Modern Medicine Is Lost In Translation

Dr. Mel Hopper Koppelman traces the popular Western version of Chinese medicine to the 1960s and 70s, when Chairman Mao's government created a simplified synthesis meant to appeal to Western doctors and scientists. The actual source text, the 2,200-year-old Neijing, is written in classical Chinese that even most modern Chinese speakers cannot read. Her mentor, Dr. Ed Neal, an emergency room physician, secretly translated it himself over several years. Applying its original principles instead of the modern synthesis moved his clinical results, in Mel's words, from "40% medicine" to "80% medicine." We traced a similar rediscovery in Elite Performance Labs Reverse-Engineered an Ancient Secret.

Mel calls elite athletes and chronically ill people "two different species," because their metabolisms run in opposite directions. She has watched recovery tools built for athletes, red light therapy, molecular hydrogen, extreme protocols, filter down onto podcasts aimed at people managing chronic illness, with no adjustment for the fact that the same input produces a completely different result in a depleted body versus a peak-performing one. Before adopting any protocol, she argues, the real question is not which tool to use but whether you are the right person for that specific tool at all. We unpacked this same one-size-fits-all failure in Your Body Is Not a Machine.

Across biohacking, clean eating, and spirituality, Mel sees the same failure pattern: people over-focus on one bucket and call it the whole solution. Some fixate on nutrition and keep eliminating foods for diminishing returns. Others go so deep into trauma work, psychedelics, and spiritual practice that they become dissociated, what she calls forgetting that "earth needs us here." Her metaphor is a tree: you cannot survive on trauma work and ritual alone any more than a tree survives on sunlight without water, nutrients, or fresh air. We explored the same physical-versus-energetic blind spot in The Energetic Prison: Why Your Biggest Growth Blocks Aren't (Only) in Your Mind.

Mel points to a real cultural shift: awareness of trauma, both "little t" and "big T," has grown enormously in the last decade. But she argues that naming trauma is not the same as healing it, and that collective awareness has outpaced the actual embodied work required to metabolize it. Part of the fix, she says, is surrounding yourself with a community that holds the level of consciousness you are trying to reach, since healing rarely happens by willpower alone against an unsupportive environment. We go deeper into that root-cause work in What Trauma Really Is, And the Deeper Meaning of Healing, or you can start directly with a Quantum Diagnostic Session or a full cohort of The Science of Healing & Enlightenment.

Below is the complete transcript of "Modern Medicine Is Lost In Translation," the main conversation with Dr. Mel Hopper Koppelman. Read it if you prefer text, or want to search a specific point we covered.

Sure. So for but when it comes to Chinese medicine, I came to Chinese medicine because I had a health issue. I originally thought I was going to go premed and go into medicine like my mom. My mom is a retired u endocrinologist, hormone doctor. And she was also a national institutes of health researcher. So I always really loved science and love medicine. And then I had a a health issue. I was traveling in India and got really sick with this parasitic infection and it was mistreated. So I was really sick for two years. Industrial medicine was not able to help me and so I went into Chinese medicine.

And so, Chinese medicine education varies, from school to school, but there's a kind of a standardized sort of, version that's taught, and what a lot of people don't realize that this is actually fairly modern from like the 1960s and 70s that in China there was something called the cultural revolution. And so, Chairman Mao kind of created this sort of like invented this kind of like sanitized synthesis of Chinese medicineish that he actually thought would be appealing to Western medical doctors and scientists, but it's tricky. There's like a lot of promise there. And I think, you know, people who study Chinese medicine, people who go for acupuncture and Chinese medicine, which is millions and millions of people all over the world outside of China, you know, it's very popular.

It's like there's so much promise and then there's a little bit like I don't know what's going on you know and if you ask a group of acupuncturists a question you get like a whole totally like anything goes variety of answers and when I was studying I would ask a lot of questions and a lot of them were you know scientific questions and the type of types of answers I would get were something along the lines of like well you're asking that because you're coming from your modern perspective but like if you just meditate long enough and you become old and wise then you won't even have that question anymore which is not a great type of answer right and so you know a lot of things a lot of other things happened but I found myself in 2020 so I I trained in 2000 2008 is when I started my training and so I found myself in 2020 really disillusioned with like a lot of things that I had learned I'd also learned functional medicine and that also had a lot of promise but didn't make didn't people couldn't answer my questions and so I declared intellectual bankruptcy and was like I need to just start over.

