 In one of our most ancient medical texts, often translated as the spiritual pivot, there's the description of certain kinds of dreams that show up when certain organs have pathology or are diseased or imbalanced shall we say. And I thought it was very interesting because very often people interpret dreams in a very Jungian or esoteric kind of way. But this is a very clinical look at what some dreams can mean as part of a diagnostic picture going back thousands of years. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Hein, doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book Master of the Day. So 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. There are links right below this video to reach out to my private practice for more information. And the second is there's a free guide we've put together for the rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So again those links are right below this video. So there are all kinds of ways you can interpret healing dreams. There are dreams that range from the really the symbolic right you're interpreting things from a very very very interpretive angle. Not really an objective it's tricky because dreams are subjective by nature but for many people dreams take on an almost emotional or metaphorical sort of interpretation. But I'm someone who likes to be clinical and I like to share things that I know for sure are true. Now really the value of using dreams in diagnosis is not that this dream guaranteed means that there is this problem right. I don't interpret any kind of dream as a one-to-one correlation with illness or pathology or if I dream I have cancer therefore I have cancer or if I dream I'm dying therefore I am. I don't believe that. You do see it sometimes clinically but day to day I think more often the content of our dreams is a reflection of our conscious mind which is really our hopes and our fears. Can we agree on that our conscious mind and the subconscious pretty closely linked? Very often what is not conscious will pull itself out in the subconscious which is why so often under periods of duress or periods of stress we tend to have dreams right or if like let's say you've overeaten you've had some spicy food late at night and you have some indigestion you may also have weird or funky dreams. So the dreams are closely intertwined with the physiological state of the body. That's something I know for a fact to be true. So let's jump in though to what one of our most ancient medical classics the spiritual pivot says about five kinds of organs and the dreams that may show up when there's basically pathology in that organ. When we talk about the heart first of all the heart we say is heart fire. Now the Ling Shu the spiritual pivot says that dreams related to pernicious influences being in the heart involve mountains smoke and fire. So in this case the dream is a reflection of what we call the phase element right. Heart is associated with the fire phase. Heart in the small intestine depending on the model that you look at. So no surprise there that dreams involving fire smoke are related to the heart or the fire organ in this case. Dreams involving the lung organ tend to be involving dreams of flying as well as metal objects or weapons. So again no surprise when we talked about the five phases within Chinese medicine which is sort of an ancient archetypal way of looking at interactions both in nature and society and in medicine the lung is depending on the model you look at associated with metal. So of course well you have lung obviously dealing with air and things like that. So flying but also lung is associated with the phase metal. So as a metal organ it's dealing with metal objects in the dreams. When we talk about the liver organ the liver is associated with wood. So no surprise here the liver pathology the dreams tend to be involving things like mountain forests and trees according to the spiritual pivot. Now the spleen organ tends to be one of the earth organs as we say and one of the key aspects of the spleen is that it tends to be prone to dampness right. So in the spiritual pivot they say that there are dreams of hills with big marshes or ponds water wind and rain or the elements as well as hardship related to these things. So pathological factor of the spleen being dampness we see earth in dampness or damp earth that kind of thing. Now the kidney is associated with the phase element of water and so according to the spiritual pivot the dreams are related to facing or overlooking deep pools being even submerged in water. So obviously dealing with some aspect of deep pools of water. Now that's the kidneys associated with the winter the phase element is associated with even for example winter right and winter is associated very often with the north which is often the dark side right because the sun comes through the sky through the south. So just like we say moss grows on north side of trees I don't know if that's only earth that's ever true but that idea of association with the dark the mysterious the deep the subconscious the kidney often has that association many times. So ultimately these dreams are just guideposts just like in Chinese medicine we may use the tongue as a general indicator for diagnosis or abdominal diagnosis or the pulse diagnosis and they may have very general or may have very specific meanings as well but ultimately the best diagnosticians tend to use multiple points of diagnosis a lot like triangulating where the issue is the more data points you have the more you can accurately diagnose what's the issue and what you have to actually treat specifically for example if a patient came in said hey Dr. Heine I'm having dreams of big marshes and what does it mean I'm not going to automatically say oh you have definitely have a spleen pancreas issue of course not if they have no symptoms that indicate there's a spleen pancreas issue and no pulse related and no abdominal findings related I'm not going to rely on a dream over objective findings right but it is a piece that we may take into account and we may utilize this as a piece of the person's healing journey because again I do value that subjective data including their own gut feelings on their own gut hunches that they bring in but we don't overvalue necessarily one thing or the other. So I thought I would share that because there are all kinds of dream analyses that are highly subjective and highly metaphorical and very easy to fudge and I think I like that this ancient guidebook has some rough guidelines what can be tendencies of the pathologies in each of the five organs here mentioned so that's what I have for you today guys very interesting maybe it'll give you some healing insights on your own check out these other related videos I have for you right there and there are those two other related links right below this video