Destiny: John Kokko, Meridians, Acupuncture, and old World Medicine

John Kokko

When I moved to the SF Bay area, a friend introduced me to Fu Yu-Tai, a renowned tui-na (traditional Chinese bodywork) practitioner in the Outer Richmond of the city. I became his first student, spending every Saturday from 8 am to 8 pm for a year studying under him and working with his patients. At the same time, I got a job working at Mayway, the largest Chinese herbal company in the country. Mama Lau became famous in Chinatown a couple of decades back, selling every traditional herb under the sun. She even started a restaurant cooking traditional herbal soups and dishes next door to their herb shop. What I learned there by the time they moved to Oakland was invaluable. I stayed there for 7 years, which got me through graduate school.Since acupuncture licensure, I've taught dozens of graduate courses at three acupuncture colleges for a decade and ran a program to help hundreds of graduates pass their state and national licensure board exams.

I also sat on the board of the California State Oriental Medical Association for 5 years, working with others in guiding policy and continuing education for our profession. However, I am most proud of teaching for 3 years at Contra Costa College. At this community college, the academic dean, Susan Lee, now a family friend, helped me set up a program for preventative health using the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. We saw people who reversed major alcohol and smoking addiction, chronic pain, blood sugar and hypertension issues, and anxiety and depression by utilizing the eight branches of Chinese medicine in their everyday lives. This was nothing short of miraculous in many cases and still inspires me today. My passions include creating community through the art of tea. For this, I owe a debt of gratitude to my late tea teacher, Winnie Yu, one of the first to bring artisanal tea to the West. She taught me to be generous and authentic, and that tea, like so many things, can bring us all together and dissolve differences.I continue to refine my clinical practice through ongoing studies with orthopedic expert Alon Marcus and Lonny Jarrett, a pioneer in integral medicine. Both have been awe-inspiring mentors and great friends on this amazing journey. I am committed to translating the depth of these teachers into our life practices, and I look forward to working with you. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Destiny.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
This is Thanksgiving week here in the United States. So
happy Thanksgiving from your friends at Destiny Earth Ancients and
the special edition of Earth Ancients that we hear about occasionally.
And I hope you have a chance to be with
your family and your friends during this festive occasion. And

(01:18):
it really is the beginning of the holiday season, the
Christmas holiday season or Hanukkah. And you know, we're thinking
about the good year. We've had, the positive interactions, the
new friends, and you know, giving thanks for all the

(01:40):
good things that have happened. Hey, this is Cliff, your
host of Destiny. And you know, as we settle into winter,
not quite render yet. Winter is December twenty first, but
it's getting cooler and the sun's going down earlier. I
have to be very careful now because I need to
get out at least three or four times a week

(02:01):
for a little hike. So if I if I wait
longer than like three o'clock, the sun's is dark at five.
So I got to get out early. And so that's
critical to get some fresh air, at least for me,
a guy who sits on his posterior for hours at

(02:23):
a time, producing podcasts, editing podcasts and getting the word
out about our guests. So anyway, happy Thanksgiving and on
where we go. The program today is another in the

(02:44):
series of tools for transformation, and I wanted you guys
to hear exactly the importance of acupuncture and traditional Chinese
medicine as a complimentary healing tool when you are unwell,
all feeling unbalanced, or perhaps depressed and filled with anxiety.

(03:07):
And these are all normal conditions that we have in
our fast paced Western society. You know, if you're working
all the time, you're not listening to your body, and
you can get you can get run down, you can
get fatigued, you can have little aches and pains, you
can have migraines. There's a million different problems that you

(03:28):
can deal with. And as a complimentary medicine, traditional Chinese
medicine is a wonderful alternative to taking a drug or
depending on aspirins or painkillers. It's a subtle, holistic way
to help ease your discomfort, ease the pain, and kind

(03:53):
of help you move back into equilibrium, which is feeling better,
having more energy, and reducing the aches and pains. And
I'm really blessed with my current acupunctures. His name is
John Cooco. We've had John on about three years ago

(04:13):
talking about the traditional Chinese medicine, but today we're going
to dig into it, and I'm gonna have him give
you an explanation for why it's so powerful. Why our
ancestors not a few thousands years ago, five plus thousands
years ago, incorporated these healing methods into their everyday activities,

(04:40):
not when they got sick, but more likely when they
were sensing that they were coming up on potential physical problem,
perhaps the flu, other conditions that required some attention. It
know that, and we'll hear about more about this today.

(05:05):
That not only has acupuncture been around for thousands of years,
it doesn't rely solely on the wisdom of the Chinese.
They have found mummies with various tattoos that are acupuncture points,

(05:25):
and we don't really know what that means. It might
mean that this person has a condition and these are
markers that need to be adjusted and attended to for
them to remain pain free, illness free, or whatever. Acupuncture
is extremely sophisticated, and it has to do with chi,

(05:47):
the energy that surrounds us, but it's also in our body.
And this is what's really fascinating, the meridians of the body.
We talk about the lay lines of the Earth, these
energy fields, these energy highways. The body has meridians like
the meridians like the Earth, but they are throughout the body,

(06:11):
from the top of the head all the way to
the body of your feet, and it's a super energy
highway that runs.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Through the body.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
When you manipulate these meridians with needles, with massage, with
certain other types of therapy, you trigger healing, You trigger
greater awareness, You trigger hormonal releases and other fantastic physical

(06:41):
manifestations that your body is not only desires, but actually
can use for healing. And this is why these traditional
healing techniques, although they're not really well accepted by the
traditional medical allopathic community, they have more long the effects

(07:07):
are much more long term and beneficial without taking a drug,
without having to be surgically treated for surgery or radiation
or whatever. And once you hear our program today, I
really recommend that you consider visiting your local acupunctures and

(07:28):
if not, then perhaps if you're interested in alternative healing techniques,
perhaps look into it a little bit by going to
your Google search and punching in acupuncture benefits. Acupuncture is
not only old thousands of years old, it looks to

(07:49):
be powerful healing technique. And I go in once a
month for what I call a routine checkup, and so
they'll John will check me and then we'll get on
a table and I'll have my acupuncture treatment, which concludes

(08:11):
with a short massage. And I got to tell you,
once I have that, my week just runs better. The
rest of the month until my next appointment just flows,
just flows a lot better. So today's program is Meridians Acupuncture,
an old world, forgotten medicine. And my guest is John coco.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
The seventh annual Grand Egyptian Tour is coming up. We
have Mohammad and Nohah by him with us. We're going
to be visiting Tennis, Egypt, which is very very old.
We don't know what happened there. It looks like a
catastrophic event happened. It has megalithic structures, statues, and some

(09:01):
large pieces strewed around Muhammad. What do we know about tennis?
What makes it so unique?

