Welcome to the Pacific College of Health and Science podcast channel. Today’s podcast is part of a series called Private Practice Plus.

The purpose of this podcast is to provide acupuncturists, and other independent health care providers with ideas to expand their practices. By expand, I mean both grow the number of patients or clients you see and also expand the boundaries of your practice and your career. To that end, to provide inspiration and ideas, I am inviting practitioners who have had both busy private practices and who’ve also created businesses, written books, teach, or created other additional income streams beyond private practice. These projects can provide direct financial rewards, or help build your brand, your recognition as a healer and expert in your particular area of healthcare. They can also bolster your enthusiasm for the field, the career you are in. As you will see and hear, there are no shortages of opportunities for growth in the field of healthcare. Your patients, your clients, your community and you will benefit from every effort you make to expand your career. I hope you enjoy the show.

Related Instructor(s)

Jack: Welcome to the Pacific College of Health and Science podcast channel. Today’s podcast is part of a series called Private Practice Plus. The purpose of this podcast is to provide acupuncturists and other independent health care providers with ideas to expand their practices. By expand, I mean both grow the number of patients and clients you see and also to expand the boundaries of your practice and your career. To that end, and to provide inspiration and ideas, I’m inviting practitioners who’ve had both busy private practices and have also created businesses, written books, teach, or created other additional income streams beyond private practice. These projects can provide direct financial rewards or help build your brand, your recognition as a healer, and expert in your particular area of healthcare. They can also bolster your enthusiasm for the field, the career you’re in, as you will see in here. There are no shortages of opportunities for growth in the field of healthcare. Your patients, your clients, your community, and you will benefit from every effort you make to expand your career. I hope you enjoy the show. Cool! Matt Callison is well known for his work with professional athletes; he’s traveled across the United States in his work with NFL players. His unique ability to blend Chinese medicine with sports medicine is particularly evident in his international certification program, Sports Medicine Acupuncture. Matt also created the motor point and acupuncture meridian chart, The Motor Point Index, and is the author of the amazing and long-awaited textbook, Sports Medicine Acupuncture, an integrated approach combining sports medicine with Traditional Chinese Medicine. Matt also created an orthopedic class featuring the foundations of Sports Medicine Acupuncture that’s currently being taught at all three Pacific College campuses. Matt worked at the Alvarado Sports Medicine Clinic and at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla for six years. Matt received his master’s degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine and serves as Pacific supervisor of acupuncture interns at the University of California San Diego Sports Medicine Rehab Center. Please welcome Matt Callison. So, hey Matt, nice to see you. Congratulations on your new book, long awaited! Must feel good, in fact. Before I dive back into your past and how things developed and why you are where you are today, tell me how it feels to just have you know that finally completed.

Matt: It feels great, it’s fantastic! When I held the book for the first time, I fell to my knees – probably because the weight of the book, but also, I fell to my knees. I broke down and I cried because this has really been taking a lot of focus and a lot of qi to do and to be able to end product was pretty amazing and it’s like giving birth right now. The book is taking me a lot of different places.

Jack: Yeah, that’s really great, Matt, you should be really proud. Let’s go back to, you know, the early days. I know that your undergraduate training was in, what would you call it? Not physical therapy but, you tell me. I mean, I know it’s kind of related.

Matt: That’s in athletic training.

Jack:  Athletic training, yeah. So you’d have that background and it’s really great. Then, you’ve been able to stay in that area, you know, work to your strengths. But what got you interested in acupuncture and then at what point in your career did you really start to combine the eastern and western side, you know, to develop the kind of practice that you have now?

Matt: Okay, I was going through the training hours to become an athletic trainer at San Diego State University and I kind of got disenchanted with where I was going. Not necessarily because of lack of love or passion for rehabilitation and the science behind it, but it was more with the people. I think that I was working with it; it was kind of an unfun environment and I should have hung in there probably, but yeah, the way that life works – I sold everything and I moved to Australia, where I went with my surfboard and a backpack, to be able to see what sports therapy with my training in San Diego State was like over there. And I met an individual in Perth that was a physio; they don’t have athletic trainer licenses there, they’ll have sports trainers that are also physios. But anyway, he had a clinic in Perth, Western Australia, where he was applying needles to these people – and I had no idea what acupuncture was at that time – it was like voodoo. But I followed him around because I wanted to see if I could work with him and stay in Australia and long story short is, he’s the one that planted the seed for me because I watched what kind of magical things that he was doing to the musculoskeletal system with acupuncture. Now, this was 35 years ago or so.

