Dhru Purohit Show - #247: An Unconventional Path to Treating Autoimmune Disease with Dr. Cynthia Li

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

An Unconventional Path to Treating Autoimmune Disease | This episode is brought to you by Vivobarefoot and Cozy Earth Dr. Cynthia Li seemingly had it all—a successful career in medicine, a loving marriage, and children. But it all came crashing down after developing an autoimmune thyroid condition, chronic fatigue syndrome, and dysautonomia. Mysterious symptoms began consuming her body—test after test came back “within” normal limits,” baffling her and her doctors. She was housebound for two years with two young children, and she began a solo odyssey from her living room couch to find a way to heal.  In this episode of The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Dr. Cynthia Li to talk about her disabling autoimmune illness, the limitations of Western medicine, and her hard-won lessons on healing—mind, body, and spirit. Dr. Cynthia Li received her medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Her personal health challenges led her to integrative and Functional Medicine, and she currently has a private practice in Berkeley, CA. She serves on the faculty of the Healer’s Art program at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and she is the author of Brave New Medicine: A Doctor’s Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness. In this episode, we dive into:  -How Dr. Li came to discover her autoimmune disease (5:56) -The importance of not being attached to one healing modality (12:53) -How Dr. Li’s mindset was a big obstruction to seeking alternative help (18:06) -Why we have to distance ourselves from our diagnosis (33:22) -One of the first things Dr. Li did to heal her illness (39:35)  -How Dr. Li learned to tune into her own intuition and use it to guide her (43:19) -Key pillars that were crucial in Dr. Li’s healing (55:55)  -The impact qigong had on her healing journey (59:01) -Hitting rock bottom for the second time (1:00:34) -Dr. Li’s qigong practice (1:12:33) For more on Dr. Cynthia Li follow her on Facebook @dr.cynthia.li and through her website https://cynthialimd.com/. Get her book Brave New Medicine at https://cynthialimd.com/brave-new-medicine/. This episode is brought to you by Vivobarefoot and Cozy Earth. Vivobarefoot footwear is designed to be wide, thin, and flexible, so you feel as close to barefoot as possible. They promote your foot's natural strength and movement and studies show that foot strength increases by 60% in a matter of months just by walking around in them. Right now they’re offering my community 20% off their first order at vivobarefoot.com/DHRU.   If you’re looking for super comfortable and stylish men’s and women’s pajamas, joggers, robes, pullovers and hoodies, basically all the stuff we’re all wearing working from home these days, Cozy Earth has got you covered! So what’s Cozy Earth’s not so secret fabric that powers their superior comfort? It's the miracle plant bamboo! Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my audience 40% off. Just head over to cozyearth.com and use the discount code DHRUPODCAST. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anything that we identify with, and I will say positive or negative, keeps us actually very attached to that. It keeps us actually more in that fixed state instead of the state of dynamic change. And healing is really changed. Hi, everyone. Drew Prode here. Today we're talking with Dr. Cynthia Lee about the approach that she took to heal her autoimmune condition. If you're curious or you're interested in the topic of autoimmune. and you're open to new approaches and things like energy medicine, this episode is for you.

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Right now, Vivo Barefoot is offering my community 20% off their first order at Vivo Barefoot.com back slash Drew. That's Vivo, V-I-V-O-B-A-R-F-O-O-T dot com slash Drew, D-H-R-U. If you miss that, just click down to the show notes and you'll find it there. I also wanted to let you know that Vivo Barefoot is a certified B Corporation, and it's extremely passionate about using sustainable and recycled materials. They make their footwear in small batches and certain styles are limited. So if you see something you love, don't wait.

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Earth's secret ingredient. First of all, bamboo is ultra soft, way softer than cotton and better for the planet too. Secondly, bamboo is crazy durable. All cozy earth's clothing is guaranteed under their 10-year warranty. Thirdly, bamboo is temperature regulating, so it's perfect for nighttime and making sure you don't get too hot or too cold in the evening. Lastly, Frickin Oprah has listed Cozy Earth on our top list of favorite things for the last few years. So if it's good enough for her, it's definitely good enough for you and the loved ones in your life. This holiday season, give the gift of health and wellness, which means giving the gift of Cozy Earth's ultra-soft and super stylish loungeware. Right now, Cozy Earth is offering my community

their highest discount ever 40% off. Just go to cozyearth.com with the discount code Drew Podcast. That's cozy C-O-Z-Y-E-A-R-T-H-E-A-R-T-H-E-A-R-T-H-R-E-R-T-E-R-T. Keep in mind that Cozy Earth has a 10-year warranty, so you can't really go wrong with giving them a shot. Welcome to the Drew Perrault podcast. Each week, we explore. the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness,

medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Dr. Cynthia Lee. Dr. Cynthia Lee received her medical degree from the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She's practiced as an internist in settings as diverse as Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, San Francisco General Hospital, and St. Anthony Medical Clinics serving the homeless. Dr. Lee is the author of Brave New Medicine, a doctor's unconventional path to healing her autoimmune illness. Dr. Lee's personal health challenges led her to not only integrative and functional medicine, but energy medicine and Chi Gong as well. And in today's interview, we're going to do a deep dive into how all those things came in

together to lead to multiple experiences of healing on Dr. Cynthia Lee's journey. I want to jump into your health journey. Take us to the point that you knew that something was going on. The first time that you felt that something strange is happening, and I'm not exactly sure what's going on. Yeah. It was, I mean, there are so many different points to that, but I would say when I really recognize that something could be wrong

and it might be chronic, was I was three or four months postpartum, a new mother, and I was pushing my daughter in a stroller up the hill coming back from the park, and I was having a lot of palpitations, and I was very winded, short of breath. And it was a very foreign sensation to me, but that was the beginning of what would later be diagnosed as postpartum thyroiditis, or it's a postpartum form of Hashimoto's, known autoimmune thyroid condition, which I would subsequently be diagnosed with. And there was another point two and a half years later.

So, I mean, just very briefly, I took a very, a very, conventional right route to address my thyroiditis. And I sought out a top-notch endocrinologist and I took the medications. I waited. Unlike chronic Hashimoto's, the postpartum form, most people will recover. And I knew that data, I felt horrible still,

but my numbers actually normalized after a year. My primary symptoms of fatigue, palpitations and weight loss actually were still ongoing oh and I'm sorry and insomnia insomnia was the first symptom so even though your numbers improved you're still not feeling like yourself yes yes so you know a lot of different voices in my head I did ask a lot of people people you know it was kind of reduced down to motherhood your working mom too and And of course your body's not the same.

You know, you had a baby. So I just thought, well, a little bit of time, a little bit of rest, and I'll start to feel better. And I actually came to the place, but I should say I was fully functional. You know, I was living in a very full life. So I came to the place of feeling like myself just before the next point at which I knew something was really, really wrong. And that was on a trip that now my daughter was about two, or almost two. And then my husband and I, we went to Beijing to visit my parents who were living there. And on that trip, I actually felt great. I felt like I'm back. You were, I remember a story of you saying you were on the

great wall of China and you were feeling like, I feel like I'm finally myself again. Yep. I had the toddler on my back, you know, in a little carrier. We were hiking, you know, some pretty steep parts of the great wall. And, yeah, and my husband was like, oh, my God, this is so great. This is so great. So it was after that that we went to a dumpling palace, a dumpling restaurant, and we were kind of celebrating with my parents. And I had just a very, very sudden surge.

of, I don't even know what you want to call it, but energy, where I basically, yeah, I kind of, you know, I felt like a, first thing I felt like I thought I was going to pass out. I did not. And I thought it was just some wave, you know, moving through me, I didn't know what it was. And then I kind of saw my life flashing in front of me. And, you know, okay, my daughter's going to be fine. You know, everything's going to be great. and I thought I was dying. When I did lose consciousness, when I came to, I was in an emergency room there.