Speaker 4 (09:08):
What we know about tennis unfortunately so little, but it
is so little incompiliar with the importance and the greatness
of Tennis, but for us it is very high level
of information. Number one, what we know that Tennis was
a great center of knowledge in Incia issupt.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
It was the big city.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Receiving all the travelers and immigrants and visitors to Egypt
from the northeast part of they come across Sinai. The
second thing about Tennis that there was a massive size
tembile or I can call it big town. We call
it temble dedicated to Amonra. This temble or this village,

(09:55):
if I can call it this way, was completely built
out of rose granite. From one You know what people
don't know that there was more than twelve obelisks in Tennis,
maybe more, but the remains some of them still in
good condition, but all of them are laying on the ground.

(10:15):
The one they took it to the Grand Museum, the
one in front of the main gate of the Grand
Museum is from Tennis, and the one in Tarry Square
now is from Tennis. So there are about ten obelisks
or eight obelisks still there at Tennis. So the story
is very strange because we expected even if the temple

(10:37):
was in bad condition. We expected more ruins to see
more cat ORed blocks, but we found only few. But
we found the biggest. By the way, there are remains
of blocks weighing more than two hundred ton and three
hundred toon we found the foot of a statue. According

(10:57):
to the dimension of the foot, the statue would be
more more than fifteen hundred ton.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
The foot is like a car size. Wow.

Speaker 4 (11:05):
Okay, so we don't know what happened exactly. It must
be something very strong hit tennis and hit that temple
and it causes it caused great damage, like great exublusion
happened inside the temple and caused that all the pieces
are scattered on a distance maybe like three or four

(11:26):
kilometers wide.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Amazing.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
When people go to tennis, they're going to feel the
magic and they feel the dips of the history of tennis.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Coman join us. It's gonna be April twenty eight through
May tenth. For all the details and the itinerary, go
to Earth Ancients dot com Forward Slash Tours. It's been

(12:22):
a while since we had John Coco on the program.
He is the owner of Coca Wellness in Berkeley. He
is my acupuncturist, he's excellent, and we want to continue
on with our theme of tools for transformation, because we're
all fixated with allopathy, which is your traditional i should say,

(12:42):
conventional doctor and in that environment, and I want to
expand on the acupuncture process and what it means when
you go to a traditional Chinese medical doctor, the benefits
of it, and perhaps more details that will make you

(13:04):
understand why so many people find it just the way
to go. So, hey, John, good to see it. Man,
thanks for joining me again.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
It's an honor. Thanks brother.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
Talk a little bit about your background when you decided
to become a acupuncturist. What was the motivation for you
to do this kind of work?

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Wow, that's that could take a long time. It was
the short version, oh man. Okay. The short version is
I traveled and met medicine people along the Silk Road.
Not really, but did a Fiji in Australia walk about,
and in Fiji I met a medicine man who told

(13:49):
me I was a healer. And I could go into
that in depth, but basically, there are people who can
tell you what you should be doing, and sometimes you
just need to listen. So family comes from healers. Different
kinds of healers, herbal healers, spirit healers. And they wanted
me to be a white coat doctor or a preacher,

(14:13):
and they wanted me to go into seminary and h yeah,
but yeah, you know, and the spirit calls you, you
got to listen. So then I got into traveling around
and chasing volcanoes and finally found the Big Island. And
when I got to the island, I was home. I

(14:33):
found my fire. Wow. And so now I'm here in Berkeley, California,
hanging out with you. Very cool.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yeah, And I've been with John I think at least
three years, maybe more, and he's a miracle worker when
it comes to all kinds of health conditions. When we
speak about the history of acupuncture or traditional chin medicine
as a whole, how old is is acupuncture? How how

(15:04):
far back does it go?

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Oh? Wow? Okay, So let's let's just theoretical, because maybe
I was there, maybe you were there, but we're just guessing, okay,
and this is from documented evidence. So the first question
is how old is medicine itself? Right the beginning of time,
people start breaking bones, burns, you know, in caves. So

(15:29):
I would say formal acupuncture. Is that what you're talking about,
you're talking about like Pudney.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, I mean what we think of traditional Chinese medicine.
I read, you know, different aspects. Some people say it's
twenty five hundred years old, some people say it's five
thousand years old, and yeah, I'm just curious, what are
your what is your feeling on? When the what the
inception when someone began to discover these meridians that we're

(15:55):
going to discuss today.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Well, uh, there's a a master of Japanese acccuncture named
Shoodo Denme, and his idea is that the people who
were seamstresses putting needles through thread on people to actually

(16:19):
fit their clothes right. So someone actually probably punctured someplace
on the body and someone felt a nerve sensation, achieved sensation,
and then they started paying attention to that. That's one idea.
Another idea is that people were already seeing these channels,

(16:42):
these lines and so energy lines, and there's certain people
who can do that. It's very rare. I know, I'll
just full disclosure. One time I tried doing some mushrooms
and I could see these channels and mainly because I'm
doing this work twelve hours a day. But it's it's

(17:02):
in my field, right vision field. And basically, if you're
a Rishie and you lived in the mountains and there
were there were no distractions, and you grew up this
way and you were fostered from a very early age
because someone saw your gifts and and then you know,

(17:24):
you were the person that everyone brought anyone who was
sick to in the mountains, that person probably could see
these subtle energy lines, right, and so it wasn't like
something where we had to experiment or find scientific evidence
for that. It was it was plain as day. Now,
there are other ideas such as the points came first,

(17:45):
and if you have these acupuncture points first, before needles,
there were actually maxa or scarring techniques. So we were
in the cave. Going back to the cave, and basically
you're caterizing different areas where there's a lot of pain. Right,
Let's say there's a lot of nerve pain in a
place and you actually put some fire, a fire stick,

(18:10):
you put you put a branch into the fire, and
then you put that right into that place that hurts,
and oh the pain went away. Hum hmm. Okay, So
that's an idea, right, I mean, that's that's pretty primal,
so I think that's legitimate. We also know that there
is the tattoo uh man in in the in Europe, right,

(18:34):
what's his name, the the ice man. He had tattoo
lines uh.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
He had markets for what could be acupuncture points. So
what of that marketunc points he's thought to be He
thought he's about to be three or four thousand years old, back.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Guy at least, yeah, at least. And this is not
in you know, China, this is in your eur Asia Europe, right, Yeah,
So basically I don't think that China can take claim
to own this or to have started this. However, we
do know that the Egyptians, you know, we're doing piercings

(19:12):
in the ear going back at least five thousand years
They were doing surgery. They were doing cataract surgery at
least five thousand years ago. So I believe that this
is at least five thousand years old. And it took
until about twenty two hundred BC when they started writing
this stuff down, compiling it's that's written. We have this evidence.

