Ep. 21: Challenging Systems of Oppression and Reclaiming Ancestral Practices with 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

0:00:04 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Welcome to Notes From your Acupuncturist, the podcast for anyone who's interested in acupuncture, complementary medicine, holistic health and self-care. 

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Hello and welcome to Notes From your Acupuncturist. I'm your host, Alexa, and I am so excited to be joined today by healing artist and writer, Camellia Dowling McDermott-Lee. Before we get into Camellia's story, I want to first share why I was so excited to get Camellia on the podcast. They contacted me because we share the same academic pedigree. They're a student at YoSan University of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is my alma mater, and regular listeners of the show might recognize that name because I've had a number of other YoSan alumni on as guests. So when I asked Camellia to share a little more of their story, they said this quote "based on unceded Tonga Land I serve as a channel for my ancestral medicine to flow to marginalized communities I work to exercise Orientalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, settler colonialism and cis-sexism from the healing tools I study". Well, dear listener, that certainly piqued my interest and I hope it piques yours too. I think we are all going to learn a lot from today's discussion and I can't wait to dive in. Camellia, welcome. 

0:02:17 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Hi there. Thank you for having me. 

0:02:20 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Thank you for being here. Now, before we really dig into this discussion, I want to share some of your credentials, because I want listeners to understand that you are not a casual student of some of these topics we're going to get into. You have done the work and continue to do the work. So you're a fifth generation Taiwanese healer and we'll get more into your lineage in a bit. You've been a student, practitioner and mentor in Taoism, taoist meditation and Taoist healing modalities for many years, and you're a member of Tinhao Temple and you've assisted elders in the temple for over a decade. And you're a student of a 22 generation Taoist lineage of parting clouds. And now you're a student at Yosan University, which carries on a 38 generation lineage of healing. You've practiced Tai Chi and Qi Gong since you were a child, having been taught by your father, and you're really steeped in these ancestral traditions. And then you also bring to that your background in African studies, correct? 

0:03:32 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Yeah, so I am a biracial person. My father is Taiwanese and my mother is Irish American, and the blessing of that is I grew up being asked what are you? And I was curious, and so I started to study the history of race in this country, and that led me to organize, with the NAACP, the Coalition to End Environmental Racism, and then to major in African studies, because I started out wanting to understand where I fit in and then realized, oh, in order for me and all my loved ones to be free, we really have to reckon with anti-black racism and all these systems of power. So I bring that way of understanding the world, that research and that background into this healing, which is another side of me. 

0:04:35 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Well, what a unique background and perspective you bring. I love it. So I'd like to start by talking a little more about your background. You describe yourself as a diasporic Chinese person working to reclaim your ancestral practices, and you say you've encountered some interesting internalized racism in family members who feel that the ancient folk ways of practices like acupuncture are backwards. I'd really love to hear more about that and maybe some of the comments and attitudes that you've encountered from family members. 

0:05:11 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Definitely so. These comments used to bring up a lot of anger and feelings in me when I was a younger person, and now I have a bit more humility and I think that comments like oh, but what if the needles spread hepatitis? Or that's not like, backed up by peer reviewed research from the FDA and, by the way, I think that is changing there is research on acupuncture. But now I see this coming from the ways that my family has been shaped by war, by empire and by anti-Asian racism. So my grandparents were born in the 1920s under Japanese occupation. They survived the US bombing Taiwan because it was seen as a territory of Japan, and then there was a war right across the street. 

The nationalists came across and imposed martial law. There had been a nuclear explosion very close by, and so when my aunt and my father came into the world, my grandparents made some strategic choices that I now see as acts of care. They saw okay, the United States is basically the only place that seems to be doing well, and they were so smart and they timed it so that my aunt and my father were born in the US when my grandfather was doing residency one of those medical doctor things and they were so strategic in making sure their children had citizenship and then, when they had to return, they enrolled my aunt and my father in Taipei American School. And at Taipei American School there was a guidance counselor who told my grandparents that my father and aunt weren't going to be able to balance having so many languages because my grandparents spoke English, japanese, mandarin, taiwanese and, I think, maybe some other ones. 

But they were fluent in those four and based on that guidance counselor's impact on my family, my grandparents started to just speak English to my father and aunt and then my father and aunt earned admission to US universities. But this was all part of my grandparents seeing the United States as a place where their children could maybe be away from bombs and martial law. But the trade-off to me is very sad because they emphasize so strongly English. Get to the US, you have citizenship, make a life there and focus on US culture, by which they meant the dominant white culture. And there was this turning away from the festivals and the traditions that I have a different perspective on now that I'm older but resulted in a deep longing in me to say no, I don't think those folk ways are backwards or non-scientific, but music I see. 

