Peter Fairfield - A Life Exploring Deep Medicine

In the discussion, Peter Fairfield, renowned acupuncturist and medical intuitive, is characterized by his ability to blend traditional wisdom with contemporary relevance. The conversation examines the complexity of medicine and healing, emphasizing the significance of emotional, spiritual, and personal development in becoming a successful healer. Fairfield explains the essential nature of empathy and understanding in building a healer-patient relationship rather than simply relying on facts and figures. Furthermore, the dialogue underlines the importance of acknowledging ancestral lineages in shaping the healer's work. Fairfield shares insights about the human heart's role in health and intuition’s integral role in the healing practice. He stresses the importance of authenticity and self-compassion among healers while unearthing the importance of intuition in their practice.

00:00 Introduction to the Healer's Journey

00:59 The Power of Ancestral Influence

01:51 Guest Introduction: Peter Fairfield L.Ac.

06:36 Peter's Journey into Healing

09:59 The Role of Spirituality in Healing

20:37 The Impact of Ancestral Lineage on Healing

23:38 The Importance of Self-Understanding for Healers

26:34 The Influence of Modern Medicine on Healing

29:52 The Role of Emotion and Connection in Healing

34:24 The Need for Personal Discovery in Healing

35:10 Expressing Discontent and the Basis of Healing

35:48 The Power of Heart and Kitten Therapy

36:34 The Healer's Council and the Concept of Heart

38:18 The Human Heart Beyond a Pump

38:39 The Heart in Chinese Medicine

41:28 Understanding and Forgiving the Pain in Others

44:27 The Role of Healers in Shifting Pain Cycles

48:14 The Importance of Self-Compassion for Healers

50:31 The Power of Pulse Diagnosis

59:20 The Role of Intuition in Healing

01:07:17 The Impact of Healers on Patients

www.healerscouncil.org

Transcript

0:00

And you've got to get out of your head, you've got to get out of your thinking, because the truth is rarely in the books. In, acupuncture, you know, there are all these pictures, you know, this is a young deficient, the indeficient fire and all this stuff, almost nobody looks just like that. There's all these other things. And, so our training is a language, but it's not our limitation. And so until you actually get out and discover your own emotions, your own creativity, you've got to say, no, that's not right. There's something else happening here. What could this be that I don't know? What could I do? How can I bring this in? We are witnessing so many remarkable miracles in this modern age of medical sciences. But what about a wisdom that is capable of containing this intellectual genius? Please join me as I engage in conversations with remarkable healers from different traditions. As we explore wisdom that can both inspire and inform our workers. 21st century healers. So welcome please join us on the healers council So welcome everybody once again to the Healer's Council. It's great that you are joining me today at the beginning of 2024. It's almost a year of the wood dragon. It's a month away, and I'm sure that 2024 has a lot to teach us. So I'm just, as always, I keep repeating myself, but I really do mean it. I'm just so delighted and really have such gratitude for our guest today, who I know will take us on a Really interesting, unexpected, and perhaps even surprising journey as we explore the wisdom of medicine. And so our guest today is Peter Fairfield. I count Peter as a friend and a teacher. Um, I am actually going to read Peter's bio from his latest book. There it is, called Deep Into the Fire. A Thriller Beyond Time, and so I've just started reading this book, and it's really wonderful, and I have a sneaking feeling you might be seeing it manifesting on the screen one of these days. So, Peter is a very respected acupuncturist. I actually read recently in an article he was actually included among the four individuals who have been most responsible for For bringing Chinese medical, what we call Chinese medicine to the United States. Um, not many of us can actually claim that we helped to bring a new medical. I didn't know that actually. I can't remember the article, but I definitely did started. An acupuncture school in the United States and is recognized as a very gifted medical intuitive. Peter has been immersing himself in the world of Asian medicine for over half a century, more than 50 years, and, peter has specialized, well not really specialized, but practiced meditation, qigong, and transformational practices for all of these years, and has a particular focus and interest on the field of Asian medical psychiatry. Peter spent seven enriching years operating an acupuncture Chinese medicine clinic in a small Tibetan town in Nepal. And I really look forward to hearing more about that experience. And he says that this gave him really invaluable insights and skills as he practiced alongside influential lamas and yogis of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He utilizes advanced pulse diagnosis techniques, and he meticulously studied the impact of spiritual practices on health and healing, which we will be discussing today. This knowledge is reflected in his really unique clinical work and writings that offer readers a blend of traditional wisdom and contemporary relevance. Peter has been identified in the Tibetan tradition as a reincarnation of Nakpa Yeshe Gyatso, and also in the Hindu tradition as Swami Pramanand in the Oro Valley lineage. Peter's spiritual journey has taken him on long retreats in the Himalayas, China, and India, and his teachings have found their way across continents. With his European and American seminars, which he continues to offer, gaining widespread appreciation and attendance. Peter, just to add to his interesting story, um, I'm having a flashback here to that beer commercial. It's that beer commercial, The World's Most Interesting Man. At least in my own mind, anyway. He's made me the world's most interesting healer, having served as a resident, the resident acupuncturist at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. Peter, has also interestingly brought his work and healing to the world of music and has toured with Pink Floyd, um, one of our earlier guests, David Shulman, He's actually been the touring physician, uh, with the Rolling Stones, although we didn't talk about that. And, um, so perhaps we have a pattern here, I don't know. Um, uh, he has, as I just mentioned, written a new book called Deep Into the Fire, and also has a very, well known book, bestseller called Deep Happy, that explores perspectives on the true nature of happiness and well being. He continues a very active international practice, dedicated to helping clients rewire themselves to lead creative and inspired lives and I will be including Information on the podcast episode about how you can actually contact Peter Much of his work is actually done remotely and Peter continues to live in the Marin County area with his practice and his very active as a hiker, as a father, a musician, and just a great guy and a great raconteur. So, just really happy to, just as I said, happy to have great deep gratitude for Peter, and I know we're in for a very interesting conversation today. So, let's kind of strap ourselves in, shall we? Well, after the introduction, I can't wait to meet me. Yeah, well, I know it's, it's actually, is actually true. So, um, you know, we have a tradition here on the Healer's Council, Peter, and I think it's helpful, we, we ask each of our healers if they could share with us a little bit about their journey in becoming a healer. You know, if you could share with us, why do you become a healer? Why Chinese medicine, Eastern medicine, intuitive medicine? What was that journey about? Well, as a kid, I had some profound spiritual experiences at about eight or nine. This is in my first book. Somebody told me about infinity, and I couldn't figure out what it was, so I asked my mom, I said, Mom, what's infinity? And she said, it's something that doesn't begin or end. And my mind didn't go, didn't get that. And somehow at that age, that was a startling concept. So, in hindsight, I realized I went into what was a meditative state for I'm guessing it was a month or two, I don't know. You know, I wasn't paying attention at the time. And all of a sudden, one day, I got there. I got to that place that didn't begin or end, and that was my first transmission of non duality. And, and somewhere shortly after that, when people would be ill, I'd want to put my hands on them. I, I didn't, didn't even know any, I didn't, the concept of healing wasn't part of me. But somebody would be sick and have a headache, I just want to put my hands on them, kind of help them. That was kind of how it was wired. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a monk and I wanted to be a doctor. And, um, it turns out that before my dad, there were 13 generations of ministers in my family. And, um, which I'll tell a story about a little later. And my dad was born in China. My, grandfather was a missionary and grandmother were missionaries in China around the turn of the century. They were, there for 18 years. I think it was and, um, so there's a little bit of soy sauce in my blood and, uh, these are, and I didn't really know my grandfather well, but these things that have sort of come up. Shadows of positive shadows and from my genetic and my energetic streams. And, um, so I, didn't really trust myself. I had a learning difficulties when I was a kid. I was. I had a different style of learning. Um, and so I, I didn't really trust myself as far as going far in school. Um, but I could sit in school and listen and I would get it later on, after I, uh, got into meditation and my own kind of healing, and I was able to study differently. I, studied science and, I worked in hospitals of all kinds and healing centers. And I thought about going to medical school by that time I was able to study well, but, uh, there wasn't, it didn't excite me. You know, I talked to the doctors that were working in, in the, I was working in peas at the time, and I had a book in iridology and I said, Hey, you want to see this? You could diagnose the little babies without. So, oh, that's interesting, but we don't have time. And, I realized that the, whole profession was. It was focused differently. I, wanted to touch people. I wanted to get a sense of what spirituality was. I wanted to, I wanted to look deeply. I wanted to understand, and I didn't understand it at the time, but, but so I was given, uh, I started to make, I had lived in a spiritual community in Santa Barbara, and I, wanted a career that the, That touched my heart. I, when it got out, I did a radio show and a tv show on spirituality, but I wanted something deeper. I didn't want to look at people. I wanted to be it. And so I started making prayers and one day I woke up and every single cell of my body said I had to study acupuncture. Well, you know, acupuncture wasn't even a profession and this was in the early 70s. I, had met Several people at meditation retreats who were into it and had invited me to study. So I went to the bookstore that day and, and I was, I was very interested in books. I went to use bookstore. I'd been there the day before, actually, but I was guided to go there. And when I walked in, there was a stack of five, five of the only good books in English on acupuncture. Waiting for it had just been brought in moments before I got there. And so I've had extracurricular help and in doing this and I Went down to UCLA and I end up getting it. I had a wonderful relationship with a, with a psychiatrist named Will, Mel Wehrbach, who was the president of Biofeedback Society at the time. I was living with a Taoist priest in the mountains of Malibu and, also studying this. So I was having a, multifaceted training, but that the biofeedback was fascinating. And I use those techniques even today in my phone sessions, because I realized that people. Could go in and they could be cognizant of their own physiology and using their will or consciousness. They could change it. Well, that that was one of the turning moments of my whole life to realize how pliable. These patterns of disease and unhappiness and suffering were and that was a primary focus for me And so I went to you know New in the school of acupuncture, which is the first school in the country and it was a marginal program But we were all you know, we treated we used to sit on our step and talk people into getting acupuncture Oh, you ripped it. Look at oh, are you feeling come on? Well, what is the way you would treat anybody for anything just to get some experience? And we finally figured out how to make it work, you know, we basically taught ourselves because, you know, we had Dr. So at the time, it was wonderful, but it wasn't like training, you know, so, so we really had to train ourselves. Eventually, I founded an acupuncture program as part of a naturopathic college in California, which was the first four year, 5, 000 training program in the country. And, uh, you know, I hired teachers that I wanted to learn from and, uh, I've kind of gone beyond, you know, and I've always. I've always looked for unusual places, so I'm also, I was an artist in New York, studied film, worked as a metal sculptor, so I have a creative side, played music, so I've always been interested in working with artists and creative people and that process, and so I worked with a lot of musicians, that's how I ended up working with Pink Floyd, and, it's, it's kind of a multi faceted career. When I was 35, I, I had a house, beautiful musical Girlfriend and a happy dog and everything, but something big was missing in my life and I I realized it was more of a spiritual sense, and also I had never been to China. So when, when I was 35, I, I gave up my practice, gave up my girlfriend, went, I studied Chinese in Monterey with, with the intention of, of going to, to Shanghai College of Traditional Medicine, Shanghai UN. And um, but while I was there, I was meditating one day and a face appeared to me and it turned sideways and then it disappeared. And I said, okay, I'm, I'm not gonna. Focus on this at all. I'm not gonna pay attention to it and put it on my mind. If it shows up, good. If not, it's just a, a deviation. So the next day I got a letter, I got a letter saying that my plans to go to Shanghai were up in the air because the people that were sponsoring me were gonna do something else. So I decided to go to Taiwan and through some connections here, Michael Broman and wonderful mentors like that, I was able to, to go to Taiwan and I, made friends there both in the Tibetan Buddhist community and in the Chinese medical community and I was studying. I was down in Kaohsiung and I got a call one day, Do you, do you want to make some lamas? Yes. I gave him my address and he laughed. A few minutes later, a taxi drove up in front of the house. This old Chinese man with these Tibetan silk robes. I'd never seen, like, robes like that before or after. And we went one block away. One block away from where I was staying with a friend. And we went inside, and, and the older home's in Taiwan. The bottom's like a garage. There was a picture of a llama. on a desk there. And, and I said, that looks like the face I saw. No, no, they all look alike. I can't do that. You know, they had a headdress on a glass. But we went upstairs and we met these two lamas that were visiting from Bodhidharma in Nepal. And they had a picture of the face that I had seen in this meditation. I said, you know, I know this person. Who is that? And they said, well, that's our teacher, Dao Seng Rinpoche, and we're going to Nepal in 10 days. Would you like to come meet him? Of course, I said, yeah. And I'd already been accepted as the first student at the New Chinese Medical College in Kaohsiung. I've been on Chinese TV, but I wasn't going to give up that opportunity. So, 10 days later, with 30 Taiwanese Tibetan Buddhist