Jack: Yeah, it was in the early days, yeah. And so, you came back from Australia, moved back to San Diego, and that’s when you discovered Pacific College and decided to go to our program?

Matt: Well, I stopped off to visit a friend for a couple days in Maui and ended up living there for a year.

Jack: Okay, that sounds like a good break, yeah.

Matt: So I ended up teaching at a massage school there, anatomy, and investigated the acupuncture school there on Maui, actually, because I was really intrigued with what I saw. But then that’s when I reached out, actually, to you many, many, many years ago and said that you know San Diego has a good acupuncture program and you and I spoke by emails. It was quite a while ago and it sounded great, it was a good fit. And so I came back home to San Diego and started college.

Jack: Alright, yeah. You know, one of the things that I’ve always admired about your approach to Chinese medicine has been your, how would I put this, your interest in validating what it is that you’re doing. I remember, even in the early days, you’re here at the clinic and you were measuring range of motion and needling and really, you know, not necessarily a formal research project, or maybe it was? I mean, you may have developed into that and I’m not aware of it, but you really always had an interest in research, as well as being a practitioner.

Matt: Yeah, thanks for noticing that, Jack, I really appreciate it. And it was informal, for sure. I was more interested in what works clinically – what works consistently, clinically – and then once it’s taught, does it still work? Yeah, and that’s always been a big thing for me. And, yeah, thanks for noticing that. That’s what drives me actually, because it truly is magical to be able to insert a stainless steel needle into an acupuncture point the way they did 5000 years ago and watch how function improves. Sure, yeah, it’s fascinating. It’s just discussed in a different language now.

Jack: Sure, yeah, I mean, I think it’s something that every practitioner can do in their own private practice and not necessarily to publish or to get grants or anything like that but just for their own edification, for their own validation of what they’re doing and to learn, right? I mean, you see things that work, try it out a few times to see if it works consistently; that’ll add to your skill and your confidence. So, I think it’s something that everybody can apply.

Matt: Yeah, I agree. It’s a practice practicing to see what works and what doesn’t work and record the findings, learn from the findings.

Jack: Right, learn from the findings, exactly. And yet, and you’ll never know what it’ll lead to, right? You might find something that you can write an article about or even a book. I noticed when you were doing your Symposium presentation this year, that you’d mentioned the interest that you had in posture and its relation to meridian imbalance. And so, you know, another book idea for you, right?

Matt: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s another idea. Though, that’s something that really still intrigued me quite a bit. We discussed this last program. I was just in the museum, we were talking, it’s the Low Back, Hip, and Groin module. So, we’re talking about the different postures of that study that I did in 2010 and discussed it again at the Symposium 2019. Yeah, looking at the five different postures and how those particular postures had a tendency to have the same signs and symptoms. A Zang-Fu TCM differential diagnosis, signs and symptoms. And it’s just became very, very curious now. After studying this, year after year, it’s very osteopathic when you start looking at these different postures. You start to see how the the organs themselves are in dysfunctional positions where they can’t actually move very well. Looking at Zang-Fu imbalances, posture, osteopathic view and TCM view, and then overlaying that with the channel systems, what happens with the channel systems, and the muscle imbalances, and how to treat it.

Jack: Yeah, it’s an interesting point. In fact, I’d written down a question I wanted to ask you – kind of relates directly to this – and that is, what role you think Chinese herbs play in the treatment of orthopedic disorders? It’s not commonly addressed in this country but yet, when you think about these organic imbalances – particularly if you want to address an underlying problem – it seems like Chinese herbs would have a big role.

Matt: Well, by not prescribing Chinese herbs means that you’re kind of getting away from Traditional Chinese Medicine. And only utilizing one aspect now, acupuncture, is a powerful aspect; but Chinese herbology is the nutrition that makes the changes, right? It’s the patient that, let’s say they have heat in their tongue and a rapid pulse and they’re going to be prone to inflammation. So therefore, too aggressive of the needle technique – they get inflamed. But yet, if you give the proper constitutional formula to be able to cool the internal heat, that’s part of the balancing that’s part of Traditional Chinese Medicine. So to answer your question, it’s a huge part of chapter five of the book.