(19:35):
It's in the Inner Classic then Agen and so in
the Lingshu, all these points. Everything has been documented, organized analyzed,
and so it's at least twenty two hundred years old,
but the oral history is much older.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
So you're saying that the documents that we see of
illustrations of the body with these needle points, these points
on the body, that's about that's that shows up about
twenty two one hundred BC.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Now about two hundred BC is when it was written
and compiled in the Qin dynasty. You've heard of the
Yellow Emperor. Maybe saw the movie Hero, Yeah, if you
saw that, Jong Emo and a great movie has jet
lie in there, right, and basically it's all under heaven. Right.
So there were these warring states periods and they were

(20:27):
fighting for hundreds of years, centuries, and finally there was
an emperor that united all the kingdoms in China and
also burned a lot of the histories, but also compiled
a lot of the science and a lot of that
was put into these texts. So we have evidence from
the Malongdi tombs, we have we have a lot of

(20:49):
evidence from that time period that this medicine is at
least twenty two hundred years old.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
And when they were documenting the techniques, what was the
application for all illnesses or were there specific illnesses it
was good for.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, so you know people come to us mainly for pain, right, right, pain,
stressed neurological disorders, kind of cological disorders, et cetera. But
back then, you know, this was the cutting edge medicine, right,
this was state sponsored medicine. I mean like they would
get the smartest people in all the lands, have them

(21:29):
basically go through tests and find out who were going
to be the ones to treat the emperor. Right. So
that's the stuff that's written in these texts. So it
was used for everything. And remember acupuncture is only one
of the eight branches of Chinese medicine.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, give us the full spectrum. It's acupuncture, herbs, bodywork.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
What else? Right? So the first three or the heaven
heavenly branches, right, So there's meditation, there's diet and movement diet, right,
and so those three are the most important because if
you actually can do those things, you don't need anything external. Right.

(22:12):
If you meditate, if you have the right attitude, if
you are someone who eats in harmony with seasons, you
don't eat too much of anything or too little of anything, right,
and you move with the chi that you're in the
field that you're in and you keep circulating your blood

(22:33):
your chi, then you'll live a long, full life. So
those are the top three, and those are three things
that you can learn by yourself anywhere. You can go
to YouTube right now, or you can find a teacher,
or you can just walk in nature and just know
that it's in your DNA, right, So those are the
top three. Then there's functue and astrology. And what's interesting

(22:57):
is functue, which is not something that's really like in
the purview of a lot of Westerners, but it's just
part of life for people in Asia, right. This is
environmental medicine. And what we need to think of is
how do we survive and thrive with other beings in

(23:18):
harmony and how do we flow so we don't waste
our time and energy, right, And that's how you live
a full life. If you're a candle that burns too fast,
you know your wax that just spills out right makes
a mess, right, And so this is really important. Functual.
We'll talk a little bit more about this when we
go out. I can show you some of the functual

(23:39):
of our clinic. And then astrology, which I think a
lot of your viewers listeners are really into I'm sure
you know. Of course, if you ask some scientists, they'll
say it's just random variables, and people want to believe
what they want to with biases, right. However, I really

(23:59):
believe that it's important to look at the big cycles,
the cosmic cycles, right, not just the individual cycles. So
if you look at, for instance, the Chinese zodiac cycle,
we're in the snake gear this year, right, and a
lot of people, i'm sure have gone through a lot
of internal work sloughing off a lot of the shadow stuff, right,

(24:22):
unveiling what's underneath the surface, right when we mold this
this skin. So that's that's a Jupiter twelve year cycle.
And it also coincides this year with a I think
a big solar flare cycle as well. So it's been
a very intense, intense year. We just had a G
four storm last week, right, So you know, these things

(24:45):
all matter and they influence us. So ninety nine nine
percent of who we are is from the Sun, right,
and the rest is from this planet, and we just
don't give that enough credit, right, So that's FUNCTU. And
then if you keep going through that, so those are
things that we all share. Then we go to the
personal stuff. Right. So we've done five branches. The other

(25:08):
three other things you think of when you come and
you pay money to see someone like me, Right, that's
the body work, that's the herbs, right right. And so
basically the acupuncture is the lowest branch. So the branch
that is most invasive is acupuncture, which is actually very

(25:30):
un non invasive. We barely put these needles in people.
And what we're doing is we're guiding chi through the body.
We're just speaking to the body and reminding it that
actually there's something there that could be internally released or tonefied, nourished,

(25:51):
stimulated in order for there to be harmony and balance
in the body.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
Find to find chi, John, What I mean this is
a huge thing.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Uh? What is chi? And how do you manipulate it? Man?
These questions?

Speaker 3 (26:09):
I told you, I told you to be ready, buddy.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, okay, So the best way for me to explain
she she is functional, she is relationship. I have a
teacher who passed years ago who said she is time.
All right, So I'm just gonna show you right here.
Let's turn this around, all right, So this is a

(26:36):
tests have been and you see that steam coming out, Yeah,
that's chi from the right, from the teapot, that's yeah.
And you see that that's that's that fire, that's young.
And you see the water in there, yes, fire underneath water.
Great chi. Okay, So we drink a lot of tea

(27:00):
here you can see right here. That'll be the next
time we talk. And actually I should drink some tea.
So what does she Chi is like steam engine energy?
I mean, you know, what happened was a long time
ago in eighteen hundred's. These French guys, they they were

(27:23):
introduced to acupuncture and Chinese medicine and energy medicine. It
was really popular at the time, so that was the language.
And so what they do is they translated chi into energy.
It made the most sense. Okay, But she is more
than that. And that's what I mean by that because actually,
if you see the character of chi, it's it's actually this,

(27:44):
it's the steam that's cooked coming off cooking rice. Okay,
So when you think about that, it's it's it's invisible,
but it's also visible. You saw the steam.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
It is like life force. Would you say, like life
force of the body.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Uh So, Prana you know numa prana. These are very
similar terms, right right, And yes it does enliven activate
our own our own processes so that we can keep
living for sure.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Right, Okay, Now I want to jump into the meridians
because this is a huge part of the traditional Chinese
medicine practice, and we know that the earth has meridians.
It's not necessarily accepted by traditional archaeologists, but if you

(28:40):
talk to older traditional people like the Maya or the
current Egyptians, they know about it because it was handed
down to them. The meridians are the body are an
energy super highway. Talk about the meridians just for a second.
Tell us about the meridians and why they're important.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yes, So I like what you said, super highway of
the body, right, Okay, So there are also these blue lines,
you know, those little roads that are on the map, right,
Those are also channels too. There are so many different
ways for that she that steamed that I just showed
you for that to travel through the body, and it

(29:22):
travels through open spaces. Those open spaces could be vast
blood vessels, it could be interstitial tissue, could be factial lines,
It could be through the nerves, right, It could be
through any space where there's an opening, and as we know,
we're mostly empty space. Right. What you're seeing right now,

(29:44):
when I'm seeing you know, these it's just like electrons
separated by almost an infinite amount of space. But basically
she runs through all that and it also activates it.
So let's start actually with feel old sort of stuff. Okay,
So the first thing is that these channels are not

