[music] Hey fellow gear, those of spirituality with a twist. So as you can see if you're watching the video, we're here with good friend of the show Rory Hiltsbrand to discuss uh one of the things that we've been kind of in the flow of discussing transformation of anger which seems like a very timely subject. And so we wanted to give an episode where we kind of talk through these ideas, especially maybe from a traditional Chinese medical point of view, a dowist point of view, kind of share our thoughts and hopefully provide things that we all can find useful for ourselves. Um, but the real inspiration for this episode started with our favorite Daniel.

Our favorite Daniel. Yeah, the only one, but our favorite,

most favorite of our Daniels. [laughter]

And uh, you had some inspiration for really doing this. You said was really kind of personal. So, we like to do personal. So, uh, you know, I think we'll start with that way of talking about it. So,

yeah. Yeah. Uh, Rory, as always, thanks for for joining us. Eric, thanks for being here. Audience, thanks for tuning in. Uh, as always, uh, you know, do the things that people ask you to do because it helps us out. We are uh trying to get seen as much as possible as everybody else is. So, like, comment, subscribe, share. All those things are uh definitely helpful for our work and they cost you absolutely nothing, which is our favorite price in the world. Free.99. Uh, so uh thanks thanks in advance uh for doing all that. So um for those who are keeping up you know this is kind of a continuation with what we had started last week which is a discussion on the wood phase in Chinese medicine uh the liver the gallbladder uh anger frustration all kind of put to the background of like uh the emotional plague Wilhelm Reich's work on you know society's I don't know madness if you want to call this and um so we had kind of started the the first half of our discussion on anger because anger frustration is such a a large emotion that I think a lot of people feel right Eric what's the line from the or Rory you can give it to the line from the nijing that they say about uh liver and and our patients

in adults treat the liver is one of the really famous ones

yeah yeah which we've talked about many times before but I think amongst many interpretations of that line

is the inherent irritability or frustration lack of expression um observation that the sort of ancients had thousands of years ago when describing their adult patients and that that is something that that should be treated so much so that they wrote it down and it's been passed forward when they wrote very few things down but they wrote they wrote that one down so you know in describing this I think we wanted to do a couple things or I wanted to do a couple things one come at this from the perspective of you know I wanted Rory's perspective in particular from kind of his like dowist viewpoint I wanted Eric's perspective in particular from, you know, his clinical and teaching tradition because Eric, you can speak for yourself on this and Rory because you guys both do a little bit more teaching than I do. Eric teaches far more in the university system. You know, Rory is doing a lot of continuing education and things like this. But when you're learning something, there's a phase of observation. And Eric, I talked about this at the on our retreat. Shout outs to those those people who were there on retreat with us in March. Thank you for coming. Um, but when you're in a state of learning, your nervous system is kind of um a little bit like not sure exactly how to react. So, you're kind of in a little bit of a fight or flight. And so, there tends to be a tendency for students in particular to be a little on edge, right? Because they're taking in new information that could be challenging to things that they held previously. They're sort of in a transformational process. You can't really express. You have to kind of just take in and then break it down and go forth from there. So from a teacher's perspective, I wanted to ask you guys that part. And then the last part I wanted to talk about was just as a human being, as a human male living in our culture at this particular time in history when tensions seem like they're probably as high as they've been since I'm not sure cuz I wasn't alive for that long, but they're very high to say the least. So these are the act these are the places that I wanted to go. And before we go to any of those uh spots, I wanted to give uh either of you the moment to uh to say anything before as a as an elongation of my preamble.

You want to jump in on that, Rory? You want me to do that one first?

Sure. I mean, where do you want to start? Clinically, teaching? Uh

I guess maybe like a little teaching thing. You got something you want to share and I can kind of give my two cents or vice versa.

Sure. Um, so thinking about teaching, well, that brings me back to like, you know, in Chinese medicine school, everyone's so depleted. You know, you're really using your spleen and the the earth element we talk about in uh the way that we translate earth in the Dohan system is we don't translate it as like the planet Earth. we translate it as soil and kind of the ground on which you stand. And so when there's a depletion of the earth element, it's slightly different from just that fear that we talk about. There's a a sense of something missing. If you think about the earth as like within the cosmological view of the five elements, it's kind of like the glue between all of them. We process things. we, you know, make narratives out of all of these intense and confusing emotions and string them together through this this earth element. And so we're really tilling the soil there. But it's one thing kind of like you were talking about the the sensing, you know, picking it up after you kind of there's a difference between uh adopting, you know, learning a theory and adopting it to the system.

So I think in time clinically, you know, you really get a better sense of what these things actually mean. And you know, I could talk about I see it a lot in hyperinsulinism. I see it with patients as is affecting the the nervous system. They get that anxiety of like biting their nails and this feeling of like something's missing and there's there's a problem that needs to be solved. Then I don't know. I can always go off on tangents, so I'll let let you take it from what you were thinking, Eric.

