“Finding balance at Barefoot Living Arts”
Download the full transcript: P5P Podcast – Dr. Mark Romano Transcript
[00:00:01] [DE] Welcome to the next edition of P5 protocols. I am lucky to be here with Mark Romano who is the founder of Barefoot Living Arts which is a unique studio and place of treatment in Fairfield Connecticut. And I’ve known Mark for 10 years initially as a patient, and he’s become a good friend, but he’s also been a guide, a mentor and what I would call a sage of wisdom; and, he’s gotten me through some very difficult times with incredible equanimity. So, with that I’d like to welcome you.
[00:00:49] [MR] Thank you David. I feel the same. I think I think of you more as a brother.
[00:00:54] [DE] And so you’ll see some or hear or feel or sense some backslapping but it’s really not it’s mutual respect and a comfort. But as we’ve already interviewed several interesting people in various fields what I thought it was time for was to bring in Mark because I have rarely met someone who is that sensitive an instrument in and of themselves. And we’ll get into that. But also the concept of Barefoot Living Arts is as I’d like you to describe it but my impression and the reason that I am behind you in many ways and with you is that it is a place to put your feet and get them planted firmly on the ground and find balance, so [I would] love for you to first just talk about your evolution going pretty far back how you started and how you got here. And then we can get into what Barefoot Living Arts is and how you practice it like that.
[00:01:59] [MR] Yeah, I mean the evolution of how I practice started from I guess my beginnings. And I luckily fell into the fitness industry when it became I guess an industry in the 90s. I came out of school. I had injured myself so many times through football and other sports that I had learned to do rehab and undertake work out and take care of myself and I came out of school actually minoring in philosophy with a specialization in exercise physiology and a brand new club opened up and the next thing I knew, Personal Training became the industry and at 20 years old I was telling 50 old people what to do, which is pretty remarkable. But once Oprah got a trainer and everyone felt like they could get a trainer, which was [also] interesting. My father did not believe it was an industry because before that you know personal training was not. He was whining when are you going to get your real job when you get your next job. And from there I met a chiropractor who thought I had great interpersonal skills and he was going to give me his practice and I was going to go back to school to be a chiropractor; ends up he had pretty bad Crohn’s disease and I saw him diminishing as we worked. And from there I realized there had to be something more than just adjusting the spine so I looked in search for another venue of healthcare and I came across as through Gary Null or some book to that extent and naturopathy. So I actually enrolled in the school [Bridgeport University School of Naturopathy].
[00:03:36] [MR] Signed my letter of intent. I guess you would say paid my tuition before it ever actually met a naturopath. So, we moved while we moved to Connecticut; guess we totally jumped in. My wife got behind me and we jumped in. So, I moved from Pittsburgh to Bridgeport Connecticut. We lived in Milford but Bridgeport’s a little different. Those of you that don’t know it’s one of the more bizarre cities and diverse but difficult cities in the country right which was wasn’t the suburbs of Pittsburgh. I guess you would say the what came with me was this practical idea that I believe western Pennsylvania has this kind of like blue collar mentality. Luckily enough as I was going into naturopathic school, a place in Westport opened up called Qi Fitness and again with great synchronicity, she was actually from Pittsburgh and she hired me on the spot. So, I got to meet an amazing clientele in Westport, Connecticut, which I would never have had a chance to meet. And from there I realize that there is something that I hadn’t learned or gleaned from them growing up and I guess a blue-collar town, and the idea of like let’s get to work, let’s do this, let’s focus on something to do that creates motion, and that is why I started my naturopathic practice in Westport, because of that. But I kept movement as a major part of the evolution of health for my patients. And I found the people that were moving, and this kind of comes back to Barefoot Living Arts, were a lot easier to treat than people that came in, and had these chronic illnesses, but were not getting off the couch, had not embarked in any kind of health journey; weren’t willing to actually. Maybe they were willing to take supplements or do a few things, but they weren’t invested or they weren’t participating in their health care. So, from there I learned a system of exercise called qigong. And then there’s many kinds of Qi.
