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Fertility Challenges and the Blocked Dai Mai – Dr. Martha Lucas

Hi, I’m Dr. Martha Lucas, and I want to thank the AAC for this great opportunity to talk with you today about ways to treat fertility challenges and the importance of the Dai Mai.

Click here to download the transcript. Click here for the slides.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, I’m Dr. Martha Lucas, and I want to thank the AAC for this great opportunity to talk with you today about ways to treat fertility challenges and the importance of the Dai Mai. I’m Dr. Martha Lucas. As I said, I have practices in Denver, Colorado, and Littleton, Colorado in Littleton. I work in. Western Medicine Clinic.

I’m a research psychologist who started out my medical career in Western medicine doing research in hospitals, and then I started to think about what else is operating besides the person just had surgery and I ended up loving doing Chinese medicine for more than 20 years. My specialty is the diagnosis.

I also specialize in cosmetic acupuncture, but generally my biggest practice is internal medicine because of my specialty in making an effective diagnosis. So if we wanna go to the slides, Our today we are going to talk about the Dai Mai its functions, reasons to unblock it. I’m gonna show you what it feels like in the pulses and talk to you a little bit about how you can open it up and make your treatments, your fertility treatments more effective.

Now, you’ll notice that I say fertility. And that’s how I talk about treating fertility. I talk about treating fertility challenges because. Infertility is what I call a damning diagnosis. You go to the doctor, and I think for a long time we’ve talked about the word diagnosis and how when you get a diagnosis for something, suddenly it becomes who you are.

I had a woman years ago who was so attached to her fibromyalgia. She said, my fibromyalgia, she kept saying my fibromyalgia, and finally I said to her, , can we say my experience with fibromyalgia or the diagnosis of fibromyalgia? So it’s, I don’t want to be saying infertility. Oh, you have infertility and you’re coming to see me.

I like to say you have a fertility challenge. You and your partner are having some fertility challenges or sometime it’s just the individual woman. I recently had a patient who had the whole embryo transfer. Procedure because she doesn’t have a partner. So I like to say fertility challenge because I don’t wanna set up that psychological problem of I’m infertile and I, it just happened to a current patient of mine who’s 45 years old, granted.

Getting a little up there for that. However, she went to a fertility clinic and they basically told her, you’re never gonna get pregnant. You’re pretty much in menopause. Almost like two months away because she hasn’t had a period in quite a long time. And they said they won’t even take her on as a patient.

She went to see a different fertility doctor who said to her, yeah, there’s still a chance we can still try. So again, they women, when they come in, they’re, they have been to other. Practitioners, they’ve been to fertility clinics. They already have a quote unquote diagnosis. I recently got an email from a woman who said, Yeah.

I just was diagnosed with infertility at 35 and she put a question mark because within infer with fertility clinics, infertility clinics, that’s the age. That’s the age 35, where they feel like, okay, that’s it. You’re infertile. I remember my own oldest daughter who doesn’t have any children, but I remember her saying to me at 35, oh mom, did you know, I’m infertile now?

And of course I just roll my eyes and say, you’re not infertile. So I like to say, Phrase it as we are having a fertility challenge. So the Dai Mai is so important overall for almost anything you’re treating, but certainly for fertility issues because I think that’s where schools make a big mistake. If they tell you to just keep tonifying, the lower gel tonifying, reproduction tonifying the kidneys, because if the Dai Mai is block.

What’s gonna happen with all that tonification? You could actually create toxic heat in the lower gel if you just tonify, because you don’t know whether the Dai Mai is blocked or not. Now I tell people, if you don’t know how to find the block, Dai Mai in the pulses, just open it. It’s not gonna hurt anyone. Just do your gallbladder 41, San Jo five, and just open it.

because it’s going to be good for the patient, even if it’s open. Okay. Then theoretically opening it didn’t do anything because it’s already open, but it’s all good. If you don’t know how to feel it in the pulses, which I am gonna show you today, then just open it for your fertility patients and. One of the first times, very early in my Chinese medicine career that I recognized the power of the block Dai Mai and opening it for fertility.

Challenges were, I was seeing a couple icy couples. I know it’s going to be the woman who calls you or emails you or texts you and says, I’m, I am having a problem getting pregnant. I need to come see you. I treat the couple because it takes the young part. So I tell them, regardless of whether the male feels like he’s veil and there’s nothing wrong with him and nobody said there’s anything wrong with him, I always say that according to the theory of Chinese medicine, it takes both of us.

It takes the young part and the in part, and if you’re an active gentleman and you fall skiing or fall mountain biking, or have been rear-ended, then there’s a chance your Dai Mai is blocked and it doesn’t make you a very good reproductive partner. According to the theory of Chinese medicine, so I insist on seeing both.

I do generally see the woman more and longer than the male, but I insist that I at least see the male and so I can make a, take his pulses, make a diagnosis about what’s going on with him in terms of reproduction. But it was a couple who were seeing me and they said at their first visit we wanna get pregnant next spring.

It was maybe September. We kind of wanna get pregnant in the spring. We think that would be a good time for us. But we are starting now cuz we kind of wanna get, just like everything, all our ducks in a row. , I saw them both. I opened both their Dai Mais and they were pregnant the next month.

And of course they were like, oh, I thought we told you we wanted to get pregnant in the spring . And I said hey, your husband’s Dai Mai is blocked. We open it up, things are flowing, and boom, you get pregnant. So it’s very important. So let’s talk a little more generally. About the dynamite. So first of all, it is called the be.

It’s one of the extraordinary vessels, one of the eight extras, one of the specials some people call them. It is also known as the Belt Channel or the Girdle channel. And it goes around the body horizontally and we can see that the pathway of it is literally around the belly and the hypochondriacal, one of its main functions is to connect the vertical channels.

Okay, so the belt channel, the, we know that the Dai Mai connects the upper and lower bodies, and it’s it’s very important for the functioning of all of the vertical channels, the longitudinal channel.

Right here is our core energy. That’s where all the, this is the part of the pulses that fund everything. This is what funds all the rest of the pulse diagnosis movements.

That’s how important the Dai Mai is to stay open a block. Dai Mai can lead to poor digestion. Now we know digestion is how we make our energy. Digestion is partly how we make our blood. We need those. Items in order to be able to reproduce. So if the Dai Mai is blocked, we can also have problems with our digestion.

It can be implicated in a whole bunch of health issues, migraines, reproduction issues, psoriasis, low back pain, knee pain. It’s always good to be able to figure out whether the Dai Mai is blocked or not, because then we can see. , oh, that might be related to the condition that this person is suffering from or their quote unquote diagnosis.

And then even if they feel uncentered, it can be because of a blocked Dai Mai losing the connection. This makes total sense. Losing the connection between the upper part of the body and the lower part of the body can make the person feel uncentered. It can make them feel like they have lost their energetic center.

And, that’s why it’s important to know about the blocked Dai Mai. Now, how does it get blocked? It can get blocked from a fall, and I have to tell you that. A large percentage. A large percentage of people have a black Dai Mai no matter what they’re coming to see you for. It’s always good to check for the black Dai Mai, and I think I said before, with your reproductive patients, even if you can’t figure out how to feel a black Dai Mai in the pulse, just open it.

Just do the gallbladder 41, SAN five and open it. It’s gonna help them no matter. Whether it’s open or not, and you need to recheck after you open it, because sometimes that doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s so blocked, like for example, by repressed emotions that opening it with the master and the couple point does not open it.

So sometimes. What the books tell us is going to happen doesn’t happen. Which is another reason why it’s so important to keep taking the pulses during the treatment so that the person, you can tell whether your acupuncture prescription worked or not. So let’s say you take it again, it doesn’t work, then you need to do gallbladder 26.

And we’ll talk about that a little bit more, but at any rate, a fall, even a sports fall. And that’s interesting because especially men will say, no, I’ve never had a fall, because they’re thinking, old person fall. They’re thinking like, oh I, yeah, I need the walker cuz I fall or I, yeah, I fall and I’m gonna break my hip.

No, it means, , I’m skiing, I fall. Guess what’s gonna happen in your body? Your Dai Mai is going to block because it’s trying to protect your internal organs from that trauma. Now you get up, you walk away, nothing’s broken, you’re good. So we don’t think, oh wow, that was a fall, perhaps. I injured myself. And when I was playing soccer, I did the same exact thing.

I would get knocked over, I’d fall, I’d roll back up. No, no blood or broken bones, but the Dai Mai gets blocked. So if a person is active, , chances are they have a block Dai Mai getting rear-ended because of that, that jerkiness that happens to you when you get rear-ended will block the Dai Mai pregnancy blocks the Dai Mai.

I open the Dai Mai, I treat my patients, my fertility patients before they’re pregnant, during their pregnant, and then after they’re. Pregnant and during the pregnancy, their Dai Mai is blocked because for heaven’s sakes, there’s a huge blockage in there. Now they have another human being in there, so they have a big group of cells that is creating a block.

So I open it every time. You can just feel the energy and they feel like, oh, I’m so much more open now. I feel so much more free flowing. If you have an abdominal surgery, it can block the Dai Mai storage of emotions, so repressed emotions. Sometimes when I feel the Dai Mai is blocked and I’m asking the person, oh, is your Dai Mai blocked or not?

Is your dite? Did you have you had a fall? Oh no nothing. But I know it’s blocked. I can feel it in the pulses. I might ask them, do you express your emotions? And some people say yes, and some people say not so much. All right. Holding it. Remember, it’s gonna block the spirit, right?

We all know about liberty cheese stagnation. It blocks that angry energy from getting up to the spirit, but also repressed emotions that we stuff down get. Below the spirit below liver 14 and can actually lead to a block Dai Mai. So a block Dai Mai is actually a fairly common condition for you to see in your practice.

