Healing Beyond Medicine: A Doctor's Journey

Summary
In this episode, Dr. Anne Alex shares her transformative journey through medical challenges, the importance of compassion in healing, and how integrating conventional and complementary medicine can enhance well-being. Discover insights on personal resilience, the power of mindset, and practical steps for active health participation.




Takeaways
The connection between healing and environment
Personal experience with medical challenges
The importance of compassion in healthcare
Bridging conventional and complementary medicine
Mindset and beliefs in healing process
The role of retreats in self-discovery
Active participation in health and well-being
The impact of patience and trust in healing
Compassion and empathy are crucial in healthcare and retreats.
Personal health journeys can reshape professional perspectives.
Integrating different medical approaches can support better outcomes.
Stepping away from daily life helps reconnect with inner self.
A calm, peaceful state is a key indicator of healing.



Chapters
00:00 Introduction to healing and retreats
01:13 Guest introduction: Dr. Anne Alex
02:17 Medical system from the patient’s perspective
03:24 The importance of compassion in medicine
05:34 Anne’s medical school experience and health challenges
08:29 Diagnosis and surgeries: a turning point
10:26 The value of complementary medicine
11:09 Knowing when to accept or keep searching
12:52 Beliefs and mindset in healing
13:28 Stepping away for self-connection
14:14 What does a healing experience feel like?
14:48 Encouragement for slow healing processes
15:28 Small actions for active health participation
16:00 Living well through balance
16:38 Inspiration behind the book 'New Pass'
17:09 Key message from 'New Pass'
19:43 Exploring new paths in medicine
20:50 Integrating holistic approaches in healthcare
21:55 Rapid fire: science vs intuition
22:26 One word to describe healing
22:47 Misunderstandings about doctors
23:01 Final words and tips for listeners



🔗 Connect with Anne Alex
📧 Email: anne.m.alex@outlook.com
🌐 Website: https://anne-m-alex.com
🎵 TikTok: @anne.m.alex



🔗 Connect with Holly Porter | Retreat RNR 
📧 Email: holly@hollyporter.com 
🔗 LinkedIn: Holly Porter | Retreat RNR 
🎵 TikTok: @retreatrnr 
▶️ YouTube: @intlretreatassociation
📸 Instagram: @retreatrnr | @hollyporterinternational 
📘 Facebook: HollyAnnPorter

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to All Things Retreat Podcast. I'm Holly Porter, your host and CEO of Retreat R. With over 25 years of experience in designing transformative retreats, I'm here to share insights and inspiration to help you create extraordinary experiences. Whether you're a pro or just starting out, you'll find valuable ideas here. Enjoy the ride. Let's dive in. Retreats are often designed to create space for healing, reflection, and transformation. But what actually helps someone feel safe enough to change, trust themselves again, and move forward in a new way. In today's conversation, we are exploring the connection between healing and the retreat experience, including how we can create environments that support resilience, self-empowerment, and meaningful personal transformation. Dr. Ann Alex is the author, is an author speaker and medical doctor whose work shaped as much by lived experience as by her medical training. After undergoing three major surgeries, she found herself questioning conventional ideas about health, resilience, and what it truly means to heal. That journey led to her book, New Past, and a mission to help others navigate change with a greater clarity, courage, and self-trust. Anne speaks on self-empowerment, personal transformation, and intersection of medicine and lived experience, encouraging people to become active participants in their own health and well-being. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. And I forgot to ask you before we started is it Anne or Annie?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Um both work. I got my butcher.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Oh, yeah. Okay, well, if I butchered it, my apologies. But sometimes people don't care, and other people are like, you said my name wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

No, it's always fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Oh. Um so you hailed from right now, you are in Germany. Yes. I just finished med school here. That's where you finish school?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Okay. Is that where you were born as well? Yes. I'm originally from Germany. Love it. It's it's so amazing to be able to talk to people. She mentioned uh that it's nine o'clock at night where she's at. And so I was so grateful that she stayed up for us to be here. Lots of different time zones in the world. So let's talk about you're both a medical doctor and someone who had personally experienced three major surgeries. How did that be how did becoming the patient change the way that you viewed medical and healing?

