Mindfulness in Motion: Discovering Vitality with Dr. Jacques MoraMarco and Dr. Yun Kim

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

A show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today I am joined by Dr. Maura Marco and Dr. Kim. Dr. Maura Marco is a true pioneer, as he is one of the first licensed acupuncturists in California. And he is a true student of healing traditions. And Dr. Kim is the founder of Empress Wellness. And she blends ancient healing with modern medicine and clinical care. And for over 20 years, she's been a practitioner of meditation. So we're going to be talking to them about their passions and everything that they're up to and gonna be up to, and how they're helping the world become a better place with healing. So thank you both for joining me today. Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:31

So um as you um uh uh introduced to the to the audience, I am a licensed acupuncturist, doctor of East Asian medicine, and um a uh practitioner of mindful meditation, Sun Tai Chi, qi gong. Um these these are my my my passions. And so very, very happy to have collaborated with Dr. Mora Marco on our book, Walking Your Way to Vitality, Integrating Walking, Breath Work, and Mindfulness into Your Daily Exercise. And um, this this book encompasses um some really simple but powerful practices to improve your health, um, improve your um quality of life, improve your mental health. And so we're very, very excited to um talk to you about our book.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yes, thank you. Uh Jacques Moormarco. I'm also a doctor of East Asian medicine. I've been in practice for half a century, 50 years now, and uh was one of the pioneers early days uh practicing this medicine in California. I studied in Asia and throughout my studies were involved in the studies of breath work, meditation, yogic practices, and martial arts. So most of my work was done pioneering some of these practices in the early 80s with the HIV AIDS patients. And that's where I saw the effects of these type of practices and also what inspired me to further research and teach and share these experiences that I had during the time of my work with the AIDS patients.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

Yeah. And for listeners who might not think breath work is real, you know, uh a lot of people use it, you know, even the military uses it. So breath work is uh a really powerful tool.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Yes, absolutely. And you uh your listeners might not know, many people actually don't know that acupuncture is a mandated benefit for veterans. Um and so at the West LA VA, where uh Dr. Mooremarco and I have been volunteering, um, acupuncture is offered to veterans for PTSD. They offer Thai chi classes, mindfulness, health coaching. And so the VA has really embraced this idea of um integrated medicine. So bring the best of Western medicine and eastern medicine. And these practices that we present in our book come from the Eastern tradition.

SPEAKER_03 4:26

Absolutely. And when I was in massage therapy school, we did a lot with acupuncture as well. And speaking of acupuncture, Dr. Mauramarco, you you took the first acupuncture license exam in California. So talk about what that experience was like. And uh, did you know that you were becoming part of history doing so?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Well, I don't, yeah, I certainly did not think I would become part of history, and and I certainly did not project 50 years into the future how integrated and how mainstream it has become, you know. So when I took that first exam after studying with my uh teacher and mentor, who was a Korean monastically trained acupuncturist, he had trained during the time where you know Korea was uh under the Japanese uh occupation and acupuncture was banned. So it was just taught in the monasteries there in northern what is now considered North Korea. So he had learned a very traditional form of acupuncture, predating what is the more modern version out of China, uh post-Mao Zhetung post-1947. So I was very lucky to have studied with him, and that also gave me the opportunity uh after my studies at Loyola University to go deeper into this field and uh took the exam, then moved back to Europe, where I continued on some of my studies in France while I was working in England. So I did all that and returned to the United States in 1980 and uh pursued my career here. Also, I was able to teach at a few different of the early acupuncture colleges in California, and I was a dean of uh the Empress College for the last uh 17 years. Um, so so that's that's in a nutshell uh my my uh career in the this field. But what I really saw, the effects of acupuncture and the effects of these breeding practices and and qigong and all the combination of the therapies that we could offer to AIDS patients early on when there was absolutely no type of therapy offered to them, and they had a life expectancy of 18 months. And I definitely saw the effects, and I saw how some of those patients were able to live long enough, that means at least 10 years, to be able to take the you know, the medication that came about into the mid-90s, so it's already 30 years that they've had those types of combinations, but prior to that, it was not uh uh it was a pretty grim outlook, you know, 18 months life expectancy.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

