Surround The Dragon w/ Guest Dr. Sara Asadoorian
In this episode of the Unreal Results podcast, I chat with my long-time friend, Dr. Sara Asadoorian to delve into the world of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), acupuncture, and their application in treating movement, pain, and injuries. With Sara’s extensive experience in TCM, she explains the influence of visceral organs and the nervous system on holistic health. We talk about how seemingly unrelated bodily functions are interconnected through the principles of TCM, including the organ clock and the concept of yin and yang. We also talk about the importance of integrating various medical practices to center patient well-being and how traditional treatments like acupuncture and Qigong can complement modern physical therapy and sports medicine.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Episode 40 - Healing and Wellness: Remade
Dr. Sara's Website
Dr. Sara's Masterclass: Your Secret Advantage Over Pain
Dr. Sara's Instagram
Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole-body approach to care, however, it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com
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Anna Hartman: Hey there, and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman, and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone, even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs and the nervous system on movement, pain, and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.
I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the unreal results podcast. I got a friend on today, which I'm so excited for, um, as you may or may not know, um, I don't typically regularly or do regularly do guest episodes, unless it's a guest that I really want the world to. Like know about and, um, that's how I feel about Sara.
So I've gotten a couple of questions recently about, um, traditional Chinese medicine stuff. And so I was like, I would like to bring Sara on the podcast because she is my go to on everything, traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture and all the things incorporated under that bubble. And so that's, that's where we're at.
And I've, I've actually known Sara for like 20, 20 years, like right around 20 years. I was, my sister's like, I was telling her, you're coming on the podcast today. And she's like, Oh, the name sounds familiar. And I was like, um, she was a strength and conditioning intern at EXOs back in the day. Her brother was one of my athletes.
Like, We got tattoos together. That's right. Oh my God. We got a burrow together.
Sara Asadoorian: That's right. Oh, the tattoos. Oh, that's right.
Anna Hartman: And my sister was like, oh yeah. Uh huh. So anyways, so welcome to uh, my podcast, Sara. Um, I would love for you to introduce yourself. So Dr. Sara Asadoorian.
Sara Asadoorian: Thanks Anna. Enjoy it. Thank you.
I'm psyched to be here. I have to, and I'm not just saying this, but your podcast is one of my favorites. Um, you know, I'm not just saying that cause you're my friend and I've known you for 20 years, but you know, we call you Yoda for a reason. You know, you're always, you're always consistently putting out amazing, brilliant content and I'm just honored that you invited me on today.
So thank you.
Anna Hartman: You're welcome. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad you're here. And it's funny too, cause I, like, just looking at your background, so Sara got this, um, LED light put up one day and I was like, shut the front door. And I sent her a picture and I literally have this, not all of it, but because I couldn't afford the whole LED, shout out, shout out,
Sara Asadoorian: they're expensive.
Yeah. They're
Anna Hartman: not cheap. So I only got the, um, last part of it. I have feel more on my wall as well in my office. So I was like, of course you
Sara Asadoorian: got that. This is I know! And we didn't even plan it that way.
Anna Hartman: We didn't even plan it. No. And this is, this is where I'm just like, this is why I love Sara. Because we've all, we've always been on the same page.
And this is also why I love It's really cool when you're working with a fellow practitioner that practices. with a different tool set, but you arrive at the same sort of conclusion about the patient in front of you. And like, that's just, I love that so much. And so often that happens between us and you know, for the, like also just like full transparency.
A lot of times Sara is who I call when I need help with a patient, either like I get to, like, I'm stuck or I'm like, need more ideas or even like, if it's a patient in Arizona that I can't put my hands on and I want some good quality hands and like a, you know, very holistic technique, I call Sara. Refer them to Sara quite a bit.
So, yeah. Yeah. It wasn't surprising that we had the same LED mantra on our walls.
Sara Asadoorian: I know. It's really not surprising. But honestly, it's the truth, right? We need to feel more. Think less. We gotta get out of our heads and into our bodies. Right? That's, that's the future. That's where the good stuff is, right?
Within.
Anna Hartman: That's my favorite quote from Jill Miller, the founder of TuneUp Fitness, um, is the body thinks in feels. And I was like, ah, that's so good. That is so right.
Sara Asadoorian: And thank God for Jill too, right? I, I haven't had the privilege yet to learn directly from her, but I have her books. I follow her. I've been following her for years.
And, uh, I was actually, I was signed up to take one of her courses in May of 2020, and. Of course, it got canceled with, you know, COVID and everything, but, um, you know, her work and everything that she talks about thinking and feels, I just, it's just, it's brilliant. Thank God. Thank God for her. But one thing I want to highlight that you just said, Anna, is, you know, there's a lot of different ways to get to a certain result.
Right. There's, there's, um, and that I think is overlooked. I think we, a lot of practitioners, trainers, coaches, therapists, clinicians, like, we get so caught up in our own little world and our own little way of thinking that we forget there is a million ways to skin the cat, right? There's a lot of different avenues.
There's different ways to get to, uh, you know, a positive result and right. And, uh, you know, what I appreciate for, from you again is, you know, it's always. a good feeling when you call me and say, Hey, I'm stuck. I need, I'm like, really Anna stuck? Like, okay, I got to put on my, my acupuncture hat and, you know, try to come at this from a different angle, but whatever it is, it usually clears up right away.
And it's just like, you know, I call this surrounding the dragon, Chinese medicine. We have a lot of really cool terminology, right. And surrounding the dragon is one of my favorites. And, um, what that is, is basically like It's a needle technique, right? We use, we replace needles all the way around the perimeter of a target, right?
So I use it a lot for scar tissue, lacerations, you know, um, that kind of thing. And when we come around, when we surround the dragon, we come around an issue from all angles, right? Top, bottom, you know, angle, just we surround it. And I, I take that. Very much like from a, from a theoretical standpoint, and I apply it to everything in my treatment plans in, you know, the conversations that I'm having with my patients, like, how can we come at this problem or this challenge?
And like, what angles are we missing? What haven't we explored yet, you know, and, um, so that's, that's one thing that I always appreciate about you too. It's like, yeah, you, you don't discount things that are outside of your specialty and you're, uh, you know, I take that and I run with it. Yeah, thank you for that.