And then I was lucky enough to meet my teacher who teaches Sheng Zhen Qi Gong, which is a very rhythmical form of qigong. And that really has been a basis of my understanding of health. In naturopathic school, our teacher said If you want to know the maps… if you want to know the points, study the maps; if you want to feel the points, study qigong; so from the feeling and understanding, I learned a lot more about how to practice as a doctor; how to treat people with acupuncture; how to treat them as a naturopath. And I still use that. Those ideas are my basic premise of how to treat my patients. The qigong teaches you how to listen, how to experience another, how to really extend your feeling out, and sense what’s going on. And from that I’ve been able to understand the Chinese pulse a lot quicker than I guess I would have if I hadn’t understood the qigong that I know.
[00:07:08] [DE] So I’ll say one thing. I mean Mark can be sensitive to the point that when I was… almost 7 years ago, I was macrobiotic. I took one of my sons away and I was trying to stay with the diet be really clean and we took him up to Vermont. We’re driving back and all I had was a bag of carrots, and that and a bottle of water to drive home, and I’m driving and I start eating the carrots and eat this big bag of whatever organic carrots and my jaw is killing me. By the next day, when I come in to see Mark the next morning, he puts his three fingers on one wrist and he sees something wrong. Does your jaw ache? And, if I have a really hard workout, and I burned out my legs and his fingers go near my pulses and he says what’s going on? You know he knows every organ. It’s an amazing accomplishment of pattern recognition. So, it is, it is a feat to watch and be a part of and I mean all the time so it’s for those that are near here, it’s something you can experience and benefit from. So, let’s talk about your practice because as listeners know I like to get into not just information but how if someone comes through how you think which you’ve really gotten into and how you actually practice and how things how patients evolve as they go through your practice it’s nothing static as we discussed actually earlier today. Right?
[00:08:45] [MR] Yeah. So the evolution of my practice was. So, I started out. After I graduate from school and I thought I’d work in wellness. I thought that was an easy transition and it was already with people that were taking care of themselves. And so I opened my office in a fitness facility for some reason I thought the most important thing was to ask people the three biggest traumas in their life and they actually thought maybe broken bone from a car accident, simple or traumas that maybe I recognize… I had no idea. Some of the traumas that people would share with me that quickly made me rethink my idea of health. And I moved my office to live with a bunch of psychotherapists. But in naturopathy school I wrote my doctoral thesis on melatonin psychiatric and metastatic disorders and that when your circadian rhythm is dis-functioning, your sense of self is also not clear. And from there your immune system becomes affected and also your mental health. And the gift that qigong that I practiced taught me was it taught me how to understand my position, to be in my body, to know where I was in relation to others, in relation to the world. So a lot of my diagnostic abilities that I thank you for bringing up are I believe from that qigong, and I have some innate abilities, but that qigong reinforced that because when you know who you are, you know what you’re not, and you can listen to others a lot better. So I thought that by working with psychotherapist and people understand the mental aspect themselves, that would help me. That help buffer some of the suffering I saw with my patients. It didn’t actually necessarily happen. And I realized that just talking was sometimes not enough. So, I believe that you need to have a combination of different factors to really solidify who you are and what you need and so, Bearfoot Living Arts is actually what came of that. This sense of self being lost I believe is a big part of our trouble in society that comes out as addiction possibly, or believing that happiness is outside of us. Gabor Maté is… saying that right. I’m a big fan of his work and his positioning, and it just reinforced what I already felt and had an experience. And so. We started to do more work with people that are addicts. But as I realize, a lot of the patients I work with are looking for something outside of them to be their answer, be it work, be it diet, be it exercise, be it their job, be it their relationship, be it their children, and maybe not spending enough time with self-knowing self, and solidifying that. And as that comes up, it seems that we’re having better success when people realize that they are their center, they are their own happiness, they are their own health. We’ve talked about the great part of working with you David is that and I realize that I’ve kind of set up my life where I don’t assume order.
