine in contrast to modern TCM, including its immaterial and spiritual dimensions, and recounts founding a classical Chinese medicine college and building Classical Pearls to improve herb sourcing and quality.
Heiner describes the Healing Order Wellness Center, housed in a restored 1924 building in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge, as a model for clinical institutions that support practitioners and demonstrate the medicine in practice. He tells the story of a trip to China, from mineral hot springs in Datong to a pilgrimage to Mount Wangwu, where the landscape echoed the name of an acupuncture point, and offers encouragement to newer herbalists on choosing formulas and on why quality and adherence matter more than a rigid preference for raw herbs.
Topics
From nature-cure physicians and Chinese literature to Chinese medicine
Classical Chinese medicine and modern TCM
Founding a college and Classical Pearls
Herb sourcing, processing, and quality
The Healing Order Wellness Center in the Columbia River Gorge
China trip: Datong hot springs and Mount Wangwu
Acupuncture points, rivers, stars, and geography
Advice for newer herbalists: following formula indications
Raw herbs, extracts, and patient adherence
Key terms
Classical Chinese medicine: in Heiner's usage, Chinese medicine grounded in its classical texts and cosmology, including dimensions he argues were filtered out of modern TCM.
Classical Pearls: Heiner Fruehauf's line of classically based herbal formulas.
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: Heiner Fruehauf, welcome to Office Hours. So nice to see you.
Heiner: Same here, thank you.
Toby: I think a lot of our listeners will be really familiar with her work, but on the chance that some of them aren't very familiar, would you mind giving us like a little bit of your professional background? And if you could somehow lead it into your latest project to the healing.
Heiner: Yeah, I originally was born into a family of German nature cure physicians. Those are MDs who exclusively practice homeopathy and hydrotherapy, those kinds of things. I was a big family. Everybody was a doctor. I wanted to do something totally different. So upon graduation from high school I studied Chinese, which was thoroughly unpopular at the time when China had just opened after being basically closed completely for several decades during the Cultural Revolution. And then was one of the first people to go to China. Met my American wife there, got a PhD from the University of Chicago and was all ready to be a teacher of Chinese literature. And then got diagnosed with cancer as a young man. And that prompted me to go back to China for self-healing purposes. But Also just was interested in this modality that was helping me that before I only encountered theoretically and I got so enamored with that after two years, instead of taking a position actually that was open at the time at Harvard University to teach Chinese literature, I never looked back and founded the College of Classical Chinese Medicine here at National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. And was sort of partially at least instrumental in coining the term classical Chinese medicine in contrast to the regularly used TCM, which stands for traditional Chinese medicine, of course, but found and my teachers found that the way how this medicine is nowadays, at least in China, taught and practiced and how it then initially came over to the West was anything but traditional, but was basically Chinese medicine filtered through a Western medicine lens and understood through a biochemical and anatomical lens and lots of things, particularly any kind of overly immaterial content, right? My dear friend and colleague, Lou Li Kong, author of Classical Chinese Medicine, That book that we helped to translate, he always talks about, uses the Yijing term Xing Arshan and Xingar Xia, the level of the material below the level of the material. So the immaterial, the world of the immaterial and the world of the material, the world of matter, the world of the red dust, the world of the sticks and stone reality, as some physicists call that. And
Angelique: Bye!
Heiner: He as well as my other teachers, they are of the opinion that Chinese medicine is primarily a Xingar Shang medicine, which means it lives in the realm of the immaterial and the realm of the spiritual, even, and that has been sort of cleansed out of the record, because of course we know that China is has a government that already since 1949 has Devoted to the ideology of Marxist materialism, which is not that different from scientific materialism that we practice over here, but then wanted at the same time to bring Chinese medicine back as sort of a patriotic statement. This is our culture, this is uniquely Chinese, but only in Mao Zedong started that under the auspices of Western medicine where it was almost strictly sort of like there was this police person there with the Ministry of Health, which had Chinese Western medicine over Chinese medicine and was literally nitpicking, this book is okay, that book is not okay, this kind of article is okay, that is not okay, proceeding in this kind of a fashion. And so when I came back in nineteen Ninety, I 1992 actually, I was greatly encouraged by my main teacher within the university was the dean at Chengdu University, TCM and Pharmacology. Started a real Chinese medicine college that he didn't have the power to change the curriculum over there since the whole country was using the same government issued book. And so we did and then we've had a good run for 35 years. Until the college itself decided to also go the Western medicine route as so many others are doing, but had an influence on the profession, I believe. I also published an article together with Professor Dung. Called Chinese Medicine in Crisis, Science Politics, and the Making of TCM, which is kind of chronicling what I just said in greater detail and with lots of footnotes in the late 1990s. And that prompted several schools to change their previously TCM curriculum to something that was more of what they always wanted to do or felt because it was this we are Westerners doing Chinese medicine. Well the Chinese themselves do that. We must be
Toby: Do but never.
Heiner: Overly romanticizing the medicine until it was like, my God, I have permission to charge forward. This is always what I thought Chinese medicine actually was. And here are some historical reasons that we are not bound by. And therefore we let's practice and teach the medicine in this way. I primarily was introducting a little bit needle phobic because my father was a neurotherapist, meaning he basically practiced acupuncture with injection needles and did that already on us when we were five years old. So I just see a needle even now I get goosebumps. So even though acupuncturists
Toby: I'm license. Angeli could doing that to her kids.
Angelique: I did it when I was in school.
