What if the most powerful healing is also the quietest? In Episode 2 of The Fire Inside, I sit down with Jessica Watson, DAcCHM, L.Ac, a licensed acupuncturist and owner of Roots of Harmony Medicine in Mooresville, North Carolina, to talk about the subtle fire at the heart of Chinese medicine.
I worked alongside Jessica for about a year and a half in Mooresville, and it was her teishin, a non-insertive acupuncture needle, that gave me one of the strongest treatments I've ever received. In this conversation she shares how one book in her last semester of college changed her path, why the yin-yang is a living, moving map rather than a static symbol, and why gentle, nervous-system medicine does so much of its work beneath the surface.
What we talk about
- How Between Heaven and Earth turned Jessica from occupational therapy toward Chinese medicine
- The yin-yang as a map of constant change, traced through the seasons, the four directions and the organ networks
- Using the teishin to follow the qi, and what it means when a point wants to release or to be held
- Chinese herbal medicine in practice, from capsules to granule teas and herb-tasting events
- The TCM clock opposites, and the ministerial and imperial fires at the center of her capstone research
- Why she tells anyone new to acupuncture not to underestimate the power of subtlety
Chapters
- 00:00 Welcome
- 00:35 How Jessica found Chinese medicine
- 02:22 The five elements in daily practice
- 03:27 The yin-yang as a living map
- 07:13 The teishin, acupuncture's non-insertive needle
- 08:48 Non-needle treatment for children
- 09:22 Listening to the qi
- 12:50 Craniosacral therapy and poetry
- 14:11 Imposter syndrome and finding your spark
- 15:27 Chinese herbal medicine in practice
- 17:21 Qigong and herb-tasting events
- 18:43 TCM clock opposites, gallbladder and heart
- 20:19 Ministerial and imperial fire
- 23:05 Advice for anyone new to acupuncture
- 24:17 Subtlety and the nervous system
- 27:59 Seasons, rhythm and rooting inward
- 28:40 Where to find Jessica
- 28:58 Chromopuncture and distance acupuncture
- 29:47 Closing thoughts
Links and resources
- Roots of Harmony Medicine, Jessica's practice inside Soul Wellness in downtown Mooresville, NC, with telemedicine appointments for herbal medicine
- Watch this episode on YouTube
- More episodes of The Fire Inside
- Kusala Healing Arts
This show is meant to educate and inspire, not to diagnose or treat. Everyone's healing path looks different. If something here sparks your curiosity, please bring it to your own healthcare provider.
The Fire Inside is brought to you by Kusala Healing Arts. Stay close to your fire.
Full transcript
Read the full transcript
Ryan (00:08): Welcome to The Fire Inside. My name is Ryan M. Faught, your host. This is where we sit down to talk about the transformative, creative power of fire, inside and out. Today we sit down with Dr. Jessica Watson, owner of Roots of Harmony in Mooresville, North Carolina. She's a licensed acupuncturist and doctor of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. Jessica, welcome.
Jessica (00:26): Thank you, I'm happy to be here. This is a really neat concept.
Ryan (00:28): How are you doing?
Jessica (00:32): I'm good. It's finally getting kind of chilly here in North Carolina, so I'm very happy about that.
Ryan (00:35): Is it? So what brought you into Chinese medicine? Is there anything in your background that really sparked that urge to learn?
Jessica (00:42): Yeah, so I was in college to become an occupational therapist in my undergrad. I knew that I wanted to do something in the healing arts, but I was just kind of following the conventional path. Then in my very last semester of undergrad, we had an alternative medicine class, and I think we had to do a report on something we learned. In this class we would go through different alternative medicines, and Chinese medicine was mentioned. So I bought that book, Between Heaven and Earth.
Jessica (01:13): Yeah, an introduction to Chinese medicine. And I started reading it and I immediately resonated with the theory behind it and the five elements, and how the liver is in resonance with the wood element, about movement and how that manifests in humans. It just really struck a chord and I couldn't stop thinking about it. At that time in my life I just jumped into things. So I was like, all right, I'm switching it. This is what I'm doing.
