Acupuncture and Western medicine don't have to speak different languages. Practitioners who understand both can offer something neither tradition delivers on its own.

In this conversation, I sit down with Dr. Chi-Chi Tang — physiatrist, former St. Louis Rams team physician, and acupuncture practitioner — to explore what a sports medicine lens brings to needling work.

We discuss why palpation is missing from most medical exams and what that costs clinicians, how myofascial chains may be doing the work that meridian theory has described all along, and what the fascia reveals about why acupuncture works.

We also explore posture assessment, nerve anatomy, the Stecco family's fascial research, and why the greatest tension in the body is often far from where the patient feels pain.

Finding the source isn't always obvious. Sometimes it takes learning to read the body in ways that Western training alone never quite teaches.