Toby: But so
Heiner: So as a result of it, I was more interested in the herbs. I felt the herbs were also helping me the most and the qigong. And so we implemented also at the College of Classical Chinese Medicine one of the most rigorous, classically based, lots of Shang'an Lun reading and et cetera, programs in the country. And Was always because of my own disease background was very much focused on difficult and recalcitrant diseases and including cancer. My practice has been that for the last 35 years or more. And yeah, as a result of it, I not only 15 years ago established the Earth Company Classical Pearls out of the need that. I felt like that if you are not just by reputation, that anything coming out of China, unfortunately, including the herbs, has is getting a lower and lower reputation. Like right pet food and all other kinds of things that have been lots of scandals and but also as just knowing that even if you prescribe a perfect formula and you using herbs that were sprayed or Even worse, genetically modified or something like that, that or using the wrong species, which is very often the case as my colleague and friend Andy Ellis already pointed out almost forty years ago using the example of Penalia, which is even to the present date we have I mean it says Pansha We're using actually not a Penelia but an Arcima species that the Chinese call Shribancha, which is an okay replacement for wet phlegm, but it doesn't have the downward-moving anti-counterflow type of effect that the true species Penellia Tanata has. So that was a whole fun project to kind of ride around China with jeeps, make lots of connections in the countryside, teach a staff on the ground there, teach the factory there, what kind of extraction techniques we want and what our standard is, which is basically the sentence from the Tao Dijing, Tao Fat Zurian. If in doubt go the natural way, the Tao is for always following nature. And so all of this, because this is what's happening in China, is this Enamor being enamored with modern technology and it's a shiny new machine it's gotta be better than some traditional kind of stuff that's called tour, right? That which means earthy, meaning that's sort of like grandma stuff that's can't be any good, you know, can't be as good as this shiny machine or scientific you know, you just throw in the word science and everybody goes like, that's amazing. It's all scientific. So that was in and that venture enabled me because it's because of course you in the manufacturing business, well it was very in the beginning you put your some of your own money on the line there and you don't know what's whether that stuff's gonna spoil and the transport over, whether you're ever gonna sell a single bottle of it. But it was quickly I'm
Toby: Whisky
Heiner: Grateful that I was steered in that direction because that company is, you know, is saving lives from a, you know, that's the most important from a mission perspective. And allowed me also to fulfill another mandate that my herb teacher, Professor Dung, gave me, which is incorporating poucher into the equation, which has almost been forgotten, like the alchemical processing of single herbs will then immediately impart a different direction or underline a particular potential of efficacy in the herb. And that's very labor intensive and it's not normally done anymore. But then of course, you know, you it the company also generates income even if you're not seeing patients. And that then enabled me to have the funds for something I've always wanted to do that many of us want to do, but I haven't been able to because of the not just lack of finances, but lack of support from the financial industry. I learned that even with financial funds where you can prove a track record, I can pay this mortgage, even if this business is blank for a year or two, I have other company that can pay for it. The banks would not loan us any money to build a larger retreat center that has infantry capacity. If we would have said we want to invest in Walmart or just buy another house or something s invest in a strip mall, they would have all, you know, said no problem. But my God, some alternative medicine. There was always you were being led along and you have to Supply every month's an update, every month's an update. And then at the end it's like you come these national banks, you'd like a level higher and level and then in the last meeting, some guy sits there on the board of directors and says that's crazy, we're not gonna do that. And then they you just get a phone call in a whole year of tediously hiring like an accountant to document every single thing and everything you did do, everything you will do, all the paperwork. And then you start over again and there's another bank and that says, we so super interested. Yeah, that's yeah, we so more f so much more flexible than this other bank. But then the same thing happened. So we kind of wasted like many years. And of course we are out here in the Columbia River Gorge, which is one of the most scenic But also because of that, is a national park that is incredibly strictly reglemented in terms of business opportunities. And so we purchased a historic building that was completely that has in an iconic spot and with a illustrious history like Clark Gable, FDR, Charlie Chapman all stayed in this. 1924 building that once was called the Vista House because you have such a commanding view over the Columbia River Gorge. But that was now completely fire damaged and water damaged. The floors were buckled like half a yard off the floor, so much water, totally mildewy and so but we bought that building because it was in nature, it wasn't in the city. Oregon is not Nevada. It's you can't just buy a plot of land and just open a business. It's super outside of the city boundaries or strictly controlled. And so we spent eight and a half years building this, you know, like working with seven government agencies, the Indian tribes to make sure you're not damaging any graves that potentially could be there. The Transportation Department, the Forest Service, the You know, various nonprofits who want to raise all the buildings that exist in the gorge and not allow any new ones. But we were finally able to convince all of these stakeholders in the local community that this is a good idea. And historical buildings are allowed to have business. And so and then when we finally had a lot of Equity in the building, about fifty percent, and the interest rates were super high at nine percent. Then I said, Wow, we are so willing to give so that then helped us to kind of finally finish. And as of two months ago, we are in that building which is called the Healing Order, and is probably as far as Chinese medicine is concerned, probably the largest.
Toby: Yeah bunny now. So
Heiner: Chinese Medicine Center in North America with like nine treatment rooms and five bedrooms for people to stay overnight for one week retreats where people do qigong in the morning meditation at night, get one or two treatments a day and get a lecture at night about exercise and nutrition. And the goal is of course to not just give people a treatment, but have them understand how did you get yourself in this pickle in the first place. And so when you go back, how do you change, not fall back into patterns or so? And of course, after a week of treatments every day and hikes in the gorge and you feel already much different and you feel like some reset has already occurred. So that is the latest project that gave me more grey hair than any of the other ones.
Toby: Home. It's amazing the fortitude to push that through. I remember hearing that banks will only loan you money when you don't need it. Yeah, yeah. That is that's the metaphor that this exact
Heiner: This exactly they go like you wanna ha borrow a million dollars? Well show us a million dollars in collateral over here.
Toby: Like if I had it, but I'm so excited about that vision. And I already have a patient that I've partially referred to your website to look at it and I think I am gonna send her. But so you feel like a week is good or like especially something really recalcitrant like that. Do you do you feel like that's that would that's your ideal stay for somebody?
Heiner: Well longer it's it's like this. It's as you know, since we're all in the same business, one of the famous sentences in the Huangdi Najing is and my one of my teachers at the university in China gave that to me as a calligraphy when I left, which is that sentence from the Najing that says, If you if you're drilling a well, start starting to drill a well when you're already thirsty and when you're starting to forge When the battle has already begun, isn't that too late? So, of course, our business is primarily not treating serious cases that with oxygen tanks and metastasis everywhere when they're already at that stage, but keep people healthy. So this is called, therefore, a wellness center. So we want to help people stay healthy and also want to have that.