Jack: Yeah, there you go, yeah. I’m really, really happy to hear that because I think that if you are only using needles like as you just described with your example, you are only using part of the tools that are at your disposal, you know? Going back a pretty long way, I seem to remember when you first got started down the path of orthopedics and Chinese medicine. You were really focused a lot on Janet Travell’s work and trigger point therapy and then at some point, when you gave me a part of your manuscript – you know, this is going back pretty far – I saw that, or maybe it was a Symposium proposal or whatever, I saw that you had kind of come back to the extra meridians and Luo vessel meridians and stuff for orthopedics. So was there an evolution or was I just missing something in my description of your early work?

Matt: Yeah, I think I’ve always blended the two together because when I started studying Traditional Chinese Medicine quite a bit, in order for me to understand it better, for the way I think I needed to compare it to western concepts. And so with looking, learning about ashi points and then studying Janet Trevell’s work and then remembering what we did in athletic training school, San Diego State, and what we did with motor nerve innervations – how we would use those with electricity – wondering what would happen when you use acupuncture to that was really, I think to answer your question, it’s been a combination for me. Just so I can simply understand it better.

Jack: Yeah, got it. So okay, so I mean, I think that I probably have a misimpression then of your earlier work. That it was really a lot more western and then the Chinese medicine kind of came back into your focus. So maybe it was a just misimpression.

Matt: I’m like, wait, yeah. Well, I don’t think so. I think we just – I have to elaborate a little bit more – I’m not saying that it was 50/50. Yeah, I got you. I’m not saying it was science 50/50 and TCM 50/50. Sometimes it would be 70/30, 80/20. But there’s always that underlying – how do I combine these so I can be able to practice this? Got it? I think that’s maybe what it was.

Jack: Yeah. So what’s life like now for you? What’s your balance? I think I overheard you say you weren’t practicing for a while. You’ve taken a bit of a well-deserved sabbatical. What’s the thinking behind that?

Matt: Well, I wanted to finish this book, which I have. The next two projects for me right now that I want to be able to finish before I go back to practice, which I miss – I’m really looking forward to going back to, sure – is the Motor Point Index, which is a flip chart that shows motor points. That was a real popular book and we ran out of print of that. So the Motor Point Index 2 is going to be coming out with a refined motor point locations and needle techniques. And then, the wall chart – we ran out of the wall chart – so the motor point acupuncture meridians wall chart is also being updated, got it? We’re working on those right now so those should be out by summer time.

Jack: Got it. Alright, well, good work. So you’re not – I’m sad to hear – that you’re not just kicking back, working on your tan, getting some good waves, and enjoying a well-deserved break. So you’ve got other projects that you’re bringing to fruition; that’s good for us.

Matt: I am getting some good waves, that’s for sure. I mean, surfing is my Prozac. If I don’t go surfing, I can’t function in life.

Jack: Yeah, I hear you. When you were working on the book, I mean, there was obviously a long time when you were working on the book, when you were doing both practice and working on the book. How did you balance your life? I mean, did you have a set schedule? Did you say, “Every day, I’m going to get up and work for a couple hours in the morning on the book,” or was it random? You know, what was it like? How would you advise somebody, an aspiring author, to finally get it done?

Matt: That’s, yeah, that’s an involved question because over 25 years, there’s been a lot of different with that. But I remember taking time off of my practice for five weeks or so and having somebody else take over. And most of time, I was very inspired to be able to do it, very passionate about it. Get up, eat a good breakfast, exercise, and then go ahead and work on the book or just get up early and work on the book and work on it all day because I have such a drive and a passion. A lot of things are being created so you just have to kind of observe the energy with it and try not to be too obsessive. But I’m not the one to really be preaching that one.

Jack: Yeah, I’d imagine there’s a bit of a team involved in the production of your book. In fact, I know for a fact that you had key members who helped with the art and layout and things like that. Did that help get it done? You know, did having someone else who was kind of dependent on you, getting your share done so that they could work on theirs? Does that kind of have a virtuous cycle?

Matt: For sure. Adam Schreiber, who is the editor of the book – we’ve had a number of different readers and editors – but he’s the primary, and I actually just saw him in New Jersey this last couple of days. He came back and he took a class, he’s a licensed acupuncturist, but he has a lot of experience with editing journals and such. And Adam was the person that really kind of cracked the whip for me because I have a tendency to go off on a tangent. If that tangent is not going in the right direction, have to be able to reel it back better. Now, I’m probably a lot more seasoned on it now than I was 10 years ago. So he was the one that really kind of kept things very, very focused. And yeah, together we were able to put this thing together, yeah.