And this was right after the time that my mother went through a breast cancer journey. I'm not gonna speak too much to her story, but I'll just say that I witnessed how exhausting that process was for her to navigate, and some miscommunications between nurses. I think that Western medicine is really amazing emergency medicine and has its place, but I was seeking something more. I was really drawn to this idea of an ancient science that seemed to be in tune with something that, in our modern world where reductionism is really at the forefront, doesn't always get touched upon.
Ryan (02:22): The whole person, really. And you mentioned the particulars of the Wu Xing, or the five elements, and there's more than one phase of those five elements. What part of that do you see as most relevant to your daily practice?
Jessica (02:34): Man, it's hard because they're all intertwined, right? All the five elements. But often there are certain vessels presented where it's like, okay, this is an entryway into healing here. What I see a lot of here in my practice in North Carolina, there's the earth element, spleen qi. This is a very damp and hot environment, so you see some of that. I also see a lot of liver and wood pathology.
Nowadays I try to see where along this whole wheel of the five elements someone's pathology is lingering. And I do notice a lot of wood pathologies: the liver, gallbladder, that transition from winter to spring. I don't know if that's also because that's part of my own pattern too, and maybe I attract that to my practice. But I do see a lot of that.
Ryan (03:27): So earlier we talked about how I worked with you for a year and a half or so, and you really mentioned the importance of the yin-yang symbol. When I look at the yin-yang symbol after learning Chinese medicine, there's so much more to it than the bumper sticker. It's really unfortunate that it's been commercialized to such an extent. Is there anything you can speak to on the Wuji or the Taiji?
Jessica (03:47): Yeah, I've honestly been drawn to that symbol since I was a little girl. When you look at the yin-yang symbol, it looks like the static image of balance, right? This is perfectly balanced, yin within yang, yang within yin. That's what a lot of people know it as. But the way I learned it in school, through a professor named Joon Hee Lee: on the left you have the white, and that represents yang.
Yin and yang can be looked at a lot of different ways. I like to think, at a basic level, yang is expansion and yin is contraction. So on the left you have the yang, the white sphere. On the right you have the black sphere. The black circle at the top of the symbol, we can think of it as density that wants to descend. And the white circle at the very bottom is levity that wants to ascend.
So really the yin-yang is not just a static image. More than anything it's dynamic, and it shows this dynamic movement through a process. What is rooted there is that there's constant change. You can also map the seasons and the four directions. Looking at that map, the bottom is north and the top is south, so the bottom is winter, the top is summer, and spring is on the left. That's where there's the ascension towards summer, and then the descension towards winter would be fall. Then we can trace the organ networks. I love to stay rooted in that and think, where is someone's physiology lingering?
If someone is stuck in summer, their boundaries are so open, because in summer everything is open and outward. Then there's a hard time descending into fall. So your boundaries stay open and you're not able to contract inward. Or if you're stuck in winter and you have a hard time initiating into spring, then this yang, this innate vital warmth that's stored beneath the surface, has a really hard time pivoting and moving and ascending upwards. So certain symptoms arise then. But sometimes there are complicated cases where I'm like, what's going on here? And I try to return to thinking about the yin-yang symbol, and where along this big process is the most available vessel to turn the wheel and keep it spinning.
Ryan (06:16): One reason I asked that is, sometime last year I was listening to another podcast, and the person being interviewed mentioned something his mentor had relayed to him: you don't understand yin and yang well enough. I tend to agree, because it's such a simple symbol, but it explains quite a bit. It explains the positional relationship, temperature relationship, movement, stillness, there's a lot to it. So I really like diving into the yin and yang. You can just sit back and look at the positional relationships of many, many things.
Jessica (06:44): So true. And what I mentioned is just one aspect of it. I remember a teacher of mine, Bob Quinn, who I think is very, very skilled and cultivated and phenomenal. He speaks often about how in Chinese medicine things can get really complex and out there, and he's like, I'm still trying to understand yin and yang. I think if you focus there, there's a lot there.
Ryan (07:13): There is. And one thing Bob Quinn is very good at is using non-traditional needling therapies, which you use too, the teishin and enshin, correct?
Jessica (07:22): I do. I use mostly the teishin. I have a few other tools; I forget some of their names.
Ryan (07:27): Your collection is still growing? Your collection of non-needles?
Jessica (07:29): You know, I'm happy with my four main teishin at the moment. And then I have a few other things, I'm forgetting their names, but a couple of them are from Bob, actually.