And I was fortunate enough at that time to connect with a number of really amazing teachers. And one of those teachers who taught me about what we're talking about this kind of modern ancient understanding of of Chinese medicine is a really brilliant man named Dr. Ed Neal. And he's a medical doctor. He was an emergency room physician who studied Chinese medicine. And he studied the kind of western version that we all learn. And when he was in China, whenever he'd ask one of his teachers a question, they'd kind of give the standard answer and then they'd say, "But if you really want to know, you need to look in the Neijing." And the Neijing is this 2200y old text on which all of Chinese and East Asian medicine is based.

So Japanese medicine, Korean medicine, it's all traces its roots back to this text. And so after getting that answer enough times, he was like, "Well, I I need to I need to read this book, you know." but it's written in classical Chinese so even modern Chinese people can't most of them cannot read it just like you know you can't necessarily read and understand Latin you know even though you're from Italy right so so he taught himself classical Chinese and he spent years on his own translating it and after about four years he was like I don't think this says what they taught us it says and he was starting to pull out these themes from it and he's like but I'm like a white dude in living in Portland Oregon how is it that I'm under like I'm kind of figuring this out.

But it turns out he's not the only one to make these connections. But what happens when you go back and study the original text is that this extremely rich cosmology emerges, this explanation of how the universe works and then a small subsection of it is how health and disease works. And it's written in such a sophisticated level of detail that you like have to wonder what they were smoking.

You know that there's like these this these myths that get repeated like oh well the people who wrote this book you know dissections were against their religions they never saw the inside of the body like oh did they see inside of a body I mean they are detailing these pathways in many ways this book is more sophisticated than what modern understanding modern medicine understands in terms of the three-dimensional architecture of the body and so you know a bunch of really important and valuable themes emerge but the most important thing that my teacher found was that when he applied the principles that he thought he was discovering, his results got much better, right?

And so we could move from, you know, what he calls like 40% medicine to like 80% medicine where when you apply it with this interpretation, people get better quicker predictably. And so this is this is sort of the the kind of re the modern rem mix of the the classical Chinese text. Amazing. I was reading in a energy and frequency medicine book recently that ancient medicine like Chinese medicine in the US or in in western society in general is really really new like he came around the 70s or something like that because a president flew to China and he was sick and nobody could heal him and then at some point he he kind of got to to a Chinese medicine doctor and he was able to to cure him and he was like oh wait a sec what is this is about western medicine, how does it possibly work?

And then from there it completely like widespread like a I don't know if if virus is is a good metaphor in this case but definitely it definitely it definitely grew. I I was you catch me very hard where when you were talking about that he understood something about how the universe works. Is this something we can kind of get a little bit into? Because sure, one of the one of the questions that I that I have is I I mean the the the reason why I started all of this work, it was really going deep into the history. And so as exactly the same work that your that your teacher did like really going into even questioning some of the kind of assumptions that we give for granted because somebody else taught us and we take for granted that that isn't how it works.

But in reality you figure out okay there has been a loss in translation some in many cases benevolent unfortunately under many cases not really benevolent but let's say we we lost a lot of information it's been kind of like cut and for simplicity eventually it's been it arrived to us in a in a very simplistic way so we kind of lost the meaning afterward. So what is the map of how it works if you can explain it from the the the traditional books that you that you studied or even just your understanding as with your 15 years of experience and why why do we like why is so important to connect it to ourselves? Yeah. No, these are really great questions and it's funny.

I think that the the more people are educated in higher education, the more confused they get because we kind of get into more abstractions. And especially when it comes to medicine, I noticed this quite a while ago that there's what I would call like a war on common sense where you're not allowed to just use like just look at someone in front of you and kind of get a sense of how someone's doing. Everything has to be, you know, a scan and a a long Greek word and and things like that. A lot of what ancients knew was really like it could some of some of it could fall into the category of common sense and things that you know people knew and people and people around the world still know you know if they're not talked out of it.

