 There are lots of modalities and therapies you can utilize to heal and improve your health. But in this video, I thought I would share 7 laws of healing that I've seen from traditional Chinese medicine that have proven true time and time again, especially for people who have chronic illnesses. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Heim, author of The Health Book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video, there's two very important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide, which is four daily rituals that can potentially 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 locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my private practice right below this video. Now, healing principle number one is treat your constitution. Something very distinct to traditional Chinese medicine is this idea of constitution. In other words, genetics. But constitution explains why so many people have a tendency towards certain problems throughout their life. Someone who has a tendency towards GI problems, a tendency towards menstrual problems, a tendency towards respiratory problems, for example. These are all basically genetic predispositions, right, but we use the word constitution. And I prefer the word constitution a lot because constitution is just a tendency. It is not a death sentence. It is not something 100% fixed. It is something that is malleable and can be altered. So when I say treat constitution, someone may have a tendency towards let's say low appetite and bloating and food allergies and catching seasonal respiratory viruses. But that tendency, we can mitigate, for example, by treating them for a few months with herbal compounded formulas from TCM and acupuncture. We treat them for three months before that typical season, lo and behold, they don't get sick for the first time in several years or in a decade as I hear from many of my patients. So constitution is not something that is fixed, which is why I don't use the word genetic because I find that most of these genetic conditions are a tendency that you can mitigate through a certain lifestyle and through certain health practices. The second law of healing that I've seen is that the spirit leads the body. I think for so many of us, we hear terms like mental health and we think, oh, well, you know, it's mental, right, so I just need to do some journaling or I need to take this antidepressant or we try to directly treat the mind. But the mind and the body are not a mind dash body. They are the mind body. They are one and the same. Now I think back to so many people that I've seen that are chronically ill or have chronic symptoms that are not changing the course of their life, but are just nagging chronic symptoms, a tendency towards poor or light sleep, a tendency towards anxiety or depression, a tendency towards upper GI indigestion. These symptoms are typically very easy to treat with what I do, especially internal medicine, these formulas from TCM, but for many people, the symptoms will keep coming back over and over and over again if I stop treating them. So there is something about their day to day life that is constantly pushing them towards this ease over and over again. Now some of these people, as soon as they go on a two week vacation, if they will ever take that two week vacation, will be shocked because so many of those symptoms will dramatically improve. Some of these things are just due to getting them out of their environment, right? If you have chronic sleep issues, it can be Pavlovian where you associate your bed with insomnia. You go in a new spot, you don't even think about it because you're in a new bed and you have a new ritual. Or maybe it's something dietary. People are eating food that's due to stress, right? They're having a lot of coffee or a lot of pastries every day because they don't enjoy their day to day life and they feel stressed. And then they go on vacation, maybe they go to a spot where they're eating healthier food and they're eating less food because they're out having fun and they're busy and it's good quality food and they're sitting down for hours at each meal. Good digestion. For many people, choosing a life that makes them internally happy will also make them externally healthier. The third law of healing is trying to increase your resources or your yang qi. Now, fundamental question I ask patients all the time. Well, if that antidepressant is doing such a good job of treating the root of the issue, why is it that 10 years later, here we are and you still have to take two or three of them. Now, they know that an antidepressant does not fix anxiety or depression. And I don't think there's any issue with any antidepressant at all. But something fundamentally true is that if you are interested in healing, then we need to figure out why the body is not healing, right? It's not a difficult question to ask. For so many of my patients that I see for anxiety and depression that are on antidepressants, and it's a lot of people in this modern world, even on a very low dose, for many people, we utilize formulas and we utilize treatments in traditional Chinese medicine that increase the charge of your battery, as I tell my patients, meaning that as we do certain treatments, your body maintains more of this charge. And as it maintains more of this charge, you will notice your baseline begins increasing. So whereas many people experience an acute exacerbation of symptoms, let's say anxiety, if they're unrested, right? I had two nights where I only slept six hours instead of being fully rested. I was out too late one night. The other night I just didn't sleep well. Now I'm feeling a lot more anxious or a lot more down than I was normally. If that keeps happening, they will consistently feel down. But if they consistently are sleeping well, then their symptoms are better. And on and on they do this dance their whole life. But when we utilize the treatments in traditional Chinese medicine, we are net increasing the charge of your battery. So even if you have a few nights of poor sleep, you're not seeing that resurgence of anxiety symptoms, for example. Now what