If I wanted to live to 100, I’d do this.

In ancient China, there were doctors who weren't paid to treat disease. They were actually paid to keep their patients from getting sick in the first place. Now, one of those doctors was Sunsuma, and he lived past the age of 100 in the year 600 AD. So, how did they do it? You know, they weren't taking supplements in the way that we do. They weren't getting blood tests, and they didn't have biohacking gadgets. They followed a completely different set of rules based not on fighting illness, but on preserving jing, your life essence. Now, in this video, I'm going to show you three longevity practices from Chinese medical classics that people use to live to 80, 90, and even 100 years old without degenerating. These are things you can start doing today to protect your mind, your gut, your sleep, and your spirit. So, let's dive in. Hey guys, it's Dr. Alex Hine, board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, and author of the health book Master the Day. Let's get into point number one here. Now, the first thing I want to read to you here is a quote from one of our medical classics, the yellow emperor's inner cannon. And this dialogue is a dialogue between Chiboa, who is like an adviser to the Yellow Emperor, and he usually talks about certain health and longevity practices. Chibi said, "The ancients accorded with yin and yang, harmonized with the seasons, ate and drank in moderation, and lived with regularity, and avoided reckless exertion. Therefore, their physical form and their spirit remained intact and they completed their aotted lifespan, often living a hundred years or more. Now, traditional Chinese medicine and really a lot of Dowist philosophy is based on the principles of yin and yang. And while you may pay lip service to these concepts, you know, I remember as a kid in the 80s wearing a yin-yang necklace, I thought it was so cool because I liked watching Ninja Turtles and [music] I wore a yinyang necklace. But now as a doctor of this profession, you start to see yin and yang is what determines life and death. Now the second thing I want you to think of here is a great quote from the dwangza. [music] And here's how it goes. The true person almost like the sage breathes into their heels while the ordinary person breathes only to their throat. So this is a very weird quote from Dangza. Dangza was a daist philosopher sort of like the uh kind of like the comedic relief in the dowist world. And Drangza says this quote that aligns with a lot of old dowist and Chinese medicine thinking which is the power of breath regulation because from a physiological point of view the fastest way you can change your state without taking a medicine is breathing. So ancient mystics and adepts and doctors highly praised breathing which is why chiong which you could literally translate as breath work is so highly praised in East Asia. It's something you can do if you're incredibly sick. It's something that you can do if you are old. [music] It's something you can do that's low impact on your knees. And so this has a literal meaning and a metaphorical meaning. The literal meaning is when you're sitting at your work desk, breathing into your throat is just, you know, chest breathing. Breathing into your heels is inhaling my chest, my diaphragm, my stomach. Feeling that breath go all the way to your toes metaphorically. And when you breathe out, breathing out all of that air. When you breathe in, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. Imagine the breathing going all the way into your toes, all the way into the earth. And when you exhale, exhale all of that out and cleanse everything. And one thing on a pure scientific level this does is it lengthens the breath. And lengthening the breath is one of the best ways to regulate your physiology. For those who are daily meditators, you know the first technique is watching your breathing. Because the first technique, watching your breathing is the best way or the [music] simplest way to calm the mind. But also by lengthening the breathing, you're improving oxygenation. You're regulating your nervous system even more strongly. You're getting better blood flow. You'll often notice warm hands and warm feet. And you're downshifting your nervous system out of fight or flight. You're putting it into the parasympathetic rest and digest. So when you do that at your desk, when you do that in your life, when you do that metaphorically, you're enabling your body to stay in the optimal state for longevity and for healing. Now longevity for my opinion is not about biohacking. It's more about balance. But you can't really have balance if your gut is inflamed, your digestion is off, or food really makes you feel worse instead of better. Which is why with my patients, I focus on digestion as one of [music] the core systems to get in order. So, if you're having bloating or food sensitivities or gut issues that are dragging down your energy, I actually launched a brand new free guide that walks you through exactly how I fix that with traditional Chinese medicine. It's the first link right below this video and it's a simple practical guide and it's a great way to start living like you actually want to live to 100. So, you can check it out right below this video. Now, a final passage for longevity I want to leave you with here. This is from Suen chapter 2 and it's called the great treatise on regulating the spirit according to the four seasons. This is called breaking open the old to bring forth the new. Heaven and earth are born a new and all things blossom. Lie at night and rise early. Take long walks in the courtyard. Loosen the hair and relax the body to let the will emerge. You know, this passage talks a lot about how you must align your lifestyle, sleep, activity, food with natural cycles [music] to preserve your health and longevity. There are seasons to life, right? Like going back to the type A person, type A people, the problem is they're in an eternal spring and summer mode all the time. It's always let's work at max capacity. Let's work every day. Let's never take time off from the gym because god forbid I get fat. Let's always be disciplined, discipline, discipline. But they'll do that even when they're exhausted. They'll do that even when they're tired and burnt out. They'll do that even when it's harming their family life and their personal life. Not understanding that the way you preserve your health and longevity is adaptation based on the circumstances. I mean remember Charles Darwin what he said the species that survive are not necessarily the most intelligent or the strongest. It's those most adaptable to change. You know a leopard doesn't necessarily go expend excessive energy and go for a jog for fun. It goes for a jog and utilizes its energy only when it has to because your resources are limited ultimately. So, when we talk about adjusting your life based on the seasons, if you're more burnt out, that means you need to go into energy conservation mode, monk mode for a little bit, go into hibernation, sleep longer hours, maybe take a little break from coffee, dial down the work projects for 3 months, focus more on your friendships, your health, time in nature. That is how you recover and that is how you prevent an illness from becoming chronic. Or maybe you're the opposite, right? Maybe sloth is a vice of yours [music] and maybe you have a hard time eating healthy. Maybe you have a hard time going to the gym and maybe inactivity is one of your main vices. You're eternally in winter mode, but you know you need to get yourself going in the gym or eating a better diet or maybe also not drinking so much coffee or drinking so much wine at the end of the night. These kinds of things are understanding basically what do I need to do to create my life as my medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine calls this alignment with theqi or the quality of the season. Spring is up and out. Energy is the peak of yang in the summer. the fall, the energy is going inward. A lot like the trees, they're a perfect metaphor. They shed their leaves to conserve all of their energy in the root. So, these passages really go into the traditional Chinese medicine thinking around how can you protect your energy and live in alignment with the flow. You could often have the exact same success in life you want, but without the exhaustion, without the burnout. So, just some things to think about here today, guys. Now, if you've made it this far into this video, it probably means that this message has resonated with you on a deeper level. Maybe you've tried the supplements, the stress hacks, the lifestyle changes, and something's still missing. That's where personalized care comes in. Now, in my private clinic in Los Angeles or virtually via tele medicine, I work one-on-one with people who are done guessing. People who are ready to get to the root cause of their digestive problems, anxiety, insomnia, burnout, or chronic fatigue. This isn't a generic protocol. It's custom classical East Asian medicine designed for your body. If you want to work with me onetoone, go to dr. alexheim.com/cl clinic or check out the info below this video and you can always reach out from there. Don't forget to download that new guide on bloating and food allergies according to Chinese medicine and I have a great related video on this right here.