28 - Chad Johnson on Orthopedic Acupuncture + Recovery Optimization

Acupuncture for Pain Relief & Recovery Optimization in Asheville with Chad Johnson, L.Ac.

Introduction to Chad Johnson and Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture

In this episode of the Wellness in Asheville Podcast, host Travis Richardson sits down with Chad Johnson, Licensed Acupuncturist and founder of Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture on Haywood Road. Chad brings a distinctly body-centered approach to his practice — rooted in whole-body palpation, Japanese acupuncture techniques, and years of massage therapy experience — to help people recover from pain, injury, and surgery faster and more completely.

Chad explains why he specializes in orthopedic acupuncture, how he uses the Kiiko Matsumoto style to test points before needling, and why the right shoulder and right hip are the two most common pain patterns he treats every day. He also introduces three foundational recovery habits — conscious breathing, movement-hydration pairing, and balancing rest with activity — that anyone can start using immediately.

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone dealing with chronic pain, recovering from surgery or injury, or looking to build a smarter longevity and self-care practice in Asheville.

Key Takeaways:

• Why Chad focuses exclusively on orthopedic acupuncture and physical palpation rather than pulse and tongue diagnosis
• How the Kiiko Matsumoto Japanese style allows point-testing before needling for more precise, measurable results
• The real cause of "sciatica" most people are misdiagnosing — and why the gluteus medius is usually to blame
• Why right shoulder and right hip pain are so common in modern life and how they're connected
• How to pair hydration with movement so water actually reaches your muscles instead of heading straight to your bladder
• The Chinese medicine view of conscious breathing and the lung-kidney connection
• A simple 3-breath technique you can use anywhere to bring your stress level down immediately
• Why acupuncture before and after surgery accelerates recovery significantly
• How regular maintenance acupuncture supports longevity, performance, and resilience as you age

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – 02:00 | Intro and Chad's body-centered approach to acupuncture
• 02:00 – 05:00 | How Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture got its name and niche
• 05:00 – 09:00 | Japanese Kiiko Matsumoto style explained — palpation, point testing, and immediate feedback
• 09:00 – 13:00 | Referred pain vs. reflexes and reading the body's channel system
• 13:00 – 18:00 | The most common patterns Chad treats: right shoulder, right hip, and "dead butt syndrome"
• 18:00 – 22:00 | Diet, posture, and lifestyle factors that undo your acupuncture treatment
• 22:00 – 27:00 | Hydration done right — why drinking plus movement is the key
• 27:00 – 31:00 | Conscious breathing, the lung-kidney connection, and heart rate variability
• 31:00 – 33:00 | Balancing movement and rest — especially during recovery
• 33:00 – 36:00 | Using acupuncture preventatively for longevity and aging well
• 36:00 – 38:00 | What's next for Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture and Chad's CEU courses
• 38:00 – 39:00 | Rapid fire: Chad's advice for anyone living with chronic pain

Episode Links:

• Season 2 Hub + Wellness Discounts
• Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture
• Find Chad on Google
• Moxa House — Direct Link
• Be Well Asheville
• Be Well Asheville Podcast Archive

Produced by Be Well Asheville

The Wellness in Asheville Podcast is produced by Be Well Asheville — Asheville's local wellness media brand connecting the community to the practitioners, modalities, and conversations that matter most for your health.

Get Involved

🗓 Monthly Meetup — Join our free monthly wellness professional meetup at Sun Soo Martial Arts, 800 Fairview Rd Suite D2. Connect with practitioners, educators, and wellness seekers across WNC. Join the Meetup.

🤝 Wellness Collective — Become a paid member of the Be Well Asheville Collective and get access to exclusive resources, community, and practitioner support. Learn more here.

📬 Newsletter — Stay connected with Asheville wellness news, episode drops, and community updates. Sign up at bewellasheville.com.

🎁 Special Offer — Season 1 Wellness Discounts — Get all of last season's expert podcast wellness discounts. Top spots: Drip Sauna, Asheville Salt Cave, Stillpoint Wellness + 8 others incl. massage, sound healing, neurofeedback. Get them here.

🎙 Be a Podcast Guest — Are you an Asheville wellness practitioner? We'd love to feature you. Submit your request at bewellasheville.com/podcast.

Partner With Us

Interested in reaching Asheville's wellness community? We offer sponsorship and partnership opportunities for aligned businesses and brands. Reach out at travis@bewellasheville.com.