Toby: Ideally
Heiner: Energy in the center. However, since our bread and butter for the last thirty-five years has been difficult in recalcitrant diseases. So we've been getting many people with cancer, getting many people with heart disease and heart failure, getting many people with COPD and you know, serious kidney and liver stuff, etc. Diabetes, whatnot. Of course that will stay open To those people, the question is just like, you know, that is an ongoing five-year project mostly. In that case. And yes, you can stay two weeks, three weeks is even better. But you know, it's it's more meant to be for these people who stressed out, they haven't had a vacation in a long time, and then after a week you feel like I'm back, which hopefully will happen with people also who are have more serious types of diseases, but it that is we can't really call a reset there because it'll still be like a drop on the stone that needs to be continued. But the idea is then to send people home with like sort of three to six months worth of program that they then continue for sure. So we open to both regular health maintenance as well as more serious kind of Problems we've been treating before. Of course it's also a cost thing, you know, because it is like in this relatively fancy building now. It has this guy giganton mortgage and this huge staff. Before it was just me and, you know, an acupuncturist and one person answering the phone. And now we like this fifteen people milling around facility.
Toby: The studies or you have
Heiner: My god. Yeah, I mean the idea is to have a model for alternative healthcare in this country, not just for greater live in the materialist society. So you have this iconic place and fancy in this special historic place and with real serious money involved there. It people then believe that's gotta be real medicine if there is such a you know, like 11,000 square foot building there. But really at the same time, we living at a time as you well know when every day there's some the Empress College and play collapsed and OCOM and Portland collapsed and so and so this clinic collapsed. It's is and people putting logging and saying our school defrauded us by
Toby: It's
Heiner: Telling us, you know, we could make all this pay our loans back, and we feel like we can't. So the attempt is to create a center that's not only offers a serious alternative, not just sort of, I mean we do sports men injury medicine and that alone, but are we willing to disorders rather than referring you right back out? It was also a goal to show then that This is like a you know, like we should be able to pay people similar wages than is that a nurse gets paid, that a that a physician's assistant gets paid, that a doctor gets paid. There shouldn't, you know, people should aspire, not just because they want to help people to go into this medicine, but because it's a viable from economic and financial perspective is a viable option. And then of course you do that, you train the people and you pay decent wages, then you of course you are and you are in a fancy building and with all of these not just Chinese by the way, but European nature to modalities. Like we have a Polish salt room that's mimics the atmosphere of Polish salt mines where nobody ever gets a cold or covet or asthma. We have German oil dispersion bath in the Steinerian anthroposophical medicine way. We have French Vishi shower that's combined with Chinese medicine herp wraps. We have Japanese cedar enzyme bath, we have ja Korean charcoal room. So there are lots of wonderful modalities from all over the world. So it's an ideal strategy egg project that Everybody, including my family, is making fun of me because I didn't want to cut corners anywhere there. But then that means, you know, it's you come to a facility like that, you stay there, you're getting like three locally sourced biodynamic meals with an on-site cook, you having on-site trainers, you having on-site people who walk you in the forest, that is sort of, you know, that will That'll cost money. So if somebody, unless you're independently wealthy, you couldn't just say, I'm gonna stay there for three months. That would be great. But that's probably going for the just a day or two is too short. But I think in a week or so you should feel some kind of difference. At the very least, you can say we know this person's how they're reacting. We can see how they're reacting to the herbs and the supplements and to the other kinds of hands on treatments. And So that when they're going home they already is a difference, but also when there's a long distance a follow up or so, we have a pretty good idea who this person is already.
Toby: It's it's so heartening to see a Chinese medicine institution being started in twenty six. It's you know, it and with a model that, you know, could be replicated on the future. And then it's possible like b now that you're showing that it works, banks in the future might you they might be able to point to, look, it thi th this does work, right? People we can make this financially possible going forward. I was gonna
Heiner: Absolutely correct. Just like when you're buying a house and then the real estate agent does comps like square footage worth in your neighborhood, this is exactly what the bank will do and go like give us examples from the whole country of similar institutions and ideally with their as much financial information as you can provide for them. So that is the goal is to because I You know, I'm sixty-five this year and I retired from in-person teaching at the university. Of course, we have this classical Chinese Medicine.org platform more there than ever and enjoy that and will continue doing that for a long time. You just open the doors of the Healing Order Wellness Center. So I'll be there for a long time. But the real goal is really not create a headache for me in almost retirement times, but is to inspire the profession and go like anybody sh can do this, you know, and I'm we not only in the business of inspiring you and cheering you on, but we'll actively teach you how to do that. Or if this is successful even more, we'll be your bank. We'll we'll invest in your center and become partners in that venture because And this is an important part, and I'm sort of following Liu Li Hong's lead here, who after writing Su Kao Jong Yi that we translated as classical Chinese medicine, which is not only, by the way, in China became a best selling the for many years the best the best selling nonfiction books for many years, over a million copies sold. But even, you know, while this is of course not the case in the West, but As far as Chinese University of Hong Kong Press goes, that publishes very geeky academic books, they say this book is selling much more for other kinds of books as well. So I'm glad to hear that. But he sort of started a revolution. Two lineages back to a classical way of thinking in China. So we've always been sort of friends for almost 30 years now and joint efforts here in East and West doing similar things. While he, before he was retired, and he was still professor, senior professor at Guangxi University of TCM, he founded the research institute for the clinical. Investigation of Chinese medicine because he felt that it wasn't through theory at this point, right? In this country, since the 1970s, we've swollen from certificate programs to master programs to doctorate programs and then having 72 of them. And granted there's been a little bit of a contraction. But nevertheless, there was a tremendous effort on the educational certification getting licensure. In comparison to the naturopaths that only have like I think 17 states, there's almost all 50 states have licensure for acupuncture. So that's tremendous success really on educational and licensure level. But clinic, our even the p profession itself doesn't believe that we can treat cancer even in a in a complementary fashion while people are in chemotherapy. That we believe we can't treat heart disease when people are on high blood pressure medication, but that you need to even teach that at school, you need to stay away from that. And kind of reglemented ourselves into this kind of very narrow window of pain where also the insurance companies pay for. And so he felt that was true in China as well. So he said, we need to show that this medicine really works. Let's focus on the clinic because it's our patients who will refer patients. And so That was sort of one of the goals why at this stage in my life I got involved in this headachey, headache inducing project, because I feel like our profession needs clinical centers, not just teaching theory at this point, but seeing the theory in action and document it, you know, eventually maybe have a magazine or some kind of a you know, research arm associated with that, which is not The necessarily Western medicine research, but at the very late you know, case based learning, which we are already perpetuating doing on classical Chinese Medicine dot org. Basically all of my classes online now are case based learning or so. Yeah I get
Toby: I yeah, I'm just so heartened again that again you're you've got an institution in demonstrating the effectiveness of Chinese medicine. And then if you could document case by case coming through there, especially Angelinique and I, we just get, you know, hour max with patients. It what a fantasy to spend a week or two, you know, and just immersed in that and then to be able to go from that. I feel like that's yeah, anyways, really exciting news. I again sorry about the headaches, but the end product it sounds amazing.