tourists, we, we went to Nepal, and, uh, I met him, and, uh, he accepted me as a student, he had never accepted a Westerner before, and, uh, I, I didn't realize how special that was at the time, and, uh, he was a profound being, he didn't talk so much in facts or information, There was a transmission that happened between us, a mind to mind transmission that I'll ever be grateful for. And so, so that, while I was in Nepal, I was able to do pulse diagnosis of these great lamas. I treated most of the Nyingman Kagyu lamas and, and, and other ones. And of course, Westerners from all over the world had to come to practice. So I was able to, without realizing it, get a sense of The effect of many of these practices on the nature of a being. Eventually, I had an experience of taking a Great Llamas Pulse and I received a transmission. By taking the pulse of what the Buddha nature was, I began to see this, this crystalline being inside people. It's the essence of, it's the pure essence of being. And, and once that happened to me, I, I kind of re engineered all the things that I had learned and knew, what I thought spirituality was, what medicine was. And I realized that the goal of a healer is just to uncover this, this Buddha nature, this Christ consciousness, this purity of being. This place where the universe actually, actually lives inside these. These spacesuits that our karmic, our, our karmic predicament is to be conscious. The Buddhist call this the two truths to be conscious of, of this spiritual essence, that that really is us. And then how it moves and filters and reacts and becomes clear about this, this body that we're living in. And, uh, eventually, um, I guess I'm bopping around here. Eventually, it had dawned on me the physiology of how our karma is imprinted into it. It's so simple. You know, we talk in Chinese medicine about the importance of yin and yang. And we have the manifestation of yin and yang in the body is the governing vessel which runs up the spine, which is the polarity of yang. And the energy of yang is physically contractive, energy expansive. And then we have the polarity of yin, which runs up the front, which is physically contractive, I'm sorry, physically expansive, energetically contractive. And then if you look at the Chinese character for Buddha, you see a curved line in the yin and a straight line in the back, and then there's this empty space in the middle. So we have this non duality, and a healed person lives in the middle. And so a buddha is a person that's clear on the end, clear on the young, that's non, habitual, and yet has this non duality that they can rest in. And, and so, um, that became, you know, my format of how I practice. And so what I realized later, I went through a divorce and I started to look at the physiology of bonding and personality development and stuff. And I realized that. depending upon the bonding ability, or the bonding experience with our parents, it shapes the fundamental yin and yang balance in the body. And that creates a foundation for all physical and emotional susceptibility in our life. It's so simple and so powerful and so profound. So if we have, okay, and a healthy person who's ever seen one of those, you know, the parent is loving, conscious, gives you a sense of freedom and support at the same time. And it's present, you know, it's a modern world that we don't, we don't see that very often. If that was, we'd all be out of business if that was the case. But, when we have an opposite sex bonding deficit, the parent is not there, or they have their own difficult problems. What happens is, if it's the opposite, We move more to the spine. We become more linear, more cerebral, more externally, externally protected, less connected to our inner nature. If we have a same sex primary bonding deficit, we move more to the front, more to the end. Where we're, you know, kind of amorphous, connected to ourselves, it's very hard to be direct. And when we have a dual bonding deficit, which most people have some, both the front and the back contain, and if you listen to my voice, there's a contraction, there's not much vibration in the body, there's this containment, not much freedom, not much space. You can hear it in the voice. Here, let me mock it up. If I'm in my spine, there's this, I'm just leaning back, I'm not doing anything esoteric, I'm just leaning back in the spine, and all of a sudden, My mind is different, my energy is different, my voice is different. If I'm in the front, there's a softness, there's a connection, but it's not direct. If I have both the back and the front, there's a balance between the softness and that. And then if I add the non duality in the middle, let's see if I can have the dudes. If I add the non duality in the middle, there's a certain resonance that there's, there's a character in the voice, there's a momentum of energy. So you can hear it in the voice. And I have found this to be 100 percent since I never found anybody that deviated. Anyway, so, so those experiences are what allowed my practice to kind of be how it is today. So that's probably too detailed cliff notes for where I am. Absolutely fascinating. I want to I just put a pin in a couple of things. Um, so you, you bring up this concept of attachment. Maybe we could use the word connection. Um, I want to go back to what you said right at the beginning was that you had 13 generations of Were they Christian ministers? Is that correct? They were congregations. I do a lot of ancestral work, clearing and connecting. You know, if you've ever been to a Thanksgiving, you know, we, we have a lot of, we have crazy relatives. And there's a part of them that are screwed up and disconnected. But there's an innate biological part of living beings, which is everything. That wants to benefit the ancestors. And this momentum of goodwill, that's, of course, out of time, infinite time and present time, constantly existent, is a source of nourishment and support that anybody can tap into. It's this powerful momentum that comes through our ancestors, that comes through the energetics of the subtle dimensions of our ancestors that is so supportive. And so that's how I discovered, um, And that's how I discovered the power of ancestry. And, and I was working with a woman a couple of months ago, and she found that I had a Grandma Hattie that I had never heard of. I went back to my family, to my grandfather, and did some research, and I found I had a Grandma Hattie who had such negative, um, thoughts of everybody, such judgment. But it was still affecting me several generations later. And so that's caused me to start to do a lot of ancestral work. Interesting. So, so connection, lineage, um, as healers, and now I'm talking mostly about what you might call a typical 21st century healer, most of whom are trained in the allopathic tradition, um, How important do you think it is for us as healers to, to be aware of our lineage and its characteristics and how influential do you think that that lineage connection is in the work that we do today in our clinics and our offices? I, I think it's the most important unthought of. Issue with healers, you know, I've been part of a Tibetan tradition, a Qigong tradition, a number of traditions, Chinese traditions and so forth. Um, when I teach, when I talk, when I work, I feel, I feel the momentum of, the people that came before in me. I taught at a number of acupuncture schools, most of the ones in California, a number of around the world. A number of years ago I did 60 seminars in two years, so I taught at a lot of acupuncture schools. The single most problematic issue that I found with was the lack of emotional and spiritual and human development of these kids. I have found that a lot of the, I taught a lot of MDs who came to my class, a lot of naturopaths. And they, in, in many ways, they were kinda more mature than the, a lot of the acupuncturists, but they, they were too tight they didn't know what it was to, to feel their own pain and, and, and, and hold the space for somebody else's