The 4 Pillars of Holistic Health with Dr. Robert Ciprian

Come back to the doctor body mind soul podcast. My name is Dr. Jude. And this is a podcast which explores how we can integrate modern medicine and alternative therapies to help you get the holistic health care that you deserve. I will be speaking to healers and seekers, researchers and authors who will share their experiences and the evidence to help guide us all to Holistic Health. Let's do this. Dr. Robert Ciprian. I'm so excited to be welcoming you on to the podcast. Just to introduce you to everyone who's listening. Dr. Robert is the author of heal profoundly, a graffiti thugs transformation to holistic doctor an autobiography that tells the story of his spiritual journey from being a gang member to have a 20 plus year successful career in medicine. Now, up until his early 20s, Dr. Robert suffered from poor health, allergies, asthma, bronchitis, digestive problems, and there were times he spent weeks in bed because of illness. And due to his poor health and destructive behavior, Dr. Robert seemed destined to achieve little in life until he decided to seek more out of it. He joined medical school to learn better ways to treat his medical problems and has been studying various healing energetic and spiritual modalities for over 25 years. I mean, what a story, Robert. I mean, as I just mentioned before, we've been on air and I know the trials and tribulations, of going through the rigor of of medical school, that's no mean feat. And you, like me, have gained an understanding about how the medical establishment views the body and views, health. And I'm super keen, first of all, to explore your personal journey, but then also to explore how you have learned to understand how the body works, perhaps beyond the model through which you were taught at medical school. So let's start by just first of all, saying hello, welcome.

Hi, there, thank you so much for having me from the work

that you do is that you really have gone in to define what holistic health means. Can you I mean, like Holistic Health for me, I mean, it really stems from this from the word whole, you know, holistic health. And I love the way that you've broken this word down into some pillars. So can you sort of break down and explain to us, what do you feel makes up the components of Holistic Health?

Yeah, so I definitely have through my experience of centers, you know, just a handful of categories of what really makes up our well being and something I want to say too, about this whole aspect of holistic. Being holistic means looking at everything available to some, somebody looking at everything that's in their world in their universe that has an effect on them. So you got to be aware of everything, I kind of broke it down into four different aspects. Number one, there's the physical aspect of your well being set your joints and your muscles and also how they operate, how you know, while you walk, how long how well, you could sit down and get up from a chair, how well you could run how your flexibility like what's the health of the joints, like the muscles, the tendons, the ligaments, the cartilage. So your whole physical aspect is one big part of health. And I've kind of I've made this into a pyramid. So we're looking at the four bases of the pyramid right now. So the the physical aspect of the body is one. Next is the bio chemical and to really simplify a bio chemical, it's the chemical processes in your body. And they can be off balance by really simplifying it to different things. Either you have too little of something which is a deficiency, like you're deficient in a vitamin or mineral or even maybe dehydration, or there's something your body needs where it can't function properly. Or there's too much of something in toxicity where there's too much of something built up or it's actually blocking again processes in the body that can't work right and these processes might have to do if your blood or lymphatics or neurotransmitters or hormones or all the biochemical kind of functions that happen in the body. So biochemicals the second side of the bases pyramid. The third side is the mental and emotional aspect of health and well being. If we have too much past emotional stress, I mean all the way from just like you know, things are rough in relationship at work all the way Maybe PTSD where someone's been at war or something like that, that is going to be a big issue on just while being in function in life, just having these kinds of memories that keep replaying and changing the way you feel. Now also, that's kind of emotional aspect. Well, it can be mental and emotional. So emotional, Jeff, these feelings that keep coming up mentals how's your mind operating for someone PTSD, they get a trigger and they freak out. They can't function. But other people might have other triggers, too, that caused them to do things, maybe even that see or acknowledge things or maybe just get into an anxiety attack depression. So the mental emotional aspect is very, very big. And not many people do really good work with this. I think some people are just scared to dig into someone's emotional aspect of health me, I love it. I love like, Alright, let's talk about your whole life. Let's talk about the worst times you've ever had, what's your biggest emotional problems? I love that piece. But the mental emotional, yeah, it's one of the sides that least actually worked with. And I think it's actually one of the most important. Now the four sides a little bit less tangible, even then the emotions and the mental. The force side is the energy and electromagnetics of the body, the energetics of the body. Now, this deals with a couple of different things. I mean, yeah, there's like, you know, right now I'm surrounded by my microphone and computer and all this other stuff and everything and you know, TV next to me and my cell phone. So these things impact us even you know, we have radiations from satellites, and you know, your power cords outside or under the ground and everything. These things have an impact on our well being and health. But also, there's another part to energetics. And that is like the energetics of your body, your acupuncture meridians, your chakras, which are kind of more bigger energy centers in your body, the aspects of your aura. And also kind of more what's outside your aura. We're literally in a multi dimensional soup. And many, many most of us don't understand what else is going on this energetic soup and all these different dimensions that's also affecting our well being. Being literally and lots of people with real chronic issues, I literally do things that you might consider exorcisms just removing darker parasitic energies from people that might be plugged in in different areas of their body. Where people can feel better almost immediately after getting that done. They feel a sense of relief, because someone has been sucking energy out of them for years and years and years. So we have these four sides of a pyramid of wellness, we have the structural, the biochemical, the mental, emotional, and the energetic. So those are the four bases of the pyramid.