Jack: Yeah, it’s important. I mean, one of the things I have here, obviously, is a huge team at the college and it really makes a difference, for sure. Yeah, it makes it more fun too, you know? I mean, working in isolation can be a challenge. I mean, some people thrive on it. But for others, having that camaraderie is important.

Matt: Yeah, it’s been really great. And since we’re going to be talking about people, I self-published this book so I hired.

Jack: I was going to ask you, you know, what drove that decision?

Matt: Because I’m an anal, Virgo, obsessive person.

Jack: It just had to be your way, right?

Matt: It had. Well, I have my team. I listen to my team, I listen to their ideas, right? And then when the ideas make sense, then we all work together. But like you, Jack, you know there’s got to be somebody who makes the final decision. So Nancy Ryan, who’s the artist of the book, she also was the artist for the Motor Point Index wall chart as well, she’s fantastic. She has her input and that worked out really well. Michelle Livermore, who put the book together right; that was a huge, huge undertaking doing that. Yeah, and so it was a big team effort, for sure.

Jack: Yeah, definitely. So what was the self-publishing, a financial equation, I mean? Did you say, you know, I can just do better in the long run? Particularly in the field of Chinese medicine, it’s not like you’re trying to reach 300 million Americans who are going to read the next bestseller, right? I mean, we can reach every act, everybody who’s probably in the market for your book you can reach. So it makes sense to me that self-publishing has a lot of merits. Now I say this with certain trepidation knowing that some of my clients who are Symposium exhibitors are publishers. But you know, not to take anything away from them, self-publishing will certainly have merits.

Matt: Yeah, if you have a large enough database and interest in the book, that people can be able to carry your book, then self-publishing is great. It gives you more freedom and creativity. For example, I had a really good idea of how I wanted the book to look and have it laid out. So with Michelle, we sat side by side for countless hours and months putting the book together, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, and placing the images, and just formatting it. So it’s nice that way. Whereas, if I gave it to a printer or another publisher, I may not have that kind of creativity.

Jack: Interesting, and it’s good to know. And particularly in the kind of book that you created that has – even though it’s not technically multimedia – has a lot of visuals. You know, graphics design is a big part of the book, as opposed to if you were writing something that’s a little more narrative, right? You know, that has no weaver or something?

Matt: I mean, I wanted the book to be really beautiful because if the content sucked, at least it’s a nice look.

Jack: Looks good, right? Yeah, well yeah. But lucky for us, I think it’s a success on all aspects except for the weight granted and that’s actually just said as a joke, right? It’s clearly a reference book that would be very at-home in everybody’s clinic. You know, as a student lugging it around to class. Well, hey, you know what? Students tend to be younger than us and can benefit from the exercise.

Matt: I like your rationale.

Jack: Yeah, right. So you know, I’d only hesitate to ask you this, but during the same period of time, you went to New Zealand and came back and I was kind of curious what the rationale, what the motivating factor was for that? Besides uncrowded waves, or maybe that is the entire rationale?

Matt: That was a big part of it. But also, I wanted to slow down a little bit more in life and I fell in love with it when I went there numerous times before, and then had an opportunity to actually become a resident, which I ended up doing. But you know what’s really good about that, Jack, is that I didn’t work on the book at all during that time. Actually, that was not true. During the second year, I did. But that’s when in my clinical practice in the North Island, in the Bay of Islands, I treated a number of different people there including a lot of menopausal women, a lot of aging, a lot of varying ages, and that’s where the Zang-Fu and posture idea came out. Interesting, so it was almost like I needed to go on the other side of the world and be upside down to be able to see that kind of thing. That’s interesting, that’s where I did a lot.

Jack: Yeah. So at that time, when you made that move, you basically had a practice here in San Diego, you basically wrapped up your tent and said, “You know, I’m going,” like you said, “halfway around the world.” Yeah, how long had you been practicing at that point?

Matt: Before I went to New Zealand?

Jack: Yeah.

Matt: See, New Zealand was 2010-2020, right? Now, so about 20 years.