hurt. Somebody else's loss. They didn't realize how to help somebody be present in their own suffering and allow it to dissolve. And, you know, the mind tells us all these stories that we think are true until we realize it's just a record going on in the other room. And, and there just isn't that kind of training and, I've been kind of experimenting with Western medicine. I'm 74. I've got issues that I've dealt with. I've not found a, a Western doctor that really will touch me. The whole issue of palpation. I, I had an odd feeling in my right kidney a couple of years ago. I think I never would palpate my kidney. I mean, I, I worked with a wonderful healer from, from Grass Valley She went and palpated my kidney front and back. She could feel it. You've got to touch a body, you've got to touch yourself, you've got to hold a space and have compassion for someone. And you've got to get out of your head, you've got to get out of your thinking, because the truth is rarely in the books. In, acupuncture, you know, there are all these pictures, you know, this is a young deficient, the indeficient fire and all this stuff, almost nobody looks just like that. There's all these other things. And, and so the, our training is a language, but it's not our limitation. And so until you actually get out and discover your own emotions, your own creativity, you've got to say, no, that's not right. There's something else happening here. What could this be that I don't know? What could I do? How can I bring this in? When I was developing the acupuncture school. In the 80s, early 80s, there just weren't any books and I found that I could download information. Like, my whole theory of the extra meridians came from downloading. I have a whole different theory of the extra meridians. And it's valid. It works clinically. We, humans have the ability to bring information in from the infinite. I mean, it's normal. Everybody can do this. Oh, I got an idea. Well, your idea came from somewhere. It probably came from the infinite. So there's this massive Opportunity, creativity of openness, discovery of bringing the information in, of adding to humanity, but the modern healer is so programmed by, and I don't want to get too, too polarized here, but it is so programmed by the financial interest. I mean, uh, you know, I, you know, we have a mutual friend who used to be head of psychiatric training at the medical center. His is only one of two schools in the country that taught psychotherapy. Uh, you know, in psychiatric training, most of it's covered by the, by the pharmaceutical companies. All of the propaganda on TV is from people, from paid advertisements. TV cannot tell the truth. Magazines cannot tell the truth because of this massive corporate influence to encourage people to do things that make money for the drug companies that don't help people. So to go back to the practicalities of helping, um, part of that psychodynamic training Of course, uh, is understanding people's lineage, understanding their ancestral stories, even if it's only back, not even what, maybe just one generation. I don't think Freud really went further back than people's parents, but, um, so. How do we begin to explore these ancestral aspects of people's experience, that is influencing people's experience? Um, do we just take a very detailed history or go on ancestor. com and see what we can find? How do you work in trying to excavate that energetic lineage that is influencing that person's experience of themselves? Well, you know, it's all right there. It's all right in your face. I was working with a woman yesterday. I worked with on and off. And she's she has a daughter that triggers her. It triggers her into kind of this helpless anger. And when I said, What does your daughter's face look like? The first thing she said, her jaw gets tight. Well, it turns out her mother's jaw. And it turns out her father would trigger her mother. And so these little characteristics are there. Everything is in the present time. You don't need to dig up anything. You just look what's real. And so She would get triggered into this primordial sense of, lack of not being good at having to prove herself just from her daughter picked up from her husband. Her husband, she'd married a man who was very similar to her father, although her mother was really the enabler. And these patterns become so apparent. How a person is, okay, let's start more basic. If we think that we're fundamentally a Buddha or a Christ or whatever. And then we have this other, this other thing that includes the expression of the light into the world. That's our karmic path, right? That's our karma. And so what's there? Well, I go on. What makes me go unconscious? What makes me go conscious? So what makes us go conscious is the good stuff that we can count on. What makes us go unconscious is the stuff that we need to work on. What makes you, what makes you go unhappy? What makes your mind go round and round? How do you lose your power? What makes you gain your power? And as soon as you begin to see these little, these little tidbits, there it is. You just follow the stream back and you know, it's, it's cliche. Well, mom and dad did this, but it's true. It's true. And so we, one of my great mentors was a wonderful man named David Chamberlain, who was kind of like a dad to me, and he was one of the founders of prenatal psychology. And he did lots of research in the experience of the unborn being in the womb. And, um, so, so this influence goes back all the way to conception. I mean, it's amazing, uh, the things that are locked in the consciousness. And, um, he, had a client who was a psychiatrist and hypnosis. He took him back and he realized that it wasn't his dad's sperm that got his mom pregnant. And, and in finding and questioning the family, he went to Denmark and found this man. And knocked on his door and the man was in his eighties. He was 60 and he goes. I've been waiting for you to come knock on my door my whole life. So all these realities are existent in the field. I mean, it sounds so far out and wacky, but it's true. And it all comes down to what does the person look like today, right now in the present time. What influences, how can we trace them? It's simple. So, once again, very practical terms. I mean, a modern day healer, we talked about your 13 generations of congregationists, um, I guess that's the word. Um, in their own way, they're healers. How does a modern healer go about Trying to, hmm, understand their particular lineage of healing and how it's influencing, them, their work most particularly because, you know, just about every healer I've met, allopath or osteopath or chiropractor, they genuinely, I mean, the recent research reports that 87 percent of, people entering medical school this year say that The desire to help other people was their primary motivation. So there's this deep desire to be of benefit to others. And yet we also witnessing burnout and something's influencing us that is not responding to the usual, western interventions of shorter working hours or having a medical scribe. Getting a higher salary or shorter shifts. How do modern day healers begin to gain insight into their own lineage and, how it's influencing them and those around them? I, don't know if I would agree, I, think, I mean, I, I agree in some total. I think people that have been unhappy in their whole, I, I think in the western doctors it's quite different because there's status, there's money, there's all kinds of things, there's family pressure to, Have a good job and be, you know, high up to an acupuncturists and, and healers, you know, lower echelon healers. I, I think most of us felt kinda screwed up and I, think we had a dual momentum of trying to help other people, but also trying to heal ourself. I think that gets lost. I think it was more prevalent, you know, 50 years ago when I started, and I think, I think it's gotten lost. Well, when I taught at the last acupuncture school I taught at, which was in New Mexico a few years ago, these were