And it was, there were a lot of different things going on at that time. It was the beginning of, you know, of course I wouldn't know this for months, but it was the beginning of chronic fatigue syndrome and dysotidomia. I had an acute gastroenteritis that probably was one of the triggers. And then also in that ER visit, I learned that. that I was newly pregnant with my now second daughter. So all of those things were happening, and it was so much to just bear and endure the physical symptoms,

but to recognize that I wasn't going to die, but I was actually going to give new life was really overwhelming. It was really overwhelming. And not only are there your own feelings, there's your family's feelings about the situation, but then there's also you looking to guidance from the doctors around you to help you explain, like, what the heck is going on. And some of them, correct or wrong, the thought might be that some of the symptoms you were experiencing was related to maybe being pregnant again for the second time.

There was still not a full clarity of why you were feeling the way that you were. Is that correct? Yeah. And so, you know, I knew that there was some. something really wrong. But because I was pregnant, everything was kind of just chalked up to that. You know, similar to like earlier when everyone's like, oh, you're a new mom, you're a new mom. Everything gets chalked up to that. So, and I kept saying, but I know there's, no, I know, I know there are challenging pregnancies, but this is like, it was in chronic vertigo.

I couldn't get out of bed. So I was bedbound actually for about six months. And then after I I was able to, I think being in the second trimester, the surge of hormones, like I had a little more energy. I was able to get out of bed, but I was largely housebound. It would begin the period of being largely housebound for almost a decade. And, but yeah, but because I was pregnant, not only was that the reason why, you know,

or that was the explanation, but nobody actually wanted to do anything. They just wanted me to, waited out until after after I had my baby. With you putting out your story and having shared and been on podcast and your book, which is excellent, people can find a link to that in the show notes, how often do you hear from whether it's at one point of time,

you know, you're seeing patience, you know, fast forward much in the future, or just general commentary and people writing in that they've been in a similar situation where they feel desperately that something's going on. but well-intentioned people around them, they may not know that answer,

but it's being chalked up to it might be in their head or it's being written off as something else. How often do you hear that from folks who reach out to you? I mean, I would say most of the time they're reaching out to me because, you know, I mean, now, right? Fast forward many times. But they've either read my book or they've seen a podcast and they say, oh my God, that's like, that's my story.

You know, that's my story. and can you please take me on as a patient? You know, I mean, the heartbreak and the challenge is that, no, I cannot take on everyone, you know, who reaches out to me. However, you know, I know of a lot of resources, and I know of a lot of great doctors. And there's a lot of modalities, you know. I'm not attached to functional medicine being the one way for a lot of people.

And so, and I personally have gone through a lot of people. different, you know, healing modalities and try different things. And ultimately, it's about self-empowerment. It is about going back to what you talk about, connecting to yourself, connecting to your family, connecting to the environment, right? So the connection required of healing is not just to ourselves. It's to whatever it is that we're disconnected from. And so, no, It was about connecting to myself, to connecting to family. It's also about connecting to doctors, going back and seeing the doctors that actually that I had seen before.

And, you know, they're human beings. We're all human beings, not vilifying any particular modality or paradigm, but recognizing where it is that we are nearsighted or blindsided, as well as whatever truths or paradigms and doctors and practitioners that were that we're seeking support from. So you had mentioned that over the course of a decade, almost, that you were homebound. Take us from the point that you found out you were pregnant, your daughter came, there's well-intentioned advice that's coming your way, that's saying that these mystery symptoms, and I think mystery is really the key, are being associated with things like overworking,

or having a lot on your plate or this is just normal. This is part of being a mom. What happened after that? So I will clarify, right? So I had two daughters, right, by this point. So by some miracle, right, my second daughter, actually, we made it through this pregnancy. And she, you know, she's completely healthy.

She might be the healthiest person in our family. Certainly the strongest physically. And it's, yeah, just that kind of stuff you can't make up, right? So she was like this life force who kind of came in at this very tumultuous time and she carries that life force with her still. But here I am with, you know, a toddler and a newborn and I cannot get out of bed. Now, I had a lot of support. But even so, right?

I'm the mom. I mean, there's one element of, oh, the things that I want to take care of and be able to do. But there's the other, of course, internal experience of just feeling very, very miserable. So, you know, a way to sort of help people understand is like a chronic severe flu that you basically just have for years. And there would, you know, there would be days where I'd be up, you know, know the inflammation was down and I feel a little bit up and then it kind of come back down. So, and I wouldn't say I was 100% housebound. So what I characterize it is largely housebound.

I mean, on a very good day, I could go out to like the nearest grocery store, maybe do a really short run and then come back and be pretty wiped out. So it got to where I could manage things, you know, in the house with my two kids. Sometimes my parents would come to support us. We had a nanny. I mean, my heart grows out to people who don't have resources or family around them. I honestly don't know how people manage that. And even so, it was really, really challenging.

I think, well, for my being a Western trained doctor, my mind was actually a very big obstruction to finding alternative help. I was still trying to understand myself what was going on, and I didn't realize my framework was very limited for the conditions that I had. I didn't understand what my symptoms were. I didn't understand certainly what my diagnoses were. So I mean, I basically endured, I think, about two years before I finally realized I cannot do this anymore.

Like this is long term and I have to break out of what I have constructed as the truth, the absolute truth and nothing but the truth, to see what's beyond that. And so, and I did. We had friends around us who were doing, like, studying traditional Chinese medicine, another friend who was an Ayurvedic school. Like, I was aware of that. the midwife that we had, she kind of showed up, you know, in our life when I was having the difficult second pregnancy, yeshi Newman. And, you know, she would be considered, quote,

alternative. I couldn't see, you know, I couldn't see that there was this whole other world of healing and understanding the body outside of what I'd been trained in. You've shared before that, a lot of the forward momentum that you've experienced a different, points in time in the healing journey. And I think a lot of people can relate to this. Comes out of just the sheer need and pain sometimes. Some of the most beautiful things in our life come out of pain. And at that point in time, I believe there was also a lot of challenges of how your own

relationship and the life around you because of just how severe things were. I think you said that even one point in time your relationship was at rock bottom. Is that fair to say? Was that coinciding right with this point that we are in your story, that there was an openness? Like, what was part of that pain that finally led to, maybe I need to let my framework, just put it to the side for a second and be a little bit more open? Yeah, it wasn't, you know, one of my mentors, Rachel Raymond said, you know, there are two general ways to learn, I guess, wisdom to walk this path

and one of them is contemplation and sort of an openness and wonder and then the other one is just sheer fatigue mine was the latter I couldn't I couldn't hold on anymore I could see so this life force

that I was talking about in my husband David it was very difficult to tolerate when I was feeling so not just weak and tired, but hypersensitivity was another major symptom. And so it was like, I felt, you know, kind of like the way people with migraines feel towards the light. Like, it was too much. I couldn't deal with that. Way too overstimulating. And so, and yet he's my partner. And so over, and what he felt

for me was I was just weighing him down, you know, like he felt like I was, I said, no, no, know, like stop going so fast forward. Like, I'm trying to go deep down. And so we were just moving in very different directions to, not just to cope, but to actually really try to, you know, to find whatever it was that we were seeking and to stay connected to hope. And but as I went downward, he felt weighed down by it. And then he was going forward and I felt really dragged by it. So we came to this point in our marriage where we just said, you know, like, would we be better off being separate? And just going to that edge was very important because I could see that what was on the other side was not, you know, was not what I had kind of been fantasizing for it to be. So, all right, how do we stop trying?