What they were maybe trying to say was our ancient ways don't have as much cultural capital, they're not as valuable, they're not going to get you as far, they're not going to pay your bills. We want you to focus on what will allow you to have a life where you're not worried about food and shelter. That's how I interpret those comments now. I think that context is really present with me now when I see acupuncture seen as cool or exotic, right, I'm like well for my family. They were like this is not as interesting as you getting a degree in Western medicine, which is what then my father and my grandfather and my great grandfather all did. They were MDs or PhDs in biomedicine. 

0:09:57 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

I find that so fascinating because you really give light to the context that surrounds that attitude. I wonder do you think that these attitudes of what you call internalized racism, do you think they're really representative of the larger Asian diaspora? 

0:10:21 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

What I know best is the Taiwanese context specific to my family. I have a friend who I know is far more knowledgeable. I'm fortunate to have a friend who's a scholar of Asian American feminism. She would know more than I do. My observation is I definitely see a lot of commonalities, I think, within East Asian diasporas. I use the word diaspora because calling myself Asian American feels a little difficult, because America comes from Amerigo Vespucci. It's a colonial name and I'm very aware that I'm on native land that is called the United States of America, but it's in the original people's name I'm on tovangar. 

But I do see in other folks who are in my life, who are spread away from ancestral lines in East Asia as well as from sometimes South Asia, an emphasis on acquiring cultural capital, acquiring skills, languages, papers, documents, degrees that are valued in the dominant US society. 

And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I also see this in loved ones and community members who come from direct immigrants from Central South America, from Africa, the continent and the many 54 countries in Africa. 

I think, a lot of recent immigrants, which is a specific subset because of course there's the people who never left and descendants of enslaved people who were forced to be here, but those communities where migrants came here with some choice, because sometimes economic conditions are such that it kind of feels like you don't have a choice. But I definitely see this valorization of the dominant US culture because that's what I know, that's where I was born and the devaluing of the medicine ways, the folk culture, the remedies that the grandmothers passed down, as well as that going to pay your rent, and I think that is a sad phenomenon, but one that I have a lot more compassion and understanding for now that I've gotten a little bit off my high horse and considered why these folks made that call, why they decided you know what our kids need US citizenship and English. I benefit from that every day, so I can't really be ungrateful for that gift when I know that honestly, I think it came from love. 

0:13:34 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

That reminds me of my first job that I had when I graduated from college. I was a case manager for a refugee resettlement program, and we resettled refugees from all over the world here in Tennessee, and there was very much an attitude of and this was an attitude that existed among the refugee communities an attitude of the faster you can adopt the dominant culture of this new place that you're living in, then the easier your life is going to be, and it's going to be better for your kids too, and so I see these as ways of survival and, as you say, love. People want better for the generation that comes after them. I'd love to hear your perspective as a member of the Asian diaspora who is now studying acupuncture and traditional East Asian medicine in the US. Where do you see these things like racism and anti-Asian bias and white supremacy showing up in how acupuncture is taught and practiced here in the West? 

0:14:54 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Yeah, I am so thankful, first to your alma mater, my still current school in the US. It's, if not unique, certainly remarkable in terms of being a lineage school that was founded by, and still led by, practitioners with origins in East Asia. Not all acupuncture schools are like that and I think that actually is quite beautiful and special. Acupuncture as a regulated field and profession in the US is a new phenomenon, of course. Like when immigrants came over from China, they brought their medicine with them Up until, I believe, until Dr Miriam Lee was arrested for practicing medicine without a license and then her patients showed up in droves and eventually it became legalized. The pathway to practice up until I believe, 80s and 90s was apprenticeship, and now acupuncture education in the US is masters and doctoral programs that often have price tags. If you have generational wealth, it's going to take 60 to 100 thousand dollars of that, but those of us who don't have generational wealth, that is either living, hand to mouth, but usually loans, and you know that forgiveness of student loans is still pending at the time of this recording. So that acupuncture education in the US structurally in this moment, I think, is deeply inaccessible to a lot of people. And again, this is nothing bad, reflecting on the knee family, who's school we went to. But just like the way that this has been set up is that it is, and I think many people don't know this. But if you go straight through which again I think is feasible if you either take out a bunch of loans or happen to have generational or partner wealth is an immense amount of money, tens of thousands of dollars, if not 100 thousand dollars, four years out of the workforce and during that we get intensive study. Just the rigor is really medical school like a MD guess, in terms of both the rigor and the memorization. I think that a lot of times folks outside of the profession when they see an acupuncturist who has the LAC credential, they I doubt most folks understand this person has memorized at least if they went to school in California 361 acupuncture points, indications, combinations, 83 herbal formulas, over 300 single herbs, again all of the indications, contra indications and combinations and as well as the entire musculoskeletal system, the like. We learn reading labs, we learned Western physical assessment. It is ridiculously, I mean that's I'm at the point where I've been there for four years so I feel a little bit burnt out. So it is ridiculously thorough and intense, and so that acupuncture education system is personally not speaking for us under anyone. I I think it is in need of a lot of change to make it more accessible, because there's so many people who would be amazing clinicians, amazing healers, who understandably can afford to take on that much debt and that as I'm out of the workforce. 

