Any page I turned to offered me a gem of insight and instruction. I’ll turn to it again and again. — Anne Lamott, activist and NYT bestselling author of Bird by Bird Optimize your body’s innate healing abilities...in a seemingly effortless way. Are you one of the millions who suffer from chronic illness? Have you tried everything—conventional or alternative—only to find that you still aren’t healing? Do you struggle daily with anxiety, stress, or overwhelm? Most of us have be

Li's writing is so intimate -- and so exacting -- that it cuts like a knife. She raises fundamental questions about the future of medicine, her own future, and about being a doctor and a patient at the same time. The result is a beautiful book that will be read and remembered for years to come. —Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies In this intimate memoir, Doctor Cynthia Li shares the truth about her disabling autoimmun

Most of us have been taught that better health requires more effort -- discipline, optimization, and willpower. In this experiential workshop, hosted by The New School at Commonweal, a nonprofit long dedicated to health and the environment, Dr. Li guides you through a different way of healing: opening yourself to greater flow in the mind, heart, and body, and also observing patterns that may be keeping you stuck. After Dr. Li experienced a radical healing firsthand, she began

3.4M+ views, and still creating ripples... What do you do when you have a debilitating chronic illness and the medical system you've dedicated your life to has no answers? For many, this leads to a feeling of learned helplessness, being punted from one doctor to the next only to be told your tests are "normal." In this powerful and personal conversation, Dr. Mark Hyman talks with Dr. Cynthia Li, a conventionally trained internist who found herself on the other side of the ste

Awakin Calls is an initiative of ServiceSpace, a global, all volunteer-run community dedicated to inner change and outer service. In Awakin Calls, we engage in deep conversations with individuals gently shaking the world, and inspiring us to transformative action. What If the Heart Knows Before the Mind? A Deep Dive Into Heart Coherence The heart is by far the master rhythm maker in the body. Think of the heart as the conductor, and the body is the music it's playing. If the

I used to be a total skeptic when it came to intuition. Having grown up in Texas in an evangelical community, then going through western medicine training, I would say that my “gut feeling,” if I had one, was to steer clear of any such practices. The Other Kind of Knowing The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung defined intuition as a method of perception drawn from inner or imaginative experiences; this was in contrast with sensing, where information was drawn from the external wor

Awakin Calls is an initiative of ServiceSpace, a global, all volunteer-run community dedicated to inner change and outer service. In Awakin Calls, we engage in deep conversations with individuals gently shaking the world, and inspiring us to transformative action. Reimagining Our Biology, Health, and the Process of Aging A physician, author, and public figure, Dr. Mark Hyman has been transforming Western medicine for 30 years. As a young man, he taught yoga and wandered Ti

Awakin Calls is an initiative of ServiceSpace, a global, all volunteer-run community dedicated to inner change and outer service. In Awakin Calls, we engage in deep conversations with individuals gently shaking the world, and inspiring us to transformative action. The Seeker Who Called Off the Search and Dares You to Do the Same This is an invitation to shift your allegiance from the activities of your mind to the eternal presence of your being. Born Merle Antoinette Robers

When we think of infections or toxins or pollutants, we typically think of protecting ourselves. A rigid shield to protect us from the outside. While there's nothing wrong with this, a response of hypervigilance and alert can trigger the "fight or flight" stress mode which, if chronic, can suppress the immune system. Perhaps you get sick more often. Or your joints and muscles ache. Or your seasonal allergies are worse. Or you tire more quickly. These may be signs that the imm

Most of us try to avoid anything that triggers us at all costs. Especially if we have sensitive nervous systems. But what if triggers, approached consciously and incrementally, can be a source of deep healing? Cynthia Li, MD, gave this presentation for the World Consciousness Community (a global qigong community) to illuminate how, through embodied consciousness practices, triggering events can potentially contribute to deeper healing, rather than just keeping us in a trauma