Heiner: Well, I'm born in the year of the ox, so that's that's sort of the when the ox doesn't have anything else the Chinese say to put its horns into, it feels uncomfortable. So this kind of suffering and then letting everybody know how what a b
Toby: Bitter life, one in a house. That seems like almost too many yokes though, all those government agencies, seven or so yokes on you. I think that might have been too much. Underneath of that though, the
Heiner: The oxy Fox is always delighting when he gets to
Angelique: Other people Yeah.
Toby: That's okay.
Heiner: If you born in the year of the pig, it's more like I just managed to have this year vacation or something and that is your
Toby: Right. So that's like a then that's then the
Heiner: Opposite MOSL. So we are just all so yes, I sometimes wish I was born in the year of the pigs, but yeah.
Toby: All different. Yeah. Lucky for that. Yeah. I know you're just recently back from a trip to China. Any highlights from that trip?
Heiner: Yes, there were many, many highlights indeed. This was there's usually some kind of interpersonal drama when you go with a group of like twenty-five to fifty people to China. And this time it was I only went there as a kind of pilgrimage to my only still surviving teachers, Professor Wan Shen Yu's 90th birthday. And I opened the door for anybody who knows him from years ago when he came over here in the nineteen nineties and was teaching here or been to China with me before. So everybody came on it was a not kind of commercial trip. It was just a bunch of like minded people who all knew each other really well. And so for the first time in thirty two years of doing these trips, there was like no drama virtually.
Toby: Because everybody
Heiner: Was sort of a veteran and then secondly so that was nice and as a result of it we just got to focus on the impressions on the yeah experiences we had. It was really a smorgasbord of remarkable experiences, starting with a place in northern China that is called Batong. I this is a dangerous question because I could talk for two hours if you
Toby: I said only highlights.
Angelique: Holy highlights, but everything was a highlight.
Toby: But
Heiner: Last year I went and Ludi, who I always visit when I go there, he kind of introduced me to this special mineral water and said this hot spring in Datung in northern China and it comes from like three kilometers deep and it's this healing water and I took some bottles home with me and this super alkaline water almost pH of nine and it
Angelique: He- he- he-
Heiner: As you may know, I'm using in my clinical practice as an additional in addition to asking questions and tongue and pulse in our regular Chinese medicin pick, I use German electrodermal screening procedures to verify that something is actually wanted by the patient. And this was the only substance I've ever investigated in this manner in thirty-five years that was a medicine for everybody. Usually everything, just like the herbs and fruits, the same thing as you or this supplement, that superfruit, you test it. It's good for this person, but doesn't do anything for that person. For that person, this is the same substance, even allergic. And this water was like a medicine for everybody. So that caught my attention. I've never seen a substance like this. And I go went like I want to go back to this place. And so we bathe in this water. It turns out This was made by the e China's always not just about the places but about the people. So this person, like remarkable, Mr What was his name? Mr. My goodness. This is like one of these kind of Mr. Gore. Mr. Gore was his name or Dr. Gore, but he was like edu he was educated as a doctor in the nineteen seventies during the cultural revolution. Which basically means he got two weeks worth of training and then somebody said you're a licensed physician and then he just was so entrepreneurial that he just started this own shack and then that shack got bigger and then he made more shacks and hired more people. So now he's like bigger than the government hospital. He has like three hospitals. Wow. In the city of Datong. One only for tumors, one only for cardiovascular
Angelique: Huge.
Heiner: And one for all the rest of it. And makes it's interesting that his full name is Gordon, he who makes all of the profit. So I don't know whether he'll change his name. I don't think that is legal in China actually change your name, but so he was proudly telling us how he's netting nine hundred million US dollars a year, but he doesn't believe in Western medicine, and so he uses all of this profit.
Angelique: He- Really mean
Toby: They eat Year
Heiner: To build like this huge Chinese medicine hospital in the countryside outside of Doc with five hundred beds, has like these, you know, hotel nearby and where people can just and has like a hundred and thirty-five private courtyards in the traditional northern style where you can kind of let the water come into your own tub and your own so speak.
Angelique: Sweet.
Heiner: Because once he bought developed that he discovered there was this water underneath, so he drilled really deep until he reached it and found that it was one of the best, even from a biochemical perspective, one of the best waters in the world. That evaluates waters from all the wor around the world. So most hot spring waters you can just sulfur very sulfury and it's very good for your skin. It's
Toby: Really there is Soccer right is very
Heiner: Good for rheumatoid arthritis, et cetera. But you can't drink that water. It would be hard on your kidneys. Whereas this water is excellent to drink. And he while he does do train on their acupuncture moxabustion herbs, he most patients he just gives this water to bathe in it every single day. And there's these amazing case examples of all kinds of cures that they are affecting there. So that was like a
Toby: Very real.
Heiner: Experience. Also it was amazing we had this because now I mean technically billionaire using that money to instead of like doing this what's called Baovahu behavior thing in China, which is this nouveau riche, right? Driving Lamborghinis and totally spoiling your kids and having them, you know, fly in private jets to Paris all the time, which is sort of
Angelique: Here.
Heiner: What happens a lot, he like just still walks around with this gray communist suit and it does have a driver, it's a normal car and whatnot, but he invests his money to buy back Chinese medicine texts from abroad, particularly to is willing to drop two million dollars on a little book like this from the Ming Dynasty.