Ryan (07:41): I call them your magic wands, because that one treatment you gave me with that was literally the strongest treatment I've ever had. I just felt that to the bones. She rolled her magic wand and did the points, and then needled after that. And I was like, wow, what was that? So what's interesting is I'd wanted to learn it since then, and Heiner Fruehauf and Bob Quinn just recently released the Phoenix Rising teishin CEU course, which they're putting online.
Jessica (08:05): Yeah. If there's someone to learn it from, that's a great person to learn it from.
Ryan (08:09): So I'm looking forward to that. I was close to doing it last fall. I backed off, then touched base with them again, and it's being set up as an online CEU, so I'll catch up in another few months while it's live.
Jessica (08:19): I love that you called it a magic wand. I like that a lot.
Ryan (08:24): Doesn't the one have a little hand on it?
Jessica (08:26): This one, yeah. Can you see?
Ryan (08:28): That's what I saw. It has a little hand on it, like a little magic wand. How do you use that?
Jessica (08:31): This is actually for the face. This one I just use to get qi off the face, and I actually run it through the hair as well.
Ryan (08:48): And do you work with any toddlers or infants?
Jessica (08:52): I haven't. No, I haven't.
Ryan (08:53): From my memory, when the teishin was mentioned at the school I went to, it was really encouraged for toddlers and infants, to reduce the risk of pneumothorax or injury. So if you're working with young children, that'd be really important.
Jessica (09:05): Yeah. I learned some techniques for working with children; I just haven't yet. But it's a great way, especially because children have so much yang going on all the time. You can definitely do a lot. And I'm sure most kids don't love the thought of needles going in their skin, so it's a really great way to provide treatment.
Ryan (09:22): And their skin is much softer. I think it would take much less effort to use a needle on a young child, so the risk there is legitimate. Explain to our viewers: how would you use the teishin at an acupuncture point, before needling or even without needling? What do you actually do at that point to activate the qi?
Jessica (09:45): So Bob Quinn, who we've been mentioning, I've never actually received a treatment from him, but from what I know he is very much in tune with a lot of technique within the teishin. Actually, probably my biggest influence in how to use a teishin was a man named Ken Glowacki. He uses it a little bit differently, at least from what I explored under his mentorship.
I don't always use certain techniques, but what I do use it for is, if I have a starting point, okay, I know this channel needs attention, I'll use it to see where there's a blockage on the channel. What I really like about the teishin is that it'll lead you to a point, and you can go through the deeper layers just by connecting with the qi there and seeing how it wants to unwind, really. So often I'm led to a point and it either wants to unwind and release, or it really wants attention, like to stay there. I think of that as tonification and sedation, but I'm not exactly sure. To me it's a tool to really listen to the qi and listen to the body itself and the meridians.
Ryan (10:59): I know every patient is different and every situation presents differently, but when you say a point needs attention, when the point's saying stay put, what's happening inside you internally there?
Jessica (11:11): Well, with the point, what I'm connecting with just doesn't want to move. So it wants stillness, almost like this holding. And what's going on in my body? Sometimes not much. I remember something Bob Quinn always said was, keep it centered in your hands. Keep it in your hands. That doesn't always happen; sometimes I do feel certain things happening in my body. But it's like there's this area on the meridian, and it wants to be held, and then if you stay with it, it often wants to go somewhere else, across the body or to different meridians. It's a really neat process. Anyone can do it; it just takes presence and curiosity and listening.
Ryan (11:57): I love this description where you're working in one part of the body and it leads to another part of the body. That intuitive work, that movement with the patient and your own, that dance, I think is so important. It takes a lot to get out of the theory and textbooks and into the actual hands-on practice with patients underneath your hands. Such a big change happens there.
Jessica (12:17): Yeah, I think of that as its own yin and yang, right? I do try to go back to studying the classics sometimes, but there is also value in just dropping that for a minute, being present, and seeing what the body says and where it leads you. Those two together are a beautiful dance, and the things you're reading get solidified in your consciousness anyway. Sometimes it's best to just be present and see, through the experiential world, I guess.
Ryan (12:50): And you also have some craniosacral therapy under your hands too, don't you?