Mm hmm.

Now, I'm very aware that you know, it's quite unusual to to hear medical doctors speak of something like the energetics of our bodies. And talking about bioenergetics and whatnot. It's so often it's so often described as woowoo, for lack of a better term. And yet there are other paradigms within and perspectives that consider the bioenergetics much more prominently. I've mentioned the Chinese system, because that just seems to be a system that really does focus more on the bioenergetics and bio elec, electricity or most biophysics, rather than solely the biochemical.

How do you do you draw on Chinese

traditional medicine in order to inform how you work with the energetic body.

One of the first things I do whether I'm working with someone the first time or each session, I work with them. I check the basic 12 acupuncture meridians to find out what the weakest one is, because that's usually the what's going on as the most problems in the body at that point. And it doesn't always line up with what their complaint is or what's going on. But I know this is the weakest point. And there's some complexities in that going through the five elements and different flows in the body and everything. But I know if we get that biggest one just boost it up. If I only do one thing that day is free that weakest meridian that an ingredients and energetic pathway to just free that energetic pathway to that energy flow. Again, I know no matter what, they will get better in some ways. And then you know, we also make sure all the other details that they're complaining about their complaints are fixed up too. But yeah, that to me is always one of the biggest things to look at.

And of course, but when you describe, freeing up, or allowing energy to flow again, the way I've sort of started to understand that, as you said, it's like there's, the meridians are sort of energetic pathways. I see them almost like electrical pathways, we know that, you know, we have electricity flowing through our body at all times, which instruct various biochemicals to be released. One of those chemicals being freezing, or one group of chemicals being sort of, for example, neurotransmitters, one, one sort of group of biochemicals that are impacted our hormones as an example. And we start to be able to understand

how these four pillars or basis as you are calling them actually interact. How would you describe the interaction of all of these pillars?