Angelique: He
Heiner: That's the only extant version of I don't know, Bensao Gamu or something like this. So he has one expert on staff that does nothing but just southees and other auction houses. So he has this shuck full library with all of these treasures. It was I it kind of blew us away. It was amazing. So that was one highlight. Yeah. I'll just give you one more highlight.
Toby: Hong Kong And that was pretty amazing.
Heiner: To not make it too long that question, but what now we already in northern China. My all of I spent two years in Fudan University in the eighties, which is in Shanghai, and two years in Chengdu, which is in southwest China. But I never while I traveled through almost the entire country, I never spent time in northern China, which is now considered sort of a hinterland where country bumpkins live and where coal mining is happening. And You know, like when we think China, we think Suzhou, we think gardens, we think bamboo, we think qi, whereas the cradle of Chinese civilization is north of the Yang, which is Shanxi Province, maybe a little bit south Henan Province, maybe a little bit west Shanxi province where Xi'an is. But it's basically what was called Jungguo, which means the heartland or
Toby: Yellow roof?
Heiner: The center of the world really was not what we call Jungwa, the central country nowadays, which goes all the way to Tibet in the west and all the way to the Vietnamese border in the south. But it all of that was considered Babarian country before. It was just this small window of which is primarily Shanxi Province and You have so many artifacts there still standing from the Tang Dynasty and Sung Dynasty and Ming Dynasty that you cannot find in the South where if you find something older, it's usually Qing dynasty. So that was really remarkable. But as you know, I've been my one of my passion projects has been for the last 30 years the Chen K philosophy of Chinese medicine, which is as above so below. To use hermeneutic alchemical language here, which that the map that is our human that is Chinese medicine map with its meridians and acupuncture points on it said to be a reflection of the macrocosm, which means places on earth, which means stars in the sky. And that is always what is considered Confucian is considered Taoism to make that statement.
Toby: Cheers.
Heiner: But how the microcosm is related to the macrocosm, at least the mythological imagination of the ancient Chinese, nobody ever fully explored. And so I spent 30 years of scouring, you know, like taking the name of an acupuncture point, where Sun Tsun Miao in the sixth century reminded us and said that the secret of the acupuncture points is in their names. And so I started paying
Toby: In the
Heiner: Just like how I teach everything else in the medicine for the last thirty five years by looking at the Chinese characters. What is yin, what is yang, what Haiyang, what is the wood element, those kinds of things? I started applying this symbolist methodology to the names of the acapuncle points. And then was able to identify about a third of the 360 cases stellar constellations in the sky that are one-to-one relationship to acapunture points, are they directly, you know, like
Toby: G.
Angelique: This is.
Toby: Very rarely.
Heiner: The name of the star, it's usually some kind of hidden roundabout way to relating it to that, where you need to study non-medical text to find that out. And of course, modern search engines help greatly in this. And then places on the earth. And so I made a map before we went to China with like about 120 dots on it on the earth. And all of those dots, they were to 95% north of the
Toby: River.
Heiner: And east of that bend you know, that they call Ne, inside of the yellow at Lumen at the Dragon Gate, comes to the surface, then goes south and then cuts sharp east toward the ocean. That land that is in between there, that is where most of those points are, and the vicinity of Loriang.
Angelique: East
Toby: Yellow river
Heiner: And then also a little bit west to Xia. And so it was just amazing to take the train and go through this ancient land and visit these ancient temples where you still have statues from the Tan Dynasty from 1500 years ago. But and I will conclude with this, we in one instance we were close enough at the city that's very ancient city, but that I've never heard about before called Jincheng, close to the Yellow River in Shanxi province. We one of my students who's seen in my cosmic math class where I'm going through every single acupuncture point in this fashion, linking it to different places that we have on classical Chinese medicine do to work. There was a drone shot of Mount Wangwu when I was talking about the small intestine and the heart. So this is right in the heartland. It's the number one out of fifty mountains in Taoism. And we were just two hours away, so we said let's go there. So we did a day trip and we went to the top of Mount Wanwu, which was more touristy than we thought it was, because as a cable car now, you don't need to walk up there. And there were, you know, some monks who were banging against stuff, but that was really just for tourists, I think. There was but then as we were enjoying the amazing view you have. From up there, right? You looking at the Taihung Mountains in the west, and you're looking at the Yellow River in the south and that steep drop of the northern Shanxi Plateau that drops down to the Yellow River and then comes the Henan Plain, south of the river. That was all like so many battles have been fought there. So many legendary figures have walked this land. It's just amazing to stand there and behold that. But I was talking to one of my students and said somewhere here on this mountain is the source of the Ji River. And as you know, chapter twelve of the Ling Shu is this enigmatic chapter that's called Shara Jing Shui.
Angelique: The how the
Toby: Twelve
Heiner: Or meridians of the body are linked to the 12 sacred rivers in ancient China. And it just is a 12 statements, you know, the lung goes with the yellow river, the large intestine goes with the Yangtze River. Heart goes with the Ji River. The Ji River is a river that is not wider in many instances than this desk that I'm sitting at here, and that is underground a lot of its journey, very much like the heart is a immaterial organ, right? It governs Shen. So it is a Xing or Shang organ dealing with light, dealing with sacred essences that are immaterial. And therefore it's no coincidence that the most material, voluminous waterwise rivers, they go with the most material organs, along the large intestine, metal, the most structures of the elements, the ones that have most to do with matter, have most to do with money and industrial production, etc. Both outside the body as well as inside. So the river ji is this mysterious river that out of tens of thousands of waterways in China, they pick to represent the heart and it flows from this mountain, which is called Wang Rushan, which is the Mount King Chamber. So it's like the Heartland, the heart chamber of ancient China, which itself is significant. And I said, This mountain is huge, and you know, we need to go back for dinner. They're waiting for us to complain if he won't be there. It would be cool to find the source of that river, right? So the guide who was with us, he spoke some English, he overheard that, asked the monk and said, Where's the chamber? And he said, it's just five minutes.
Toby: Source of G River.
Heiner: You just walk down the steps, it's right there. And it that source is interestingly called, which means pond that star of the Big Dipper. So first star of the Dipper, it doesn't other than the pole star itself, is at the center of our known universe. And so this is like a mirror to that. So that means it's again heartland, right? So we've got the G River, got the heart.
