 There are some medical cases that will puzzle you and puzzle every doctor for years and I'm often impressed and baffled because some of these people, some of these patients, the only time there is a permanent healing is not when they see every doctor and every specialist. It's not when they see every alternative doctor. It's not when they see every healer. It's when they sit down and they begin listening to what their gut says that they need to heal and that is the moment where the transformation begins. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of the Health Book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. Now before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below the video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine you can reach out to my private practice and clinic right below this video and the second is for a free guide I've put together which is four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. So this concept of Dharma is very interesting to me. I have not only spent years of my life sick with chronic illness I've also seen many hundreds of people like this and at some point in a small percentage of people where a highly skilled practitioner is not able to fix them you begin to wonder why they got sick in the first place or even more importantly why their body isn't healing and every now and then you get a very interesting case of someone who's done everything that should have led to healing and they're not getting any better and through a chance encounter or through a gut impression or a message in a dream something obscure they go off on this side path in their life and they come back and they're better they begin to turn the corner for the first time in their life. Now I often think about these people because when people walk through my door the first thing that I think is what is it that this person needs what is it that they actually need because what they actually need may not be me they may not need their physician they may not need their specialist they may not need their alternative or integrated person Dr. Alex they may not need any of that they may just need to get divorced and quit their damn job but it makes me think a lot about human beings and purpose and the decisions that we make and if they lead to healing or if they lead to disease I've become more intimately familiar with this concept of Dharma something inherent to a couple East Asian religions but I think of Dharma in the context of the Indian classic the Bhagavad Gita. Now I had a yoga instructor once describe Dharma to me as the following that Dharma is some kind of spiritual dash earthly purpose primarily working around your work and what you do on a daily basis in the world that the Dharma is almost like a track somewhere out there that is your destiny so to speak that if you listen to it that if you trust it that it will lead you to the path of the greatest fulfillment and the greatest peace in your life now just because you do your Dharma doesn't mean you'll be successful financially look at many innovators and many change makers that were not successful many artists many creatives many authors Gandhi MLK mother Teresa the innumerable monks and religious devotees but I think about Dharma in the context of are you living the actual life that you want to be living that is the million dollar question now when it comes to medicine there's a particular story that makes me think of this now it's one part Dharma and one part someone just trusting our gut impressions there's a great New York Times article that came out called the island where people forget to die this island is based in Ikaria Greece and it describes the story of a man named Stamatis Moraitis some Greek person and please correct me there but it describes in 1976 him feeling short of breath and he had to quit working midday and after x-rays his doctor concluded that he had lung cancer and as he recalls nine other doctors confirmed it and they gave him nine months to live and he was in his mid 60s now the article goes on to describe how he considered staying in America and seeking aggressive treatment but he decided instead to return to Ikaria where he could be buried with his ancestors in a cemetery shaded by oak trees that overlook the Aegean Sea he figured also that a funeral in the US would be thousands while a traditional Ikarian funeral would only be 200 leaving more of his retirement savings for his wife so they moved back into Ikaria and they said at first he spent his days in bed as his mother and wife tended to him he reconnected with his faith and on Sunday mornings he hobbled up the hill to a tiny Greek Orthodox chapel where his grandfather once served as a priest when his childhood friends discovered that he'd moved back they started showing up every afternoon and they'd talk for hours and activity that invariably involved a bottle or two of locally produced wine I might as well die happy he thought but in the ensuing months something strange happened he says he started to feel stronger and one day feeling ambitious he planted some vegetables in the garden now as time went on what was interesting that after six months he didn't die instead he woke up when he wanted he worked in the vineyards until mid-afternoon made himself lunch and took a long nap and then in the evenings he would walk to the local tavern and play dominoes past midnight let's see this was written in 2012 this guy was now 97 years old had outlived his diagnosis by many decades with no treatment of any kind he never went through chemotherapy took drugs or saw therapy of any sort all he did was move home to Icaria now I'm not sharing this anecdote to say that everyone given a terminal diagnosis of cancer needs to just move to a remote Greek island and drink wine with their best friends although I think most of us would be much happier and in much better health for doing that but there is a kind of healing force I've observed when people particularly given a diagnosis of cancer where there is a sort of finality to it there's a sort of cutoff point as in if you do not change the consequences will probably be death that sometimes forces people to change in the biggest way possible they begin doing what they've always actually wanted to do and sometimes that by itself is the healing force that people need what I see today for so many people is that there's this kind of epidemic of psychospiritual dysfunction this psychospiritual illness where people work jobs that they don't like they work hours that they don't want to be working they live in places they don't even want to live in also they can repeat it over and over and over again to impress people or to look successful or to be safe or because they're afraid or because their parents will disown them or because their wife says that's the kind of man he needs to be or the little boy that's the kind of boy he needs to be and all of this leads to people making the biggest betrayal of all which is the betrayal of oneself because it doesn't matter at the end of the day who you end up talking to or who you end up answering to what matters is that when you look in the mirror at the end of the day the only person you're looking back at is yourself and only you know if you're actually happy living the life that you actually want to be living or if you're living the life true to other people what they've expected of you to me the ultimate betrayal and the ultimate reason for all the psycho-spiritual illness we see today with people is specifically because of this because people are living lives that are not their own and to me the definition of dharma is that you are living the life that you feel you have a calling for I mean we use these terms like calling these words like vocation right these words that have to be called there's a tug coming from somewhere you don't know where you don't even know where it's going to lead or what it means but there is a call someone's phoning you right and they're saying this is what you're supposed to be doing this is the track that the universe the dow of your dharma is trying to get you on but you're over here being a freaking accountant but this is your destiny and there's one other plot twist a lot of the world's most successful people Paulo Coelho Oprah they described that the biggest transformation even in their finances came when they followed that dharma that path that hugs on them internally they don't know why but they know they feel the tug so I want to leave you with this today that if there's something you feel like is tugging on you internally maybe trusting that feeling because maybe it is connected to your dharma or to a piece of some hero's journey that is so much bigger than yourself that you can't even comprehend it maybe secondarily it'll be the most essential piece of your healing journey so I'll leave you with that today guys contemplate this idea of dharma and where you feel that draw that tug that vocation in that calling because it is probably an essential piece of your healing story