Jessica (12:55): I do. I also learned a lot of that with Ken Glowacki. He really gave us permission to experiment and to listen to the body. Several of my teachers did. I haven't taken it as deeply as some have with craniosacral, but there are certain holds that I always return to again and again.
Ryan (13:20): One of the reasons I mentioned that is your background in poetry. I like that part of you; I didn't know that about you. That place you go to where you can find a moment to articulate what's needed. I find it interesting that it parallels Hugh Milne, who does Visionary Craniosacral Work, and he's out in Oregon too. I'm not a poetry person myself, but for those of you out there who are, I think that's a pretty unique thing to hold in a bodywork session.
Jessica (13:49): Yeah, that's really neat. I think there's a deep perceptiveness in both of those things, craniosacral therapy and poetry, where you're listening for something that's not directly being said. One through your hands, and one through, I don't know, observation.
Ryan (14:08): The place you go to. Yeah, the place you go to.
Ryan (14:11): You've been in practice now for what, almost two years? You're in Mooresville?
Jessica (14:15): About two and a half years.
Ryan (14:19): How are your first three years in practice going for you?
Jessica (14:21): I had to get over a huge imposter syndrome at the beginning. But it's good now. I feel like I'm finding my footing and my spark is coming back. For a while there was so much internal pressure that I placed on myself, and that's dissipating and being replaced with that spark again, the inspiration that brought me into this field in the first place, that I discovered while I was studying it formally.
Ryan (14:48): And it goes back to what you mentioned earlier: your patients are mirroring you. The people who seek our treatments are the ones who reflect something to us and from us. I find it interesting, once you have people coming to you, to step back and look at who's coming, look at the characteristics, because each one of them is a direct reflection of what you're sending out there. I think that's very much an understated part of any bodywork practice.
Jessica (15:12): I fully believe that we cross paths with certain people at certain times because there's something we both offer each other, whether it's for an extended period or just one meeting. I fully believe that and am open to it.
Ryan (15:27): Awesome. And you're in North Carolina, where licensed acupuncturists don't need the herbal medicine. How often are you dispensing Chinese herbal medicine to your patients?
Jessica (15:37): Quite frequently. I'm really lucky; many patients are very open to herbal medicine here. I do prescribe it quite a lot, and I think that's maybe because I lead with it and offer it so confidently. That was actually the first thing I fell in love with in Chinese medicine, the herbal medicine. I definitely have a couple of teachers to thank for leading me there and making it so accessible to treat what seems complex in our world. They really instilled confidence in herbal medicine. I would say maybe 75 to 80 percent of my patients, I prescribe herbs to.
Ryan (16:19): And they're actually taking them and getting results. One of the most common things you'll hear from people new to any kind of herbal medicine is the taste and the flavor, but that's not really what it's about. It's about bringing things back into energetic balance internally.
Jessica (16:31): Well, I do prescribe a lot of capsules, for sure, which helps.
Ryan (16:34): Much tastier.
Jessica (16:38): I do have some patients who want the more intimate experience of making the tea, the granule teas and such. But patients here are pretty open and pretty consistent with their herbal medicine.
Ryan (16:50): A few years ago I was given a Chinese herbal medicine from a practitioner in Durham, and I took it and I was like, it really does taste like dirt. I didn't get the capsules; I got the hot water tea.
Jessica (17:02): I found it interesting that when you think of Western herbalism, which I'm not versed in, it's a lot of flowers, a lot of the plant aspect. Then you get into Chinese medicine and it's roots, twigs, it's even bugs sometimes. But I think the herbs move, too, with that.
Ryan (17:21): And you're a qigong practitioner as well, and you've held some community events at the space there in Mooresville, Soul Wellness. How did those turn out for you?
Jessica (17:31): I have done some qigong at events, and those have been really fun. What's funny is some of them have been centered around herbal medicine, from my own nerdy love for it, basically trying to recreate one of my classes where we taste herbs together and feel them in our bodies. But the thing with that is that not all Chinese medicine herbs are delicious. So I've taken a little pause from that. Some people love it, and some people are like, what did I sign up for, when we get to certain herbs. But those have been great. I don't teach too much qigong publicly, but I do try to do it before patients in the morning.