So the major organ systems involved in fertility healthy kidney G, I already mentioned that the block Dai Mai prevents the healthy flow of G down into the reproductive area and into the kidneys. That good flow of energy is necessary for ovulation and healthy menstruation. We all know that, so we know for the lower gel energy to be flowing correctly for fertility purposes, we need to have the open dynamite.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am a total techno boob, so I really appreciate Alan’s support and you guys being patient. At any rate, healthy kidney G, we need it for fertility, healthy liver energy, right?

We need healthy liver energy. We all know that for reproduction, for having a good period for being emotionally stable and the block, Dai Mai is not going to allow us to have healthy liver energy. We need healthy heart energy. Heart is partly how we make our blood and flow our blood. It’s, it sends blood to the uterus.

And remember, your fertility patients have a lot of emotions going on, so we need them to have healthy heart energy. So two of the extraordinary vessels that are involved in fertility besides the black dynami are the remi and the chmi. Now the Ren links and regulates yin channels, essence, and fluid.

Regulates menstruation nourishes the fetus. In men, it affects libido and impotence. It affects our endocrine system and affects digestion. And this is why we also very often during fertility treatments, open up the Ren and the Chong, or treat the Ren and the Chong. The Chong affects reproduction.

Effects digestion, respiration, it’s a reservoir of chi and blood. For example, the woman is not having very good periods, what I call a tiny pink period, meaning not very much blood. It’s the root of postnatal chi, so post heaven chi, and it basically is known to treat all menstrual reproductive. Heart issues, spiritual issues, digestion, depression, anxiety.

The CHMI is another one of my favorite extraordinary vessels to use. So I’m going to show you a little picture here of the pulses and we’ll review the positions so you can see that we have a left side and a right side, and the positions are what we all know the kidneys are. The Cor Chi. Then we have Earth and all of the regular positions.

So we have Imperial fire wood, and then the kidneys.

And it’s just the same my system uses the same as we’ve No. Although I do need to tell you that on the left kidney, in the left kidney position is where you also find uterus and prostate. So it’s in this position that you will find things like uterine fibroids or if the male’s prostate is getting enlarged.

So it’s, this is an important position to be paying attention to. Oh, it’s also where you’ll feel pregnancy, that position, the left kidney pulse is where you will feel the actual pregnancy grow.

Where do you find the block, Dai Mai?

It is in the kidney, in the pulses. You will feel a block right here. The kidney energy will not be going into the liver sector. So what happens is between your fingers here, it’ll feel like it’s hitting. That’s where you feel the blocked Dai Mai. Now, sometimes it’s so blocked that you will also feel it on the right side.

This kidney pulse will be hitting. Instead of flowing through, because as I, you can see these energies are supposed to be flowing and when they’re not flowing, because there’s a block here, then again the kidneys aren’t supporting the other organ systems and neither can the other organ systems flow back over into the kidney.

This is like the infinity symbol between the pulses moving, they’re all supporting each other, so that is where you find it at a deep level. So deep, deep down in the. Pulse positions very deep over there on the left side. You cannot feel the kidneys moving through into the liver gallbladder, and as I said, sometimes it’s so strongly blocked that you don’t see it.

You can also see it blocked on the right side. So what do you do? As I said, you do gallbladder 41 san five. That is traditionally what opens the Dai Mai. It’s what the books tell us, however, the next little square says, but it’s still not open, which means I did gallbladder 41, san five, and instead of assuming.

That worked. I rechecked the pulse and I see that, oh, their Dai Mai is still blocked. What point can I do to open up the Dai Mai again? Gallbladder 26 regulates or modulates the Dai Mai. Put that point in. Recheck it. See if it’s still, if it’s still op, not open. If it’s still not open, then sometimes I palpate the diaphragm.

Maybe I palpate the diaphragm with my right hand while my hands are on the left pulse. So I’m trying to see is the energy flowing from the kidneys to the liver yet to see if maybe I have to actually do some diaphragm points or a little diaphragm. Massage or acupressure because the Dai Mai is still so blocked.

So I work at it until I know that the Dai Mai is open in the pulses. And then after the Dai Mai is opened, you can start finding other blocks if there are any, or start more or less a treatment that you would use for fertility because as I said earlier, If you just tried tonify, the kidneys or the lower G, but the Dai Mai is blocked, so that energy you’re putting in can’t flow, then it’s liable to actually create something like toxic heat.

The best case scenario is. Your treatment just isn’t effective. You’re not creating any toxic heat, but you’re wondering why? Why isn’t this person getting pregnant because everything looks like it should be wonderful. If their Dai Mai is blocked, then your treatment may not be as effective as you would like it to be.

So that’s the importance of opening the Dai Mai in your fertility patients, both male and female.

I wanna thank the AAC for this opportunity. If you would like more information, you can reach me at either lucasteachings.com or acupuncture women.com. At lucasteachings.com, we have events, we have courses both online and in person that offer CEUs and my books are available there, and good treating. I hope that this helped, you have really effective treatments.

5 Ways Speaking Can Help Grow Your Acupuncture Practice

So today let’s talk about five ways that speaking can help you with growing your practice.

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Billionaire Warren Buffet has said that this skill is something that can help raise your value by 50%, and is a skill that any person who is running your business should learn. So it can also help you grow your acupuncture practice and without having to always be constantly posting on social media or spending money on ads or seo.

So this is Chen Yen, your 6 and 7 figure Practice Makeover Mentor at introvertedvisionary.com and your host for the AAC live show. So today let’s talk about five ways that speaking can help you with growing your practice. So that way you have an avenue that helps support you bring in a consistent flow of patients you enjoy working with.

Now, the first way to use speaking as an avenue of growing your practice is to set yourself apart. So when you speak, people will get a better sense of what it’s like to be in your presence and especially when acupuncture is something that’s such a hands-on experience and people are wanting to know what kind of a practitioner this person is and what they’re like when they’re in front of you.

When you’re in front of them, then they can suss that out. So much better than any kind of a written post or marketing or ads or anything else like that. They might see online because they get to see you and experience you and see if they resonate with you. Also. By educating more people about how you can help them, it sets you apart from other acupuncturists who may not do that.

And so I would say that, and from all the different I’ve talked to thousands of practitioners at this point. acupuncturist and other holistic health practitioners, and of all the different approaches that I hear from them about what’s working, what’s not working in their practices, hands down, speaking still one of the fastest ways to, and most effective ways to grow a practice without having to always be Constantly feeling like you need to be doing all sorts of song and dance and think things for marketing

And when it’s also the, it feels it has one of the highest impact of all the different kinds of marketing approaches because one of the reasons why people may not be coming to you yet is because they don’t really know about you and they don’t really know the scope of what you can help them with.

Have you noticed that many times, even if people do understand that acupuncture can help? Many times they just associate acupuncture with pain, and that’s about it. So when you’re able to educate them about much more beyond what they likely know, acupuncture can help with, and you’re more likely to.

Be someone they’ll think of when they have a certain kind of issue or when their friends or other people they know have the issue, they’ll then they’ll think about you. So it totally sets you apart. That’s the first way speaking can help you with growing your practice faster. And the second oh, and also the other thing too is that it’s also a way for you to get known and recognized in your community as a go-to acupuncturist and amongst your peers.

When people just see you in a different limelight when you are speaking. For example, if you were a guest speaker at a particular organization, they don’t, it’s not if you were to advertise or post on social media. It’s Hey, I’m here. I’m here. It’s a different kind of a feeling because when you actually show up and speak, people automatically already see you as a go-to expert.

So it’s such a great way to, to get known and recognized in, in your community as a go-to acupuncturist. The second way speaking can help you with growing in your acupuncture practice is by helping grow you more personally and professionally and, business, having in your own business is one of the best personal development tools we could ever have on ourselves, for ourselves.

Have, do you agree? Have you noticed that? It will, having a business will put a mirror up to your triggers. , it will put a mirror up to your insecurities. It will put a mirror up to your inner strength as well. And speaking is a reflection of that. I. And also how clear you are about your vision and what what really aspires you to have this practice and be able to communicate how you can help people and communicate that effectively.

I know that for the longest time I used to hide. I used to hide behind mainly writing because I felt very inadequate when I would speak. In fact, when I was little and it came from this experience that I felt was traumatic when I was little. So my dad’s a PhD, research scientist, engineer, so very left brain, very analytical, and When you’re younger when I was about eight years old Sunday mornings, I used to dread when other I used to think, oh gosh, I’m so jealous of other kids, because when the Sunday paper would come, I imagined that other kids would get in.

They get all excited about reading the comics. And every Sunday my dad had me do a current event talk and I hated it so much. , I did so much that because I would always be in tears. My dad was very strict and he would critique me in the style that he felt was best. And it was very, left brain analytical just, and not my style.

Totally. And I would just cry and I would feel like when I grow up, I will never. Speak in front of an audience if I could help it. And over the years I would feel a lot, a big sense of dread come over me when in class we would be asked to present. I felt like I had to I felt like if it wasn’t perfect, then I would get criticized and I would feel really bad about myself.

And but then also, I would blank out. So even as I got older and I thought, okay, I could do this right and because one of the reasons why I decided to speak and educate is because I like to teach. As a little kid. I would grow up in my I would grow up, I would bb in my neighborhood, and the funnest thing for me was to.

The, these worksheets for my third grade teacher and then end up giving them to, to all the people I was, the kids I was playing with. And that was my sense of fun as a kid. And so the, because I’d love to teach, I ended up deciding, you know what? I would love to learn this. I would love to learn how to speak and help more people, reach more people at once.

But I used to blank out a lot. and I would literally say things that didn’t make any sense when they came out of my mouth and my face would turn red. I would feel so livid. I would want to hide under a rug. And, but and I felt judged like. , all the eyes were on me. And but if I am, if I was able to, the reason I bring this up is if I was able to go from that to now being invited to speak nationally and even internationally, then you can too, and it doesn’t.

