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A Conversation with Dr. Siddharth Shah on Wellbeing, Resilience, and his Personal Journey
74 Plays2 days ago
On today’s episode of Doorknob Comments, Fara and Grant are joined by Siddharth Shah, the Founder and President of Greenleaf Integrative. Dr. Shah is a preventive medicine physician whose path into medicine wound through the humanities, a year traveling in India, and early work in interfaith dialogue and social justice. Siddharth talks about how he found his way into psychiatry after leaving medical school twice, the mentors who shaped his approach, and why he sees agency, curiosity, and small wins as central to healing. He also reflects on the challenges of working in a world full of injustice and how practices of rest and embodied presence help sustain both clinicians and the communities they serve.
We hope you enjoy it.
Resources and Links
Doorknob Comments
https://www.doorknobcomments.com/
Dr. Siddharth Shah
Dr. Fara White
https://www.farawhitemd.com/
Dr. Grant Brenner
https://www.granthbrennermd.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/grant-h-brenner-md-dfapa/
Recommended
Transcript
Personal Narratives and Self-Efficacy
00:00:00
Speaker
I think that for many people, a narrative where they they actually claim with agency, they claim what I'm doing for myself and and then feeling the self-efficacy of having done it.
00:00:15
Speaker
those are Those are small wins that actually add up to being ah care that we need to withstand the world's um injustices and inconveniences all.
Meet the Hosts
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello, I'm Dr. Farrah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner. We're psychiatrists and therapists in private practice in New York. We started this podcast in 2019 to draw attention to a phenomenon called the doorknob comment.
00:00:44
Speaker
Doorknob comments are important things we all say from time to time, just as we're leaving the office, sometimes literally hand on the doorknob. just Doorknob comments happen not only during therapy, but also in everyday life.
00:00:55
Speaker
The point is that sometimes we aren't sure how to express the deeply meaningful things we're feeling, thinking, and experiencing. Maybe we're afraid to bring certain things out into the open, or are on the fence about wanting to discuss them. Sometimes we know we've got something we're unsure about sharing and are keeping it to ourselves, and sometimes we surprise ourselves by what
Introducing Dr. Siddharth Ashvin Shah
00:01:15
Speaker
comes out. one plus one Hi, welcome to the Doorknob Comments Podcast. I'm Grant. I'm here with my co-host, Farah. And today we have a very distinguished guest, an old friend and colleague, Dr. Siddharth Ashvin Shah.
00:01:28
Speaker
I'm going to let Dr. Shah introduce himself because he has so many positive things to say, and he's so eloquent and articulate it will be better coming from him. Welcome. ah Thank you. Thank you, Farah. Thank you, Grant. It's a delight to speak to you in this ah format.
Dr. Shah's Journey in Medicine
00:01:46
Speaker
My name is Siddharth, Siddharth Ashwin Shah. And in introducing myself, I would simply say that I started out um going into medical school with two really critical experiences. One is being focused on the humanities, ah having a degree in religious studies from undergraduate.
00:02:07
Speaker
studies And the arts and anthropology had always been really formative for me. And then second, I spent a year zigzagging India.
00:02:19
Speaker
I was born in Texas, but India had really drawn me because of ah recent readings really through my and undergraduate years. about activism and social change.
00:02:32
Speaker
And I wanted to connect that with all of my volunteerism in high school and college that had also taken me to people who believed in ah better world.
00:02:44
Speaker
And with both of those experiences, I went into medical school really searching for what my place would be in the place of health and caring for the world's hurts.
00:02:58
Speaker
That's really ah beautiful. and and I'm happy to hear about your path. I feel like this could this conversation couldn't be coming um at a better time, I think. Everyone is probably little bit demoralized. And i'm curious as to what happened in medical school and the path afterwards.
00:03:21
Speaker
I know that you and Grant met while you guys were in, maybe Grant, you were in residency and how things have gone from there. Well, I would say that some of the key experiences in medical school for me were um I knew that I loved infectious diseases. And I at one time thought that maybe I would specialize in tropical diseases because I wanted to do work internationally.
00:03:49
Speaker
I also loved the patient-doctor relationship. and And so when it came to my instructors who were all about physical physical diagnosis, not relying on tests and scans necessarily, but really listening to the patient and seeing how um the patient's concerns might occur,
00:04:12
Speaker
cohere into a pattern ah that is a disease category or a syndrome. That almost always fascinated me, just that process of discovery. The other really key experience that I had in medical school was that I essentially left medical school twice in the process, which for a kid of Indian immigrants was really a test of their resolve and their resilience as as a mother and father who were willing to let a child discover their path.
00:04:49
Speaker
And so I would say it was probably for many parents, it would be a near death experience. But for my parents, they they they trusted and listened to what I was seeking.
