 Certain body types have certain natural tendencies. Now, these are tendencies towards certain strengths in terms of illness and certain weaknesses or susceptibilities. Now, in Chinese medicine, we call this your constitution, because it is your body's tendency to be a certain way. Now, really high level medicine is also understanding the way a person should live their life and even geographically where to live. That is the best and most harmonious with your constitution. So let's talk about this a little bit more in today's video. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hein, doctor of Chinese medicine and licensed acupuncturist. So before we jump into this video here today, right below this video is a contact link. If you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can contact my private practice that way. So let's talk about two broad classes of general body or constitutional types. And then we'll talk about the kind of environments that are suitable for them because a lot of us forget that the highest level of medicine is no medicine. It is living a life that is the work is harmonious, the area you live, the people you live with, the hours you work and the kind of work you do is all aligned with your strengths and your weaknesses so that you don't have to take medicine to offset that imbalance. So there are two general types I spot in my practice. The first is let's call it the yin deficient type and the yin deficient type looks like this. These people in terms of their body type are often thin, a little bit more muscular or sinewy, have a tighter abdomen and are more prone to anxiety or restless sleep or sensitivity or the symptoms that we consider upward surging in Chinese medicine. So they're very sensitive to their physical and emotional environment and they tend to be also kind of fast thinkers fast on their feet and are also this kind of stereotypical fast twitch muscle type. So they're very like that rabbit energy right there just like the nervous system goes zero to a hundred really quickly. Now the weakness of this yin deficient constitution the struggle is that they have too much of this upward energy, too much of this momentum. The nervous system goes zero to a hundred way too quick and so it is hyper vigilant more often than other body types. Now the other type of general bucket people fall into is the yang deficient constitution. Now the yang deficient constitution looks a bit like this. This is the person who has often a larger body type. They may be more fleshy or even have more body fat. They're more prone to somnolence, maybe a little bit lower energy. They tend to be good sleepers, deep sleepers have good digestion, but they're prone to lower motivation and lower energy overall. So the main challenge of the yang deficient constitutional type is actually that they struggle with this kind of downward energy or too much heaviness. So too little momentum right too little movement. Now the point is that these are not hard and fast rules are one-to-one correlations. They're just general correlations that I spot in people. They are general tendencies and of course we are all combinations of the two right. But some of us on the spectrums the ends of the spectrum fall into one bucket or the other more often than the other. Now let's talk about yin versus yang environmental types. It's funny because I say yin deficient and it's getting confusing, but a yang environment is one of activity. New York City, Manhattan is a yang environment. A lot is happening. There's movement. There's activity. Nervous systems are going crazy off the charts. Everybody's fast in a rush. Got things to do. The cars are moving. They're honking the horns. The noise. It's activity, right? The yin kind of environment is nature. It's rural Wyoming where it's slow and it's quiet and it's boring and you're moving this. What's the rush like? There's no traffic in rural Wyoming. Where am I going to go? What am I rushing towards? But understanding these is very important because certain, I like to think of them almost as nervous system types, certain nervous systems that are already on and going crazy with hypervigilance. There's too many guards in the watch tower. And so the rabbit in the bush at night they think is a dragon or is a cougar or is the army invading and it's just a rabbit. And you know maybe the yang deficient archetype is a little bit more somnolent and maybe they're just, they fell asleep on the watch tower. And it was, you know, a mountain lion or it was, you know, the war coming. It was the Persians coming. So understanding that these environments should attempt to counterbalance your constitutional tendencies or maybe your nervous system tendencies. So high level medicine, even in our ancient books, the Yellow Emperors Inner Classic, a lot of it is about self-knowledge and understanding where we're constitutionally weak and where we're strong. And so the person that is very flighty and prone to light and bad sleep and very sensitive and they can't handle the energy of the big city, maybe they shouldn't be living in the big city. Maybe New York City is not the spot for you to live, for prime happiness and focus and good sleep and feeling well. And maybe the yang deficient type, maybe they should be in New York City because they struggle with motivation and getting things done and they need the accountability of friends that are up at eight and action takers and they're always doing things and they can pull them out of their apartment or dating a significant other that is active to counteract the desire to stay home and watch Netflix and eat food for three hours. This is really lifestyle medicine, preventative medicine, right? It is understanding your tendencies and understanding your strengths and weaknesses. And so people of the yin deficient type will often, for example, sleep better in quieter towns or quieter more natural environments and they will naturally gravitate towards those and sensitive people will prefer to stay out of the cities and they will say things like, I can't handle the energy of this place. I thought this was very interesting because I've had this conversation with several patients in the last few weeks and understanding that highest level is no medicine, no intervention. If you can arrange your life in a way that, you know, living outside of New York City or Los Angeles gives you the sleep you need which means that you're eating better and you're feeling better and you're more productive at work and you're not cranky then maybe that's the highest medicine and it's not an antidepressant or it's not having to drink alcohol every night or it's not having to take whatever, you know, smoke a joint to calm down. It's knowing that I'm a little bit yin deficient, my nervous system goes crazy for nothing and I need to live in a place that's more chill to balance that out. So matching your nervous system to your environment is very, very helpful, I think, and a useful exercise. Alright guys, that's what I have for you today. Before we go down below, there's a link to contact my private practice in Los Angeles. If you'd like to become a patient or a telemedicine patient virtually, you can reach out below and I'll catch you in these other videos here.