The light, the solution, and actually I'm going to correct myself the, because yin and yang are both beautiful. So the darkness, the solution, and the light that is a counterpoint to the intense intellectual rigor and practice. Rigor is the nada protocol, so a five point protocol that is incredibly effective and has roots in freedom with the young lords in the black panthers outside of California in a lot of places you can become an acude detox specialist. So for folks who are like I, really like this, I think I might want to do this I really recommend taking the acude detox specialist certification training process. It is much more affordable, incredibly effective. For me, as a person with a history of my lineage not holding on to our ancient medicine, it makes sense for me my particular path to be at this school founded by a Chinese lineage and go really deep with it. I don't think that's reasonable for a lot of people who would be amazing acupuncturists who can do the nada protocol, but again in California, legally only people who have done the particular California. 

0:20:40 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Right, every, every, every state is a little bit different. Yeah, not a not as great, and it's a great entry point into acupuncture. Will put a link to that in a show notes so that people can see. But yeah, I mean you're, you're really identifying already, just in the, in the education and the cost of the education, a barrier for so many people to even become educated to practice this medicine. And I, you know I want to talk about other issues that face the Asian diaspora community at large. You identify things like gentrification, violence and displacement, and so you know, what do you see as the are some of the connections between the practice of acupuncture in the West and these larger community wide problems? 

0:21:31 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Hmm, so I, in my lived experience and body, what always comes up for me is a deep sense of betrayal is a weird word, but it is what comes up for me semantically when I see acupuncturists or other folks who are making a living professionally off of the realities that my ancestors felt, that they had to give up in order for the children to survive. When I see folks who are professionally doing this work but are silent about anti Asian racism when the I don't recall the exact statistic, but it was something absurd like 300% of an increase in anti Asian violence during the pandemic. And that's the controlling images, which is what Patricia Hill Collins talks about, the stereotypical racial images. In the cultural vernacular. The one of the key images of East Asian people is a yellow peril of virus, unclean. And even the phrase like snake oil, which is a very bad, like fake medicine, was had to do with scammers trying to copy traditional medicine doctors who do use snake products, because a lot of indigenous cultures know that not just the glance but also the bird or any of these wonderful substances of the natural world can be healing. So when I saw during the pandemic, I really felt an emotional and physiological sense of betrayal and anger at some acupuncturists and it wasn't everybody, but it really hit me when there were folks, particularly white acupuncturists, who didn't have loved ones they were afraid of and I don't know, maybe if they were married into an Asian family. But I was concerned about my community members, my elders in Chinatown at the temple walking down the street and getting beaten up and I saw ads for make six figures as an acupuncturist here's how you can attract more clients. I felt so viscerally furious at the focus on. It felt extractive, it felt like an act of okay, of taking that okay. You got the training in these beautiful medicine ways that again my ancestors felt they had to give up because they couldn't be whole, that they had to assimilate, and then you want to make a lot of money out of it while the people, the elders here, are at risk of being harmed just for something they can't change, for bodies that look like the elders who preserved this, like there's no way to take away that this is a medicine that comes from the continent of Asia and here, chinatown, where my temple is. 