Yeah, I I wasn't thinking about this when we're coming in the episode of what it means to be in the role of a teacher or something like that, but um I suppose like what like happens with, you know, what that kind of like brings up for me is I do do classes on like Chinese medicine and psychology, right? It's just part of what I end up teaching. I had like a psych degree before I went into RTCM world. And uh so this question has always been kind of deep for me and so I end up talking a lot about anger. I do kind of buy the idea if we get back to like different phases. You're kind of emphasizing the other phase. We could talk about the relationship between earth and wood. Curious to hear how that gets visualized in the way you were talking about it Rory, you know, because you're kind of presenting it like as soil and I think that's a powerful way to do that. Right. And then I'll double back to you to hear what you think of the how the earth interacts with that. That's a cool thing to talk about, right? But um I think you know uh I do emphasize this idea of like in adults treat the liver or there's other this other classic saying that goes the liver is the thief of the other organs. One of the other really great ones and I guess if you translate that into um emotional talk as opposed to just talking about it as a uh physical system but you get into like the internal aspect of this, right? That means in a certain way anger is the thief of everything else or something, right? it can operate as a thief. And so I try to present students with that set of ideas, right? And uh and then you try to like go we all have our own emphasis of what we think is important diagnostically and clinically, but I do try to get that across to people and then how you can translate that out into you know either concrete TCM treatments or just thinking about what it means to think about what it means to be a human being and think, okay, if this is going to be in some ways acknowledged as such an important emotion, right? Well, then you know how do you think about that as a student of our field, right? You can always reflect on that in your own life and I ask people to write papers of self-reflection at times, right? To go, okay, which of these emotions do you feel is like very prominent in yourself, right? And so you can get people to self-reflect within that, you know, and then you can also get people to think about it like, okay, let's let's at least tentatively take this idea that this emotion is so strong as parts of Chinese medicine is saying, right? Then what does that tell us clinically? What does that mean in terms of how we're going to like think about that? And then also like psychologically, how does that change how we look at like you know patients but even ourselves or the people in our lives around us, right? This thing is such a powerful and potentially detrimental emotion. I had a little bit kind of we talked about it last episodes but episode but you and I haven't talked about this Rory but I started off doing Zen. That was kind of my my intro into this and I had a a Zen school that was like very daisoriented too. So I got kind of this combination of these two worlds. But certainly anger was considered to be one of the really potentially damaging emotions.

So that made sense to me when I got and I heard these Chinese medical quotes. I hadn't heard those when I was a Zen student, but it was talked about in the Zen world, right?

And uh I bought in on the idea like, yeah, I could see that because I already had had the introduction through my Zen thing like this is a very important thing to focus in on.

Yeah. I know what you think because you're presenting it as soil. Do you want to talk a little bit about how you think the relationship between the wood and the the soil then goes and your way of framing things and your your system? Is that an interesting subject for you? Uh yeah, I mean let's I mean we can just kind of expand on on that just how maybe the Dohan system looks at it a little bit uniquely kind of the five elemental um emotions and you know it's interesting thinking about it taking the pulse and and thinking about that quote for treating adults treat the liver and so much of the time so when we view the pulse when we look at the way field that like the most superficial level of the radial pulse we're thinking of that as their emotional state in real time and so so much of the time with adults you see you know at the guan it's blocked off not going to the soon especially on the left hand side you see that liver gallbladder kind of pouncing and not moving forward so we we look at that as a diaphragmatic constriction. So for Rory just pause for a second for our non-Chinese medicine listeners which is basically everybody um on and in and you know just [laughter] ju just to tell people so when you go when people go to the doctor which you know less people are going to the doctor these days because there's not as much you know healthc care happening for people but when people used to go to the doctor they'll get your pulse they take your pulse right and normally they take your pulse and they're counting you know whatever how fast how slow when you go see an acupuncturist Chinese medical practitioner that we're taking the pulse as well, but the pulse is being taken yes for speed, but far there is far more uh tactile qualities that the radial pulse gives us. And it's not just on one side. It's on both sides and each side has different I guess um markers for internal happenings that give us as practitioners ideas as to what's going on. So somebody can come in and say, "Oh, I have a headache or I'm ex whatever the symptoms might be." We're then we're going to then feel their pulse and try and get a a sense for what's happening internally as to give an answer for why it is that they are feeling the way that they are feeling. So what Rory is describing henceforth is a description of that.

Through the magic of Chinese wisdom, they kind of realize like all the different parts of the body can reflect the whole.

You can think of that kind of like holographically. And so you have to get your mind around that way of thinking. And you know, and we're we're we're going for it in this episode. [laughter]

So when you get that way, you go, I can feel things. I can learn about your entire body by looking at every individual part. And that translates down to even things that you can feel in the pulse, right? All the information is always there in each little spot. And then, you know, you do get this idea that we can get information about what's happening in the internal organs by like different information that's happening under our fingertips, under our very fingertips. And you know, Rory's referencing that. Yeah.

Rory Chinese medical idea.

Eric studied with um under uh uh Leon Hammer's main student or you know the the Leon Hammers uh system you know

Dr. Karen Bilton great lady from Australia. Yeah.

Yeah. And so um so Eric's taught some of these classes here and um there's one there's some tricks you know that in in pulse taking there's tricks. one of which is for a mitro valve prolapse and I am seven for seven in my career for guessing that thing. So, you know, for people who are listening to this, they're like, "What? That's bullshit." Seven for seven, that's 100%. I'm better than Show Otani. And uh you [laughter] know, he's

and he's the greatest. He's the goat.

And he is the goat for sure. For sure. So, anyways, kind of wild when you think about that. I had like a tale and I'm sure we all have our own tale, but I was like, we'll do it personal because we like to do it, but I was at a uh uh like a like a a camping trip and you it was all the adults were kind of drinking, maybe getting a little high, playing our guitars, singing some Johnny Cash songs. The kids were all running around and I had a lady who's an anesthesiologist and she came up and she said, "Uh, this Chinese pulse taking is [...] you know." And I was like, you know, take my pulse and tell me something. I was like, "I don't want to take your pulse. It says nothing but bad things. [laughter]

It's not designed to like, you know, reading your poem and talking about your love life. It's like going to tell you stuff that's wrong with your body.

Yeah.

And she was maybe I didn't realize maybe a little bit of an honory

drinker. So, she was insistent and I went, "Okay, fine." And there's again, Daniel was talking about Paul's taking tricks and techniques. And there's one that I know comes a little bit more through like Jeffrey, Master UN, another figure in our field. And uh so I was taking the pulse and you feel under your ring finger on the right wrist and there could be indications of risk for like cancer

and she had it and I kind of froze in the moment in like my semi- inebriated state and I was like oh Jesus I don't want to have to talk with her about this but she looked at me very insistently and then I said she said well what is it and I said well you got this thing that could potentially indicate risk for cancer what you want me to say and then she thought for a moment and she said yeah I'm getting these recurrent melanoma moments and I said, "Yeah, like that." You know,

and then she thought for a moment or two and then she said,

"Ah, this is still bullshit." And like stormed away.