trying harder, how do we try differently? What do I need to actually give up, you know, in my patterns and whatnot to begin to try differently? What does it look like? And so it was really piecemeal, like day by day. One of the, you know, in hindsight, one of what was for me, one of the saving graces also of that time was my husband got a, you know, a, new job. And he was spending two or three days a week, actually in Sacramento, in a different city. I was at the place where I could, again, I could kind of manage things in the house with the kids. They were still young. They weren't in school. It wasn't, there wasn't a lot to do. And we had enough friends around, okay, I can, you know, call people and family around

if I'm in a critical situation. But it just gave us enough space from each other where we could not only be in our own rhythm, but we could see the other person, you know, from a distance and begin to appreciate the gifts. Like, okay, this is really difficult, and, right, this is what we're receiving from the other person. So it was, you know, I imagine we would have,

found our way as well. Had our life stayed the same, had this job stayed the same. But I feel like that gave us kind of a jump start at a very crucial time. A little bit of space to allow for your joint path, but your individual roads within that path. Yes. Yes. You know, there's that old saying that, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. At this point in time where there was an opening that was created and there was a willingness to want to look in a different direction, which sometimes just means that I'm not sure what to do, but I'm just open. I'm just open.

I'm not sure what to do. Who was one of the first teachers, heroes, mentors that appeared on your journey? I mean, I had so many, but I, um, And even before my health challenges, I would say I had teachers, like even in medical school, right, who really were mentors to me and I developed relationships with them. And I would observe them. Like, how do they live their life, you know, like outside of medicine? Like, who are they as a human being?

How do they develop their character? But I would say, like, you know, in that moment of being in the pit, my first teachers were my kids. You know, really watching how they lived their lives from a beginner's mind and how they were connecting to their environment. And I realized, you know, and one of my aha moments was watching my second daughter learning how to walk and, you know, she was just, you know, going from place to place and just thrilled, you know, at her newfound freedom. And I just realized, you know, I do not have that. Where did I lose it? Did I lose it before my health crashed, you know? And that's where I think medicine is so challenging. And I know it manifests in all these other professions and crafts as well is the sense of

mastery, you know, so I had a sense of mastery when I finished residency. I knew there was a lot I didn't know, but I was like, I know, I'm a doctor, you know, I know how to do this. And so when, you know, my health journey took me to the opposite, right, I didn't even know, you know, how to be in my own body. But I hadn't recognized that even though I lost the sense of mastery, I hadn't cultivated a beginner's mind. How do I get there? And so it was really like connecting, you know, connecting to things that had opened that up for me in the past. So maybe it was reading novels.

Maybe it was, you know, going back to my medical textbooks. And actually, that's where I began in terms of my healing was, in terms of the medical piece, was going back into pathology 101. You know, it was not about drugs. not about fancy procedures or even clinical judgment. It was like, what is disease, what's happening, and how do we reverse disease? So it was just going back to basics, really. And some of those books that you were reading, they were written, I think, like, like 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 20 years ago, yes, 20 years ago. But there was these fundamental truths that were even recognized back

then, even though they weren't popularized in medicine. And what were some examples of those truths that you were pulling out of there that started to have you think like it was kind of in front of me. And you were lucky enough, I think one of the teachers, one of the books you were reading, they were a college professor of yours, is that right? Or they were a, I can't remember the gentleman's name. Well, my pathology textbook was a medical professor at my school. And it's kind of like the Bible of Pathology, right?

Robbins, Kotran, and Kumar, Dr. Kumar, was one of my professors. And no, like a couple of things. One thing was simply that disease happens as a result of multiple factors. Like I think it said something to the effect of the one cause, one effect model of disease no longer pertains. Right. And that was like, I mean, I was in medical school in 1993 to 97, but that book was published, you know, before that. And, you know, if you've ever published a textbook, like several years probably ensued between that. So it was known, right? Like, that's how diseases happen back then. But it hadn't been translated at all into clinical medicine at all, or at least in a way that was applicable. Like, what do we do with that? information. Would you say so that you contrasted against that, that your primary framework was you were looking for the one thing that was causing what you were going through? Was that a little bit of the energy? I was looking for one or maybe two things that, you know, that were the cause.

But I do remember even, so for example, when I, going back to when I had the just, I had my first daughter, I had the postpartum thyroiditis. I remember talking to the endocrinologist, right, the top specialist in this field in the area. And I said, I've been doing some research, and I actually found that there are some environmental causes, right, of autoimmune thyroiditis. And is there anything I can do to reduce my risks of not having this persist? And also, if I were to get pregnant again, of not getting it again. And he said, no, it is genetic. You know, it was very clear cut to him. And that, but that was kind of the paradigm I was trained in too. So, okay, you have genes or environment. It's kind of this or that. And this one is a genetic

cause. So I was very, because he sort of reassured what I went in sort of presupposing, I was very quick to adopt that. Like, okay, yeah. I confirmed it. He said it's genetic. There's nothing I can do. So I hadn't gone, you know, much deeper beyond that, like, oh, gluten and, you know, all these other potential triggers. And then I didn't need to because my numbers normalized. So that's kind of where I was back then. But I was aware of it, you know. So there's a, there is awareness. It's just what do you do with it that had not been translated. The other piece that was very illuminating for me in terms of, of trying differently and seeing differently was that the way that we diagnose chronic diseases

or even acute diseases in medicine is, you know, we have very clear criteria. It could be a lab or a diagnostics, you know, a radiograph. It can be a pathology examination. It can be a set of criteria, right, like a set of criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome. Do you meet that? And then therefore you have a diagnosis. And it feels like it's kind of a hard line, right? If you have a hemoglobin A1C of whatever, it changes a lot, but let's say 5.8, you don't have diabetes, right? We don't treat you. So you're on this side, okay, you have pre-diabetes and then, okay, there's lifestyle management there. Or we just wait and we'll check it again in six months or a year and see where you are. Right, the classic, you're not bad enough to be treated yet. Exactly. So there's this, like,

it was very ingrained in my mind, right? Like, there's a hard line. And going back into my pathology textbook, I was like, that's such an illusion. Like, that line is, it's useful, right, as a guideline for many different things. But for a diagnosis like mine, chronic fatigue syndrome or dysotidomia, where it's so nebulous anyways, I began to see, oh, healing, you know, what we would call on the cellular level as repair, it's actually this constant dynamic movement. And what can I do to move myself into this direction of repair and healing as opposed to

staying stuck in this? So I was feeling very stuck and it felt static. And then I realized it's not static. and every day my body is different, I feel the same. I feel very similar, but it's not static. My body's still an ecosystem. So it began to break me out into this. I'm not a machine.