Have to feel intimidating and each level of growth as you speak is you will grow your ability to be very concise and impactful and engaging and inspiring, and it is a skill that no one can take away from you and to the extent that you grow. this yourself personally. This way, it’s going to help you with growing in your business too, without you even realizing it until one day you look back and you realize that, that you start to attract people who you enjoy working with.

Have you ever felt like of all the people you work with currently, the people you absolutely love working with, you would love to work with more of those people. Have you ever felt that way before and. , when you are able to sharpen your saw with speaking you, you will naturally start to see that more and more people who are more in alignment with you will end up being attracted to you.

And it’s such a different feeling than just helping everyone and then having people who may not be as much in alignment. . And the third, and by the way, I also wanna say , at the beginning of this I mentioned that Warren Buffet and billionaire has said that speaking is one of the, like num, it taught a nu a one skill that can really increase your your value so much.

And, he also had, when he first started speak, , he actually ended up he did this Dale Carnegie course thing, but he actually ended up dropping out of it because he just wasn’t very like, . It wasn’t his second nature, a second nature kind of thing for him. It’s not like he was great at it and he got nervous and that kind of thing, and it took him the second round and it’s, you’re not alone with it.

And at the same time, the, those of us who feel like we have a voice and. And we want to share something really awesome and amazing like acupuncture, Chinese medicine with people. Then it, as we grow this way, we’re gonna just help more and more people. Third way speaking can help you with growing your practice is this.

, it’s to, you’ll be able to reach more people at once instead of feeling like you need to network or one-on-one or which can also be good. But then you could be, imagine reaching 20 people at once, or 50 people at once, or even a hundred people at once or more. And this could be virtual or it could be in person.

So for example, for myself, I feel. What it can feel less intimidating when you’ve got, a bunch of people listening to you virtually compared to in, in person, a huge dorms room in person, right? So you could find what feels comfortable for you and start there. And then as far as, what’s really cool about this is that you could, it’s one of the few things.

When you’re marketing your acupuncture practice, you could say something once and then repurpose it in different ways. So for example let’s just have a look at even social media. So if you were, if this is a platform that you have an interest in also supporting you with growing your. Did you know that most of the platforms are going more towards video?

For example, Instagram, their executives came out more recently and had said that we’re going towards video in the upcoming years. And what this means when they say that is that algorithms will favor if you favor you if you do video and. Similarly before Instagram had, their executives had years ago they had brought up, this is going to be primarily a video platform.

And so if you are not interested in doing video, for example on social media, that might be okay for now, but down the. , you’re, you will likely not get the kind of reach that you’re used to getting right now without doing some kind of video or unless you wanna be spending money on ads. And so if you were to do a video, the good part about it is that you could end up repurposing that.

So the video could be, Put on other platforms. For example, if you do a video on Instagram, you could put it on Facebook. You can also put it on YouTube so it, you can end up expanding your reach with just one video. You could also put it on your website. You could also. , email it to your patient base.

And so there’s so much that you could do with that one video, plus that video can be turned into something that’s written, for example, a blog article or you get published somewhere and in a paper or some kind of publication where people are reading about you and learning about you. So there are many ways where you could just take one video.

Do the work once and then everything else ends up getting distributed to, to share about your practice. To promote about your practice, so you don’t have to do that work many times. Now it, you can’t do it the other way around. You can’t go from writing to. You can’t do it writing to video, but then you would need to hire either somebody to say the things for you, , or do some kind of animation, which requires you hiring also or paying a additional money for that kind of thing.

So it’s harder to go from written to video, whereas it could go from written to video to written, and so many different aspects of where you create one asset and you can use it over and over again in different ways. . So now the fourth way to use speaking to, to grow your acupuncture practice is to.

Communicate more effectively to your potential and existing patients and clients? It’s interesting because we have clients who come to us because they would love to educate more people in the community and get known and recognized as a go-to acupuncture clinic. And then as they’re working with us to for example we help them get their.

A talk dialed in a signature talk that they feel really good about and that people wanna hear about. And then we help ’em dial that in. We also help them with getting booked and invited to speak. And then also be, be attracting patients from what they’re saying too. And in this process it’s always fascinating to me that sometimes people don’t even get to speak yet, and then they’re already really busy with patients.

We had an acupuncturist client of ours. This happened too recently actually. So we got started pretty early on in this process and he didn’t even get. Be speaking. He’s oh my gosh, my, my practice is so busy. It’s already doubled. And it, and it’s when you can communicate more effectively to your potential patients or clients in a such a way that it lands for people, then it, they’ll get it and they’ll actually come and see you or they’ll refer, and , according to Ted, Ted Talks the curator Chris Anderson.

So he said, as a leader or as an advocate, Public speaking is a key to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement, sharing knowledge and insights, and promoting a shared dream. And as an entrepreneur, as someone who owns your own practice, it’s one of the most. Important skills to, to have so that you could share your dream, your share your vision, share your excitement in an inspiring way to people so that more and more people are help.

More and more people are part of your also a part of your vision. And then love to also come and get treated by you too. And Being able to do this effectively, speaking effectively is one skillset that can help you achieve all of those results that we just talked about. And so it’s like he talks about how it’s like a superpower, to share your ideas and accomplish your dreams, and also offer your services.

So the fifth way speaking can help you with growing your acupuncture practice is to bring more patients in the door and even another stream of income. So we, when we know, when we think about this in terms of speaking for one, there’s one thing to just educate people and it’s another to. , educate and inspire new patients to come from it.

So it’s a very different skillset, which is why a lot of our clients come to us for help with this. And then as far as speaking can end up bringing patients in if you have a a way, a system that supports like what you’re saying, for one, that inspires new patients to come from it, and a system in place that supports them coming in.

Even after the talk itself. And also it. Bring in other streams of income. Why? Because you could offer other kinds of things. You could offer supplements, herbs, products, other services. You could also offer things like some of our clients are offering acupuncturist, clients are offering an automated online course.

Have you ever thought about that? Where do you ever say the same things over and over again and you end up feeling like. are a broken record sometimes and you don’t mind that, but then it still takes up a lot of energy and then it’s not like everything always, like your patients don’t always remember everything you share with them.

So what if you could put it together in such a way that helps them? And be able to understand in their own time and listen to it in their own time, they can benefit from it. And your, it’s it’s not just your patient base, it’s also beyond your patient base too. Imagine all the people who are too far to drive to see you.

They can actually benefit from what you’re teaching them, and it can help them with their health. How good would that really feel? . So then you could offer automated online courses and you could charge anywhere between, we have clients charging anywhere between, it could be, $50 to hundreds of dollars to even a thousand dollars or more.

It just really depends on what topic it’s about. And it could be for the lay public audience. It could also be for other providers. Have you ever thought about how all the things that you figured out over the. That it could really benefit other acupuncturists or practitioners, whether it’s clinical side of things, whether it’s workflow efficiency, whether it is with marketing your practice.

There’s certain things, maybe something very key that you figured out and you could make that available as an automated online course or and you can, it can also, PDFs or that kind of thing and sell it, right? And or you could offer group workshops virtually or group programs virtually.

And so there are many ways that you can end up bringing another stream of income beyond just seeing patients. And how do you get the word out about it? How will people know about you and sign up for your automated online course, for example? That’s where you can use speaking as an avenue to educate people about.

And also develop a connection with you. So they feel I would love to, to sign up for this automated online course and of yours. So that’s just one example. And so speaking can help you with Growing personally and professionally and help you become more confident and also communicating effectively your vision, your aspirations, and can help you bring in another stream of income plus more patients, consistent flow of patients into your practice.

. If you are at a place in your practice where you’re at a plateau and you would love to, to have it grow in such a way that feels like it’s more an ease and flow and or you would like to explore this as an avenue of growing your practice, cuz you just, you’re bubbling up inside where you feel like, oh, this is something that, that I’ve been wanting to do and I want to share acupuncture and Chinese medicine with more people and then, but you’re not really sure how to get going, how to get things going so that you get invited at places to speak and then also be able to attract new patients and another stream of income from it.

Then feel free to go to introvertedvisionary.com. So feel free to go to introvertedvisionary.com and till next time.

Getting Paid the Top Fees You Deserve – Lorne Brown

And I wanted to share with you today the idea around how to attract patients who are open and willing to pay your fees.

Click here to download the transcript.

I wanna thank the AAC for this opportunity to share with you my colleagues. My name’s Lorne Brown doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I have a practice in Vancouver, BC Canada. I’m also a cpa. I’m the founder of Healthy Seminar. And the author of missing the point on why acupuncturists fail and what they need to know to succeed.

And I wanted to share with you today the idea around how to attract patients who are open and willing to pay your fees. And I. I’m preparing this for you guys, and it’s not like a full on lecture. I got notes in front of me. So to be fully transparent I have these ideas and I always come from the idea, or I’ve heard the idea that those that cannot do will teach right.

and I like to do I think of myself as somebody who does and once in a while teaches. And so I’m not a professional teacher, but I think I’m okay enough that I can convey some important pearls for you to help you in your clinical and business practice. So the topic today is how to track patients willing to pay your fees.

And I do know that there are patients out there. There are people out there who are willing to pay your. And the question is how do we track those? Because it’s a drain energetically. When somebody comes to your practice and they are complaining about your rates, or complaining about how often they’re told to come in, and I know for myself, and I can share that I know this for you, that when a patient comes in and they’re excited to see you, and when they leave with real gratitude that they really appreci.

The treatment that you just provided. And they don’t balk at your fees. They don’t complain about your fees. It feels good. And wouldn’t it be nice to fill your practice with those patients? And so this is what I wanna share with you the concepts around that. What does it mean when a patient tells you that?

They would like to comfort your treatments, but they can’t afford your fees. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. I’ll tell you how I interpret it. I interpreted that they are saying that first of all, they’re being nice. They’re nice. They don’t wanna hurt my feelings. So the first part is I really want to come for treatment.