But if you assume chaos, it doesn’t take you very far, so you have to find that sweet spot between I guess an orderly plan, but also listening to what’s happening as a Chinese medicine doctor or practicing like as a Taoist you come in, and you need to have a plan. But you also have to listen to what the patient is asking and hopefully come to some kind of agreement. Some sweet spot. I think I was sharing with you today that I was at a meeting with some of the Sheng Zhen teachers, and we were talking about relationships and some of the teachers don’t have spouses or children, and they talk about doing this qigong and they feel very pure and very centered and they believe their job is to bring that to the world, which is probably true but what I’ve learned having three teenage daughters and an Italian wife from New Jersey is that I can be as pure, as centered as I want to be or as I think I am. But I’m only as pure and centered relative to what is going on around me, and finding that place where I can hang out in that chaos and not get lost to it. You know I mean life. Life happens… I know that you’ve had some events that weren’t planned, weren’t and. How you sort of try those… really is that is how you come back to yourself. Right and you decide what’s important to you.
[00:14:01] [DE] And so so your work with the patients. Let’s kind of do the path. OK. I work on the path of a patient. A We could do. I don’t know there’s any difference in man, woman. I’ll just you know since there’s a difference. But we to talk about what that entails. But let’s start with women since you have three teenage daughters now are close to and roughly talking about women. OK. But you know the patient comes in… a 60 year-old woman comes out and had some material health issues. Doesn’t have to be defined because you’re listening anyway; right? And you’re looking and seeing things… pattern levels. So, what are you were. A person comes in, what does that practice.
[00:14:57] [MR] Right. So what I learned is that we talk about this day also that with the age of information. With the education of this area. People come in with a knowing an idea of what they believe to be true, what they believe they need, and what they believe. You know they want to I guess get from our relationship. And so I take into account so I’ve worked more as an ally or I work more as I’m consulting them on the understanding of what health is or what their health could look like. And so if they come in with not as much. Mostly the boomers would come in with a big bag of supplements and they’d put them on my table and that have like 20 supplements, and we go through… nine times out of 10, I would try to get it down to three or four, because they were just like a shotgun approach, right. And so that was, and maybe they didn’t even think about diet. So, I guess that’s kind of a creative formula. So, I have been, I have learned that I have to be reactive to the needs of my patients. And from that I’m again balancing order and chaos and there’s a doctor. One of my mentors Dr. Gueniot, he said there’s four pillars for health. So there’s nourishment, which would be diet and sunshine, fresh air, ways of sleep, how well are you nourishing yourself. How well is this person being nourished. There’s also we could call flow or what the French would call drainage
[00:16:30] [MR] So flow. As things come in, you take, you assimilate, you take what you need, and things move out. So, a healthy system knows who they are in relation to the flow of information; energy things coming in, emotions and letting go of what they don’t need. So, that would be drainage or flow. So, I’m looking at that when I am taking the case of a patient. There is also the mental aspect of the patient more from the narrative of how they see themselves, and how they see their relation to the world, their story. And that is one of the biggest pieces that I am, I feel like especially in maybe my profession we haven’t… we’re not respecting enough. That we can get back that. And the fourth aspect would be what the French would call the terrain. But it could be your genetics, it’s your micr biome, it’s your attachment theory, like how you’ve like what you’ve come into with your family system what your family system has what you’ve inherited being that we know we would inherit gut bacteria, we have genetic particles, but we also have been learning these habits; we have these that were given to us that we might not even know. So that that’s a long term one, but that’s definitely taken in the case of the personal narrative is something that I talk to the other practitioners here that we have to understand because if someone comes in, we’ll say we live in Connecticut. [Let’s] talk about Lyme disease. There are many people that that’s their narratives. The narrative is that I am a person with Lyme disease, and they’ve set up their reactions, their responses based on this premise that something came in, happened to me, and this is a part of my story.
[00:18:15] [DE] So, but there’s also a sense of nothing I can do about it. If they’ve had it long enough, and have had it, the harder it is to train the mentality away from I’m stuck at this forever. I can move on.