(30:05):
like two dimensional things that you see on a chart.
I mean, you can see that they look like straight lines. Right.
We talked a little bit about this because what I
think inspired this conversation was us talking about lay lines, right,
which is also controversial because no proven them. However, there

(30:28):
have been a lot of there's a lot of evidence
that there's a lot of electromagnetic energy in these sacred
spaces and also in mountains Haleakala, you know, Maui, the
Big Island. I used to live on the Big Island.
These these five mount volcanoes have an enormous amount of

(30:51):
energy that are coming to the surface. Right. One of them, Kilauea,
is spewing right now. It's extremely active, and you know
there's a lot of energy there. It's obvious, right, So
it's the same thing there that there are these nodes
or points in the body where a lot of energy
is coming up. And we can see this obviously in

(31:14):
places people go. They go to the Himalayas. There's a
lot of ideas that potentially the Atlanteans when the floods happened,
they went to the highest places in the world to
keep this information alive, right, Rudolph Seiner said that, And
so basically we have you know, all these places, the

(31:35):
Nasca lines, you know, these these places where people have
actually created these huge I mean for they've they've worked
on these for decades and even centuries. Yeah, and why
like why in these spaces? Why did they carry those
those huge stones to Stonehenge? Right? Like why that's space? Right?
So absolutely, what we're doing is we're mapping what's happening

(32:00):
outside of us, what we can see outside of us,
also with what's inside of us. And basically there are
going back because you're talking about ancient times. There are
names of these points that are all geographic. And as
an example, bladder sixty, which is on the ankle, it's

(32:22):
close to the lateral malliolas and that's called kunlan Okay.
So Kunland sacred mystical mountains in a western part of China.
Did you say.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Bladder at the ankle, so you would put a needle
in that meridian that would affect the bladder.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Actually, that's true, it's so wow. Yeah, so basically the
whole body. You said, a super super highway, like a
super conductive highway. But we have these channels that run
through I'm sure everyone has seen these acupuncturer charts. And
what we can do is we can actually work the

(32:59):
extra to work the internal. And that was the genius
of the ancients, was that they were saying, do less harm, right,
do no harm, to do the most, do the most
that you can from the outside to work the inside.
So you don't have to surgically invade somebody because you

(33:22):
actually do harm when you do that right. It's like
if I had a teapot and I cracked it right now,
that crack is going to be there the whole time.
Even if I fix it, even if I try to,
you know, glue it together, put gold on it, whatever,
that crack is still there.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
our sponsors to identify themselves and will return shortly with
my guest today, John Coco, discussing ancient medicine traditions and acupuncture.
Will be right back. My guest today is John Coco.

(34:40):
He is a Chinese medicine doctor who specializes in a
variety of ailments and health concerns. He is located in Berkeley, California,
and he is he's describing today the history of traditional
Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Is it disrupting the energy, John,

(35:03):
Is that what it is? It's like fractures the energy
when you cut something open like that.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Absolutely. Absolutely. There's there's emotional trauma, there's karma trauma, and
there's also physical trauma. Right, So we try not to
hurt people at all. And that's what's amazing about acupuncture
and Chinese medicine is first, do no harm, right, and
that goes back to Hippocrates, right, So if you can

(35:29):
do not do anything that is going to actually make
the patient worse, right in the long run, Okay, because
maybe they'll get over it if they're twenty years old
and they're you know, a soldier, if they're an athlete,
But when they're fifty sixty, that's when they actually see
that right unravel. So let's go back to Kunland bladder

(35:50):
sixty and this point, for instance, is named after the
most one of the most sacred mountain ranges in China.
It's a mystical looks like a big snake that runs
through right the land, and there are hundreds of mountains actually,
so why that one, right, We have all of these
points that are actually named after different areas that are

(36:14):
geographic rivers valleys. As an example, this really famous point here.
You know this L four which is used for headaches.
Do you know that point? No, it's right here. It's
it's right between the thumb and the index finger. Okay, okay,
very famous for headaches. Other pain too, Okay, it could

(36:35):
be used for gynecological pain, mestural pain. And that one's
called joining valley, right, and so Hogu. So basically all
of these points are they're named after these geographical sort
of spatial areas externally. But the thing is that the

(36:55):
Chinese didn't see a difference between our bodies and the
landscape outside of us. We are part of nature, we're
one with nature, right, and that the names of nature
items exactly right. And so that's the beauty of it
is actually seeing that what health really is is being
in harmony with nature, including space and time, especially the

(37:20):
seasonal changes. Right, So people get sick, especially when the
seasons change. We saw this the last few weeks, right, Yeah,
colds and stuff when cold damp, Right, we said arthritis.
That creates a lot of arthritis, a lot of allergy
kind of stuff. Cold, all this comes out all the
old stuff. Right. If you had an old back pain, right,

(37:40):
all of a sudden, it's like, oops, out that came back.
Why did they come back? I didn't do anything. It's
the seasonal shift. And so that's again when there's a
crack in the pot, that'll show up when there's condensation, right,
when there's when there's any different kind of shift, that's
that's stress is what causes the pain. And so the

(38:03):
pain is just telling your body, Hey, you know what,
there's something to deal with here. It's not a bad thing. Yeah,
it just means you're not actually changing flowing with the season.
It's so funny to hear.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
What you're saying, because if you look at the conventional
medicine approach to problem areas of the body, they're like, Okay,
we got to cover this up. We're going to give
you a drug so you have less pain, but not
necessarily address the causation, but maybe the causation. It's it's
just so different when I think of what you do

(38:38):
and compared to my Kaiser physician, who's a great guy,
but their training is to to cover up stuff with
potent drugs that are toxic.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah. Well, I mean sometimes you need that, you know,
as an example of there's structural impingement and there's something
that I can't do you know anything about that? Right?
If you have a major bulging disc, right, you need
some painkillers. You don't want to walk around with that

(39:10):
kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. You
need surgery if it's really bad.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
So yeah, there's benefits to all the different practices, but
I'm just saying it's just much more challenging when you're
taking a very strong drug.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, the problem is this is that you know,
when we say what western medicine were allopathic medicine, you
know this contemporary modern medicine, it's only been around for
one hundred fifty years. Yeah, you know, so think about
that a point. That's a really good point. Yeah, and
one hundred and twenty years ago or so, the reason

(39:44):
why they're the primary medicine we're using in America is
because they actually went out and tried to exterminate all
the other different kinds of modalities out there. If you
look at the history of it, the eclectics, the natural paths,
the homeopaths, right, the osteopaths, the chiropractors.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
Why were they trying to eliminate the other ones?