That’s probably a bit of a lie. They’re just being kind. I’m in Canada, so we like to be kind , and so that’s just them being nice. what they’re saying between the lines when they say, I would like to come for your treatments, but they can’t afford your fees, is you have not communicated to me that your treatments are valuable enough for me to make that hour in my day and pay that fee.

That’s really what they’re saying because when people want something and in their heart believe that you are the solution that you can help. , they show up and they pay for it. And so I take it as it was my responsibility most of the time that I haven’t communicated it properly to them that The value of what I’m offering or how it can benefit, how they can benefit from it.

So the message here is we have to create value for our patients. And just so you know, the value. Is not how many years you went to school. That doesn’t create value for your patients. That’s not gonna make them want to come or pay your fees. How much school debt you have, that’s not gonna make them want to pay your fees either.

It is about perceived value and so they have to perceive that what you’re offering is the solution to the problem. And you have to be able to communicate that and that perceived values what’s gonna have them want to come and see you at their clinic. And I’m gonna share with you. A couple of stories here as well, but I wanted to let you know that if you’re selling acupuncture, then you are a commodity, meaning you’re, there’s nothing unique or special about you.

You’re a commodity and you are competing based on price, and so you need to be the same price or lower price than the other acupuncture commodities in your area in order to track patients. So I don’t see myself as an acupuncturist. I’m not dogmatic about it. It is a medicine that I practice that I’m trained in.

I’m trained in clinical hypnotherapy as well and other modalities. It’s about being patient center focused versus doctor center focus focused. So although I do really love acupuncture and I’m passionate about it, that doesn’t mean my patients are what they want. Is a solution. They want resolution to their problem.

They want to feel good mentally and physically, and if you tell them to drink orange juice and stand in one foot and go in circles three times a day for a week, and you have research or anecdotal evidence that works, they will do that. So they’re not coming for acupuncture. They’re coming for what the acupuncture provides.

but they don’t necessarily care or need it to be the acupuncture as long as they have that transformation. So your patients are looking for a transformation and there’s a great marketing book by , Donald Miller, I think it’s his name’s, Donald Miller. And he really puts it in a nice way. He puts it in a really clear way where the patient is the hero and you, the doctor or the guy and the patient is looking for a transformation.

And I’ve said this in my book and in my lectures in the past that. We wanna be patient centered versus doctor centric. And when you’re patient-centric, you’re focusing on them, their transformation, you’re gonna help them have the transformation, you’re the support, the guide to help ’em have that transformation.

When you’re customer, when you’re company centric or doctor centric, you’re focusing on you and you’re talking all about your acupuncture and bragging about how great you are, and that’s not gonna be as exciting for your patients. Yes, they do need to know you are the right and best guide. There is something about who you are, but it’s really about how can you make me the patient, have a transformation.

And so if you’re a commodity, if you’re selling acupuncture, then you will have to compete on price. And you do want to find a way to Show them the value. And I can think in our profession, three things that come to mind from you right away. The example is showing a shift on the table. If that patient can have a shift, an experience on the table, then you are going to earn their trust and confidence.

and they will probably want to follow your treatment planning, come see you that once or twice a week for a series of treatments to get that full resolution. And examples of that I can think of on my Healthy Seminars platform that I’ve learned from is practitioners like David Jeweler. He has that palpation based acupuncture courses.

The reason that one is powerful is he teaches you how to do palpation on the table. And find aches or problems that the patient is having, and then choose an acupuncture point based on that, and then go ahead and press that sore spot again, and the patient on the table notices that tenderness is gone.

And so that is quite the shift on the table. Pony Chung. Also unhealthy seminars. He has a style where he puts the needle in. He uses a pointer plus to activate the needle just for a few seconds to show muscle movement. To demonstrate that he has properly located the point. Now this is twofold. One, from the practitioner’s perspective, it lets you know that you actually hit the right point, cuz we always have the right intention when we put in spleen.

We think we got the right sling. Six for that patient. Pony has shown through his research and cadaver work and how acupuncture ties into the peripheral nervous system that you can actually check. To see if you actually got the right point. Get instant feedback and that is impressive for the patient in my practice cuz my fees are higher than anybody else in my practice.

And I have a wait list of two to three months for my practice and people who pay top fees and nobody actually. Complains about it. And after they have their session with me, the first session they book six to 10 follow-ups immediately is the trend. And that’s because they have a shift mentally on the table, mentally, physically.

What I mean by this is I do a lot of conscious work and help people work through fear, shame, guilt, they have physical symptoms, but the emotional symptoms around that as well. And I use my acupuncture laser and my mind body approach through my clinical hypnotherapy training and the training I’ve gotten through Amid OV cause he has a whole series of this unhealthy, using those styled acupuncture in his palpation.

It’s similar to ef FT on the table. Patients in that hour have their tears often come from feeling highly anxious, fearful anger. And on the table, having a full on shift where they feel peace, relief, and often even joy, they’re feeling it physically, viscerally felt sense. And so that shift is where they get that trust and confidence.

So rather than me selling acupuncture, I’m selling my treatment for a major shift and people, and I call that energy psychology with Accu Laser and people come for that. The key that I wanna share with you is I had to invest in myself and and build up my confidence and my experience, and now I’m at a place where patients are coming to my practice and the word of mouth is growing so fast because of what people experience on the table and going.

And so for us as acupuncturists, I think of David Jeweler’s style of acupuncture, that palpation base where on the table patients notice a difference. It’s, you still will need a series of treatments, but it’s nice that they get a shift on the table and pony Chong. And Hamid Monka. So those are three practitioners to start with.

There’s many more that I have trained with and I highly recommend if you’re looking to not be a commodity and give that transformation, and if you can do it on the table, then you can make a big difference. The message I’m sharing here is you want to create value for your patients and to create value means you have to a, believe that you have the value and you have to usually invest in your.

and be able to communicate the value, and they have to perceive that as good value. Just because you took a great course and it costs you a lot of money, that’s not enough. You have to be able to communicate why they’re gonna benefit and they actually have to experience that benefit pretty quickly, usually on that first treatment.

And I’m gonna just give you an example about perceived value, how this works, and tie this back to that early statement where I said, patients say, I wish I could come see you, but I can’t afford you. so many years ago, we introduced low level laser therapy for fertility in my practice at Accu Balance, and we invested in good quality lasers.

Now, there’s a lot of people, as of today’s recording using laser therapy for fertility in a practice, and they’re using laser systems that are a couple hundred to a thousand dollars. My systems were 20,000 to 40,000, so I really invested to get results. and we changed our fee structure for patients when we did this.

So I’ll share with you back then. I’m gonna round up the numbers. Let’s say acupuncture was a was it was $95 a visit back then. It isn’t today. It’s more than that, but it was $95 a visit. And we had patients that joined our laser baby program. And the laser baby program fee was accu combined with laser for one 30, visit twice a week over three.

And many of the people we had seen, ha, who had initial consults with us who said, I can’t afford $95 a week for acupuncture, joined the laser baby program at two 60 a week. So they couldn’t afford 95 a week, but they could afford two 60 a week for three months. What’s going on here? The way we shared the laser fertility and the way we were able to communicate how it could be beneficial in sharing some of the research and some of the anecdotal stuff that’s out there from other people doing it in Japan and Denmark before we were doing it, reached them and they saw the value.

And this is my point where when they say they can’t afford your services, people will find a way to afford something if they see the value, if they can’t afford it. Usually what they’re saying is, I don’t see the. in it. And I knew this already before that because women who and men who said they couldn’t afford our fees would go and spend $20,000 on an IVs treatment much more than my treatment.

And so what is that telling me That they will be willing to spend that money cuz they have a perceived idea that IV. We’ll get them the baby quicker and better than say acupuncture. That’s their perceived perception. So this is why you have to be able to be of value and be able to communicate that value.

And I thought that was an interesting story, right about, just think about it, $95 a week couldn’t afford it, but one 30, twice a week they came and joined those programs. So I thought that was quite, quite interest.

I’m just pulling out my notes here guys, cause I wanna make sure I said everything for you guys and in my practice, just so you know, we have fees for acupuncture and laser and even how we communicate this in our clinic today. At the time of this recording it’s one 10 to have an acupuncture treatment and it’s one 20 to have just a laser acupuncture.

But if you want them together, it’s one 40. So rather than one 10 plus one 20 being two 30 in that same hour, we get acupuncture and laser and they pay one 40. You have to be able to communicate the value and the benefit. Everybody does like a deal. And so rather than coming just for acupuncture, just for laser, get the benefit of them together at a really good rate.

And Probably 60% of our practice is combined laser and acupuncture, and then the other 40% is pretty much just acupuncture. And this is that idea of that perceived value. But I’m sharing here that when they’re getting a deal, you have to do the math sometimes for them.

Acupuncture is one 10, laser is one 20, but rather than paying two, You can have both for one 40, and so you do have to do the math and communicate. If you don’t let them know they’re having a discount, for example, and it doesn’t show on their invoice, then they may not know that they actually got a deal.

So you do need to communicate. That’s the second point I’m really wanting to emphasize here is one is you have to have value and the patient has to perceive the value and they’re not gonna perceive it if you don’t believe it. . So we want integrity and genuinely you believe you have the value. And two is you have to be an excellent communicator to help them see the value and the benefit.

And going back to that book I mentioned by Donald Miller, I didn’t mention the title. He’s got three out there. They’re all similar, so check them out. But the, it’s being patient-centric care. They’re looking for the transformation. You are the guide. Now you need to be a good guide. , but it’s them. That’s the hero that is looking for the transformation.

And again, if you can do that shift on the table, pony Chong, David Jeweler, amid Monk, three excellent practitioners that that you can learn from, where you can learn to get a shift on the table. It will help you with patients finding that trust and confidence and having that transformation to want to continue.

I think that is what I wanted to share. I’m gonna just check my notes here. Going back to my treatment and the fees I pay, I wanna share with you that it’s taking me years and to get to this level of training where I’ve done clinical hypnotherapy, nlp, psych, k Maris, peer rapid transformational therapy.

