 Living in Los Angeles, I'm finding that there are a lot of people who are chronically ill or who experience weird health symptoms. And the way they interpret these is not through the lens of biomedical thinking, but it's more through the lens of spiritual and new age thinking. And I thought I would talk about this in this video today because it brings up a very important question that people have to think about, which is that what people have asked me is, am I spiritually ascending or am I just sick? And that is a great question. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hein, licensed acupuncturist and doctor of Chinese medicine. Before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below it. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can contact my private practice right below this video. And the second is for a free PDF, a free handout, which is on four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So those are right below this video here. Now let's talk about this idea of am I sick or am I spiritually ascending? I myself have experienced really severe insomnia and anxiety to the point at which most people, I would say probably 99% of people would have been on antidepressants and benzodiazepines or Xanax for a very long time. And the reason I didn't go to those was not because I'm anti-conventional medicine or anti-pharmaceutical, it's because I had seen many people do that and I had seen that it may have saved them in the short run, but in the long run it handicapped them because now years later, there was no healing that had occurred and it kind of flatlined their healing journey. But for me, I mean, I had severe, severe, severe insomnia, sleeping only a few hours a day I could sleep. And there wasn't anything I could track it back to in my life. I was doing every method of healing, Chinese medicine, any other quack, weird, new agey, more fetch thing someone recommended to try and heal, I did it. I did all of it because I wanted to be alive. You know, I mean, you could only sleep so few hours in a day for a duration of time before you begin to get really scared that something bad is going to happen or that you will do it to yourself. And during this time, I entertained every possible theory of healing. Like I said, the material was, all right, this is just something biochemical. This is anxiety, depression and insomnia, right? This is HPA access dysfunction, whatever it is. And then on the more spiritual side, I went psychological, biological, physical, spiritual, everything. And one question that came to mind was, in particular, because of one very weird and alarming symptom I had, is this, is there a silver lining here that this is like a spiritual awakening, like shaman sickness. If you look through indigenous cultures, the shaman awakening, if they survive this initiation, is intensely painful. They often are close to death. And it's considered an essential part in traditional cultures of the shaman entering into this new role as the healer and the physician of their society and their civilization. Now one of the most alarming symptoms I developed after a certain period of time was this feeling of my whole body tremoring or trembling all the time. If you've ever had too many cups of coffee and then you notice your body, like your whole body feels like this, but your hands are not shaking, then you know what I'm talking about. And yet I wasn't doing anything or even drinking coffee to induce that. So it got to the point where one day I'd woken up and I thought the train was going by near my apartment because the bed was shaking, but it turned out it was literally just within my body. There is no physical tremor you can observe. And that feeling of tremoring or trembling, vibrating, buzzing went on for years, years I had that to the point where anytime I wasn't sleeping well again, the trembling or tremoring would come back. So in my mind, after ruling out nervous system causes, I was like, okay, this is either a sign of severe sleep deprivation and nervous system problems or a spiritual awakening. I hope I would like to believe it is right that I'm not dying, but that I'm something is getting better. And it's interesting because something that is very challenging is that anytime human beings do not understand something, it can be easily attributed to mysticism or spirituality. And my point of sharing that is that I do not believe that that was a sign of ascending or becoming ultra spiritual or becoming a shaman or becoming a healer. I think that most illness still has physiological causes and that most of these weird symptoms are just symptoms that people have been misdiagnosed. They are evasive or the symptoms are they come and go, they're recalcitrant, they're difficult to heal. And so when things evade all common explanations, the tendency is to ascribe it to God or to mysterious beings. You know, to me, this is the equivalent of ancient people thinking that thunder and lightning were these gods doing this instead of the intersection of pressure, temperature and electricity. I think many people in my field come into Chinese medicine because they have preexisting beliefs about spirituality and new age beliefs. And that may be them projecting those beliefs onto Chinese medicine and not Chinese medicine itself. So here are three suggestions I can give if you are someone who's really struggling with health problems. You know, in my opinion, most of these symptoms are not spiritual awakenings. Sorry, just my opinion, right? Just my opinion. And the reason for that is if you start with that assumption, it may prevent you from treating something that needs to be treated. Three things that I think are worth considering here. The first is to begin with what's obvious, right? This is Akam's razor principle. Akam's razor basically, let me give you a simple example. If you're constipated, the most obvious explanation is probably the right one for most people. If you're constipated, you probably haven't been eating well. That's it. And then there's an option B, C, D, E, F, and then they're less likely. You know, maybe there's actually some kind of, there's an illness or a bowel disorder and then way down at FGHs, maybe they actually have cancer. But the biggest chunk is going to be probably haven't been eating well in the last seven days. So start with what you know, because if you go to these far out, ungrounded explanations, you know, it's always zebras before unicorns, right? You always start with maybe the original one to start with what is most common most of the time. And then only secondarily, it's a zebra and only tertiaryly, if I can use that word, it's a unicorn. But start with what you know, because having been chronically ill myself, all I wanted was to feel better. I don't care if it was a New Age explanation, I don't care if it was a drug explanation, I just wanted to feel better. So begin with what you know to be true, entertain that first. The second thing is don't take advice from people who don't practice clinical medicine. Just my opinion, that'll probably offend half the people in my field. Don't take medical advice from an astrologer. Sorry. Like taking medical advice from someone who literally treats illnesses day in and day out, and they can give you some clear clinical feedback, and there are repercussions for their treatments and the actions or the lack of response to their treatments. See people who actually practice clinical medicine. And then the last is once you have your foundation of what you know works, then begin entertaining these other far out or less conventional theories and options. Because again, if you feel sick and having felt chronically ill myself to the point my whole life revolved around healing and I couldn't function, I mean I lost years of my life, start with what you know for sure will help you. And then from there, you know, do these little forays out to try other methods and see if it works, see if it helps, be a skeptic, and try within your own body to see if it helps you. Alright guys, sorry to rain on somebody's parade here, but I don't think most symptoms are a spiritual awakening. I'm very confident of that actually. I've seen many, many people who believe their symptoms were spiritual awakenings, treated them, and sure enough, they got better. And a final primer here is that, or a final note, PS, is that there's one of our most famous physicians in Chinese medicine, a guy named Zhang Zhongjing, lived in the Han dynasty close to 2,000 years ago. And a famous quote he had in one of his, in his text in the Shanghang Lunar Reviews in the Jingwei, he said that he was describing a gynecological disorder of a woman, and was describing these wild mood swings and this spontaneous crying as if possessed by ghosts. And he said, this is not due to possession by ghosts or spirits, but is a gynecological or hormonal related disorder. And I think some people still would like to believe that the things we cannot understand must be mystical or new age. And in my opinion, that is not true. They just, the symptoms or the expression of it exists, but we may not understand how or why it exists. All right guys, I'll leave you with that for today. Again, before you go, the link below this video is to contact me to become a patient locally in Los Angeles, virtually via telemedicine. And there's also a free download for you, five daily rituals that potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And I will catch you guys in the next video.