Well, you both come from strong tai chi lineages. So talk about how lineage shapes the way that you both practice and teach.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yeah, so uh main lineage is uh Sun Tai Chi, is uh one of the five uh families of tai chi. Uh, the most uh ancient one is the Chen style of tai chi that comes from the Chen village in in China, and then there's the Yang school, is the Wu school, and then there's the Wuha school that's very, very small, and then uh Sun Lutang is the last formal school of tai chi that was uh developed about a little bit over a hundred years ago, about 1920. So it's a really uh an amazing style, and I was very fortunate having studied other styles of tai chi and martial arts for many decades, I was very fortunate 30 years ago to um to meet the granddaughter of the founder. She was already in her late 70s, and I was able to study with her for about 10 years. So I would travel to China twice a year for a couple of weeks at a time and perfect my uh Tai Chi with her. So it's uh basically two lineages removed from the founder, so very close to the source. And Sun Lutang was one of the great Chinese um teachers of uh Ba Gwa, which is another style that we incorporated in our book for the meditative and longevity aspects, and uh Xingy, which is uh one of the older Chinese martial arts that uh was developed uh about uh over a thousand years ago by a great uh Chinese war general and very direct form of martial arts. So all that uh, of course, evolved in the 1920s and became more health and therapeutic. So very few of the Tai Chi practitioners now, I would say less than 1% of the people that practice tai Chi do it the uh with the application of the martial application. 99% is more for health. However, having studied with uh with this lineage, it's definitely uh both, and you derive the most out of your practice once you know all the components and the details of each of the Tai Chi movements and postures, which are very interesting because some of them were also derived from therapeutic movements based on the ancient uh healing arts, uh, even discovered in this tomb in 1973 called the Mawang Due tomb, which had some specific um exercises uh that were printed in this fabric with 40 different types of exercises. Some of those were were for therapeutic use, and then they became martial use in the in the Shaolin temple around the year 600. So that's so they had different evolutions of these therapeutic exercises for health, and then they had a martial component, and then they came back to the health component just about the last hundred years.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

There's um a tremendous amount of research now uh validating uh the efficacy of Tai Chi for very various conditions, including arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, wound healing, cancer support, um, cognitive enhancement, um, and on and on and on. So it's just an incredible, incredible therapy. I do have a daily, daily tai chi practice, and uh it's um it's wonderful and it's all-encompassing, all-encompassing. I am uh 53, so I have gone through paramenopause, and they're debilitating effects um for for women who go through menopause. And I had had very little little uh symptoms because I did tai chi every single day. And uh research is also saying that tai chi is good for bone density. So instead of lifting, um one can do tai chi to um uh to strengthen bone density.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Well, I definitely appreciate uh you giving that tidbit to my listeners. And and speaking of that, uh Dr. Kim, you you have studied with the uh some of the world's most respect respected mindfulness teachers. So talk about how meditation shapes the way that you approach medicine.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

It's it's everything. Uh mindfulness is is such powerful medicine. Um so one of the inspirations um was uh Tik Nat Han, who was a great um Vietnamese monk and peace activist, and he founded a monastery here in California called Deer Park Monastery, a wonderful, wonderful place. And I had the honor about 20 years ago of doing a retreat with him, and uh his signature teaching was mindful walking. So we did mindful walking from the meditation hall to a hill nearby, and it was the most incredible, peaceful experience. I can still remember doing that. We did this this mindful walk in silence, and mindful walking is um very simple. The instructions are very simple. It um simply bringing your full attention to the present moment, to the body, to the breath as you walk. He has a he had has a great book called Uh Peace with Every Step. So with every step you can say, you know, peaceful, um, calm, centered, anywhere that that resonates with you. And uh instead of ruminating about the past or worrying about the future, we are simply here now doing the mindful meditation walk. And um, so once one uh trains in this way, bring the mind to the present moment, we can bring this um state of being to doing the laundry, um taking care of our kids, um cleaning. So any kind of sort of mundane activity that we do in our daily lives can actually bring us a lot of joy when we're mindful. And so this is something that I um practice myself, and I teach to all my patients this concept of of being right here, right now, and really enjoying our lives, really being present for our lives and all the ups and downs of life. Um, and so and that's that is very powerful medicine. And now research is saying that it really is powerful medicine, incredible health effects of of mindful, um being mindful and in the walks that that we present, that is the secret sauce, the mindful, bringing mindfulness into this movement, into these walks.