During the pandemic, the, I think, the landlords raised the prices and there was also a lot of decrease in like support for the businesses. So Chinatown, which is this rich multi-ethnic community, there's actually a lot of black and brown communities and seniors who come from not just China but also Vietnam and Cambodia, but a lot of Asian elders where the median income, I think, is something like $17,000 a year really low where the businesses were closing a lot of actually like herb shops and like acupuncture places run by Asian folks had to leave. I mean, I sum went to the San Gabriel Valley, but now the Chinatown that I go to, nowadays, in 2023, there's no grocery store. There is no grocery store for elders to go and get their food and there's no laundromat and most of the elders are renters. And so the beautiful thing is that the Chinatown community for equitable development, cedla, has organized produce and grocery deliveries for elders and a lot of tenants rights organizing, because there's at least one building I know of where the elevator was broken for 45 days, and these are elders who are not necessarily mobile, and so the there are all of these serious community issues facing my. My community is the folks who actually look like the founders of our school, asian people who have the beautiful almond eyes and the skin tone and who, honestly, probably know a lot of these remedies. They probably most of those folks, those elders, where the cutest, most practical outfits they've always got a scarf and like walkable shoes and a little vest, like they are living memory keepers. 

But I am. I want to be very clear that I am not against folks who don't have Chinese ancestry doing Chinese medicine. That is reductive and not what I mean. But there is a reciprocity that I feel is actually kind of baked into Chinese medicine in the flow of Chi, the life force, energy cultures called Prana or a she in Yoruba land, and we're recycling through us and our bodies in Chinese medical theory. We reflect the macrocosm we have summer and winter in our kidneys and heart. We are in relationship. The herbs are guiding our body how to, how to heal, and all of this relationality and flow. 

And what really disturbs me in Chinese medicine and even in the like crystal roller business which is Gua Sha, is an extractive relationship where there's not a return of resources, where there's not a showing up but a just a taking this medicine, this remedy, I can sell this, I can make a profit on this, I'm going to take it and leave and then make my business and leave the people who who come into this world wearing a face that they can't take off and are perpetually seen as foreigners. And that is the way that the US constructs Asian people is the yellow peril, the perpetual foreigner, the alien, and so the the frustration for me is the extraction, and the remedy for me is, like our current CEO, I'm not sure what role Dr Robert Hoffman has, but Dr Robert Hoffman, who is a leader at your son I've actually really seen show up for our communities and there are a lot of folks we have seen showing up. 

0:29:26 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

So those are the yes, the counterpoints, yes, and you know we as practitioners, we talk about the energetic exchange on an individual level between practitioner patient, and what I hear you saying is that we can't forget that that exchange needs to happen on a community level to. I think that's something that all of us who who practice and benefit from this medicine can try to keep in mind that this there is a community level reciprocity that we need to engage in as well. Yeah, I really just love hearing that perspective, and this also gets into the topic of Orientalism, which I'd like to talk about. What, what is Orientalism and how is it harmful? 

0:30:14 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

So that is a that's a good one and a deep one. So I want to shout out Tyler fan, phd, who has written about acupuncture in the US and how it relates to Orientalism, and so his body of work is really important, and I want to fight that. 

0:30:34 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Yeah, we'll link. We'll link to Tyler's work in the show notes, because I'm familiar with his work as well. 

0:30:41 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

So that's a way that I'm trying to be reciprocal and not pretend I know, all of this organically. 

I'm so thankful for those who have offered their studies. So Orientalism has its roots in scholar Edward Said, who was actually Palestinian, and he was writing in his 1978 book about the relationship between the West. And for this construct, this way of seeing the world, the West means basically Western Europe and the US, even though from here in the US, from California, western Europe is to my east. But this is a way of thinking that positions like Western Europe as the center, because that was the attitude of intellectuals for for hundreds of years. 

So if you were in, say, france, then China was to the east and seen as East earn, and even we call it like Eastern medicine, still so Oriental if you speak Portuguese or Spanish and many of these language like that means East, and so this has to do with power, right power and money, which is a lot of times what it does come to. So the way that these cultures that had empires the French Empire, portuguese Empire and so forth saw the places that were to the east of them were I had a lot to do with domination and the way that Said says it is rather than an intention to understand there's this effort to control, manipulate, even to incorporate manifestly different, alternative or novel world. So basically, in plain language, I see that, as the East is different and to be controlled, there's this difference, this oh, what's that thing that they do over there that connects to that idea of like the perpetual foreigner, the alien, that where are you from? That you couldn't be here. It couldn't be. I was born in San Diego, but, as many of my friends and loved ones who actually look more phenotypically Asian, as I mentioned, I am biracial, so I actually often get asked what are you? Because people can't place me, but people, and so I think that's one of the reasons who are perceived as Asian are often asked where are you from? Not here, but where are you really from? So that other and that different and you are not from here. 

