Today on the podcast, we have acupuncturist Russell Brown; Founder of Poke Acupuncture LA, with over 15 years of experience practicing this ancient medicine with exquisite finesse. Using his distinctive voice and gentle wisdom, Russell advocates for a realisation of the constraints and meritocracy of the current whitewashed, capitalist-driven wellness industry. Russell is an educator and a brilliantly poetic writer who brings forth the kind of gentle healing one's soul longs to fall into at the end of the day. As a practitioner of acupuncture, Russell operates through the subtle energetic realms of Chinese medicine with ease, translating the insightful metaphors of this ancient knowledge into soothing remedies for the intensity of modern life. In this episode, Russell offers his nuanced perspective on the invention and westernised packaging of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the existence of cultural appropriation and privilege within the wellness industry, and how conscious social activism lies at the confluence of these topics. Tahnee and Russell discuss the Eight Extraordinary meridians, constitutional energy and life trajectory, The Five Elements, and the type of strength required of practitioners to support their patients through healing.
"I want you to experience beauty for an hour every week, every two weeks. I want you to be removed from the story of your life. I think that's the only way we're going to survive, frankly, is to have a chance to cushion ourselves from how hard the world is with some softness. And that's how I practice acupuncture now. I want people to be given an opportunity to catch their breath, to float, to not feel like the world is coming at them in a hostile way"
- Russell Brown
Tahnee and Russell discuss:
- The Wei Qi.
- Yuan Qi (source Qi).
- The Five Elements.
- The eight extraordinary meridians.
- Doing the work of social activism.
- The whitewashing of the wellness industry.
- Stomach 36 and our relationship to nourishment.
- The importance of creating and nurturing as humans.
- The history of Traditional Chinese Medicine communism.
- The institutionalisation and education system around TCM.
- Becoming very clear on your perspective as a practitioner.
Who Is Russell Brown?
Russell Brown, L.Ac, studied journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and enjoyed a career in feature film development (including The Fast and the Furious films and Cruel Intentions) before quitting his job on a whim and enrolling in Emperor's College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. After passing the California State Board in 2007, Russell opened Poke Acupuncture in Los Angeles in 2009.
Russell has operated pro-bono acupuncture clinics for the HIV/AIDS community in San Francisco and L.A. and was the in-house acupuncturist for the Alexandria House, a transitional home for women in Koreatown. He wrote a book on meditation titled Maya Angelou’s Meditation 1814 and his writing on wellness has been published in several outlets including Bust and Lenny Letter. He sheepishly did acupuncture on Paris Hilton for her reality show in 2011, a real moment in time he only slightly regrets.
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Resources:
Poke Acupuncture Instagram
Russell's website - Poke Acupuncture
Subscribe to Poke Acupuncture Substack
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Check Out The Transcript Here:
Tahnee: (00:01)
Hi everyone. And welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. Today's guest is an acupuncturist from Los Angeles who's been practising for over 15 years and has, in my opinion, one of the freshest voices in the industry.
Tahnee: (00:12)
He's an advocate for understanding the limitations of the industrial capitalist wellness machine, that's a mouthful. And he is an educator and a writer who, in my opinion, manages to put TCM theory into this most beautiful language and metaphor that's really accessible and relevant for modern humans.
Tahnee: (00:29)
And Russell also has an ex-film producer background. And if you're a 90s kid you'll know some of those movies. Fast and the Furious, Cruel Intentions.
Tahnee: (00:36)
So he's had this amazing 180 coming into this more subtle kind of energetic realm of traditional Chinese medicine. So I'm really excited to welcome you here today, Russell.
Russell Brown: (00:48)
Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so excited.
Tahnee: (00:50)
Yeah, I'm so excited.
Russell Brown: (00:51)
I spent some time in Australia by the way in the 90s.
Tahnee: (00:54)
Did you?
Russell Brown: (00:54)
Yes. I went to Sydney and then I was young and took a tour of the outback, which I'm sure you guys hate, but-
Tahnee: (01:01)
Oh, nice. I love that.
Russell Brown: (01:02)
One of the stops was at this farm in a place called Coonabarabran, I think.
Tahnee: (01:07)
Yes.
Russell Brown: (01:07)
I just stayed there. And so I lived on this farm for, I think like two months, and just worked on this farm out there. Yeah. And it was great and it was not my real life and it was nice to be not in my real life.
Tahnee: (01:19)
And the stars.
Russell Brown: (01:21)
Beautiful. Insane.
Tahnee: (01:23)
Yeah.
Russell Brown: (01:23)
Obviously coming from LA, like we don't really have stars in LA like that, so it was all very shocking to me so I have very fond associations with Australia.
Tahnee: (01:32)
Yeah. They've actually preserved Coonabarabran, so the Warrumbungle is like a National Park there and that area is now a dark sky park, so.
Russell Brown: (01:39)
Oh wow.
Tahnee: (01:40)
They're trying to preserve it for yeah. Like, so you can't-
Russell Brown: (01:42)
Because otherwise the development would come in and sort of just make it-
Tahnee: (01:45)
Yeah. I don't know if they'd ever developed that [crosstalk 00:01:48] pretty far away. Yeah. But just more like, yeah, so people can't have, I don't know, flood lights on their farms or I don't know what people would do, but yeah.
Tahnee: (01:56)
So you're the founder of Poke Acupuncture and you've got this amazing clinic going. I actually heard about you through lots of sort of connections in LA and then started following you on Instagram. And it's been a delight following you for a few years.
Russell Brown: (02:10)
Thank you. It's so funny. Obviously I have such a take on wellness and part of that take is that I don't know that I need to be on Instagram.