that is in our profession is yang qi is one way to conceptualize it. It's like the charge of your battery. The fourth law of healing is allowing unobstructed flow. The most ancient description I've seen of what is health in traditional Chinese medicine is unobstructed flow through the channels in the body, the meridians, and through the organs of the body. So if I make this a lot more grounded, just look at your digestion. When you eat food, do you feel hunger? Eat food, and then it's comfortable in your stomach. Or are your hunger cues all messed up? You're hungry all the time, or you're never hungry? And then when you eat, are you experiencing excessive bloating, or indigestion, or acid reflux? This is obstructed flow, which means that there's a pathological process that's happening here. But unobstructed flow through the channels, through the organs, is probably the most ancient and accurate description of what is health in the field of traditional Chinese medicine. So paying attention to what are those factors in your life that obstruct the flow, let's just say, of digestion, because it's so material. You can physically feel your stomach or your intestines. There's something about your bowel movements, how often or how not often, and what those actually look like or feel like. What is obstructing that flow when it comes to your sleep? What messes it up? What makes it amazing? What is obstructing the flow, let's say, of just physical energy? Like, I feel high energy when? I feel low energy when? Think about this day to day. What allows continuous, smooth, unobstructed flow of your body's resources? Law of healing number five is find the fulcrum. Our ancient medical ancestors talk a lot about this idea of yin and yang. And that's a very cutesy concept. But in day to day life, yin and yang are different for each person. An Olympic athlete needs to sleep 10 or even more hours per day because they're training so vigorously so many hours per day, four, five, six, eight hours per day. But that's not the amount of sleep that an average person needs working 40 hours a week. Maybe the work is low to moderate stress, and then they come home and they can relax from 5 o'clock or 5.30 until 11 o'clock at night, right? You're not going to need 10 hours of sleep for that. But finding your fulcrum, right? Today I worked out a lot, so maybe I eat a lot. Tomorrow I've been sitting all day, maybe I don't eat as much. Or you know what? I've been working really hard for years and I've consistently felt exhausted for years. I'm going to allow myself a lot of extra sleep over the coming months to replenish those resources. So where you place the fulcrum, if you have the scales here, it's going to be different for each person. If it's really heavy, you move your fulcrum all the way over here or you move it over here. What is that fulcrum for you in terms of work and rest, in terms of diet? How much you eat when you eat? In terms of how much you need to sleep? Or how much time you're taking off for vacation? Think about that, because that fulcrum is the beginning point of where Yin and Yang begin to separate and where disease and illness begins manifesting. The sixth law of healing is non-doing or surrender. In my mind, lots of the health issues of modern day people are due to this tension we generate in the body called stress. It is the stress of living in Los Angeles and driving in traffic. It's the stress of being self-employed and having financial uncertainty your entire life. It's the stress of having a sick child or multiple children who all need care or having a special needs child. It's the stress of existing in a world where life is non-stop and you can come home and instead of resting, you're watching a Netflix show, going through Instagram and answering emails for work with a kid yelling at you. The stress of day-to-day life. So understanding that one of the best ways to remove that tension in your nervous system is just to let go. To let go of this year making that dream income I wanted. To let go of trying to make my child perfect. To let go of the perfect diet plan. To let go of trying to always be on time to work or trying to get there at the same time every single day. The let go, the surrender aspect, the non-doing like the doubt of Jing talks about is about maybe letting go of expectations or these excessive hard grasp that we have on our life that generates so much physical tension in the body that can lead to illness. So let go more. Healing Principle Seven is making your life your medicine. I love this story of a Greek man that was profiled in the New York Times that was given a terminal cancer diagnosis. So he figures, I'm gonna go home back to Greece. I don't remember where he lived, but he figures the funeral will be cheaper. I'll be with my family and some old friends. So the story goes and it's a true story. You can look it up. He went back to Greece and instead he started living as all of his friends there did. He was walking around a lot. He would spend long hours, leisurely meals with his friends and with his family, tapped into his community, drinking wine, having coffee in the morning, walks, working in the garden. And he figured, I'm just gonna live a peaceful life until the day I die. Irony was, the joke was that his cancer actually went away. And this is profiled. I mean, there are cases like this that happen from time to time with no medical treatment of the man who I think it was called the man who forgot to die. And while I would not recommend that as a treatment for cancer, I will say there is something to people who have chronic issues that they are always needing to be medicated or treated for, that if they live their life a different way and that is a hard thing to do, will lead to the more permanent healing and the more permanent feeling of wellness that they really want. So make your life your medicine because ultimately the highest level of medicine is no medicine at all, is not needing anything other than the way you live to be healthy and to feel well. So those are my seven laws of healing. Check out the related downloads below this video and I'll see you soon.