Toby: Mirrors the first star
Heiner: We got the Big Dipper. It's all about the center and the heart. And then we go down to the spring where everybody goes to the top, but nobody goes down there. Nobody knows what this is. Nobody knows what the significance of the G River.
Toby: This
Heiner: I was thinking
Angelique: If the G
Heiner: Originates there, then the spring is resonant with heart one, the point heart one. First of all, the geographical location of that is that mountain is like a head here. And then right below that head, it branches out like this. Like it has. And that point is right here, right? It's right below the head. And so we walk down there.
Toby: Shoulders.
Heiner: And then that so-called spring is not a spring that bubbles from the ground. It doesn't bubble from the rock, but it is a pool that collects water from water that drips down top. And the name of heart one is called
Angelique: On the top. It's the G of Taiji.
Heiner: As in Taijian is an actual description of a type of spring that falls from the heaven, that falls from the sky, rather than Yung Chuan, which is bubbling well kidney one name, which is a geyser that comes up from the ground. So there was not only, you know, this naming of Akapantra points is not just metaphorical and fantasy land and but is actually mapping I mean, you stood in this small defined place and you were like the creators of the acupuncture point names in this exact spot and it was just everybody was just like you know, and we were kind of meditating there and kind of doing a Tibetan water chance and it was just like at the medical moment of the trip, particularly after researching this for thirty years and being
Toby: Very
Angelique: They stood here.
Toby: Thunderstruck.
Heiner: Not just sort of in the land where the acupuncture points are represented on earth or resonant with on earth, but in an actual spot. So yeah.
Toby: That's incredible. I was I'm I'm restraining myself from asking for a third highlight just because I know Angelique has a question for you. There's more there's more highlights. I know but I'm gonna re
Angelique: Maybe later. Yeah, it sounds like quite the chirp you had. If I may ask as a newer practitioner, so I had awareness of classical pearls and I have the manual and I was looking through it and I was feeling a little intimidated by it. Like maybe I didn't know enough, you know, before to start using them. And Toby introduced me how he uses them. And then I read them more closely and I started recognizing patients that I have and some of the formulas that you have there. And so I know I'm personally interested in learning more, but I'm wondering what you would recommend for any practitioner, especially those of us that are newer, to get started with learning from you and how you approach Chinese herbal medicine.
Heiner: Yeah, thank you for that question. I mean, first of all, like created classical pearls not only to have absolute control over the manufacturing and the sourcing of the herbs, but also to provide classical formulas in an already in most instances now of course we have unmodified classical formulas as well in the I believe it's called the heritage line, but the first thirty-one formulas were basically taking classical very often Shan Lun formulas and modifying them after being in practice for twenty years.
Angelique: For
Toby: For
Heiner: What seems to me the most common kind of modifications that for modern people and the kind of diseases we see in modern times, because it's hard enough for a new practitioner. And this is why our profession also is saying very often that this topic we started with were people claiming that they can't make a living with it. But it s we are in an amazing position.
Angelique: It's
Heiner: As Chinese medicine practitioners in the United States that different from Europe, you can you are legally allowed to carry a pharmacy on your own and sell herbs, not only teach people about that and give them consultation advice and then send them off to an epoch where then somebody else is making the profit, but you have your own medicinary and you are selling the herbs to take home to patients. Yeah, even though this is and this is if you would be doing this with every patient, your income would be much you would be making more income from selling herbs to people than you would be making from just like I'm treating them for an hour and now I'm getting this much money as the fruit of my labor here, so speak. But despite that, and even though there are business classes at colleges, this is never from my perspective taught. But that eighty percent of people who graduate with an acupuncture license, they and even if they take and get an herbal certificate, they do only do acupuncture. And I think one of the reasons is this insecurity that you were mentioning there, that even though it's classified as a food. It's no legally no different. Even something like aconite that's supposedly super toxic, it's no different than buying a bunch of peppercorns or cinnamon bark or something at the store, as some supermarkets already carrying herbs like gochiza or koshov, something like this, right?
Angelique: Yet.
Heiner: We are teaching people to be careful with herbs because even though people anybody over fifty is now having an armful of orange pharmaceutical bottles in their in their bathroom because you when you go to annual checkup, it's not like how it was with my father and grandfather, where it was always rest more, sleep more, eat more healthy, chew your food more, do some hot and cold shower, that kind of thing. It's all about immediately whether you need that or not, pushing pharmaceuticals on you because it's it's all AI driven. And the parameters when you need something is decided by lobbyists, not by doctors. And so quite literally, you know, like you're over 50, now no matter what your level of cholesterol is, people are going to tell you, doctors are going to tell you, You need to be on statins. Yep. You know, because otherwise you're gonna get a stroke or heart attack when we know that this robs you of enzymes that the heart needs. And while your number may be going down, in the end you might be having heart problems because of it, eventually down the road, because you doing you interfering with some natural processes in the body. I'm not, of course, saying in every Instance or so there may be a place for those sometimes. But this kind of thing is over prescribed and is definitely a racket. I had a patient said, you know, my cholesterol was, I don't know, 200 or and the doctor said, you need to be in statins. And he says, can you in your AI program, can you bring it down to one sixty? He still said you need to be on statins. He said, bring it down to one hundred, which is you want to throw yourself out the window I mean our brain is made out of cholesterol. You need that. The problem is the cholesterol accumulating in your arteries. That's why an arterial scan is a much better indication for whether you need statins or not, rather than some kind of number. Right? Many decades ago, cholesterol count of three hundred was considered normal and now it's like, my God.
Angelique: We'll chill over tomorrow, supposedly.
Heiner: And so and so even with the hundred, they anyway, you would get morbidly depressed, most likely, or maybe get cancer if your cholesterol count is too low. And you still would be the AI is saying you still need that. So that is very clearly not good sound medical advice, but is profit driven by greedy corporations rather than You know, that where you need to be careful not immediately trust that. And so the coming back a little bit closer to your question there, the pharmaceuticals are overprescribed on one side, and on the other, even our own profession is teaching people that's you know, heart problems, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer. That's something for real medicine. You just need to refer that out or keep your feet or don't when they're already on drugs, which all my patients on some level are already on drugs. If they are, then they need even more tick herbs because Western medicine, no matter whether it's antibiotics or steroids or painkillers or statins or anything else, they all have one thing in common. And what is that it harms the body's jamship?