00:05:02
Speaker
And that was a deeper sense of how the the interest in humanities, in spiritual practices, into spiritual quests that humans and human families have, how that all could combine into the practice of medicine.
00:05:18
Speaker
So I returned to medicine and really grateful for that. I was really grateful for the advice that I got from people who kindly questioned why I would leave it um having done more than half.
From Psychiatry to Preventive Medicine
00:05:32
Speaker
And in finishing medical school, I did my internship in psychiatry at a residency in Kansas, the Menninger Clinic. It was its last year of operation in Kansas.
00:05:46
Speaker
What the Menninger Clinic was known for was an interdisciplinary approach to the restoration of individuals and their families that were affected by mental illness.
00:05:58
Speaker
health concerns or mental illness. And I was really drawn by um group therapy in particular and mind-body medicine. And so I focused on that in my one year of training psychiatry.
00:06:12
Speaker
And since it was the last year of Menninger's operation, I was at a crossroads after my internship. I could continue psychiatry ah where the Menninger Clinic moved to Houston, Texas, to Baylor College of Medicine, which is where I went to medical school.
00:06:29
Speaker
So that was appealing. But at the same time, i i felt that something would be gained by looking around at different options. And I landed on preventive medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Icahn School.
00:06:45
Speaker
And so I was not in psychiatry when I met you, Grant. You had already done your own changing of fields and gotten into psychiatry, which was, I think, something that we we had in common.
00:06:58
Speaker
You started surgery, right? Right. Right. yeah I also took a year off in medical school, though I didn't really question finishing med school. I needed a break. I did research in cancer, but kind of similar. Yeah. Yeah. We were we were introduced by a shared mentor, one of the the voluntary faculty there, Hillel Swiller, who is a real mensch and also a group therapist.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Hillel brought so much joy and ah connection in the process of doing psychiatry in ah form of ah group therapy.
00:07:36
Speaker
And i think he created an environment where ah a person who is not training any longer in psychiatry, like myself, could find mentorship and collegiality.
00:07:48
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And that meant quite a bit. And it serves me to this day. He taught me something very important. I remember I visited him in his office once that i to this day, remember and make use of.
00:08:01
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He told me that it was really important to nap.
00:08:05
Speaker
And he
Interfaith Dialogue and Innovative Apps
00:08:06
Speaker
was right. do you mind if we ask a little what you did when you took breaks from medical school? And I'm trying to restrain my usual sense of humor. the The other question I wanted to ask you somewhat tongue in cheek was, you know, what what do you think the best religion is?
00:08:23
Speaker
but
00:08:25
Speaker
If you had to pick one, you know? it's clearly ah the one I follow, the nameless one. I did make an app that allows people to design their own belief system.
00:08:38
Speaker
I'll share it with you later. Exactly. Well, I'm not joking. Actually not joking. But really in a, in a, on the serious note of, of religion, i have been interested in interfaith dialogue and comparative religion, giving a sense of, you know, what has been either eternal, what has been life-giving in the different religious traditions and, and taking it seriously, really you know,
00:09:10
Speaker
um there can be some very distinct differences. And so comparative religion is not the idea of trying to figure out what's common, but really appreciating the different notes, tasting notes, and deep core problems that each religious system ah seems to specialize in responding to.
00:09:33
Speaker
What did I do? you' done a lot of sorry You've done a lot of work in that area, just as a side note, helping to bridge differences in high conflict situations. So maybe we can talk about that a little later. And then, yes, what did you do? And then maybe wrap into slide into what you're doing now.
00:09:52
Speaker
And then we can find out more what advice you have for our listeners. Yeah. Sure. I probably did two key things when I took that time away from medical school.
00:10:03
Speaker
One is I explored a little further whether I would do a more academic PhD route where an inquiry into human suffering would be right for me. And that took me in particular to the Harvard Department of Social Medicine that was being ah headed up by Arthur Kleinman and other fantastic people, including um one of the graduates, Paul Farmer, ah who has done quite a bit of work around the world.
00:10:33
Speaker
That's an understatement and has written extensively. recently passed, right? Yes. And has been a leading light for many in the humanitarian space. And somebody who had an uncompromising view towards human thriving and human protection.
00:10:49
Speaker
i went to the re I went to the program there in social medicine, which was ah is a kind of a dual inquiry of anthropology and critical theory and medical practice.
00:11:02
Speaker
And I met with ah Arthur Kleinman and he he listened closely to what I was looking to do. and And he, in some ways, dissuaded me. He says, I think you're going to be fine you know returning to medical school. And and and you're always welcome to come and apply here, join here.
00:11:22
Speaker
um So that was one of the deep questions I had because I admired their work and I admired his his writings, which include illness narratives and social suffering. The second thing I did is because of that year I spent in India before medical school, I had all of these friendships and bonds, really these narratives in my mind of people I wanted to keep working with.