I'm an ecosystem. How do I begin to connect my ecosystem and listen to what my symptoms are trying to say to me instead of dismissing them? Is this partially why you share the idea inside your book and you share with others on podcast and some writing that we have to distance ourselves from our diagnosis in order to go down the pathway of healing. Is that related to this? Yeah, it's related and it's beyond that. It is that anything that we identify with, and I will say positive or negative, keeps us actually very attached to that. It keeps us actually more in that fixed state instead of the state of dynamic change and healing is really changed. So with diagnoses, it's sort of like being labeled a C-student,

right? Like we become, it becomes sort of the, or I will say, it can risk becoming what it is that we think we are. And so with something like chronic fatigue syndrome or disautonomia or even, you know, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which mine, after the second pregnancy, I did get postpartum thyroiditis again, and it was chronic this time. You know, most people don't recover. Most people don't heal. And so it can be a very dangerous place to identify. It's like, oh, I'm just not, this is kind of my life. And how do I learn to cope with it as best as I can? So I could see that, and I knew that actually as a doctor too before, you know, like, what am I going to do if I diagnose someone with this? And yet, that's the paradigm that we work in.

So it is both useful in terms of researching or doing treatments and how do we respond, and yet we cannot identify with it. One of my favorite definitions of ego is by Eckartoulli. He says ego is just identification with form. And when you think you are something, is very hard not to see anything other than that. Sometimes you see this even online when it comes to case studies and people's testimonials like yourself and have had many other friends.

We were just talking about Dr. Terry Walls and other individuals that are themselves, also doctors, practitioners, who've had incredible healing, journey and sometimes people that are in that community, again, coming from a good place, it's like, no, this cannot be healed. I have X. I have MS. I have Hashimoto's. I have this autoimmune condition. I have this other thing. This is my sense of identity. Everybody's told me this is what it is and this is what it isn't. And our entire construct of life is formed around that.

In this instance, we're talking about chronic disease. But it could be with, your job, your car, the identification that people think that they are only, or that their entire life is them being a mom or a dad or anything. Anytime we're only identified by one particular form or multiple particular forms, we get locked into that and we can't see the fluidity of life. Right, right. And at the cellular level, it is, it's information, it's just information, right? I mean, our bodies are very agnostic. Our bodies respond to the information we give, I want to say it, but no, to get, we give ourselves, right? We are bodies in this form.

And it can be information as food, information as, you know, whatever's in the air, right? What's in the water? It can be, but our thoughts are, you know, running somewhere between 6,000 to really high estimates are 80,000 a day. It is, those are very powerful bits of information we're constantly feeding to the way that our genes are folding or not folding. And so it is, it's very, very powerful. And so the diagnosis fits into that. Again, I want to say it's, they're useful because that's how we communicate, right? It's like, but what I always encourage my patients, too, is like, okay, you know, you have imbalances that are manifesting as MS.

Right. You know? And or it's not, you know, cancer is a big one, right? We can say it's just a word. It triggers all sorts of patterns in the body that there's all sorts of connotations to it. And so it's not a neutral word. And so it's like, okay, saying, okay, you have a tumor, right, that you are, we're learning how to rebalance your body to respond to that versus, you know, I am a cancer patient. They're very different.

It's so subtle, but just completely different vibrations that are there. Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. And when you step into one vibration, there's an openness of starting to explore. And going back to where you were sharing earlier, when you recognize that it wasn't either I have disease or I am cured, there's this ebb and flow that happens in the middle, this gray area. And that gray area of being in that, both on a laboratory sense, like subclinical, like it can't be easily picked up.

We don't know exactly what's wrong with you. how do we exactly measure inflammation, which ultimately, you know, these chronic diseases are linked back to that. We don't have tests that are good enough right now that exactly can dial that in. But there was a recognition that you mentioned earlier that you could influence that. You could either steer yourself towards one environment or you could steer yourself to another environment. You could influence the healing or you could influence it going into other direction. What was one of the first things that you can remember consciously choosing to do when you had that recognition of, hey, this is an input that I can control in some way, whatever that input it is, as you mentioned, there's food, there's thoughts,

there's all sorts of inputs that are out there. What was one of the first ones that you took on and said, let me see if I can influence that state that I'm in? I mean, the first one, you know, again, usually most of them were kind of done not chronologically. I mean, in the book, it's very chronological because it was a book. But a lot of them happened at the same time. But the first one I was really set on was I have to get, I have to figure out how to get more sleep so that I have more energy to do the deeper healing that I want to do.

And by this point, you know, both kids were sleeping largely through the night. and so it was learning about the circadian rhythm. And the reason why it was important to me, so it wasn't just like, oh, how do I get more sleep? You know, okay, what do I do at night for sleep hygiene? I mean, I had already been doing that for a long time and with minimal improvement. And the circadian rhythm science was, again,

much more useful for me because it connected me to something much greater than myself. And that's another piece of, that's really important in healing, is our whole world comes crashing in, you know, we're very, very, I mean, I became very self-focused. And suddenly, even though I'm still in my house, you know, and I'm mostly within, you know, these four walls, my sense of myself and connecting, oh, okay,

there's rhythms that my body as an ecosystem has connected to the sun. enter the moon. So it's not just like, oh, you know, create a dark environment. It's like, oh, okay, the sun is down. The moon is up, you know, and how do I align my body with those rhythms, you know, as opposed to kind of just the prescriptive, what do I do, you know, kind of thing. And even before my sleep got better, I was just feeling much more fluid. I was feeling more ease in my body because it was like, oh, I'm aligned with nature and I'm a part of nature. So so much of that is, yeah, is like prescriptions. And like when I'm working with patients, too, it's we get very focused on the prescriptions. What do I need to do? And we try to do it as perfectly

or not, you know, or maybe something doesn't resonate. And I'm not going to take that and I'm not going to do that, but this is what I'm going to do and get really focused on that. Forgetting, again, like connecting to the healing, actually. You're connecting to yourself. You know, why are you taking that supplement or that medication? It's like, oh, it's an act of love. It's like, you know, I'm taking care of myself. And so the more quickly we can connect to ourselves into something much larger than ourselves, the much faster actually healing goes. I mean, I don't like to prescribe supplements or medications, but they are, they're wonderful. They're easy to do, right?

They're easy. And so it can be a real foot in the door. It can be, I would say it's much easier than doing the deeper healing work. Where does intuition fit into all of this? intuition came to me well it was a the teacher came i guess i was ready i didn't feel ready when she came but her name is her name is pia aitken she has since passed away um but she and her husband don were they were friends they were dawn and pia had known my husband through a sustainability work you know, this is renewable energy work.

And they're a generation older, but they came to stay with us one weekend, and we had just moved to a new house. And my younger daughter was having night terrors ever since we moved. She was two at the time. And, but they came to stay. And, you know, long story short, Pia became aware that Sonia was having night terrors. And again, that was one of those things. That was one of those nebulous diagnoses or symptoms that I had taken her to a pediatrician.