[00:18:44] [MR] Well yes. I mean there are the people that will change the narrative. But the longer they have had this story in their head this is who I am. Like that I survived or I had Lyme disease and this is a part of my who I [am]. They actually can get upset. When they’re getting better. Because now who are they. They don’t have that story. So unless we replace it with a new story, unless we replace it with a new idea of who they are it’s kind of omnipresent. And I was surprised that when people felt better they would actually get cranky or people you would think it’s just like a linear path. But it doesn’t work that way all the time. So, I take these four pillars, these four positions into consideration. And this I believe gives me a basis to work with trying to find help that person find themself again, which from that place they have a chance to stay in balance. And.
[00:19:55] [DE] Yeah that’s so so. But needle’s are a regular part right. So a typical session is an hour. Yes? And what does that hour…. How much does that hour vary? I know what our hours look like it’s virtually at least half needles, and you know listening, taking pulses, needles and then we do qigong. And I don’t know how does that vary with other patients.
[00:20:21] [MR] Yeah. You know you’re working there for a while. So our relationship is more fine tuning and has a specific pattern in place. Teacher Li, my teacher, master Li Junfeng says you treat the life. So, the first part of the, of any, the beginning of any kind of treatment is there is where I’m asking how they are, how are you doing. And from there we start, you know, the story of what’s going on comes up. It’s also it’s my belief that to treat the energy or treat the qi or treat the feeling, the person, you have to talk about… it has to be in the room. So by asking how you are, and bringing up the conflicts or the concerns or the challenges then the body the emotional body comes up and you can start to feel that in the pulse, and you can help balance that, and bring it to a conclusion. So. So, I ask people how they’re doing, and we talk about their specific things; we talk about that progression; what direction they think they’re moving their pain, their imbalances and then their struggles. I take the pulses, and then the treatment, and I think the treatment is part you do… glean information by how they respond to the needles. Right… So, the needles are treatment, but they’re also giving you information on what’s going on with that person and how to further that. And then from there it kind of guides me into what organ systems are… what things are needed. You know if their energy is really low, we talk about nourishment; if their energy is very chaotic, we probably talk about their mental positioning; if it seems like it’s a deeper thing, we do talk about family systems, and like what’s going on and your sense of security and in your life. And then if it’s just a congested liver, we talk about flow. Like what are you. You know. Your habits. I like the idea of a bunch of micro habits and so make little small steps. So but with someone like you that’s already moving and it’s easy to change and easy to change your positioning and adapt, it’s, you know it’s… I think these practices teach people to have a mindset of growth and change in outlook and listening. And that’s what is really empowering to watch as a practitioner.
[00:22:52] [DE] How long is a typical patient? I think you have some people that kind of float in and out of and as we talked about this morning. You know life kind of happens and you find a lot of people you know that there’s some percentage I believe that are like me either regulars; there’s some percentage that may ebb and flow based on their life needs I assume.
[00:23:10] [MR] Yes.
[00:23:11] [DE] And I’m curious kind of distribution of your patients and in different types.
[00:23:20] [MR]Yeah. I mean so I have had some patients for I guess 15 years. I’ve had patients that was just 3 sessions – will both have a specific need it could be pain, it could be a G.I. problem, it could be… usually it’s pain if it’s that short. And then once the pain is gone. They’re gone. And then they come back when the pain is again. So, you know what people are willing to like look at her talk about her focus on. I try to meet them where they are some people who have more of a… like me and growth mindset see coming to my office as a reflective tool so they can know who… they understand what their needs are understand themselves and they can use that in day to day life. So, people come in for a tune up or for like an hour. To get in to get some information on their state and their needs and so I could see people once a week, once a month, every three months… every yeah I’ve seen…. I just saw a person yesterday I hadn’t seen in 10 years. They came back. You know they moved back and they just wanted to like they had told their story. And we just reset them. Yes. So.