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Well, becoming a patient meant that I saw the entire system from the other side. So basically in med school, you see what the students have to do, what the doctors are doing. You see the workload of everyday life, and you see how stressful it is to work in the medical field. And on the other hand, as a patient, I saw what it means to really be afraid, to worry about your health, to not know what's going on, and to see how it affects yourself and other people when your doctor, for example, doesn't have as much time as you would like him to have or can't explain everything the way you need him to understand. So I saw the struggles both sides have, and it helped me understand how to connect to people, how to connect to my patients better, because I know what it means to really be afraid and to really be in pain, especially.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Yeah, do you feel like that it gave you a bigger sense of compassion, maybe as a doctor?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

It gave me a bigger sense of compassion and a bigger understanding of what patients go through. And it also helped me realize, because normally, you know, when you work in the medical field for a long time, you see how the doctors just kind of get a little bit more numb. And we've we've been actually they tell us in med school that it's important to not um feel with every patient to you know be a bit more distanced because you have to protect yourself and you have to protect your peace of mind as well. But being a patient helped me realize that I don't want to go that way, and that it's important to keep the compassion and to keep the empathy, and even though like you need to be able to set boundaries, of course, but also it's important not to just become numb and see a patient as a number, you have to work with an example.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah, yeah, I I agree. It makes me think of most of our audience listening, they're retreat leaders, which is very broad. They can do a retreat in anything uh they can think of. But as they're listening, it's it's like a lesson for retreat leaders to think about that compassion because we're bringing in people to our spaces that we're creating, this container, usually for some kind of transformation, not necessarily a doctor, a hospital atmosphere, but you're healing, you know, no matter what. Some kind of transformation's happening while your guests, patients for you, but guests are coming and seeing you. And I think that to have that compassion is so important um in the work and deciding when tough love matters, you know, just like a hard diagnosis. Like at what point do you uh offer, you know, the the heavy hammer or grace? And I think um they that parallels what you were saying. It kind of parallels to to how I wanted to compare that to retreat leaders. Um tell us if you would you mind sharing like a little bit of what happened to you while you were in medical school? Of course.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Um, so basically after my second semester in medical school, I or during my second semester, I started having back pain. Like really, really bad back pain, and not the kind of pain that you have when you know get tense, or I don't know, you're just overworked and stressed. So I went to the doctor and I told him that it was bad and it was different. But the doctor who treated me back then, he he didn't really believe me. It was always like, oh, you're a medical medical student. Ah, of course, it's so stressful, and you have exams, so obviously you're under pressure. So um let's do some acupuncture and I'll give you some uh like uh go to the physic physical to the physical therapist and it'll be fine. So I did all of that and it wasn't fine, like the pain got worse instead of better. So I went back to the doctor and he tried a lot of other things, but he didn't he didn't believe me. He thought I was over exaggerating my pain or whatever. So that went on for like four months until I went to the emergency room because I was in like it was the worst pain I felt in my life. And they basically told me it's nothing acute, and I have to go see my doctor again and maybe get a picture taken, you know, like do some exam. Which my doctor refused to do because again he thought it wasn't necessary. I was young, I was healthy otherwise, and I was a medical student during her exam phase. So after six months I couldn't take it anymore. And I went to a different doctor who also didn't believe me at the beginning. So I came in and I told him, hey, listen, I am in pain and it's bad. And he asked me, yeah, on a scale from one to ten, how much is it? And I told him it's a ten, it's even worse, it's a twelve. And he went ahead and said, Um Are you sure? I mean, a 10 would be, you know, like burning alive. And I was like, Are you even kidding me? Like, I don't even know what to say. It is bad, you need to do something. So he sent me uh to get an x-ray and had me come back a few days later to see the results, and his in his entire demeanor shifted. And he was like, Listen up, we have to do like an MRI as well, and you have a tumor in your spine. And a bone tumor, your vertebrae is about to collapse. It's really bad, it can be dangerous, you need to have surgery basically immediately. So that kinda started the entire journey of me going to a hospital, me having to get like biopsies. First one didn't take, I was awake during the biopsy, they ran out of pain meds, it was even worse pain than before. The second one got two surgeries. They kinda messed up the first one. Um, so they they didn't damage the spinal nerve, but they compressed the spinal nerve, which led to even more pain after the surgeries. So um we kind of went back and forth a while, and after three surgeries, I was officially done. I was told you're young, go back into life, you don't need like rehabilitation or something, just go back, do your thing, you know, it'll be fine. And yeah, I went back into life, but it wasn't really fine. I had panic attacks a lot. I couldn't stand people touching me, I couldn't stand going to lectures or going in like taking the tram or something when people were behind me. And that kind of opened up in a completely new world because I started looking for a lot of alternative approaches to healing and what else out there. And my parents, they supported me through all of it, and they also they took me everywhere. Like we tried so many different things. Um, my mom also works as a kinesiologist, which is um yeah, a different system, different approach uh to health as well. And we tried different healers, we tried, I don't even know, everything from um light therapy, we did osteopathy, all kinds of yeah, alternative approaches basically, to see what could help. And that kind of opened me up to understand that conventional medicine is important and it has a lot of benefits, obviously. And for example, if you break your leg, you should go to a doctor and see if it can get fixed, but that there's an entire field of complementary medicine out there of approaches that are not evidence-based, as people love to tell me. And these approaches have so much potential to support us in our way in our healing.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yeah, wow. How do you think um someone would know when it's time to accept the situation and when it's time to keep searching for another path?