And I was like, "You can't, you know, that's that's being a TCM doctor sometimes in the world, right?" You know, no matter what you say. But anyways,

little fun stuff to share on that kind of, you know, she's okay to the present day. But it, you know, you can tell this is there's a power in this. And that's what Rory was talking about. So

yeah, there's a reason we say, you know, I got my finger on the pulse of something. It it really is uh

some incredible, you know, and that's with the tradition I came from. That's what got me into Chinese medicine was I watched Master Song take someone's pulse and read out their entire life story from it. You know, there they had some genetic predisposition, they had a trauma at a certain age. you know, even cases like that too where they didn't believe it and you know, spelled it out and so yeah, and I have a bad habit of I tend to forget about the audience and I just speak to the people that I'm speaking to in things like this. So, yeah,

it's all good.

Canary in the coal mine for when I So, I'll try and keep it less technical. Um, what I was trying to say was just reiterate clinically we definitely see that, you know, adults often their hearts are kind of closed off because they're blocked off

at the they have anger and resentment. Mhm.

And so just to get back to the the 101 of the Dohan system, we don't when we learned like we would sit around [clears throat] maybe we would talk about the liver and so we talk about liver pathology, different treatment pro protocols and then uh different herbal prescriptions. And so when we think about the organs, like for instance, when we talked about the heart, we didn't, we were told, you know, we learned the emotions of the elements in the context of yin and yang. So we were told to think about the heart as a sadness detector.

When we learned about the kidneys, we're told think about the kidneys as a fear So why is the kidneys you know associated with fear but it's also our you know our driving force that propels us into life. How is this petrifying force and this driving force the same? And [snorts] it's because these opposites always go together. That's you know fundamental Dowism yin and yang theory is that yin and yang aren't two separate things. They're two parts of one thing. And so the heart, you know, love songs are sad tones. We use them to evoke them. So within our medicine, you know, we do things like puta or lacquer, different poisons in order to increase health or in the dough on system, you know, certain points for stopping bleeding can also start bleeding. Uh we can use the same point that's used to clear heat to put heat in. It's effective both both ways. And so when we think about anger, anger is interesting because it's associated with the the gallbladder and Xiaoyang. And so when we had had last spoke, I think I had shared with you some of this perspective of Shiaoyangqi being this ministerial fire which we think of as being an analog of traditions like you know tumo or shakti. basically this higher dimensional psychic fire as opposed to the imperial fire

that begins in contact with the ground on kidney one which we think of as our earthly fire.

So when we were taught to that when we felt anger then it was inescapable we should be grateful for our anger. So when someone pisses you off, and this is much easier said than done, but it's far better than falling into this deeply grooved pattern of returning back again to the soil of it moving just laterally and controlling going to the control element. So if you can move it into Shiaoyangqi, it will also move forward in the generating cycle into the heart. The anger becomes passion instead of just moving into the earth and then the earth will divide it into both resentment, a narrative of resentment. I've been victimized and also uh self-righteousness with that victimhood. There's also a sense of redress that you know a call to action that needs to be done. If there's not enough energy, the anger will move backwards into a insecurity into the kidney. So there'll be a reversal

backwards. So it reverses the generating cycle. So that's what we were always told to do was basically it's almost like the dark side of the force, you [laughter] know, using anger in order to increase that. And and in the same way, you know, I talked about that the Shiaoyang we talk of as subjective heat instead of objective heat of Shiaoy.

So Shiaoyang psychic fire, you know, there's a big difference, and we could get into the weeds on this, but I think it's also a little too technical, but there's a big difference between

caloric energy, you know, a unit of thermal heat and neuron energy. And so you know that feeling of when you get so pissed off with rage you know the lion rises you get you feel hot but it won't measure on a thermometer that's this subjective heat that we feel.

So when we feel that we need to move it up we need to have gratitude which moves it up becomes passion and that's like a lot of life force there. you think about, you know, a lot of movies, a lot of action movies, it's all about, you know, vengeance and revenge and passion.

Um, and even think about some of the greatest, you know, we were talking a little bit about sports. Think about I was watching a uh Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance. Did you guys see that?

Yeah, I watched it during the pandemic. It's it's a heck of a thing.

He's the He's the show for those who don't know who Michael Jordan is, he's the show Otani of basketball. [laughter] Yeah,

I actually don't follow baseball too much, but so I'm a little behind on the dark on that one. But um but in that documentary, he people talk about like I played this game with him and he came up to me and he he would have he would make up fictional totally fabricated stories how people wronged him.

Yeah. in order to have more energy to go and passion to play these games. And so he would that's a case of him really using this and you see it in a lot of like the you know some of the greats you can see the same pattern of of using this you know dark side of the force I'll call it using anger in a way that you're channeling it instead of it becoming self-destructive into the earth element victimhood all that

kind of awesome because I kind of wrote it down from my notes I was thinking about [clears throat] what might we be talking about in this and I was thinking uh my son who is uh now 13 and I remember we had conversations about I taught I taught him the emotions in the five phases you know from a TCM point of view and they said okay here's your emotions

and we talked about anger you know and I think he was dealing with kids at school who were screwing with him and how do you handle that and what do you do you know

and the anger that comes from those experiences but we had conversations just about anger just in general and I like what I I love what you're saying there because I agree with it you know you can take those emotions and one way of framing that is you take them and you move them from wood into fire in Chinese medical thought right you go from the wood phase and you don't let it stick there almost what you were describing when you were talking about your diagnostics with the pulse taking you have one pulse that's more associated with the liver and anger but it won't connect to the next one right

it won't connect into the heart

and you know the the positive attributes of the heart is sort of passion creativity you know or you can say joy Right? Or if you want to get really into the the tantra of it, you know, jin and tandra is our podcast. The bliss of things. So if things get stuck in that wood phase, okay, not so good. But if you can figure out a way to translate those into the joy

of the heart. And I was trying to tell him that's what you have to learn how to do.

