Psychospiritual Illness: The Sickness of the 21st Century

It's obvious that today in this era and time of history that many people die of cardiovascular disease and cancer but in my opinion there's a deeper more insidious illness going on and that is what I call illnesses of the spirit. So in this video I want to talk about what I think is the great crisis in modern medicine of the 21st century. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Hein, doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book Master of Now before we jump into this video I've put together 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 a few traditional Chinese medicine principles and the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine you can check out those links below to reach out to my private practice and clinic. You know I'm moved by this story that I heard somewhere on the internet about these Americans that went down to Jamaica to do psilocybin mushrooms, magic mushrooms. They went down for medicinal and healing purposes and as they were being sort of warmed up and prefaced they were being prepped for this journey one of the shamans said you know what's interesting is that in our culture in Jamaica people only do this when they're seriously and chronically ill and they are trying to find a solution to their illness but what's funny and interesting about the Americans and the foreigners is they come when they're physically well but they don't feel connected to anything or as if their spirit's empty maybe that actually is your illness and this connected so much because what I've seen in so many of my patients is just we live in an interesting world with more material abundance than ever more opportunity than ever more safety than ever especially in the developed world but people don't seem to be any happier and the state of the psyche and the human spirit has been almost separated from the body the physical body is safe the base needs are met but the self-actualized needs seem to be further away than ever before makes me think back to an experience I had when I was visiting the rural Philippines I was playing soccer with these kids in a very very remote part of the Philippines and some of those kids had actually never seen a white person before so seeing as I'm six foot two or three they thought I was a professional NBA player and they would come to sit outside of the house that I was staying in which 10 or 15 years ago was my girlfriend's grandmother's house which is why I was in such a remote part of the Philippines and one thing struck me these kids barely had clean water they would still regularly get typhoid from their water infection and they were way happier than most American kids they were out there barefoot on the streets they had big smiles on their faces they couldn't wait to see this foreigner that they would call Ate Alex and they wanted to play basketball and soccer with me and I'm just thinking to myself when I go back to America there aren't that many kids playing outside compared to when I was young they're on their devices and they're stressed and they're anxious and they're already little girls comparing themselves versus other little girls on Instagram and these kids had almost an inversion the converse of what we have in America almost excessive physical poverty just the borderline of surviving they still have infectious diseases that we've eliminated for generations in America and yet they look a lot happier than most of the children that I see so what gives when it comes to illnesses of the spirit I really like the word spirit as someone who's very clinical I like science I like facts I don't like new agey esoteric spiritual philosophies I love the term the human spirit because everyone knows what it feels like to feel alive and every adult knows what it feels like to die slowly inside in a life that loses meaning I was watching a recent movie avatar and as I watched this movie I was just thinking about what life must have been like for traditional and native people where you live in a tribe where you have your significant other and your children and you have a role and you're part of a community and you're an integral part of that community and what you do is important and it matters in your tribe and your community your people need you and I compare that to what I see so many people today living living like drones sitting on a wooden box working on a computer in a virtual reality with work that doesn't inherently feel like this serves any point much of the time just to earn a paycheck just to exist on a piece of land that unless you're a very very high income earner doesn't even feel like it's big enough to really live for a life that doesn't even really feel that exciting where we're 20 pounds overweight and we have at least one medication we don't really have any major purpose outside of our work maybe it's our family or maybe we're lucky enough to have a hobby but this general sort of malaise right this lack of feeling well that's pervasive in the human spirit especially as we get to the adult years as our dreams start to die and we stop taking the risk betting on those dreams as we stop deciding that you know what doing work that's personally meaningful and impactful is important to me we get older and as those dreams die and as we become those corporate drone worker bees and as we sit at our desk and as we get fat and as we keep taking the paycheck and listening to our boss and existing what do they say that most men die by 25 but are buried at 75 maybe that was benjamin franklin for so many of us our lives lack meaning in the fundamental questions that matter which is why am i here and what is the point of even doing any of this if i don't like most of my day my job my rituals my routines where i live what i can afford my student debt what is the point and for so many of us that psycho-spiritual illness is an integral aspect of being chronically ill look at the rates of how much anxiety depression and antidepressant usage has increased over the decades and even over the generations that's scary statistic given how much material abundance we have in our life more stuff less spirit and this has been a trend for a long time so while i do think that obviously we have big problems like heart disease and cancer and diabetes we are in the midst of a crisis of the human spirit and this is not a simple read a little book i'm finding my life purpose and it's all good but it is a big problem that i think is the preface to many other problems it's the precursor to other issues in a person's life and while many of these people may go from doctor to doctor the doctor doctor getting treated and over medicated and misdiagnosed and they're still on antidepressants and they shouldn't be underneath it all is an inherent meaninglessness to their lives that if they approach their life from that angle everything else will be superfluous so that's my two cents rant for today what i think we're in the middle of another kind of crisis that has been increasing for generations but i see this so much in my private clinical practice and it is something people struggle with endlessly so my two cents for today guys check out these other related videos on that topic and the links below that video there and i'll see you soon