[00:24:36] [DE] That was that was good. So, talk about what you’re building here at Barefoot Living Arts. We have a studio here now. When we talk about John [Dunlavey] and the team you’re building right and the different services because obviously not everyone can afford to come in and have private treatments to three times a week or even once a week. And there’s different assortment of solutions and sometimes it’s not, you’re not the guy they need at that moment. Yes. Maybe just talk about the whole solution that you’re providing here.
[00:25:13] [MR] So barefoot Living Arts. The idea is that we. I guess we take you back to your natural state. We were very grounded in our approach. We’re very well as a simple but concise. Our expertise kind of. Brings you to a place where you can focus on the task at hand. Why I picked barefoot was not because of feet, even though I think feet are important is that there were barefoot doctors in China that when their economy was crashing and their healthcare system didn’t work, Mao tried to go Western and get rid of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the people in the farmlands were not doing very well. So, they started sending out almost like PA’s of today into the farmland and teaching people to remember… so that they could remember herbs remember how to take care, how to eat. Remember some of the things that Mao tried. Mao wanted to get rid of all the past. Forget all that they knew and they almost did it; so, then they had to reset and so the barefoot was like resetting that you have to participate in your health care, and you have ways to do that. So qigong or Tai-chi that sometimes you see in the parks in China is a… it’s a way to… it’s not to get in shape or be fit. It’s a way to reconnect to yourself and also reconnect yourself in the community. It’s a communal and also physical form. So I believe that community has been shown to be an important part of health care right now. We need to feel like we’re part of something so social isolation especially in Fairfield County is problematic. So one of the big things we’re trying to create here is a sense of community non-judgmental community. The other so the practitioners that share the space with. Myself we have a cranial sacral therapist (John Dunlavey) who is also into Native American teachings. His position is very much of I guess grounding; just being with them. You feel like you slow down; you’re in the woods.
[00:27:34] [DE] You know John Dunlavey. He’s it’s he’s, he’s on the opposite side of this wall right now. But he’s this giant of a man who’s a very gentle soul. Right. And yeah I’ve when I was on his table years ago I just I don’t really remember much because if he wants to knock you out, he will do that; if you know not with his fists but with the gentle part of his hands. Yes, it’s to relax you deeply. You will be relaxed. And so you.. he adds a very dynamic element here right.
[00:28:11] [MR] Yes. John’s presence in his presence is very nourishing very grounding. And what we’re trying to do is really create a narrative where patients, we sometimes will play complementary roles based on what the patient needs. And so for someone to heal the belief is they have to be seen, heard and cared for, and only when they can experience that state and relax into it can you start to make inroads on some of the habits that are not serving them mental physical or emotional habits. And so we’re we’re talking about we talk a lot about narrative, and how we can help restructure someone’s narrative so that they are more comfortable and healthy. We also have Dr. Tanvi Ghandi. She has studied ayurvedic medicine. She’s also my abdominal massage and she’s a licensed acupuncture and she also is a doctor of nature apathy. She has a pretty popular group.
[00:29:12] [MR] She was doing a combination of Community Acupuncture with meditation and she herself has done a lot of meditation so people can feel the deep states; they come in and take a nap; they feel comfortable; they feel relaxed. There’s something to be said of when people can sleep in your space, right? They fall asleep. They like… And so that’s what we’re trying to foster is a group and also Tanvi does a nice job of that.
[00:29:39] [DE] It’s just one side. I give up on yoga when I moved up to Connecticut almost 15 years ago, because I kept looking for places that did shivasana at the end, which to me, there was almost no value to all of that movement if I didn’t have 10 or 15 minutes to assimilate it, which is what a lot of what this class just focuses on.