You can't let it get stuck here. You have to let it go through into this more beautiful place, right? the passion, you know, and and uh those kinds of feelings and, you know, joy, too. My one of my mentors, uh, Master Wong, Dr. Shangi Wong, made a big deal about this, too. You know, he talked about like this idea of transmitting

the emotions into joy, right? We can do that with anger. There's a kind of classic Chinese medical saying that also goes, joy is the antidote to all the negative emotions, right? but you know special relationship with anger even like can you learn how to take that anger and transmute it into something that becomes the fuel like you were talking about Rory of something that is passion creativity and so on sometimes I guess it's a dark side of the force [laughter] if you're like a great athlete they kind of use that and I think they kind of know on some level they're playing psychological games with themselves and with others you know and a lot of times at the end everyone will like give each other a hug and a tap on the behind when the game is over and everyone walks away, you know.

Um, but you know, it's a it's a creative use of those emotions, you could say, right? And that's that's tantra and dowoism and these things, too. Yeah. Well, Eric, you know, we had we were discussing last time about the the aspect of benevolence in the wood phase, you know, and just like Rory, what what makes me think about this is Rory was talking about the sort of seeming dichotomy between in the water phase, which is fear on one hand, but then will, drive, push on the other hand, as being the total opposites in that particular phase. And so, on one hand, you have anger and then you have benevolence. And anger anger almost inherently gives rise to what Rory was talking about like revenge. You know these kind of like actions that are I don't want to say tainted but highly influenced by retribution for doing you know being the you know transforming the victim to the victimizer which is in with a sense of empowerment even if it's just mental you know even if you just think of have revenge thoughts that's still moving that cycle laterally as opposed to continuing the same cycle. But the harder thing to do which is much harder thing to do is in a state of anger um move to do something for somebody else. move to move to a state of benevolence which if you're doing it for someone else or in a communal sense then you are automatically moving then into the fire phase because that has this the aspect of spreading the aspect of of giving you know in a sense and if you can use you know Rory I like how you brought that up this idea of or the sense of gratitude for what it is that you're experiencing then you might free up some of the the the the influence that anger might have on your actions that would make you do something maybe slightly more negative negative to something that you can do that's positive will which will a help other people but more importantly more selfishly as human help ourselves in the process deal with whatever it is that we are dealing with that brought us to that particular place

absolutely well I feel like you know it's not just in our perspective of dowoism these elements being a small subcategory of the numeric it's not just you applied to the human body or emotions, we can call it medicine, but we really view it as as life itself. So, naturally, we go through all of these experiences and they follow this kind of trajectory. We're we're often spooked into anger, you know.

Mhm.

And you know, if you're driving and you you know, someone comes in or you make a mistake, you'll often be if someone scares you, your next thing is, "Oh, you bastard." You know, [laughter] so it's very natural uh to follow these cycles. And so you can go any direction like you know just fundamentally you can use the control cycle if you're very resentful or angry about someone and you get a call hey you know your dad just died immediately that grief will dry that resentment you know it will put things in perspective and you will not you know immed I can't believe I even felt that way and so and these things are happening all the time And and we can think about wood itself when we look at it in its yin and yang pairs. It's anger which is this destructive force.

And then it's creativity. You think of it as creativity. So a lot of times I would think about Beethoven when I almost like this classical rock star like like kind of aggressive but also creative or if you look at you know the greatest technological advancement is during times of war or if you look at the physiology of the the liver itself there's two it stores the blood there's two aspects of the blood we have the the red blood cells and the white blood cells or killer cells we call them and that are you know nutrative Yang Chi understanding the earth a little bit deeper. When we think about the earth element and the dohan we also kind of view it as like a time time extender time release. So if we you know when we process our emotions we're digesting them over time. It's not just one sharp experience. If I want to kind of soften the energetics of a formula and release that therapeutic signature over time, I'll add like Gansau to the formula,

which is licorice,

licorice to a formula, which is earth element you could think of. And so if you notice, if you re are very resistant to anger and you're thinking uh then obviously you have this narrative of oh anger is bad and you're struggling with all of these internal conflicts of of anger going on. So you're moving into that earth element. Your diaphragm's blocked off. there's a a wall to protect your heart from that pathogenic chi pathogenic stress. And so it actually if you're okay with being angry, it doesn't last very long. It's when you really are you can't stand being angry and you can't stand that you've made me angry, then you know it really it will last much longer. Hey, Rory, one second because your screen is making me angry right now. So, we're gonna pause just for [laughter] one moment.

All right. So, um

maybe Rory, I just have to say something about the Beethoven thing. I can't let that go because he really was a really aggressive piano player.

Yeah. Yeah.

And uh I saw the Who recently with my son smashing the instruments, you know? I heard the story. I I love music, too. And uh he would sometimes leave like the piano and tatters. I didn't know.

He was like original punk before it was [laughter] clearly beat the [...] out of the piano to the point where like it's not obvious this thing is playable afterwards

like really powerful you know so even like physically he would do that you know and but that creative power that he directed through that and if I could just say one other thing because it's so funny because I think we had a lot of the same thoughts or

would produce the same thoughts because I was thinking about

we talk about like ways in which energies can kind of relate to one another and you kind of brought brought up this idea of like what we all call metal, right, associated physically with the lung and how that can interact with anger and you talked about sadness and grief. You know, you hear, "Oh my god, something bad happened to someone that maybe I had these bad feelings about and that all just dissipates so clearly and so quickly, right?" I'm kind of interested in the the virtues of these phases. You know, there's lots of systems for the way we talk about in the Chinese medical world and the Dowist world, but I tend to associate metal with things of fairness, you know.