Alright, so let's go back to the acupuncture Meridian or energy pathway being blocked. That could happen just because there's deficiency in the energy that could happen, because there's some sort of stuff going on in the energetic realm of your well being for some reason, you know, you might need a joint freed up to actually get that energy flowing again. Now that would go and interact with the biomechanical side with the physical side, because jumping out of place can block the energy. Also, the different muscles in the body relate to the different acupuncture meridians, for example, the lung meridian, which is the first one that the energy comes into in the body is related to several different shoulder muscles, serratus anterior and a deltoids, and levator scapula, so there can be also muscle function that's deficient because of the acupuncture Meridian being blocked, or the acupuncture Meridian can be blocked, because there's injury in the muscle function or dysfunction in the muscle. So that's how it could work with the bio mechanical side. Now with the chemistry, let's say, Yeah, let's go back to the lung, let's say is the lung meridians just not doing that, well, maybe there's a vitamin C deficiency, because the lungs, they really need a lot of vitamin C sometimes need bio flavonoids. So maybe there's something going along with a deficiency that's causing that Meridian to be off, or maybe it's a toxicity, maybe you're breathing in something that was toxic to your lungs. And that's overloading them, they're trying to detox and again, it's slowing down that lung energy from moving in your body. Okay, so that's examples with the bio chemical relationship to what might be going on with a lung meridiem. Now mental emotional of lung, it's a big one, emotions related to lung or grief and sadness. And these are just you know, a lot of people can relate with these emotions. When you're being overwhelmed by some of these emotions. For some reason, it could also make that energy flow of the lung energy, the meridian stagnant because it's overwhelmed with these energies. One of the easiest things to do with that is to feel the emotion as much as you can and process it because people don't want to feel emotions. And to me, I tell people, the easiest thing you could do is just feel what's going on, even if you got to sit for a few minutes and let yourself be uncomfortable. And yeah, good. Let yourself be uncomfortable. Because in our mind society, it's like no, don't do that. Positive thoughts feel good, think good. No, if our body's processing something that does not feel good, we should sit there and honor it and see what that's about. And let that process instead of just shoving it in the back and ignoring it. It's like a smoke detector in your house is going off you want to ignore and go back to sleep or you want to see why is my smoke detector going off, I need to look at that. And then of course we have the spiritual. So aspects of that could also affect meridians. Maybe it's the energy center around the throat, which is the fifth chakra some people call it this relates to your thyroid, and also the lungs. And this is where you communicate. This is where your expression comes from. This is where you take creativity from your mind your brain out into the world. So if you're being stifled somehow you can't communicate or people aren't hearing you're properly or you're you're holding back something you want to say you're holding back your creativity that could shut down the fifth chakra, which is around the throat neck area and that could stifle the lung meridian. Now so you could have a energetic parasitic energy plugged into that fifth chakra too. that's causing you grief and sadness to feed off your energy you're just sucking energy from you in general. So there's kind of four aspects of how you would put together and I holistic fashion. If something was gone at the Lombardy I need to get it going again. I will do To all those aspects and you know, even more complexities and things like that, you know, when I sit down with someone, I kind of want to go through their life, I want to go through their health, I want to go through the relationships, I want to know what their parents for, like what life was like, as a child, I want to know what they're eating, I want to know if they're active, if they're exercising, I want to know if they're in a good relationship, I want to know if work is if they're happy with work, and if work is successful for them. So we got to look at all these things to really, like I have to deep dive into someone's life when they really come to me to have their life changed. I got a I got to get real personal with them. And I got to know about things they maybe don't even think about and probably do not think about themselves. Yeah, I'm seeing patterns. Seeing red flags. I'm asking other questions as things come up, see where that goes. And also, I'm an intuitive I've always been intuitive. So as they're talking to me about things like my papa my head, like, Oh, Mother anger liver, like, you're just like, grant me jot that down as you're talking. Like, so things will come to me as they're talking to me. Sometimes they will say things or the ICL facial expression. They might say, as I'm shaking my head, no, for people who can't see, they might go, oh, yeah, everything's great right now. And I'm like, why would they shake their head? No, as they say, Everything's great right now, right? There's a conflict there emotionally, you know. So there's all sorts of things to look at, to me, every aspect of a person's telling you something. And they're all valuable. And even, you know, of course, even bloodwork and imaging, and all these other diagnostic tests we got to do, that's all super important too. But you got to, like we talked about in beginning, whole, the holistic looking at the whole world of a person, you know, to figure out why are they having a problem and can't fix it, maybe they've been to five, six other practitioners, doctors are still having struggles. Yeah, gotta sit down and spend some time with them first, before even do work.