00:11:47
Speaker
So whether that was Shabnam in New Delhi or Sanjeev in the state of Gujarat or Anil, who with his wife, Daksha, you know still to this day influenced my thinking, they were working with ah tribal populations in India.
00:12:03
Speaker
um So in that break from medical school, I just took a flight to India and and continued my um affiliation, which was...
00:12:15
Speaker
half studying what the work was and half contributing where I could.
Humanitarian Work and Inspirations
00:12:20
Speaker
But I think I was still in the stage of being a student of the work rather than contributing to social change or humanitarian work.
00:12:29
Speaker
um I was taking my time. I was taking my time to think about what these life worlds were that ah involved ah working in some of the most difficult, challenging circumstances. Yeah.
00:12:41
Speaker
and Any influence of your ancestral home and some of the people who came from there? I remember visiting for one of your weddings to the same person, but in different locations. And it's a pretty storied and historical place in India, right?
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah. I wonder which one of us should clarify what we mean by one of my weddings. Well, it was, well, right. There was one in Ahmedabad and then there was one in Delhi. And I think there was one in Houston that I couldn't make it to.
00:13:07
Speaker
all to the same All to the same person. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I said that, right? Yeah. No, no. Yeah. ah Sorry if that sounded funny. Still my wonderful wife. And it took three weddings to really seal the deal.
00:13:25
Speaker
Well, was I mean, it was great it was great for me, I mean, especially the one in Ahmedabad, because I was kind of a spectacle, I think. But this is not about me. I think, you know, actually you you share something with my mother and father when when it comes to some of the how people will spectate, which is that you danced with such ah gusto there. And my mother and father um in you know, my mother is in her late 70s and my father's 83. They dance...
00:13:56
Speaker
they dance you know, they dance more than any 50 year old typically dances in India. And they are, they are a spectacle as well. So I think there's just something about channeling that joy and emotion that, that got you all, all those eyeballs.
00:14:19
Speaker
That's fine. Yeah. ah which my parents also share. i From my ancestral space, I would ah really link to the fact that you know I come from a ah society that has been heavily patriarchal for eons.
00:14:35
Speaker
and And part of my interest is in supporting those organizations that balance away from patriarchy to a more equal footing of influence.
00:14:47
Speaker
but But the story I'm going to tell you about the the impact that my ancestral experience had is in some ways patriarchal. I certainly recognize, which is that my two grandfathers and my contact with those two grandfathers, think, influenced me to this day from a professional standpoint.
00:15:07
Speaker
which is that my my father's father, Somal al-Shah, he um was for his life a professional artist, watercolor painter.
00:15:18
Speaker
And that was unusual in many of our family systems and in our clan. He did not meet great financial success, which is oftentimes the purpose of ah the family system um in my background.
00:15:37
Speaker
And he painted and he looked at the world with a very wide aperture and that impacted my father his and in terms of giving me all the leeway and flexibility I needed in my life to explore.
00:15:56
Speaker
My mother's father, Govind Lal Shah, he ah was ah merchant, a timber and lumber merchant. And every visit that I made to India, I found his work in some ways very inscrutable and uninteresting, except for the fact that what I was seeing is how much relationship building had to do with his work.
00:16:19
Speaker
I mean, hit I would watch him go to a ah small little space in the city and he would sit down with people and on little pieces of paper, they would write down basically the deal, the pricing, the terms.
00:16:33
Speaker
And Compared to somebody like my father's father painting, I found that, ah frankly, dull. And it was a great surprise to me that um ultimately i had to lead an and entrepreneurial endeavor, which I do now,
00:16:52
Speaker
Greenleaf Integrative, which is a big surprise. I never thought that I would be doing something where I'd be working with the terms of contracts and and ah doing the relationship building that's so fundamental to the work of human trust and and growing things.
00:17:11
Speaker
um bigger and stronger. um So I think my ancestral home in that way really did make a difference ah from the patriarchal side. from the the But then clearly both of my maternal grandmothers were always there as the glue and the infrastructure of our family lives.
00:17:33
Speaker
And I certainly oh an enormous debt to them, intangible and incalculable um to this day. And at the risk of maybe being incorrect and and possibly culturally biased, but my understanding is that Mahatma Gandhi also came from your town.
00:17:54
Speaker
The state, not the town. was from... I guess I projected that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But Gandhi had had his own, you know, like he he um went about his life in a very unusual iconoclastic way.
00:18:14
Speaker
I certainly identify with it. I'm not necessarily following that path. Well, you better hair. um and And so... um A pause, Farah, any thoughts? here You're sitting there looking very pleased. No, yeah, as I am curious to hear about the Greenleaf Enterprises and what you do today um Sure. and Greenleaf Integrative is is really an and accidental ah experience for me, but extremely strong as ah as a blessing.