Russell Brown: (02:20)
I don't know that acupuncturists need to be on social media. I don't think that I have such an issue with like content creation. I don't think that I personally need to be making more content, but I also think there's something sociologically interesting about it.
Russell Brown: (02:33)
And so I've sort of tried to find a use for Instagram that doesn't make me feel like a 17 year old. And I don't know if I'm succeeding at that personally, but I am enjoying the process of it most of the time.
Tahnee: (02:48)
Yeah. I vote for you. I've had a really love, hate relationship with the platform and I really hear you on that. And I think it's evolved in really positive and negative directions, but there's this positive where it's this place to yeah, like share ideas and connect and use the kind of medium for education and inspiration.
Tahnee: (03:10)
And I think you do a really good job of that and Wellness Trash Can just makes me laugh first of all. But also I'm always like, "This is so relevant big because we've got this culture," and something I've always said to my husband, the first time I went to LA was probably I think, seven or eight years ago.
Tahnee: (03:26)
And I remember being like, "It's so artificial here. No wonder the wellness industry came from here," and my husband kind of looked at me and he was like, "What are you talking about?"
Tahnee: (03:33)
And I'm like, "Well, everything's just plunked on top of the desert. It's not really meant to be here." And then we've got like this really toxic kind of culture there around aesthetic and lifestyle. And I'm sure you know all of that very, very well.
Russell Brown: (03:52)
Well, I also think about it in context of one of the things about Los Angeles and Australia too, but really LA, we don't have seasons here, right? Every day is exactly the same weather wise. It's going to be between 75 and 85, right?
Russell Brown: (04:05)
It's always going to be sunny. We have a couple weeks of rain, but there's no passing of time essentially. I wear the same thing to work every single day. I wear black t-shirt. I wear black pair of jeans every day. It doesn't really matter.
Russell Brown: (04:15)
And I think as a result, we don't get the passing of time. We don't see it. There's no, the jacket comes out, the jacket goes away. Now summers here we get to go to the pool. We go to the pool every day here and as a result our relationship with ageing is affected by that. Our relationship with the way the body passes through time is affected by that.
Russell Brown: (04:38)
And so I do think that wellness sort of came in as a sense of in part, because we have such a resistance to believing that we're ageing, people just can't believe that 10 years has passed because we didn't have any markers of that.
Russell Brown: (04:50)
And I always say like if you're a man especially, like women you guys have a cycle, you have a menstrual cycle that says a month has passed. But for me, I really can't believe time is passing. I don't have children. I don't see any of that.
Russell Brown: (05:03)
And so I think that wellness was really born a lot from this idea of how do I rectify the fact that I'm ageing even though I just can't believe it's to be true? And Los Angeles is really I feel like the epicentre of that.
Tahnee: (05:17)
And if we drill right down to what you speak about a lot in your work anyway, we're talking like this idea of capitalism and how it's driving this kind of constant work ethic.
Tahnee: (05:28)
And we can take that right back to the industrialization of the world and you speak about that online. The moving from it's a candle to get anything done at night to like, "Hey, we can electrify your whole house and you can watch TV or work on your computer or whatever."
Russell Brown: (05:44)
Have that computer in your pocket and then go into your bed and so you can have the computer with you in the bed, in the place where you're supposed to be resting.
Russell Brown: (05:51)
And then you wonder why you can't sleep because you've now made your bed into an office. And you're like, "I couldn't possibly meditate. There's just no way that could be." It's very, very complicated.
Tahnee: (06:03)
It's a trip. And even if there's not that seasonal variance, we used to have that nocturnal rhythm, so there'd be dark and you'd have to go to bed at some point.
Tahnee: (06:14)
I often think about that when I'm camping. I'm like, "Well, it gets a bit boring." You have a chat, you drink some wine and then you're like, "Well, let's go to bed." There's nothing else to do.
Tahnee: (06:23)
So it's like, yeah, I think we've lost that natural kind of push to shut down. And so I think LA really, you've got the film industry there, not just that, but a lot of other kind of economies in that area that are just driving this kind of constant, hectic pace.
Tahnee: (06:40)
And culturally, I think America too has had that anyone can achieve anything kind of push. And I see that in the wellness industry as well, it's almost like this kind of spiritual version of that sort of drive to succeed.
Tahnee: (06:55)
And if you put your mind to it, you can be anything you want to be and create anything you want. And sometimes I'm very concerned about how toxic that is, so. Is that something you see?
Russell Brown: (07:04)
Well, it's a lie, it's 100% a lie. And now like, especially lately in America being like, "Oh, actually it's still just intergenerational wealth."
Russell Brown: (07:13)
The entire idea of American meritocracy is a lie, but we use that lie as a dangling carrot to make everyone feel terrible for not doing enough.
Russell Brown: (07:24)
And I think the wellness industry is all braided up in that now. And that's part of the problem is that the foundation of it is that lie. It's not like manifesting, I don't believe and I don't think that's a thing.
Russell Brown: (07:34)
I think this idea that you're supposed to rise yourself up in the bootstraps because allegedly one person did it one time, because Oprah Winfrey came from nothing and became Oprah Winfrey.
Russell Brown: (07:47)
But she is the exception to the rule, which means that the rule is there that no one really can do it except for one person, two people, which are a complete, complete exception.
Tahnee: (08:01)
They're unicorns. Yeah.
Russell Brown: (08:04)
Totally. And now you are chasing a unicorn and thinking something is wrong with you is part of the problem, right? And that's the illusion of it all.
Russell Brown: (08:13)
And I think America is starting to rectify or at least reckon with that lie, that it's not true. And part of the racial reckoning that's happening right now in America is like, "Oh, a lot of this meritocracy, the manifesting nonsense is for white people."
