A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond Sabine Wilms PhD

For today’s episode on “Living and Teaching the Way of Yin,” Leo Lok and I are once again joined by Kris González, Chinese medicine practitioner and herbalist, whose personal experience of motherhood has been influenced by her Korean mother and her Mexican mother-in-law. In addition to her clinical practice, she is also an educator offering evocative courses on topics like embodied menstruation, holistic breast care, the alchemy of perimenopause, spirit-heart-womb transformation through the somatic womb path, and sacred vaginal ecology, to name just some of her juicy offerings. Check out her gorgeous website “Thewayofyin.com” to get a sense of the beauty she weaves into being in her corner of the universe.
In this second half of our conversation with Kris, we considered a Yin approach to Chinese medicine. How do we shift out of the heady, Yang space and the intellectual models of Chinese medicine as currently practiced and taught in the West, into the sensorial, embodied experience that serves as such a potent alternative doorway to healing? How can we manifest a more expansive, softer, deeper, gentler, and less rigid healing practice that aims to lean into and support what feels good rather than fighting what is wrong? How can we express the Yin way of weaving community and nurturing health instead of the Yang way of solving problems? Ultimately, how can we change this extractive culture of ours through the authority and power of our medicine, to restore the valuation of Yin in all aspects of society, from menstruating and giving birth to cooking and caring? What a conversation! Oh, I am really happy that I get to share it with you and hope that this will in turn inspire you to engage in similar conversations with your community of family and friends.
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The Way of Yin - Nourishing Life WisdomTraditional Chinese GynecologySubscribe to my newsletter!Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Welcome to Season Two of “The Pebble in the Cosmic Pond” where we focus on 2nd generation immigrant Asian voices by, for, and about women in that sweet spot in between traditional Asian wisdom and contemporary Western embodiment.
Joining Leo and myself for our third episode on Season 2 is Kris González, Chinese medicine practitioner and herbalist, whose personal experience of motherhood has been influenced by her Korean mother and her Mexican mother-in-law. In addition to her clinical practice, she is also an educator offering evocative courses on topics like embodied menstruation, holistic breast care, the alchemy of perimenopause, spirit-heart-womb transformation through the somatic womb path, and sacred vaginal ecology, to name just some of her juicy offerings. Check out her gorgeous website “Thewayofyin.com” to get a sense of the beauty she weaves into being in her corner of the universe.
I first crossed paths with Kris when she consulted with me on the classical Chinese perspective on women’s health and on yangsheng, so that is naturally where our conversation with Leo started. It was really interesting and moving for the three of us to explore the fertile intersection between Kris’ personal lived experience and her professional training in Chinese medicine. I feel like this has given her a special angle that is rooted firmly in a traditional Asian perspective, emphasizing dietetics, living in harmony with the external cycles of the seasons and internal cycles of the female body, and yangsheng (“nurturing life” or, as she put it “providing wellness instead of treating disease”). Kris is such a beautiful spirit, internally and externally, and Leo and I walked away from this conversation feeling very lucky that she so generously shared her way of being in the world with us, and through this podcast also with all of you, our dear listeners. May her deep commitment to helping women experience the cycles of their bodies fully and with ease, in harmony with the cycles of the seasons and the cosmos, inspire you as well to explore the power of this approach in your own life and clinical practice!
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The Way of Yin - Nourishing Life WisdomChanneling the Moon, A Translation and Discussion of Qí Zhòngfǔ's "Hundred Questions on Gynecology," Part One — Happy Goat ProductionsTraditional Chinese GynecologySubscribe to my newsletter!Happy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

In Season 2, titled “Over the Moon?”, we feature the voices of second-generation immigrant Asian women on female health. We explore the creative sweet spot in between the traditional Asian kitchen table wisdom that they have inherited from their mothers and aunties, and their personal and professional experience in contemporary North America.
In this Episode two on “Attuning and Releasing,” we continue our conversation with Ramona Deonauth, a Chinese medicine practitioner of Indian heritage in San Diego who is finishing up a doctoral dissertation on menstrual education at Yo San University in Los Angeles.
Now we get to dig a little deeper into current menstrual education in the US: What are some missing pieces that traditional Asian cultural and medical paradigms might be able to provide? What is the effect of non-existent or harmful information on menstruation not just for menstruators but for their family members, partners, and society at large? How can we celebrate and elevate currently emerging young women’s intuitive voices and cross-cultural universal experiences to fundamentally change the way in which especially young women experience menstruation in a positive direction? And on the other hand, how can we address and prevent, instead of normalize, menstrual pain and provide much needed medical, emotional, and social support? We walk away with Ramona’s insistence that menstrual education must be improved for ALL humans, not just women, and Leo’s teaser for a future session that “fertility is not an on-or-off switch.”
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Channeling the Moon, A Translation and Discussion of Qí Zhòngfǔ's "Hundred Questions on Gynecology," Part One — Happy Goat ProductionsTraditional Chinese GynecologyRamona Deonauth's bio and websiteSubscribe to my newsletter!Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. WilmsLeo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

