My Visit With a Chinese Medicine Doctor · 5 min read

More than just a wet sock and fire...

Back in the early days of my fight career, I was plagued by lower back pain for a few months. I had experienced lower back pain before in my wrestling days so the pain was nothing new. I went the physical therapy route like I usually do and may or may not have rested as much as my doctors wanted me to. My back pain wouldn't go away and I needed to be able to spar if I was going to prep for another fight.

In addition to rehab, I got massages and went to a chiropractor. I thought I was checking off all the recovery boxes. I didn't consider or even want to hear about Chinese medicine at the time but it kept getting brought up by my girlfriend at the time. Some people in her family had lower back problems and got them fixed by some guy in Oakland.

A Chinese medicine doctor. I’m not even sure if it’s Chinese medicine but I don't think he even had an MD. They swore whatever he did, worked. So I decided to go. The pain wasn't going anywhere and I was willing to try anything to find some relief. I needed to spar because I had an upcoming fight so off to Oakland I went.

After aimless wandering downtown Oakland I finally walked into the doctor’s office that looked like a scene from "Big Trouble in Little China,” to check-in. I had no idea what I had just walked in to. The place smelled like a market. I wasn't sure if the smells came from herbs and incense or if someone just finished their lunch.

The room was small and split into two areas by old office dividers that looked like they were mostly held together by duct tape. The front space was the waiting room. There was one other person there to see the doc. The other man seemed to be bleeding from the neck but it was hard to be sure because he was holding paper towels against his neck. He didn’t seem concerned or in a hurry so I figured he must be okay.

I got called in first, thank god because the guy with the bleeding neck was creeping me out a little. The back area was tiny. Maybe 6x6 feet. There were two chairs and a small table. My girlfriend sat in one chair, and I laid face down on the table. As I was on the table, the doc brought in the other man and sat him in the other chair. Once the man was seated, the doc pulled a curtain around him. From where I was lying, I could see the man's feet stick out from under the curtain. If I tried I probably could have touched the guys' shoes.

If this wasn't strange enough already, the doc also had Chinese radio blasting loudly and would periodically turn the radio off and on. As I lay on the table, he would walk around me and lightly massage parts of my back. It wasn't a massage, though, more like he was poking me to see what I was. Every once in a while, when he was by my feet, he would pull on my toes.

This continued for a bit, then the doc started hitting me with something warm and wet. I was face down on the table and couldn't see what it was. I found out later from my girlfriend that he pulled a brown sock out of a rice cooker and was hitting me with it. The sock had something in it. Might have been rice or even another sock. Maybe even magic beans but I never got confirmation. It was in the rice cooker soaking and staying warm. I think that was what I smelled when I first came in.

The doc would walk around me, poking my back, pulling on my toes, switching the Chinese radio on and off in-between moments of him hitting my back with a warm brown wet sock. This is different. It was a new kind of treatment I’d never experienced or even knew existed. I couldn't understand what was going on so I just went along with it but also started getting a little annoyed that I let myself get talked into doing this. I felt like I was wasting my morning and at that point, I didn't even know about the sock yet.

This treatment carried on for a good fifteen minutes. Next came the cups. I had heard of cupping before, but I hadn't personally done it. The doc didn't use the pump ones that everybody has now. Instead, he would lite paper on fire in the cup and then place it on your back. The fire created a vacuum in the cup. The doc put about four cups on my back and left them there for about ten minutes. While I waited, he continued to turn the radio on and off. During this time, he also treated the bleeding neck guy.

After the cups came off, I only had one more step to go. The doctor had mixed up some concoction while the cups were doing their work. He had a brush that he used to paint my back with whatever he had mixed up. It was cold and wet and odorless. I figured it was just an ointment for me to wear home with me. Nope. I was wrong.

As I laid there, I could hear a familiar sound. It was a lighter, one of the long ones with the trigger that you use for starting the grill or lighting fireworks. The doc clicked it a few times as he walked over to me. Once he got to me, he said softly, "hot, this a little hot." I had no idea what he was talking about.

Click and then the sounds of an inferno. The Chinese doctor set my back on fire. It was hot, but only for a second. I was a little shocked. I guess the ointment he put on my back was flammable. After the first batch of flames had passed, he slopped on another layer of the fire juice and lit me up one last time.

I don't know what kind of sorcery this was, but the man set my back on fire two times and he didn't burn any of my back hair. After the flames settled the appointment was over. Back on the road to San Jose, I got filled in about the sock by my girl before I dropped her off at home, and I went to AKA to train.

On the day of the appointment, I was able to spar three rounds for the first time in a couple of months. There was some soreness that day, but by the next day, I was pain-free. I haven't had lower back pain since then either and this happened around 2007.

What’s the moral of the story? Be open to trying new things. Even if it doesn’t meet your expectations (or lack thereof) you’ll get a cool story out of it. By the way, I’ve turned the internet upside down looking for the name of this type of alternative medicine. Like I mentioned before, I’m not positive it’s even considered Chinese medicine so any leads are appreciated.