unknown concepts of healing. No, we don't want to do that. We just want to get our license. And so, I, I think that the, the schools are at fault for this. They're trying to make a living, trying to get people through. But, but it, it should be a, a required training from day one in schools to learn about yourself, to learn what makes you tick, what, what screws you up, learn how, what makes you happy and unhappy, how can you, how can you be a healer? I mean, it's not about colds and flus and you know, inglinated hernia, uh, strangulated inguinal hernias. It's about. It's about what you attract to yourself. It's about who you are. It's about the, you know, if you ever find somebody with a respiratory disease and not getting better, well, what's between the lungs, the heart, the heart, what, what pain is happening in the heart? As soon as you open up the heart, often. The lungs start to respond, and so you have to be able to go there to really get people well and deeply well, and especially now that there's so much there's just so much propaganda in the world, you know, politics, medicine, everything. If you don't discover the truth in your own heart. If you don't know what it feels like when somebody's, when somebody's not telling you the truth, if you don't know what it feels like when somebody's trying to sell you something, how can you get through the world? That's what's happening in our government. People have lost the ability to think for themselves and to feel the truth of things because we've been so inundated. Most of the emotional experiences that we've had have been in movies, where actors that are kind of lying, but they're good at it, portray some emotional thing, and then we think that's it, but that's not it. So it really comes down to people dropping into themselves, meditation, therapy, group discussion, all the basic things. Who am I? What feels good to me? What feels bad to me? Is it okay to express that I don't like something? Is it okay to express that something should change? And how do I do that? That should be the basis for all healers. Because it's the basis of all ill health, I think. And so, yes, go ahead. Carry on, Peter. So, you know, this is so basic, but it's not handled. Acupuncture schools aren't doing this. I, I don't think the, the naturopathic schools are handling it. I know that. I, I don't think the, uh, the, medical schools are handling it, but, what's more important, I, I put some videos, actually, on New Year's Day, I put three videos out about this. But, but you have to find your own heart. I tell everybody, just get a kitten. Hold a kitten to your heart for 10 minutes a day. What does it feel like to feel the prayer and the love? If you can feel that, then whenever your heart doesn't feel like that, somebody's not telling you the truth. I mean, kitten therapy, I think, would save the world. But that's the thing. We gotta anchor into something that's real, something that's true, something that's so pure. We don't get that. But that's what it takes to be a healer, because we have to bring a person to be successful, back to their own purity. And that's the deepest place of healing. And that's what spirituality should do, that's what medicine should do, and I think it's gotten sidetracked. So, of course, this is the central motivation for the Healer's Council. It's exploration of a of a wisdom of medicine that can inspire and inform us in our work. You've used the term the heart a lot, and for, um, as Westerners, that concept of the heart is perhaps very different than the one that you're describing. I, I, it's amazing. I remember I think I was 11 years old. I was in Cape Town, South Africa, about two miles from Kritiskeur hospital, where I eventually ended up working as a physician many years later. And it came over the radio that Christian Barnard had actually completed the world's first heart transplant, um, uh, to Lewis Walensky, I think his name was. I, I remember even as a young boy just being dumbstruck. I, I just couldn't imagine even the construct of transplanting the human heart that, because in, in those days, That human heart was central to who we were as an individual. Um, and yet, you know, you fast forward, decades. I found myself working at Michael DeBakey's hospital and the Methodist hospital in Houston. I'm doing a lot of work on the intensive care units, witnessing. heart transplants and technology really being considered equivalent to the human heart in terms of Biomechanics that there really wasn't any difference So so what what I hear you saying implicitly is that and from your training experiences the human heart? is much more than a, simply a pump. Um, and could you talk a little bit to that issue about what is the human heart? Because I think this is really central. I think it creates a lot of confusion, for us. And people talk about the heart. What do you mean by the heart? What do I mean by the heart? And often there's no actual meeting place for those different concepts. This is the central theme of my own healing. Um, in Chinese medicine, we think of the heart as being both a pump, and a pump. But it's also a core governor of life. You know, if you, if you look at the physiology of the heart, the heart has a electrical, electromagnetic field 5, 000 times greater than the brain. You know, it's, it's, it does things. If you look at the electrocardiogram, there's all these little affects, but those affects are actually messages going out to the body. The heart, it regulates the body as a central theme in Chinese medicine. So the heart is a delicate thing, the heart should be allowed to have the most delicate space imaginable inside. And then there's an organ called the pericardium, which exists in western medicine, it's a membrane, but in Chinese medicine it's also both an expressor and a protector. So when the heart is pure and, and undamaged, what, what happens is this purity of the heart is transduced into something more earthly by, by the pericardium, as expressed as kinda a happiness and a Ravi by the pericardium. Now, when you grow up in an area where, where your heart is shut down or the people around you are wounded, where, this heartful sense is not happening and what, happens in the body and it's amazing miracle self protection, the pericardium becomes a protector. It becomes a barrier. Rather than an expressor. And what happens is the pericardium separates us from, from the pain where we can, we can't feel our heart anymore. And, and the, psychological profile of the pericardium is emotional disconnection. It's very hard to have sex and feel love at the same time. So there's a whole idea of what it's like to be in the pericardia. I, I have that. I had a very obstructed pericardium. It was very hard for me to feel really. I mean I had a sense of feeling, but you can't connect to people heart to heart without them. So I, working with, uh, amazing profound being his own self, Michael Brockman. And I was able to break through and understand this phenomenon. I've actually written articles about it and do my own healing. Once you break through, it takes a long time to. Create a life that from that and of course in buddhism and and even taoism to an extent It's the sense of the heart that creates the compassion because it's not like you have to build compassion Compassion is the natural state of humanity or of life because life connects to life and so The heart is central to forgiveness and understanding, and I really wanted to speak on this because you cannot forgive unless you understand. When you think of something like a rapist or a child molester, those, what we think are the most terrible things. War criminals or all that that are just killing thousands, tens of thousands of people. How can you forgive them? This is central, I've had this discussion so many times. You never forgive the act, no matter how, no matter what somebody does. You cannot forgive that act. That act is terrible. Especially to kids or weak people I mean, you cannot forgive the act. The act is