Russell Brown: (08:29)
It's really not for any one of colour. It's certainly not for immigrants, queer people. It's really a very specific version of success that is not available to just about everyone.
Russell Brown: (08:41)
And wellness is a part of that and that's why I am critical of it now more than I was before is that I see it and I see myself as the beneficiary of a lot of it too. And I feel like it's a lot of my responsibility to speak out on it.
Russell Brown: (08:55)
One of the reasons why I am so critical of wellness and specifically acupuncture is because I am successful, but I am successful because I am a white man as an acupuncturist.
Russell Brown: (09:05)
And I understand that media outlets like to see me and like to give me press, because it's easier to project Asian tradition and culture onto me than it is to actually just speak to an Asian person or an Asian American person.
Russell Brown: (09:22)
And I feel that tension, even now on this podcast, I feel that tension. We're two white people talking about wellness and that feels odd to me. And I feel like it needs to be called out that I'm not from Asia. My ancestors are not from Asia. I learned this very generously from a Taiwanese woman in my school but I don't feel an ownership to this medicine.
Russell Brown: (09:48)
And I feel very strange being a representative of the medicine often publicly, because I don't know that it's the most appropriate. I do the best I can, but I don't like often that I feel like sometimes when Caucasian people take up the spaces in these conversations they are doing so at a disservice to their colleagues who are minorities and I wrestle with that myself.
Tahnee: (10:19)
Yeah. My husband, he has a comedy Instagram, he often says things like, "Look at the white people enjoying the empire," and it's as much a reflection on his own processes and people take it. They're like, "Oh, its not very kind."
Tahnee: (10:35)
But we know we need to process this our own way. And I see that in your work with Wellness Trash Can and these things, it's like it's as much a self reflection as it is criticising the industry and we are a part of the problem.
Tahnee: (10:49)
I have staff that are Sri Lankan and have different names and we've had people be really racist to them on the phone, like "Put me onto an Australian." And I'm like, "Jesus fucking Christ. You're buying Taoist tonic herbs from like two white people that have a company with some people with strange names in it. How can you be racist toward them?"
Tahnee: (11:07)
And it's just a funny situation sometimes. And I often think, we have this amazing person in China we work with, with sourcing. And I often think if I put him front and centre on our social media, people just they would freak out. They wouldn't get it.
Russell Brown: (11:23)
Well, that's the thing. What does it mean? Like what does it mean? Like what are we talking about here, especially like me as an acupuncturist, you're a yoga instructor.
Tahnee: (11:32)
What are we doing?
Russell Brown: (11:33)
What are we doing? And how did the industry become this place where it's like we have sort of appropriated a lot of these traditions. And now the industry wellness in general which is based on so many traditions of countries that are not Caucasian people. And yet the consumer is a white person who wants it to be a Caucasian thing and how that tension plays out.
Russell Brown: (11:59)
I don't exactly understand, I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do with it, except for talk about it as much as I can and signal boost the other of practitioners who I'm close with and who I really believe in who I think need more attention put on them than I do.
Russell Brown: (12:19)
But I don't know what it means about wellness. And it's one of the things that just makes me uncomfortable about wellness in general is knowing that how whitewashed it's become, how clean it all feels.
Russell Brown: (12:30)
And it didn't actually come from a place of cleanliness. It's like a very superficial cleanliness. Particularly last year in America, there was so much anti-Asian violence because of COVID.
Tahnee: (12:42)
And Trump.
Russell Brown: (12:42)
That's like the least of it, I could just talk about forever, but for me to see acupuncture, white, Caucasian acupuncture, saying nothing about the anti-Asian violence really didn't ever compute to me.
Russell Brown: (12:58)
And it would be like, "You owe your careers to Asian immigrants. You owe your careers to social activism on the part of racism. And now when racism is actually happening here in communities that are tangential to you and the work you do, you say nothing."
Russell Brown: (13:12)
And that really just pissed me off last year. It still pisses me off. And there are friends of mine who want their Instagram and their social media to sort of portray that same cleanliness.
Russell Brown: (13:26)
And I'm like, "The ship has sailed on that cleanliness." Your silence is what? What exactly do you think your silence is buying you around this? I don't understand it.
Russell Brown: (13:37)
And COVID has only made it worse because of all of the conservatism around masks and the vaccines and things. And I think a reckoning is coming. I just think that the wellness industry can't continue to operate like this with a lot of these lies really at the heart of it.
Russell Brown: (13:56)
And that's sort of where I ended up kind of going with my social media some of the time. And then sometimes I'm like, "Who needs to hear from me? I'm just like one more white guy who thinks that the world needs to my voice in it. And it doesn't." And I go back and forth with it. I go back and forth with it.
Tahnee: (14:19)
Yeah. I really hear you on that. And I find pushing the button sometimes on publication myself very challenging. So I'm sure you have the same feeling.
Tahnee: (14:28)
But I remembered you shared a whole piece on, is it Miriam Lee who was one of the advocates for Chinese medicine in your country and that was new to me. I didn't know that history.
Tahnee: (14:39)
And I was really grateful you shared that. And if you don't mind, would you mind sharing a little bit about that? Because you talked about the politicisation of like all these wellness people avoiding politics, but really to get where we are now this is what's had to happen.
Russell Brown: (14:55)
Well, Miriam Lee, we sort of consider her like the pioneer of Chinese medicine, at least on the west coast in America. She was a woman who came over from Asia I believe she came in 1969 and she was an acupuncturist in China.
