 All of us have an inner calling to do something in our lives, but most of the time we ignore that calling. Eventually, the wake-up call tends to come through an accident, a divorce, or an illness, or some chance encounter that tries to push you back on the path. But still, again, many of us ignore that call. We ignore that little whisper. But what if listening to that inner path, the inner directive as I call it, was more important than any healing intervention that a person tried? That what if listening to the inner whisper, that inner voice, the thing you can't explain was one of the essential pieces to healing? Well, I think it is. And I think in this video we're going to talk more about the healing path, something that has transformed my own life as someone who is sick for a very long time. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, 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 there. 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 right below the video to book a call. And the second is I put together a free guide, which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Traditional Chinese Medicine. Again, those are both right below the video there. I once had a client years ago before I was even in the field of medicine. And even though I was helping her with sort of life coaching, that kind of life purpose aspects, she had always had all of these health problems. And she was saying, you know, I've been trying to achieve my goals and trying to change my life and trying to quit my job and find the next direction going forward. But it honestly wasn't not knowing what to do. That was the problem. For her, really her health was the main problem. I mean, she was a New York City finance person. She was a high performer. She was married and not really happily married. And so when you look at the combined stress of her day to day job, her marriage, the fact that her health was the limiting factor in actually changing her life, one would think that that would be something that we would focus on instead of the actual strategies and the tactics for living a better life, you know, like goal setting. But go figure. I hadn't heard from her in a very long time after we finished our coaching session. And some years later, she had reached out and she said, you know, you remember me back when we were trying to get me to change jobs, back when we were talking about my stressful marriage, back when I wanted to take that trip to Paris and even study fashion over there. Well, she said, guess what? I know that my health was the limiting factor back when we spoke. But I since have quit my job and got a divorce, but guess what happened? I don't have any of those health issues anymore. And after we had this conversation and made me think about so many people go after the tactics, the strategies, the supplements, the doctors, the alternative doctors, trying to palliate or change the symptoms or work on some aspect of healing. But it's that saying that there are no incurable illnesses, only incurable people that keeps coming back over and over and over and sort of haunts me when I think of her story, and even my own story and the lives of so many people here. Because very often, you can try hammering this problem over and over and over. But what it needed wasn't a hammer, right? What it needed was the person needed to quit that job. The person needed to get that divorce, the person needed to move cross country, the person needed to start trusting their gut instincts and starts trusting their hunches. I would say the most telling patient demographic that I hear this from is people with cancer. I mean, more than anyone, people given terminal diagnoses who are told definitively from their physician that they're going to die. Nothing really puts life quite in perspective like a death sentence. And whether or not they will ultimately die, only time will tell. But ultimately, what happens is inevitably the people that want to live decide to wake up. The people that don't really want to live, they don't care. That's a relief because cancer and disease is a final ending to a long, difficult life and signals rest. They can give up. But for the people that want to live, this is the most essential wake up call. And the most essential wake up call means that they're going to now do what they've always wanted to do, which most of the time is listen to that gut feeling that thing when done, that they always had wanted to do. Now for many people, it's a lot like Bronnie Ware, the hospice nurse who wrote her book, The Regrets of the Dying. And she said that the number one regret of the dying was that I wish I'd lived a life true to myself, not the life others had expected of me. In other words, in layman's terms, I wish I did what I actually wanted to do. Do you have the job you have right now because you want it? Or because it's security? Do you have the job right now you want to do? Are you in that career because it's something that you're passionate about? Or because your mom and dad said you'd never be able to make it as a dancer? Is your life what you actually want? Or is it something that you've lived really out of fear? Because maybe I should use the word security, which is fear. We're thinking about. But I know that within all of us, there's something we really want to do. And we have these hunches and these hints and these little canaries in the coal mine that come up from time to time. And whether you listen to them or not, will determine whether or not your life gets better and bigger every year or whether it stays the same and it stays small every year. Now, to me, healing involves two main paths. There's the path of pragmatism, which is concretely getting medical treatment, changing daily habits and rituals, and ultimately becoming a different person. Because for many of us, it was our own actions that made us ill in the first place, not every time, not 100% of the problem was us, but very often, a large percentage was us. But the other path is the inner path of healing. The inner path is really paying attention to those whispers before these little things become big things, these little things become the accidents, the little nagging back pain, the little nagging headaches, the nagging insomnia, before those things become a problem that you can no longer ignore. Because unfortunately, really, once they get to the point where they're so big, you cannot ignore them. Very often, that's the point of which it's too late. And something has gotten to be something that has consumed your whole life. So the inner path to me is always trusting that calling, that whisper, that vocation, that thing you've always wanted to do that gut feeling about do this or don't do that, even though everyone is saying do that, trusting those inner hunches and those inner gut feelings in my experience for people that are chronically ill is often as essential as the linear progress that happens through getting conventional medical advice. So inner path, trust those gut feelings and those hunches, because very often they're there to try to help you heal, and they're there to get you not repeating the same thing and getting the same results. But they're trying to take you on a path that your gut feels is right. You feel it to be true. You don't know it to be true because there's no evidence yet. But if you trust that, in my experience, more times than not, it'll lead you to the proper healing path. So my two cents for today on the inner aspects of healing as someone who's known what it's like to be sick for many years of his life, trust that gut feeling, just like you would trust it, hopefully when it comes to marriage or your career or your life, trusting it when it comes to healing journey is often essential. Alright guys, that's what I have you here today. Check out these other related videos and those links to download right below this video. And I'll see you soon.