 There's an epidemic of a very specific and certain kind of disorder in today's world. And in my mind, it's the epidemic of both nervous system disorders and psycho-emotional or psycho-spiritual illness, whatever term you want to use. But in this video, I thought I would share a key that I found for many of my patients that has helped them. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide I've put together, which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of my locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my private practice right below in the description there. Recently, I was traveling in Morocco and I had an experience that really made me think. I was walking through a small alleyway and there was a woman who was fully covered up to her eyes in front of me. And as she was passing by a little intersection, a giant dog jumped out of the alleyway and barked at her. Now she completely freaked out and she clutched her chest like this. Now I didn't think anything of it, but later that night we were walking on our way to dinner and this time I saw a different older woman who was looking at her grandchild for the first time that she was meeting in a restaurant that her, I guess it was a family sort of meet and greet. And this is the first time she'd seen this little baby. And what did she do? She did the same thing. I got always like a cute little heartwarming sort of gesture. And it made me think about a key healing lesson in traditional Chinese medicine. The heart is almost the holographic center of the nervous system. And whether we are experiencing heart shock, like fear, the dog, or whether we are experiencing something that is heartwarming, like love, like this grandmother seeing her new grandchild, the heartwarming so cute sensation, human beings throughout the world and throughout history, we develop the same sort of gestures for specific archetypal purposes. And the heart is one of those mirrors of the nervous system. Now encoded in this story is both a profound lesson about Chinese medicine, but also about healing and wellness in general. You know, we say that in traditional Chinese medicine, our ancient texts say that the heart is like the emperor. And all of these other organs in the body almost are responding to the heart, right? And if all of these organs are having issues, it's almost like there's a rebellion in the kingdom and people are trying to overthrow the emperor. But the heart is the seed of the big spirit, right? The spirit is in the consciousness of the person. The consciousness is in someone who is healthy and has bright eyes and has vitality. And clearly you can see in them wellness. You can see vitality, not something measurable in labs or blood work or imaging, but vitality anyone can recognize that is immediately perceptible. When there is a disturbance in the heart in traditional Chinese medicine, this is one of those reasons people have issues with anxiety or depression. Now, heart is not just in a holographic sense, it is an emotional thing. In a clinical sense, we utilize formulas that we say treat the heart if people are experiencing clinical depression or clinical anxiety. And one thing I'm interested in is how often my patients who have issues with our nervous system or with HPA access dysregulation will experience physical issues with the heart, like having an elevated heart rate. So many people that I see that are primarily experiencing a lot of stress see the symptoms in their in their chest, tight chest, elevated heart rate, dysrhythmias like heart palpitations, they're having obviously insomnia, anxiety, depression. But how often stress and this dysregulation, this disconnection in day to day life, how often it does manifest physically, even in the chest on its own. Now I love this idea of somatic healing or somatic sensing. In other words, one of the most illuminating exercises I had ever done in my own healing journey was learning to pay attention to where I felt certain stressors were in my body. So if I drink a cup of coffee, and today was not the day where I should have had a cup of coffee, where do I notice it? I close my eyes and I notice my hands feel a little sweaty. That wasn't like that before, or I'm noticing my heart, I feel boom, boom, boom. I can feel my heart and I couldn't feel my heart an hour ago, or I'm noticing a little bit of indigestion, and I was feeling fine prior. Just this concept of somatic sensing, learning to recognize where you feel certain parts of your body is really key to having a built in sort of biofeedback mechanism, where going forward, if I'm working on my healing and my healing journey, recognizing, okay, what gives me that feeling of this is heartwarming or I feel peace? So as I go up on my day-to-day life, that keep baby, oh, that elevated emotion, that energy, where do I feel that sense in my day-to-day life? And where do I feel the opposite, right? I'm driving, I'm driving in traffic, I feel tight chest. That is not the feeling that I want. Or I'm having a cup of coffee, I feel anxious chest, or I have a healthy meal, I feel calm, I feel grounded. I work one job, I feel constant tension and pressure in my chest, I work another job on the weekend, I feel positive, I feel relaxed, I don't feel that pressure in my chest. The heart is the mirror of the nervous system in many different ways, and is the mirror of really the psyche in so many ways as well. And certainly within traditional Chinese medicine, there's a reason for that, because the heart is really the center of the big spirit, consciousness of the person. And for so many of my patients, when I'm helping them retrain to recognize how they feel, the number one thing I have to pay attention to is, if the heart is where you feel tension and stress, go about your daily life and see how varying things affect that physical location, and try to find more things that give you that sense of peace and that calmness. So for many of us, regulating the nervous system is about learning to regulate the heart. And that is a retraining journey of going about your daily life and noticing what makes your physical body actually feel the best, because very often it's affecting the nervous system. So the heart has a holographic mirror of the nervous system, very useful in something you see every single day. Alright guys, so don't forget to check out those links right below this video, and I'll see you soon.