Russell Brown: (15:07)
And then she set up in the Bay Area in California and she was not legally allowed to practise medicine at the time. No one was really legally allowed to practise acupuncture at the time, but they did. They practised acupuncture.
Russell Brown: (15:19)
And so she operated sort of under the radar and had a clinic and it was quite successful. And the versions of the story told of her is that eventually they found out about her. They came and arrested her and her patients came to court and demanded that she be freed.
Russell Brown: (15:43)
And as a result, she was given licence to practise acupuncture. And which paved the way for California to be able to have licence.
Russell Brown: (15:51)
The truth is is that she was not the meek, very subservient female acupuncturist that they portrayed. She was working with various organisations. She baited them to arrest her because she wanted to push the issue. And she actually had been lobbying for it. She bankrolled lobbyist's. She was out there actually doing the political work.
Russell Brown: (16:15)
And I think that the difference is interesting because in one version we get to sort of just be either the victims of politics or the heroes of politics. But her version is actually no, you have to be a social activist.
Russell Brown: (16:31)
The harder story to tell is this is a woman who knew exactly what she was doing and was doing it intentionally. And I think that that is a much better role model for acupuncture than just this very heroic tale of all of her patients worshipping her and wanting her to be able to practise.
Russell Brown: (16:46)
But actually she was out there working in Sacramento, which is the state capital, to make sure that this legislature went through. And I think that that is something that we don't talk about enough is that we have to be really doing the work of social activism and not just hoping that our patients speak on our behalf, which is the fantasy that is told about Miriam Lee.
Tahnee: (17:09)
Yeah.
Russell Brown: (17:09)
The part that's also tangential to that is that Miriam Lee was only arrested because essentially what happened was is this cohort of Caucasian men at UCLA essentially discovered acupuncture in the 70s. They had never even heard of it before and learned it in about a year and a half from a teacher here in Los Angeles.
Russell Brown: (17:30)
And as a result, they used their connections to get themselves permitted by the government to be able to practise medicine. But the terms of their permitting were that anyone who wasn't associated with medical school, they were with UCLA, anyone who wasn't associated with a medical school, then they became illegal.
Russell Brown: (17:50)
So Miriam Lee was only arrested because these white men decided that they should have control of the laws around acupuncture. And they then went on to found most of the acupuncture schools in America, the curriculum of what it takes to become an acupuncturist, and worked with most of the states around the licencing of acupuncture.
Russell Brown: (18:11)
And to me, that is the much bigger conversation is how it is that this group of white men basically decided that they should own the medicine, be responsible for the medicine, of which they had no connection to, to the detriment of the practitioners who actually this was their legacy. This was in their family. This was lineages of knowledge.
Russell Brown: (18:33)
And that's why I think of myself as someone who is now one more in a lineage of white men who thinks that they should be the spokesperson for this medicine. I don't like that.
Russell Brown: (18:44)
And I am very cautious of that because I understand how these things work. And I wonder, that when I am even on this podcast now talking to you, is there a Miriam Lee out there who's paying the price for my speaking on behalf of Chinese medicine in a way that perhaps I shouldn't be. And it's something that I think about.
Tahnee: (19:05)
Yeah. We have a friend, Rhonda Chang, who's a Chinese-
Russell Brown: (19:10)
Rhonda Chang's, and she was like, "I'm done, I'm not doing this anymore."
Tahnee: (19:14)
This is what I was going to say. She just was like, "This fucking system is broken and you've taken my medicine and you've turned it into something that it's not, and I'm taking it back."
Tahnee: (19:26)
And we've both been deeply inspired by her work and we spoke before we jumped on about the challenges of the institutionalisation and the education system around this work.
Tahnee: (19:37)
And people like her, I'd much rather sit at her feet than the feet of some of the people I was studying with, so yeah it's a really tricky situation.
Tahnee: (19:48)
And it sounds like you had a beautiful teacher from the little bit I've heard. Yeah. Could you tell us a little bit about your experience at school and how that went down?
Russell Brown: (19:57)
I had a few teachers, but my first real primary teacher was a woman named Christine Chang, who, the first time I saw her, she had a man in a headlock on the floor of the clinic because she was cracking his neck which, of course we're not really allowed to do, but she doesn't care.
Russell Brown: (20:10)
And she looked like a small woman wrestling a bear. And I was just like, "Who is this woman? I need to know everything she knows."
Russell Brown: (20:18)
And so I followed her around and basically just made her talk to me and she was from Taiwan and she was the first person that would look at it like a point I was needling. And she'd be like, "Who told you to needle that?" And I'd be like, "Oh, Dr. Jai." And she'd be like, "Don't listen to Dr. Jai. Dr. Jai is a communist."
Russell Brown: (20:36)
And I didn't know what she was talking about but come to find out that she's not wrong. I would be like, "No, Dr. Jai was born in America. I don't think she's a communist," because my understanding of what that was.
Russell Brown: (20:51)
But what she was actually basically saying is that how when the communist party took over China in the 40s and 50s, they basically created acupuncture out of nothing.
Russell Brown: (21:01)
It was an invented tradition that sort of took what they liked about eight principles and applied it to dialectical materialism, which is sort of communist ideas and sort of syphoned it down into a version of Chinese medicine that they could then package and sell to the west that would appeal to sort of Orientalism.
Russell Brown: (21:25)
But it stripped out a lot of the things that she really believed the medicine to be. And Rhonda Chang, that's exactly what she speaks about, is that this sort of communist hybrid that they've made is not interesting to her at all. And it doesn't speak to the lineage she understands.
Russell Brown: (21:39)
And so she is doing work that's around that but that's what my teacher was basically into and is that there was TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine is a communist invention, and she's from Taiwan where they didn't subscribe to the TCM.