I had looked it up myself, and everyone just said it was a phase. It was just a phase. And so we were just kind of waiting it out, but it was really taking a toll on my sleep. Every night she would scream, you know, wake up screaming. And we knew that Pia was clairvoyant, and she had these other gifts, but we had never experienced it directly. And so Pia kind of went into that intuitive space and said that Sonia was picking up on stuff and that she was feeling this energy that she was that was making her really upset. And so funnily enough, you know, total skeptic, but we were desperate, right? So desperation really opens doors, opens minds.

and they went and got some sage, some smudged sticks, or, you know, basically a dried sage. And she started doing this incense around the house. And, you know, my husband and I were both like, okay, whatever, you know, Pia's doing her thing, but we don't know what's going on. Now, Pia's husband was a leading climate scientist in the United States, top physicist. And so I was really curious to talk to him, like, what are you, what is going on? How do you even make sense of this? And he began talking about the quantum realm and he didn't really understand it, but she was

somehow accessing things beyond Newtonian, sort of this, what you talked about earlier, form, right? This material world that we can see and feel and touch and everything. Exactly. So, you know, it was more just trusting them as good human beings and friends. But from that point on, like Sonia's Night Terrorist totally went away. we could chalk it up to coincidence, we could chalk it up to her adjusting to being in a new house. I mean, there were a whole bunch of things that we could chalk it up to, but we could not

deny that it happened at that time. So what I had, before Pia left, she said, I had said, you know, if you can do that, can you help me with my health? And she said, the way I can help you with your health is to teach you how to tap into your intuition and how to trust it. So that was my journey into it. And it began to just open up my experience of the laws of nature in a much, much more expansive way. So even would you say that the desire, because intuition is one of those things that it's constantly there. It's just the question of, do we, are we in a place where we can hear it, right? Are we in a place where we can hear it? Or is there a lot of layers that are on top of it. Looking back on your journey up until that point that Pia, Pia, was sharing this

information with you and helping you really talk about some of these practical steps to incorporate intuition to your life. Could you see little moments where intuition was speaking to you? And you did actually, you did pick it up, right? What were some examples of those? I think, well, like one example I can give, that's much more clear cut that I didn't write about was actually about my mother. She had gone and seen a doctor and had, you know, had on her blood tests, it was just screening labs, an inflammatory marker that was really high. And she had some chronic conditions.

that were just assumed that that was why her marker was high. But even those, I was looking at those labs, and I was like, but nothing's really changed, you know, they actually look great. You know, you're taking your meds, you're doing all the things that you need to do, you're walking, eating, blah, blah, blah, eating right. It doesn't quite make sense, but let me just sit with it. And so I sat with it. and what emerged in the intuitive informational realm was her teeth, her teeth.

And I just asked her, I said, when was the last time you saw a dentist? And she said, oh, I just saw one, you know, a couple of months ago. And I was like, okay, maybe it's not that, right? Because a lot of learning about intuition is, it's not about being right, it's about seeing what's true. and so the egoic mind has to get out of the way. It's not about me trying to be right. It's just being open. Like what am I, what do I need to see that I'm not seeing?

And then she said, oh, but you know, it's really funny that you ask that because there's a tooth that he wants to take out. And I really don't want to do that. And so I said, you know what? go and actually get it taken care of, you know, because we know, and I knew medically that, right, any kind of oral, like tooth or peridontal disease actually could correlate with systemic inflammation. And I said, go get it taken care of, and then we're going to repeat these tests. Don't start any of the meds that your doctor recommended. We'll just see.

And sure enough, she did that, and the inflammatory market was completely normal, right? So that's a very clear-cut example of how we can use intuition and healing. But I will say also, again, these were all just learning steps for me, was in the beginning when I was using intuition, it was very much like that. It was still dictated by, like, my egoic mind was the master. My analytical mind was the master. I was choosing how I wanted to use intuition, and I wanted intuition to serve a specific purpose.

And as I deepened in my own healing journey and chigong, which we can talk about later, this moving meditation was a very big part of it. I realized like, no, no, lead with intuition, lead with mystery, lead with being wide open to whatever possibility it is, which expands what is possible. because I was still looking within a very narrow, you know, framework of how I wanted to use it, what I wanted to emerge. And it's limiting.

It's really limiting. So, and then, you know, and I write about it in my book, but Jonas Salk, right, one of the discoverers of the polio vaccine has that quote, right? Let intuition tell your thinking mind where to look next. so that, you know, if I have a, my experience of it is like, okay, my thinking mind, I still fully employ that highly useful, highly trained, very specific in what I know, but it's, you know, that sits in the passenger seat now. And it also gives my thinking mind a sense of play, a sense of like being on that world trip with not knowing, like, where is my

intuitive mind going to take me. Where are we going on this road? I have no idea. So it's, you know, in the beginning it was kind of scary. It felt like total surrender. And now I'm at that place where it just feels fun. It's like we have no idea where we're going to go, whether it's with a patient that I'm going to see or whether it's in my life. But we're along for the ride. And we're going to pay attention. We're going to use that analytical mind in however it's useful. It's such an important reminder because I think zooming out, the folks that are suffering from chronic disease day, I hear from most every functional medicine doctor is that because of how our environment is, pollutants, environmental toxins, other stuff, they would largely say that people suffering from chronic diseases today are quite sicker than, let's say, 10, 20, 30 years ago. There's just a lot more variables that are there in the classic sense of how many components they're. all have going on. And even they, a lot of the great ones that are out there, they'll be open

and on and saying that sometimes they're not sure what the next step is. And they're not sure where to guide their patient or to do. They have the classic tools that are there and they deploy it and sometimes somebody's still not getting better, which is why it's so important for I think everybody who's listening. And I think a through line through your work and even this interview here is regardless of how bad things are, if we can tap into a little bit more of our intuition, there might be some signals that are constantly there. They're screaming at us. They're yelling at us.

It's just, are we in a place to be able to hear them to know what direction is right for us? You know, you started with sleep. At the time that you wrote your book, which you probably started writing in maybe 2018, end of 2017, maybe. I think it came out in 2019. Even back then, sleep I don't think was talked about as much as right now. Now, sleep is such a hot topic. And there are so many more practitioners that are out there saying, listen, I know you're excited about diet.

I know you're excited about all these other things. But until we touch on sleep or in some cases even trauma, until we deal with this trauma that's there, I feel for you particularly, it's going to be very hard to take the next step forward. So everybody is different. there are some patients that diet is the next right most move for them to move forward. But I think the component that's there is that what do you feel for the person listening,

for the person watching? What do you feel is the next most important thing for your life? Even if you aren't suffering from a chronic disease, which knock on wood, I hope, you know, you aren't. But for those who are, there has to be some sense of where is your inner compass guiding you? Yeah, absolutely. And it's, you know, it's both important in healing, but it's also where I am right now with working with patients and also in talking with other, you know, other leaders in health care

is this distributed, I feel like we're on the frontier. The next step is distributed medicine, right? It's patient directed. It's not just patient involved health care, but it's patient directed, right? Where? What do you want out of this appointment? Like, where do you want to start, actually? Where do you want to start? And it is, it is, it's not to say I am not going to guide and support and offer, you know, specific, specific prescriptions and suggestions and resources, and that's what I'm there for. But this is your ship, right?

You're going to, you're the navigator. and I'm just kind of on board as part of your team. And it is uncomfortable to realize that. But that's really actually what healing is about. So I want to go to your journey because I know we don't have a ton of time here and there's a few other topics that I want to get a chance to talk about. So you having met Pia and the guidance around intuition, take us through a couple other miles.

stones that were there that were a crucial part that allowed you and ultimately led to you writing your book and wanting to document the journey that was there. So I'll go through a few different pillars and it might be a little bit out of context, but if you might be able to just chime in, since they are one of the key pillars that's inside of the book. And again, books are great because they're a template for people. They're there. But I actually love these interviews and I love talking about the real order that it comes in. I love hearing that sleep was the first thing that you worked on because I think that that benefits people, even though diet gets so much, you know, attention. Other areas get so much attention. So take us through a couple more of those

pillars that were crucial in your journey of steering your environment more towards the direction of healing. Well, I mean, I will mention also acupuncture. When I was so low, I wasn't even capable, actually. I don't think I would have been able to do a diet. for example. There was too much brain fog, too much, you know, there was too much of everything. And so just having, receiving treatment is a really big thing when people are that low. And that's often what I will recommend to people, you know, like if someone sounds like they are, you know, similar to where I was, it's like, you know what, what can we do that is a modality that you can just receive? But you don't have to do a lot except just show up.