So what my teacher discovered in his very careful reading of this and it's very he's very open to debate and that sort of thing but he references what his perspective very nicely which I appreciate is that when you look at the Neijing, this text it's very long it's two books of 81 chapters so it's like 162 chapters and basically it keeps referring to things on three levels and so it it refers to things on like the universal or cosmological level so this is how things work in the universe then on the terrestrial earthly level, this is where how things work here on Earth. And then inside the human body, this is how things work in people. And so Earth is in the universe, but it has special rules because we're on a Goldilocks planet that's orbiting the sun and you know, and it's on a bit of a tilt on an axis and it's going around.

And so that's like one broad theme of of the text is that they're they they're describing these these kind of sets of rules. And and so one of the big ones I've actually just started using AI to create an app that would let me analyze the Neijing because I was getting frustrated because it's such a long book. Like after I don't know six years of of studying with Ed, I've still not like read it from cover to cover because it's just so massive and I'm like what is in here? How long is it? Like I there aren't, you know, really good translations. And so why was I talking about that? Oh yeah, because I part part of it was that I asked it to show me in order the frequency of each character.

So I just wanted to like pull out themes that way. So the most commonly used character is chi, which is maybe not too big of a surprise. And so basically one of the things that it's saying, and I've heard some of your guests say the same thing, so that's also nice when that happens, you know. Is that basically the the universe started as a void and then there was an impulse to move. And basically that movement for whatever reason is an oscillating motion. And so that oscillation that oscillating motion we could describe as being like a breath, like an inhale and an exhale. So when people say you know everything's made of waves, that's another way of saying that that we have all these oscillations nested inside one big oscillation.

So the inhale of that breath which is where you're you're starting at a root and then you're expanding from that root is called yang. And when you have the reverting motion collapsing inwards becoming more dense going back to the root that is called yin. And I want to pause that, you know, you can go on the internet and you can find like a bajillion different definitions of yin and yang. And they'll say things like, you know, hot and cold or masculine and feminine. And these, well, and I'll say two things about that. One is that the Neijing contains big universal definitions and then smaller contextual definitions. So, the definition of yin and yang that I just gave is the universal definition of what it always means.

And then you can talk about specific examples of how that shows up in in little different contexts. But it also it's nice because it gives you a much firmer understanding that it it's a motion. It's not a thing, you know. And there's a lot that's gets baked into that. So for example, depending on how far you want to go with it, right? That when you have this expanding motion is actually when dimensions get created and and things get more complex. And then when you have this, you know, exhale and this reverting motion, things break down and and so on. So that's that's one of the big ideas from from this text and we can apply it in infinite ways.

But that's that's one of the big ideas. It's it's amazing that you mentioned this. I to be honest before meeting you, I had never heard anything about this book. But as I keep doing this deep research and you were talking about the app, I have a code co-work session which I think he analyzed at least 150 books or even more. And I'm trying to build a knowledge graph just to keep a visual understanding of what's happening. But at the end of the day, the the essence keeps going back to exactly what you mentioned. And it's it's crazy because all of this journey for me started when I I got married in Colombia in the middle of a jungle just me, my wife and a shaman.

And he was talking about all of these concepts of how the universe works. And he was talking in Spanish to us. And somehow I reconnected it back to exactly the same things that my Buddhist teacher in Italy speaking in English was translating from the Tibetan books. And I was like, wait a second, they're saying the same thing. And then the more that I go deeper and the more that every single other ancient book exactly describes the same thing. Now, how does it get into ourselves? Because I do I have my own definition.

I actually have a course that is called the science of healing and awakening and the very first two lectures are only about the how the energy of the universe works and how it does it get into biology but I'm I'm curious to know what's your understanding what's your definition what how do you bring it to people so that they really understand a we are not separate and b why making this common sense kind of correlation it is so effective for for healing and for just you know unleashing the best version of ourselves. I mean that's a nice question.