I just joined Dawson Church’s program. Here’s a transparency idea. Just to let you know, he has this six or nine month online program. And I was looking for transformation. I’m always looking for spiritual evolution and like many of you, I want to heal my shame, my guilt, my imposter syndrome that I sometimes run that doesn’t feel good.

And I saw his program and how it could work, how you can work through shadow work. And that’s something I’m really interested these days. And his program was advertised for like 10,000 US dollars, early bird, 9,000, and. really wanted that transformation, so I wasn’t so stuck on the cost. And that amount of money would hurt.

By the way, that’s not an easy money to spend, but I joined that program. Now I’m getting twofold benefit. I’m getting my own spiritual evolution. I love to continue to do my personal growth, but I’m learning ways to communicate to patients, and I’m learning new tools that I can bring into the treatment room, and I’m pretty aware.

Within six to nine months, I’m gonna raise my fees again because I’ve gotten better at what I do. And as long as I can communicate that to my patients then I expect that they will fo will follow. Now, Dawson’s program isn’t cheap and there’s a lot of people that paid for that program like me, and so he’s got people that are really wanting that transformation and they’re willing to pay that price.

Although you may think your fees are. , the patient is focusing on the result. First, can you be the solution? Are you the person that’s going to help them have that transformation and have that solution? And if they believe that, then they will invest in you first. You need to invest in yourself. . And when you as a practitioner invest in yourself, then the public will be willing to invest in you for their healthcare needs, has been my experience.

So it’s not a, you’re gonna turn this around in 24 hours or in 48 hours? Every two years. I’d like to add a designation to. to me. So every two years I go into a intensive type of program that I like to learn. If you go to healthy seminars.com, you’ll see that we have these mentorship programs on pregnancy, on fertility, on consciousness.

And so these programs are what I partake in sometimes through healthy. I’m doing Dawson Churches programs not on my healthy seminar. So I do pay for these sometimes too, cuz I’m constantly investing in myself and when I see that it’s taking my game to another level and I. I can bring that to my treatment tables and I can communicate it, that’s key.

Where the benefit is, then I’m able to increase my fees as well. And it’s been my experience that when I increase my fees and I believe there’s value there and I know they’re gonna get results and they have that experience early in treatment. There’s not an issue when I raise my fees because I need more fees, but I don’t believe in the.

people fight me over it and it doesn’t work. So I have to take up a relationship and work on those issues around money and me feeling good enough first and really believe it because I believe in energy chi and if I don’t believe that I’m of value and I have and I’m uncomfortable charging the fees I’m charging, that does get put out to the ether.

And you’ll attract people to challenge you cuz you’ll track people to help you work your issues. Those limiting subconscious. . So first you invest in yourself and you take your game to another level. You have to be able to believe that you’re of value. What you do has to transfer to your patient on the table.

They have to have results, and you have to be able to communicate it. For example, when I treat patients, even though they’re coming regularly for certain conditions, I’m telling them why I’m using these points and lasers and herbs. I’m constantly remind. Engaging the placebo maybe? I don’t think of placebo as the negative that it’s inert.

I think of placebo as engaging the innate ability of the human being. The brain is the greatest pharmacy on the planet, and every time I’m explaining how acupuncture is helping them. Regulate inflammation in the immune system, regulate hormones, the hypothalamus, pituitary ovarian access all the things that we’re learning that acupuncture could do from the western medicine perspective.

And I explain the blood flow and what we’re doing, all that is engaging. The healing in the body as well, but it’s also reminding them why they’re coming and the value they’re getting versus just coming and getting needles put in that commodity. Why they don’t know what, why you’re putting a point in spleen six and large intestine four, that doesn’t make sense to them.

Why that may help a digestive issue, for example. They don’t know. And so explaining to them constantly be becoming a great educator, a communicator, a teacher in the treatment room is. . And so that’s of what I wanted to share with you guys. I’m just looking at my notes to see if I left anything out.

I think I have not . Just a few things I wanna mention. I have launched a Conscious Fertility podcast. If you’re looking about that mind body stuff and consciousness, you don’t have to be trying to conceive to enjoy it and to benefit from it. Check out the Conscious Fertility Podcast also on healthy seminars.

I do wanna remind you. That we have lots of on-demand courses where you continue education purposes and check out those mentorship programs that we have. They are super valuable in bringing more value to you that you can take to your practice. And again, contact me if you’re interested in a copy of my book.

Missing The Point. I do want to thank the American Acupuncture Council again for this opportunity to share with you some practice management tips to you, my friends and my colleagues. Thank you very much.

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Top 3 Questions Most Patients Will Ask You

Are You Charging Too Much or Undercharging?

Treating Patients Who Work at a Desk

So we’ll be looking at movement, corrective exercises and some other things to be able to recognize patterns in patients when you’re looking at it from a channel perspective.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hi, thanks for coming today. My name is Brian Lau and sometimes I present with these AAC webinars with Matt Callison, but he wasn’t able to make it today. And I’ll be presenting solo, but this is something I’m gonna be presenting a little bit more of an expanded view on at the Pacific Sports and Orthopedic Acupuncture Symposium.

Which if you’re watching this live is coming up in spring, but you might be seeing this. , it’ll be an ongoing event, so maybe check it out another time. So this is a little sample of that and I’m gonna be expanding on it quite a bit at that symposium. So what I’m gonna be looking at today is specifically treating patients who work at a desk.

But this is really looking at more movement oriented aspects of the channels, looking at the movement from a channel perspective. So while sitting if we’re in a static position is not really moving, but it is moving cause we’re holding the position. So we’ll be looking at movement, corrective exercises and some other things to be able to recognize patterns in patients when you’re looking at it from a channel perspective.

So we have this nice image in the beginning title slide. And I took this from the internet and I liked it cuz it says bad posture and I guess it’s not great posture. That could definitely cause strain. We’ll talk about this a little bit more in a second, but I generally don’t think anything is a bad posture.

There’s positions that have a use and that particular position of somebody was crouching over and had to look up. It’s a fine position, but if we’re gonna hold that for a prolonged period of time, it becomes problematic. and it can definitely lead to pain. So I don’t really like to think about good posture or bad posture.

I like to think of movement potential and the ability to move in and out of a particular position and to move in and out of that position with ease. So that’s a little bit more of the take. We’ll be looking at and we’ll go through some specifics on that. So let’s jump right in. So first of all, prolonged sitting puts a strain on the body, especially if the patient sits with poor posture.

Yes, I just said that maybe nothing’s could be totally bad posture, but if they’re sitting in a position that’s collapsed, that’s putting pressure on the organs, that’s putting pressure on the joints for a prolonged period of time, that’s gonna lead to problems. , and this is the frequent position the patients will sit in, is they’ll have their back and shoulders rounded.

So you could say scapular protraction would be there and their heads are forward. The myo fascia of the back is not engaged and it’s locked long. So things like the lower T trapezius, the erector spinna in certain regions, those are all gonna be in a long position and they’re failing to bring the body back into extension.

And then the other key point is that the core is not gonna be. We’ll be looking at that from a movement perspective here in a second, but that’s gonna be the general thing that you’re seeing with people. They get tired, they’re there at the desk for a long time. Things start to sag and slouch.

When they do that for prolonged period of time, that can lead to many injuries that obviously all of us see in our clinical practices. So these will be things like muscle tension, headaches, you can see especially. Younger kid in the bottom picture, a great picture that’s not staged.

That was a camera that was on, on particular people. And these were just live action shots that they got. You can see how much capital extension that younger kid has and how much tension that’s gonna put on things like the suboccipitals. And the cervical muscles that can refer into the head and create very much of a tension type headache pattern.

So tension headaches are gonna be a massive one that’s going to be pretty prevalent with office workers. Thoracic outlet syndrome is the scaling shorten and the peck minor shorten that’s gonna look, have a potential for entrapment sites for the brachial plexus. And then they’re gonna have symptoms down into the arms.

Rotator cuff tendonopathies. It’s putting the shoulder in a bad position and especially with activity that’s gonna tend to put more strain and wear and tear on the shoulder. Peri scapular pain, both the cervical fast sets muscles like lava or scapula. Other things can refer into that peri scapular region.

So that’s gonna be a common complaint and all of that’s gonna put a lot of undue stress on the cervical joints and lead to premature or increase the chances of degeneration. For generative disc disease and that can lead to a whole host of other problems. So it’s a massive problem. Many of our patients are office workers.

They sit for prolonged periods of time on the desk. So it’s really important to be able to have a good working knowledge to be able to help them come out of those patterns. And we’ll look at some acupuncture ideas, but I wanna start with looking at it a little bit more from a movement standpoint, because I think this is something that we can.

Really increase our effectiveness if we can give them some movement reeducation. So just a little bit of something I’ve been working on, especially starting just a little bit before covid and then all of a sudden I had a little bit more time when I had my practice closed for a little bit then have it closed too long.

But that sort of allowed me to really start getting into my own training. and as I was getting into a lot more movement training, I have a pretty extensive background with Qigong and Tai Chi and some martial arts. But I started doing a lot of body weight calisthenics and just something I was really interested in.

When I was younger, I used to be a wrestler and wrestlers have a lot of similar training where we use a lot of body weight type, climbing rope. pull-ups and a lot of other body weight type stuff. You’re obviously, if you’re wrestling, you’re using a lot of other people’s body weight as you’re doing competition.

It’s something I was really interested in when I was younger and I of started coming back into it in my, I guess this is just before my fifties and really enjoyed it. But since I’m an anatomist and since I’m looking at the channels a lot, especially the channel sy and thinking. Movement quite a bit.

As I’m doing all these exercises, I’m going over my head what channel am I working with? How is this organizing between channels? It’s just something that’s really taken a hold with me and I’ve been really looking a lot more at developing a system for understanding movement through the perspective of the channels and use.