Anna Hartman: No, I mean, and it's so I love that. I just wrote dance around the dragon. Cause I was like, Oh, I think this is going to be the title of the episode because,
Sara Asadoorian: oh, yes. Oh, so good. So good. Yeah.
Anna Hartman: Um, yeah. Yeah. So true because. Like the, what you described too is like, yeah, not only doing that with like the target tissue or the target focus, but it's like the person, right?
Like the athlete centered model is like, how can we put the athlete, put our patient in the center of every decision that we make, like what, who they are. What they're presenting with, what their goals are, like, you know, what they want versus what they need. Like, how can we always keep that centered? Um, and I think when you do keep it centered like that, it's, it's inevitable that you realize that you can't, like, you can't surround them all on your own, right?
Like, you're only one person and it's hard to surround an entire another human being without a whole team of people. Right. Exactly. Exactly. You know, it's even too, like, if you think of like the biopsychosocial model and like the diagrams that often people show with biopsychosocial model is like the circular, like Venn diagram.
And it's like, yeah, because we have to consider all the parts of what it is to be human when, when, when we're considering, you know, something that's not going optimally with a human. So I love, I do love, I mean, Chinese, like Chinese medicine, Chinese. You know just culturally the way they describe things like they do have do such a good job of sort of like this imagery of Giving meaning to to things.
So
Sara Asadoorian: I love it's very profound. Yeah, it's profound. It's creative. It's Symbolic, you know, sometimes it sounds a little mystical, um, but it's, it's beautiful. It really is. And you know, traditional Chinese medicine, you know, I, I've been studying for gosh, almost, almost 15 years now I've been a student of Chinese medicine and that's barely scratching the surface.
If you think about it, because there's, there's texts that date acupuncture in China, you know, this, you know, this type of medicine. 5, 000 years in history, 5, 000 years. Like it's it's pretty vast. Yeah, you know, it's deep and it's wide and it's beautiful and
Anna Hartman: when I love it too, because it's just Well, and this is probably biased because I would say like my whole lifetime.
I have been an observer like I You know, it's part of what I think makes me good at figuring out, um, complicated cases and puzzles and stuff with my patients is that I am like, able to like, take a lot of information in and like, sit with it and like, just observe things really well. And I think that kind of is like, when I think of Chinese medicine, I think of just how robust it is in terms of.
How they've considered everything and like observed patterns throughout the season in relationship to the organs in relationship to the people's constitution and like, you know, that kind of thing is like, you know, what an interesting way that they've always centered the person within nature, um, to, to observe the, the natural seasons, the natural ebbs and flow of the entire system of the body too.
So that's, that's really. That's really cool. I guess
Sara Asadoorian: it is really cool. And you bring up a good point too and like using your observation skills, right? Like that's all they had to go off of 5, 000 years ago. They didn't have anything. They didn't know what the body was They didn't know, you know what they were dealing with They were just kind of looking around and trying to figure things out as they went so all they had was their observation skills and the practitioners at that time You know, at the roots of this medicine, they had no way of writing anything down.
So all they did was, you know, they gathered their students and apprentices and they, it was their job to remember everything. Yeah. You know, so a lot of the roots of this medicine, um, you know, was based solely on presence and the ability to observe and put, you know, put the pieces together. And there was no separation between Human and nature really, right?
Cause we took, they took the stars into account, the sun, the, the weather, the environment, animals too, right? Plants, herbs, like there's a, it's a really vast and deep, deep medicine. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's withstood the test of time, you know, and here, here we are.
Anna Hartman: It's interesting too, because like fundamentally that is like being a scientist.
Observation, like paying attention to something, providing a little stimulus or intervention or like, you know, or just noting like, oh, interesting. After, after you add this, after you add sugar, like, this is what the response is. And not only observing that in 1 person, but like, starting to see patterns of that in multiple people.
Yes. And, um, I think, you This is a whole nother rabbit hole we don't have to talk about, but it's just always interesting to me because I always in, I always go back to, like, the evidence based practice trolls and I'm like, you're forgetting what fundamental science was like, you're forgetting what. You learned as a fifth grader of like, creating a science project is having a hypothesis and observing and doing something and observing the change and either, no, you know, deciding did that support my hypothesis or did it not?
And then also the understanding that any scientific model that's been put out there, the whole purpose of putting a scientific model out is to prove it wrong. Right. And so. Right. Anyways, it's just, and again, it comes back even more to the mantra of the feeling more is the reason why people have a hard time fundamentally with the observation piece and the recognizing patterns and the, and being curious and allowing the body to sort of speak to them is that they are so disconnected from what they're feeling in their own bodies.
Like they can't. They're like, they're so used to just thinking their way through life that they've disconnected from the feeling and the feeling is actually what provides the observation and the curiosity and all the things.
Sara Asadoorian: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Their attention just goes right outside their body. Right? It goes outside to an external source.
Yeah. And, uh, all the answers are within, right? Yeah. They're all in the fields. Yeah. They're all, they're all inside and we're all, I mean, that's, I think the direction we're all heading. is within, right? Our answers to everything is already inside of all of us. So we, the more we can get realigned and pick up on all the feels, the faster we're all going to get there.
Absolutely. You know, and we're all the same on the inside, right? Yeah. Like Yeah. That's, that's unity. If we can all develop that skill of alignment and listening, the faster we're all just going to start getting along and everybody's going to love each other and, you know, let's get that going, right?
Anna Hartman: Isn't that the truth?
Yes. Yes. Um. So, I don't want to be taking down this wonderful rabbit hole that we're going down, which I love it, but I also want to, um, I also want to get in a little bit of the nuts and bolts of the Chinese medicine and the connection to the visceral organs. And maybe the emotions and the musculoskeletal pieces of it and talk a little bit.
Well, so the question that came up that made me be like, yeah, I need to bring Sara on the podcast to talk about Chinese medicine because I always sort of touch on it whenever I talk about the viscera. And this is what I love about the Baral Institute is. He's noticed these patterns too. He's pulled from Chinese medicine and recognized that it's been around forever, and so he too sees these patterns, right?