That Orientalism results in marginalization of people from and I think it's you know West Asia as well, because Edward Said was talking about Palestine, so Middle East even as a term that can be not chosen by my loved ones who are from there so what the? That's Asia. So he was thinking of Western Asia and Palestine, and how people were talking about Palestine, that language, and in the US it has a lot to do with seeing if you, my grandmother, actually had these. My white grandmother had China, right, so porcelain. So this, oh, this is a beautiful thing that came from far away. And I think it's important to note that Orientalism, like any of these systems of harm, is not primarily Howard by individual malice. So grandmother Verna bless her heart, she's on the other side now I don't think had any malicious bias against Asian people. That was conscious. 

But the understanding that I actually find very helpful and that is backed up by the research is that bias and structures of harm that happened through policy and just individual acts of how we talk to each other. These are not usually the way that they are depicted for children when we first learn about harm, like I remember seeing in movies and TV shows, oh, there's the good guys and the bad guys, and the bad guys are evil and they want to do something bad to hurt people. So often when we think about Orientalism, anti-blackness, homophobia et cetera, there can be this assumption that oh, if I have implicit bias then I'm bad. If I've ever said something that was harmful by accident, I'm bad, and that tends to lead people into a place of shame, which we know corresponds to a lot of adverse childhood experiences, which tends to be correlated with addiction and depression and not constructive action, not generative change. So if anyone listening has ever said or done something that was not the most respectful of Asian people, we are all. 

My perspective from Africana Studies, research and lived experience and organizing is that we are all in this soup together. 

So I am part of Orientalism and anti-blackness in all of these structures because they're social structures and social means people. 

So we're all people-ing together imperfectly, and so these structures of power and the gentrification and displacement of Chinatown even are not usually people being the bad guys and tending to inflict harm, but rather not being conscious and continuing to do what we know. 

And the good news is that then there is all this possibility for change, because we can know better, do better without beating ourselves up about it, and notice, oh wow, maybe I'm not going to ask where are you from or where are you really from, and maybe I'll think about reading some of Tyler's fan's work. There is a way that the systemic look at Orientalism or any of these structures can actually breathe really freeing. It can get really overwhelming, and I want to name that especially because we are so saturated with news. But the fact that it's so old, that Orientalism and all these systems of power have been going on for literal centuries, also means that we aren't expected to individually solve it all, and that, because it's a social phenomenon, that happens because a lot of people are accidentally still doing what they know. All of us can change it. All of us can make little efforts that are like little needles. 

0:38:09 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Yes, that make people healthy. What a great analogy. That make people healthy, yeah, a healthy body a little bit happier a little bit healthier. 

Yeah, I think that narrative of the bad guy who wants to do harm is so attractive because it's so simple and then you just need a hero to vanquish the bad guy and then everything's fine. And it's so much more complicated and difficult to do the actual work of addressing these harms and trying to correct them, because it requires cooperation and so much introspection and a willingness to say I was wrong and I'm going to try to do better next time. And even when I try to do better, I'm still going to be wrong sometimes. And yeah, there's a big, massive structure that is upholding these systems of oppression and I'm only one person. But it is like acupuncture One point or one herb does something and then a whole herbal formula or a whole prescription of acupuncture points is so incredibly powerful. And that's how we humans can be in community as well. 

0:39:19 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Yes. 

And I love, even in the community acupuncture model that you go to your clinic or in these amazing community acupuncture clinics all over, that I even think not just the acupuncturist but everybody who's in an armchair or recliner is also helping the community heal. Like in Lisa Rehedler's books on community acupuncture, they talk about community chi, community energy. So even just every time someone sits down and gets their needles and rests, it's like you help make the person next to you feel safer because they're not alone, they're getting some treatment and you're not the only one who's taking time for yourself and together. That whole room, everybody resting and letting their body remember how to be whole together, is making the world a little more sweet, a little more cool, a little more whole, and it makes a difference. 

0:40:21 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

It's so true. I see it every day in my clinic. It's so true. Well, before we wrap up, I want to talk about your new book. It is called Elemental Healing a five element path for ancestor connection, balanced energy and aligned life, and I just picked up my copy and I am in the fire chapter. I love that you started with fire, because that's the phase of love. So what inspired you to write this book? 