Yeah. Just Yeah. Justice.

Justice and fairness. And, you know, again, different associations for different people, and it's all good. But if you go to that one, that's sometimes a way of dealing with anger, too.

If you put yourself in the spot of going, okay, well,

let me really think through this, like what's just and fair in this or whatever words we want to use for that. And sometimes that can help control the anger too because you realize, oh man, in the heat of the moment of that anger, I really felt like I was right. You know, anger has that quality to it, right?

And then in the moment where you take a step back and you go, well, let me like see if I can control this. And a lot of times we'll do this even, you don't have to know Chinese medicine even sometimes to do these kinds of things, you start thinking, okay, what was really happening here? Is what I'm saying really fair and just, you know, no way I'm thinking about it? And you can walk away and realize, oh, no, it really wasn't. And then it kind of calms you down in its own way. Anyways, I just wanted to throw that out. I thought it was really great because a lot of the same ideas were coming through. You know, we have nuances of how we think about it, but even though I was jotting down my notes, I was like, "Oh, same things." And you're bringing up all the same stuff, too. So, it's kind of brilliant.

Yeah. It's great to cross-pollinate. You're kind of making me think about just in being on opposite sides of that chart kind of. We I mean we have yin and yang in every direction, but there's almost like an arranging tensing up quality to to anger. And when you get angry, your diaphragm constricts.

You'll feel that constriction blocking off that energy from the heart.

Often it will uh especially if it's moving into the spleen. Um but in the lung especially like that grief you know just you know even knowing people close to me have died recently there's such a uh there's such a spaciousness in the in sitting in that grief. There's a stillness and spaciousness that's very contrary oppositional to that aringent tight holding on control energy of uh of anger. Um, now I'm thinking of a uh there's an old anecdote, parable, whatever you want to call it from that the Dohan have been telling for hundreds of years from from master to student. This is one of the first stories I heard to help me wrap my mind around the importance of yin and yang in in physiology and Chinese medicine is when you die, if you if someone dies, if you cut them open immediately and you take out the liver, the liver will have like a slightly green hue, a fresh liver, you'll see some of that bile kind of shining shiny metallic kind of greenness to it. So it's exhibiting that color of that energetic. You cut out the lung, you take the lung. If you both put them in water, the liver will sink and the lung will float. And so as dowists, you know, it would be so satisfying if they matched, you know, if the liver would float and the lung would sink. But if you wait 3 days, suddenly the liver floats to the surface and the lung sinks. So after this period of time, once the there's decaying of the cells and there's death of that that energetic, it exhibits that opposite force. And so the moral of the story is that all of these organs, all of you know the internal struggle of oppositional forces is in fact the state of living. And I know you're into physics, too. It's kind of like the, you know, the um I'm spacing on the name now, but in

almost like a super symmetry, right? You need like complimentary opposite forces, right? That's just how nature works,

Exactly. I was thinking of a specific example of from quantum field theory of of uh [sighs] part some type of particles that exist in such small time frames that they're called

muons things like that the muons and the little tiny little they show up in the chamber and then they're gone

not not just muons I'm talking these pairs of of um of positive and neg so like particle and anti

antarticle Yeah, super symmetry in quantum fields. Um,

yeah, that's another theory theory of super symmetry. In any case, we got it.

In any case, okay. Yeah. Super symmetry.

In the quantum field constantly, you know, in empty space, these particles emerge, you know, in these pairs.

Oh yeah, they do come off in pairs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, in perfect symmetry, they have this energetic balance. And then in the case of Hawking radiation, the negative energy goes into the black hole and so it has Hawking radiation. So they actually do exist. Um not a virtual particles.

Okay.

Yeah. So [clears throat] they were called virtual because they exist at such minute time scales that we thought we'd never see them. and Hawking predicted that we'd have radiation because of them because of the intense gravity near the so I mean it's so that's just to say that it's not you know it's also the very structure of this you know life itself is you know you can look to yeah super symmetry

reminds me a little bit you know we're all riffing on it but it reminds me a little bit of like sometimes in the like the Tibetan tandric world you have this idea of zouen Okay,

which is like uh great perfection,

you know, great perfection. And it's kind of the idea like all these things are going to exist on some level, right? And so these what we could sometimes say would be the negative emotions if we get to the emotional part of it are like inevitable.

They're just embedded into the fabric of things themselves, right? And if you can recognize that part, J was talking about that [laughter] these oppos oppositions are in the fabric of reality.

Right. Yeah. Woven right into the fabric, right?

Yeah. It's it's kind of

Yeah. It's its own perfection. And I feel like once you really adopt this view of yin and yang, not as, you know, as husband and wife, we fight to stay together. You know what I [laughter] mean? the the when you can appreciate the sad tones of a love song like you know in your most tender moments when you cry if you can the greater the negative force that you can hold and embrace like excitement is the embrace of fear the embrace of danger and so the excitement that you can experience in your life is totally symmetrical proportional to the amount of fear that you can hold.

That was like sort of at the heart of Zen training. It's interesting that you say that cuz I had that experience going through that. I didn't mean to cut you off. Sorry about that.

No, no, you're good.

But like, you know, I was like, it was so amazing to me because I was in my 20s. I was a younger guy. I grew up in a house there was a lot of anger. So, I had to deal with those emotions, but fear, too. I grew up in a house that was kind of violent, you know. And uh what I realized as I was doing that training, which isn't easy, you know, you could it was more of a spiritual marathons if you do the Zen retreat rather than like uh what people think. [laughter]

It's not it's not like an easy time out in the woods and

yeah,

people are playing flutes and

it's not like that. It's intense, right?