And so, you know, without us sometimes really realizing it when we go through their teachings, we're learning a lot of what he learned from. You know, however, he learned some Chinese medicine stuff. So sure You know and it comes up a lot. I Whenever I share about the organs I try to like give all the information of terms of like the motions associated with the organs, which is very very pulled from Chinese medicine both Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine which are you know, have a lot of similarities to similar.
Yep, and then also Also, because I'd say sort of like, you know, my big, I don't want to say shtick, but my big thing with teaching people the LTAP, the Locator Test Assessment Protocol, is that it doesn't really matter if you're trained in visceral manipulation or even acupuncture or like any sort of like, it doesn't matter if you know how to treat that exact action.
organ or that exact point or meridian or like have a specific tool to treat it with like acupuncture or visceral manipulation because if you're in the area where the body is protecting right if you've targeted the right organ or the right vessel the right joint or right muscle for that matter you can do anything in that area and you're going to get a good response and so basically i have taken my understanding of visceral anatomy And learned the visceral manipulation technique, but then also been like, Oh, but I also know this movement.
Of the body in this area that if, if the, if the peritoneum and the suspensory ligaments attached to the, this rib and that spine and this part of the fascia, like it, you know, I'm virtually doing treatment from a movement standpoint. And so since I've introduced these more visceral based movement concepts, um, that I've either created on my own or pulled from other practitioners.
Um, that I've learned from people inevitably has asked, have asked me, is this similar to Qigong? Or is this similar to Tai Chi? And, and I don't know enough about Those practices to answer it well enough. I know they're connected. Um, and so that's one of the main reasons I wanted to bring you on is so you can kind of speak to that because, um, obviously movement is a big part of your practice for yourself and for your patients.
And, um, since you're familiar with those movement modalities, I would love to hear how you describe them in general and then how they're connected to the visceral. Mobility pieces or the visceral function pieces.
Sara Asadoorian: Yeah, so, I mean, movement is a huge part of what I do, and you as well, right? And, uh, we can't have movement without breath, right?
I think we both can agree with that. Like, movement is always better when breath is synchronized. And the thing that I think ties both Tai Chi and Qigong together is that Awareness of sinking breath with movement. So I think in, in that way, there, these two disciplines are very, very similar. Um, Qi Gong, I typically use with my patients to stimulate more of like a, like an internal change of energy or visceral function.
Um, so I'll start, you know, I'll just start, just put that right there. With Tai Chi, it's, it really is a, it's a combat martial art, believe it or not. Right. And I, and, uh, you know, my teachers that I've learned Tai Chi from are the experts, you know, so I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I'm a, you know, a Tai Chi expert or, you know, a martial art expert by, by no means am I that, but, uh, I will use Qi Gong more from a medicinal standpoint and I will use, uh, Tai Chi more from a, like a coordination movement development type of approach.
Yeah. So with Qi Gong being more. Organ related, um, the movements that, that are typically performed follow, uh, I would say the Chinese medicine meridians. If you're familiar with that, I know you are, and I'm sure your, your listeners are at least a little familiar with that, but, um, you know, if they read, um, anatomy trains, they've they've, you know, yeah, they're, they're familiar with that.
So, um, you know, synchronizing breath with movement and. Uh, breathing and moving in such a way that stimulates organ function through, uh, these patterns of energy and these patterns of, you know, fascial, fascia, the fascial trains. Uh, you know, I think there's, there's a lot of use. There's a lot of benefit.
There's a lot of utility in, in Qigong and, and Tai Chi. I don't know if that was.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, no, I think that's good. I mean, before I learned about visceral connections to movement and to the musculoskeletal system, I think in traditional physical therapy and athletic training and strength and conditioning practice, you learn how Qigong is great for the geriatric population because it is gentle movements and, you know, slow movements and, um, You know, and so I think sometimes it gets categorized as like only for those people and I'm like, actually, no, it can be like, you know, that's, it's almost like saying yoga should only be for old people for the same reasons, but it's like, we all know that yoga is great for everyone.
Right? Everybody. Understanding that there are practice, movement practices out there like Qigong that are very supportive to our health and have a lot of intention behind the positions and the patterns and the way it goes about doing things.
Sara Asadoorian: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I would challenge those people who say that Qigong is just for, you know, geriatric populations because it's not that easy.
And those folks, like, you know, especially if we take it like an athletic population who's used to going, you know, bigger, stronger, faster, going hard all the time in the gym, like, how easy is it for them to slow down? It's probably one of the more challenging things that they're, they're, uh, they're going to be faced with.
So, you know, it's, it's for everybody really, especially I would say the, uh, the athletic population, you know, because it, it, it presents a challenge that they're probably not. Tapping into very often. Slow down, breathe. Like, how is your coordination? You know? Uh, how, how, how slow are you willing to let your body go?
And how much attention can you pull into your body? Like, that's not easy to do. So I would encourage people to
Anna Hartman: here's a question for you. So like obviously the liver comes up a lot in For everyone needs support with the liver and If I were to give if I were to give someone treatment If I were to treat the liver, obviously, I'm going right at the liver from a manual therapy standpoint, but I also might go to like T7 through T9 on the spine, or I also might support some sort of, um, rotation thracolumbar rotation, or maybe even side bending.
Or, like, really any movement around the thoracolumbar junction, so depending on, like, what mobility is limited or, like, what direction the liver's not moving, I might get a little bit more intentional with it, but, um, how would you, from a Chinese medicine or, like, Qigong standpoint from, for a liver? A person who needs support of the liver, what would that potentially look like?
Because maybe I'm mistaken and maybe you can walk us through this, but just because someone needs support to their liver doesn't mean it's the liver meridian. It might be a different meridian, right, that supports the liver.
Sara Asadoorian: Absolutely. I mean, there's there's relationships, uh, between all of the organs, right?
So the liver will interact with each, you know, other organ in their own way. They'll support each other, right? In this reciprocal way. But, uh, to keep it pretty basic, the liver and the gallbladder are yin and yang pairs. Right. So, you know, always I would consider what's happening in the gallbladder just because of its close relationship in physical proximity, but also from an energetic standpoint, uh, to, to the liver from a Qigong standpoint, what I would do is, um, I would do, uh, like a tapping technique.
