 wellness industry is very very difficult and very complicated because just like the diet industry there are hundreds of different people with hundreds of different opinions about what you should put in your mouth at that next meal. But in this video I thought I would share some insights from having read 25 books on wellness and healing and I think it would be helpful if I shared two of my main key insights. Hey I'm Dr. Alex Hein Chinese Medicine Doctor and licensed acupuncturist author of the wellness book master the day which is on Amazon and audible. I've included two very important links right below this video. The first link is for a free guide which is four daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine and the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine either locally or online via telemedicine you can get the info to my clinic in the description bio below as well as my email. You know a big thing that I realized a big commonality reading all these books as well as personally having gone through that healing or disease illness journey multiple times is that at the end of the day it is a hero's journey. You know this idea of the hero's journey was popularized by Joseph Campbell and he talks about how there is this progression that is not necessarily a progression but there is this predictable cycle that happens where you get the call of adventure right you get the call I'm sick that is the call that is the wake up call or the calling but then a person can refuse the call they can say this is my dream this is my passion I'm going to be a writer I'm going to be a doctor I'm going to be alternative whatever it is and then because of fear because of what dad said because of what mom said or the hater spouse that plays it safe whatever comes up that can lead to a refusal of the call this is what I know I must do but I'm too afraid but my dad said always chase money but my mom said you'll never be able to succeed we always fail in this family you get the call in this case the call is for healing now you may not even try it because maybe you went to all the doctors and all the conventional doctors of your time in your era in your location say it cannot be treated this is all there is this is standard of care this is your 12% chance of surviving it's terminal whatever it is that is a piece of the calling and the refusal of the call you've tried your best you've seen the experts and now you've resigned yourself to not trying anymore but beyond that what we forget about this epic hero's journey in every movie is that there is always a period of trials and tribulations there is always a period where it's frustrating you hate it it's difficult you fail you fail 50 times 100 times years and years and years and years and years of trying and never getting the one thing you want to have happen it never works out and that is a necessary prerequisite piece of the hero's journey of the sick journey is I try I fail I try I fail I try I fail one doctor two doctor three dollar six doctors alternative doctor whatever all of these are necessary in that hero's journey to realize your own healing you know I know people who've done everything healthy and right and at 16 years old developed leukemia I know people who did everything wrong and they live to be 85 and they smoke daily and they drink moderately heavily and they don't have a very particularly specialized diet it doesn't mean those factors don't matter or affect health it just means that's the hero's journey that's the combination of genetic inborn factors as well as personal choices and decisions some we made some were just things that happened to us so here we are gone through the hero's journey the main thing I notice reading all these texts and all these books is that for each person their healing journey is a hero's journey it can never be replaced it is so wholly unique that it is not something that you can predict or compare or whatever it is getting caught up in blame why is this happening to me I eat healthy he never ate healthy he's fine doesn't matter it's a non-question because your hero's journey is going to be totally different from somebody else's now the second thing I've come to realize from reading all these books is lots of the pathology of the modern human the materially wealthy but the spiritually bankrupt if I can use that term or psycho emotionally tormented existentially angsty I could come up with a lot of terms our primary pathology for a lot of us is not just what we see with diabetes and heart disease and cancer related to our diets but is also related to the state of the current human spirit now what's very interesting is when you look back through history you see that the texts of the doctors the books that are popular the lectures that are popular the schools and organizations that are popular reflect the malaise the illness of the times so maybe 100 years ago doctors were heavily focused on infectious disease getting tuberculosis and measles and smallpox and all of these illnesses that were really severe killers of humans under control that was the focus and now in this era this modern era we see a lot of psycho emotional a lot of psycho emotional illness of anxiety and depression being the highest potentially they've ever been and it's only getting worse and the medication prescription has gotten skyrocketing and these rates are still increasing so you tend to see that the texts that come out and the the impassioned rants of the physicians of the times reflect the dominant malaise of the humans of that era the big one for us now being anxiety depression our life materially being well but inwardly not feeling very well and that's a very interesting paradox you look at the books on spirituality and religion and purpose and meaning victor franco man's search for meaning all of these are an attempt to access those higher states of maslow's hierarchy because we have our base level needs met certainly in the first world the developed countries and we're not starving we're not likely to die of infectious disease we can have kids and not worry about them dying for the most part and so what humans struggle with the most is our feeling of a persistent lack of meaning in our lives though why should i show up to a job 12 hours a day to come home to a home that's all right to just work so hard at something i don't even like to build a life that frankly i don't even like it's like a circular loop of logic i'm going to work harder to exist in a place i don't really care about because my life is okay and i'm just going to work harder to to build that okay life i've noticed that a lot of the content of the books today have this yin yang of the material which is usually diet and exercise right that's like the big material bucket and then the other bucket which is the psycho emotional which is on anxiety and depression but even then lots of those authors just focus on a material approach to anxiety and depression not analyzing what is about the life of the modern human that leads to this and so i think just general buckets the two main things i've learned are that first and foremost your journey of building a fulfilling healing life is going to be your own hero's journey which means it's going to be messy as hell and it's not going to look like anybody else's but you still need to accept the call if you want to heal the second thing is that for the modern human psycho emotional health if you want to call it that should become one of the dominant things we focus on besides you know exercise and diet because all of them are intimately related and i would advise someone not to think that these are material things treat them as what is it about the modern humans life and the way one lives that is so divorced the way we were supposed to live and a good last thought here is look at the way the european quality of life is in a way of life is versus the modern american way of life so i want to leave you with this which is that the modern human not only struggles with of course diet and exercise but really those intense needs of the human spirit that are not being met now maybe for you it's loneliness maybe for another person it's they hate their job maybe for another person it's the crushing stress of supporting a family maybe for somebody else it's they feel like there's a thing they've always wanted to do but they've never trusted or been brave enough to do it my call to action for this video is to listen to those things and figure out what the missing pieces in your life all right guys so if you'd like to stay in touch again there's a free guide right below this video four daily rituals that can possibly help you add years to your life with traditional chinese medicine and if you'd like to become a patient of mine either locally or online via telemedicine the link below this video has a link to my clinic and contact info to get a hold of me people at my clinic all right before you go i have two related videos right here