Ryan (18:11): You have such a gentle soul, and so grounded: the Roots of Harmony. One thing that always stands out is that sinking into the earth of the roots. You did a really good job of naming your business and also carrying that energy with you. That's something you walk. It can't just be a slogan or the name of a business; it's actually your embodiment. So I really applaud you for the thought you put into the name.
Jessica (18:33): Thank you, I appreciate it. That took some time, and I think my love of the herbal medicine was part of that too.
Ryan (18:43): Another question, and this might be a little out of order, but one that stands out to me is your capstone. I don't remember the whole title, but I know it's on the Shaoyang–Shaoyin axis, and I know you spoke to the Holomap quite a bit. How often in your practice are you actually looking at the clock and matching organs with the TCM clock?
Jessica (19:02): That's a good question. Quite often. The clock opposites made a big impact on me when I was in school. We were talking about all these yin-yang axes that are vessels into healing, and I definitely think the clock opposites are some of those axes.
The way I was taught it: at midnight, the meridian that's most active is the gallbladder, and at noon, the opposite time, it's the heart. These are organs that are literally opposite gestures of one another in the body. There's also this quality of stepping in for the other when one is deficient or disharmonious, or unable to completely fulfill its role. That's how I learned about them, and I always found it fascinating. They're mentioned in just a little blip in the Neijing, which means it's not always a central focal point of conversation in Chinese medicine. But I do think about those organ interactions often.
Ryan (20:19): I remember when I read your capstone, I was impressed, because we had not gone into the detail that your capstone did. For our viewers who are curious about the Shaoyang and Shaoyin you mentioned earlier, is there any more you can speak to?
Jessica (20:29): Sure. For some of the listeners: there are the five elements in Chinese medicine. When it goes to the six, these elements gain a quality. So wind wood, damp earth, cold water, and then we also gain two fires. The ministerial fire I think of as literal fire. It's that spark, that metabolic spark. It's anywhere in the body where there is an initiation and a pivot, where something turns on. It's also present where there's fluid transformation and fluid exchange. The ministerial fire is embodied by the gallbladder and an organ called the San Jiao.
The imperial fire is embodied by the heart and the kidneys. I think of this as the sun; it's this quiet warmth. Sometimes I like to imagine the mantle of the earth as this kidney yang that's powering the soil of digestion from below. So the imperial fire, the heart and the kidneys, embodies our deepest essence, the beingness of things, and whether that beingness within ourselves is obscured or very clear. The ministerial fire is more within the function of things and the movement. It's embodied by yang organs, which are more active and at the forefront of things. So, did that answer anything?
Ryan (22:09): It's definitely answered it.
Jessica (22:12): It was a really fun study, really fun to research. I don't know if my capstone answered any questions or just opened more. I don't really know if I had a real conclusion, but it was certainly a fun exploration. Basically it all came back to the clock opposites and to thinking about the different relationships within things: that the gallbladder can help to clear excesses from the heart and keep it in this open state. Because the heart, which represents fire, speaking of the name of this podcast, in Chinese medicine is represented by [unclear]. It likes to stay open, and not get bogged down by excesses, or possessiveness, or jealousy, or intensity. It likes to remain open and clear.
Ryan (23:05): For anyone new to acupuncture, how would you encourage them to take on a treatment from either you or another licensed acupuncturist?
Jessica (23:14): Acupuncture itself is a subtle medicine. It works by initiating, by opening certain gestures that already exist within you. It can influence things first internally, and then mirrored in your external world. So I would just say be open, be open-minded. Don't underestimate the power of subtlety, the transformative power of subtlety. Not everything is loud and in your face. Often things that are loud and in your face are very transient. Things that are subtle and quiet are doing a lot of transformation beneath the surface. So don't underestimate the power of subtlety, is what I would say.
Ryan (23:59): I've had far more subtle treatments that have been more potent than the handful of really strong bodywork treatments I've had. You mentioned that in the questionnaire too: not every treatment is this big thing. It's really the subtleties at play, which provide more potency with consistent treatment.