I love this. I love this, because it's funny, I was at a party on Saturday night, and I was. And as you might imagine, there were a few doctors at the party, because it was a 40th birthday party, many of us had been to university together, and have now been practicing for, you know, 1015, nearly coming up to 20 years at this point. Which is terrifying to think of actually. And, and it was really interesting one of one of the one of the doctors there, how it has a major is actually suffering with with with a terminal cancer diagnosis. And he was seeing how difficult it was to actually speak to doctors about about his journey and about his diagnosis and about what that means for him and how he's coping. Because doctors are so used to keeping an emotional distance from their patients. And I found this, I found this slightly jarring when I heard it because of course, it's true in some ways, doctors do have to by necessity, I suppose, like have some sort of distance from their patients, considering the number of patients that they are dealing with on a daily basis. I mean, I work in the ER, I see 1015 patients a day at least. And so if I was going to get emotionally involved with all my patients, I can see how draining that would be on my own well being. However, what really struck me at that point is there must be something lost in the emotional distance that a doctor between the doctor and the patient because there's a lot going on in that relationship that we need to be at least aware of when entering into a consultation. And I'm really hearing from the way that you work with your patients that actually you are really in that soup with with with the patient, you're really in tune with their emotional presentation and really reading a lot into it. And in doing so, gathering a lot of really important information. Yeah, I have

very empathic, very intuitive I had to learn how to To separate keep separate my energy from the person that I'm interacting with. And not only with work but socially to, when I first started working on people when I was in the clinic in school, and I was in downtown Los Angeles, it was a busy clinic, I'd work on two people, my clothes and be soaked through it sweat, a big, exhausted frazzled, I couldn't function, I couldn't work with a lot of people, because I would get so into their energy I'd, I'd be done. But one of my teachers later on, she taught me that what you have to do is keep your own energy kind of flowing in your own light encapsulation and observe theirs. But don't get entangled. I've observed theirs, and don't give them your energy to heal. observe their energy healing them, because if you walk away and pull your energy back, well, then they're not healed anymore. So it was it's a whole nother training is training in the energetics of who you are as a person, if you want to really dig deeper into things like this with people. And for me, yeah, because I'm also you know, I'm like a, it's a word that's thrown around so much nowadays, because I just much more than that, but it's like, I'm a coach with people, I really got to get into their lives and get intimate with them in ways to have them open up to me and people do open up to me, you know, I mean, people come back to me from business, ask them, have you been and they'll just start crying before they give and talk? I'll go good, feel it, feel it, feel it, keep going, keep going get this out, we're already starting. We didn't have to tell me what's going on, you're doing. So yeah, but I had to learn to keep those energetic boundaries and differences between me and the person work with Matt just really learns how to you have to learn how to ground your own energy. And not try to give people your energy or take on their so that's, that's just the basics of it. But you really have to learn how to do that and energetic way.

And I think that that's really lacking in the current medical training. I mean, like, you know, of course, there's an awareness around bedside manner and how and the importance of how to communicate with a person. And we were taught, you know, how to break that news in an empathic way. But I think what really strikes me is that it's quite a surface level training. And that is felt not only by the PERT the, the patient that you're communicating with, but also from ourselves. And I guess the way that we are currently trained is just how to communicate in an empathic way, rather than really be empathic ourselves while maintaining our own energetic strength and position and role within the the doctor patient dynamic. And what I would love to see more of is doctors really being able to embody their role as a doctor more fully understanding the energetic the dynamics of the interaction between doctor and patient and how important our energy is in and how it impacts the other way beyond, you know, just the words that we speak and how we speak them. Because there's no doubt it, at least in my mind, that that is going to be felt by our patients. And it's been my experience that patients feel that and feel so often emotionally distant from their doctors, because I guess the way that doctors have been trained, is just on how to communicate, rather than how to actually get your feet in the fire with that person and be with them in sometimes the most difficult parts of that person's life.

