Chapter 1: You Are Not the Problem
You are awesome.
I have thought long on how I want to start this book and what I want to be most clear. And that message is:
You are awesome. If you don’t read any further, my message is said.
To elaborate more, you are unique and essential, and there has never been anyone quite like you in the past and no one in the future will be your own essential combination of you. You have everything you need inside of you. All the wisdom, the knowing of how to move forward on your path and live your fullest life. This is not to say you currently have the mental cognition of all of it, but if you keep seeking and listening and following, it will all come. And I do not mean that you can do this alone. You are a connected being and through this connection it is my wish that you will find and embody your wholeness.
I hope you know how special you are. How important you are.
Many people do not recognize how awesome they are. Instead, many feel unworthy, deficient, and unlovable. But this is taught, and instead of internalizing these awful messages, you should be pissed that you have to fight off these infiltrations of “not enough” and “not worthy” in order to be happy and make it though your day.
What do I mean that these terrible feelings we feel or bad thoughts that “pop into our heads” were taught?
No one is born thinking they are unworthy. No child enters this world ashamed of their body or unsure of their voice. We are born believing in magic—believing we can fly, we can heal, we can ride unicorns and find treasure at the end of rainbows. We arrive believing in our wholeness and our loveability.
Then, slowly and steadily, these feelings of wholeness and loveability are stripped away.
Not because it isn’t true—but because we are taught otherwise.
We are taught that we are not enough, that we need to strive, prove, win, and also to shrink, fade into the background, “fit in”, not cause a stir, and even sometimes to apologize for our own existence. We are taught that our worth is conditional—on our looks, our gender, our race, our wealth, our grades, our performance, our productivity, our abilities, our perfection. Taught that if we just tried harder, were more disciplined, made better choices, we’d finally be enough. If we could just pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we would finally succeed. It is all on us individually.
And when we try and try and try and fail, when we feel exhausted, anxious, or unfulfilled, the culture around us quietly whispers—then shouts:
“It is your fault! You are the problem.”
When your body begins to struggle—when you feel anxious, depressed, inflamed, tired, sick, have hard periods, get migraines, gain weight, have digestive pains, heart burn, or develop chronic pain patterns—the default assumption is: I must be doing something wrong to cause my body to break down like this. There is something wrong with my body. My body is failing me.
When you seek professional help due to changes in your body or mental state, you're often met with well-meaning advice that centers around doing more, being better, or “fixing” yourself. Eat less. Exercise more. Take the right medications. Buy the latest supplement. Fix your mindset. Heal your childhood wounds. Get off your phone. Sleep more. Meditate. Try intermittent fasting. Go vegan. Reduce your stress. In other words: It is all on you. You hold the control and you should be doing more/doing better.
And if your blood work labs and other testing come back normal but you still do not feel good? You may be told it’s “just stress,” “all in your head,” or what I was told at a teaching hospital the docs and residents called “bad life syndrome”—a blatant way of saying (though not to the patient’s face!), we can’t find anything wrong, so it must be you.
To be clear: most practitioners are doing their best within a system that is limited by time, support, training, and scope. The structure of conventional medicine isn’t designed to explore the broader context of your life. It rarely considers or has the time to find answers for the systemic realities that shape our wellbeing—things like our industrialized food system, which fills our bodies with chemically treated, nutrient-depleted food; the relentless pace of modern life; chronic stress and overstimulation; economic inequality; or the deep social disconnection that leaves so many of us depleted and alone.
Vitality Medicine seeks to go beyond all of this. It asks different questions. It seeks a larger context for the human experience—one that looks not just at the individual in isolation, but at the cultural, environmental, systemic, emotional, and energetic ecosystems we were born into and continue to live within.
We don’t ask, “What’s wrong with you?”
We ask, “What are you at the effect of?” “What is your system responding to?”
Vitality Medicine was born from my own lived experience. It emerged as a framework to help me understand not just what I was feeling, but why—on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day level. It gave me a map to make sense of my symptoms and sensations, and to interpret them as meaningful, rather than as signs of struggle or failure.
That map eventually crystallized into the Four Pillars of Vitality Medicine:
Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Empathic.
Each of these is a dimension of your being—and each holds critical information about why you feel the way you feel and why your body and health is the way it is.
The Physical Pillar addresses your biology: your hormones, digestion, neurotransmitters, thyroid function, adrenal stress response, blood sugar levels, and more. So much of how you feel is shaped by what’s happening inside your body, your physiology. And the neat thing is that you can measure it! We can order comprehensive blood panels that examine what we call Vitality Markers—but we go further. We interpret these markers through refined ranges and pattern recognition, identifying imbalances that may be not be identified by conventional medicine yet are deeply impactful on your daily experience of vitality.
The Mental Pillar looks at your perceptions, beliefs, and thought patterns—how your mind shapes your experience of reality, and how those patterns influence your physiology and resilience.
The Emotional Pillar acknowledges that your feelings are not a distraction from health—they are central to it. Suppressed emotions create stagnation. Honored emotions create flow. We support emotional processing as an essential part of healing.
And the Empathic Pillar, which we’ll explore more deeply later, speaks to the concept that your body doesn’t just respond to your personal life, but also to the collective field around you. Many of us are feeling not just our own pain, but the pain of a world out of balance. That too matters.
When these Four Pillars are aligned and resourced, vitality emerges. You begin to feel like yourself again—not a better version, not a fixed version, but a remembered one.
Because your symptoms aren’t the problem.
They’re the message. And Vitality Medicine offers a new framework within which to understand your symptoms and tend to your body.