Japanese, hence intense, but you know, spiritual training can be intense and it could be good for you, right? And I had exactly that thought. I realized like wow this is like it's almost like a you know if we get to some of our physicsy kind of speak it's almost like being a capacitor right how much capacity do I have

to hold this and my greater capacity it is for me to hold these things the more I'll be able to actually live

right and it'll translate into you know activity and the joy of living and the overcoming of the fear that keeps you away from experiences and all this wonderful stuff but it has to do with do I have the capacity to hold that and part of the training was I realized like oh that they're increasing my capacitance increasing my capacity andre increasing my capacity you know and the more you can hold of that charge in a way the more you can be alive right absolutely that's that's really how we view taii medicine life the more yin and yang you can separate and hold the more life you have and we say your capacity is mediated by your sanja so I told you this perspective basically how much nerve do Do you have when you say someone's got a lot of nerve, they can handle more life. They can go deeper into the fear. And somehow just that understanding of, you know, when you have that negative emotion, you're not as far from the positive as you may think. And when you can blend them together, like when you can, you know, be, you know, at the birth of a child and feel that sweet heartbreak and simultaneously with this incredible love, you see that they're not meant to be separated. You know, they they it's a coming of together that's really this, you know, Dao. This is the the eye that that binds them together.

So, we probably got about 15 minutes, you know, before we have to uh to depart for this evening. And with this last section, I wanted to give a bit of a premise and then look at this from we've kind of done the teacher philosopher sort of, you know, medical perspective. And I want to keep in that vein but now maybe shift towards a practitioner patient relationship. Okay. And the premise is this and this is and also this is the kind of human part right because we're we're people and we study these things and this is how it works in in an ideal. There's no forces around us. We can say these things and it works well but sometimes it within us it's hard to it's hard to find the gratitude when you're you know really uh inebriated with the sense of anger or frustration or you're inundated with it constantly or you have it coming from numerous fronts. It's difficult to kind of parse but the goal is still to work towards that. So that's in a in a good spot. So I see patients Eric sees patients. Rory sees patients and we would be lying if we didn't give um some observation, some moment of observation for the world that we are currently in right now. The political climate, the societal climate, the immense amount of division, the immense amount of violence, the immense amount of ac um acrimoniousness that exists, right? It's very very high. Very high. You know, some people don't view other people as human beings. They don't, you know, we have a hard time agreeing on like basic rights like people's are human. They deserve, you know, the opportunity to succeed or fail based on their own whatever, right? So, people are feeling all kinds of ways about all different kinds of topics now. And you know, one reason for this, I think, is definitely social media makes things worse. The isolation is increased. the the opportunity for people to find others who have similar weird views and then gather in little clusters and say, "Did you read this? Did you read this? Did you read this?" They get their news from memes, which is like the weirdest [...] No source, no nothing. Just a picture of a cat and some random bullet point that somebody made up. They're like, "Yeah, I fucking," you know, people reacting off obvious fake AI videos like, "I knew that's bullshit." You're like, "It is it actually is [...] It's not real. You should probably pay attention to this. But I feel personally and I believe that you all see it in the clinic because I definitely am the sense of increased pervasiveness of life outside life, societal life, communal life in people's personal lives because everybody's being affected by things where I think for a long time there was this idea that like oh what are you worried about? It's not affecting your life. Why do you care? Why do you care? Why do you care? And you know the the poem that not many people knew about. Now everybody knows it. Right? At first they came for the uh whatever the communists, but I didn't care cuz I wasn't a communist and they came for the laborers and I wasn't a laborer so I didn't care. And then you know so on and so forth and eventually they came for me and there was no one left to save me. So this kind of thing of like you know everinccreasing rings of stress and things like this that are kind of surrounding people now that are touching people's lives in a negative way. I find that there is a far more increased sense of angst, sense of frustration, sense of anger, sense of irritability. I have not had you know personal road rage has not been an issue for me for for many years. I felt like if I was going to be a kind of well-balanced person who was meditating and doing my thing that like I shouldn't be afflicted by somebody driving like an [...] Like that's that's there. You know what I mean? And we can all watch traffic and how people get overwhelmed by, you know, being four minutes behind where they were supposed to be. Okay, fine. I have noticed for myself over the last couple weeks, man, I'm I'm begging people to get out of the car. Begging, begging, please, please get out, sir. Please, sir. I would I would love to put your teeth on the ground. I think you know, you've had you've been paying health insurance for all these years. You've never used your benefits. Now is the perfect time for you to see how good those coverages actually are. And the fact that I have had multiple experiences where you know people are looking at me and I'm looking back at them and this I'm like okay this is a thing I am not an unregulated person. Of course I'm not devoid of emotion but also I'm like this is weird you know this is something this is something extra. Then of course everybody has eyeballs they can watch the news and decide what they want to react to and and have some kind of feelings about. So I wanted to ask your guys' thoughts with our last you know 10 15 minutes here based on this premise on how you are if you are seeing this in your clinical practice slashpersonal life whatever you want to choose to discuss as you know for for value for those who are listening as to say yes I see this or no I don't and then if I do what can I uh glean from what I'm seeing and how do I help people who are coming to me for guidance being a human being a male in this society and trying to navigate um all these difficult waters that you know are representative of other cultures in the past who have navigated it but then also we didn't do it ourselves. So all that we have is tales and books and teachings from people other people who did and now we're trying to implement it for ourselves authentically passionately but also making mistakes as we do it. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, I've given sort of my, you know, uh, mid-stage preamble. I guess it's a post amble at this point. And, uh, I wanted to hear what you guys think because I'm genuinely interested in both of your thoughts. That's why I have you both here this evening. So, I'm playing three-dimensional chess. Do you want to go first, Rory, on that or you want me to take a tumble at that? Or how do you want to do it? I'll I'll throw it to you since you're the guest in the house. You go first this time.