And generally, most of the movement that we’re gonna be looking at is gonna fall under one of three categories, and these will be. The Y and Shao yin channels, so movements that are organized around those. That’s primarily what we’re gonna be looking at today. So we’ll come back and talk about that one.

But that’s gonna be primarily extension type movements and we’ll add to it a little bit in a second. Shao y and Joy Yin. So the Shao y and joy Yin channels. So these will be actually one of two things that are co-related, either side bending type motions or snowball. So when we’re walking and moving, we’re stabilizing from our sides and preventing excess movement.

So that would be part of it. Or just literally like side bending type motions and also rotational type move movements. Maybe another webinar we can go into a little more detail of how those are co-related through the joints to this pelvic joints. But for now we’ll just keep it simple side bending and rotation.

and then Ming based patterns, much more flexion oriented type positions. We can look at the movements from the channels and design very health giving type, Chiang, movements that are organized through the channel. Syk, these movements can open fossil planes, mobilize joints, and mobilize and massage the organs.

So looking at the movement of the organs and the movement potential of the organ. Those channels actually take the organs into a movement. Briefly going back to Shain SHA Yin, the liver itself has a rotational type movement where it rotates around the the su inferior venava. So the, any type of rotational movement’s.

Also mobilizing the liver side. Bending the liver has a side bending type motion where it kind of moves and side bends. So any side bending type of movement will also mobilize and move the. So understanding the channel syk and their movement actually gives a little window into understanding how to self mobilize the organs through movement, which is really a lot of what Chiang and those types of exercise systems are about.

But we can just look at it a little bit more with a modern lens. So let’s go today into the ta, young Shein pattern. So this would be urinary bladder, small intestine. I know you everyone knows this, or at least if you’re an acupuncturist, So urinary bladder, small intestine, kidney and heart. We’ll be focusing a little bit more on the urinary bladder, kidney portion, but these movement patterns engage the back and the core lines.

So those are gonna be a big part of it. The general movements involve hip and spine extensions, so they’re things that lift us and bring us upright into the world. So extension. Would be the big part of it. Spine and hip extension, scapular depression. So they help pull the scapulas down.

Again, this aspect of lifting us up into the world. So very open and upright and present in the world. We’re gonna have external rotation, especially the small intestine sy channel. An extension, so shoulder external rotation, extension, elbow extension. all of this with a very stable core because as you’re going into extension, it’s easy If those muscles in the back are in the urinary bladder channel and small intestine channel are too overactive in some respects, they can over overextend us.

So we need the stability of things like the transverse dominance to keep us stable. So there’s a nice relationship between how the back and the front work, especially via the kidney and the urinary bladder channel. , both of them, to give us a sort of extension, this nice expanded spine and nice upright posture that’s really prevalent in much of, much activity we do.

And sometimes becomes less prevalent when we’re sitting and starting to fall and collapse a little bit. So these would be active sitting and just to keep us upright and keep us in a really good decompressed position of the spine. So the movements are gonna include things like stacking the spine and pelvis, stabilization of the shoulder girdle and engagement of the core.

So I have a little video here that you could use this for an exercise for office workers. It’s not the main one I’m gonna be showing for today, but just to highlight some of these features. It’s a front lever progression. So a front lever would be if I were holding onto the bar and making myself completely.

Horizontal with the ground, something I’m not able to do, working towards it, maybe in the year next year, come back and we’ll see how I’m doing on that. But it’s a very difficult exercise it takes a lot of strength in the back, a lot of strength in the core. But this would be an easier way to do it.

You can see being at a much less angle where I’m more upright, still at an angle. I have to extend the back to be able to get upright. I have to externally rotate the shoulders. I have to pull down with the lats and I have to stabilize with the core. And I think you can see all of that a little bit better with the actual movement.

So I’m gonna play the video. This is a pretty short video about a minute. The very first thing I’m gonna do is relax the arms so they become passive shoulders go into protraction. I become rounded in the back. Then I’m gonna start to let that relax all the way down the back. I’m not sticking my behind out.

I’m just letting the spine stretch and drop until I’m underneath the band passively hanging. And when I’m ready, I’m gonna start to push up, haul into the band, gauge the lats gauge, the lower trapezius gauge, the core return to that straight line.

All right. So that’s a very nice exercise cuz it massages the spine and basically going into a lengthened. In the urinary bladder, small intestine channels. And then the standup portion is where I start to engage those structures. So I engage ’em from a position where they’re already lengthened.

And, a pretty decent full length position and then engage ’em from that position to come back to an upright posture. So I sometimes use that as a nice warmup exercise and just to inform and give information to the channels before doing something that might be more strenuous.

If I’m doing, trying to do the front lever, working with that and putting more strain in the body, I like to have a a good warmup to where I start to inform the body of what muscles are activating and how is the. Organizing those movement between the channels. You don’t have to think about it so heady, but just how does a body organizing that movement before I go into something that’s a little bit more difficult.

But that is a really nice exercise by itself for for people who are in offices. If you have a setup for something like that, it can be really nice. But I’ll show so one that’s maybe a little bit more accessible in the. . So let’s briefly go over some channel information. So as all of us know, the urinary bladder channel moves down, starts at the brow and travels down to the foot.

But how about the Sinu Channel? So the Sinu Channel, we of already saw it a little bit with this previous video. The Sinu channel tends to pull downward. to create an upright posture. I really like this image on the right, which is from a outer print book from an anatomist John Hall Grundy, who Tom Myers, if you’ve ever studied with him, really likes this book quite a bit and uses some of his images.

I, I think his images are great. They’re very thoughtful. He gives just these dissection images. Sometimes this one’s more of schematic. That kind of shows the body from a different perspective. That helps us understand something about the body. And this one’s kind of showing that aspect of those erector spina, almost like a pulley.

And what they’re doing is they’re pulling to bring us upright. Yeah, maybe they can get too tight in areas and over pole, but they’re just like this, those hands on the ropes or just of lifting us up. They’re lifting us up from the back. They’ll lift the front upwards. So the downward pole in the.

lifts us upwards in the front. Very good representation of the urinary bladder sinu channel. So we would have that capacity at things like the lower trapezius. See if I can get my cursor on here. So lower trapezius is gonna pull down on the scapula to help lift and open the chest. The erector spin A is gonna pull on the spine to help us come out of flexion and into extension.

GLUT Maximus is going to help us prevent us from going too much into an anterior tilt to the pelvis. So it’s gonna drop the pelvis down and keep the pelvis in a good neutral position. So when it gets weak and inhibited, sometimes people will then go into more of an anterior tilt to the pelvis and put strain on the back so it helps stabilize the back, stabilize the SI joint muscles like the lateral portion.

of the leg here, this lateral branch of the UB channel on the bottom left which I interpret as the Proteus longest and brevis, those help. Or if they get too short, let me say it. That way, if they get too short and lift excessively, they’ll help, they’ll collapse the foot into the medial arch. So we have a technique that we show, and we have this on our YouTube channel where we pull those down, descend help.

Propri receptors understand they don’t need to be so excessively lifted. They can drop down to help take away that dropping into the medial arch. And then we’ll combine it with a lifting technique on the medial arch at things like kidney two, which is the abductor hallucis motor point. So I was gonna put that into my presentation.

I wasn’t sure if I’d have time, but that is on our channel. I decided not to put it. Not relevant necessarily to office workers specifically, but just to understand that downward aspect of the channel and how the channel in pathology sometimes can excessively lift. So the kidney channel moves up and stabilizes.

So when we start looking at the channel sinus, we have structures like in front of the spine. The so as major. The anterior longitudinal ligament, a big stabilization of the the spine in the front of the spine, and then this portion at the neck up at the top of the spine there on the image on the right would be the longest coli and longest capitus.

Those are very important for stabilization of the neck, so when those get weak and inhibited the neck tends to jut out. So they have a certain amount of ability to keep the neck in a nice upright stacked.

The kidney channel also. Not, if you look at the description in the ling shoe of the SY channel, it’s pretty vague. You have to really start looking a lot at cadaver dissection and some research, fossil research. You have to bring a lot of things together, I think, to get a good understanding of what structures could be potentially part of this INU channel.

It’s a work I’ve been doing for about the past 10 years. But it would be hard to find a description from the Ling shoe that talks about things like the transverse of Dominus as part of the kidney sinew channel. But if you look at the channel system as a whole, the low connecting point does talk about the core in a way.

because this channel, this low connecting channel, travels up the abdomen following the kidney channel. Question I have is what depth? I think it’s at the depth of the transverse abdominus that goes to a point just below the pericardium. If the transverse abdominus is part of those structures, it’s gonna blend in with the diaphragm pretty seamlessly.

And then the heart sits right on top of the diaphragm. So that would technically go to a point just below the pericardium. And then those the multifidi connects also with the pelvic floor, but also I’m sorry, the transverse of dominus connects with the pelvic floor, but also the multifidi, these deep lumbar muscles that are stabilizing muscles of the spine.

So I think the kidney low channel is really giving some kind of description, maybe not of the muscles, but of the ability for those muscles. to stabilize a big part of the kidney channel to stabilize the lumbar region to support. And I think their description, their trajectory hints at these core stabilizing structures of the transverse, a dominus, the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, and the lumbar multifidi.

in sports medicine, acupuncture, we take those core structures and put ’em in the Sinu channel just for ease. So the kidney sinu channel would include those core stabilizers of the spine, the SOAs, which is other, and also a core stabilizing muscle, at least the portion, the stabilizing, the , the deeper fibers and the more superior fibers of the soaz, which are really stabilizing the spine are part of the kidney channel.

A little bit of a aspect of the ql. Also, all of these stabilizers of the spine really speak to the kidney channel and its lumbar and spinal stabilization role. But then also, like I said, up in the neck we have those longest coal, iron capitus. So very much about standard. So collectively the urinary bladder in the kidney sinew channel are looking at balancing the spine in a very easy way, or at least a simple way of looking at the spine.

is to look at the curves of the spine. Cause it’s tricky when you start doing postural assessment. Is that right? Is that normal? So one thing you can look at is there a balance between these curves of the spine? And what these curves are is things like the cervical lordosis that’s in that picture is referred to as a secondary curve, meaning that it’s not there at birth.