bad, wrong. But what you can do is understand the terrible pain of somebody that enacts those things. I mean, it's probably very uncool to say, but I have sympathy for child molesters. I was actually molested. I, I get that. Not because what they did has any semblance of goodness, it's terrible because the influences are, it sends through the system and the society is terrible. But here are people living with such pain that the only sense that they can have is to touch a child and hoping for some sense of life and goodness. It's terrible. So, you, you cannot forgive the act. But you have to understand the deep pain of someone that would act like that. The deep pain of that would send bombers to, to kill millions of people. Or, or, whatever. You just have to understand their pain. So you don't, the act is terrible. It's always going to be terrible. It's never been right. There's nothing good about it. But people in such pain, to hate them. makes their pain worse. To push them away makes it worse. It makes the whole thing worse. By understanding that they're in pain and helping them through their pain, that's what begins to relieve the problem. Understand the inside, the same person that, that, that, that, that makes the greatest saint in the world, the same energy of the universe that created the greatest saint in the world also creates the, the chamelister, the bomber, the general, whatever. And so we have to understand that the process of healing It comes from helping somebody feel their pain and heal the pain inside them, and that's what changes the world. And as we can begin to feel our own pain, then we begin to feel other people's pain, then we begin to sense our own heart, and then we begin to sense what's true. We begin to sense the deeper reality that's affecting people right now, that's the mass inoculation of weird Profit driven ideas is poisoning the world. And so as we begin to find our own hearts, as we begin to heal, as we begin to really understand forgiveness, we begin to understand that each being has a purity inside them, no matter how far away from them. Then we begin to create a foundation for a world that could be like we all want, which is where we know the truth, we sense the truth, we live the truth. And out of that comes a natural outcropping of love and care. So, am I right in saying, um, that what you're describing is that the deepest work of a healer is to be able to open a space within which the cycle of, um, abuse, pain and its consequences can be shifted? Would that be a true statement? Yeah, I mean, I've been practicing almost 50 years. You've been practicing probably longer than that. We've had despicable people come to us. So how can I find my compassionate self to help this person? It's by realizing how much pain it took them to act like however they're acting. So the life that they had to endure to be as they are. And if we can find that, then we can help whoever comes. And that's what changes the world, you know, blame does not change the world, understanding changes the world. What I, what I hear coming up as well as a, I think a really important and simple insight that we're not made aware of in our training. And that insight is that we have to be aware of what level we're attempting to do. the work. I mean, so if you are working with somebody, Peter, for example, comes to you because they have, I don't know, let's say, uh, radicular pain, they have, shooting pain down their left leg, um, and they want some relief from that physical pain. And that's what their, that's what their agenda is, at least the overt agenda for the day. Um, it's important that we understand what their agenda is and what ours is, correct? Well, you know, you can take that, you know, if somebody comes with a, with the right sciatica pain, uh, you know, they probably have a contraction in the right psoas muscle, so you can undo that. Right psoas muscle connects to the right kidney. The right kidney relates to, to the bonding deficits or the transmission from the father. And so depending on what they want, you know, you can just, there's a point on the heel that makes the legs the same length. It releases the psoas, you know, you can do that, give them some medicine, send them on their way. But if they're interested in going deeper, you already, their symptoms, the, the picture of, of, of their issue. can be a doorway to go deeper. From the pulse, you can describe the personality of someone's parents easily. It's not hard to do at all. So let me come back. I'm going to put a pin in that, what you just said about the pulse. But do we need people's permission to do anything more than the obvious physical intervention? I figure if somebody comes to me, then at least there's a chance they might want to hear something. And, you know, I don't necessarily bring this up right away, but if they come a few times, and it depends what they talk about. If they just talk about their pain, thanks, that feels better, give me some herbs, I'll see when I need you. But if they start to talk about their life, they start to talk about their relationship, they start to talk about How disappointed they are in their life, you know, they're bored, they're, they're anxious, they're depressed, you know, so as their conversation brings up deeper elements of their need, then, you know, then we bring it up now. You talked about burnout, which I know is important discussion for you. When we are out of our power, When we are out of the place where we can take in nourishment at the same time as we're using energy, we get burned out. I know myself in my 50 year career. There are times when I just don't have any compassion anymore. Small rooms with unhappy people, I've wanted to call, I've wanted to call an autobiography for a few times. You know, the feet smell, you know, they talk about crap that you don't care about. They're just rattling on on how unhappy they are, and yet they've got a house and a family and a dog and everything, you know. Sometimes it's like, ah! When you lose your compassion. It means you're not taking enough energy in. You're not taking your own medicine. You're not taking a walk in the woods. You're not going to the ocean. You're not, you didn't have a good enough lunch. You didn't have enough, you weren't hydrated. You know, whatever it is. But you lost track of your own sense. So, this concept of self compassion is very popular today. Um, and as with most things in the Western world, good idea gets overused and then loses its, its most central meaning. Um, what would it look like for a healer to be self compassionate as opposed to just feeling sorry for themselves? For a healer to experience manifest self-compassion rather than becoming withholding of their services or self-indulgent, so what would that look like? How do, how do healers do that in a really practical way? Well, you know, it is a cliche, but we gotta. put gas in our car, change the oil, you know, a couple every once in a while, clean out the transmission, put in new fluid. I mean, it's just a matter of keeping it running. You know, a lot of healers get stuck for just going after money or going after fame or trying to prove something. Those are hard, hard goals to fulfill. It's never enough. Right. So I want to just change back to something I put a pin in earlier, which is you've, several times you've made reference to taking people's pulses and experiencing deep insight. Um, into who they are. And, uh, you know, I, I had the opportunity early in my career to be a senior resident to someone who was considered at that time, probably the greatest to. Clinician in cardiology and and he literally would have a road show and he'd go around to medical schools and take people's pulses and listen to their hearts and And then he would challenge the echocardiogram And say they needed to repeat it because it was wrong and sure enough He he had picked up something that wasn't picked up in the the echo, but kind of fast forward You know 40 years and find myself I found myself you know, being trained