[00:30:00] [MR] Right. Yeah the movements take you into this state right. Yoga means union sovereignty, moving until you let go and drop into that deep state of Delta or whatever alpha, theta, delta where your brain just calms down. Then maybe you are missing the point. So here we have qigong classes where we’re going to start having yoga for recovery classes. We have some we have rescue recovery which is a Buddhist form of AA that’s starting to build. We have different age groups coming in with that. We have a psycho therapist who does yoga and reiki Halley Ceglia Terrell. I’m sorry she just got married. So yeah. But it’s based on the idea that this is a place where people have come a respite where they feel safe they can relax and will meet them where they are like in everything you brought in is relative we’re not going to say that was a bad choice, or this was that didn’t work for you if it worked for you. If you feel good about it, it makes you feel more whole. Then we’ll compound it maybe add… add to it, not subtract. Right. So what’s nice is we get referrals from other therapists. We get referrals from other doctors we work with other people will fit what’s needed. So, it’s more compounding, integrating.
[00:31:20] [DE] So you’ve had some I feel like every time I come here which is frequent I’m getting an education on your offices next door. It is not even supposed to be here right. Subletting in order to sneak an office into a sports complex. But you know it’s actually when I was forming P5, the five I’m looking up at your wall that has a wonderful diagram with the extremities and the acupuncture points in the bottom half, and the five elements on the top. And it’s that image, which is where P5 came from, specifically seeing that over and over and at various times if you are not in the room, I was waiting, or just at the end of a session is me staring at that and that’s where the five P’s in P5 – in the five elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine came from that name. And again when I talked to investors, and its performance, its precision, its personalized medicine, its all the P’s of Western, but really underneath it all, it is a view of the body where everything is integrated and you know where you can relieve pain in my shoulder by putting a needle in my ankle you know.
[00:32:44] [MR] Yeah I have been really lucky. When I moved from Pittsburgh to Connecticut and to go to naturopathic school, I worked at a cardiac rehab center in this little town in Connecticut, and they were, when healthcare was I guess hospitals were changing and they were trying to change their approach and they were going to have this integrative clinic in the first resident naturopath came over from other, most of the schools were on the West Coast at this time. You had not got, was not strong enough to have someone from university Bridgeport’s that hadn’t graduated. So, she came over from the National Naturopathic school and she was hanging out with a bunch of Yale students. And so this is supposed to be like state of the art. We’re going to go holistic we’re going to have a naturopath and medical doctors, and we’re going to find a middle and it’s going to be like this Kumbaya experience. It did not work. They could not understand each other’s brains. They could not understand each other’s approaches. She came to me because she knew I was in school and shared a lot of her challenges. A lot of the problems and I started to realize like this whole blending inter… like the approach that they were treating each other as the same instead of saying you’re an artist, I’m a scientist. We see things from different directions; we can both help. They are like: No you’re right, I’m wrong, I’m right, you’re wrong. There was this feuding on truth and it was a great thing to experience in the very beginning because I realized it wasn’t possible to not… to say there was an absolute truth. It was more a compounding, integrative approach where ideas were being shared, and the patient’s health was the only truth that really mattered.
[00:34:35] [DE] I would say that I think what, if I were to take a fault perspective, or a fault in the perspective of Western medicine that I think for chronic disease is an Achilles heel. Or maybe it is and then some. Is this concept that you have to always have answers, and you have to be the one that has the answers. And the problem with medical school is there are a lot of slots at least historically, it is very prestigious. It’s always the smartest people, top or the smartest people who feel that they can’t afford to be wrong. Right? So, they don’t take risks even when they’re small. Right? So, they limit. Whereas if they were asking the questions. And that’s one of the very first interview I did with Sid Baker, he said you know, it was that you know, whether it’s the needles but the treatment is and and of itself, if a diagnostic doesn’t work or doe work, if it doesn’t work that’s telling you that what you’re treating is not the issue right. Or at least the way you’re treating it is not the issue. And but again it’s this concept that you do by listening all the time is you’re always asking the body to tell you what’s going on as opposed to using one that takes some blood work and that’s going to tell you everything or I’m going to just look at you and say well you have these symptoms. And that’s what I find very fascinating when you see the difference between a let’s say genetic, cystic fibrosis genetic, clearly defined genetic problem as opposed to something that may be dementia or Alzheimer’s or other things that are what we call a clinical diagnosis which are often diagnosed incorrectly. And you know we’re a long way before machine learning and artificial intelligence get us to ninety nine point nine percent accuracy. A long way off. And that’s what that’s one of the things is as we move towards the close this conversation that you have and where it really complement you and I want to have you back on again, is to talk more about your ability to listen and how you can share that more with other practitioners or other people who need that from their practitioners to listen and to be in a state of humility that is always asking questions. So I don’t know if you have any last thoughts for today. I know where you live so we can continue this.