More Asheville Wellness News

Stay up to date on the latest in WNC wellness at bewellasheville.com.

DISCLAIMER: The content shared on the Wellness in Asheville Podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making changes to your health routine.

This episode is brought to you by the 9th annual Love, Shine, Play Yoga Festival, happening July 23rd through 26th in Asheville, North Carolina.

Join world-class teachers, inspiring workshops, live music, and a heart-centered community in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. Whether you’re deepening your practice or just starting, it’s the perfect summer experience to reconnect and recharge.

Get your tickets at loveshineplay.com

The Wellness in Asheville podcast is produced by Be Well Asheville, your local news source covering health + wellness news + events in Asheville. Get the latest at bewellasheville.com or follow @bewellasheville.

Transcript

Travis Richardson (00:00.11)
So we have Chad Johnson on with us today. How are you doing, Chad?

Chad Johnson (00:09.187)
Doing well, thanks Travis. Thanks for having me.

Travis Richardson (00:11.308)
All right. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to talk to you because as well, as the listeners will hear in just a little bit, you do things quite differently from what most acupuncturists do in town. And I'm really excited to share that and myself learn more about that. But for someone who's never heard of you or your clinic, give us sort of the one minute breakdown of what you do and who you help.

Chad Johnson (00:34.68)
Yeah, so most people fall under the in the mind body spirit categories. They fall in one direction or the other. I'm firmly in the body section. So I have years of massage therapy experience and you know I palpate the whole body rather than just the pulse and look at the tongue. I get most of my information from palpation rather than those other two diagnostics.

And so the patient, what they feel is someone who can read the body and find the pain spots and help remove them. And in addition to that, you know, I use a Japanese style, which allows me to test a point before I actually use it. So you can use your fingernail like it's a needle and press it right into the point where you want to have an effect on the body. And you can feel it change with palpation in the body.

And so I get to test the point and if it changes by 30%, that means I can go ahead and use a needle there. And the needle should get 60 to 80 % relief from whatever we're working with.

Travis Richardson (01:40.14)
That's interesting. And I think that probably not a lot of people realize that the body has that kind of information system built into it that you can assess. That's actually pretty cool.

Chad Johnson (01:51.95)
It happens immediately, so they get to feel the immediate change in the body. And then once you start using the needles and accessing the breath, then things really start to rapidly change.

Travis Richardson (02:02.336)
Yeah, it seems like a natural kind of feedback loop. so, Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture is the name of the business. I guess just how did you personally kind of gravitate toward that name? Obviously, we've got the word orthopedic in it and also the styles that you do. How did you come across this way, these methods?

Chad Johnson (02:10.54)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (02:24.726)
well, I lucked out and went to the good school in New York City. So we learned three different styles of acupuncture. We didn't learn any herbs for three whole years. We just practice acupuncture the whole time. And so they taught us three different styles and we learned how to use them individually and then mix them together and integrate them. And so you get to basically practice however you want to and use the best tools for the right patient.

Travis Richardson (02:50.636)
Hmm. That's interesting. I guess when did you when did you how long have you been in Asheville and what makes you stay here? What do you like about Asheville?

Chad Johnson (03:00.768)
Yeah. So I graduated school in New York in 2011 and we wanted my wife and Nicole and I wanted to have a baby. So I said, well, New York City is not going to be the place. You know, we were having some difficulty. And so I convinced her to move out of the city and she's a New Yorker. So that was a difficult task. But anyway, I looked all over and found Asheville on the Internet and it's,

says everything good about Asheville back in the early 2000s. And so we came and visited and everything went really well and we moved down here. We really love it here. And so we started in Biltmore Village under the name Chad Johnson Acupuncture, because it was just me working in a rented room. And so I built my practice there. And when we moved over here to Haywood Road, we didn't want to have other people working under my name. And so we decided to change the name.

We worked hard for that over a year. We tried to decide, well, we wanted Moksa House, but nobody understands that. So we just simplified and went to Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture. Orthopedic work is what I do, acupuncture in Asheville, you know, it just really fit. And so a lot of people have responded to it too. So people come from ankle sprains to elbow sprains and all kinds of stuff.