But if all Vitality Medicine teaches you is that you are not the problem, that you are awesome, that is enough. Because you were never the problem. You are a human being reacting in a very intelligent way to a culture that does not honor life and connection. Your body and its messages are a canary in a coal mine, signalling that something is wrong in our environment that is largely hidden and undetectable. Your symptoms are not your failure; they are your body’s cry for reconnection, your system’s wisdom alerting you to the disconnection all around you.
In Vitality Medicine, we name this dominant cultural lie—“You are not enough”—as one of the deepest and most widespread root causes of modern illness.
Not your weight.
Not your blood sugar.
Not your diagnosis.
But this:
The learned belief that your struggle is a personal failure.
This belief severs you from the still, small voice within. It makes you doubt your instincts, distrust your body, and suppress your needs. It hijacks your power and chains you to shame.
It is not just unkind.
It is immobilizing.
It traps us in a modern-day corset, cinching in our brilliance, binding our power. We adapt, until we forget we were ever free.
But what if it isn’t you who is broken?
What if the culture is?
Let’s imagine this differently.
Vitality Medicine begins here:
With the radical, world-shifting truth that you are inherently enough. You are whole. You are not missing anything. You are the medicine.
This isn’t just a mindset shift. It’s a paradigm shift. A return. A remembering.
And re-membered—back into your body, your wisdom, your connection to life.
Even now, your body is working on your behalf. Even now, it holds the map back to vitality. Even now, the pulse of life and vital flow courses within you.
And that is where your power lies.
Because what your body is asking for—more connection, more space, more truth—is something we can begin to rebuild. We can restore your physiology. We can gain intelligence about our empathic design. We can honor your emotions. We can remember your wholeness. And in doing so, we begin to rebuild a different kind of world.
What This Book Offers
This book is a guide to remembering the wholeness of who you are and regain the innate vitality of your system. It will help you:
Reclaim your body as an ally, not an enemy.
Understand vitality as the central measure of health.
Recognize your empathic design—how your body processes not only your personal stress but also the energetic and emotional input of the collective.
Use blood testing and wellness protocols to support vitality
Adopt a doctor as Ally model and fina a healing team
Shift your relationship with health from deficiency to sufficiency.
Learn the Four Pillars of Vitality Medicine—Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Empathic—and how each one influences your overall well-being.
Find practical tools to restore your body’s flow—nervous system regulation, craniosacral therapy, mindful movement, somatic presence, and nature reconnection.
Employ personalized wellness protocols to increase your daily vitality using food, natural supplementation, sleep hygiene, movement, and energetic care.
Learn practical tools to support your nervous system and deepen your connection to self and world.
Practice a new way of visioning health—one that acknowledges you are not separate from your environment, and that your healing is deeply connected to the web of life.
Most importantly, it will help you rewrite the story of your body and your life.
You are not failing.
You are remembering.
You are not broken.
You are wise.
You are not the problem.
You are the possibility.
Vitality Medicine is not just another protocol. It is a re-membering. A realignment with the truth that you are whole, connected, and sufficient—and that your body already holds the wisdom it needs to return to vitality.
Most importantly, this book will remind you that healing is not about “fixing” yourself—it’s about remembering how to live in alignment with your natural design and being connected to the world around you in a life-enhancing and life-generating way.
Let’s begin.
Rewriting the Story of Your Body and Your Self.
You are not alone.
You are not failing.
You are simply struggling to adapt to a broken world—and the fact that you are not adapting to the brokenness is a good thing. That in itself is a success marker. It means you still remember what it feels like to be whole. What it feels like to live in a connected world because you would not miss it if you did not know it deep within yourself. It means your body is calling you back to your core essence of your Self.
Vitality Medicine is here to help you reclaim your energy, restore your health, and remember the deep intelligence that has always lived within you. You have all the answers already– Vitality Medicine is here to help you unlock the true and innate vitality that is unique and essential to you.
And as we heal, we create something even greater—a new world, one based in kindness, connection, and vitality.
Let’s begin.
Your Next Steps: Embodying the Truth that You Are Not the Problem
This chapter introduced a radical reframe: that your body is not broken—and that the problem is not you, but the disconnection you’ve been conditioned to normalize.
To help anchor this truth in your own experience, here are a few practical steps you can begin today:
1. Name the Story
Take 5–10 minutes to reflect or journal on this question:
What messages have I received—explicitly or subtly—that made me believe my health struggles are my fault?
Who or what taught you that you weren’t enough? Naming the story begins to loosen its hold.
2. Notice the Voice of “Not Enough”
Begin to track how often the “I’m not doing enough” or “I am not enough” belief arises in your daily life. You don’t have to change it—just notice it. Awareness is a first and powerful act of resistance.
Try completing the sentence:
“I notice the ‘not enough’ voice when I…”
skip a workout, eat a certain food, need to rest, feel emotional, etc.
3. Begin a Practice of Body Gratitude
Choose one moment each day to thank your body—not for how it looks, but for something it did.
“Thank you for carrying me through today.”
“Thank you for digesting that meal.”
“Thank you for asking for rest.”
This small but potent shift starts to change the relationship from blame and shame to trust.
4. Start Listening Differently
Instead of asking:
“What’s wrong with me?”
Try asking:“What is my body trying to tell me in its wisdom?”
This simple shift opens the door to partnership.
Optional Exercise: Connecting into Your Body
To bring this into the body, try placing your hand on your heart or low belly and opening up into the sensations of that area. Feel the feelings, connect in, be curious and notice the sensations of your body. Be fearless in that connection as fear may arise to try to keep you trapped in the dominant paradigm of separation. Be ruthless in your will to connect and feel without judgement. Notice your life flow and Breathe.