And for some people, actually, it's like it's energy healing that they're receiving in their house, right? So there's a lot of possibilities. So I just want to say that because, you know, some people are like, oh my God, how did you get out of it? And it's like, no. You know, the first thing was actually I found an incredible acupuncturist who, right, just worked with me every week. And I got to this place where the vertigo was manageable to where I could read, right? and began to research and things like that. I just want to comment about that point.

Between the sleep and the acupuncture, it's almost like let's get the body up to the next place where the next things are possible. There's always great ideas that people have on how to heal. But if our body isn't in the right place, if we don't have the energy, if we don't have the stamina, then those things aren't the right thing for us.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And like one of my favorite things to prescribe to people, if it's within their budget and within their geographic area, and it's available, is cranial osteopathy. I'm like, some people think everyone needs a therapist. I think everybody could benefit from a cranial osteopath. And again, just show up and the treatments, and it's very balancing for the whole body. But, no, I mean, I have to say, you know, especially given where I am right now,

but chigong, my chigong practice was a pillar. that I wrote about, but when I wrote my book, I didn't quite actually know how large of a pillar it would become. And it is very useful. There are a lot of different lineages of chigong, and chigong is a moving meditation, right? It's got like a mind, body, spirit practice. And I was using it similarly to intuition. Like, I ran up to a certain place in in the integrative and functional medicine, right, matrix or the model, and I wasn't healing. What else do I need to do? And intuition helped me sort through the vast confusion of testing and supplements, and it was

overwhelming. Functional medicine can be very overwhelming, and it's highly complex, right? So I as a doctor slash patient was very overwhelmed and was like, how do I sift through this information and find what is resonant for me. Chi Gong was very similar. Okay, how do I begin to rehabilitate my hormone immune neurological systems? Like I thought of it very pragmatically. And, oh, I got to exercise those, right?

I got to exercise those. So I was having stepwise improvements and that was keeping me motivated. So it was very much like that. I had a second health, I call it a health awakening now, but a crisis for a more commonly used term just as my book was getting published. So not enough time had passed to get it into the book, but elements of it were incorporated. And during that time, I was kind of at the forefront of internal medicine, integrative, functional, and intuitive medicine, and I still didn't know what to do. So the first crash, I knew there was a lot

I didn't know, and I would say that's opening of the mind. The second one was really opening of the heart and the spirit. And I was back on the couch, back on the bed. And this time I would say that the near-death experience, or what I would call a near-death experience was I was I was really on the edge, I could kind of see almost, like, I don't know, the realm of death. I don't even know what to call it, the soul realm for about three months. And so it was really like, whoa, I could see things about myself and attachments and identities that I was holding on to that were not serving me. And just to put this in context for everybody who's following along with your journey, you got better, right? I'm just going to use that.

it in the best terms possible, right? You got better. You incorporated a lot of different things, many of which you write about in the book, some which I'll highlight a little bit later on. And then even within that component, there was a re-emergence of something later on, even though you had gotten better. And that pushed you to even in another place to open up and see what was there for you in the second part of the hero's journey. Well, yeah, it was a second crash. It wasn't, I wasn't, I mean, if we're talking about in terms of ascension or decension, it was, I was, I had crashed again. And, uh, but I could see, you know, I had much more awareness of myself and my body and just, you know, reaching, I was much more about reaching out

to other people, uh, instead of, you know, kind of wallowing in shame of, you know, what the hell happened. But, um, I could see all these, uh, transactional, uh, uh, deals I was making with myself. Like, I will eat, I will practice chikong, I will do all these things, take my supplements, you know, be a good patient as long as I'm getting better, you know, which was kind of how I was relating to myself, right? I am worthy as long as I am a doctor who's on a healing path. And so here I was with like nothing.

And I realized, no, you know what? actually the life that I want is the one that I have right now, as I am. Sensitive, you know, introvert, like all these other pieces and completely messy. This is the life that I want. And what I, and then I went deep into my Qigong practice. I had nothing else to do, right? Deep into the Qigong practice, I did do medical things as well. I kind of went down this path of Lyme disease, tick-borne infections, all these rabbit holes. that I was resisting, like, I don't want to go down there. Oh, my God, mold. I don't want to go down there. It's so overwhelming and laborious, and I don't want to do that. As long as I'm getting better,

I'm going to just stay this path, which works for a lot of people. But because I was there, I went deep into my Qigong practice and then was open to these other explorations as well. So, but what I realized, and here's the big paradox, is that the less we focus on, healing as a goal the actual the faster we actually heal because I wasn't connecting to myself as my whole self I was connecting to healing as a goal and so again intuition she go everything was for that goal I was there was still a big part of myself I was missing I couldn't see and so it took for me anyways it took that second crisis and I wouldn't wouldn't wish that path on

anybody else which is why I was like you know what I can make this public. I didn't write to publish the book. I wrote as a healing for myself, for my family. And I didn't publish actually to heal people, to offer it to other people. I was very clear. Like, I'm publishing it to release the story. Like, I don't own that story. It's nobody's story. And then the story you read is going to be different than the one that somebody else's, somebody else reads because it's you, right, interfacing with my story. And I'm just going to release that thing into the world so that it's not mine. And it never was. And so it is the human story, right? It's the human journey. And as a side effect, it can benefit potentially other people.

And that, to me, I feel like, is a double blessing. Right. So, but I couldn't see. that until that second awakening. And so, and with Chi Gong, you know, a lot of it is, it's connecting, it's understanding that we, everything around us is energy, right? The whole universe, you know, E equals MC squared, right? All matter is a form of energy. It's just condensed. And it's just about connecting to, I mean, we call it source energy, you know, without sounding, you know, or religious, but just connecting to life. And so at the foundation, the way to heal is to begin to live your life, is to stop focusing on healing. You know, again, sort of like the diagnoses, we need to do those things, right? They're frameworks, their offerings, they're tangible things that we

can do. But that is not the focus. So can we connect to that and then disconnect, and then focus on living our lives and focus on living our lives as who we truly are. You know, early on you talk to authenticity. I didn't actually know who I was. And the parts that I knew about myself, my sensitive nature being a big part of it, I didn't, I didn't like that. It's hard, you know? Partly living your life is not resisting your life. Yes. Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of fighting, a lot of fighting. You know, when I think about your journey and everything that you have to share in the book, but also the continued conversations that we've been able to have, that you've been teaching out there in different workshops

and sharing about Qigong, intuition, energy medicine, just energy in general, life force, source, I think often about the yin and the yang, like the classic yin and yang logo that's there, the duality of life. You know, we need the practical components. If somebody was probably talking to you about energy medicine or talking to you about other things and you weren't having sleep,

it would have been very difficult. You've even shared yourself. You might not have been in the place to be able to receive that information at that right moment for what you were dealing with. So we need the practical components, sleep, diet, ancestral diet, maybe even sometimes supplementation, other things like that. That's maybe one aspect. And then there's this other aspect, and they both live in harmony,

and that other aspect is the mystery, the unknown, the higher source in whatever definition that means to people that's out there. and that present moment life force awareness, which is so much bigger than everything else, but they both kind of work hand in hand to bring us whatever personalized version of healing that we need for us. That's kind of how I see it.

Do you have any thoughts on that? No, I mean, those are great thoughts. I think it's a really exciting time to be exploring these realms. I mean, not only because the healing can be much faster, oh, I should add the second time, I actually experienced a radical remission. So my healing trajectory was like this.