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Just it's called a big business. It's called oh capitalism, profits, profits, Yeah,
that's right. I'm maybe on again show with this. I'm
just telling the history. This is a fact. Yeah, everyone
could read this, but basically that's that's what dominated and
they won. Okay, so you know, now ostiopaths work in hospitals, right,

(40:25):
Chiropractors are seen as quacks according to the allopaths. You know,
they don't like them. So acupunctions, we don't. We don't
fight with the alipaths. We actually do allopathic type of medicine, right,
and so you know, we haven't so far had any
problems with them. But homeopaths are quacks right because they
do the law of similars and mentetismals. Right. Yeah, you

(40:45):
see what I'm saying. It's like there's not enough room
in this this allopathic world for other types of modalities
or even other kinds of thinking, right, the mactricity thinking.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
So, I mean, I think of acupuncture, your traditional Chinese
medicine as complementary, yes to the altopathic. I mean, and
I think more people should be thinking of it like that.
But I don't want to spend a lot of time
on that because we can we can talk forever about that.

(41:18):
How did they manage to discover all these points on
the body and and relate them to earth features? Which
is just mind blowing because how many points are there?

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Joints? More than a thousand? Yeah, so there's a saying
that every place in the body is a point. Okay,
However there are nodes right, just like in music, right
when you when you have a certain like a guitar
and you you play you know, the third, the fifth,
it sounds different right on an octave. So basically we

(41:55):
have I'm going to turn this around just to show
you a chart here, oh your chart? Yeah right, okay,
So these are different types of microsystems, right, here's scalp.
This is the hand, and then this is the ear.

(42:17):
And what's really interesting is when it comes to ear acupuncture.
Is this is an inverted fetus. Okay, So here's the head, right,
and then you got the feet up here in any
of the internal organs, okay, all of these have been
mapped scientifically proven that if you stimulate this point, it
also has a correspondence with the internal organ and tissue. Okay.

(42:40):
Now what's really interesting about this is that traditionally in
China they had some of these mapped out, but they
didn't have all of them mapped out. And it was
a French medical doctor named Nogier who actually created this map. Wow, okay,
and you just saw it and you know this is
pretty cool, right, But there are a lot of systems
is Chinese, French, German, so it's not just one system.

(43:05):
So this is this is a holographic image of what's
happening inside our whole body. And we have at least
thirty two of these, which we call monclises, right, little
little areas of the body that represent the whole like
a fractal body. You know, you guys know a lot
about fractals, because I'm sure you're your listeners are really

(43:31):
into physics, right and so yeah, but basically what is
above is what is below what is within is what
is without, and it's all archetypal. So let me turn
this around here.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
So is the is the meridian flowing like this cheat
energy like a liquid or is it like electricity can
be compared to electricity?

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, so let's let's let's go past electricity and we'll
start talking about fields, okay, because we know about electromagnetic
magnetic fields, all right, and you know about Alex Gray,
I'm sure, oh, the painter. Yeah, so yeah, right, so

(44:27):
this is this is that our clinic, and we have
these up here so that people are reminded of who
we are. And you can see here the channels. Okay, right,
you see some of that electricity coming off of the aura, right,
you see the chakras. And then here this is a

(44:49):
little beyond that. This is a third body right here.
This is what some people see, for instance on d
MT as an example. Right, So we're going from the
electromagnetic we're going into the more subtle energy into this
cosmic archetypal fortex right, And so all of this is

(45:11):
happening in everything, including this planet. And let me just
show you here. This is what the Chinese saw. This
is called an aging two and This is a copy
of something that's in the White Cloud Monastery in Beijing, right,
and you can see here this is actually the energetic

(45:34):
functional blow of chi ching Chi and shin, which is
fundamental essence. That's steam and then spirit. You can see
the Daoist right going up to the high mountains.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Yeah, so are you saying that we're each a little
power plant of energy, like where we have our own
energy system or are we deriving it from the environment?

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Is that powering us? Yeah? Good question. I don't think
it has to be either. War. You know, when you
eat food, what are you doing beating the engine? That's right,
you're putting some fuel in your body. So this is
something I say to almost everyone who comes in, especially

(46:24):
in the winter. Winter, no raw cold foods.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Okay, why in the winter, no raw or cold foods,
because you want to keep the fire burning.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
I guess yeah, it's that you saw that tests have
been that tea kettle. We need that steam, we need
that heat that young. So if you're putting something that's
that's in the fridge, like some salad or whatever that's
been in there, and you're putting that inside your body,
your body has to generate the energy to break that down, right,

(46:56):
So you're wasting energy. So when you put something that's
that's that has fire inside of it and you put
that into your body, your body as a vessel becomes
a container for that energy and you generate energy. Okay,
it's the same thing if you go out to outside
and you sunbathe, or if you hug a tree, or

(47:18):
you go down to the ocean and you just put
your like, your whole body and you immerse it into
this incredible wave, right and all that energy goes right
into you, right through you. So those are ways that
you can generate energy. There's tontric sex, there's just breath work.
I mean, there's so many ways that you can do it.

(47:40):
And going back to sacred spots, sacred locations, those are
places that some people go and they stay there to
regenerate their energy, to heal sacred waters, sacred churches that
were built on pagan sites right where we say maybe
lay lines were formed into you know, a place where

(48:04):
people miraculously healed. Why because all of a sudden, all
this energy went inside of them and healed them. I mean,
I do believe that. Right there are wells, there are pools,
you know, so in Chinese medicine, when we talk about
these channels, they're actually translated as water sort of vessels. Okay,

(48:26):
places that water flows, and so let's talk a little
bit about these points. There are seventy two channels, but
we look back, we look at twelve primary channels, eight
extraordinary channels or vessels. And in these vessels, these eight
extraordinary vessels are much more like reservoirs. They're underneath, they're deeper,

(48:49):
and the primary channels are more superficial.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
When you say channels, you're talking about the energy flow.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
The meridians, Meridians. We're talking about the Meridians, right, And
so going back to all the stuff we're talking about
what she is, right, it's that steam that Yang and
the yin and the intermarriage between Yang and yin creating
this sort of steam, right, that itself flows through all

(49:16):
of these vessels. And if there's a place that's stuck,
then there's this function down down that way. There's pain
because your body is trying to tell you there's something
there to look at. So pain is a great teacher,
something wrong with it. Unless you can't you take care
of it, then it just becomes a pain in the butt. Right.
So going back to the field, we are this field

(49:39):
that is reflective of the whole the whole universe, right,
all the fractal archetypal imagery that you see throughout the universe.
And it looks like a sitting Buddha if you stand.
If you stand that Buddha up, then all of a
sudden it has all these little fractal sort of things

(50:00):
coming off it. That's part of us. To these nodes.
They turn into our head, our arms or legs right
our fingers or toes, and all of these channels are
also they're just lines that connect with the internal part
of our being into those organs. Okay, so you can
look at the channels and you can see that. You