What I would say really is that I love having conversations like this, but often this is not the level at which most helpful for people to understand or to start like it, you know, when working with people, you need to communicate in their own metaphors, in their own language, tie it to what's important for them.

I really enjoy discussing how the universe works and how you know the but then how to shamans figured out the same things you know but when it when people are on their like journeys of healing and self-actualization you know often you know there's like maybe crisis going on or you know it could be different for different people but you know if it's whether it's bills to pay or health challenges or just feeling stuck you know this sort of conversation is one path But it's not it's but there's other paths that are often that we have to get started with first. How would you start then? Mhm. How would you start like for for like to bring it more into like the grounding level?

Where do we start from? Yeah. So, you know, there's this idea and I think it's actually fairly universal in the hero's journey is that, you know, I listen to what how the person perceives their problem and so they'll, you know, because I work with people who have chronic health challenges, not not all, you know, more and more I'm working with people who are healthy and want to stay healthy, like they'll see how their parents are aging and they don't want to do that, you know. So, I work with people like that, too. But a lot of the people I work with have really, really complex health challenges and they've had it for a long time. So, I'm listening to like how do they see their challenges?

It's usually about symptoms and and and those types of problems and then also what they're missing out on or the problems in their life that that's causing. And whether it's a health challenge or a different challenge, the punchline always tends to be that when you zoom out and can see it from a higher perspective, you realize that the way that they're you're looking at it is the problem. And then once you zoom out, then you can kind of navigate more clearly. So there's that kind of universality to it, but also it needs to be kind of that that sort of choose your own adventure thing that we have going on in our life like that we have to tie it to what what they need.

So you know some people might come in and they're fetishizing Chinese medicine and spirituality and I need to tie them back to their body and say look you know these are the these are the reps that we need to do. And for other people, maybe they overidentify with their body or they're just not, you know, maybe a lot of people have been told to expect quick fixes or biohacks or quick change and not understanding that they are a complex system and what that means and so the kind of rules that we need to understand to interface with that system intelligently.

Yeah, I I we were discussing before getting on on on the records that there is definitely no silver bullet and I think anybody that is really serious about doing the work understood this and I think another thing that I understood fairly recently is that keep listening to what is the standard in whatever person that is speaking is not necessarily the standard for you what what what could you say about this because you know I I can make a very simple example that I don't know if if it's relevant to the specific person listening or it's mostly like into the biohacking kind of war but I don't know like all of this talk about creatine for example like I even tried I I wanted to believe that you could get so much grams of fake stuff in your body and my body kept rejecting it and then at some point I really realized okay wait a second probably the standard number that they're giving is fake or it's fake for me.

So h how do you how do you go with these kind of conversations? Yeah. Well, I mean there's let me just clear my throat. Excuse me. Yeah. I mean there's two things baked into that. One and I really like that question you're asking. It's really about like who you know when when a claim is made, who are they talking about?

That like one of the biggest things I see over and over again and it really pains me is that because I kind of have my foot one foot in performance world and other foot in like you know helping people heal from illness and what I see a lot is that you'll see these innovations coming out of like athletics and how to you know get athletes to keep pushing boundaries and doing like more and more extreme things and so then they'll discover something like well whatever whatever it is it changes every few months right so I don't know molecular hydrogen or Hbot or, you know, red light therapy or whatever it is that's applied to athletes and then it'll somehow filter on to a podcast for people who are really ill and oh, this is really good for your mitochondria.

And as someone who was a pretty high level athlete for my age when I was younger and also was really sick for many years, I can tell you that high level athletes and sick people are two different species. Like their metabolisms work completely differently as two big groups. And so whenever I see something that's used to speed up recovery from from performance, I'm like you should be very cautious about taking this because your body is going to do something completely different with it than that, you know, that that athlete over there. So that's one idea. And then the other idea is really kind of a broader question about categorizing inputs, right?

So like creatine is an example of an input. There's there's loads of them. So any type of supplement is an input herbs and herbal formulas you know food or specific diet I suppose but even like grounding mats or again red light therapy or pulse electromagnetic field or you know psilocybin or meditation and breath work these are all inputs right and so I think what I want to help people realize that there's like this kind of one conversation which is like more and more people waking up to this idea that the the standard way of doing things is not working well. You know, it's not working well for individuals. It's not working well for the collective.