Travis Richardson (04:06.658)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (04:17.666)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (04:25.42)
I think the more that a business niches down into a specialty like that or, and really tries to get good at something that is specific, the better results they have, the better testimonials. People talk a lot more word of mouth because it's, know, hey, you just go to, hey, you got a problem with something related to an injury or you're somebody who is looking to recover from a big event that you did, you're a big athlete, you you go to Chad. So I think the that impressed me

Chad Johnson (04:39.797)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (04:50.507)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (04:55.344)
is that you do CEU courses, so I don't know how you have time to be in the office practicing and developing out all these things. So when did the teaching side of things start to develop for you?

Chad Johnson (05:09.293)
Yeah, I was troubled when I was first writing my first one, like what am I going to offer to acupuncture, you know, that hasn't already been offered. And so I went right back to my strengths, know, palpating the body and feeling the channels. And so what I've done is I've created three classes and they're basically front, back and sides. And I'm teaching people how to palpate through the muscles and find the concentrations of pain and

and dysfunction and learn how to use those other techniques to release those and then work locally on it with massage or acupuncture or moxibustion, which we'll get to in a little while what moxa is. But you can use all three of those and successfully treat the muscles. And that's about the only three techniques I use. I don't do cupping or scraping, guasa. I don't do a lot of that or herbs. I don't practice any of that. I just stick with the physical work.

Travis Richardson (06:04.108)
Yeah, like I said, knowing your specialty, mean, being an herbalist honestly is a profession to itself. Like I can't even imagine being a proper herbalist and also being anything else if you're, you know what I mean? It's not a trivial study, especially with Chinese medicine. Like it is very complex. You mentioned something in our pre.

preparatory call that we did before this around, because I think I mentioned referred pain. I used to be a massage therapist and of course any massage therapist that's worth their weight in salt knows about how to understand referred pain and sort of trace back where things are in the body. They know the musculature or the ligaments and tendons, but you talk about sort of idea of reflexes instead of like referred pain, but all I understand is this referral mechanism.

Chad Johnson (06:50.596)
Mm-hmm.

Travis Richardson (06:56.11)
is are the reflexes that you test the same mechanism or are they different from what somebody would consider like a referred pain scenario?

Chad Johnson (07:04.364)
Yeah, that's a great question nobody's ever asked, but yeah, the referred pain pattern comes from a trigger point in the muscle, which is a hypertense nodule in a fiber of muscle. And then the muscle tightens up around that to protect it. And that creates a referred pain pattern to either the tendon on either end or even to a distal place. For instance, there's a trigger point in the calf muscle that refers pain to the jaw. I don't know how that works.

But anyway, the reflexes that I'm testing are based on the Chinese chart here. And so I'll trace the body and find along these lines where the blockages are and then use points along the channel either above or below and reduce either other side or you can use all different strategies. There's many different strategies.

Travis Richardson (07:31.086)
You

Travis Richardson (07:53.12)
And to a person getting work done in acupuncture, and I assume it's the same with your system, is if I come in for knee pain or any kind of pain somewhere and you put a needle in my belly for some reason, it doesn't always make sense, does it? Like I don't always know why you're doing the thing that you're doing. But you are understanding the energetics in a different way, yeah?

Chad Johnson (08:19.677)
Yeah, the organs connect to the hands and feet through these channels. so, yeah, once you understand this and learn all this for three years, you you memorize it all, just like you would the herbs. And once you memorize it, you understand it in a deep level. And somebody comes in with, you know, stomach trouble and knee pain while they're both on the same channel. So we can treat both at the same time.

Travis Richardson (08:42.272)
Yeah. And so I want to bring up the one of the, so the, the, the people that you study with are the techniques. Kiko Matsumoto is a Japanese acupuncturist. and I think that's where the, mentioned the whole body palpation technique kind of comes from.

I guess from an experience of somebody, let's say somebody who's received acupuncture before in a traditional way, they're used to getting acupuncture, how, when they actually get a treatment with you, is it different than what they'd expect? I know you kind of already briefly talked about it, but walk us through how it's a little bit different based on his technique.

Chad Johnson (08:59.785)
Yeah.

Chad Johnson (09:06.6)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (09:17.578)
Yeah.

Chad Johnson (09:21.223)
Mm-hmm.

Well, I specialize in pain, so when people come in, they usually point to their pain in the intake. They'll point to it when they're talking about it. So there I know where the trigger point is once they point to it. Whenever they lay on the table, I'll start to palpate right there and all the muscles that are around that, the whole myotactic unit, back, the side, the other side, and find out where's the blockage for this person. Everybody's different.