Russell Brown: (21:55)
And so she was very strong about that and making me understand the difference between the two. And I was very fortunate of that. She was a real firecracker and just a very strong woman and taught me to be very strong in terms of my perspective on the medicine and having a perspective on the medicine. And I think that that's really ultimately what I teach.
Russell Brown: (22:20)
And when I work with students now is that I want to say that there's a lot of ways of looking at the medicine. This idea of TCM, that there's one thing, it was never true. It never looked like that in Asia. There's always different perspectives on this.
Russell Brown: (22:36)
Whether it's Five Element, all of them, whatever Rhonda Chang's doing. And the idea I always want is that you just see what you see and really own your perspective on it.
Russell Brown: (22:47)
I like to work with a lot of students on just honing that perspective. What is your version of it? Do you see the world through the eight extras? Do you see the world through secondary vessels? Do you see the body through whatever mechanics? Orthopaedic mechanics?
Russell Brown: (23:02)
But really becoming very clear on your own perspective is I think the most important thing. And I associate that with any success that I think that I have is that I've always had a pretty clear perspective. I see it the way I see it and I can own that.
Russell Brown: (23:17)
And I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that I'm a white man and so culture allows me to own my perspective in maybe a way that other people wouldn't. But I really think that that's the most important part of it.
Tahnee: (23:27)
Mm.
Russell Brown: (23:29)
I got that from my teacher.
Tahnee: (23:30)
Well, I'm interested in that because, this is from my background research, I believe you were raised Jewish?
Russell Brown: (23:36)
Yes.
Tahnee: (23:37)
In kind of a fairly alternative household model, which if you want to talk about that you can, and then you studied journalism, then you've ended up in film and then you suddenly had a restaurant like, "Okay, I'm going to go study TCM."
Russell Brown: (23:51)
Correct. You done your research.
Tahnee: (23:51)
What is Russell's journey? Because how did you find your voice in all that? Because it doesn't really like seem particularly clear from my side of the pitch.
Russell Brown: (24:01)
It's interesting. So yeah, I grew up Jewish is sort of a little bit of a stretch. I had a Bar Mitzvah, but that was about it and it was LA Jews. And my family was going through a very strange transition around the time of my Bar Mitzvah.
Russell Brown: (24:17)
My mom had just left my dad to be with a woman. And so she and Diane had gotten together. My dad got remarried right away after that. And so by the time I was like coming of age, whatever that actually looks like, at around 13, it had been a long couple of years.
Russell Brown: (24:35)
And so I just wanted to be done with that particular chapter and move on with my life. So I don't know that I ever really like thought like of myself as a Jewish person, even though my family was, but gosh, I never really thought about the full story.
Russell Brown: (24:53)
One of the things that I knew growing up was is that there's more to be felt than to be seen in the world. And I think I always sort of like that. I always thought that there was magic. I always thought there was magic. I just really thought that there was things that I could see that other people couldn't see and that those were the things that impressed me the most, that I liked the most.
Russell Brown: (25:22)
I had a grandfather who had a park and he would take us to the park and he knew every tree in that park in New York. And he would put bird seed in his mouth and the birds would sit on his chin and eat it out of his mouth because he would go there every day and the birds knew him. And I understood that to be the real world. I just knew that that was real and everything else was not.
Russell Brown: (25:45)
And he played music and I understood that that was real and music was real. And I think that from a very early age, I understood that beauty was the point. The point was beauty and finding beauty in the world that is becoming increasingly ugly has always mattered to me.
Russell Brown: (26:03)
And when I was, as you said, I got into the film industry and was working in films. And I think that that's a really beautiful service actually, out of the time to provide, I think we work hard, we deserve to be transported for a couple of hours to something else. I think we deserve to see other stories and to be transported by the stories of other people.
Russell Brown: (26:23)
And I thought that was a really beautiful service to provide. I worked on the Fast and Furious movies and though those movies are ugly in a lot of ways. I think what a beautiful gift to give young people, to say to a 17 year old, "You could be somewhere else for a few hours. You could be in a flying car for a few hours. You don't have to be in your life that is hard."
Russell Brown: (26:47)
And I still think that that's a beautiful gift and I knew that I wasn't going to be in that profession for long. But I still think that what I do now is a version of that.
Russell Brown: (26:59)
I want you to experience beauty for an hour every week, every two weeks. I want you to be removed from the story of your life. I think that's the only way we're going to survive, frankly, is to have a chance to cushion yourself from how hard the world is with some softness.
Russell Brown: (27:17)
And that's how I practise acupuncture now is I want people to be given an opportunity to catch their breath, to float, to not feel like the world is coming at them in a hostile way. What could it feel like to just be soft and to sit alone in the dark and wait for something to happen?
Russell Brown: (27:40)
I just think is such a beautiful way to be for a little bit of time, especially in Los Angeles where it's not like that. And it's hard and we drive cars and everything feels hard here in a way.
Russell Brown: (27:51)
It's easy here in LA, but it's also hard in that like parallel parking and all of that, the tiny streets and part of the Los Angeles lifestyle is it's a hustling lifestyle, right? Like these are people who are here to make things happen and that hustle is hard and it feels like it's coming at you.
Russell Brown: (28:09)
And I like to offer people a space where it doesn't feel like the world is coming at them for a little bit. And I think that's beautiful. I think that that's what I'm still offering is beauty.
Russell Brown: (28:20)
I like to think that I'm giving them a chance to feel what it could be like in a soft world where your grandfather gets birds to sit on his chin and eat out of his mouth. That's all really I'm trying to do. That's really all I'm trying to do.