SPEAKER_03 14:37

Well, for listeners who are new to East Asian medicine, what are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about acupuncture and holistic healing?

SPEAKER_01 14:47

Well, I think misconception one is that uh you know this is uh not based on there's no science behind it. This is just based just on faith or like faith healing, and uh, you know, they they're inserting these needles, and and uh, you know, we we we don't when we don't see these acupuncture points, we don't see this meridian. And and I I want to to give you an analogy. Many, many months ago, I was at a conference in uh France, and this great uh doctor, his name was Musa, who was a medical doctor, but he also had a PhD in astrophysics, superbly brilliant uh physician. And he said to me, Well, you know, the the acupuncture meridians are just like the lines you see in maps, or you used to see maps in airplanes where you would see the traveling of the airplane. But if you look up in the sky, there is no plane that is there all the time. However, every so often that plane goes through that, and that is the energetic pathway. So a lot of people are, you know, are not able to comprehend or be or or grasp the idea that there is other systems in the body besides the nervous system, besides the circulatory system, besides the lymphatic system. So this is what we call now the bioenergetic system. And this is uh really the cutting edge of some of the understanding how the biofield works. It's a cutting edge how the brain actually developed. The brain developed from the ectoderm layers and the skin developed from the same layers. So there's a direct correlation between the brain or the nervous system and the skin, and that's what some of these uh cutting-edge embryological developments that have been researched by science are actually proving that this has some really deep, deep root into this whole embryogenesis, and therefore it has this effect where observed empirically by observation. They could see, oh yes, these uh points work for XYZ, but now we can prove it scientifically. Yes, it affects this area of the prefrontal cortex, yes, it affects this area of the brainstem, or it does affect the right and left hemisphere. Even when you walk, you're engaging the right and left hemisphere, and you're also affecting that big cable that is called the corpus collossum. It's like a big cable that connects the right and left side of our brain. So that's all these effects that are coming to play when you do the acupuncture, when you do the walking, when you do some of these meditative movements. So hopefully that more and more research validates more and more uh usage of this medicine.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

And um, you know, some people sort of dismiss acupuncture and and say that um it's all placebo, but I want to reclaim that word because placebo is the bound the body's natural way of healing. And with East Asian medicine, we can tap into that. The body is very, very powerful, the mind is very, very powerful. So with acupuncture, herbal medicine, dietetics, mindfulness, movement therapy like qigong and tai chi, we can heal naturally. And so um, you know, I want I'm gonna we claim that word. And also there's veterinary acupuncture, the Marco always.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, yeah. So so when I don't think there's much uh yeah, when when people say, oh, acupuncture is placebo, I say, well, it works on cats, it works on dogs, even works on horse racehorses, it works so well on hairstro horse races that in Florida they actually forbid the horse from getting acupuncture before the race because they found out that well, this horse gets some type of energetic boost, even though it doesn't get injected by anything, just the stimulation of some specific points in the horse will help the horse run faster. So it's very, very interesting. And yes, there are meridian charts and points for the horse, there are meridian charts and points for the cat, and there are meridian points and charts for dogs and and and uh bovine animals, the buffalo and the cow and so on and so forth. So very, very interesting.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Well, let's talk about your guys' book. Uh uh, you know, talk to the listeners about why you decide to write it, what you expect the readers to take away from it when they read it, and where can we get it?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, I think the one thing we wanted to do is to support people's journey to wellness. How do they do that? You know, by whatever means they can do it. In this case, we just are introducing a few different styles or types of walking, one of them being the vitality walk, which is a combination of breath work and uh hand mudra position for vitality. Then we have a chapter that talks about mindfulness walk, which Dr. Yun just described. Then we have one chapter on the Tai Chi walks, which we specifically selected the cat or feline walk, which is a very specific type of transitional moves in Tai Chi, uh, rooster walk, golden rooster, which is based on a bird type movement, and then the uh bear spirit walk, which is based on the bear, the energetic of the bear, the power of the bear, but also the calmness of a bear. And then we go into the longevity walk, which is uh a um a bagwa, which is a circle type of walking pattern, which is a walking pattern that is done throughout many different cultures where they do circumbulation of a sacred site like the Portola Palace in Lhasa or even a sacred mountain like Mount Kalish in the Himalayas. And then, of course, the immunity walk, uh, which is a specific walk which also focuses on breath work. And that's one of the walks that became very popular in China for cancer support and for cancer support group, where they have it in every park in China doing this specific walk to you know to support uh individuals that are going through cancer therapy and give the immune system a boost. And that's one of the inspirations for for the book, too, when I was working with AIDS patients. Dr. Yun, where do you get the book?