And there's a variety of reasons that the stories that keep that in place keep getting told, but it's like not for your benefit, you know? And so then they look over here and they're like, "Oh, there's all this stuff over here like the ancient wisdom and the biohacks, you know, and it's very exciting meditation. There's a lot of gold here. It needs to be organized, you know, so that people have a way of navigating." and I suppose that's maybe part of the benefit of my journey. I was reflecting that it's not too uncommon to hear about someone who maybe was a medical doctor and got sick and then found alternative medicine. But when I got sick again 10 years ago, I already had two master's degrees in health sciences and alternative medicine and what I was working what I was doing still wasn't working.

So, I had to kind of go even further and be like, right, how do we organize this? What are the actual first principles here? You know because the mitochondrial boost stuff is not like is not fixing the problem right or the meditation is not fixing the problem either so it's really understand the first principles of how people work so that you can you can ask answer the question like am I the right person for this input but also like where do I start and how do I understand these things in a way that would help me select it so if you think about any other complex project you you know you might think about running a business but like something a little less abstract of like building a house, you know?

There's tools, but like you wouldn't be like, "Hey, what hammer should I use?" You know, that's not the right question. Am I the right type? Am I building the right type of house or this hammer? You know, it's like that's that's not where we start. We like we we for renovating a house, we need to assess where the problems are. We need to go in a sensible order. So, like if the the windows are broken and the roof is leaking, then we're not going to start fixing the electrics, you know? And and yes, it's good to have good tools, but it's even more like more important to have good application and and be organized and go in order.

And so we're kind of, you know, no matter how much we try to fight it, we really are seduced by the new and shiny like that edge and that that silver bullet, you know, like who doesn't want the thing that's going to give them more energy and more focus and better memory like and better, you know, sex drive and all that. Like of course everyone wants it. But once you take enough laps in that and and sometimes you'll get you'll get benefits. What I see commonly, people might get an initial benefit and then it stops working, but they keep taking it almost like out of superstition. Or they don't know if it's helping or not. They don't notice any different, but they're still believing the story about this is good for my mitochondria, so I should take it, you know.

And so it's really once you can organize these things and do a clearer job of assessing how things how you're responding to things that you can then start navigating a way forward. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

I mean you you're kind of describing my own journey per se because of course I mean we I I guess because of the way that we are taught at school or society things I mean we all get there at some point and we get stuck there and it's all about okay finding the little things I I I still remember like kind of reading the book of the flow cycle and then understanding okay that's why I'm kind of collapsing every 3 months and then okay, if I take this and this and this then I'm going to prolong my flow and then after a while then I really realized okay wait a second this has nothing to do with myself and then I started I mean in this case I went even deeper into my own energy profile and how do I actually convert the energy from the universe and from life into the actual biological chemical reactions and then it's like oh okay now this actually is even more precise on on myself.

And for anyone anyone that is ever heard about astrology and human design and other tools, but you've never done it because you know it's too ho, try for free to just write a basic prompt on codes with your charts and you will figure out by yourself if it's really random and woo woo. But that that's really powerful. Anyhow, I'm curious now, let's get a little bit into kind of like the the situation, typical situation of the people that are within the community of Wholegrain Wisdom. So, we do a lot of work to connect the dots as as I mentioned, but especially these dots are serving the people that have done all of the work and still understood there's something more.

Especially when it comes to you know the the shifting between thinking that you are your body and you are your chemistry into okay there's something a little bit bigger here there is energy how does it how does the energy works etc etc so how would you kind of guide somebody because you said okay we need a map we need to bring like we need to give the basics first and then slowly build on top of it. How would you navigate somebody that is into that kind of transcendent point between the pure physical into something that he goes even beyond and he connects to your m the power of the mind and and all of that?