0:40:55 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

So I was actually really missing Taiwan During the pandemic. I didn't go back I actually haven't gone back to Taiwan in five years now and I was feeling frustrated with acupuncture school. I was in more of my pain I'm not in that same place now about how expensive and challenging it has been for me to find these medicines, and it's not the same difficulty for everybody. I have it easier than some folks, and then also folks who don't have the kind of trauma that my lineage has around anti-Asian racism, don't have that particular hurdle that I come up against, and so I was feeling a lot of the more challenging emotional experiences we get to have as humans, and I think that alchemy and transformation is a really powerful metaphor that the elements are always changing into each other, and so the alchemy there was thinking okay, what can I do? I can't personally change a lot of the things I'm frustrated about, but what I can do is write, and I come from writers my grandmother, grandma Su-Chen Lin-Li, who spoke those four languages and I think she also spoke French or something. 

0:42:27 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

She's an amazing woman, amazing woman. 

0:42:30 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

She published her own memoir, so I think in English and maybe also in Japanese. 

So, in honor, I was just so grateful for the gift of language the ability to write in English, which comes from their choice, and so that felt like something I could do to deal with the frustration and stuff I was feeling about things I couldn't change, and this also is because of what I mentioned earlier, that not everyone can afford to go to acupuncture school. 

But there is actually a lot of wisdom and kitchen remedies and acupressure and just little ways of making life a little sweeter and a less hard that actually we can do. And so when I was in school it's so thorough and I wasn't I'm not yet in clinic, but I was thinking about all my loved ones who aren't gonna go to acupuncture school but if, with their copy of the book, they can do a little acupressure, they can make a remedy for a cold and they can learn about the seasons and follow some of those patterns and their life can be a little sweeter, a little less hard. And so I wanted to make all of this amazing knowledge accessible to my communities now and not whenever I finish this long program, also because I won't be able to needle everybody, and this book can go beyond where I'm gonna go. 

0:44:09 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

That's right. That's right. It's really a wonderful book. You have some beautiful meditations in there as well that I wanna mention, and it really is. You say in the introduction you think of it like a care package from a dear friend, and it does really feel like that. It is something that I think that anyone who's interested in this medicine can get something from, can learn something from. You, can learn more about the medicine and you can learn practices that you can use. So, yes, it's a beautiful book. So you have so many offerings. You have your book in addition to your book, and we'll link to your book in the show notes so people can buy it. You also offer healing services. You have a great website and a newsletter, so tell folks how they can keep up with you and work with you. 

0:45:09 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Thank you. So I am so thankful that I get to connect with everybody here. I have a website and that's probably the. I think of it actually as a little clearing, because the internet for me can feel like a wild honking city full of cacophony and distractions. So I tried to design my website as a little grotto where people can come and my stuff is in a little altar. So there's a newsletter that has updates on upcoming events in this season of summer, so fire time. I am doing some virtual and more in-person events that are so exciting. I try to make them sliding scale or donation based as much as possible, and the yeah, the great blessing is that my meditations are on Insight Timer and those are free, so you can find some sweet little meditations on Insight Timer, and I'm also always happy to refer people out, because I'm so fortunate to know so many amazing folks. If you need something and I don't have it, I probably know someone who does. So. 

0:46:28 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

I love that. I love that it takes a whole community to do healing. Well, we will link to everything in the show notes so that people can easily find you and some of these other folks that you refer to and some of the work that you refer to. Camellia, this conversation has just been so generous and enlightening. I just can't thank you enough for joining me today. It's been wonderful talking with you. 

0:46:59 - 李道玲 Camellia Dao-Ling McDermott Lee

Thank you Likewise. I hope everybody remembers that you are Starlight. 

0:47:04 - Alexa Bradley Hulsey

Love that. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Notes From your Acupuncturist. If you liked what you heard, please follow this show, leave a rating or review or just tell someone about it. And if you want to join the conversation, you can subscribe to Notes From your Acupuncturist on Substack, where you can comment, ask questions, participate in discussion threads, watch videos and read more of my reflections on acupuncture and healing. Huge thanks, as always, to our paid subscribers for helping keep this work sustainable. You too can become a paid subscriber for just a few dollars a month. Just head over to substackcom and search Notes From your Acupuncturist or click the link in the show notes. Until next time. This is Alexa Bradley-Hulsey, your acupuncturist, signing off with love and gratitude. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page