The Flow of Coherence: Cynthia Li

Dr. Cynthia Li joins us to talk about her new book, The Medicine of Flow. Trained as an internist, Cynthia developed an autoimmune condition and then chronic fatigue and dysautonomia, illnesses largely dismissed at the time as being in her head. Her own body pushed her out of the paradigm she was trained in and into functional medicine, qigong, and intuitive healing. A decade later, a second crisis took her back to housebound and taught her what all her effort hadn't: coherence, and what she calls embodied flow. We talk about surrender that isn't passivity, why nervous system regulation is only part of the picture, and how coherence moves between bodies. Guest Cynthia Li, MD, is a physician who moved from public health to integrative medicine and intuitive healing, with earlier work at Kaiser Permanente's HIV/AIDS group, San Francisco General Hospital, St. Anthony Clinic, and Doctors Without Borders in rural China. A certified qigong teacher and healer since 2014, she has served as faculty for Rachel Remen's Healer's Art program at UCSF, and her story appeared in Dr. Kelly Turner's Radical Remission documentary. She is the author of Brave New Medicine and The Medicine of Flow (May 2026). Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 00:01 From internist to patient: the first illness 00:05 Intuitive medicine, and learning to rule things in 00:07 The second health crisis and the turn to surrender 00:09 What coherence is, and why it isn't just relaxation 00:14 Too many apps: the body in incoherence 00:23 Breath, spiritus, and the nondual 00:27 Physics 101: why we are electromagnetic beings 00:31 Coherence in a time of polycrisis 00:34 Overlapping fields, and the living mandala 00:40 Why the collective comes sixth 00:47 Bamboo in the wind, and whether the future of medicine is ancient Books and practices The Medicine of Flow: Harmonizing Your Inner State for Effortless Healing (Reveal Press, May 2026) Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness (New Harbinger, 2019) Embodied Flow Methods, free guided audio and video for the practices in the book, including coherent breathing and a downloadable 30-day worksheet Find Cynthia cynthialimd.com Instagram LinkedIn Facebook Psychology Today Her New York Times piece on the pandemic, poverty, and homelessness Going deeper Awakin Call with Michael Lerner, July 2026, on The Medicine of Flow Her first Awakin Call, 2020, on healing from the first crisis HeartMath Institute, the heart coherence and HRV research referenced in the conversation Contact SAND [email protected] Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member