I would just start with, you know, kind of just starting in a flex position, starting at the, uh, the beginning of the liver meridian, which is on the top. The big toe, um, and just following the meridian just by tapping, coming all the way up the, uh, just medial, just, just off midline of the medial aspect of, uh, of the lower legs, of the limbs, coming all the way up, and then, Once you get to the hips, I would, I would probably, if I could stand up and give the demo, can I do that?
I don't know if you can see me here, but if you come, if you come up, you know, the, the, the liver meridian is again, just medial to the, uh, to the midline. Once you get to the hips, now you come out to the side. Now you're following the gallbladder meridian all the way down, um, down the lateral aspects of, um, of the leg down to the pinky.
So we're just, we're stimulating, um, uh. Energy flow, we're simulating these meridians to move. Um, and we're actually just by doing that, just through this tapping and the and the breath work and just the movement, we're just, we're highlighting the brain's attention to these particular areas. So if there's any stagnation, if there's any, um.
You know, any congestion in terms of energy, in terms of blood, in terms of even lymph, right? Um, there will be, uh, you know, that, uh, that stimulation of flow there. So, whatever you're doing, that type of movement and, uh, and breath work, with a little bit of tapping, a little bit of guidance, um, To guide your brain's attention to those particular meridians, I think will go a long way.
Anna Hartman: That's that's interesting. So with those meridians, you know, I'm obviously familiar that the meridians exist and I know how to look them up in a book or on the Google. Um, but so you demonstrated how they are in the lower extremity. Do those. Extend through the trunk and the arms too, or those are only in the lower extremity.
Yeah.
Sara Asadoorian: Yeah. So, um, the liver, let's see. So the liver is going to come up the midline just just off, uh, off the, uh, off center and the gallbladder meridian is actually 1 of the larger meridians in the body. So it'll start, um, at the eye and it comes up around the skull and it goes all the way down the lateral aspect of the body and ends on the pinky toe.
So. So. So. Yes,
Anna Hartman: so spiral line in anatomy trains.
Sara Asadoorian: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Um. So, it's, uh, I mean,
Anna Hartman: any kind of movement would be like the deep frontal line.
Sara Asadoorian: Deep frontal, yeah, deep front. Yep, exactly. So, like you mentioned before, you know, flexion, extension, rotation, side bending of the spine, like any spinal, uh, mobility, any, any of, any of that kind of intervention will be beneficial.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, so it's interesting. One of my favorite movements for the liver specifically is the da Vinci rolling patterns that I got from Philip Beach and it makes sense to kind of what you said of the liver meridians because The liver meridian it sounds like as it goes through the trunk is a little bit similar to the borders of the helical field Which would also be the nipple line on mammals And so he talks about how important like mobilizing the nipple line is because it's our fluid field.
Um, so, but the interesting thing too, if I break down da Vinci rolling, it's also a rotational pattern. So it's getting that spiral line. So there's the gallbladder connection into it.
Sara Asadoorian: Yep. Absolutely.
Anna Hartman: It's such a powerful. a powerful movement. Um, my friend, Daniela Spear, who I had on the podcast, she is, um, on Instagram remade.
Maybe she's just, maybe she's just Daniela Spear on Instagram, but her business is called Remade Wellness. She does autoimmune, um, coaching for people, movement. And, um, she swears that she healed her autoimmune Um, disease and her liver enzyme function with doing the da Vinci rolling every day. She's like, I swear to God, Anna, I added that in, it was like a game changer.
So I cast together, which I'll link, but yeah, so interesting.
Sara Asadoorian: It's miraculous. It's miraculous.
Anna Hartman: When you were describing that, and thank you, not to put you on the spot of like, where's the Herdian? You said a couple things that, of course, I'm familiar with, but I don't know if everybody listening is familiar with.
So in the sense of. Assuming they're not, I want you to explain it. So you said that the liver and the gallbladder were yin and yang for, you know, so maybe that is from an energy standpoint, and then also just made me think of like the fact that the term qigong, many people might not know that qi is like the Chinese word for energy, um, or maybe it's not, maybe you can explain it.
And then that made me think of like, well, what does gong mean? So it was, what does qigong necessarily translate? You know what? Um,
Sara Asadoorian: I don't have the answer to that. She, well first, like, she, energy, well, chi, life force, right? It's, it's, um,
Anna Hartman: it's, it's a Yoga. Mm-Hmm. key. Yeah.
Sara Asadoorian: Uh, you know, qi or qi, the, you know, it's all the same explanation for the force that gives life to all living beings, right?
Mm-Hmm. . It's the common denominator between all living beings. We have Qi. In our bodies, we have it surrounding us. We have it in our food. We have it, you know, every living being has chi. It is, and even though like, if, and again, this gets back to like the observation aspect of like the roots of this medicine is all they had to go off of was their observation skills.
So they sat back and they, you know, they just observed like, wow, here are humans, here are animals of all these different types of species. Here we have sun, we have moon, we have all these, you know, plants and trees and forests and all these things. They're all living, they're all thriving, and yet we, we all take such different forms, but here we are co existing.
We're all, like, we're here together somehow.
Anna Hartman: We're all vibrating atoms, basically. Yeah,
Sara Asadoorian: ex yes. Well, they didn't know that at the time, but yes. And so there has to be some force, there's something that we can't physically see that ties us all together. There's something. And, you know, life force, qi, is that thing.
And, um, it's a, it's a really beautiful concept. And, and, um, you know, qi moves through us. It's, it's, uh, talking about yin and yang pairs, equal opposites. Um, qi and blood are yin and yang pairs. So it's a beautiful thing that within the body, our blood is what moves our qi, with blood being a yin substance, and qi is the action base.
It's our energy that makes the blood move. So it's this beautiful, you know, You know, reciprocal relationship where blood will deliver Qi to the body and Qi is what moves the blood. So it's, you know, kind of a, it's just a beautiful thing to me. But just to get into the, the yin and yang pairs, right?
Everything is equal opposites, yin and yang. Um, it's, I, a lot of times I'll talk to my patients and I'll liken it to the, uh, the autonomic nervous system where we have a sympathetic and parasympathetic You know, dominant state at any given time, one is gonna be more dominant, the oth at than the other. Um, but they're always both running.