As we, start looking up into the world and put strain in the body, we start developing that secondary curve in the cervical. primary curve in the thoracic spine that’s there at birth, we have just an a c curve, so they call that a primary curve. And then same thing as we’re crawling and moving and eventually stand up and walking, we start developing a secondary curve at the lumbar spine.

So looking at that kind of curve of the spine can help us understand if the, there’s a good balance between the urinary bladder and kidney channel because we want a really good balance between those curve. We don’t want all thoracic curve or we don’t want an excessive cervical lordosis or an excessive lumbar lordosis or maybe a flattening of the lumbar lordosis.

Some people naturally have less curvy of the spine. Some people have naturally more curvy of the spine, so you can start looking and seeing is there a balance between those secondary and primary curves. Back to Tom Myers, his work, I’ve studied a little bit. , he also extrapolates that out to the posterior knee, which isn’t a spinal curve, but that’s a normal, there should be a little bend, a little gentle lordosis and if you wanna call it that in that posterior portion of the knee.

But as you look at people, sometimes their knee becomes hyperextended and say, so they’ve lost that curve relationship or even the arches of the feet. So you can take that idea of that balance of the curves all the way down the. Into the knees, into the feet and the arches. So we want just a nice, even ebb and flow in those curves of the spine.

So I think you can agree looking at those images of the desk sitters that were dropped, , their balance was lost. They have a, capital extension, a strong curve up at that upper part of the cervical spine. But everything is, the whole spine is in curved. They’ve lost a little bit of the lumbar curve.

There’s not a really good balance between those positions. So let’s look at an exercise and we’ll talk acupuncture. And we’ll also look at a myofascial release technique. Let’s look at an exercise that is a little bit more accessible. Cause people can do it in a chair. This is something you can work with them.

on. This is gonna be a seated exercise. It’s modified from a Chiang pattern eight pieces of brocade for those who know it. This is the second move. It’s two hands, hold up the heavens and it stacks the spine. That’s gonna be the first thing it does, but then it’s also gonna start moving in the frontal plane.

So a side bending movement. The reason of that is because, Office workers, everything is moving forward or back. Maybe the neck shutting backwards or forwards. Maybe the thoracic spine is sinking back, but everything’s moving away from that frontal plane. The head maybe moves away from the frontal plane, the back moves away from the frontal plane.

Everything is in. That front and back position, maybe those people exercise, maybe they don’t. But frequently when people exercise, everything’s in that front and back position. Like running much of weight lifting, everything’s flexion, extension, flexion extension. So most people, especially office workers, aren’t doing enough movement in the frontal plane, like side bending motion.

So this exercise is gonna stack the spine, get a good balance in the spine, get a good stability in the. Engaging those back muscles and then it’s gonna start going into a side bending motion to help bring in a different movement potential that they’re not probably, or let’s just say they’re more than likely underutilizing.

And that can really give a little tensional support from the side and help that elevation and lift coming up the body. So I’m gonna go ahead and play that video.

Many of my patients sit for prolonged periods of time in this position, the head is forward, the back muscles are under slack, and the core is not engaged. Prolonged times are spent with major parts of the spine move forward or back. Let’s look at a simple Qigong exercise that can be a mini break from sitting and help alleviate some of these issues.

This Chigong pattern is one of the eight movements in a system called the Eight Pieces of Bou. This is a great chigong exercise for office workers since it highlights an engagement of the back and core while performing a side to side movement. These are movements which are frequently absent and sitting, especially if the posture suffers.

The exercise can be performed standing or seated. Here we see it standing, but we will look more detailed at the seated version since it can be easily adapted to a work environment.

Start by sitting upright on the sit phones or the issue two Verocity. Roll off the back of the zip bones and round the back, then roll back onto the zip bones, engage the back and core, and grow back to an upright position. Again, roll off the back of the sit bones and round the back. Roll back onto the sit bones.

Engage the back and core. Grow to an upright position. Repeat the same movement, but this time, rotate the arms and turn the palms up.

Turn the palms down as you grow back to upright.

Now let’s look at the full movement roll down. Like before, interlace the fingers as you grow and expand. Start to turn the palms towards the sky. Get the elbows lined up with the side of the body. Reach upward and maintain an open chest.

End to the side, allowing the opposite side ribcage to open and the spine to curb. Keep both sip bones on the seat. Return to the midline and then repeat and stretch to the opposite side.

Return to the midline stretch up. Then let everything relax down while bowing the spine. As the hands passed, the solar plexus row opened the chest gauge the back and horn. The entire movement can be repeated several times. At least three times would make a great little mini break and help bring back length and ease while sitting.

All right, so that’s on my YouTube channel. It’s Jing Jin Movement Training, if you wanted to check that out. It goes through a practice run of it if you wanted to do it with the video. So that it gives you a chance to practice that. I think there’s three three repetitions of that. If you were to work with that on a pa with a patient the whole movement’s great because of that side bending aspect.

Again, that’s a movement that they don’t often do and everything that they are doing is forward and backward generally. So it’s nice to have some tensional support. Put into the body from the side to help give tension, good tension to give, like stabilization, kinda like an old-fashioned boy scout pup tent.

You want a nice balanced pole in all of those wires that are giving the tent nice shape. So it’s nice to have that little pole from the side. But if you didn’t have the time, or maybe a patient wasn’t super aware starting with that, rolling off the sit bones and letting the spine. and rolling back on the sit bones and letting the spine stack is a really great educational tool for the patient because my general view, again, is that there’s not a good or bad position for the body.

If I were to roll off the sit bones and curve and I were reading a book and I had a book in my lap, that’s not a bad position. I have a nice, I wouldn’t wanna be there all day, but it’s a nice curve through the spine. It’s a balanced curve. And if I roll back up on my sit bones and stack everyth I think that’s a good position. Again, I wouldn’t wanna necessarily sit in that all day. I wanna get up and move around a little bit. Where I think people run into the most trouble is when the spine is not working in a balanced position. Maybe they’ve rolled off the set bones, they’ve collapsed the chest, but then they arch the head up.

So part of the spine is inflection, and then another part of this spine is making up all that difference and. and that position is where people I think tend to get in into more trouble. It’s fine for a momentary movement, but when you’re holding that position, it’s not a particularly comfortable position.

Puts a lot of strain on the neck and the shoulder girdle and can lead to injuries. So I like that aspect of rolling up onto the sit bone so they can get that support under them from the pelvis. And finding that position of stacking the chest, bringing the head back, lining everything. , but you don’t want ’em to go too far, you don’t want ’em to roll off the front of the hip bones and hyperextend either.

So it’s just finding that balanced tone from the pelvis, torso, shoulder, girdle head, everything is comfortable, balanced, and it’s a much more injury-free position. Doing that, I think is a better strategy than trying to dictate to somebody how to sit and pull the shoulders back and everything becomes very stiff.

Finding that relationship of how the pelvis stacks on the chair and everything else stacks above it is a really great tool. Acupuncture can be very useful for obviously for a lot of these injuries. So if we’re looking at acupuncture, we have to spec specify really what they’re coming in for. So a lot of the local base injuries are gonna be more specific treatments for those.

I’m not gonna get into that cuz there’s a whole host of them. Learning how to treat and recognize those particular injuries can be very useful in guiding that. But just some general guidelines for distal points. If people are in that position for a long period of time and they’re not engaging the back, those back muscles tend to get inhibited and they have a hard time finding those muscles that help depress the scapula externally, rotate the shoulder girdle, stack the spine.

So UV 64 SI four is really a wonderful combination, both of them being source points to help. Channel T to help inform the channels and give a little bit of energy to the channels to help them find those find those muscles and engage those muscles more effectively. So UB 64, SI four are really a great great treatment.

UB 60 SI three. Obviously a lot of people use that combination of their acupuncturist. UV 60 as many people know is really working on that excess young that rises up the channel. So there’s people who have their ears up against their, their shoulders up against their ears, and everything tenses.

And that channel rises excessively that, especially if it’s much more of a tension stress high-end type thing is a really great point to help descend that chi down the channel. S I three obviously used for a lot of neck pain. So those are great great combinations for those people who have a lot of excess rising of the back of the body.

And leading to things like tension headache tension headaches, kidney four, low connecting point of the kidney channel can really help engage the core structures if they have a very weak and inhibited core like transverse, abdominous, pelvic floor, that kind of stuff. And then working with local motor points for things like the rhomboids upper and middle trapezius and the chest muscles to help balance the front and the back can be a great strategy.

So last thing we’re gonna look at today is the am myofascial technique that’ll help stack the spine and Descend. The channel in the back descend the urinary bladder channel. So this is a technique we teach at sports medicine, acupuncture program. And we have, I have this one up on my YouTube channel, Jin Movement training.

There’s a similar table technique to this on the sports medicine, acupuncture, YouTube channel.

Let’s look at a myofascial technique where we spread down the urinary bladder. Jin, especially concentrating on the erector speed. A muscle room. We will have the patient roll forward vertebra by vertebra.

While they are actively flexing the spine, we will spread through the tissue to soften and lengthen any areas where the erector being a or bunched. So you can do this with both hands simultaneously or one hand at a time. Both hands is nice, but sometimes it’s good to guide the patient by working on one side while you’re assisting them.

It depends on their ability to do this. First thing they’re gonna do is make sure they’re solid in their feet. They can even give a little small push back into their feet so that they can support against your pressure.

Now let the head go and she’s just pulling me through the erector. Speeding. So I’m lengthening, I’m looking for balanced movement. Okay, let the left shoulder go that. You can just go straight down. So with women, you’re gonna have to readjust around the bra straps there. You gonna stop for a moment so when they stop, you’re gonna sink back in and then have them go deflection as you spread through the erector.