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Um, you can get the books uh anywhere where books are sold. So you can get them on Amazon, Arsenal Noble, um, uh bookshop.org. Um yeah, you can get them, they're wide widely available. And I do want to mention that. Um the our book has QR codes where if you take a picture, scan the QR code, it will bring you to a video uh with models demonstrating the mo the the walks in each of the chapters.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

And also it has an audio version.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

There's an audio version, there's a Kindle, there's a spiral bound. So there's some something for everyone.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

Absolutely. And Dr. Kim, let's talk about your Emperor's Wellness Company. Talk about what inspired you to found the company and what problem were you hoping to solve with Emperor's Wellness.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Yes, thank well, thank you for asking. So really our mission is to promote health and vitality through practices in East Asian medicine. So that's through these walks, Tai Chi and Qigong, mindful meditation, acupuncture, and herbs. And so that is my vision for this organization. And our book is a major, major part of that mission. You know, people are so sedentary these days, at least uh in in Los Angeles. We drive to work and then we sit all day in our offices, on our computers and our phones. We drive back and then we sit and probably you know watch movies or Netflix. And so, you know, the research says that being sedentary is a risk factor for so many serious diseases. Um, and our medicine, and you know this because you've been in the healing field, that prevention is the highest form of medicine. You want to you want to maintain health, you want to prevent. And one of the pillars for health is is movement. And so walking is so important because it's also very safe and almost everyone can do it. It's very accessible. You don't need special equipment, you don't need to join an expensive gym. You can you can do it anywhere. You can do it in your home, you can do it at the park, you can walk around your house. And we wanted to bring these principles from East Asian medicine where you can really maximize the health benefits of walking. So that's that's our intent.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

Well, after decades in this field, talk about the changes that you've seen, good and bad, how Western culture embraces Eastern culture.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

I think that the evolution has been very positive, you know, from those early years. Dr. Moramarco um has been there since the beginning of the 70s, and and my parents as well. Um and uh, you know, back then uh acupuncture in East Asian medicine was considered very alternative, it was very considered counterculture. And now we're at the VA, the Department of Defense in the United States funds acupuncture um research and projects. And as I said, it's a mandated benefit for veterans. And so the evolution has been tremendous. There's so much good research out there.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Um in the early days, it it was so cutting-edge that organizations like the Black Panthers, they they they were one of the very first organizations that embraced this and actually had the very first uh research project at the the Lincoln Hospital in New York. And they used to use it for uh different drug addiction and as a support mechanism to get people off the drugs with this very specific acupuncture called auricular acupuncture, that there's a specific points down in the ear. So it was really uh very much, you know, not mainstream. It was they they were radical and they they were doing something that was beyond what was imagined at the time, something that was mainstream.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yeah, that's very interesting uh history of East Asian medicine that many people don't know. That the the Black Panthers, they were um really ahead of their their time in bringing Eastern medicine uh into the United States. They went to Montreal to train and they came back and they set up this whole detox center in in the Bronx and used acupuncture to to heal and to bring wellness to um black and brown communities.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

Well, for someone listening who is looking to begin their journey in mindfulness and holistic healing, where where would you recommend they start?

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Um there uh is um a podcast called Cheological. It's a it's a wonderful podcast um with Michael Max, and he has all the giants of um East Asian medicine um talking about their work and their philosophy. And Dr. Moore Marco was was interviewed on that on that podcast. So I think that's a very good good place to start.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah, and and then you know, you you can always join uh a tai Chi group uh at the senior centers they have them, at the Y they have them, at your local community centers that would have a Tai Chi group. That's a good way to start. Uh a good way to to start in in uh some mind-body practices.