You know, everybody's got neck and shoulder tensions. So I include a neck and shoulder release in each one of my sessions, you know, to help people relax into it really deeply. I use all kinds of strategies, whatever I'm feeling into and what this patient needs for that time, you know. Some people are cooler, so they need more moxibustion, which is adding heat to the body. And so I do a lot of that, and that's why I call it Moxa House. Yeah, many offices won't let you burn moxa in it.

because the windows or whatever fire hazard. So we looked for over two years for this spot so I could burn mucks in with windows. got two opening windows and lots of sunshine. So it's just been a really good move for us.

Travis Richardson (10:35.314)
All right, well, let's get into some of the longevity based stuff because we kind of topic that we talked about that would be of interest, think, to the listeners is recovery optimization. let's talk first about why you think that might be or why did you choose that as your as like a longevity topic that you want to talk about?

Chad Johnson (10:54.6)
Yeah, I see all kinds of recovery in here from a viral recovery to, you know, recovering from a fall or a sports injury or a surgery. You know, there's all kinds of recovery that I see every day. So that really spoke to me. I think that acupuncture needs to be included with every surgical procedure. You know, it has so much positive effect for these people. They recover so much faster when they have acupuncture before and after surgery. It just is remarkable to see the difference.

Travis Richardson (11:25.118)
One of the things I've always wondered about with acupuncture is, and I know in my massage therapy training, we became aware of how acupuncturists do their thing, like even in other countries, like say Japan or even China. Some of the way they do it is it's more of a rigorous, like they'll even do it daily for five, six, seven days. Obviously our society is not structured so that somebody can easily come

Chad Johnson (11:49.415)
you

Travis Richardson (11:54.784)
come by to the office every single day for five days. how do you understand that in terms of, it's still be obviously is still very effective even with weekly treatments. But what is your sort of like regimen and protocols and what do you understand of that nature of being doing it every day for a time versus spreading it out?

Chad Johnson (11:58.161)
Mm.

Chad Johnson (12:16.16)
Yeah, well, the way I learned was for acute conditions, which are shorter than like two years, you know, recent acquisitions, those things usually clear and we can do a course of three treatments and usually see a significant change in that presentation and say it's 60 % better. Maybe then we might do follow ups once every two weeks or once every three weeks, depending on what the patient needs.

chronic condition, you know, that's been there for more than two years, a course of five treatments is standard. And we'd like to do one once a week for the five weeks. And that gives us the best chance to see if it's going to really give it a change. 

Travis Richardson (15:02.83)
Um, all right. So yeah, so let's talk about the kind of, guess, patterns that you see a lot of, like what, what, what do people come in typically to see you for and how have you helped them? Like, do you have any sort of like example case studies of somebody coming in and they're kind of like the archetype patient that comes in and this is what I see and this is kind of how, what I do and this is what I see as a result. What would that look like?

Chad Johnson (15:15.376)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (15:31.034)
Yeah, Well, with a modern society, it really rubs people in a certain pattern. You know, like I said before, neck and shoulder tension is one of them that I do for everybody, you know, whether they come in and that's their chief complaint or not, they're going to get a neck and shoulder treatment. And in addition to that, right shoulder pain is very frequent, I think because of the mouse, you know, people have to hover their hand when they do a mouse. And that's become a chronic thing with people. And

Travis Richardson (15:38.348)
Yeah

Travis Richardson (15:56.822)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (16:00.292)
Also right hip pain. The right hip and right shoulder go together. And when one goes, the other often goes with it. And in between that is the liver and kidney. So that also plays a part in it, which we could get more into. But for the orthopedic section, the shoulder and hip are closely related. And people in modern times, they sit way more than they used to just 30 years ago. If you think about Netflix, you sit back in the reclining position, same as the car.

Travis Richardson (16:24.652)
Yeah.

Chad Johnson (16:30.659)
You you sit on those gluteus medius muscles and it compresses them, pushes all the blood out for how many hours? Four to six hours in a car ride, a plane ride, or watching Netflix or whatever. So what happens is called dead butt syndrome. Look it up, it's real. And so what happens is, yeah, it becomes necrotic because the blood is pushed away from the muscle attachment up there at the iliac crest.

Travis Richardson (16:48.066)
Ha ha ha ha.