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and hold. Stop for a moment.

Sink back in and then have them continue down in deflection the whole time being supported in the feet. Let the left shoulder go a bit. There you go. Good. And now continue to drop and you’re spreading through the erector. Speeding now into the lumbar.

All right. Now you can help them as a stack. So behind settles first, a little bit more weight here. There you go. A little bit more.

A lot of people wanna come up instantly with the head. I’m gonna do this incorrectly for a second. A lot of people wanna come up here first, but we want them to stack first and get the support stack chest. and they’re in a neutral position.

Great. So that’s a bench work technique that’s very common in structural integration. It’s the type of work I did before an acupuncturist. Rolfing is a type of structural integration. We do a ton of bench work. I really like it cuz the patients are actively engaged and they’re they’re able to informed the body, by that movement of stacking, in this case, stacking the spine.

If you do go to the YouTube, my YouTube channel at the Jing Jin Movement Training and watch that particular video, I’ll give you something to look for. She had a hard time stacking her lumbar spine. and I of wish I would’ve pointed it out on the video. I of noticed it when I was demonstrating the technique that I didn’t wanna take the time there.

But as I, as she goes to stack the body, she has a very difficult time coming outta flexion with a lumbar spine and then misses it and comes up above it. And she has a tendency to have like a lot of people who are very athletic She has a pretty notable anterior tilt to the pelvis, so maybe a little more time spreading through that lumbar region.

A little bit more time stacking would’ve been indicated. But I was just doing it as a demo. But anyway, something to sharpen your eyes. You can look and see, cuz what we wanna see is that each vertebral level moves apart one by one, and then each one then stacks from the bottom. That’s kind of part of that training of the UB Jing gin to get that stacking and get that upright posture so that then people can feel comfortable in their seated position.

So thank you to American Acupuncture Council for for having me for this webinar has been very nice presenting on some of these ideas. These are, like I said, things that we teach within the sports medicine acupuncture program, especially in. One of the classes that I helped co-develop the class that’s looking at assessment and treatment for the channel sy use.

So check that out. If you get a chance, you can also, like I said, check out those YouTube channels and hope to see you guys again. So thanks. Thanks again to American Acupuncture Council.

3 Things Your Missing for Consistent Revenue Growth

So we’re gonna talk about what you’re missing for consistent revenue growth in your practice today.

Click here to download the transcript.

Hello. Welcome to another episode of To The Point. I’m Dr. Nell. I wanna thank American Acupuncture Council for having me today, and let’s go right into the slide.

So we’re gonna talk about what you’re missing for consistent revenue growth in your practice today. What’s happened to a lot of us before, I’m speaking from experience, we get started in practice. Maybe things are going well, maybe we have this misconception that growth is just going to be linear, and that trend is going to continue the entire time.

But don’t often take a second to check in on what are the things that are working, what are the things that are not, is it time to scale? And so we’re gonna talk a little bit about the things that you might not be thinking about when it comes to revenue growth today. . Let’s see. So this is what I thought when I was first getting into practice that, oh, okay.

I’m starting out, I’m at the beginning, so obviously I’m not gonna be making a ton of money right away. Acupuncture is a relatively low startup cost considering what other industries look like. So a lot of us come right into practice, not taking out loans, not having a ton of capital, getting right into it.

And Pros and cons to that. But we think, oh, hey, we have a few patients. We’re already making money. This is great. And okay, maybe six months later it’s gonna be a little bit different, a little bit different. And what I’ve noticed when I’m working with other practitioners or students who are gonna be getting started in practice, Because we don’t have a ton of business training when it comes to our schooling.

And this is, not a ton of fault to the schools. They have to get us prepared for boards, right? But with 95% of acupuncturists being sole proprietors small business owners, we’re not really taught these things that we have to consider when it comes to growing our practice. And a lot of times it ends up.

Very reactive and we think, oh great, we’re not losing money this month. So wonderful. Like I said, that growth is not necessarily going to be exactly linear, but what we wanna see in our businesses is a constant trend of growth. So even if there are weeks that might fluctuate a little bit, months, that might fluctuate.

You work primarily with teachers and. People go away during the summer, they’re not working, they’re off their schedules. These are all things we need to factor into our equation when it comes to having that consistent revenue growth. So the first thing that we might not be thinking about when it comes to our consistent revenue growth is mindset.

Now, I think that term often gets overused at times, but we do need to address what’s the mindset of our industry and then how does that affect us in practice? How does it affect our patients? How do we let Our ethics, our values, our beliefs bleed into our practice. And so there can be a little bit of a scarcity mindset when it comes to this medicine, when it comes to our industry.

And so that’s okay. It’s just an important trend to note so that we can fix it on our end. Just having that awareness that this is something that we need to be considering as we are trying to champion growth in our businesses is important. That lack of business training that also could go into our mindset.

It could affect our confidence when it comes to the next steps. And what I see a lot of times, and I’ve been guilty of this too, is we jump right into executing right into strategy without even checking in. Is my mind, right? Is this really what I want to be doing? Do I have the right tools in place?

Does this make sense at this time? And so mindset is really key when it comes to having that consistent growth, because you don’t have to be in a perfectly positive mood every day. You don’t have to be a hundred percent every day. That’s complet. Unrealistic to think that we would be able to but we need to be more on than we’re not, and we need to be just really clear about the type of mindset that we need to have for that consistent growth.

So mindset is the first of these three things that might not be on our radar as we’re trying to jump right into executing on getting more patients in the door. The second thing is clarity. , what do we even mean by clarity? It’s another word that I think if any of us heard it, we might have a different definition as to what that means to us.

When I talk about clarity, when it comes to consistent revenue growth in your practice, the strategy that you’re going to have, how you’re gonna execute on that, how do we keep things consistently? Trending forward. I’m talking about your why your clarity around do you even want to scale your business?

Are you someone who’s very happy being a solo provider and you don’t want other providers in your space? That’s okay. There’s a financial reality that goes. With that, we might need to think about additional revenue streams when it comes to building. If it’s just going to be us, there is a set number of patients that we are gonna be able to see as an individual, and that obviously becomes exponential when you bring in another provider, when you bring in staff.

But that clarity around why we’re doing what we’re doing and what that vision for our practice truly looks like is incredibly important. When you’re talking about. Keeping patients coming in the door. If I know that I need to get to a certain number of patient visits before I can bring on another provider, if I know that’s something that I really want, that is going to allow the next steps in scaling my business to be all the more simple, because I’m very clear on what I want that to look like for my business.

We talked in a previous show about having a business. , and it can be very simple, very easy if you miss that one. It’s something you can do in one hour to make sure that you stay on track. And it really does fit into this clarity piece on how you’re going to continue to have consistent patients coming in the door, —-consistent growth for your business.

So very clear on why I am doing what I’m doing, what I want the future to look like. And we’re not just talking about practice, we’re talking about. Because your practice is going to have to fit into your life. And so those goals need to be really realistic within that. And then the last piece, now we can finally get to the strategy.

And this was the three things that you might not be considering for that growth. I think a lot of us. Think about strategy a lot, but a lot of times it’s jumping right into execution. Strategy has a lot of these different pieces to it. So you’ll see the puzzle piece theme that we went through today.

But it’s not just about your customer. It’s not just about how your business is now. It’s how you want your business to be. And are we working through that analysis? So looking. What are all these pieces? What has the past trend look like? What do I want the future to look like? Do you have additional products?

Is your service offering your only product? What’s your vision? And that should have been thought about in the mindset and clarity pieces, but now we get to actually have a framework and make some decisions around that. How do we. That, how do we work towards it with our marketing? Do we have a team? Is this team gonna play an integral part?

If you are planning to continue to scale and you have one provider and other than yourself and two office staff. . Okay. What comes next? Are you bringing on another office staff? Where’s the bottleneck in the capacity for your business? And a lot of times we might shy away from some of these conversations.

A lot of times it can be really difficult. That goes back to that mindset piece that we often don’t really dive into. We’re trained as clinicians. We’re trained as providers. A lot of people get into this medicine because they care about people, because they want to see people improve with their health, and not necessarily because they wanted to own a business, but that doesn’t mean.

There aren’t certain realities when it comes to growing our business or that, we need to make a living. And so to be able to do that and still stay true to that clarity, that vision that we had, we have to think about all these different puzzle pieces. How are we gonna develop different things and.

That gnarly budget. I remember being in school and having Marilyn Allen as my teacher in practice management, and it just felt like a fire hose. All of that information when it came to budgeting around each of these steps. So what happens sometimes is we get really fixated on one of these little puzzle pieces around strategy, and we completely forget that all of these things fit together and that you cannot even begin to develop a strategy.

First, having clarity on what you’re doing. And then prior to that, are you in the right state of mind? And how do you get there to make sure that you can consistently grow? So we have to keep our mind so that we can effectively help our patients. . So those are the three. I want you guys to just keep that in mind.

And what’s also really important about these three is that you do them at each level of growth. This is not something that, okay, I opened my practice doors for the first time and I’ve thought about mindset. I am clear on what I’m going to do and I have a strategy of what I want to accomplish. This is a constant check-in.

This is something that you can do monthly and make sure you’re on point. I like to set up little wellness checks for myself, mentally as well as physically to make sure that everything is on point when you’re growing your business. And so this is a constant check-in, just like checking in with your business plan.

Again, don’t miss that show that we did as well. And you’re gonna go through these things every time you decide to grow, not just checking in on a regular basis. Anytime you wanna bring on an additional team member, anytime you wanna bring in a new product or a new offering, or you wanna make changes to your fee schedule, these are three things that you wanna check in so that you can have that very consistent growth when it comes to your practice.

So we got through that nice and quick, I like to keep it efficient for you all. If you have any more questions, always feel free to reach out. We do these shows quite often, and don’t forget that next week there’ll be another episode of To the Point. Tune in and don’t miss it.