The 4 Seasons of The Healing Journey

If you're someone dealing with chronic illness, something that is very important to keep in mind is that there are seasons and phases of healing. And while one day you may be on top of the world feeling better, feeling normal for a period of time, six months from now you may be seeing a resurgence or a flare-up in your symptoms, thinking that things may never get better and I may always be this way. But in this video I want to discuss that there are seasons of healing and why it's important to keep in mind each and every season so that you aren't discouraged in your healing journey. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. Now before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide, four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with TCM, and the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my private practice and clinic right below this video. In one of our most ancient medical books, the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, there is a whole chapter on how each season has its own quality called the qi, right, winter qi, summer qi, etc. Now some people translate that as energy but I like to think of it as a quality because people in temperate climates know the feeling that winter gives you or that fall gives you or that spring or summer gives you, right? After a long winter, that first sunny day when the birds sing and the sun's shining, what do you want to do? That feeling is the qi of the season. But when it comes to healing, there are variations in your healing journey. If you're dealing with a chronic disease, you'll be high in the mountaintop seeing the future and seeing your life as normal and you'll be back down in hell thinking that this is maybe the way it's always going to be. But I think looking at them as seasons, your life cycle and your healing cycle can be very very helpful in the healing journey. So let's start here with the winter season. Now the winter's qi is about death and hibernation, right? At least not in Los Angeles but if you're in a temperate climate, the winter is the season of hibernation, of going inward, of storage and decreasing energy output and calm and reading a book by the fire and not working so hard and sleeping long, restoring your resources, right? Within the winter phase, maybe it is the phase where you're kind of discouraged. This is the phase where you're doctor shopping, you're researching diagnoses, you're wondering if you're ever going to get better, you're feeling inward and introspective and you're feeling, you're looking, right? You're feeling like you are in a death phase of life where you are looking for solution and you are looking for hope and a lot of the energy in your healing process is inward and you're protecting it. But as we go into spring, you know the spring qi is like the story I've shared here before when I was in a coffee shop one day about 12 years ago and I was talking to the barista and the barista said to me you know you were talking about health issues and I said I haven't seen you in a while and he said I've been so ill I can't even work and he said you know this person didn't fix my problem but he helped me gain more progress in my health than any MD I'd seen and he's an acupuncturist and he's actually right around the corner so you should see him. And in my own journey with my gut problems, I felt excitement, possibilities, I might get better, this might help me. That's the springtime qi. Spring is the realm of possibilities, of new beginnings, a new practitioner you're seeing, a new method or something you're going to try that might help you hope, right? There's a quote in our medical classics that talks about in the springtime the quality is you want to let your hair down and go for a stroll in the courtyard, right? It's the sun shining and the birds are singing and you want to just get out of the house clean and go for a nice walk with the dog, that excited inspired feeling. Now when we come to the summer season, right? Whereas winter is about death, hibernation, introspection, what's my plan? And spring is about hope. Summer is about the treatment arc and summer I can think back in my own journey was like the first summer where I met my first mentor who had treated me for several months and I began to see that there was something working, right? He gave me a simple herbal formula from TCM about 600 years old and that first formula was more effective for my GI symptoms than anything a nutritionist, dietitian, specialist, PCP, any medical provider had ever given me. It didn't cure me, didn't fix me, but it showed me that there was something that could possibly work and that is all I needed to know that there was another option that was clinically effective. Now that formula began my treatment arc and I like to think of summer as the long-haul treatment arc where you're seeing a practitioner, you're seeing some results, you're seeing improvements, there's possibilities, right? Month in month my gut was getting better, less and less was I reacting to food, more and more I was having more energy and just not feeling wiped out. The summer solstice is where the sun is out the longest and the summer solstice is that summer month feeling where kids are jumping off rocks and going jumping into the lake, right? Everyone's running around late at night out in the summer sun and people are going to the beach and it's out in the sun, it's restored, revitalized, it's used that energy now. Now when we talk about fall, the fall season is in some ways about returning inward again. Sometimes the fall is as simple as you lose faith, right? Maybe you were seeing a health care practitioner and you're realizing well maybe I got better for a bit but now I'm not or I've plateaued or maybe you saw a provider conventional or alternative and it just didn't really help and now you know you're just not sure what to do next. As you go into the winter phase where you're discouraged and you're in a death phase and you're refocusing, gathering your reserves again to figure out what is the next plan going forward. The fall qi quality is about leaves falling down and you're sipping a chai tea, looking out the window, thinking about what is the next thing I'm going to do, thinking about those bigger existential questions about your life and your healing journey and where do I have to go next as we go into the winter phase. So sometimes thinking about your healing journey as these phases being a natural thing, autoimmune disease getting better and then flaring, getting better and then flaring goes through these cycles, right? Sometimes cancer treatment is like this, you're getting better and then maybe some side effects from treatment, you're getting better and maybe the prognosis is changing, you're getting better, maybe the cancer has recurred after five or ten years. But understanding these seasons of healing as a healing journey and maybe not necessarily something that's unnatural or maybe not always something that's meaning the direction is going in the wrong way, wrong direction, sometimes it's very healing for the psyche and will keep you on track. So that is my two cents on the seasons of your healing journey, something to keep in mind as you're going about this process.