Travis Richardson (16:56.649)
Chad Johnson (16:57.221)
And so people get raging pain in the glute medius muscle. And they call it sciatica. Everybody comes in and says, I have sciatica or piriformis syndrome, but it's wrong in both cases. It's this gluteus medius muscle. And so I treat it all the time. the the referred pain pattern is right here at the sacrum and L5. And so people think they have back pain and, you know, but it's really coming from the hip muscle.

Travis Richardson (17:12.526)
interesting.

Travis Richardson (17:24.538)
So how do you help people not aggravate that? Do you give them any sort of like, let's work on your posture a little bit? mean, I know that's maybe outside of the, yeah, I gonna say maybe that's outside of scope for what you do, but almost like you have to do something like that otherwise people are just gonna keep coming back in and never get better.

Chad Johnson (17:34.353)
yeah.

Chad Johnson (17:44.697)
Yeah, yeah, if you come in and get treatments and we warm up the muscles and we do all this work and then you go out and eat a bunch of ice cream, it's going to tighten back up because ice and cold makes things shiver, you know, and tighten up. Also, the sugar is not good for muscles. And that's a whole nother topic. But what I'm saying is diet has a lot to do with you need to hydrate, eat good food, rest and also take the muscle through the full range of motion without any stress on.

Travis Richardson (17:52.652)
Yeah.

Chad Johnson (18:14.969)
The muscles love smoothness and so if people go back to lifting weights or something, it's gonna tighten right back up. But if you teach it how to smoothly open and close over time, like Qigong exercise for instance, then that's gonna strengthen the muscle and then you can start to lift weights after a week or two.

Travis Richardson (18:33.11)
Yeah, that all makes sense. I've seen that pattern too. I don't know in the, will not, what I've noticed in even massage therapy is that when I see a, almost like a reverse curve in the lumbar, the spine is reversed. and I have to wonder if a lot of that reversal is because of that laid back position, you know, where you're, you're literally constantly just never, you know, stick sticking your butt out basically for lack of better. you can't

Chad Johnson (18:57.945)
Yeah.

Yeah. It totally reverses the curve.

Travis Richardson (19:02.614)
visualize it. Yeah. And I've seen that pattern. And so then I'll see people that have, they're saying they have sciatica and I just know enough about anatomy and then I'm looking at them and like, you, got to, you know, I don't practice in any sort of capacity this way right now, but I really wanted to be like, we need to work on your posture. Actually you to get some treatment, go to Chad, but then we need to work on your posture and also some,

Chad Johnson (19:26.657)
Yeah

Travis Richardson (19:31.726)
Maybe some strength training in the core and the low back maybe which brings me I guess to another point is Do you do any other lifestyle recommendations or? Do you recommend other other modalities outside of what you do in addition to or does it yeah, how do you handle handle that?

Chad Johnson (19:36.45)
Yeah.

Chad Johnson (19:53.441)
sure. Yeah, the three things that I try to get people to do all the time and reset in their body are daily breathing exercise, movement and rest balance, and also hydration. You know, if you aren't doing those three basic things, then you need to catch up, right?

Travis Richardson (20:12.846)
Can you talk, can you talk about the, yeah, that's, that's a really interesting point. And it sounds simple and like, well, everybody knows you should do some, everybody knows we should drink water. Um, and everybody knows that maybe we should, I don't know if everybody knows about the daily breathing, but I guess go through each one of those and why they're important and what can somebody do actionable? Like, you know, after this podcast, they could say to themselves, okay, tomorrow I'm going to drink water in this way, this amount or whatever it is. Like, how do you.

Chad Johnson (20:22.456)
Mm-hmm.

Travis Richardson (20:42.882)
How do you position each one of those?

Chad Johnson (20:44.811)
Yeah, great. Hydration, for instance. If you sit at a computer and drink a sizable amount of water, it's going to mostly go right through to the bladder. Now, if you drink a half a cup of water and do some stretches, the water is going to go into those muscles through that action and less of it will go to the bladder. So how do you keep the water is the good question. And that's how you do drinking and then movement, basically. Yeah.

Travis Richardson (21:10.286)
phenomenal.