(50:22):
can look at the charts that just showed you. The
thing that's really interesting for me is actually that these
lay lines. I know, it was a thought of theorized
as straight lines and then that's been kind of debunked.
But actupuncture is not the same either. It actually is
more like a snake. Right.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
Oh really, they're not like straight line meritian pathways or
all over the place moving like this.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Well, look at your body. Yeah, so if you see
your body, you see the contours of the muscles, the
fascia in between those, that's where she runs, right. Okay,
So there's a there's a principle in functua. So in function,
there's this idea that things that are straight lines, energy

(51:13):
goes in and out. If you ever go to a
Chinese restaurant, first thing you come in, you're gonna see
some kind of barrier maybe you know, maybe a fish
tank or something. Why do you think that is? Okay,
the energy to go out? Oh, you want to keep
the energy in. So yeah, you people, people are bringing
energy in and you want to store it and contain
that energy. Ah okay, okay, So let me just show

(51:36):
you again our our clinic here. This might be demonstrative. Okay, right, okay,
hey lala, all right, so we're kind of winding through
and you can see here. Oh yeah, okay, all right,

(51:59):
so just already here all right. So this is a
series of paintings by our friend April McMurtry, and she
puts together the Moon Calendar and Moon Journal every year.
It's my Moon Calendar, and that's what it's called. And
if you see right here this is these are every

(52:20):
month of the year and this is a calendar that's
depicted in a painting. And do you see the snake
that runs through that? Yeah? Yeah, So these are different
snakes for different seasons and different flowers and so. And
you see the al chemical triangles right right, it's really brilliant. Well,

(52:42):
that snake right there is the same thing that's running
through that's the chie that's running through here. And when
we built this place out, I brought in my friend
Manya Butterworth, who's the owner of the Golden Gates School Functual,
and he advised us that we need it to have
this sort of slithering effect. Yeah, and you can see

(53:04):
that right if we went straight through, all the ergy
would go in and go straight out and just like
it be a long corridor like a tunnel. And now
here you have the moongate. So half the place is
on the sun's side or outside, and then we walk
into the inside. Ay about you, there's an.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
our sponsors to identify themselves and we will return shortly
with my guest today, John Coco of the Cocoa Wellness Center,
and the details on traditional Chinese medicine.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
We'll be back shortly.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
What child is this? Who late to us on May's
lafe is slee thing who may just green with anthem
sweet while ship shocky.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
My guest today is Chinese medical doctor John Coco coming
to us from Berkeley, California, and we are learning about
the history the tradition of acupuncture and how the Riadian
system works. Yeah, I see the I see the intention.

(54:59):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
So she is the same way, okay. Basically she runs
not in circles but in spirals and in waves. Okay.
And if you do chigong you know this as well.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
When you when you move like this, okay, there's flow.
When you do straight line kinds of things, you get tired.
There's resistance right right, And it's the same thing in
politics and everything. If you if you try to do
everything straight with in this order, there's gonna be some resistance. Yeah.

(55:39):
So you got to be like a snake and you
gotta flow. And that's that's actually the lesson of this year.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Expand a little bit on when you first see somebody
and they say to you, John, I have upset stomach
all the time. I have digestion problems. And you will
hear that it's like a brief history and then you
do what do they call it? A pulse reading? Talk
about that because that's really critical for you as a

(56:06):
practitioners to understand what is happening, What is that? What
does the pulse reading determine?

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Yeah, well that's a good question. So what's interesting about
the diagnostics, right, is that the most complex and most
important diagnostic that we use is actually the pulse reading.
And why that's person to what we're talking about today,
is that the pulse itself, that radio artery, that's another snake.
So think about the blood flowing through there in waves,

(56:37):
right it it undulates, And what you're doing is we're
actually writing that we're listening to the wave pattern, the waveform,
and we're able to discern at different levels which organ systems,
which tissues are dysfunctional, and which ones are functional right
inside of a patient. And so through the microcosm of

(57:01):
a couple of inches on both sides of the wrists,
we can actually feel in the time and space continuum
the shift in that patient at that moment.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
So talk about where you're you're placing your fingers over
the inner part of the wrist, right right, And so
then you're you're you're kind of moving your it's almost
like you're manipulating that area to get a full I
want to just say, charge or an ability to read

(57:35):
what's happening and what do you trying to do sense
when you're doing that.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Yeah, So you know what's interesting is that, like when
you see somebody's face, Okay, it could be a stranger,
not even someone you know, and you know there there's
over thirty muscles in the face, right, so when we
see that, we can already tell Okay, this person's upset,
they're in a good mood, they're happy, they're they're angry,
they're free, I mean, whatever it is, right, Yeah, so

(58:03):
you know that's a visual representation of what's happening in them.
The Chinese actually saw they did face reading, they did
palm reading, right, they did all these kinds of ways
of reading the internal landscape through the outside. Again, we
just talked about this. You can treat to the outside

(58:24):
to work the inside, and you can also see the outside,
and you could listen to the outside to listen to
the inside. Right. So when we're feeling this radial artery,
and then there's a lot of ideas around this one
is that you could also do a lot of other
kinds of diagnostics. But we were trying not to be

(58:45):
invasive again, right, we're not trying to cut people open,
we're not trying to put radiation in them. What we're
doing is we want to listen to what's happening in
the most sincerely respectful way. Okay, all right, And and
so one of those ways is can I, you know,
listen to the pulse by your hand. Okay, you don't

(59:07):
even have to take off any clothes, right, It's it's amazing.
And so this this goes back again twenty two hundred years.
It's all written right, very very very sophisticated pulse readings.
And this is not owned by the Chinese. Okay, Galen,
the Roman physician, he had over one hundred kinds of

(59:27):
pulse readings as well. Oh interesting, is that incredible? So
different parties the.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
World has different readings, as though you're suggesting.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Absolutely, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arivedic practitioners in India
you know, which later went to Tibet, you know, and
the Chinese they were all doing this and we we
have this historical evidence. Right, So again, this is not
something that the Chinese invented. Like the Chinese didn't invent moxibustion,

(59:58):
they did not invent cuppying. Right, companying comes from Africa, right,
mock sebustion, scarring techniques are at least from eagypt and
before that. So I would just want everyone to look
into their own traditions wherever they come from, and dig deep,
and you'll find that we're all very similar, and we

(01:00:21):
all actually have almost everything that we're doing. As far
as in Chinese medicine, there's also a precedent in Africa
and other parts of the world because it's that old.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Right, So somewhere there was a foundation that spread out
to these other parts of the world, and each country
enhanced and improved the technique and made.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
It their own. It sounds like, yeah, well, so one
thing that Chinese did is they again, they synthesized it.
They're very good at synthesizing, keeping what works and throwing
awaight what doesn't, right, I mean completely eliminating exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Hey, talk about the training that you receive to apply
the needles to the meridians, because you don't push the
whole needle into the arm or the leg or the body.
It's a very light penetration. Talk about that, because that's