in pulse diagnosis and, uh, in a very simple way, five element way. Um, there was, unfortunately, Leon Hammer who passed away recently. Leon was a psychiatrist and, uh, he was a master of pulse diagnosis. He has a thousand page textbook, which I have on my shelf more. Um, I've got to read it. Yeah, yeah, but so, so my question is, um, but you know, so nothing my first teacher ever got close to what Leon Hammer was describing and that subtlety of what the pulse could tell us. Um, could you share with us a little bit about your insights into The pulse, whether it be the radial pulse or the carotid pulse, what is it actually telling us, and what could perhaps Western doctors, benefit or their patients benefit from learning more about this? You know, the, the pulse has two deep realities. It's, it's a very physical thing. There are pulse diagnostic machines in Taiwan and probably China and Japan as well. It's very coherent. And yet the pulse is also a quantum receptor. It's what you look for in the pulse. What, what kind of information you're looking for in the pulse can respond in the pulse. It's, it's very real. Um, for instance, if you think about the pulse as being chronological, if you take a tube, the bottom of the tube is birth, top of the tube is now, you can go all the way down to the bottom in the kidney position, and on the right side you can feel the personality of the father. I've said you can feel the personality of the mother if there's a tiny space between the bottom of the pulse and where that sensation begins, it means that parent was not present either emotionally or physically during the birth or shortly after the birth. It's true. It's 100%. It's there. Um, I know I've mentioned Michael Brooklyn a couple of times. He was beyond anything I could do on the pulse, but I can find things he can't because he's not looking for. He's trained in a different way. Like if I'm I can, if I'm giving a treatment, an acupuncture treatment, I'll take the pulse to see if what the needles I did made a change. Is there more balance? He doesn't do that. Oh, you can't do that. Yes, you can. There it is. So we all look for different things. And it's, it's quite real. I mean, it's a, it's phenomenal. And, you know, in, the, in the early time in historic China, it was considered improper to touch the body so they would have these, you know, jade reclining or standing statues, and the person would point, and then also they would stick their, their arm through a curtain and you'd take the pulse and figure out what it was. That's all they had. So that's what they had to do. Now there are, I, I mostly use the radial pulse and, which is slightly different than position, than the Tibetan pulse. Tibetan pulse also have a life pulse, which is the ulnar pulse, which I'm not very good at. Um, and the Tibetans do all kinds of things like I had a magazine on Tibetan medicine that talked about how to tell you if your guest is going to be late for dinner from the both, you know, I forget how to do that. That probably would have been fun. Our body is a multi dimensional reality. We're very physical. We're also connected out of time, out of space, the most subtle realms. Our bodies are this multi focused thing. It's very physical, but there's also this other part. And, maybe we're making it up in our mind what we feel, but you can validate what you feel. When I describe to somebody's parents from the pulse, I'm right. I'm not wrong. I can say, your dad was busy when your mom had you. Yeah, he was working. And one time I was taking, I was giving a seminar, I was taking somebody's pulse, and I rolled back to a lateral position, and I realized I was feeling the caregiver pulse. Her mother was absent, but but she had a Vietnamese caregiver, and I could feel the quality of her caregiver on the pulse lateral to where I would felt the mother, the mother position. And so one time I was doing a radio show and in San Francisco, and I was talking to the Japanese descendant woman who is the secretary. I offered to take her pulse. And when I took her pulse. In what I later figured out was the grandfather position, there was this great power. And I said, well, wow, who was your grandfather? It turns out her grandfather was a Christian missionary. And he was the sole source of strength in a Japanese internment camp in World War II. And it was his power and his strength that pulled everybody through, to through the three or four years that they were locked up, which was a terrible thing. And I said, you know, you, have all this power you can draw from your grandfather. She says, I can feel that, but I don't know what to do with it. So, our history is in the body. It's in our voice, it's in the little things that show up. When we're talking to somebody, the little ticks that come up, our body's causally communicating what's going on. And so the pulse is a very coherent, it's a small little window, it's very easy to control, very easy to understand. Um, and so it's a profound being. Now, I've never heard of a Western doctor being as good with a pulse as your teacher was, as the cardiologist was. I would like to, I would like to know what he felt because those are the kind of things that we need to really combine, you know, a lot of interesting, a lot of the old nature paths from the 1800s and early 19th and early 20th century had a lot of tricks and somehow, but by being isolated from each other. We, we should have a coherent system of medicine that involved all that we know, and we'd really be able to help people. There's all kinds of cures in the world that are not commercial and they're poo pooed, but most diseases are not very hard to treat. But we're denied that information, you know, because of financial interests. I keep bringing this up, I don't mean to be polarizing, but it's what we have to fight through as healers because this misinformation is so ever present in our society. People need to be aware of that more and more. So, you raised several times the issue of Our currency model that shapes, our healthcare pro providers. Um, I wonder if it's not so much the money, but what it is a manifestation of a manifestation of fear and scarcity and that only hard currencies can reassure people that in fact they are, have enough. At least for this moment, and that they're safe in the bank. Um, I wanted, and picking up on that, I, my experience as a provider, and also with my colleagues, what I witnessed a great deal is this fear. Living within a culture that is driven around, facts, um, regulations control that literally puts them in a straitjacket. Um, and one of the most dangerous things for a 21st century healer to, acknowledge, let alone manifest, reacting to, is intuition. Um, Intuition. And so, I know that you're recognized as a medical intuitive, and, um, perhaps you could share with us a little bit about what your understanding is about what is intuition, and most particularly medical intuition, and why anybody should take it seriously. In the 70s. I remember reading, uh, an article that was stating when somebody, when a speaker speaks, microscopically, the mouths of everybody in the audience is, is mimicking. Not a second later, like they heard it and then they did it at the same time. Because the brainwaves are coming out and affecting everybody the same way. In the 70s, I went to a meeting of the American Society of Engineers. At that time, they could measure the electromagnetic field at 38 feet. Now, I'm sure they can measure the electromagnetic field from satellites. We have this constant interaction of photons, hormones, nerve impulses, electromagnetic fields. vocal tones. We are constantly taking in our environment and influencing our environment wherever we go. We're sharing DNA. I mean, it's not just like wearing these skin suits. There's this effervescent feel that goes everywhere. Our bodies know the truth of everybody that we can even think about, And especially if we're in the same room with somebody. Our body feels it. That's what we do. That's humanity. That's the