Chad Johnson (21:12.823)
then that's going to hydrate the muscle and it'll be able to contract and relax smoothly and get electrolytes and so forth and so

Travis Richardson (21:19.65)
That is so interesting. Okay, I gotta say, I've noticed, actually funny you say that, just recently, I have noticed this exact thing, is that when I drink a bunch of water and then I go on a run, which I love to run,

normally if I were just milling about the house or like you said, sitting or watching, would have to go pee like right away. But if I go running, I'm surprised because I'm like, wow, how do I not have to go to the bath? I can go an hour, you know, even two come back and, and I still don't have that urge to, to, to go. But it might be a little TMI for folks listening, but it's true what you say there. That's interesting.

Chad Johnson (22:00.381)
Hahaha

Yeah, yeah, totally. And then the breathing, how is this important and why is it important? And most people say it's important for meditation or to calm the mind and to relax the nervous system and all those things are true. But from my perspective, what I see is that breathing is a two part process from Chinese medicine perspective. Like if you have asthma and you go see an herbalist in Chinese medicine, they're gonna say, do you have problems breathing in or out?

And that's gonna determine whether you treat the lungs or the kidneys. So the in-breath sends oxygen to the kidneys. And if you think about it, the lungs go down to here, the kidneys are right about here too. So they kind of touch each other just about. If you take a big breath in all the way to the lower lobes. So that deep in-breath into the belly is gonna connect the lungs and kidneys. Now most of us, we don't do that deep in-breath and it doesn't connect these two important organs.

And so they don't have that connection, communication, interplay with each other unless we're doing this daily intentional breathing.

Travis Richardson (23:09.486)
And so what can, what is the impact of this communication or connection between the two organs? Why do we want that?

Chad Johnson (23:09.6)
I like to call it conscious breathing.

Chad Johnson (23:19.58)
homeostasis. That's the real answer. The kidneys, they're the first organs that form whenever you're in the embryo in your mother, in the placenta. The two kidneys form, then the nervous system and brain come out, and then the bones and the other organs come from there. So the kidneys have all the information to heal your body, and if you include them in the cycle, it's going to help heal the body better.

Travis Richardson (23:43.656)
Mm, fascinating. Well, that brings us to the last one, balance, movement, and rest. how does that work? What do mean by balancing those two?

Chad Johnson (23:45.856)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (23:49.792)
Yeah, balance movement and rest. What? Yeah, I get a lot of A types in here and they like I help them get better and then they go out and do their thing and they hurt themselves again and again and again. It happens all the time. Also, some people, you know, they take care of themselves and they get better rapidly. But I do see a lot of A types and, know, especially after when you're recovering from something illness.

surgery or anything else, you're gonna wanna rest more than you normally do. You're wanna hydrate more than you normally do. And the breathing is what's gonna help shift in between those transitions. So if it's time for you to go to rest, I recommend doing 10 belly breaths at night, laying in your bed, closing your eyes, ready to go to sleep. If you focus just breathing into the belly, and I tell people 60 % in, 100 % exhale.

So there's no counting, it's just space and moving air. And I think about the waves on the beach coming in real slow and going out real slow. And that's the rhythm I try to set when I'm breathing. And when I tell people to exercise, that's the breathing I'm trying to get them to do. And so if they create that rhythm in the body, that's much different than this conversation we're having now where this form of a wave pattern is a square, when you're breathing choppy short breaths.

But when you're breathing smoothly, it creates a rhythm. And the body loves a rhythm. And so you'll go to sleep faster, stay asleep longer, and your body will heal while you sleep.

Travis Richardson (25:28.758)
Yeah. I know when I personally have done breathing breath work, and I've done it throughout the day as a, as a practice, I don't do this. I don't do this now. and I only did it for a test and the test was what if I stayed conscious of my breath all day, as much as possible. And obviously I'm not, you you, you, you get busy obviously, so you, you come back to it as much as possible. And I got to tell you, my sleep improved so

Chad Johnson (25:54.516)
Mm-hmm.

Travis Richardson (25:58.684)
so much, I just could not believe it. It didn't matter what was going on during the day either. I could have the same stressors as any other day and they could be fairly decent stressors. as long as I was focusing on the breath, it seemed like it was really protective for my hormones or something. My ability to sleep was, and I have problems with sleeping. So for me, it was a big win there.