And my husband and I were just, we couldn't actually, we couldn't wrap our minds around it. I mean, that's just it. We couldn't. And, but what I realized is it's exciting, it's an exciting time to be a doctor and also to even be on a healing journey

because the science is there, right? So you don't have to be religious, you don't even have to be spiritual, the science is there. And so one example is, in terms of Qigong, it's like, oh, it's a mind-body spirit practice, or you can even take out the spirit part, mind-body practice, and what is the body, right?

So in medicine, in mainstream medicine, and even, you know, actually in functional medicine too, where when we think of the body, we often think of the flesh, right? the muscles, the systems, the cells, the organelles in the cells, but like what's happening and it's a physical body. And then beyond that, we're 60%, 70% water, right? So like, why do we experience ourselves as solid if we're actually largely fluid?

And then beyond that, right, we're all created, we're all basically made of atoms and molecules. And atoms we know are 99.999. I forget how many nines there are percent space. And we know through science it's not empty space. It's very, very subtle energy. And subtle doesn't mean weak. Subtle means beyond what our current technologies can measure. So they're indirectly, I guess, known, right?

They're indirectly known, not directly known. And so it's like, oh, mind-body practice. like my body as subtle energy, my body as fluid. So that the strangest thing is, is that, I mean, the quantum healings happen because that's where the consciousness piece comes in is it's similar to what we know about light, right? Like light, right? Okay, you do these experiments and moves as a wave, right?

And then if we observe it and we're trying to measure it, it begins to move like a particle. Right? Something about our consciousness interacting with that. energy changes its nature and or changes its path, I'll put it that way. But the same thing actually with our bodies. We follow universal laws. Like radical healings are not, they don't defy nature's laws. They're accessing these higher laws or whatever that adjective is. They're accessing different laws than what we tend to think of in terms of what is possible. And so having experienced that firsthand, I was, again, my thinking mind in the passenger state, trying to make sense of,

okay, what's happening? And the science is there. So I've gone back into, funnily enough, in science and college and in medical school, like, I loved Newtonian physics, but as soon as it got into electricity and magnetism and the quantum stuff, I was like, okay, I'm lost. But this experience has brought me back into understanding quantum science, which I understand much more now because I've experienced it. So this marriage of experience and didactic information is, it's exciting. And the chigong practice is about that, right? It's an ancient, ancient practice. The lineage that I practice is called Zunin Chigong, or translated to wisdom healing chigong, and it's a marriage of science and a modern science and this ancient practice. So for me, it meets all those needs, right?

My analytical mind wants to know, my body is experiencing my, and then it opens my intuition as a natural side effect. So I'm not, intuition is not a goal anymore. It's not a craft and I'm trying to develop. I just practice. I just connect to source energy and not outside of me, but outside of me and also within me. And then intuition and knowing comes as a side effect. So you know, you kind of can't make that stuff up. It's the byproduct of you re-centering. Yes. So when people hear this story and they're listening to you right now and they're thinking of themselves, so I'm suffering and I want to take that next step and I'm trying a lot of things at work. And they're thinking of about wanting to explore something like Qigong, is there anybody that it's not a good fit for?

Or can everybody just go down the path and go and explore it? Yeah. I mean, it's the thing about Qigong is that you can do, you don't, first of all, you don't need any props. You know, you don't need a gym. You don't even need like a yoga mat. I mean, you don't need anything. And when I began practicing and even after the second crisis, I was practicing, you know,

often from the couch or from a chair. So any movement can be modified. And then you set your own pace. You know, if there's a practice where you're just holding your arms up like that and it's like it's too much, you know, you can lower it down. You know, everything can be personalized. And I realize we actually, you know, maybe some people that are not familiar with Qigong,

if you could just describe basic definition of it or just anything you toss in so that people can follow along with what we're talking about. Yeah, it can be summarized as a moving meditation, sometimes embodied consciousness maybe. But oftentimes for people who are, I have patients who come to me who are longtime meditators, consciousness tends to be sort of upward and expansive. But this is about, oh, how do we bring consciousness,

how we bring the mind fully into the body so that the mind is actually fully inhabiting the body? And so people are like, well, what does inhabiting the body mean? You know, it's like, well, you know, and so there are practices, right, where we're not just using our bodies. We're fully inhabiting our bodies with our consciousness so that they merge. It's not mind, body, spirit are not separate categories. We can think of them as separate categories, but in terms of the full human lived experience, they are one. And I've not taken on Chi-Gong, but I've been to many instances, probably about like at least seven or eight, where I've been taken through a session by different sorts of teachers.

It's one of those things where it's not like you're just believing in it. You feel the energy. You feel the energy even in sometimes as little as 15, 10 minutes if you're doing these different exercises that you're being walked through where there's a sense of, there's some sensation that I'm sensing. Yeah. Absolutely. And so it's really about building up our own internal energy, you know, and again, from a scientific

perspective, we can think of it as ways to really bring, to optimize the way our nerves are connected, the way our spine, right, is aligned, maybe perhaps most certainly increasing mitochondria in number and also optimizing function in the mitochondria. So there's a lot of ways to think about it scientifically. But, you know, one of the things that I heard actually from Dites Karazian, who was like, you know, my, just one of those incredible functional medicine doctors, but neurologists as well, was, he said it, and it really clicked. He said, you know, in functional medicine, we're great at prescribing diets and, you know, supplements and just healing the gut, you know, were great at all those. rebalancing hormones, but take, for example, a person who had a stroke, right? We can give them all these nutrients to, you know, heal the body, to support rebalancing,

to support nerve regeneration and healing and whatnot. But the only thing that's going to make that arm move if that arm was paralyzed is the person doing these rehabilitation exercise, like fully inhabiting this body and reconnecting the mind with the body. And that really stuck with me. You know, it was like, our bodies are meant to be moved. Really meant to be moved.

And so the other things serve that, and they synergize with that. But the movement is really key. And so how do we optimize that with the internal workings? So it's not just a movement. It's not just an exercise. but that we are fully present, right? We were talking before this, you know,

conversation about being fully present to life, to ourselves, to others. And this is the way, this is a tried and true way to do it. So the other thing that I, that, why I gravitated towards Qigong, partly it was, you know, my heritage, right? It reconnected me to ancestors and to my lineage in a way that I didn't, that I'd been sort of had been cut off from. The other piece was that knowing that there were thousands of years that this, you know, at least as a broad category of mind-body practices had been cultivated, it gave me a sense of trust. Like, I felt like I could relax into it.

Like, I'm like, wait, this movement, okay, you know what? they've tested it out for millennia. Okay, I'm going to trust that, you know? A lot of trial and error there. Not a randomized controlled trial, you know, lots of lived experience in terms of the experiment. So trust is a really big piece of the healing journey, learning to trust yourself,

but if you can't do that initially, you trust your doctor, you know, well, whoever, whatever healthcare practitioner you're working with, You learn to trust the people who are showing up in your life. And then you learn to trust these traditions that are tried and true. Within that new container of trust and the vehicle being, you know, Gingong, not as an endpoint to create intuition, but just to reconnect to your body and intuition being a byproduct with that. So let's say that's like one of the containers, just for the purposes of this conversation.