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Honestly, um I'm the type of person I would not accept a situation if it's not what I want. Like if I'm not happy with the situation, if I'm not at the point where I'm satisfied, I would keep looking for answers. And I've talked to a lot of people who tell me they've tried everything and nothing helped. And I believe there is a way out there for everybody, and that it's important to keep looking until you find it.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Yeah. And and your mindset is so important and so involved in this. Um, what do you think your beliefs you had to have to release in order to become the person that you are today?

SPEAKER_00 11:02

I stopped believing in the impossible. I started and I'm still doing it. I started believing in everything. I started believing that everything is possible. I'm still skeptical about some things, obviously. And I think like a normal skepticism is important, but I've had an energy healer fix 80% of my pain in one session. I have no idea what she did. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what she did, how she worked. It was crazy, like literally crazy, but it helped me. And I stopped questioning it. And that's the that's the thing. I'm like, I'm open to a lot of different approaches now, because if they help, they help. And if you are stuck in your old ways, and if you're stuck in believing that just that things are crazy or nothing will help you, you don't have you don't even have the potential to find the new way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Well, I'm glad you didn't give up that you kept, you know, insisting until it's I learned with my own health challenges that we're our best advocate. No one cares like we do about our body. And I think that intuition you were listening to super important. So I applaud you for that. But why why is it sometimes necessary to step away from everyday life before you can clearly hear what your body or intuition is telling us?

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Because in everyday life, there's always another problem you have to solve, need to solve, always another person who may want something. Um it's always busy. It's and if you step away, if you have like a retreat, for example, you get the time to just focus on yourself. And you get, if possible, also a different environment. You have other people around you, you have people with a different mindset around you, and you can just you can just connect with yourself again without the distractions you have to face in everyday life.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

What does a truly healing experience feel like to you?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Um, a truly healing experience. It feels calm. It's something something calming. And I'm a person, I'm very active, I have a lot of excitement in my life. And those moments when everything just calms down, it's like time stops for a moment and you get to breathe freely.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Yeah, I love that. What would you say to someone who feels discouraged because their healing is taking longer than expected?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Oh my gosh, I'm the most impatient person you will probably ever meet. And yeah, I love the saying there that everything takes its time and it will happen when it's supposed to happen. And that's for me just a moment where you try to give up control and just accept and just trust the process.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Yes, trust the process. Um, what's one small action that listeners today could take to become more active participants in their health and well-being?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

I would say to be more aware every day, to take a moment or many moments during the day to just make a small stop and get back into the now, to breathe, to just take a small break, to reconnect with yourself.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah. Which retreats can do for people.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Definitely, they do it every day.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

After everything that you've experienced, what does living well mean to you now?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

For me, it's about balance, it's about um doing things every day that I love doing. For dancing, for example, dancing is my passion, and I just feel so much happier when I'm able to do it. So even if I have a lot of work and during the day and if I'm super busy, I try to take at least one hour to just do something I love. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:50

Yeah. So you recently have a book that's called New Pass. What inspired that title?

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Um, it was it's based on my experiences that I collected during med school, during my tumor um journey, and for me it was a new beginning and a new way to see the world, a new way to actually take responsibility and to create your own world.

unknown 15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Okay, so what's one idea from a new past book of yours that you hope everyone remembers when they read it?