Russell Brown: (28:36)
And so I don't know that I'm a great acupuncturist in that way. I don't know that I know the most about endometriosis or herbs, but I do know that that's how I'm trying to practise, is to give people that small space in their lives for some magic to fill it.
Tahnee: (28:54)
Hmm. What do you do for you to get that same thing?
Russell Brown: (28:59)
The best question. The blacksmith does not get his shoe shined. I go through phases where I'm good at it and where I'm bad at it.
Russell Brown: (29:09)
I had a place in the desert and the desert really helped me out a lot there because it is so quiet and it's so peaceful out there. I spend a lot of time with my dog.
Tahnee: (29:17)
Backpack.
Russell Brown: (29:19)
Backpack is my dog, but Backpack is really helpful because Backpack is a reminder that the world is polite. He's a very, very polite dog. He doesn't take anything for granted. He always asks for permission. Even like to sit on the couch, he looks at me like, "Will you please invite me on the couch?"
Russell Brown: (29:36)
And just being in relation to that kind of gentleness is incredibly healing for me. And it slows me down and he just wants me to put my face on his face and I just think that's the best. And I find that kind of sweetness is very, very medicinal for me. So we spend a lot of our time together when I'm not at work.
Russell Brown: (30:01)
I read a lot. I write a lot as you know. I really like to write and part of that writing is that I get to spend time with myself and it's a place of creation for me. And creation is really important for me.
Russell Brown: (30:12)
And so I have to remember that when I hit the send button on the Instagram post that I'm embarrassed about or that I think is too much it's as much because that kind of creation is very important for me. I don't toil over it too much. I just need to be able to make and to create.
Russell Brown: (30:29)
And that's how I sort of restore myself a lot is just with that kind of creation is helpful for me. I don't have kids. I'm not interested in parenting like that, but I do think that creation is still important. I think nurturing is still really important and that's how I nurture.
Russell Brown: (30:49)
I eat. I like to eat. I like to watch TV. I like to check out, I need that too. I need stupid. I have a boyfriend and he's a genius, but he's also very stupid. And that balance is very, very important for me.
Russell Brown: (31:05)
He's one of the stupidest geniuses I've ever met and will just make me laugh. We've been together a long time and I just can't believe he still makes me laugh, but those are some of the things I do. Yeah.
Tahnee: (31:18)
That's really nice. Do you receive treatment yourself from anyone or?
Russell Brown: (31:21)
I do. I go to an acupuncturist who does not know I'm an acupuncturist.
Tahnee: (31:26)
Secrets.
Russell Brown: (31:27)
Yeah. I don't need him to know. I prefer he think that I'm not so that I don't have an opinion or a position and I don't want to talk about acupuncture.
Russell Brown: (31:39)
So he thinks I'm a law clerk, which is a job I don't know what is.
Tahnee: (31:41)
I was going to say, what does a law clerk do?
Russell Brown: (31:45)
I have no idea. Actually someone told me, I can't say I don't know what it is, a lawyer finally told me a law clerk is a lawyer who works for a judge in America.
Russell Brown: (31:53)
So like when a judge does a whatever judges do when they make rulings and they write out their rulings, the law clerk writes it out. So that's what I do. My understanding is it is the most boring profession there is because there is no follow up question you could ask to a law clerk. Like there's no like, "Oh you wouldn't." And so he just never does.
Russell Brown: (32:15)
And whenever I've said I'm a law clerk, because I'll say at a party. Because sometimes I don't-
Tahnee: (32:18)
So just shut downs conversation.
Russell Brown: (32:20)
It just kills a conversation dead.
Tahnee: (32:23)
Love it.
Russell Brown: (32:23)
There's nothing you can ask. There's nothing you can ask about a law clerk, but there's something about being an acupuncturist, especially in LA, I don't want to talk about it.
Russell Brown: (32:31)
Especially in certain settings in LA, at an LA party, the minute you say you're an acupuncturist, then you're like in a whole place. And a lot of times I like it. My boyfriend's always like, "You will find some woman with a menstrual disorder at any party who wants to talk to you about her menses."
Russell Brown: (32:48)
And I love it. Nine times out of 10 I love it. But like I will always be at a party at a chocolate fountain talking about menstrual cramps and my boyfriend will always walk up and be like, "How? How did you find this woman to talk about her cramps with you?"
Russell Brown: (33:00)
But I like it most of the time, but sometimes you just don't want to talk about that. And so that's when you say you're a law clerk and people change the subject or they never speak to you again.
Tahnee: (33:09)
I'm so stealing this.
Russell Brown: (33:11)
Law clerk's the best.
Tahnee: (33:13)
There was a time about six or seven years ago, where if we said we worked with medicinal mushrooms, people would kind of back away.
Russell Brown: (33:18)
Oh, yeah.
Tahnee: (33:20)
But now it's unfortunately you're-
Russell Brown: (33:26)
You're just a law clerk.
Tahnee: (33:26)
Yeah. Got to get there. So on clinical practise, and I want to bring it around to that because we've spoken about this before we came on, but I have a little bit of background in understanding some of the basics of what acupuncture means to be as a practitioner and-
Russell Brown: (33:40)
You know more than the basics. I think you probably know more than most acupuncturists.
Tahnee: (33:44)
Well, yeah. I've had some really amazing mentors and like you said, people who are pushing back against that sort of communist industrial sort of model.
Tahnee: (33:54)
So they've pushed me to learn very deeply, which has been something I'm really grateful for. But I wouldn't feel comfortable sticking needles in someone just yet.
Russell Brown: (34:04)
You can do it. It's not that hard.
