Well Being Holistic

Let me tell you about my week.

I had a kidney stone. Severe pain. Two nights of almost no sleep.

And in the middle of that - I got up and delivered a presentation to a progressive community about my upcoming masterclass, The Unpatient™️ Way.

I showed up because the message matters more than my comfort.

The response in that room told me everything I needed to know.

Since then, 40+ people have registered for the masterclass - 7 overnight, with just three days of ads running. This is the universe saying: yes. Keep going. This is right.

Sometimes life tests you right before it opens a door.

I spent years as a practising doctor. I left that version of myself behind - not without difficulty, not without grief. But this week, navigating my own health crisis with the exact skills and knowledge I spent that career building, I comprehended something clearly for the first time.

Nothing was wasted.

Every clinical year, every consultation, every patient - it was all preparation for this. For helping people learn to trust themselves. To use their own knowledge. To stop waiting for permission to listen to their own bodies and receive the messages as signals to be heard not symptoms to be managed.

I couldn't have designed a better proof of concept for the Unpatient™️ Way than my own kidney stone.

If something in your body - or your life - is calling for your attention right now, there is a reason. And there is a path forward that does not require you to hand your power over to anyone.

That is what I teach. That is what I live.

One of the most validating parts of my Bali experience was realising how strongly the training aligned with something I have quietly believed for years:

Healing cannot only be something done to us.

It must also involve participation from us.

Throughout my years in medicine, I have always valued education, self-awareness, and empowering people to take an active role in their health. Yet so much of modern healthcare can unintentionally position us as passive recipients rather than active participants.

What Bali reminded me is that human beings are not designed to heal in isolation.

We heal through connection.
Through being witnessed.
Through shared experiences.
Through feeling safe enough to be fully ourselves.

We also possess far more internal capacity than many of us realise.

Breath changes physiology.
Movement changes emotion.
Presence changes awareness.

The body is not simply a machine to be managed.

It is intelligent.

What moved me most was witnessing what becomes possible when people stop outsourcing all authority and begin participating in their own healing journey.

Not by rejecting professional support.

But by becoming an active participant rather than a passive patient.

That distinction matters deeply to me.

While I was managing the physical pain of a kidney stone this week, I picked up a book I love - "The Secret Language of Your Body" by Inna Segal.

I turned to the kidney section.

The words stopped me.

Holding on to a negative perspective. Living in the past. Regrets and rigidity. Unable to trust.

I read it and recognised - immediately and honestly - that I had been carrying something heavy about my previous life as a practising doctor. A jaded version of that identity that I hadn't fully let go of. Not consciously, but lodged somewhere deep.

I followed the healing practice Inna describes - the visualisation of green healing energy, the spoken affirmations, the emotional release work. It felt almost too simple.

But the shift that followed was immediate and unmistakable.

I am not asking you to believe that emotions cause kidney stones. I am a doctor. I get physiology.

What I am telling you is that the body and the mind are not separate - and that when we address what is happening at both levels simultaneously, something opens up that pure biochemistry cannot always reach alone.

The physical remedies I was using supported my body. The emotional clearing work supported something else - something that the CT scan cannot measure.

If your body is speaking to you right now, it might be worth asking: what is it trying to say?

This week I lived my own teaching in real time.

I woke up with severe pain radiating from my back to my groin. Every breath, every cough, every movement was agony. I didn't sleep properly for two nights.

Here is what I did - and what I did NOT do.

I did NOT call an ambulance. I did NOT spend six hours in an emergency waiting room. I did NOT hand myself over to a system and wait to be told what was happening in my own body.

Instead, I used what I know.

I recognised the pattern immediately - sudden onset, that very specific location and character of pain - and I knew I was most likely dealing with a kidney stone. I texted my GP with a clear, clinical summary of what I was experiencing. Because I know how to communicate with doctors as a colleague and not as a patient seeking permission, he was able to send me pathology and radiology request forms the same morning. By that afternoon I had bloods, urine and a CT scan done - without attending his surgery, without going to hospital.

While I waited for results, I wasn't passive. I used everything I knew could support my body - hydration, heat, rest, and some targeted natural remedies I trusted based on my understanding of how kidney stones form and dissolve.

This is what being Unpatient™️ looks like.

Not anti-medicine. Not reckless. Not waiting to be rescued.

It is using your knowledge, your relationships, and your self-trust to navigate your own health with agency and clarity.

If you've ever sat in a waiting room feeling powerless in your own health crisis - this is what's possible when you know how to advocate for yourself.