Episode 14

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Published on:

17th Feb 2026

New Year's Joy: Whales, Spring, and East-West Transmission in Pregnancy Care

Happy new year of the Yang Fire horse to everybody!

In this conversation, recorded on the eve of the Chinese New Year, Leo had set out to share his excitement about the work that we have been doing on our upcoming course on "Nurturing Pregnancy." Sabine got distracted right at the beginning of our recording session by two grey whales passing by and then returning to feed outside her window, as the biggest (literally!) and most amazing sign that spring is truly arriving here on Whidbey Island. So this podcast meanders a bit, between Sabine's attempt to share the joy and love of a spring day, Leo's desire to share some insights on pregnancy care with Chinese medicine, and our serious contemplation of the challenges in this specialized field that Western practitioners of Chinese medicine encounter:

We discuss the very unfortunate lack of access to the precious primary sources, historical and contemporary, that reflect the top quality of care that is common in East Asia. Then we explore the difficult clinical reality for practitioners in the West, surrounded as they are by a culture that considers both traditional Chinese medicinal treatments and acupuncture either as dangerous or as ineffective. We lament the unnecessary suffering resulting from the fact that patients in the West are reluctant to lean on their Chinese medicine providers during this tender period, when there is so much Chinese medicine can do! This stands in sharp contrast to China, where pregnant patients often turn to traditional Chinese medicine for addressing common pregnancy symptoms as a safer and more effective alternative to biomedical treatments. Inspired by our close collaboration these past few months in building our upcoming course on "Nurturing Pregnancy," we truly want to help our listeners see the clinical potential in this area as a very potent path for alleviating suffering and sharing "tender loving care," which is ultimately what all of our work is about.

May we all spread the love!

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About the Podcast

A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond

Old and New Stories from China's Healing Traditions

Tune in every other week for inspiring, joyful, and informative conversations on transforming ourselves, our communities, and the world, in the spirit of ancient Chinese medicine, spirituality, and philosophy. Separating fact from fiction, we aim to bring you medicine from China's distant past, translated here to meet YOUR needs today, in clinic and beyond.
I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, medical historian, recovering university professor, and author and translator of more than a dozen books on the Chinese healing arts, from gynecology and pediatrics to medical ethics and materia medica, published by Happy Goat Productions. In addition to writing, I teach and mentor at https://www.imperialtutor.com/, about the roots of Chinese medicine and its larger cultural background. In addition, I will bring in insights from my checkered past as a biodynamic goat farmer and musician, all under the banner of my favorite phrase, “cosmic resonance,” a.k.a. the Chinese ideal of harmony between the three realms of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity. I really love to inspire people and spread around some good vibrations, which is what I aim to do in this podcast, with the assistance of some of my favorite clinical and academic colleagues, friends, and guides, like Leo Lok (our self-proclaimed "Purveyor of Multiple Perspective") and Dr. Brenda Hood, master physician and specialist in all things Daoism.

New episodes will generally drop twice a month, with a free one on the new moon and a bonus one for Imperial Tutor members on the full moon. Check out https://www.imperialtutor.com/membership for more information on my mentorship. Episodes will be roughly an hour long and will follow the format of what you may already be familiar with as the Imperial Tutor’s Tea Time Talks: loosely structured conversations that provide education, inspiration, and connection. If you want to be notified of new episodes, why don’t you subscribe to my newsletter at https://www.happygoatproductions.com/connect?
Here are our three main goals:
1. Bridge-building: We gather to explore the liminal sweet spot, in between Heaven and Earth, the distant past and the present moment, East and West, the clinic and the academy, the healer and the scholar, the discernible and the unfathomable, oral lineage and written text, and, ultimately, between Yin and Yang.
2. Collaboration: The treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine is bigger than any single person's expertise, no matter how vast. We actively pursue and embrace a diversity of opinions so that we can collectively deepen our understanding.
3. Authentic Transmission: Translation, from the past to the present, from Chinese to English, from texts to clinical application, etc., invariably involves an alteration and adaptation of the original message. How do we stay as true as possible to the insights expressed in the ancient Chinese texts while still making sense to our listeners? We invite you to consider the creative challenges of this task with us.

Potential future topics include: Meditation Sickness and Qigong Psychosis; The Difference Between Responsibility and Fault; Daoist and Confucian Perspectives on Humanity's Role Between Heaven and Earth; The Creation, Development, and Transmission of Medical Knowledge and the Dangers and Benefits of Lineage; Buddhist Perspectives on Reality and Expedient Means; The Wuwei Way; The Weasel and the Yak, and The Frog in the Well; Simple Questions: How to Read the Classics; The Cosmos in Six Lines: The Yijing as a Tool of Healing; Translation, Transmission, Transcendence, Transcreation; Pointing to the Moon: How to Name the Unnameable; Should Return and A Hundred Meetings: What's in a Name; The Fish’s Delight: The Limits of Sense Perception; Clear Talk: Creating Light in Dark Times; Reverberations of the Valley Spirit; Lotus in the Mud: Buddhism and Medicine...

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About your host

Sabine Wilms

I am the producer, manager, director, and (whether I like it or not) person in charge of this podcast. I take full responsibility for this project and vision but do not necessarily agree with anything anybody else says on my podcast, whether it is framed as an opinion or a fact. You can find out more about my books at happygoatproductions.com, my mentoring at imperialtutor.com, my classical Chinese offerings at translatingchinesemedicine.com, and my gynecology courses at traditionalChinesegynecology.com.