I get to go first this time. I'm not sure if I went first last time or not, but it's okay. [laughter]

I joke. Um, no, I was smiling when you were talking, Daniel. I was like had the the the mic off, you know, because I want to like uh create any sound over like you're sharing your thoughts and your feelings about that. Uh, but I was smiling. So, if you're not like if you're not watching the video, you wouldn't see that. But I've actually heard that exact thing from other people where they'll they'll say like, "Yeah, I'm waiting for somebody to say something wrong and I'm going to hop out of the car cuz I'm so, you know, I feel it so deeply, you know,

and uh and uh [clears throat] it's complicated times obviously, right?

And uh you know, I'm living in Chicago and it's complicated times in Chicago for us, right? Like uh we got military helicopters that are right outside my window right now, right? that are kind of swooping by. So, um, uh, so yeah, it's like kind of deep as I look at it in my life where I'm seeing it definitely. I think I feel like with I see it with just people in my personal life. I see it with people, uh, that I treat, you know, depending on how close they are to, you know, however things are affecting them. And then I deal with a lot of students, right? I have a lot of students from different parts of the world and people who are scared, right? So all of that's very real. I think um the dealing with it is interesting. You know, we've been kind of talking about what to do with some of these emotions like the whole way through. Fear and anger are like probably the deepest emotions that you're going to have within these contexts, right?

And how do you start handling them? As I was jotting down my notes for this, I started thinking about the the Tibetan cultural experience of this too because I had connections to people from that part of the world, right? and how they had to deal with, you know, the really strong feelings. One of the stories I found to be inspiring and I try to think about it in my better moments was the Daly Lama talking about his meditations around like Mount Sait, you know, and you're right in the midst of something, you know, so deep happening, you know, and he's in a position of of responsibility and uh also like the deeply interconnected. I don't know if you all seen the movie Kundon, did you see it? one the Mar Scar Mercedes movie about the Daly Lama.

No, so not much. It's an amazing scene in it where the Daly Lama is realizing like, oh, we're in real trouble. There was a sort of I guess a political thing that happened where uh they were trying to kind of like influence the Daly Lama's brother to turn on him and uh you know and and uh the Dal Lama in the movie it's very powerful because he says like oh that's what we're dealing with. we're dealing with something where there's an element of like they think my brother's going to turn on me if they offer him money and things. It's a powerful scene. So he, you know, the Daly Lama talks about this having to go through and deal with these very powerful emotions and these very heightened, you know, political situations and he talks about, you know, having to do one of the classic practices almost what you were talking about, Rory. Can I open up my heart so much that I can even hold the openness of the people who are on the opposite sides of such a the an existential conflict like that? But can I do it? Can I be open enough? You know, and and there are meditations that Daniel and I have talked about in what you were talking about the opening of the heart and then allowing feelings of love and compassion to happen even for people where that's very difficult, right? Um, but the thing he says that's so interesting about that is that the moment you're able to do that, the first person who really benefits in the irony of things is like you. You're the one who benefits because that closing of the heart is uh, you know, so nonproductive for human beings. It cuts you off of so much powerful uh, subjective possibility and uh, love and creativity and the things that we were talking about that kind of come when that flow is able to happen more. So that's I mean the start of a reaction right in one of my classes I try to teach this meditation to students then I was doing this before I've been doing it for years because it's a sort of a quintessential one you were talking about the three parts of the body the triple warmer idea in Chinese medicine. You can divide the torso up in these multiple parts. And if you can open up this upper part, like open up your chest and let the diaphragm move and let that be free, it's so much easier to get into these more positive emotional states of love and creativity and joy and you know, so I mean there's meditations around this that we've worked through, but that whole idea of doing that is like so powerful. And the first person who's going to benefit from that will actually ironically be you, right? When you're able to do that, right? Even if you find yourself in conflict and opposition, even conflict in opposition that's justified, right? But still, you have to be able to find that space somehow. It's an ideal, right, that we can strive towards. Not easy, but you know, something that's an ideal that also ultimately is a benefit to ourselves, right, and the people around us who we love and care about. Anyways, that's some thoughts on that. It's a deep conversation, Daniel. Thanks for opening it up. It's not easy, but you know, at least that's some thoughts. And you have things on that too, Rory? Yeah, I love that, Eric. And I could feel not just you speaking about it, but touching into it, too.

There's such a power to understanding that it's not that we need love from anyone. Although that's great but in in loving you are like a great king you know you can you that's where the joy is is when you're you're loving to others and so that's part of the pain I feel like is because the the anger is is so dividing and separates us and we feel so alone wronged don't um you know it all just feels wrong. And so it reminded me of a really powerful experience I had in a in a meditation retreat like you had said where I went so deeply into my heart and I I saw this uh saint's face in my heart and it said that everyone's face is in your heart. It was like I heard my heart speak.

And you know, I could spout platitudes at you about, you know, this and that, but the the the truth of it is that it's difficult. And um yeah, if if someone came into my clinic talking about that clinically, you know, I' I'd talk to them and you know, I you know, again, platitudes. I you know, but I try and be the change that I want to see in the world.

I don't know much what much more that I can do. M

aside from that, I'm not sure. Maybe you guys have more of that in Chicago. Maybe there's more going on. I'm in a suburb of Philadelphia closer to Lancaster, farm country.