SPEAKER_03 28:48

What tell us about any upcoming projects that you guys are working on that listeners need to be aware of?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Well, we're looking at our our our next project, and which will be on longevity with um East Asian uh strategies and principles.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yes, the the the longevity factor is very interesting because uh when we're talking about prevention in the Eastern view, the medicine, there has the highest physician was the physician that had no patient. He was the very highest because he was able to prevent disease. He was able to teach him certain specific methods, certain ways of living with the environment, being in harmony with the season. And by doing so, he was able to really engage into this whole harmony between the cosmos or the outer to the inner, so that you would feel yourself balanced. Within the outside of the body, there are these elemental visions of these five elements in the Eastern thoughts. So you have fire, you have earth, you have metal, you have water or air and uh wood or the creative energy of spring. So if you can harmonize and be in balance and be in harmony with your with your activities, even with your diet. So in in our book, we talk a little bit about how to eat according to the seasons. So, you know, what you would eat in a very cold climate in wintertime would be different than what you would eat in a summertime in a tropical climate. So all those are key components. And obviously, in the future, we will try and get more exposure to some of these ideas that were pretty much a niche for people that were in alternative medicine, which then became uh alternative to complementary, and now it's become integrative. So the evolution was alternative medicine to complementary medicine, and now it's called integrative medicine. And some of the recent uh cancer centers, the big cancer centers like Anderson Cancer Center and the Cancer Centers of America, the City of Hope, the slunk catering in New York, they integrate all these modalities for cancer support. Not that it will replace some of the uh the therapies that are doomed but they can enhance and maximize the effect with these types of uh uh modalities integrated. So it's really becoming integrative medicine and all these modalities that are in this eastern tradition from uh the bodywork, too. You know, the all the the that's one of the branches of uh eastern medicine is uh bod or trina, ama, shiatsu, all those. Then you have the moving therapies like qigong, tai chi, yoga, and then you have the dietetics, then you have the herbal medicine, and then you have also the acupuncture, uh, acupuncture, and also another art called moxabushan, which is a heating up of very specific acupuncture point with this herb, uh mugwort type herb that would stimulate the acupuncture points with this heat factor, which interesting enough, research showed that this particular herb uh has a specific heating property at a very specific frequency that helps the immune system, that helps the white blood cells, that helps the T helper cells, which are key components of the immune system. So all these therapies that that uh we see uh and that have had uh thousands of years of clinical experience are now becoming validated with the Western scientific research, the modern Western scientific research, because in the past they always had uh empirical observation. By empirical observation, they were able to validate their uh their choice of points or herbs or formula.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

But also, listeners can keep up with everything that you two are gonna be up with up to, so at your contact info, any websites or anything.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

So the We have an uh Instagram page is it's um walking your way to vitality. Um Emperor's Wellness also, and you can reach Dr. Moore Marco at sun taichi.com. Sun as an S U N T A I C H I dot com.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

All right, well, close us out with some final thoughts, maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on. Uh any final thoughts you that you guys might have for the listeners?

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Curtis, just the first step is just start now. There's no better time than now. Start with the first step, start with a commitment. If it's a one-week commitment, do one of the practices and see the effect. Don't take our word for it, but feel it, observe it, and benefit from this to enhance your health, your vitality, your well-being, and your everyday existence.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah. And I want to emphasize the importance of a daily practice. Um, and so even if it's for five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes, um, try to do one of these uh practices every single day. And uh the effects are cumulative and um, you know, the results will be really wonderful. But it's a lifelong, it's a lifelong commitment. It's you know, it's not 30 days and you'll get a six-pack. No, that's not that's not what we're about. It's really about daily practice um making small changes every day um for our um our longevity.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

And speaking of that, I just want to let you guys know you you brought back so many memories when you talk about tween all and all those different uh terms that I recognize going going uh through massage therapy. I practice Swedish massage. So you guys brought back so many memories about those those different terms. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

My work is is wonderful, wonderful. I recommend to all my patients it.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

Yes, and I recommend, ladies and gentlemen, you visit sun.chi.com and pick up Dr. Marrow Morco and Dr. Kim's book and you know take take advantage of of the practices that they have in the book and follow, rate, review, and and share this episode to as many people as possible. And uh encourage them to pick up the book and take advantage of these uh wellness practices as well. And also go to www.curveball337.com for all things living the dream, and please share that website and the show to everybody that you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Dr. Mora Marco and Dr. Dr. Kim, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me. Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dreams.