(01:01:28):
really critical, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
Yeah, so let's go back to the principle of do
no harm and also to do the least invasive thing
to create the most efficacy. Right. So the style that
I practiced mainly is a Japanese style that I that
I studied from a few different doctors. And so the
Japanese especially are very good at being efficient. Right. They're

(01:01:54):
also the best swords people as far as well, some
of them with blades, like they say, you know, they're
famous for their their blades. And so acupuncture needles are
like small blades, right, and so they make really good needles.
This is what we use here. They make Oh absolutely,

(01:02:14):
the needles we use are the best, and they cost
four times more, but it's it's worth it, and their
tensile strength is much better. They don't hurt, you know,
So it's really important that acupuncture doesn't hurt. Okay, you
might feel like a little sting, that's no big deal.
But it shouldn't be sharp ever. Yeah, and if you
feel like a deep achiness, that's great, there's nothing wrong

(01:02:37):
with that. That's actually good heaviness, Okay, all right, So
how does accupuncture work. There's these sea affarent sensory nerves
and we're stimulating them. And this is all the Western
medicine science. This has all been proven over forty years ago.
And basically that goes through the spinal cord and connects
with three different parts of the brain and sends signals

(01:02:58):
through pertaining tissues and leases and door fins.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Oh my god, I didn't know that they had it
had been analyzed to that level.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, of course. And for sure in America
we got to figure it out. Yeah yeah, other people
got PhDs and this kind of stuff. But you know,
it's if we're asking the question does it work or
if it doesn't work? If that's the old stuff, you know, Yeah,
The question now is how, like you said, how do
we work together with the dominant models that are out there.

(01:03:26):
How do we help the most people in the best ways.
And I really believe that Chinese medicine can do that
because it's very good at doing the stuff that Western
we say Western medicine is not good at, right, which
is like outpatient care as an example, right, or preventative
health before you even get into the hospital. Right, If

(01:03:47):
you could if you could fine tune your car so
it never has to go into the garage because the
engine block broke right, blue, right, you want to get
these tune ups right. So that's that's how acupuncture could
be very helpful.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
Yeah, but let me ask you this, So, do we
have an idea of the thickness of the meridians? And
I asked that because as you're pushing the needle through
the skin to pierce the meridian, is it you're training
to pierce it completely? Or because sometimes when you're putting

(01:04:25):
the needle in my on my arm or my body,
I can actually feel it when it connects with the meridian.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
It's like a little.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
Dull ache almost. It's really weirdly, really weird.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Right. So one idea is to think of the needles
are not just going inside the body. They're also little
antennae that are connecting to your aura or your field
outside of your body. Very cool, This is another way
of thinking about it. Yeah, right, cool. So what we're

(01:04:59):
doing is we're like lightning rods. We're putting lightning rods
in there so that you can also connect to what
the reiki guys call universal chi or universal key. Yeah. Right,
So that's going in there too. And I'm not doing it.
I mean, like I put the needle there, but you're
just connected to the universe, right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
And you're talking about surrounding energy passing through the needle
into the body.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Right. Wow, it's not just the material. It's not just
the material needle going in there. And remember it's also conductive, right,
these needles as well, that's why it's made of iron.
They used to be made of stone and fish bones
and other things. But you know, it's very interesting because

(01:05:43):
there were silver needles, gold needles back in history. The
different alloys, the different things that you use also have
an effect. And you know, people out there who are listening,
you know who do crystal healing, would have you know
there's a Pizzo electric effect. Everything has some sort of
frequent and see, and you just got to find the
right ones for the right place. So you've.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Met somebody they told you they have a problem. You
have done the pulse reading to get a sense of
where the influxes are, the problem areas are, and you
apply the needles the acupuncture. How long did the needles
stay in the body.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Yeah, So you know we talked about space can talk
a little bit about time as well, right, so usually
about thirty minutes, twenty five to thirty minutes. Okay, really,
and this is very interesting because there's actually a cycle,
a time cycle that it takes for the chi to
run through all of the channels, all right, and it's

(01:06:52):
about twenty five to thirty minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
So it's coming from the outside of the body through
the needle and passing through the meridians to the going
you're saying, it cycles through the whole body.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
It cycles through regardless of acupuncture, if you're having acupuncture
or not, just being alive and breathing. Yeah. Right, So
within twenty four hours they're fifty cycles. This is what
the classics say.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
Okay, this is so amazing, John, because I've never heard
this step before. It's like, you know, these cycles and
the time period for it to completely pass through the body.
That's amazing. It's totally amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
Well, it's amazing when you think of this sort of
twenty five to thirty minutes as the amount of time
that they've studied for people to watch these cartoons and
TV shows, right, I mean, you know, with commercials and
everything's about twenty three minutes. But basically you know, and
then you do three of cycles of that, you have

(01:07:48):
ninety minutes and that's pretty much, you know, what a
lot of people can handle as far as attention span.
You know, now it's thirty seconds, but you know that
thirty minutes is a really important sort of time rhythm
for people. So if you're gonna and also look at
you know, sleep cycles, they're ninety minutes, right, So it's

(01:08:12):
I think it's really important to pay attention to you know,
space and time. And going back to what we talked
about with that snake running through with functue is also
to use your body in that same way, don't you know,
do straight lines for everything. Don't try to just like
power through everything, you know, be a little bit more

(01:08:33):
subtle and things will be less resistant on the other end.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
Yeah, you know, it's amazing. I was researching this before
this interview. And you guys also can work with emotional
and psychological issues or as they call it, pain. And
I don't know where you would place the needle for
somebody who has deep depression, but I guess it's it's
kind of opening the body or connecting the body with

(01:09:02):
these subtle energy fields to relieve blockage.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Is is that the thinking? Right? So let me get
as an example for someone who's depressed. Okay, obviously, if
someone close to them died and you know, they should
go through a morning you know, traditionally it's three years
in China and Korea to mourn. Oh yeah, I mean
this is very important because Confucia is understood. You know

(01:09:27):
that if you don't have these rituals, people walk around
depressed for their whole lives. Oh yeah, right, So what
you do is you you create an altar, a family
alter and every day you light a candle, you put
some fruit, whatever it takes to remind remember them. And
after one year, you have a big party and you

(01:09:48):
remember them and you know, you mourn and cry and
you do this for yourself, not for them. And then
after three years it's it. That's it. You don't have
to do this every single day, right, you don't have
to because your psyche got it. It's like, okay, you know,
I mourned, and then you just do the annual thing.
So yeah, I think it's really important that we remember

(01:10:11):
time and rituals as well.