[00:37:12] [MR] Yes. To listen you have to listen to yourself. So the practice of Qi Gong that, the way we worked together on but I do every day. I have to listen to myself every day. So when I listen to myself I know that I’m not the same person every day. And it tells me the nuances which I believe helps me to position myself, so when someone comes into my office, I can listen to them and realize that, it’s a living system and it’s always changing and I can’t tell you how much people asked me. They say to me and they say should I tell you when it hurts when I put a needle in and I say how would I know if you didn’t. And it’s this like they even come in with the premise that they’re not supposed to tell me. It’s not that it’s Western Medicine, it might be the Western mind right. Like I said, I joke around. This is an interactive relationship. If you don’t tell me I won’t know.
[00:38:15] [DE] And I have no problem telling you, the more pain the more excited I am because I know you opened up the channels that, you know, I’m a glutton for punishment. I just see that you hit a good spot right. Yes.
[00:38:28] [MR] You definitely have a unique approach but you the not be able to tell someone that it hurts, to think that’s even a question like that shows you where they’ve come from and what they’ve experienced in their health care. Like you know so it’s. Yes. Tell me if it hurts. Tell me if it’s not working. Tell me what have you learned about yourself by your body, about your needs, by your diet, about your sleeping. What do you need. And that’s what people come into the office knowing that, like there’s a lot more we can do. Right. So
[00:39:08] [DE] Well I want to thank you
[00:39:12] [MR] – Thank you David
[00:39:14] [DE] This was awesome as usual and we’ll go back into our archives where we did some interviews back earlier in the year and I will go through them over the next month or two. And we were I guess you could say practicing for this day.
[00:39:18] [MR] Practice, we are always practicing
[00:39:23] [DE] We’ll be doing more of these because your insights and your, you know just wide open openness to working with others and learning is astounding. And so it’s the web address is barefootlivingarts.org
[00:39:41] [MR] And then for Sheng Zhen qigong
[00:39:47] Do you want me to spell it? Yes. Shengzheninternational.org.
[00:39:54] And if you can go on Vimeo there are videos available from Master Li. He is a rare rare gem of a human being, let alone a martial artist. You can even find I think well at least one of his movies is on Netflix from the old days.
[00:40:13] [MR] I mean this is hot off the press I just found this out today actually. He got a starring role in a Chinese movie. He’s going to play the grandfather of a martial artist and they actually wrote the role in the movie for him after meeting him, they changed the whole role. They loved him so much. They want him to like so I mean he was a movie star before but this is a big deal.
[00:40:34] [DE] He’s incredible. We were, I just say one last thing because this is really fascinating about the power of the body. And I remember we were at training in New York about four or five years ago so he was 73 / 74 at the time. And he had a platform and it was probably a good, what would you say 30 / 36 inches off the ground. Yeah. The idea of a table. Right. Yeah. And he stepped down to walk around the group and then he had everyone aggregate around him. And then he realized that not everyone could see. So he wanted to go back up on the platform and it was just it was right out of one of these crazy you know, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, like he just elevated one leg. And I looked at you. I said that, did I just see that and that just happen. And you’re like yes, I guess I’ve seen it before. It’s unreal when you meet a grandmaster. And you know I see in you his ability to pass on not just the skills but the energetic wisdom, which goes way beyond having just skills. So I’m appreciative because you’re my teacher and we’ll be doing more teacher training with Master Li because I will be joining you now more than just a day here a day there in the future in the very near future. So thank you and we’ll be back.
Links
Dr Mark Romano
https://barefootlivingarts.org/our-practice/
Sheng Zhen Qi Gong / Master Li
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUmWJKLSp0U