Cynthia Li, MD, offers these playful "Pure Consciousness in Daily Life" workshops for the World Consciousness Community (a global qigong community) as a way to integrate qigong theories and methods to transform your health, relationships, and day-to-day life. Although this workshop was given to support of students enrolled in ongoing courses, it can also support students new to coherence and qigong practices. ✨ In this talk, you'll learn about: • the common pitfalls of dee

Awakin Calls is an initiative of ServiceSpace, a global, all volunteer-run community dedicated to inner change and outer service. In Awakin Calls, we engage in deep conversations with individuals gently shaking the world, and inspiring us to transformative action. Healing What Remains A young man arrives in the Big City with two hundred dollars in his pocket, no English at all, and memories of horror so fresh that he sometimes confuses past and present. When Deo first told

If you’re reading this post, you likely feel sick, but your labs are normal. Or maybe this has happened to your partner or another family member. I had the experience myself, for years after the birth of my first child. I couldn’t sleep or think straight. I felt awful. All my energy went towards keeping a precarious inner stability. And yet, my screening tests were normal. As a doctor, I'd concluded that I didn’t have a disease, that I must be fine, and if I wasn't, it was al

Our modern lifestyle is disrupting a deeply ingrained, primordial, and universal code to being healthy. This is how Dr. Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego and a researcher on circadian rhythms, begins his book, The Circadian Code. His statement is backed up by a compelling body of research. In 2012, Dr. Panda’s team divided genetically identical mice into two groups, one with unlimited access to a high fat-diet, and another with access to the

New beginnings often prompt people to make a list of resolutions, myself included. When I quickly searched the Internet last week for the Top 10 resolutions, a survey of 2,000 people popped up with the top 3 being healthier eating (71%), exercising more (65%), and losing weight (54%). Simultaneously, a list compiled by Time magazine popped up, “Top 10 Commonly Broken New Year’s Resolutions.” At the top of that list were: losing weight, getting fit, and eating healthier, amo

In the spring of 2013, during my decade+ journey with chronic fatigue and vertigo, I stumbled across the work of Francis Weller , a grief therapist and self-described “soul activist," who facilitated daylong grief workshops. Though wrestling in the muddy realm of the soul with strangers was hardly how I wanted to spend one of my weekends, I imagined there were invisible, inaccessible stresses I had to contend with. Stresses that made me unpleasantly reactive instead of thou

Are you one of the estimated 10-20% of American adults who suffers from poor sleep? I've been one of those. Likely from a combination of poor sleep habits and night-call during medical training, hormone imbalances, and life stresses. Consistent sleep isn't only necessary for energy and mental focus, but deep sleep (stages 3 & 4) is necessary for tissue repair and regeneration, as well as proper growth and development. Restful sleep is enhanced by nighttime rituals, often refe

In the medicine of flow, there is a continual interplay between your inner state and external activities in your daily life. Similar to patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time, this interplay is a continual practice to do two things at once: awaken to and deepen your awareness of a oneness state, while simultaneously engaging in life. It could be washing the dishes, going to a doctor's appointment, taking medications and supplements, or taking a walk. This o

BERKELEY, Calif. — Kamran Abri makes “tent calls” here in Berkeley, where the homeless live in doorways, on streets, under bushes, in parks, and in ramshackle villages under freeway offramps. An energetic young medical student with dark, penetrating eyes, Mr. Abri and a small team visited one such village at dusk last week. There were 20 or so tents sheltering 50 people, with cooking stoves, backpacks, plastic folding chairs and butane canisters strewn about. “If someone come

The science of epigenetics reveals the super power of your mind: your thoughts can change your genes. Epi (above) + genetics (genes) is the study of gene expression, or the changes in how our DNA folds, thereby turning particular genes on or off. While genetic mutations are rare occurrences that happen largely out of our control, our genes turn on and off on a daily basis -- depending on what we eat, drink, breathe, feel, and think. So we have much more of a say over our