Chad Johnson (26:07.573)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (26:24.096)
Well, that's what I do to help shift to sleep at night. During the day, I do a different breathing pattern to where it helps keep me from an eight and keeps my eight down to the five. And I can use this anywhere. When I go wash my hands, sometimes in the clinic, I'll do this breathing technique. And it looks like this. You take a big breath in and you raise your shoulders and drop them real hard like this. And then you do two more breaths, 60 % in, 100 % out real slow and you recreate that rhythm I was talking about.

And just those three breaths, you can bring your eight down to a five. And if you do it again, you can bring it down to a three and bring yourself to a calm, assertive state.

Travis Richardson (27:04.11)
I like that technique. I've never heard that. That sounds like a really interesting. I like the release to the sudden release of the shoulders dropping down. One of the things I, and I do know is that when I do breath work, I once put a, maybe there's some heart math users out there listening. Heart math is a biofeedback device and it measures heart rate variability among other things. Also known as HRV. Some of the Apple watches are doing that now as well. I don't think as well as,

heart math. But anyways you can go and put this thing on and you can you can do some breath work and lo and behold all of a sudden your waveforms start looking really really good. Now go back to your normal breathing patterns and all of sudden your heart rate variability drops to crap again. So the power of the breath yeah can't be understated there. All right well I have a

Chad Johnson (27:45.747)
Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (27:54.175)
Right.

Chad Johnson (27:58.567)
Well, if you think about it, their lungs are kind of like pillows on either side of the heart. So when you inhale, it compresses the heart. And when you exhale, it slowly releases the heart. And that's what creates the slower rhythm in the heart. Yes, pressure. It's just pressure on the heart.

Travis Richardson (28:09.422)
okay, see?

That makes so much sense. Okay, so this is all making sense to me. You're inducing a natural rhythm.

Chad Johnson (28:19.867)
And furthermore, the whole body is piezoelectric, which means if you press a place on the body, it's going to create energy inside the body. Like a quartz watch, you know, they create pressure on the quartz, it creates energy in there. The same thing with the body. We create energy all the time. And the stuck muscles are only just holding that energy in one spot and we're trying to move the energy. That's all. Yeah.

Travis Richardson (28:43.896)
Okay, that's interesting. Well, I have a question. now back to longevity in general.

Chad Johnson (28:51.527)
Hmm?

Travis Richardson (28:51.622)
If so, one of the things I think is really important and I mentioned this and I'll probably mention this on most of the episodes I do around longevity as a topic here is that we have to be careful as we get older to not lose muscle, to not lose bone. And these two things obviously lead to some of the more disastrous things that can happen as we age, fall down, break our hip.

Chad Johnson (29:07.379)
Yeah.

Travis Richardson (29:17.134)
get diabetes because we have no muscle, because we have no muscle to process the glucose, et cetera, et cetera. So I think acupuncture and especially what you do might be helpful for somebody even preventatively as they go through an aging process so that they can have a better chance to not injure themselves to begin with, but also keep the energy flowing so that they can perform exercise better.

Sleep better, all those kind of things. guess, does that something, I would assume that people don't come to your office for that reason, but should they?

Chad Johnson (29:49.789)
At least half a dozen or more come to see me for that reason. They're like, I got too much responsibility. I can't die. I'm the last one left. So I have to be able to walk and work and pay these people and do all these things. So yeah, I those people once every two weeks or once every month, depending on their stress load and what their situation is, you know.

Travis Richardson (30:15.499)
Okay, so perfect.

Chad Johnson (30:15.823)
Usually they're pretty healthy if they have that much responsibility. They're pretty healthy people. They can drive in. And so, yeah, that's a big part of people's regimen for staying healthy.

Travis Richardson (30:26.784)
Okay, that's good to know. I really recommend that most people try and find a way to do some kind of self-care. I always say, you know, get yourself, if you can go do a massage, you know, or go get some acupuncture, but do something for self-care. And I also say there's something that happens to you when you go into an office to get some self-care, like...

you'll go get a, go get some acupuncture. The fact that you lay down on a table and just rest for a moment while someone takes care of you is itself, I think almost sometimes 50 % of what happens, as an outcome, because your body starts to, all of a sudden the hormones shift, you, your breath starts to relax. you know, this person is, is, is caring for you and we don't, we don't get that a lot of times in our daily lives. So.

Chad Johnson (30:56.741)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chad Johnson (31:11.553)
Mm-hmm

Chad Johnson (31:16.881)
Yeah, when I get a brand new patient that's never had acupuncture, you can see how nervous they are when they first come in. They can hardly close their eyes. They're asking questions. By the third treatment, they come in and they're just out. They just lay there and relax and receive and just enjoy it.