herd reality of humanity. We can feel it. Now, if we're so caught in our frontal cortex that we forget to acknowledge that, or we don't, we haven't thought to acknowledge it, or we don't think it's true, or we doubt it, or whatever, then you block all that. When somebody walks in a room, you can tell how they're feeling. Their vocal tone, their position, their facial coloration, all that you can tell. You know, just by looking at, you know, if you're a body worker, you can tell where somebody's holding their, their attention just from looking at their, their body shape. If, if you've gone into your own body, like in, in my work, going back to the 70s when I did biofeedback, I take people into every organ. You can go into the brain, you can change brain function, you, you can balance the brain hemispheres, you can go into, you can go into the corpus callosum and relax the, The, the, the separation between the hemispheres, which increases your telos. I mean, it's amazing what you can do. You can go into your retinas. You can go anywhere in your body. And so if I can just consciously, our bodies are doing it all the time. So intuition is just allowing, at a first level, a basic biological awareness of what's going on in your field. And if we let ourselves know, and we create a, an ability to perceive and have a language of understanding and perception, That, oh, this person is not, I'm not feeling me. I'm feeling this person. This feels, feels like this. You get a great sense of what's happening in somebody. There's, there's no secrets. That's the thing. There are no secrets in biology. Humans know, always know the truth. When somebody is lying to you, there's a part of us that knows, but it, but it's a, it's a tacit agreement. Okay. I won't call you on it. You can say what you want, but I, but deep inside we know the truth. Okay. But. Because of a quantum reality, and because of the illusion of time and space, there's no limit what we can know, only the limit of our own mind, the only limit of our own conception about how big we can let our field be. And so intuition is just starting with the most biological awareness, and then gradually as you get used to it, you know, I often say that we kind of have a spiritual agoraphobia, because the ability of the human awareness is so vast. that it's scary. So we can we kind of limit it. So intuition is not a rule. It's the most basic biological awareness. And we just differentiate between us and someone else and begin to see what messages were here. Just hearing someone's voice in Chinese medicine. You know, there, there's a groaning voice, which is the kidneys. There's a wispy voice, which is the lung. There's a flat voice, which is the spleen. It's a kind of laughing voice, which is art and so forth. Just hearing those voices tells us about somebody's organs. And when you add pheromones and you add facial colorations and the subtlety of, you know, it's, fascinating. But there's no limit to how much information we are getting and how much information we are sending. And that's, so information is the most fundamental thing and it should be taught, not, not poo pooed. So you, what are you saying is that intuition, if we are really Experiencing it never lies. Um, I guess my question is, can facts lie? Because we, we place a lot of confidence in medical facts. Somebody's, you know, full blood count, or liver function tests, or that EEG. Well, you know, those are momentary things, you know. To say somebody has a blood count of blah, blah, blah, or their EKG is a certain thing, that's a moment in time. And, and, you know, It says something on a personal level, and another level, you know, maybe they had too much ketchup the night before, and there was an ingredient in the ketchup that changes their clotting factor. Or they had french fries, or they had an angry, you know, how many people's blood pressure goes up when you go to the doctor just because they got the blood pressure cuff on. They're little pieces, but by themselves, unless you find some very reactive toxin or something, um, it's just a piece of a puzzle. So, you would suggest that modern healers should begin to pay attention to their intuitive experience of any particular moment and begin to learn from that. Yeah. And you don't want to just, you know, I have a sense of something's true. Okay. So, so now prove it to yourself. I have a sense that this is happening. So what else shows me that this is true? Do I need a lab test of blood pressure? Do I take a more detailed case history? Do I palpate their abdomen? You know, it's, I mean, once you get really experienced at it, you know, and you begin to trust it and you know, variations of your own creativity and your own solid knowing. Okay. You need to do that more, but when you're learning, you get a sense and then you validate it. You validate it with all your western diagnostic stuff if you need to. I mean, I had a teacher that was very good at reading cancer and he saw these little things that were around and he would see that when people had cancer. And, um, but he would also send him for a lab test. He would also send him for a biopsy or whatever, although I don't like biopsies. So, and then once he got good at it, he didn't need to do that because he was right. It's like when I take the pulse, you know, I It's so simple once you get it, but once you trust it, I can describe to his parents, I know what the truth is. I can tell them this, this happened. And, and, and so, but in the beginning you, you want to make sure that you validate yourself, know what it feels like when you're, when you're on the money and you know what it feels like when you might, when you're not sure it's more, you do it, then the more sure you get, right? So this is a person's life that you're dealing with. The person's, you still want to tell them anything. You want to make sure that you're leading them down a path of, they can trust you to have their welfare in mind. They can trust you to, to look at the details that are important for them to make the right decisions that they need to make in their health or their life or, who they are and what they want to do. And so it's important, you know, I, I, I often tell people that, you know, maybe you're in the wrong career or how's your relationship, you know, your relationship is toxic. So now you have to go find out if that's true. Well, you know, what are the negative impacts and what are the positive impacts of this relationship that's, that's so difficult for you? This job that's paying your rent and paying your mortgage, what would your life be like if you changed it? Is happiness and health worthwhile making that change? You know, it's, people, people trust us sometimes, occasionally, once in a while. And, they take what we say, even though they might doubt it at the time. They take what we say and it burrows into them. I hear your voice sometimes when I'm trying to make a decision. It's okay. I mean, I had a very tough, strong woman one time came and, um, and I took her pulse. I said, well, you know, kind of feeling you're angry. And so I put it on the table. I did cups and the cups just brought up all this anger and she just take these off. She ran off. She started around the door. And I had, drawn her a picture of how the anger was sort of settled in her body. She stopped, and she very carefully folded the picture, put it in her pocket, and then she went, she ran out the door again. So even though she didn't like what I told her, she didn't want to believe it, she honored me by, by showing me that I heard what, she heard what I said. And, and she wasn't ready to hear it then. So our impact on patients can be profound and, you know, just to give a feeling of something, unless you're really sure, unless you're really good at it, unless you're really experienced at it. We want to make sure we're right because it's, we, we hold, people trust us and so we want to fulfill that trust. Of course, the other side of the coin is that we need to learn to trust ourselves as healers.