Yeah, well, um, what I hear is one of the biggest reasons for malpractice lawsuits is that lack of compassion and communication and that's why most patients would go and complain to a board or Susa doc a doctor or something like that. It's because their doctor is not listening to them what's going on with the patient. Now another thing like you know, in the ER and trauma, I mean, I really feel that trauma doctors are the most highly skilled doctors there are I really feel that they are like this Special Forces on the frontline in health care, and they're not going to do what I'm doing, they're not going to want to get into every aspects of person's life if you know their arms turn and get it off, because they're having a major bleed and stuff like that, you got to get in there just work quick and do your best. But like what I do, this is more like helping a person when they're not in that, you know, I'm gonna die in 30 seconds to someone doesn't fix me to help them with their lives from there. Now, after someone recovers from injury like that, I might be like, alright, so why would you attract that type of injury in your life in the first place? You know, but yeah, it's totally different depends on what you're doing. But yeah, I think in general, you know, there's always the joke about oh, surgeons have the worst personality dealing with patients the worst bedside manner. And I think it's because yeah, they have to separate themselves from you know, cutting someone open and going into them. And, you know, the pain that someone's going through, they have to separate themselves, I think maybe a way for other doctors, the first biggest thing they could do to really have more better bedside manner is to feel themselves what they're going through. Because I feel like a lot of doctors, they're closed off from their own feelings. And when you can get in touch more for your own feelings more like the old adage, if you love yourself, you can love someone else better. If a lot of professionals can really just feel their own feelings of what's going on in their life more, they can connect with other people more,

I really couldn't agree with you more, I've often been really interested in, you know, the group of people that go on to be doctors, you know, and because, of course, you know, doctors from, and this is a huge generalization, of course, so, but in general, these people are fairly type A personalities, they're high achievers, they really seek approval through their achievement. And in doing so, have learned to cut themselves off from their own emotions, in order to achieve in order to focus and to to get the grades and get through medical school, which is, as we started off this conversation, you know, a trial by fire, it's a really difficult process. And so often you cannot let your emotions get in the way, because you wouldn't be able to complete that goal. And doctors in general are very goal oriented people, and in order to achieve their goals, they do have to ignore what is going on and driving actually that need to achieve, which I think does place them at a disadvantage, to relate to those who process their, their emotions in a different way. And to perhaps are just not able to transmute their trauma into a certificate, which is what so many doctors, I think, as I say, this is just a personal view and opinion. Do you know, so it does make it then really quite challenging as a type A personality, to then be faced with someone who is not able to move through life in that way. And that, as I say, does I think impact the relationship and the degree of empathy that a doctor can hold when dealing with with with a patient?

Yeah, and this just comes back to being able to relate with a very wide spectrum of people too. Because yeah, these doctors like okay, I can get along with my lawyer friends, my investor friends, because maybe they're all the same type. He knows when different professions like it's all good, because they have that same type of mentality. But maybe to get thrown into the party. They're like someone that grows herbs in their backyard and or someone that's like a yoga teacher, they might not be able to all relate as well. Or maybe the little lady that grew up just in poverty and you know, she's just really not with what's kind of going on society versus survivals. The most important thing there is, you know, sometimes people can't relate with them. For me, it was such a gifts, growing up the way I did through adversity. years of being lower middle class in New York City and going through this gang stuff in graffiti and having my life threatened many times and seeing other people being killed and injured and arrested and all this stuff to where I progress to, first of all get into a professional program to become a doctor, where, you know, pretty much 90% of the people in my in my class in school are way different from me, I didn't come from the background they did. And then where I was brought afterwards to be an international teacher to being invited to lecture these programs all the way to being invited into Secret Service headquarters in Washington, DC to speak there for their mental health awareness month to do a lecture be just me by myself by sharing a secret service headquarters in Washington DC, like I, sometimes I really just can't believe that that kid that used to ride around running on writing on walls and highways and trains got there. And to me, I just feel going through growth in life helps you to experience more be able to connect with more people. Two years ago, I went to this retreat that I'm going to again in next month here, this woman, Sasha Cobra, and her focus for nine days was a lot of focus and intuition and energy and everything, but her focus was on being in your presence with somebody, just being in your presence with somebody, whether it's sitting across from them, or hugging, or being in an intimate relationship with them, it's just by having your presence. And we saw that just having presence could heal, it could heal a person to give him a room. And we would, you know, the retreat was unbelievable, just kind of what we went through and fell, but the whole thing came down to just having to finding your own presence. And just being that that's the most powerful thing. And presence wouldn't take anything away from the skill you need, it wouldn't take anything away from how you got to perform in a situation and wouldn't take anything away from how quickly someone has to be taken care of. But if you come at it with this presence, I'll tell you something, not only you're going to give that person you're with an extra edge as you're getting them through this emergency situation, but you're going to be able to respond with better skills and awareness to