H you know I'm I'm now hearing another mentor of mine his voice in my head where you know almost excuse me you know almost like all advice is good sometimes you know like that I could say something that's true sometimes but not maybe not for you listening right so yeah I think it's you know again I don't know I think yeah I don't know how I would answer that in in the abstract I I think another thing that we learned from the Neijing about how people work is that we're like really well differentiated trees that walk and tell stories. You know so sometimes getting a little bit simpler. I mean again a lot of the people that I see are quite like you described that they've done a ton of work you know not everyone but like a lot of them they've they've done all of the things and they're you know still have a problem.

And they're trying to figure it out and and usually it's usually, you know, about having a blind spot somewhere. And I know that's a little bit vague, but like if you go back to first principles of like, you know, different buckets that we want to look at, usually people have just put their too much focus in one bucket. I mean, an example of this with health, especially in countries like the United States, and and certainly some others is, if over overfocusing on nutrition. So, there's like a like a cultural underfocus on nutrition, like I don't know why I feel like garbage. I just have like high fructose corn syrup and like ultrarocessed food, but like I'm healthy or whatever, lowcal, whatever that is.

And then the pendulum swings to like, oh my gosh, that's like crazy, you know? And then it needs to be whatever it needs to be organic and local and gluten-free and and all of these things. But many people will maybe shift their diet and have like initial benefits and wins, but then they keep going down that path and going, "Well, what if I cut out lectins?" You know, "What if I cut out casein? What if I cut out legumes?" and they're basically having diminishing returns for that focus because they're missing out on other things. And I would say the same thing when you talk about the spiritual trans transition. Sometimes it's that is not embodied enough.

You know I what I see in this I suppose you know kind of the the social media version of of the spiritual communities that we see online a lot of them you know are very you know spiritual bypassy you know like that they they don't they only like the good emotions they don't like the bad emotions that sort of thing but also that if we overfocus on a spiritual path we can become quite dissociated and so that's like one potential pitfall and so if someone's been doing a lot of focus on trauma work and this and that and the other or or you know again another pendulum swing I see is like we have we our culture is very trauma uninformed and very traumatizing which is not good and then we have this you know increased collective awareness that you know of what trauma is and that it could be little T and it could be big T and it can live in our nervous system but then everything becomes trauma and so actually that's one of the big things that you know people coming in that I see they've they're doing a lot of trauma work but they don't have the basics met for like you know the tree that I'm talking about like you sunlight and water and nutrients and fresh air and you can't survive on tra and trauma work alone and on you know psychedelic journeys and rituals alone you know you still have a a human body and so and and really I would say it's like the the the world the earth the planet needs us here you know that maybe people get interested in spirituality and now they're like only astral projecting and they're only in the stars and they're like, you know, you know, using astrology but not as like a way to guide their life, but they're kind of stuck in the stars and it's like earth needs us here.

We like really needed here. So maybe for a certain percentage of the people who are listening to this, maybe that invitation is like, you know, you're working so much in your past and your psyche and you're trying to come all this down, but really coming back into your body and realizing that that's part of the spiritual realm, too. It all is. It all is. Yeah. I really love this this framing. And I I don't know. I maybe the immediate question that I that comes out from here is that how how can people do this by themselves? I mean of course one way is is to work with you is to work with other communities, work with Wholegrain Wisdom. I mean this is all the bits and pieces that we are all doing to support the the broader community.

But at the same time it feels like I I mean I one thing that I don't want necessarily to to to let the people listening to us think is that you need to spend your life studying to become like the master of everything in order to live it. I mean I have my own experience and I I'm a geek when it comes to these topics because that's my life passion. But I do completely understand that others people life passion is is different. So why would I have to go so deep into all of these topics? I mean if there's probably something that ancient wisdom can teach us is the the general levels but then the general is too general like I mean how where do you start then?

M well so that what what that question brings up for me is this that you know a lot of what we're talking about in terms of doing inner work and trauma work and raising our awareness is that us we humans live in our stories and we live in collective stories and we live in individual stories and the collective stories the mainstream stories and this is really in many ways very shared across industrialized countries are are are not good stories. They are they they are stories that create illness. They are stories that keep people trapped that keep people from learning the things that you're that you're talking about and they keep people from understanding things that are true.

