We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Li-Mei Lin M.D. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Li-Mei below.
Dr. Lin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Over the course of your career, have you seen or experienced your field completely flip-flop or change course on something?
We are at the early stages of a U-Turn in health and medicine. My professional education and career as a neurosurgeon was rooted in academic sciences that treated the body as a physical-mechanical system—like a machine, car, or plane to be repaired part by part. That approach saves lives, and I honor it. But it also flattens the human being. What’s emerging now is a turn toward a truly holistic lens that includes the emotional, energetic, and spiritual dimensions as inseparable from biophysiology.
Yes, more “integrative” services exist today — but true integration is still rare. The current landscape is like an orchestra full of virtuoso musicians playing their parts in isolation, with no seasoned conductor to bring the score to life in harmony. You can have a brilliant cardiologist, a skilled therapist, an experienced meditation teacher, and a gifted bodyworker all in the same center — yet without a conductor, the music never becomes a harmonious symphony and the client/patient is still caught in the middle of a team of experts trying to integrate all the different recommendations.
I retired from clinical practice because I saw this was a critical need — to serve as that conductor for truly harmonious whole human health — and to train others to become conductors of their own harmonious health. Practically, that means:
From symptom patches → system regulation: We recalibrate the complete neural axis, not just mainstream nervous system regulation tools. This allows the inner operating system to be recalibrated to calm and clarity regardless of external circumstances so that decisions aren’t made from stress responses’ fight-or-flight and you’re not spending your entire life on a healing journey trying to manage your trauma or adaptive behaviors. You’re actually thriving!
From body or mind → body + mind + emotions + spirit: Neuroscience meets somatics and symbolism, so insight becomes a living trait, not a fleeting state.
From expert-centric → client-sovereignty: Authority is re-centered in the person. I don’t replace your inner wisdom; I help you re-inhabit it.
From performance at any cost → performance from wholeness: When the orchestra is tuned and conducted harmoniously, output becomes music — clear thinking, clean boundaries, creative flow, abundant life.
Analogy: Traditional care is like swapping parts on a plane mid-flight. The U-Turn I’m helping lead is learning to compose and conduct the score itself: recalibrate the operating system (complete neural axis), align sections (biology, biography, belief, meaning, purpose), and then let the music move through you with power, harmony, and grace.
Has the health & medicine industry already flipped? Not fully yet — but the turn has already started. And this is the work I stand for: empowering individuals to become conductors of their harmonious whole human health.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I spent 15+ years as a board-certified minimally invasive vascular neurosurgeon mastering precision in the operating room. I learned how to steady my hands in crisis, how to navigate complexity calmly, and how to make decisions when every millimeter matters. Along the way I also learned a quieter truth: many high-performers are winning on the outside while quietly fraying on the inside — driven, dysregulated, and disconnected from what truly matters.
Today I serve as a shamanic practitioner, whole human health coach, guide, and mentor to founders, executives, change makers, physicians, and mission-driven leaders who want to lead from inner authority, not just achievement. My work integrates rigorous neuroscience with timeless spiritual wisdom and somatic, symbolic practices. Think of it as shifting from “operating on the brain” to upgrading the inner operating system that runs your life.
What I Offer (Products, Services, Creative Work)
True Whealthness™ — a premium 1:1 private mentorship and group coaching container for high-performers recalibrating success to include sovereignty, vitality, and soul alignment. Proprietary tools & assessments designed for enduring transformation integrating neuroscience + timeless spiritual wisdom.
Medicine All Within You® (MAWY) — semi-annual free online live immersion that lays the foundations for accessing your own inner medicine — clarity, safety, strength, and self-leadership.
Problems I Solve
Chronic Drive Mode & Burnout: Always “on,” yet increasingly numb, anxious, or reactive.
High Performance With Hidden Costs: Success built on over-functioning, people pleasing, perfectionism, and/or self-abandonment.
Decision Fatigue & Misalignment: Smart choices that still don’t feel right because the body and soul were never consulted.
Nervous System Dysregulation: A brilliant mind riding in a dysregulated body — leading to stalled creativity, strained relationships, and health symptoms.
How It Works (My Method)
I blend three threads into one rope you can actually climb:
Neuroscience: Clear models of perception, stress, memory, and behavior change — so your mind understands why a shift works. It’s complete neural axis recalibration, not just nervous system regulation.
Somatic & Spiritual Symbolic Work: Breath, ritual, and imagery to ground safety and meaning in your body (not just in your head).