So, a lot of what I'm treating like their main concerns are their physical ailments. if they have cancer or a very sick very very sick child or

and those things kind of eclipse anything else going on society but

understand

some of that is like humane communication too when you talk about the heart what I've been trying to do is like even with people like I have family members and you know I'm you know we haven't historically been on the same sides of some of these political divides in the country, but I am reaching out, right? And I'm trying to do it and I for our conversations about the heart and openness and, you know, and things of love, I'm like reaching out and I'm being honest. I think that's fair that you have to be honest about things, you know, but at the same time, I'm making the point of like, let's reach out, let's talk, let's connect, right? And that's another way of trying to create some healing around these things because I mean

it depends on where you're at in the world and how much this is like hitting close to home or something, you know,

but um you know I have my one cousin and you know we're not in the same sides of the political spectrum of things, but I I purposely reached out to him and said, "Hey, let's start talking again." Right? And part of that's honesty, emotion of the heart. Be honest, be open, be authentic, right? but also be loving and caring and you know um in the context of not not letting the wood the wood elements dominate not to be confrontational but to be honest and try to connect and sometimes that's about things that are happening because I want them to know what the experiences are you know that are closer to us who live in Chicago or something like that but also it's like you know we were talking about how the Bears got their ass kicked yesterday in football if I should say on Sunday not yesterday Monday you know the the hangover of the Bears goes all the way into Monday [laughter] when they get their asses kicked, which is not infrequent. So, you know, other ways of trying to connect with people. Yeah. The other part that I guess that I hit in notes here, and I don't know what you all think, when you get to the anger thing, it's such a powerful emotion and it can be negative, but can you direct that into proactive activity, you know, and in the Buddhist tantra, there's the idea of like powerful action where you're not just being stuck in it, but you do something powerful, but powerful in a way that's productive, too. not in a way that's destructive, but can you direct those things? So, you know, sometimes they'll talk about the use of like um forceful activity or powerful activity that we would probably associate with the wood phase in many ways and they do too. But you direct it in ways that are not destructive. you're directing it in ways that are trying to be proactive, you know, and I think I'm trying to do that and I think I'm trying to talk with other people about doing that, you know, and uh and it does happen with students, you know, uh where we'll talk about this too and uh and you know, like can we have constructive conversation around these things and I think it's helping, you know, in whatever ways it can help. You know,

I'm kind of a big one of the things we hit on with some of our episodes before was to communicate and even if you have a diversity of ideas and you have descent, just hearing someone else say something like, okay, you know, let's talk this through and we don't have to argue about it, but you just hear a different opinion and it can start to crack. It's part of social psychology, too, right? And maybe we can like through our communication. That's what we're hoping to do through the podcast. Through the communication, it starts to create little reverberations of people feeling, okay, let's talk. And maybe our minds can change and grow just through that experience of talking like we did in this very episode. [laughter] As we get to the end of it, we learn from one another, right?

Definitely.

Rory, you got any last party shots?

Well, just Yeah, I think that's so important is just making the connections. I feel like when you're stuck in that anger phase, there's this you we become prickly. We kind of isolate from the other. And um I think making, you know, communicating, making bridges, the dam has to crack at some point. And so moving into that vulnerability, moving into the hurt instead of the aggression is uh I think so powerful too. just really feeling the hurt of the situation and you know holding that out to someone. M

can because when you talk to someone you know you can really if you can really connect from there instead of you know making someone wrong you know I'm thinking in my own relationships you know if you feel like you've been wronged sometimes you isolate and you become prickly and you become short with the person and but really what you want is to connect and you that you're holding yourself in that energetic and sometimes it just takes you Even just a touch on the shoulder, some type of energetic connection, any advances towards that I think is is a big step for the the floodgates to open.

And maybe if like it's like the drops of water. If the drops of water keep falling, eventually you get more and more water collecting and that's what can open the floodgate. Hopefully.

Hopefully. Yeah.

Yeah. I like the metaphor you're talking about. Eventually the dam has to break,

Yeah. You get more things going on. little drops of water and drops of water and the water will eventually build, right? That's how you get stuff going. But we we get to better places. Yeah.

Yeah. Or the dark side of the force like Daniel was talking about and check their medical insurance. [laughter]

That's another route.

That one. [laughter]

You know what I'm saying? Let's see that insurance card. Boy,

that's very thoughtful of you, Daniel. First,

you're good. You're good. Right. You're covered.

Where's your insurance card before?

You have insurance. Okay. I wouldn't want to put you in trouble.

Yeah, I know.

I'm trying to give you a hard physical time, not a hard financial time. I got a heart, man. You know what I mean?

That's Buddhist compassion and action, [laughter] David. Daniel,

yeah. Yeah. Buddhist compassion and action for showing your insurance card. Decent coverage. Okay.

Okay, fine. Not bad.

I can open THE WHOOP ASS.

DID YOU GET THIS ON MARKETPLACE? REALLY? What's your deductible? My guy's amazing.

Oh, all right. Well, Eric, thank you so much for uh for always joining us, Rory. Uh a pleasure to have you on, my friend. We uh we look forward to uh when your book comes out. So, we'll, you know, early shout out for that, but we'll we'll have you on to talk about that uh once that once we get a little bit closer to that uh to that project being uh being released. And thank you for

definitely all my TCM people who like are participate. I have lots of students who listen to this. They definitely want to hear you talking about that. So, we'll do it. We'll get as technical as you want, right? Yes.

For those folks and we'll really we'll go for it. But thanks so much for coming.

I won't hold you back with the general audience at that at that point really. We'll let you just, you know,

yeah, that's a big thing. The essentials of the perfect numbers. That's what I'm calling it.

Oh, awesome.

66. So, this went

great. Thank you guys so much. I, you know, it was

really, it was fun and it was also touching, so I didn't expect that. So

yeah, awesome.

Thank you for coming on, Rory. Great.

Thanks so much. Audience, thanks for tuning in. Uh if you want to get a hold of us or Rory, uh please please feel free to hit us up at jin andtragmail.com. Uh leave a comment in the YouTube section or somewhere else wherever you might be listening to this Apple podcast or you know whatever messengerpigeon or some [...] Um also we're on uh in on the gram at the Jin and Tantra podcast uh and Rory at Four Mountains Clinic. Uh if you happen to be local to the uh Philadelphia suburbs area, uh please feel free to uh seek out the services of one, Dr. Rory Hiltbrand. He's a fantastic practitioner uh and has a very lovely clinic. And uh yeah, thanks for coming on everybody. I appreciate you guys. Uh for Eric and Rory, this is Daniel. We'll catch everybody on the next one. Peace.