Angelique: Is
Heiner: It might regulate a single number somehow that feels more comfortable to the eyes of a Western medicine physician, but doesn't necessarily make the patient feel better. And even if it makes you feel better, it's a symptom suppression. It never is because the source of the problem is being healed. And so you still need Chinese herbs and Chinese treatments. And since you don't see your patient as an acupuncturist every single day. Which you would need to do to refresh that meridian opening treatment. So you the treatment and then when they come back a month later you say, For this month you take this herb because the herb is mimicking what we did with the acupuncture. But if they're already in pharmaceuticals, most TCM schools say, if they're already that then you better not and legal problems. And when you don't tell them don't right, the Western doctor would never say, Don't put pepper in your food. Don't
Angelique: Kids. EAT
Heiner: You know, use cinnamon or cayenne or something like that. It's it's that's basically what it is. And we have a medical license on top of that to prescribe that, even though legally you technically could prescribe that. Consult people and tell them to take that without a license. So we had professional training and a lot of it. And we need to therefore unbrainwash ourselves but to Take that hurdle away, because this is how I started on this, is it's already complicated enough to learn hundreds of different formulas. If then on top of that, there is the demand that you need to individually modify those. Then people kind of quit, or 80% of us quit and say, I'm only gonna do acupuncture. Because you know what? Even sham acupuncture, which means I totally do needle the wrong points. Has at least according to German studies, I'm not an advocate of this at all, of course. I believe in classical acupuncture. But from a Western perspective at least, has this so-called sham acupuncture has the same result as sort of highly trained, you know, five element or other kinds of acupuncture, supposedly. Don't know how they engineered those studies. But at the you know, unless you
Toby: Fairly.
Heiner: Needle like here on the thorax where the one problem can be a pneumo tor thorax, as we all know. You stick particularly with the with the arm and leg points where most of the important points are. Other than that the occasional bruise, there won't be ever any side effects. And no matter what points your needle, the people feel, I got my treatments worth. And You being flooded with epinephrines and oxytocin or whatever you know chemicals it is that your body produces when you stick needles into it. You know, just like people cutting themselves. There is some kind of flooding of certain you self-medicating yourself somehow. It's relaxing or it's something. And so very safe to stick with that. And people who are afraid who
Angelique: It's
Heiner: Were made afraid at school and therefore don't believe in our own medicine, particularly the herbal medicine, are afraid of potential side effects. And the side effect, of course, this is real medicine. If you all of a sudden have a formula with fifteen herbs and it's not only like one little sprinkle of it like you would use a spice, but using like the equivalent of ninety grams of crude herbs or so. That's real medicine. That'll really do. I mean, that can get you out of heart failure if you use it correctly and over longer periods of time. And so that was the attempt with the classical pearls using classical formulas that are very monodirectional, particularly in the Shang'an Lin. They're only dispersing, only consolidating, or only warming, or only cooling, or only drying, or only moisturizing. So I'm kind of always. Modified them that they are safer and that there was always yin within yang, consolidation within dispersal dispersing, and only using what I call alchemically stable herbs, meaning not using, you know, more intense kind of herbs where you use them for two days and the person feels good and on the third day they feel they're getting a headache because it's now too much. A FedR for instance, I stay away from that. It's also from a legal perspective more difficult to import that and in Europe illegal entirely. But and so that way I have formulas where I feel like even if it's only it's not going to be an issue where the where the person then will have like major side effects or so. And if there is people baking out in a rash or so for the most part,
Toby: Used wrong.
Heiner: You find out then that they're detoxing or so on that's actually a good reaction by their body. So I think part of the classical Pearl's success has been this kind of alchem ch choosing alchemically stable herbs, picking formulas that are particularly suitable for modern times. I had good teachers. And my own experience of 20 years in the clinic and using buffering remedies. To make them less monodirectional, always have yin within yang, yang within yin. And that has been, you know, we've knock on wood, never you know, had like some situation where somebody felt like they were kind of majorly harmed by imbibing a classical Pearls product. And at the same time having lots of I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to say this is another joy of mine where
Angelique: So.
Heiner: You know, I've always in the last thirty-five years always seen twenty-five patients about a week, spent like forty-five minutes or an hour with a patient. And that's not that maybe more than some, but it's not very limited how many people you can see a year that and how many people you can help. Now with making not only putting herbs in the hands of people,
Angelique: It's a
Heiner: That is already pre-modified, but then teaching people, not just from a Chinese perspective, since stuff like the pulse is so subjective, but saying, like, for these disorders, as long as this and this and that symptom is present, you can safely use this remedy. So that even like somebody who doesn't have Chinese rigorous Chinese medicine training, but a chiropractor or naturopath feels comfortable using it. We've had, you know, I Go and speak at a conference and people come up to you and say, I just, I don't you don't know me, but I just want to thank you for the glacier pearls because my aunt had you know, stage so-and-so lung cancer, and you know, this is now completely in remission, and they said she had six months to live or so. So I feel like that this effort of my teachers and my own experience got multiplied with this endeavor. Now thousands of people can benefit from that. That's really probably the best thing I've ever was launching that herbs and kind of making people more confident in herbal medicine, both consumers as well as practitioners. But really having had even from my perspective, where I sometimes go like I would have never believed that this is possible, but we're
Toby: Series
Heiner: 'Cause there are so many people using it now that there is these outlier cases that people report to me where you know that you know that's like close to raising the dead, right? Some somebody like in a wheelchair with Lyme disease for seven years, all of a sudden after two weeks they start walking again. Or I you hear people write that to you and then you feel like, Wow, you almost wanna cry when you hear that. But I don't know whether I answered your question there.
Toby: Thank you.
Heiner: With feeling comfortable prescribing that, you know. But it's I mean, that was sort of my attempt to make people to get the other eighty percent of us that are while they're already in school, but especially once you graduate, to feel comfortable to start using that on yourself and for other people. And we did that also during COVID, where everybody else c lots of people closed a clinic and we're like, we can't wait to get our hands on a live COVID patient because we want to see whether this medicine, you know, is said from the Neijing on that it and Zhang Zunjing says that in his preface to the Shang Han Lun that this medicine evolved on the back of pandemic. So that's all that Chinese medicine treated in the past. If somebody had a little bit of pulser pain, they wouldn't walk to the next village and spend you know, a week's salary to see a doctor and buy medicines, they would only go when it was something life threatening. And you know, here was this serious acute situation and to see a work like right away as advertised in the aging itself was very corroborating there. And yeah.