SPEAKER_00 15:26

That you have the power to create your world, and that your thinking and that your mindset is everything. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

And you mentioned when we were talking before the show that it took you longer to finish medical school because of this incident. But you were wise, I think, in taking that time to heal your body and not pushing through. What would you tell somebody maybe that has something that they don't want to be patient, you know, they they they want to push, push, push. What would you tell them? What was your experience?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

My experience was that it was the best decision to study longer. And I was lucky that I had the opportunity and it was supported by my family to actually take my time. So after my surgeries, I um took less classes each semester at the beginning just to get back into it. And uh even though I wasn't as fast as I wanted to be and I didn't get done as fast, I enjoyed the moment more. And many people I think forget while they are working towards something and pushing through, they are so focused on their goal, on their goal, they forget to enjoy the moment and to enjoy the way.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, so true. Which is why everybody needs to go on a retreat.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

It's a great break.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

When you It is, yeah. When when you're writing your book, do you feel like it was healing for you? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

It was. Uh it helped me work through a bunch of stuff as well. And now looking back, if I'm if I feel like I'm falling back into an old habit or an old pattern, I read my own book to kind of remind me that I've already I've already been through this and to focus on what's important.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah. Well, and that's nice to say that I mean, that your own wisdom you can learn from because I my near death shift book, I same thing. It's a personal development and and a spiritual book. And so I've done the same thing. And it's like, wait a minute, I wrote these words. Like, am I following it? Am I doing this? And and uh sometimes we could be our worst critic, but we can also be our own our own best team player. Yes, right. So, what new path are you personally exploring right now?

SPEAKER_00 17:40

I'm my plan is it to connect conventional medicine with uh complementary medicine, complementary approaches to kind of build the bridge that they can work together instead of against each other.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

I have I have actively, since my experience hasn't been quite five years um with COVID, but I got lung COVID after that and had nine doctors for a while. And I I never went to the doctors, so that was I'm very holistic. And so I myself have searched for doctors doing what you're saying. So I want to know there's a hybrid. I want to know that when I need a steroid for my lungs, it's available to me, but I'm gonna use everything else I can first. And I I love that. I'm curious, um, in Germany, if that's frowned on or is that accepted?

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Uh it's still frowned upon. That's that's a problem. As I said at the beginning, everything that's not evidence-based is kind of not legit, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah. I I had a hyperbaric. Do you know what a hyperbaric is?

unknown 18:42

Nope.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

It's it well, you can get them hard-shelled, so they're like oxygen. They put what they were made for was people that go under the sea for um the pressurice to make them sick. Anyway, but they've proven it's helped in so many different things. Um, and so I was able to have one in my home that I bought when I came out of the hospital because I had a lung disease. And after getting in it, I got in it every day for 90 minutes for probably two and a half years, and then I went like every other day. And my pulmonologist tried to tell me that that that didn't help me. There's no science behind it. And I'm thinking, I went from being on a lung transplant list to not even having to do the testing this year. You can't tell me that didn't help. It's like I did lots of things, but I mean, I don't know. It's just funny how if there's not a textbook, you know, science backed thing, then then it's not true. And I I don't believe that, and I don't think you do either. So I love that. Um, all right, you ready for some rapid fire? Yes. Okay, science or intuition? Intuition. Rest or movement? Movement, morning reflection or evening reflection. Evening reflection. A book that changed your life. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Oh, love that book. Love it. One word that describes healing. Peace. Habit wish you you wished you would have started sooner.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Doing something I love every day.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Oh, I love that. What's something people misunderstand about doctors?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

I think on the patient's side, how much work they actually do and what they're actually accomplishing every day.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah. Any last words for our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Just to don't believe what other people tell you. If other people tell you something is impossible, try it anyways and do it anyways.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

I love it. Okay, and if you're gonna give someone the biggest tip today about getting recharged, what would it be? Go on a retreat. Good answer. We didn't even talk about that before.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

No, seriously, it's it's awesome. It's just the perfect time of work.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yeah, so true, so true. Retreats are always a way for some great uh reflection and RR. Well, thank you and Annie. I'm gonna say this time. I I don't know. I've said and before, but um, thanks so much for being on the show, being such a great guest. I'm sure our listeners have picked up some tips that they can use and and had some reflection of your story as a great story. And I'm just I'm glad you're here with us today. I'm so grateful that you got through medical school going through all that, and you're gonna change a lot of lives. So sending you blessings and everyone else, we will see you next time on the show. Bye for now. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us on this episode of All Things Retreat. We hope you're leaving with new ideas, fresh inspiration, and the motivation to take your retreats to the next level. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. It helps us grow and reach more retreat leaders like you. And if you have any questions, topics you'd like us to cover, or just want to say hello, send us an email at infobreretreatrnr.com. Follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all the latest updates. Until next time, remember, great retreats are with great retention. Let's make them extraordinary, one step at a time. Before you dive in, let's make sure you're really ready. Grab your three or your retreat like your checklist. Find out that you've got everything in place for your purpose, type it to your audience and agenda. So yes, get clear. Just quick checklist will show you exactly where you stand, and what you need to do with that. Click the link below in the show notes. Grab your desk and take the first step towards hosting.