Jack: So, yeah. So you were well established at that time, yeah. Just kind of, you know, thinking again of the purpose of this podcast is to help practitioners of all ages and all 10 years in their practice reflect on where they are in their career, you know? And what they might need to, in some cases, rejuvenate their interest in the medicine, right, after 20 years of doing similar work. Especially if they weren’t already working on a book or Motor Point Index, or teaching, creating whatever. There may be some need for them to reflect on a change, right? What that might be, you know? And that’s one of the things why I want to, you know, talk to people who have, for lack of a better term, side projects. Not necessarily saying that a book is a side project, sometimes it’s the main thing. But these side projects can provide a sense of inspiration, rejuvenation, you know? Just kind of reinvigorate your interest in the medicine or some particular aspect of the medicine that they might not be dealing with on a daily basis, if they’re just kind of have a broad practice, right? So, I think, one of the reasons why I bring some of these things up is to give somebody say, “Well Matt did it. Maybe I can go and you know pack it up for a while.”

Matt: Yeah, just make it a smaller book so it gets done within a year or two.

Jack: Oh the book, yeah. I mean, and well, and that’s a good point. And that is that you know any project well, one you’re not always sure where it’s going to lead, right? I mean, you may have started with the points charts and, you know, maybe not had a book immediately in mind when you were doing earlier projects. And so, someone that just has an interesting question they want to have answered, maybe they want to know more about how Chinese medicine herbs could help with antibiotic resistance, you know? And is there some way that that could benefit the culture? Just as an example, I’d like to see that article, if anybody listening, you know. And so, you start to work on that, it can be just a few pages, right? We publish it in the Pacific College newspaper, or Journal of Chinese Medicine, or Acupuncture Today that could start something that you might not have anticipated, right? I might see that article and go, “Oh, that’s a topic that I want to present at Pacific Symposium.” That person’s done the research; they know what the topic is. Next thing you know, they’ve started a career in teaching or public speaking, right? So yeah, you never know where that one steps going to take you.

Matt: That’s true. And these side projects that you were talking about can look a lot of different ways.

Jack: Absolutely.

Matt: It’s not just like what you’re talking about. It can be researched and something that you’re really passionate about and you write an article, but maybe you’re not a writer, but so you read a lot and you get these ideas of how to help certain patients that you may have, right? Another thing, too, is that maybe you’re at a place where you just need to work on yourself. Yeah, you start working on yourself a lot more, you start to find that, actually, I’m a happier person and my practice is getting better because of that, right? I’m able to communicate with my patients differently and provide interesting things for them to be able to look at and see, you know, we all have to do those practitioners. I mean, if we don’t, then we get stagnant. So yeah, looks a lot of different ways of how what these side projects are, so that we can end up helping more people in our practice.

Jack: Really, really good point. Right, especially these days. You say you don’t have to be a writer, that’s for sure, right? I mean, blogs, podcasts, videos that you can make that you could distribute to other practitioners, to your patients. There are products to be developed still. You know, I was talking to Jake Fratkin and he said that John Scott had suggested that he was going to start an herbal company and Jake was like, “Oh, who needs another herbal company?” Now, that was 20 years ago. John’s got a big herbal company, right? So you think, “Oh, it’s already been done. We don’t need another one.” But there’s always room for another different approach to something. Maybe it’s better, cheaper, easier to read, whatever. It happens to be right, version two, you know? So, yeah, there’s absolutely no limit to the ideas that you could come up with to do things beyond your private practice, that’s for sure.

Matt: Yeah, it’s good to keep it fresh.

Jack: Yeah, I’m gonna love your comment about personal development, as well. You know, that’s a particular interest of ours here at Pacific College right now, that we’ve just created a new Masters of Science of Health and Human Performance. And a big part of it is personal development, right? If you’re going to be a personal coach, well you need to know a lot about yourself first before you start telling other people how to do stuff, right? The truth. Yeah, so I think that acupuncturists in particular are pretty good at that, right? I mean, I think there’s a very high level of awareness a personal sense of responsibility, introspection amongst acupuncturists. At least the ones that I see that come to Symposium and that’s at the college. But, you know, there’s always more to be done there, that’s for sure. And as you said, it totally would reflect in your business or your private practice, right? Yeah, just your own said personal satisfaction, you’re happier. And it’s going to reflect to everybody around you. So yeah, for sure. Yeah, let’s see if I had anything else. How about you, Matt, just like other advice that you might have for, let’s say, three different people: newest practitioner, someone who’s maybe been in practice for 10 years, and then someone that’s been in practice for 20 years. What do you tell these three? What do you tell yourself, you know, 30 years ago? What did you tell yourself 15 years ago? And what are you telling yourself now?