They're always both. And they need each other present correctly. Exactly. Yes. We need to be able to flow. And if we consi, if we think about that yin and yang, that tai chi symbol, right? The circle with the, you know, the, uh, the line down the middle, and then the two, the two, uh, circles within the bigger circles, right?
There's always a little bit of one within the other. Um. There's never one, any given moment where we're all yin or all yang. It's this beautiful, you know, flow of equal opposites.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, it's like, even though it's like equal, it's not necessarily always half and half.
Sara Asadoorian: Right. Yeah, exactly.
Anna Hartman: That's what that symbol looks like to me.
It's like, well, technically it is half and half, but it's not always clearly half and half.
Sara Asadoorian: Right, exactly. There's going to be a little bit of, uh, dominance in one or the other. Yeah. Right, and wherever you fall, and we'll all fall within that, you know, that circle, uh, at any given time, right? Like, we'll, there, there are yin times of day and yang times of day, right?
So, the yin time of day is when the sun
Anna Hartman: I was going to say, that's a good entrance into the organ clock, too, so
Sara Asadoorian: Yes, yeah, exactly, yeah, so Um, so the yin time of day, it's going to be nighttime where it's dark and we go within, right? We go to sleep, it's time to rest and recover. That's a very yin thing to do is to go within.
Yang time of day, it's when the sun is out. It's our active time of day, typically, right? I know there are some people that, that work, uh, uh, an opposite, uh, you know. Schedule sometimes they work at night as opposed to working during the day, but this is, um, you know, our rhythms and everything were designed, uh, to follow this time of day where we're most active.
We're most, uh, you know, all of our output happens during the daytime when it's light out during that young time of day in is again that that nighttime more, more restful, regenerative inward type of existence. So, um. Equal opposites. So where was I going with that? So yeah, back, back to the, uh, the, uh, paired organs.
So in the Chinese medicine system, each organ will have a yin and yang pair, right? Cause there's never, we can't have one without the other, right? So the liver and the gallbladder go together where, um, you know, the stomach and the spleen, they go together, right? The stomach, uh, being that yang hollow organ and the spleen is more of that, uh, the, the, uh, the fluid mover.
Right. It's more of a solid, uh, organ. Right. Um, that's, that's another thing. Um, hollow versus solid. Right. Um, you know, equal opposites again. So we see this, this, uh, this repetitiveness of yin and yang throughout the body and throughout, throughout all of our systems. Um, and it's just, we're kind of always finding these balances.
So within these, um, right. Chinese medicine paired organs, there's patterns that follow and in that, in those patterns, there are times of day associated with them. There are emotions that are tied with them, both, um, balanced, I'll say balanced emotions and imbalanced emotions. Um, there's elements too. So nature elements.
So we have fire, we have earth, we have metal, water, and wood, and, um, the liver and the gallbladder. I'll just touch on this a little bit. This is actually Um, really interesting is that the, the liver and the gallbladder is the wood element and it's all about growth. And if you can imagine, you know, a tree with all the branches, you know, that are going in all the different directions and, you know, blowing in the wind makes the tree stronger, right?
That adversity that the, that would has to face it, you know, it. It, it challenges the strength of the, uh, of the, uh, the tree, right? The strength of the tree and the emotion that is tied, uh, to the gallbladder in particular is, uh, uh, decisiveness. And so when there's a imbalance in this liver and gallbladder, um, we might see things like indecision.
We might see someone just growing for the sake of growing, like, like that tree that isn't, uh, kept, right? If you never have the landscaper come and trim down, you know, the branches and all the things, they just grow in all the different directions, all haphazardly, growing for the sake of growing. With no direction, really.
So, that wood meridian, or that wood, uh, relationship is I would say kept in check by the metal pair, right? The wood and the metal, which is the lung and the large intestine, which is very much more about, uh, like military style order, um, keeping things organized. And so it's like all these organ pairs. Yes, we need to grow in that liver and that gallbladder and that would we need to grow.
We need to expand. We need to make decisions and act in correspondence to that. But we can't do anything without the order that the metal elements bring us, right? We can't, you know, it prevents us from growing out of control without any direction. So that that long and large intestine Yin and Yang pair that metal really delivers some organization.
And so when we see these things, these patterns show up in our patients, um, you know, they might have pain somewhere along the line of the liver and the gallbladder. Um, but as we get into more asking about how their mindset is, what their behaviors are like, um. Even like what flavors of food are they, uh, uh, craving, right?
All of those things have an association with these, these, uh, elements and these, these Yin and Yang pairs. So when we're coming up on a, you know, coming up on a treatment plan, well, we know what points are going to be best for this person, but we also know what, uh, like mindset work needs to be done. What coaching do we need to do around, you know, Uh, you know, whatever their pattern is.
So if it's someone who's growing just for the sake of growing and they're very livery, they're gallbladdery, you know, they're not making decisions, but and they're frustrated and they're angry and they don't really know what they're doing or how they're doing it. Well, maybe we need to look into some long and large intestine stuff to see if there's any deficiencies there.
Is it that the liver and the gallbladder are overworking? Are they too, are they too much? Are they in excess or is there not enough of the, um, the metal element, the lung and the large intestine to kind of keep the wood in check? So, and that type of. Distinction will will really drag the treatment plan.
So if you're, you know, a liver in excess, um, that treatment will look a certain way. But if you're experiencing these symptoms because of a deficiency in your lung or yeah, in your lung, in your large intestine, well, that treatment is going to look a lot different. You were going to do an entirely different set of points.
So getting into all the details in terms of, Okay. not just the musculoskeletal, what they're feeling physically, but the mindset, the emotions, um, the nutrition, the, uh, the repetitive thoughts that they're having there, the strategies that they're implementing in their behaviors and the lifestyle, all of that matters.
And it's all about just kind of, um, from my standpoint as a practitioner, identifying what these patterns are and, and how much in one, Or two meridians, are they, uh, are they operating right. Are, are you too much here or are you too little here? Or is it both? Right. You know? So, uh, I don't know if that was confusing or too much, but
Anna Hartman: No, it's, it's just really interesting.