Angelique: You answered it in part, feel less, I feel bolstered. Think I have rarbs in my practice and I've been prescribing and looking at like there are certain patients that prefer to take a patent and just the ones that I've had, I haven't really enjoyed very much. And I think I just overthought the formulas that you had and like I should do more training. Tend to want to learn a whole lot more before I start doing something probably to my own detriment. It's. Reassuring that I can use the book and as long as patients match some of those symptoms.
Toby: Yeah, yeah.
Heiner: Book. This was of the many publications I published or self-published. And this is the most important one, has not only mine but clinical experience of my very excellent teachers in there. And like every single word in there is very measured. It wasn't this kind of right rounded out in a weekend, but this was written over a two-year period. And like under the indications, like you have What kind of symptoms like you have here are examples of Western diseases. And every single example, well, you can treat many more things, had a clinical study in China behind that. And then under the typical signs and symptoms, they are all in order of importance, you know, based on particularly my teachers and my own experience. So you look for the first symptom. And the second symptom, it's in the third and the fourth and the fifths. And as long as you have one or two of those, that's good enough to prescribe that. You know, that's but then also you don't want to limit yourself with this crude herb situation because I used to only do creed I was like a radical traditionalist, and Chinese herbs are a little bit like French wine, were an
Angelique: Bye.
Heiner: Originally the Chinese they exported ninety-eight percent of Chinese herbs. And you've got to whom to Japan, biggest importer, Korea, next big importer, and number three, the Chinese community in the United States and Canada and Europe. And then after SARS, the equivalent of Anthony Fauci.
Angelique: Path.
Toby: Some words.
Heiner: In China lost a daughter because Western medicine didn't work for that in 2001 or two, whenever that was. And then she was saved by Chinese medicine. He immediately invested himself in Chinese medicine patent formulas, and then you know, made tons of money when that same patent then was used.
Toby: Almost
Heiner: During COVID. So there was that openness. And so ever since that time, before you would buy big bags of honeysuckle, and it was like the most beautiful and
Angelique: Fresh.
Heiner: Didn't cost anything. It was all like $2 a pound or $4 a pound, but it was beautiful herbs and still a lot of them wildcrafted. And now when they are mowing down the frontier in China, three things have happened is the Chinese themselves are starting to use the best herbs because they have the money to buy that. And they've shifted their awareness, particularly when there's an acute inflammatory something like COVID, and you can't buy any herbs anymore for a while because everybody in China is using them. So the prices have not only doubled and tripled, but they have like 10 or even a hundredfold. And then as a result of it, shipping the herbs on top of it has become super expensive. And then of course, on top of it, the you boiling it, the whole house smells like it. You and I might love that, but the people in the house, they go like stuff. And you I mean, you seeing patients I see, that means you on these herbs for two years, three years, maybe five years, and to most even the most dedicated patient will eventually stop boiling.
Angelique: But for all of this yucky.
Heiner: The herbs and also buying that. Then of course, the quality of the herbs, now the Chinese are sending us the worst. And everything that lands here is at least already three years old. And it's like in some huge warehouse in Guangxi that has five stories and people with hazmat suits go through that. It's not even what they spray onto the stuff that's out in nature. It's what they spray while it's waiting
Angelique: It's
Heiner: They're to be sold and distributed and packaged. And it's still like super wet. And so bugs are coming and mold is coming. And so they spray fungicide, they spray insecticide while it's there repeatedly. So something that's supposed to be a medicine is now becoming super toxic. And the main thing that gets tested for when it comes in is heavy metals. That's just what's in the soil, not all this nasty stuff they spray on later.
Angelique: Year.
Toby: Yeah it's all
Heiner: So because of all of these reasons, I always thought that the crude herbs were better, but now I think that this other solution is much, much better because patient compliance is much higher. They can open the capsules if they want to, and it's highly water soluble can drink it that way, but ninety percent of patients or more, they're super happy that they can just swallow that and don't have an hour.
Toby: Just
Heiner: Brewing time, we're also sometimes to forget and then, my god, it's burnt now. You ruined that batch, right? And then of course, there are lots of companies, they add then 50 or up to 80% of starch to either dilute down the heavy metals or to make it like crispies to or twinkies to make it shelf life extension, right? And so
Toby: Were
Heiner: Then their powder always looks the same and people used to that and but they're not aware that they take the patent medicine that is actually 80 at least 50 per starch. And that starch is mostly allergenic stuff like corn starch, potato starch, even wheat starch. It's not stated on the bottle what the filler is, but they all have filler. Lots of it, probably more than the herbs. And so that was a commitment of the classical pearls. Not only use the highest grade herbs, use herbs that don't have heavy metals on top of that, and then extract it in a way without any fillers. And just put it immediately in the capsule. Then of course you get sometimes this clumping sensation or so, but that doesn't affect the efficacy of the herb. But that's another thing I wanna, you know, encourage you to not be too ideological about I'm only I'm a c classical practitioner, I'm only using crude herbs. It the most important thing is that you have high quality herbs that work and that are convenient for the patient to take because they are doing the heavy lifting. They need to take it every day.
Angelique: Yeah, I do use spring wind only.
Heiner: Yeah, spring wind is of course great, but they don't have all of the herbs because they and they yeah.
Angelique: Thank you.
Toby: Yeah, thank you. Thank so much, Doctor Pruha, for being so generous with your time and your knowledge. If it's okay, we'll we'll wrap it up for today. But we'd love to have you come on periodically if we can manage with your time. It's it just such an education. So we'll we'll talk maybe offline about that. Maybe if we can see you again sometime soon.
Heiner: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, both of you, for having me here and having the time fly by here in no time. I enjoyed the conversation and thank you for promoting Chinese medicine and doing something very important for our field here.
Angelique: Thank you.
Toby: It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope everyone takes care.
Heiner: Same here. Bye.