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
Totally as we come to the end of our time together. John,
can you give me an example of somebody who is
open to these healing modalities, but once they use it
in a complimentary fashion, in other words, they have their
regular MD, they've been, they've had. Let's go back to

(01:10:36):
the person who has digestive gostro intestinal problems and the
doc says, well, you got reflex, acid, reflex, something like that,
and they're given medicines if they came to you, what
would be your compliment to that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Okay, So I'll just backtack just a little bit. So
back to the depression. Okay, So as an example, there
are many reasons people could be pressed, but we we
do need to have, you know, these communal rituals for everybody,
and we need each other because when you're isolated, you
become depressed. Part of that is that there's you know,

(01:11:13):
the Heart Math Institute. If you don't have connection with
other hearts, your heart goes out of synchronous, you know,
synchronicity with nature. Right, There's there's an important rhythm that
we all need to share. So that's why you know,
going to live music and dancing and you know, just
just even listening to music, even if it's not live.

(01:11:33):
I mean, all of that's important. You know, eating together
all right. I think the pandemic was terrible. It was
a terrible thing for all of us because it isolated us.
So that was that was creating a lot of depression.
And so going back to that same thing with food.
If if you have a problem with gourd as an example,

(01:11:54):
usually it's the the she is going the wrong way
that she should be going down. So how does that work? Well?
You slowly? You slowly, why you're talking to people around you.
You're not just like just getting all that food in
as fast as possible. That's number one, right. Number two
is you're enjoying your food right, and you enjoy your

(01:12:16):
food more when you're other people. Number three of the
food is in season right, so the cheese is correct
for that, it's processed correctly. All of these things are
really important because if people eat the wrong kinds of foods,
if they're inflammatory, they too fast, if they're not happy
when they eat, that tends to create more issues that

(01:12:38):
can lead to things like ocurd over time. But of course,
you know, we diagnose every person in their own individual way.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Fantastic, Hey, John, thank you for the details on the acupuncture.
You really enlivened me into understanding what it's all about.
Give us some give us some details on the Cocoa
Wellness Center.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
What you guys are all about. You're there in.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
Berkeley on Shattick, and of course you're seeing new patients
all the time. But talk a little bit about your process.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Well, give you a little tour of the space. We
have a space where we have events. Twice a month.
We've been doing soundbathing with ear acupuncture. It's been incredible. So,
for instance, people who go to soundbasts a lot have
told us that they've gotten way deeper with the ear acupuncture.

(01:13:37):
Also right and yoga, nidra and other things. One reason
is that the vegas nerve. We all know about the
vegas nerve, right, which is one of the twelve cranial
nerves and regulates the autonomic nervous system. And that one
the only enervation, the only place that comes out of
the body is through the inner ear. So you can

(01:13:58):
stimulate the vegas nerve by pressing or needling the inner ear.
Is that incredible.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
So if you'll just put your finger in your ear
and push.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
If you massage, yeah, if you massage that area, it
actually relaxes you. And I showed you. I showed you
the ear the ear chart, right, yeah, yeah, it's huge.
So whenever you massage this, your massage in your whole body. Okay,
that's amazing. Just massage in your ear, pulling on your
ear lobes. That wakes you up. Okay. And so it's

(01:14:34):
really important that we do these things all the time.
We take care of ourselves. Okay. So yeah, at the
at the clinic, we have fun, We listen to music,
we spend vinyl, we drink tea, you know, and part
of that is again creating community and communal ritual as
well as doing all the work through other ways, not

(01:14:57):
just the acupuncture, but yes, we do. We do herbs,
we make raw herbs, formulas, we do uh tees, all
kinds of teas including yeah you're master. Yeah, and and
you can get bodywork as well. So if you want
to check us out, you could check out our website
and we'll also have some of these charts up there,

(01:15:19):
so you can see that under our resources page.

Speaker 3 (01:15:22):
So Coco ko Kko wellness dot com. Right, that's right, Yeah,
got it, perfect, John, A real pleasure, my friend, and
I learned something I learned a lot today talking to
you I'm glad that I kind of uh let you.
I give you a heads up and said I was
going to be pushing you, uh for the uh Meridians today,

(01:15:45):
and I think I pushed and you responded very well.
So I appreciate everything you You uh divulged all the
secrets of ancient.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
Well, I could say that the best way to understand
the stuff is to go experience it. So just find
a licensed acupuncture close to you and get a treatment,
you know, and ask some questions. Yeah, great, hey man,
appreciate it all right, thank you so much, Thanks Cliff.

Speaker 3 (01:16:17):
I think I'm attracted to acupuncture because it's energy medicine.
And I'm I mean, I mentioned that I became a
reiki teacher, oh god, decades ago. I don't really do
much of it anymore except for my friends and loved
ones and myself. But I'm sensitive to energy and I

(01:16:39):
react very well. And I think all of us have
the same sensitivities. It's just that we get caught up
in the Wi Fi internet bombardment of frequencies that is
the TV, that's our computers and so forth, and so
we become numb. We become numbed to subtle energy, and

(01:17:03):
I have always been of the sense that when you
get when I get a acupuncture treatment, the effect comes
to me later in the day, and when I get home,
I usually sit on the couch or something and I'll
pass out because it's just it's going to work. It's

(01:17:24):
altering my energy system. And a lot of you might
be going, well, this is bunk, but it's not. It
really is important, and the effects are subtle, but they're profound,
especially if you're dealing with various illnesses. If you have
a stomach problem, if you are have chronic science issues.

(01:17:49):
It has effects on a variety of conditions. In fact,
there is a clinic in the Bay Area where I
live that helps women get pregnant as an acupuncture clinic.
So if you go to look up acupuncture and find
a condition that you're interested in, maybe perhaps you're dealing
with a certain condition, see what the benefits are, and

(01:18:13):
use it as a complimentary medicine. A lot of people
are like, well, I like my doctor, and I think
he's a great or she's a great person. Well, the
thing is they may be great people, but it's the
education you need to be aware of. What is their education?
Do they only know how to drug you, do they
have anything else to suggest. Some physicians that are not

(01:18:34):
associated with medical programs or clinics have more freedom to
express self awareness and alternatives. They're more interested in suggesting
complimentary medicine like acupuncture, like chiropractic, like massage. If I

(01:18:55):
didn't get a massage once a month, I'd be in
serious trouble. I wish I could afford going once a week,
but that'd be a little too much. But these complimentary
medicines are made to kickstart the immune system, help you detox,
and help you enjoy your physical body to a greater degree.

(01:19:16):
So I hope you enjoyed John. I think he's a
real great No only he's a good teacher, he's a
good practitioner. If you're enjoying Earth Ancient's Destiny and Earth
Ancient Special Edition, please consider becoming a subscriber to Patreon

(01:19:36):
for as little as five dollars a month. You can
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(01:19:58):
twenty dollars a month makes a huge difference to our overhead.
To become a subscriber, go to Patreon dot com, Forward
Slash Earth Ancients. All right, that's it for this program.
I want to think my guest today, John Coco, coming
to us from Berkeley, California. As always, the team of
guiltour Mark, Foster and Favor. You guys rock. All right,

(01:20:26):
have a happy Thanksgiving, take care, be well, and we
will talk to you next time.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
Gives