Obviously it always Mm-Hmm, like adds to like hearing you explain it and hearing you talk about the relationships like that. It's just makes me have more questions, .
Sara Asadoorian: Yeah, I know. And that's just, and that, yeah. And this is just one style of acupuncture. Yeah, right? Like, there's a lot of different styles of acupuncture that exist, and that's something that I don't think a lot of people realize, is that not all acupuncture is the same.
So when we talk about these primary meridians and these organ pairs, that's just one school of thought. Yeah. And that's really, that's different from the style that I typically practice here in my My clinic, um, that's, you know, channel theory is what, you know, channel theory and, and five element theory where they follow all the, you know, the, the elements, um, they're, they work really well together.
The style that I practice is much more about, um. Partnering with the nervous system and how the brain kind of views the body. And so because of what I do, because I specialize in pain and sports medicine, that particular style works really well. But I can, I can always draw upon, you know, channel theory and five element theory to add a couple extra points to balance out the energetics, right?
You know, so having that understanding of that, the, um, the energetic, the yin and yang pairs and the relationships and all the patterns, it really helps me like really fine tune. Yeah. The treatment. So we know what to do, how to do it and what homework to give in terms of nutrition and mindset and meditation.
really helps
Anna Hartman: you surround the dragon like you
Sara Asadoorian: were talking about in the beginning. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
Anna Hartman: That's interesting. It's so cool. That, yeah, that's, that's, I, I like that. Um, man. Yeah. I mean, it has, you know me, I've always been interested in Chinese medicine. Like one of these days I just probably should.
Start learning it officially. Yeah. Um, until now, I just call you when I have questions, but that's really interesting. There you go. Absolutely. It kind of reminded me too of like, that's such a big misnomer too, of like the, the whole conversation between acupuncture and dry needling. Like, Oh yeah. This is when I get so frustrated when I'm like, they are not the same thing.
Like they're not. Totally different. Thought process and it's like yeah, yeah, I know how to use a needle for dry needling to get the physiological response of the needle Which is why I'm using that tool and so But I'm like man that is like you know It's sort of, I don't, I don't know what the right analogy is, bringing a knife to a gunfight, like, it's like, there's so much more you could do with it.
Yeah. There's just so much more to Chinese medicine than acupuncture.
Sara Asadoorian: Yeah, it's an, it's an entire system of medicine. It is so deep and vast that equating the two. Is just, I think, I feel like it's
Anna Hartman: disrespectful. I don't even know. It's like comparing apples and oranges. Like, they're totally different things.
Sara Asadoorian: You can't. Now, there is a lot of crossover. Right? From the, you know, from the patients from the, you know, someone who doesn't know the difference. They, it looks very similar. It looks very, same tool, like if the patient closes their eyes and I needle them as an acupuncturist and somebody else needles them as a dry needler, the patient's body's not going to know who's who.
Anna Hartman: I mean, I'm going to know who's who, because, well, you usually have the better, better technique.
Sara Asadoorian: Well, often a lot of times. We get more practice more practice. We do. We get more practice. Ultimately, there's some acupuncturists that don't have good needling technique. That's true. I mean, it does come down in every, you know, not a field.
And yeah, in every field. Yeah, it comes down to the skill of the practitioner. I, I've spent years. Honing my, my needling technique. And I, I still, I still practice and, uh, you know, there, there is, there's an art to it. There's, it's not just point and tap, you know, um, there's, there's a, there's intent and there's purpose behind it.
And, you know, the way that you insert the needle, whether, I mean, you can insert 1 needle in the same point, but do it on a. On a transverse angle as a, as opposed to perpendicular, you get a completely different result, you know, so you like
Anna Hartman: how I use dry needling. And sometimes it was like, not even how I learned dry needling.
And I use it based on my, what I feel in my hand on my assessment with the osteopathic. And I just use the needle as an extension of my hand, like to direct. A very specific, precise treatment somewhere. Yeah. Versus, you know, how you use it or like even like the whole system. So yeah, when I, when people come to me and I, if I do dry needling on them, I'm always very like, hey, this is not acupuncture.
This is not the same. This is, it's the same tool. I'm like, and there's value in both.
Sara Asadoorian: Now, there's very much value in both. And you know, there's, can we talk about this for a second? Let's just can we just dive into it? Because I think this is an important conversation that isn't being had widely. Um, because there's, there's always been a lot of conflict between the 2 disciplines.
Right acupuncturist versus whoever's doing dry needling, like, it's this competition and I think acupuncturist have been. You know, they, they feel like their territory is being threatened, right? Because we're using the same tools and all the things and it looks similar and, you know, um. And I feel like, one, like, acupuncture's been around for thousands of years, it's so deep and so vast, I keep saying that, but it's true, it's like, it has withstood the test of time, it has withstood, like, the evolution of humanity, and Science and here we are, like, we're still rocking in the modern world, even just in the last 100 years.
Acupuncture is still around with all the advancements that we've had in technology and all the things. Right? So, like, I find it really hard to believe that a small subset of clinicians doing dry needling is going to be the thing that takes us out.
Anna Hartman: I agree, you know, and also, and also to, like, not just not just the, you know, people were doing dry needling, but like.
How common now is cupping and Gua Sha and like, so many traditional Chinese medicine practices now that are now not just mainstream in sports medicine and physical therapy, um, massage therapy, but are mainstream in beauty and like. Like, how many you see on a regular basis on social media, like gua sha on the face and the
Sara Asadoorian: yeah, I think that's great.
I think I, you know, I, I think it's fantastic. And I do think that dry needling can be a great, uh, like springboard into acupuncture. Right? So if. As the acupuncturist, I think if we can develop better relationships with the sports medicine world, right, the physical therapists, the chiropractors, the athletic trainers, like, I feel like we can bring a lot to the table that's just, it's, they're being bypassed because there's this conflict between the two, like, and, and,
like Sue
Anna Hartman: Falsone does such a great job of like trying to.
Bring those communities together. And so it's, it's really great to do that and,
Sara Asadoorian: um, yeah, you know, I, I, I'm working out of a physical therapy clinic here now. I operate my acupuncture practice out of a PT clinic and there's a guy, there's one of their therapists that does dry needling. And you know what? We get along just fine.