Matt: Okay, well I’m not going to answer that part, what I tell myself. I’ll share with you what happened to me yesterday. My flight was not until the evening, in New Jersey. And so, I hung out at the school, Eastern School of Acupuncture Traditional Medicine, for most of the day getting some work done. Thomas Quo’s over there. Tom’s one of our alumni, great guy, really great, solid. I said, “Thomas, if anybody wants to come and chat, I’m just going to be here working.” And so, he actually sent an email out. So the game was like, “Am I going to get any work done?” One student, came actually two students came, and both of those students – they’re new obviously, they’re going to be graduating soon – and they’re going to be a first-year, second-year acupuncturist within a few months. And both these guys, what they had in common was trying to put the medicine together and what they’re going to do with it. Both of these individuals seem like they started to segregate. How they saw the body, for example, both of them were interested in musculoskeletal and they were looking at cases of low back pain and shoulder pain and such, and they weren’t really thinking about what other points they can use to be able to help this person that has the shoulder pain or the low back pain. What other imbalance, channel imbalances could be causing the shoulder pain or the low back pain. They weren’t really putting it all together, yet. And I’m not quite sure if that’s something that they learned later or they were just still trying to work it out because there’s a lot of information thrown at you within the three years of the four years of taking this school, right? That’s for sure. So I think, long story short, would be to really continue to study quite a bit. Find the passion that you have, keep an open mind, and just never settle on yourself with it. Just never, you know? Because you’re always going to learn, yeah. And because life has a tendency and practices have a tendency to, especially practices, will have a tendency to ebb and flow. And when it is in the low point, you really have to check your own qi and what you’re doing and how you’re communicating with your patients. Yeah, that’s my own experience with that. Yeah, I think that’s right. How excited you are with it, yeah. So continue to be a student, yeah. So that’s the new practitioner. The 10-year practitioner would probably, don’t record this one or don’t use this one, but dude, it’s all good. Got it all figured out and it’s like, you know they got it all figured out. You’re just starting.

Jack: Yeah, good point.

Matt: You’re just, you still have, there’s just so much still to learn. I still have so much more to learn, yeah. Don’t ever rest on the laurels. Keep studying, be passionate. I think that’s probably for all three groups.

Jack: Yeah, good advice, yeah.

Matt: Cut out what you guys want, but you know.

Jack: I think that’s very good advice. I think anybody hearing it would probably agree that, even particularly, when you think you know it all, is when you should stop and think about what you don’t know.

Matt: Yeah but, Jack, don’t use that part, okay, at least, yeah, I mean.

Jack: Man, sometimes stuff you want to leave out, it’s the best.

Matt: Alright, it’s not the last. I mean, I’m being kind of controversial so if you want to use it, it’s okay.

Jack: Yeah, well, I think on that note, I think it’s as controversial as you might think it is. I think it’s insightful and wise and very, very helpful. Any last words? Anything you want to say about what’s next for you? You mentioned you know what you’re going to be doing during your hiatus, but when do you expect to go back into private practice?

Matt: I’m hoping to go back into practice probably fall of this year or early next year after the birth of this book; it’s taking me all over the world, which is great and which is really wonderful. I’ll be spending the month of May in Europe with a couple of seminars and traveling around a bit. And August, I’ll be in Australia, and New Zealand would be really nice. And yeah, it’s been fantastic. So this year is pretty darn busy with my own program and some others, you know, one of the things that I’m doing here in the US. So, it’s been a wonderful experience. Yeah, well, you think you’re going to go into a group practice again or will you practice out of your home or keep a low key, is it kind of has to be a special situation because the way that my life is going is, I really like to travel a lot. Yeah, if I could go ahead and have a practice for three months but then maybe be gone for three or four months and then come back for three months and be gone again, so whatever that venue would end up being, that I have that kind of flexibility. That’s something that I’m actually going to try to manifest and see how it’s going to happen when the time happens.

Jack: Yeah, well I guess my message for our audience, kind of in closing, is that you can see that Matt has the option to kind of create the life that he wants to live and that’s come through the work that he’s put into creating, not just the books that we’ve already mentioned, but is SMAC, the Sports Medicine Acupuncture training certification. And so, it does take time, takes effort but all those journeys start with one step and we look forward to seeing what you, our audience, creates. I’d like to hear from you; my email is [email protected]. Anything you have to say about our podcast, what you got from them, comments about the profession, love to hear from you. So, Matt, thanks a bunch for being with us. I wish you all luck. I hope you can take those three months here and there and we’ll see you out in the water, real soon, I hope.

Matt: Thank you, Jack, for inviting me, appreciate it.

Jack: Alright, take care.

Matt: You too.