Yes, and there's something around, you know, there's actually a term which is known as the Gestalt within, you know, the medical field, which is actually a doctor's intuition, there is a recognition that there is an intuition that we have our own intuition, and especially as an emergency doctor, I think one of my biggest superpowers is my intuition. Because I'm having to employ all the time, is this person sick? Are they not sick? Or is this person, you know, is this person got something that I need to follow through quickly? Or can this wait, there's, there's an intuition. And actually, we we we use, there are actually scoring systems, which actually employ the gushed out, which is an attempt to sort of actually quantify the importance of our medical Gestalt. And I think that yeah, I think I think actually, that being formally taught, would help us, help us help our patients in a in a, in a in a more effective and probably more time effective way as well. And so although intuition, I think, as I said, needs to be really harnessed and appreciated. It's not to take away from all the other elements that a doctor is able to analyze and interpret and shouldn't take away from the skills that they have, in order to really risk assess, I guess, and diagnose the patient that we have in front of us.

The other thing is, when you have the intuition, you could just apply it to all that that you've learned through your training you have you can apply it to all these little details that you know, so the intuition would never take away from who someone is as a doctor. It would only add to it but yeah, people do need to be well trained and know all these things know the red flags. And also Yeah, look more holistically what else is available.

Hmm. I love that. I love that. I think that I think that intuitive or intuition as doctors can be used alongside all the other pieces in the puzzle, which makes doctors such good detectives and sort of pieced together what is good Hang on for this person, like, what is the most important thing for this person? Now, just as we sort of come to a close from this conversation? Can you tell us, you know, what type of patients do you most work with?

I work with people who are just stuck somehow they are stuck, whether that's with a health issue, some sort of pain, maybe mentally, emotionally, maybe also stuck just in the life with like, their career, the relationship, people who are stuck, because for me, I'm just like a detective who's gonna go through and figure out where do they need the help what's going on, because we know from the holistic aspect, you got to look at everything. So him over the years, I started off as a chiropractor, but kind of got other degrees in holistic medicine and just keep learning, learning learning. over the 25 years, I've been doing this to encompass everything. So for me, it's just like someone who's just not been able to make a change in their life that they've been trying to do. And a lot of times, I'm like a last resort for somebody.

Well, thank you so much for your curiosity. And following that curiosity, and then sharing, sharing the pearls of wisdom that you've gathered along the way, in order to help people really move from their stuckness. Because that stuckness can be a really uncomfortable place to be. So I really thank you for your work and service. And I just want to reiterate that you are the author of a really fantastic book. I'm just going to edit this better. But what do you tell me the the Sahil profoundly. And so yeah, this is a really wonderful story of your own personal transformation. And I think can be a real inspiration to so many others that find themselves in, in a similar situation. Yeah, it's

just, it was a catharsis for me actually a healing period for me to just sit down for a couple months and just write out a timeline of my life story. And whenever I tell people about it, whether friends are professionals or patients, people just be like, Are you kidding me? Just about some of the stories I've been through. So yeah, I mean, it's been a healing journey for me. I went and tried to frame things. Some of the stories are just really unbelievable in you know, all the way into the supernatural and things like that. And these things still happen in my life. You know, even years after this book is out. I got so much more to put out there too. Yeah, it's just, it's a wonderful journey. And I just, I love it like life is a is a great thing. Wonderful. Thank

you so much for sharing a part of that with me. And I can't wait to share that with a wider

audience. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.