Treating Kids with Colds

New Shoptalk Conversations Publish on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of Each Month

December 18, 2025

Japanese Acupuncture, Pediatrics

Treating Kids with Colds

Maya Suzuki

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It’s the quiet, gentle skills that often enough create the most change in clinic, especially for kids. The techniques easily overlooked because they seem so subtle, gentle or simple, it’s these interventions the body soaks in with a thirst.

In this Shop Talk, we sit down with Maya Suzuki, a practitioner rooted in Japanese medicine, whose work with pediatrics reveals just how responsive, intuitive, and astonishingly resilient children’s bodies can be.

Listen in as we explore why treating kids requires a completely different mindset than treating adults. The importance of proper dosage. How overtreatment is surprisingly easy to slip into, and how children themselves often tell you exactly they’ve had enough.

Maya takes us inside her palpation process and shares how the Shang Han Lun becomes a 3D map in her hands. She describes how this is useful in tracking colds, coughs, and seasonal pathogens through the taiyang and beyond.

She also talks candidly about knowing when East Asian medicine can take the lead, and when Western medicine needs to step in—emphasizing the importance of collaborative clinical care.

Effective treatment isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing just enough, with presence, precision, and trust in the body’s own capacity to heal.

In this Shoptalk, we discuss:

Kids as responsive “live feedback” systems — children quickly show when treatment is enough; babies cry or get fussy, and older kids will literally push your hand or tool away. It’s important to recognize the signs of “enough.”
Tiny bodies, tiny doses — Pediatric treatment is much lighter and shorter in duration than adult care. Sometimes just a minute of shonishin or moxa is sufficient. Children heal rapidly and don’t need big interventions to create substantial change.
Palpation as a 3D map of disease — Using abdominal and chest palpation to find the five key factors of pathogenic qi (jaki), cold, heat, deficiency, and excess (plus toxins when active). This locates where the illness sits in the body and which channels can be a route for that pathogenic qi to exit.
Cold and flu through the Shang Han Lun lens — Many pediatric colds and coughs show up as taiyang or simple ge gen tang type presentations. Treatment focuses on gently dispersing the upper back and neck, slightly opening the pores, and allowing the body to “sweat out” the pathogen.
70/30 rule for clinical results — When treating, aim for about 70% improvement on the table—less pain, easier swallowing, better breathing. Deliberately leave the remaining 30% to the child’s own system to resolve. In this way the immune response is strengthened.
Partnership with Western medicine — Maya stresses knowing when your treatment isn’t enough: stubborn, worsening coughs or deeper Shang patterns can signal the need for antibiotics or other biomedical care. She frames this not as failure, but as choosing the right tool at the right time to keep kids safe.

Traditional Japanese Medicine isn’t about memorizing — it’s about feeling, adjusting, and trusting your hands.

Maya Suzuki

Heather “Maya” Suzuki, L.Ac. is a licensed acupuncturist who spent over 10 years living and training in Japan. She is dual-licensed in Japan and the U.S., and specializes in Traditional Japanese Medicine — including Iyashi No Michi style acupuncture, moxibustion, and Daishiryu shonishin for pediatrics.

Maya is the founder of ShinKyu University (shinkyuuni.com), an educational platform helping early-career acupuncturists confidently transition from TCM to TJM through hands-on skills training, mentorship, and international workshops.