Tahnee: (34:07)
I know my husband's always like, "You can test it on me maybe." But yeah, some things I've really noticed about your work which I find interesting, is you work a lot with the eight extraordinaries. So for those that don't know, could you explain a little bit about and how you came to work with those in clinic?
Russell Brown: (34:23)
Absolutely. But people don't know is when they go to an acupuncturist, most of the time the acupuncturist is doing like, "We're working on the liver channel, working on the gallbladder channel."
Russell Brown: (34:30)
But when they say that they're talking about a very specific type of meridian. There's 12 primary meridians. And those are the ones that most acupuncturists use. Stomach channel, the heart channel. Those are meridians that deal with blood that go to the organ level.
Russell Brown: (34:47)
But when an acupuncturist is selecting to use the primary meridians, often they're doing that because those are the meridians that are taught most in schools, but not necessarily because those are the ones that are the most clinically relevant to what is happening with the patient.
Russell Brown: (35:02)
The primary channels are the middle level of energy in the body, but there's two other levels of energy that are accessible by acupuncture.
Russell Brown: (35:08)
There's Wei Qi, which is the superficial level of energy, which is deals with the skin and the musculature of the body. The Wei Qi levels have no organ connection. They're really just superficial levels. And you can access them through different types of meridians called the sinew channels and the diversion channels, which is a different type of meridian.
Russell Brown: (35:31)
And then there's the deepest level of energy that is below the blood level, that deals with something called Yuan Qi, which is source Qi, constitutional Qi, really the energy that is dealt with.
Russell Brown: (35:43)
And we sort of talk about more with destiny, like the actual curriculum of your life. And that is what the eight extras are. The eight extras are the deepest level. These are vessels that deal with the trajectory of your life.
Russell Brown: (35:55)
And I like them because often when you're dealing with the eight extras, when you deal with the primary channels, this is the thing that they don't tell you much is, the primary channels are a response to life.
Russell Brown: (36:07)
The thing happened and then it affected your body. And now it's in the meridians, the primary meridians. And so by the time you're working on the stomach channel, it's because of all the bad things that already happened to your stomach.
Russell Brown: (36:18)
When you deal with the eight extras, you're saying, "Life didn't matter." This is energy that was not affected by anything that happened to you after you were born, this is energy that is related to your constitution and what you have to learn in this lifetime.
Russell Brown: (36:33)
The directionality of your life, as given to you at birth, the minute of conception even. And so when you deal with eight extras, you're really dealing with life trajectory. And I often think that that's probably, for me, that's a more useful place for what I want to do with patients, which is to step back from the bad thing that happened and actually have some perspective on maybe what that bad thing means to the bigger story of your life.
Russell Brown: (37:02)
Or even to forget that the bad thing happened and actually see yourself as so much bigger than that all together. And that is how I think you get back to healing is to widen your imagination back to how you were actually considered before you were even born.
Russell Brown: (37:17)
And so the eight extras are a way for me to look at the body that way, or to explain the body that way. Could we just look at your primary resources? Could we look at the way you think of nourishment? Can we look at the way you think of curiosity?
Russell Brown: (37:35)
The eight extras are a really good set of metaphors for that curriculum I think. And so that's how I was always taught them. But again, it's about the selection of them. I don't do the eight extras on every patient. Some patients they have a stomach ache and they need to be worked on their stomach. And so then you do a primary channel and that's what it's there for.
Russell Brown: (37:53)
But what happens is because the boards tend to only test on the primary channels, acupuncturists don't learn anything but the primary channels. And so they think those are the only ingredients. But there's other options.
Russell Brown: (38:04)
And what we're talking about is they're Russian nesting dolls. It's like the primary's in the middle but there's bigger ones and they're smaller ones. And so I want to pick the nesting doll that is most appropriate to where my patient is and that I just want to have as many tools as possible.
Tahnee: (38:21)
Well, I've heard acupuncturist claim that you can't clinically work with the eight extraordinaries, which I know not to be true through people like yourself and other people I've worked and studied with.
Tahnee: (38:32)
They say, "Oh, once you're born, once you're incarnate there's no effect there." But my experience is that's not true. So what would you say to those people? They just haven't learned enough or?
Russell Brown: (38:46)
What we're talking about now is...
Tahnee: (38:49)
The woo woo.
Russell Brown: (38:50)
It's not even the woo woo. I'm just like, well, it's how literal you want to interpret anything as far as I'm concerned.
Russell Brown: (39:00)
I think that the primary meridians are metaphors, frankly. I think Stomach 36 is a point that everyone uses, which is like the big point for digestive function.
Russell Brown: (39:10)
But I don't actually think that when I put a needle into Stomach 36, it sends a signal into my stomach that helps me digest food better. I don't think of acupuncture as operating necessarily on the most literal level.
Russell Brown: (39:23)
And so I think of the eight extras in terms of all of that. I think all of the meridians are metaphors, frankly. I think they're all poems that I'm trying to talk to the body through. And again, that's what I'm speaking about before is that I think the whole thing is poetry, frankly.
Russell Brown: (39:38)
I think that the points are all poems. I think that the metaphor of Qi moving through the body, of feeling stagnant is the metaphor I think. The metaphor of how I digest the world, make sense of it, use it to make me stronger and dispose of the waste. That's the metaphor of digestion I think.
Russell Brown: (40:02)
And so perhaps none of it is true. I'm open to that possibility. But I do think that those metaphors are still powerful and I think they're more powerful than any medicine, frankly.
Russell Brown: (40:12)
And so that's where I come at it from. I can't say that you can or can't use certain vessels. I think it's sort of a silly conversation to have at some point.
Tahnee: (40:24)
So what do you think is happening when you needle 36? Is it your intention? You've been educated and you're sending that through that person?