Strategy & Stewardship: We map your values, boundaries, life and business priorities into day-to-day operations — so alignment is built into micro-practices and micro-decisions compounded over time.
Analogy: In surgery, you stabilize vitals before making any incision. In this work, we stabilize your mind-body-emotions-spirit before making any life or business decision. Precision first; then action.
What Sets Me Apart
Neurosurgeon-Mystic: I honor data and the divine. I integrate evidence-based structure with timeless spiritual wisdom and sacred depth.
Confidential, White-Glove Container: Discretion, impeccability, and clean boundaries.
Enduring Embodied Evolutions: We design experiences that transform, not hacks or hooks that spike dopamine and hijack attention.
Sovereignty as the KPI: We measure outcomes focused on agency, peace, and the quality of your relationships — beginning with the one you have with yourself.
What I’m Most Proud Of
I’m proud that my clients — people used to carrying worlds on their shoulders — learn to integrate their mind-body-emotions-spirit by rebuilding trust with their inner voice, reconnecting with their body’s wisdom and creating new successes that don’t cost them their aliveness. On a personal level, I’m proud I chose integrity over certainty: I left a conventional path, rebuilt from first principles, and created work that treats human beings as whole and holy.
What I Want You To Know
Your medicine is already within you. My job is not to fix you; it’s to guide you in remembering and re-inhabiting your deepest inner truths and igniting your true inner genius.
This is not for dabblers. It’s for high-performers ready to trade chronic urgency for devoted mastery and transcend survival healing narratives to claim our birthright to thrive.
Healing is sacred & necessitates confidentiality. Safety is the soil — everything grows from there.
Results compound with micro-practices that recalibrate your inner operating system. When your inner system is regulated and aligned with your true soul nature, strategy gets simpler, relationships get cleaner, and creativity returns.
Bottom line: Healing, to me, is a calling and a sacred journey — whether in the operating room or in the soul’s remembering. It’s transformative. It’s confidential. It necessitates devotion and mastery. And it’s your birthright to claim.
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
Absolutely. My awe and fascination with the human body and brain propelled me into medicine and neurosurgery. That work was a profound privilege and a precise apprenticeship in calm, focus, precision, and integrity when every millimeter matters.
It’s the same awe that later compelled me to retire from clinical practice and serve as a shamanic practitioner, whole human health coach, guide, and mentor. Neurosurgery taught me to master an instrument with surgical precision; this season of my vocation asks me to conduct the full orchestra — body, mind, emotions, and spirit — so people can create truly harmonious health.
If I could go back, I would choose the same profession again, knowing it was the exact training required for the work I do now. My curiosity about the mystery of life is bottomless. Human potential is still largely untapped; as we expand cognitive flexibility and consciousness — and develop other ways of sensing and knowing — our capacity to serve humanity (and the greater Universe) becomes truly extraordinary!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Lesson I had to unlearn: that pushing through and compartmentalizing emotions is not the same as strength.
I grew up in a blue-collar immigrant family where hard work, perseverance, and grit were non-negotiable. Out of love — and a deep desire to honor my parents’ sacrifices — I excelled academically and pushed my limits. I became a national expert in minimally invasive vascular neurosurgery and was traveling around the country training colleagues on the most innovative aneurysm treatments. That drive was a gift. It also had a shadow.
I didn’t grow up with emotional attunement, and the profession I chose rewarded stoicism: be resilient, push through, keep moving. Emotions were perceived as a sign of weakness. As I went deeper into my inner work, I experienced how emotional suppression had quietly constricted the healthy flow of energy and spirit through my body. My mind-body connection was precise for millimeter moves that made the difference between life and death — but my body was over-armored.
What I unlearned was the reflex to “tighten and override” emotions and body sensations. What I learned was how to conduct my inner orchestra — letting emotions arise, bring color and intelligence to the active score of life, rather than silencing them. I devoted myself to cultivating emotional sensitivity and leadership as a strength where it is now a superpower: a way to access clearer signal, cleaner boundaries, and a more sustainable form of excellence.
Bottom line: grit is vital, but without emotional attunement it becomes noise. Grace + grit is musical flow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.
truewhealthness.com/mawy - Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/drlimeilin/ - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/p/True- Whealthness-61571508277023/ - LinkedIn: https://www.
linkedin.com/in/drlimeilin/
Image Credits
Cathy Amwoza @Black Fielding Photography for the main photo of me in the dress holding the yellow flower.