Yeah. You know, and you know what? Our patients are getting better. And so a patient who, who might be, um, who might be open to dry needling. Yeah. Yeah. And they have a positive experience. Well, they, they, that might open the door to acupuncture later on, you know, so I think like Just, um, you know, like,
Anna Hartman: which might open the door for them to, like, consider some emotional things and consider some, like, non physical things.
Sara Asadoorian: Yes, and that's so, so important, like, tapping into the, all the unseen aspects of the body, uh, that acupuncture does so well that, you know, conventional physical therapy just, they don't do that kind of work. And, you know, it's just, it's okay.
Anna Hartman: Back to what we started with, right? Like, when you have a patient centered model, it, you don't It makes sense.
It makes sense. You don't care who you're bringing in to help you because you realize you need more help to surround the person and, and like, truly put them first. So that is like, and the whole argument too, with the, the turf wars, I'm always like, there are 39
Sara Asadoorian: I don't know
Anna Hartman: how many zeros it is, is 39 something with a lot of zeros and it's more than thousands.
And so there are plenty
of patients, plenty of people in
pain that need all of the practitioner support. They need it.
Sara Asadoorian: We need it.
Anna Hartman: Yeah. If, if you feel like you're. Not having patients. It's not because of people using the same tool as you. It's because you need to get better. Period.
Sara Asadoorian: Well, we need to, we need to put our egos down and start advocating for this beautiful medicine of ours.
And we need, we need to, you know, if, if that happens, like, if we get like boxed out by the dry needlers, like that's our fault. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Cause we didn't advocate enough, you know,
Anna Hartman: you have an opportunity to be like. This is why we're different. This is why we're better. This is why, or whatever you want to say, it doesn't even matter, like, but you have an opportunity to speak up.
Sara Asadoorian: This is what we bring to the table. Like, everybody has a seat at the table, as far as I'm concerned. You know, and, and there's a lot that we bring. And a lot of it, you know, it's, it's not easy to, uh Explain right when we say things like surrounding the dragon and liver young rising and like, you know, all these like these terms that sound ancient because they are it's it's not easy, but this is what we signed up for.
We didn't become acupuncturist knowing that. It was going to be easy. Like, it's an uphill battle. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of education that, that we have to bring to the table to the public and to other practitioners too. And, uh, like you said, like, it's that patient centered model that matters. Like, let's get our patients better.
Yeah. And there's, there's a lot that, um. Both disciplines can bring. Yeah. For, you know, anyway, so that was a good rant. Good job.
Anna Hartman: Good rant. Yeah, good soapbox. I mean, yeah, I want to before we end because we are getting towards the end because you know I don't like that super long podcast. I'm not joking. Uh huh anything like I know I
Sara Asadoorian: mean, we could keep going.
We could go for three hours.
Anna Hartman: We could. We could. We'll just have to do multiple episodes. But, you know, to go back to the Chinese organ clock real quick, because I do refer to that quite a bit when I talk about the organs and, um, I see it becoming more popular on social media too, which I love. But I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of it, of, and, and you kind of started talking about it because you talked about how each organ, you know, has a certain time of day where its energy is increasing, you know, where it is like getting more energy directed towards it.
And so like, you know, again, to continue with the liver as an example, so it's like the high energy time for the liver is between 1am and 3am. So oftentimes, like. If people find themselves waking up consistently around those hours, it is, you know, something to consider that maybe their liver is either stagnant, like you said in the beginning, like too much energy or not enough energy, like something's out of balance there.
And so like figuring out what it is, like, could you, could you speak to that? Cause I think like. Um, I think sometimes people always see the negative side of things, like, Oh, I'm waking up at 1 to 3, like, Oh, there's something wrong with my liver. Where I'm like, Well, it might not be that. It's just maybe it's, like you said, the opposite organs that are not
Sara Asadoorian: supporting it.
Supporting it. Yeah. So. Sure. Yeah. So it, it means that something somewhere along the way isn't having its needs met. Whenever we have a symptom of some kind, whatever it is, something in the system is not having its needs met. And so waking up between 1 and 3 a. m. Yeah, like I'm going to look at your, your, your liver patterns.
And oftentimes it's a liver excess. It's too much stress. It's overthinking. It's, you know, well, that's, that's, uh, you know, the spleen will Get into that to the spleen energy will will play into that too. But, um, nothing ever works alone. And that's true with Chinese medicine too, right? Like the waking up between 1 and 3 is just the way that your body's getting your attention.
Start with the liver, start with the liver and gallbladder because that's. The time when it's most active, but what else is happening? What's your digestion? Like, again, what, what are your mindsets? Like, what is your daily? Are you active? Are you not active? Are you, are you recovering too much? I don't know if you can recover too much.
Uh, are you underactive? Are you not active enough or are you over trained? Do you need to rest more? Right? Like where, where are your imbalances and where, what needs are you not meeting? Right. Um, and so waking up between that one and three. It's again, it's just like any other symptom. It's just getting your attention, letting you know that something somewhere Needs something that it's not getting.
Anna Hartman: Yeah, that's when I think to like what ends up happening is people are really aware of the nighttime Organ energies because it doesn't wake you up Whereas like they're not as mindful of like noticing patterns throughout the day when you're awake So I remember an acupuncturist I used to work with Um, back in the day here in Arizona, she would ask me questions and we realized like every day at four o'clock, I would like have some burping and like,
I would, it was
almost like I burped in the afternoon and I was like, Oh, four o'clock, four o'clock, four o'clock.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, no, again, I'm going back to observate observations, right? Like noticing. It's just not, it's not something that's going to be as striking as waking you up at night. It might be something as subtle as like burping every day. Yeah,
Sara Asadoorian: right. Um, and using the bathroom too. Like how often you're using the bathroom too.
Like, right. So like first thing in the morning, a lot of times people have a bowel movement, right? Right. So again, lung and large intestine. Stomach, spleen right around that breakfast time, like right, like right around the time people would be eating breakfast. That's when, uh, you're going to be most active in those organ, in those meridians.