Travis Richardson (31:32.846)
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, so what do you feel like is, I guess, the future for you? I know you're doing the CEUs, you're teaching. Where do you see your practice heading in the future?

Chad Johnson (31:49.778)
Well, we moved over here to Heywood so we could grow a practice and have more people coming in to work with us and try to, you know, influence the wellness in Asheville. And so, yeah, we're hiring a new acupuncturist very soon and another massage therapist. So, yeah, we're just actively trying to acquire and build the business. We moved over here June right before Hurricane Helene. So, you know, that really stuck us in the foot there for a minute.

And we've been just trying to build up since then. I did my first CE course last year and I've been writing the other two cents. So we'll be announcing that soon. And if people are interested, they could, you know, go to our website, which we'll get them later and sign up for those updates and any patients that want to come see me, you know, same page.

Travis Richardson (32:42.848)
Nice. is that say, is that acupuncture is going to be trained in the same way or is that going to be a different style or you must be hard to come by?

Chad Johnson (32:49.021)
Right, right. She is trained locally at Dallas Traditions. yeah, we'll do so. I'll do some, you orthopedic coaching and try to help her out in that area and help her treat the things that I see the most. The right shoulder pain, the right hip pain, you know, the neck stuff. These are stuff I see every day all day.

Travis Richardson (32:55.928)
Nice.

Travis Richardson (33:12.492)
Well, I think her training plus the things that you can offer this particular person is going to be an amazing asset to the business. So I feel like that's you're headed in a very good direction there. And in fact, it might be a benefit actually coming into the combination of the skill sets might actually be a better situation.

Chad Johnson (33:24.411)
Yeah, it.

Chad Johnson (33:33.852)
Absolutely, she has herbs, so she knows all about herbs. I don't know, quarterly, anything about all these herbs, so it'll be good to have her around. And we also have a PT who rents here, and yeah, we're just trying to build a good, happy team of wellness practitioners.

Travis Richardson (33:39.63)
Perfect.

Travis Richardson (33:49.066)
Nice. Well, I'm like, I'm always happy to send people your way, especially anytime I, somebody has an injury or something like that, I'll know where to send them. I'm building a referral system myself and I love sending good people to go get help with other good people. So.

Alright, well let's, yeah, now you've got a bit of an offer here, a website that you'd like people to know about, to go to, to begin to find you and work with you.

Chad Johnson (34:07.504)
Awesome, thank you.

Chad Johnson (34:19.76)
Yeah, we've got a site set up at a let's see where it is here.

Travis Richardson (34:25.095)
It's tiny.tinyurl.com slash moxa house. Is that the one?

Chad Johnson (34:30.33)
Yes, that's it. tinyurl.com slash moxa house moxa spelled M-O-X-A and H-O-U-S-E all one word moxa house.

Travis Richardson (34:40.382)
Okay, awesome. Well, that'll be how people can find you and your business.

Chad Johnson (34:44.764)
Yeah, or we're on the web at Asheville Orthopedic Acupuncture. You can find that on Google as well. So give us a call.

Travis Richardson (34:53.27)
Okay. Last thing, last thing. got a rapid fire question for you here. Your own personal advice for somebody who's been living in let's say chronic pain and feels like they've tried everything. What do they do?

Chad Johnson (34:57.627)
Alright.

Chad Johnson (35:08.891)
Yeah, make an appointment, come see me. I had chronic pain for 35 years and I lived with it and I didn't know what to do with it and that's how I got to this very point. So most of the things I'm treating I've had in my own life so that's why I know how to do it so well.

Travis Richardson (35:23.062)
beautiful answer. Chad, it's been awesome. I really appreciate our time together. And again, folks, I really think you should go check out what they're doing over there. I think the style that you do, I feel like I want to come over and get a treatment. I got to find out more about this palpation and this reflex. Cool. OK.

Chad Johnson (35:41.267)
You should. Yeah, I'd love that. So yeah, give us a call. Nicole, she's the one who answers the phone. She's my wife and she runs the business and I do the clinical side of it. So she'll just guide people in wherever they need.

Travis Richardson (35:55.572)
Okay well wonderful you have a good evening sir. Yep all right.

Chad Johnson (35:58.041)
Alright, thanks a lot, Travis.