Once again, Leo Lok and Sabine Wilms are here to bring you old and new stories about China's healing traditions and about Medicine in Heaven and on Earth... ...and in the sweet spot in between.
In a special twist for Season 2, evocatively titled "Over the Moon?", they focus on second generation immigrant Asian voices by, for, and about women's health, as the sweet spot between traditional Asian wisdom and contemporary Western embodiment. And yes, they do realize that they need help with this theme since both Leo and Sabine are first, not second, generation immigrants in the US (he from Malaysia and she from Germany), and he is a guy and she is not Asian. That’s where the interview partners come in.
For this first interview, Leo and Sabine get to chat with Ramona Deonauth, a Chinese medicine practitioner of Indian heritage in San Diego who is finishing up a doctoral dissertation on menstrual education at Yo San University in Los Angeles. Sabine has had the great honor to serve as one of her advisors for her super fascinating research project, which involved her interviewing young menstruators and professional providers of menstrual education from the worlds of nursing, public health, and Western and Chinese gynecology. For the last year or so Sabine has been so enjoying her monthly mentoring sessions with Ramona because Ramona has really powerful stories to tell and insights to share, sad and beautiful and inspiring. Doing a ton of listening and learning, she has been contemplating how to improve the experience of bleeding with the moon for young American menstruators.
Truth be told, Ramona is actually the reason for this theme for Season Two because the three of them had such a wonderful conversation, in perfect alignment with each other on the huge potential and power for this subject, that they knew at the end of three hours that they couldn’t stop there. And since Ramona has to focus on finishing up her dissertation, Leo and Sabine have simply found other second generation immigrant Asian women to interview until Ramona is done with her doctorate and can join them again. You will be able to tell from the first time Ramona opens her mouth that she is one of those human angels, motivated by her deep care for the young menstruators she has been encountering in her research and clinical practice. Leo and Sabine are delighted that this podcast might help get the word out about Ramona’s work and about the significance and potential of menstrual education from a Chinese medicine perspective, along the lines of Leo’s beloved “Bodhisattva Math.”
Additional Information
Channeling the Moon, A Translation and Discussion of Qí Zhòngfǔ's "Hundred Questions on Gynecology," Part One — Happy Goat ProductionsTraditional Chinese GynecologyRamona Deonauth's bio and websiteSubscribe to my newsletter!Imperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. WilmsHappy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

In a special twist for Season 2, we feature second generation immigrant Asian women’s voices on female health. We explore the creative sweet spot in between the traditional Asian kitchen table wisdom on women’s health that they have inherited from their mothers and aunties, and their personal and professional experience in contemporary America.
Before we get to interview these women in our official episodes, here is a little introductory conversation where Leo and I explore this topic and ask questions like “Where does traditional women’s knowledge on female health come from and how is it transmitted? How is it reflected, if at all, in the traditional literature of Chinese medicine, written largely by and for men? How do we plug the gaping holes in the male-dominated traditional literature as modern providers of medical education and medical care by and for women? Whether in the context of advanced clinical practice or daily yangsheng, how can we make space for the female perspective of the nurturer versus the technician?
Additional Information
Channeling the Moon, A Translation and Discussion of Qí Zhòngfǔ's "Hundred Questions on Gynecology," Part One — Happy Goat ProductionsTraditional Chinese GynecologySubscribe to my newsletter!Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors

What is the relationship between your personal practice of yangsheng and your clinical efficacy? Is it important, or even relevant, for a practitioner of Chinese medicine to embody the ideas of Yangsheng? In other words, can you be a good healer of others if you can’t take care of yourself? Are the short lifespans of many historical and contemporary Chinese medicine practitioners due to their failure to practice self-care? Or could it be related to the Wounded Healer pattern, to the fact that they started out with and were inspired by their own frail bodies?
Considering occupational hazards from a different angle, how do you meet a depleted patient without depleting yourself? What does a healthy or ideal interaction between the patient’s Qi and the practitioner’s Qi look like? Does the practitioner replenish the patient’s Qi, or is it a question of merely attuning the patient’s body, like tuning a piano instead of playing it, and leaving it up to the patient to replenish their own Qi?
For this episode of the Pebble in the Cosmic Pond podcast on “Occupational Hazards in Chinese Medicine,” Leo Lok and I invited our dear friend Michael Max to join us. As the host of his famous Qiological podcast and a practitioner with decades of experience, he was the perfect conversation partner. Become a member of the Imperial Tutor mentorship to receive related translated passages and listen to the continuation of this conversation as the Imperial Tutorial episode on "Dealing with Bingqi and Avoiding Martyrdom."
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QiologicalDr. Wilms' free course: Introduction to Classical Chinese — Translating Chinese MedicineSubscribe to my newsletter!Translating Chinese Medicine: Dr. Wilms' website for learning classical ChineseImperial Tutor Mentorship by Dr. WilmsHappy Goat Productions (Dr. Wilms' website)Leo Lok's courses - All Courses - Voices of Our Medical Ancestors