And then within inside of those containers, I would imagine, are still all the beautiful things that you change and incorporated in your life, like minimizing toxins in the environment, maybe making some modifications to your diet. Do you see it that way that all these things can exist, but they're within that container of you having that direct connection to source? Absolutely. Because, you know, again, this came after the, you know, the second awakening was I had a freedom within my body that I hadn't had the first time. The first time everything was highly managed and highly very much to do. And then now it's like, you know what? I still am 100% actually gluten and dairy-free. But I have more flexibility in terms of other things that I eat. And I actually,

when we travel, I can, I have a lot of flexibility, but it's more that I choose. Some, it sounds Sometimes it's intuition, like, no, I'm not going to eat that. But it's that I'm choosing to do this because I want to take care of the one body that I have. It's a very different way of relating to myself and to living my life. Before then, to contrast it, would you say that there was this, it was a little fear or gold base? Like if I don't do this, I will go back to where I was before. or if I don't do this, I won't achieve this thing that I'm striving for. Fear is a really big thing.

Yeah. But, you know, if you're on this journey where it's up and down and then, you know, you try something and then you're back, you know, it feels like you're back at square one a lot. It's really frightening. So it was a big motivator. So it kept me disciplined. It felt very disciplined. That's what it felt like.

And I just thought, well, yeah, I love myself. It's tough love. You know, it's tough love. But at some point, you know, we need gentle love. And so I have that fluidity. And it's interesting. I'm, you know, I'm four years out now from the second crash. And my life has taken on new direction, you know, sort of with and after the book came out.

And I'm doing things in my work and in my life that I never would have imagined doing, you know, had someone told me that 20 years ago. But I, yeah, even having that, there are moments where I know I'm still choosing something out of fear. You know? So where I am right now in terms of having a sensitive constitution is, first off, I had, the big realization for me was a sensitive ego versus a sensitive nature. And those were very big. Once I learned to kind of separate that, I was like, okay,

That's ego. That's just my ego getting wounded. But, okay, I have a sensitive nature. That is my nature. And it is a gift. And I don't mean that in kind of a euphemistic way. The gift of it is that I'm very sensitive to when I can feel resistance now in my body. Part of it is cultivated through Qigong, right, and just tapping in. But if I can feel that resistance, and I'll be like, I'm making that out of fear, you know? I don't want to do that because I'm afraid of going back to where I was. And nope, I got to let that go. So move through that resistance, let go of the fear, and all right, this is how I'm going to end. I might still choose the same thing, but recognizing that I'm not limiting myself due to fear. Yeah, so I'm still in that pattern. You know, I can still

feel it. There's still elements to unwind. And I think anybody who's listening is like we all are, even if somebody is not suffering from, you know, let's say a diagnosable condition or the, it's the, it's the human condition. We all find ourselves in it. We find ourselves with a sense of forget forgetting. You know, we momentary forget who we are. We make decisions out of motivations that aren't our true self. But the biggest thing that I've seen is that the more you become aware of that, the less you're beating yourself up about it in the first place. Because these things happen, But it's actually the beating ourselves up, which makes it a challenging situation to move forward with. Yeah, it's compassion.

It's the compassion. And, you know, a moment for me, just the beating up thing is really big. I didn't even, you know, I think for me and for a lot of patients I work with too, it is part of, I mean, maybe it's not part of the human condition, but it's a pattern. It's very dominant where it's so ingrained. It was so ingrained in me. I couldn't even see it. I didn't even feel like I was being myself up, but I was. And yeah, and then, oh, forgiveness.

And the next step was like, oh, forgiveness. Oh, just forgive myself for, you know, everything, you know, like, I'm forgivable. I'm lovable. And then now it's at the point where I'm, wait a minute, that's not right either. It's like, no, to truly see who you are is to see yourself as beyond the need to forgive. Right? That's unconditional love. Unconditional love is not about forgiving over and over and over and over again.

It's like, oh, you're okay. You know, you're okay. Yeah, you know, we make mistakes. We learn. This is, I'm not perfect. And there is a freedom in fully, fully embracing imperfection. For anybody who's listening now, as we're winding down and feels like they're just really confused about their next step. They're not sure where to go.

They are maybe even losing a little bit. a little bit of hope down their path of healing. And I know you've shared very openly that you've felt all those things at some point in time in your journey. What lasting message do you want to leave them with? Again, I think this may sound paradoxical, but this is kind of where I am in my own learning and what I'm working with with my patients. But it is, and I'm offering this almost as a.

sort of a catalyst, like a desire to spare people, you know, like a long labor-intensive journey that I had. It's almost like, okay, this is how you can skip this, if that's even possible, but is to relax the intention, to relax the seeking. there is something about practicing being in the present moment that, where we see things we don't actually see. And I can end with this. It was a learning, a beautiful piece of wisdom that I learned from my midwife who showed up, right,

at a time when I needed her. but she showed up during the difficult pregnancy and she I remember she said well how do you envision your birth you know your labor and delivery and I was like oh my god I'm just trying to survive this pregnancy I can't even think about that and of course I'm going to do full full court press epidural whatever meds you know anything I said I want to get through I don't even know if I have the energy right but I want to get through that delivery and I want to have as much energy as I can for my baby and for my toddler. And she said, okay, I get it.

She said, I'm not even, I'm not attached to any outcome. She said, but I want you to look back at your previous labor and delivery. When did you, when did you hit that wall? You know, go back to that. And I did. And she said, I just want you to know in my 40 years of being a midwife and seeing women from all over the world. She said, when most people hit their walls, when they think they cannot go on any longer, it's not, it's usually not due to the pain. And I was like, what are you

talking about? Like, I've been there, done that, I know. And she said, no, it's, she said, the contractions are intense, but they, they come down, you know, they end. And then even if it's like 30 seconds of, you know, before the next contraction. She said, but usually it's minutes. That's 30 seconds of peace. That's five minutes of peace. But if you're worried about the next one or you're thinking about the last one, it's going to feel like 18, 24, whatever hours of continuous pain. And so the only way to get into those moments of peace in between the intensities is to learn how practice presence and that was actually part of my journey too and I began to see that okay you know it was a tough day but there are lulls and then when there are lulls how do I just be

fully present with that yeah so it's it's just learning how to live life it's the toughest thing but it's the only thing that we have ultimately. Dr. Cynthia Lee, this was fantastic. I want to thank you for getting a chance to expand on some things that you talked about in your book, some things you talked about in your interview with Dr. Hyman, my business partner, my friend, which will also link to that was a great interview as well.

Getting a chance to expand on them that people don't often get a chance to hear. They don't hear about the role of energy, presence, surrender, letting go when it comes, it feels like the primary things that are talked about is if I could only figure out the right food to eat, the right food to avoid, the right supplement to take, the one particular approach, like you said, just like diagnoses have their point and their place in this world, those things also have their place and purpose inside of this space, but there's also something beyond that. And I feel like we got a chance to explore a little bit of some of those things beyond that.

Any places that you'd like to direct our audience so they can keep in touch with you, follow your work, and see the next iterations of who knows what the next journey will be? Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty simple when it comes to online presence. My website is Cynthia Leimd.com. It's c-y-n-h-I-A-L-I-M-D.com. And I have a kind of a very defunct Facebook page. The posts are still there, and people still find that useful, but I'm not really active on social media anymore. Again, it was about presence and just choosing that for my life, at least right now.

And I would like to direct people or just offer it up as a resource two of the primary teachers of Qigong for me. and they have online, you know, they have everything's now on Zoom and recorded and whatnot, but so you can really access that from anywhere in the world. And it's Dowhearts.com, D-A-O-Harts.com, and chi-Center.com. C-H-I-Center.com. And those are two really good, good resources. Amazing. Well, we'll have links to both of those in the show notes for anybody who wants to check them out.

Maybe I'll check them out as well too and sign up for a class. Dr. Lee, thank you again for sharing your story and being on the podcast. Super appreciate you and your work. Thank you so much.