Even this idea which I like where talking about spirituality might be unacceptable to certain people that they can absorb it when it's put in scientific language. That's a result of the mainstream stories that are told about spirituality and about science and that they are a product of. And so that's why we need to deliver we need to kind of wrap that pill in that meat is because they're in, you know, they're in inside of it. And so people, you know, listen, people are different and they, you know, this is a global platform. So people are in different cultures and they're all over the world.

But if you are in an ultimately an unhealthy culture and that can be physical health, that can be mental health, that could be the stories that are impoverishing stories about how much do you need to work, what do you need to look like, you know, where what is your value tied to, do you need to do everything yourself? All sorts of stories. Then overcoming that, if that's the water you're swimming in, then I'm sorry to say it usually takes a bit of work to undo that because you're swimming against the current. And those water the stories are pervasive. You know, we're talking about waves again. You are swimming in those waves and it really is not easy to stay sane and clear and attached to reality when all the waters around you are trying to get you to do otherwise.

So, you know, it it would be nice if it was really simple and you're like and someone's like, you know, I don't want to like spend all my time learning about spirituality. Like, I'm just like an artist or I'm when I say just, I mean, that's amazing if you're an artist, but I'm an artist or I like I have other interests. I don't want to do this. Well, that that's fine. But what I would say is that really a big key is finding a community of shared values. And that might not be the one that you you defaulted into. It probably isn't. And if it is, then you're very lucky. That's wonderful. So I guess there's like two threads there. One is surround yourself with people who are holding the level of consciousness that you want to hold and share.

Which may take some work depending on your starting point. But if you are not swimming in that water yet and you're surrounded by people who think that eating poison is normal and you know passively going to the doctor and just taking whatever pill they've been told to prescribe is healthcare and the education and all that stuff. If that's the water you're swimming in, you want something else and it's going to take a bit of a bit of work probably. Wonderful. Love I I loved. Thanks so much for sharing this perspective. It really also touched me deeply. Let me let me wrap it up. Let me ask you one last question before we go. How do you see the future then?

Yeah, it's funny. I've so this is just something like my personal experience what I'm experiencing now is that I have started to be able to see different futures and then I I guess I understand them probabilistically and maybe you call them timelines. So, I see I see these timelines and I see that right now they're all possible and some of them are really dystopian and they're they're not they're not super unlikely. And then I also see other ones that are really positive because we are using such a small amount of our potential as individual and collective humans that we wouldn't have to do much to massively improve it. And I see that possibility too.

And so I see my work and the work of others who choose to do this work is just trying to shift the timeline in a more positive direction to increase the probability of the the beautiful one emerging and decrease the possibility of the dystopian one emerging. So that which is to say that how I see the future is both really you know grim but also possibly you know and possibly really amazing. Amazing. Wonderful. Where where can people find you? How do you work with people? Let let give give us kind of like a little bit of a of the contact details for for you so that the people that have have been inspired by this conversation can can contact. Well, I don't know if it's inspiring, but I think what people can count on me for is like loving honesty that's hopefully useful and pragmatic.

You know, then it's it's no good to say like just just breathe and find your inner light and everything will be great. Maybe it will, you know, maybe it won't. But let's if it if it's not, then you need some other things to do, right? I feel like that's more more loving in some ways. So if you if after listening to all this you would like to work with me, I can be found at synthesishealth.co. And you can find out about the group that I run, which is called Synthesis Health Lab. And it's an amazing group. The people in it that you I've been running this for a number of years now. And it's it's a phen it's a phenomenal group. It's people who are really respectful.

They're really positive. They hold space. And as I say, most of the people in there have chronic illnesses that are getting better. Some people come in because they want to be proactive. And I'm really teaching health creation as a lifelong skill. It you don't have to be sick to benefit from this information. It's kind of information that everyone really really needs. And so I allow people to apply and be a free guest in that group. You're in the group with real members and you see how I answer questions. You can ask me any questions that you might have. You get access to a load of material to learn more new ways of thinking and and a lot of people get benefit just from that.

And then if you decide that you see a future there for yourself and you want to undergo more of a long-term transformation, then you can apply to be an annual member and do the synthesis health program there.