Jessica (24:17): It's interesting, I'm thinking back now to craniosacral and the teishin, and all the subtle ways you can treat with acupuncture. Those are all very much going in through the vessel of the nervous system, in a way. It's very much nervous system medicine. I haven't lived in other times, but I would say that in modern times a lot of us live inside our nervous system; we're wired in our nervous systems. So for those of us, myself included, who exist in that frazzled place sometimes or have a tendency to go there, subtle treatments are really important, even if it's not acupuncture. Subtle, quiet things that aren't overly loud are really great for those who might be anxious, or feel a little dissociated, or not fully in their bodies. Those can be really, really helpful.
Ryan (25:22): And it's so common. You'll go about your day and see people who, at least from what I learned during bodywork, aren't in their bodies, or if they are, they're really in the upper third. I don't see a lot of solar plexus areas open when people are walking down the street. But we're out and about, so our defenses are up, and maybe they're not supposed to be open. Energetically, though, you can see people who are connected and present in their body, versus people who have habitually or chronically had their energies pulled away from them and are too distracted to consolidate that energy for their own health.
Jessica (25:55): Yeah, most definitely. I think there's this tendency, or at least at one point there was for me, when I was in a more dissociated state from my body: I was always looking for the next intense thing, the next new thing. What's the thing that's gonna really change my life? In many ways, not just in healing. And getting to a quieter place, part of that was having to let that go a little bit and just exhale. The more subtle things have given me more healing than the more intense therapies, and things in general, if that makes sense.
Ryan (26:38): Definitely. In my own experience with both myofascial release and craniosacral therapy, I had really strong bodywork treatment, so that was the norm for me for many years. It goes back to when I first learned shamanic healing and energy medicine in the late '90s. There were always very strong responses, always a very strong psychic response. That was never a question for me. But as you age and you've done that a few times, things start to change, and you start to just sit with it and be with it. Part of that is coming into the moment and realizing the whole world's buzzing on around you. If you can come into your own space and just be, without needing other people to fill the void, learning to be okay with yourself and bringing that energy inward, I think is really important.
Jessica (27:19): That's beautiful. I think we oscillate throughout our lives. Speaking to modalities, certain ones will be really wonderful at one period of our lives, and then we'll find a different modality that's more resonant with where we are at that place and time. And sometimes we'll just have this call to go inward and meditate and cultivate ourselves. If our tendency is to always look outside ourselves for answers, we might go through a period where we stop all external and come inward. Honoring that journey, and listening to it, can be really valuable.
Ryan (27:59): That turning inward is everything. One thing I like about Chinese medicine and yin-yang theory is the movement with the seasons. I was even trying to piece that together on my own before I dove into Chinese medicine. When you look at the turning of the seasons, the solstice, the equinox, how our calendars are divided, there's a lot to be said for finding your own rhythm in life.
Jessica (28:22): Yeah, definitely. To expand outward, we have to be rooted inward. On a basic level: if we don't get good sleep, we're not gonna have great energy the next day. As simple as that. We have to root inward to fully embody ourselves externally.
Ryan (28:40): Where can our viewers find you?
Jessica (28:42): I'm inside Soul Wellness in downtown Mooresville, North Carolina, and my practice is called Roots of Harmony Medicine. I also offer telemedicine appointments for herbal medicine.
Ryan (28:54): Awesome. Do you have any telehealth patients, just out of curiosity?
Jessica (28:57): Yeah, I do.
Ryan (28:58): That's cool. Two questions, just out of curiosity. One is color, or chromopuncture. Have you ever heard of that? The laser with colors? It's not new; I'm just curious about it.
Jessica (29:08): No. There's always new things.
Ryan (29:13): And the other is distance acupuncture, similar to distance healing, where the practitioner intends the healing at a distance. Do you have any experience with either of those?
Jessica (29:24): I don't, but I'd fully be open to it. Speaking of cultivation and going inward, that would take a practitioner who's done a lot of qi cultivation, I would think. I've heard of it but never tried it myself. Maybe ten years down the road, once I've cultivated enough qi to even attempt that. But I'd certainly be open to it.
Ryan (29:47): All right, Jessica. Anything else you'd like viewers to know?
Jessica (29:49): Just stay open, stay open to possibilities, and remember that life is dynamic. It's not static.
Ryan (29:54): Awesome. Thank you for your time. Dr. Jessica Watson, from Roots of Harmony in Mooresville, North Carolina. If you'd like to learn more about her, everything will be in the show notes. And you can learn more about me at KusalaHealingArts.com. Thank you.