Russell Brown: (40:34)
I'm not going to use Stomach 36 by itself. I'm going to use it in the context, the conversation about how one uses nourishment. What are we talking about when we talk about where you think nourishment is? What do you think it means to take something in and make sense of it? How much worth do you think you have that you deserve that nourishment?
Russell Brown: (40:53)
I think that there's when we get into stomach stuff, we're talking self worth obviously. We're talking about how much I want to take care of myself, how much I learned how to invest in this body, to invest in my life.
Russell Brown: (41:07)
And so I'm often involved in sort of a larger conversation when it comes to that. And that's why I think like my version of Stomach 36 is going to be different than your version of Stomach 36 because I have my own take on what digestion is and which is informed by my own mom issues. And which is what stomach is, is about how we-
Tahnee: (41:31)
Oh, I know all about that one.
Russell Brown: (41:33)
I'm sure. Yeah. As a mom and as a daughter, but like, yeah, how much I feel safe in the world and how much I trust nourishment and how much I trust to be continued to be taken care of in this lifetime and how much I trust my capacity to give care relative to my capacity to receive care.
Russell Brown: (41:54)
I think all of those things are involved in that. Stomach 36 is a particularly one because in five element tradition, it's the earth point on the earth channel, which means it is really about rectifying that relationship to digestion.
Russell Brown: (42:07)
It is saying, "You had it all wrong. You were confused actually about what that relationship to nourishment is." And so we are saying, "It's time to reset that relationship."
Russell Brown: (42:19)
So when you do Stomach 36, you're basically instructing the body that you're from an earth standpoint, your earth is confused and we're going to restart, which is why it's such a powerful point and why everyone uses it, because it is a way of basically resetting your understanding of basic nourishment on the deepest level there is.
Russell Brown: (42:40)
And that's why, for some acupuncturists, that's the only point they need to use. They only want that because the idea is that if I can get a patient to just understand clearly nourishment on a very basic level, then all the rest of the body processes will come back online. And I think there's some truth to that.
Russell Brown: (42:58)
So I do use Stomach 36 quite a bit, but I don't think that it's just going in there and telling my body to help me not be lactose intolerant anymore. I'm still lactose intolerant.
Russell Brown: (43:12)
But that's why like then you do earth points on the other meridians. And you're like, "Oh, Lung Nine is actually this beautiful point for saying nourishment... Grief is part of nourishment."
Russell Brown: (43:22)
That's what the lung points. The metal element is about loss and what the earth point on the lung channel is about saying is like, could you take all of that loss that you've experienced in your life and understand that even that was a way of taking care of yourself? That even that was a version of self love.
Russell Brown: (43:38)
That is the most beautiful thing I think Lung Nine is so beautiful as to say, "All of that loss you ever had, that heartbreak that you had, that was for you, that fed you too. There was actually nutrition in all of that loss." What a beautiful way of looking at that loss I think from point of nutrition, from the point of nourishment. I love Lung Nine.
Russell Brown: (43:59)
And doing Stomach 36 to say, "You've had it wrong. Now we're going to think of nourishment a new way. And you're going to take that understanding to lung, to your broken heart, to all that grief." Perfect treatment, as far as I'm concerned.
Russell Brown: (44:12)
Those two points, that's it, I'm done. I'm out. Those are primary channels. That's not secondary vessels, but that's a perfect treatment, I think. But that's how I look at it.
Tahnee: (44:21)
And your work, especially your writing I suppose, but even how you speak is so poetic and my husband was supposed to see you, but didn't get the chance because of COVID.
Tahnee: (44:32)
But I get the sense from your writing that you speak to your clients about their lives and use these beautiful metaphors from Chinese medicine.
Tahnee: (44:42)
And I think that's something I've really loved about your work is you bring a really fresh... A lot of people just repeat the wrote learned kind of chart of five element theory.
Tahnee: (44:52)
Deliver, "You might feel frustration or irritability." I get a little bit like, "Oh, okay, can we evolve this conversation now?"
Tahnee: (45:00)
And yeah, I think that it's not an embodied or useful way, I suppose of speaking to these things. And I wonder if you could, I know it's a long conversation, but could you give us a quick journey through the five elements from your perspective?
Russell Brown: (45:16)
I really think that the seasons are such a perfect way of looking at it. And that's why I sort of wrote about it recently is that we learn the five elements and then learn the seasons, which I think is sort of backwards because they're going to teach you wood, which is means nothing, right?
Russell Brown: (45:30)
They're going to teach you metal which means nothing. And these are all the things. Wood is frustration. What is anger? Wood is spring. Wood is green. And you're like, "Oh, okay." But they teach it that way because they're going to test you multiple choice. Right? So they just want to make sure that you've covered the bases.
Russell Brown: (45:46)
But I like to go the other way. I want to start with the season. By season I think of spring and that's wood, right? And what's spring about? Spring is about the force that was required for a seed to break through snow and want to grow.
Russell Brown: (46:03)
The liver and wood is about understanding the path forward. It's the journey that's taking you up. And that is really what we're talking about when we talk about wood. It is vision for the future, capacity to plan, knowing which way you want to go.
Russell Brown: (46:21)
The wood is the general, it's like, "This is how I want to go. I want to go this way. That's how it is." And that's what spring is. It takes a lot of energy to crack that seed open after winter and that's what the wood energy is.
Russell Brown: (46:34)
And so when you meet a wood personality type, those are aggressive people who know what they want, they are competitive and they're prone to anger.
Russell Brown: (46:43)
And the reason why they're prone to anger is because they want to grow so badly that when life gets in the way they take it personally. They don't understand that obst
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