It's again, it just follows, it follows the, uh, you know, the natural rhythm of the, how the day unfolds, right? The natural, uh, what else? What was it? What? There was something else that. It fell out of my head. I just, as you were talking, I thought of something. It'll come back. It might not.
Anna Hartman: Um, until it comes back, since we're getting towards the end of wrapping up, I do want you to share, like, you kind of said a little bit how you practice in your clinic is a little different than these sort of more traditional Chinese.
Medicine, like views, um, and so share a little bit about that and then also share sort of like what you have for people out there, like where to find you and if you have anything.
Sara Asadoorian: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks. Yeah. So, um, the style of acupuncture that I practice, it's, uh, it's distal needling. So there's 2 styles that fall under this category and it's called balance method.
And Master TUNG. TUNG. Mm-Hmm. . Um, and these are entirely, uh, so the, the balance method uses points, acupuncture points that are, uh, would, that would be considered primary points just organized in a different way. Um, and then the master tongue system uses its own, it has it its own sets of points. But the thing that I love about.
This particular style and these are still, you know, these styles are a couple hundred years old. So in the world of acupuncture, they're still, they're, they're fairly new. Um, but the reason I use them is because it's, uh, it, they work instantly, right? We get instant feedback and it uses what we call, you know, homologous structures to look at the body.
So we look for structures that look like other structures. So, for example. You know, the humerus and the femur, right? You hold them up side by side. They look very, very similar, right? They're not identical, right? But they're similar enough to know that, Oh, that like one's just bigger than the other. Yeah.
Right. And if you follow the pattern, just the anatomical structure, like following, like again, the humerus and the femur. Like we have a ball and socket on one end and then we have a hinge on the other in the knee and the elbow. We go further down the limb, like, to the tib and fib and to the radius and ulna, we have one solid bone and then a floater, right?
And then moving down, we have the hands and the feet. They're pretty much identical. You know, for the most part. And so, um, same bones. These are just organized a little differently, right? Um, So, using, like, moving in opposition, right, the right limb, the right upper, the right arm will swing with the left arm and vice versa.
Did I say that right? No, the left leg and right arm. Yeah, did I say that right? The opposing joint. Opposing, yeah, exactly. So, whenever I'm treating, let's say a, you know, a right sided shoulder, I'm going to look at the leg on the, on the left side and I'm going to needle there. Why? Because there's no pain there.
You know, the, the brain, like the brain brain's gonna protect something that hurts, right? Mm-Hmm. . It's gonna protect it from an external source or an external for, right? So if I go in with a sharp object, this is why I don't needle locally. I seldom needle locally into a need a point of pain. Mm-Hmm.
Because I know that there's gonna be, there's gonna be guarding here, right? There's gonna be guarding around that area of. Pain, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a needle into like, here I come with a sharp object. Brain's gonna be like, right? You know, I'm gonna have to you know Really work to earn the trust of the nervous system before the benefit really starts to settle in but when I needle It's homologous structured partner, right?
So if I needle the left leg to treat the right shoulder we get instant results instant I think I think we've we've demonstrated that in your clinic up in back when you were in Scottsdale. Yeah, probably if I remember. Yeah, probably a bunch right. Um, but we get instant results and and. It just, it gives me an opportunity to apply any other modality that might be appropriate to the injured area.
So if we can clear the pain first, well then we can either do some movement or body work or whatever it is that, you know, the area of pain is in need of. Or sometimes we just need to leave it alone. Just get the pain down and let the body do its thing on its own and just retain the need. the needles for, you know, a short period of time.
Um, but this style of, of needling that I practice very much partners with the body itself. And, um, you know, the results that I'm getting is just, it's incredible. And so, yeah, it's great. It's just, you know, you, you say this all the time. It's like your nervous system is the smartest thing in the room. Right?
So why not use it? Like, why not partner with it and just encourage it to do what it does naturally just by putting in these little needles and just give it a little bit of direction, right? That's really all I'm doing. And, uh, yeah, it's really, I mean, I could talk all day about distal needling. I won't, but, you know, that's, uh, that's my favorite thing for another podcast.
Yeah, another day. No, we'll do that another day. Um, but yeah, so, um, I talk more about like nervous system stuff. I know you talk a lot about that, Anna, and, um, I always. Yeah, I always learn from you. Yeah, and it's great, but I have I have a master class that's out right now It's partnering with the nervous system That's available on my website.
Dr Sara net and folks can if they're interested in following me more on Instagram. It's at dr. Sara Asadoorian
Anna Hartman: And I will link both of those things in the show notes for everyone, uh, definitely check it out. Like I said, Sara is one of my go to practitioners for my own body, which is always like the biggest thing.
Like, I don't let anybody touch me, but Yep,
Sara Asadoorian: which while you're here, let's get you in.
Anna Hartman: I know while I'm here, I should come see you. I do need to see you actually. Yeah. Um, and then, um, yeah, so she's my go to for my own body. And then she's my go to, like I said at the beginning for when I need help and get stuck on a patient.
And so, um, 10 of 10 recommend, um,
I think
we covered a lot, obviously, and hopefully this opens the door for more conversations. And honestly, too, like. You know, I am like a, I know you're starting to put more content out there. So I'm like, you need to do a podcast.
Sara Asadoorian: I know. I know. I, um, I'm, I'm working with a, um, a media manager and this is something that is on our agenda.
Anna Hartman: I just have to, you know, business standpoint, anybody listening podcast is I should have done it. Five years ago, it's been the number one best thing in terms of nurturing my people and getting my people to learn more and get comfortable and like show the world what is out there to learn and what I am teaching in my courses.
And so I'm like, this is like, it seems like a big animal to do, but it is one of the things that has paid off the most in terms of effort and my time and everything. So,
Sara Asadoorian: Well, guess who's going to be my first guest on my podcast that whenever that's coming. I don't have a date yet, but
Anna Hartman: yes, I would love to.
Sara Asadoorian: Yay.
Anna Hartman: Oh, all right. Well, thank you. Just inspired me. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Um, yeah. Well, well, see everybody next week. Let me know how you liked it. Let Sara know how you liked this topic and we'll, uh, do more maybe in the future.
Sara Asadoorian: Thanks.
Anna Hartman: Thank you. All right.