Post-9/11 Trauma Work
00:18:52
Speaker
I was busy in the early after the 9-11 attacks.
00:18:58
Speaker
attack provided the context in which a lot of suffering needed to be addressed and and uncertainty in that um in that context. I was living in New York City with you, Grant.
00:19:15
Speaker
at Mount Sinai, and we were looking for different ways to respond at a population-based level ah to people who were experiencing trauma.
00:19:26
Speaker
But we were not necessarily going to go out and try to find all the people in the whole community of the tri-state area who had the the diagnostic criteria for PTSD or PTSD.
00:19:43
Speaker
other traumatic conditions. So what Greenleaf is, is ah like an evolution of about a decade of work in providing people ideas about how organizations can better respond to trauma that is not a diagnostic clinical trauma, but it is a largely population felt experience of trauma informed by psychiatry and psychology, but not limited to um to those disciplines.
00:20:18
Speaker
And as I was doing this work, which took me to India and Sri Lanka to respond to the tsunami, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which took me to the to Kashmir to work with survivors of the Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan, particularly.
00:20:38
Speaker
I found myself just doing the the the work of organizational consulting around the trauma that they were responding to and the trauma vicariously that their teams were experiencing and frequently finding that managers had an inkling that something more should be done, but there was a question of what exactly more should be done.
Founding Greenleaf Integrative
00:21:02
Speaker
um Some organizations had an employee assistance program and then many of these organizations, especially in much more remote places, lower resource settings,
00:21:13
Speaker
The idea of an employee assistance program was, you know, have a very far away concept. And so what I started to be able to partner with organizations with is what are some practical strategies, some strategies that complement something like an employee assistance program? How do you...
00:21:33
Speaker
um How do you excite the interest and rally the energy to do something for trauma when actually so much more seems to be the priority every time when it comes to a disaster?
00:21:48
Speaker
And so it would be oftentimes simple techniques, whether they be breathing techniques, guided meditations, or um a ah we oftentimes produced an index card technique type of way to monitor just how bad stress is getting for a person.
00:22:06
Speaker
Like and in in hospitals, people wear the dosimeter for radiation exposure and they, you know, people will, you know, if the the dose on your your on your coat um is showing to be too much exposure,
00:22:23
Speaker
ah radiation exposure, then you have to investigate further why um why this person is is getting so much ah of that exposure and possibly take steps for um mitigation.
00:22:36
Speaker
I guess what I'm relating that to is that people oftentimes, they have an abstract idea of just how much stress they're undergoing and they're coping with.
00:22:47
Speaker
But they're not really stopping to think about just how bad it's gotten and whether some steps need to be taken. And so you you know a simple job aid like an index card with a color continuum can help an individual track their own stress levels and the consequences of that stress and maybe do something about it.
00:23:08
Speaker
Kind of like, yeah, like... Green, yellow, orange, red. Precisely. was looking for your card. I have them somewhere. yeah i guess you know in response, that was a very long response to a simple question. How did green leaf come to be?
00:23:26
Speaker
I had moved to Washington DC by this time and it was in 2000, 2007, 2008 that I happened to meet somebody unbeknownst to me what his profession was. But as we started talking about my work with doctors, nurses, that I was working with the GW Center for Integrative Medicine at that time, seeing patients and also um consulting for burnout and vicarious trauma at the hospital center.
00:23:55
Speaker
This person I met at a film screening said, why don't you do this for the federal government? And i should shrugged my shoulders and said, oh I've never thought about that. And he said, it is the largest employer here in DC, you know. And he handed me his card. He introduced me to tim and Marcy at ah the US Agency for International Development, who heard what I was really up to in terms of preventing and mitigating trauma.
00:24:21
Speaker
And they said, we want to get you started right away. How do we work with you? And i sort of fumbled around at that time. I never really thought about the federal space.
00:24:32
Speaker
And they said, you need to have an organization. um it would be easiest if you had an LLC and were a private ah contractor to the government. And this was all very new to me. And then, you know sort of my my maternal grandfather's, you know, business background started coming back to me and saying, I had no idea I would ever be starting something that would be classified as a business.
00:24:55
Speaker
But that's how the federal government saw it. And ah we started Greenleaf in April of 2008. And it is still going strong as as a way of helping organizations large and small think ah about trauma in novel ways.
00:25:14
Speaker
Very good. I'd like to shift gears and try to capture some of the wisdom and pragmatic advice that you have gleaned over the years so that listeners can take something away that they may find useful, as Farah said, during so these stressful times.
00:25:31
Speaker
um As much as we may wish things to be different, we have to accept and work with where things are, um though not everyone is is feeling that stress. The world at large is quite more stressful, and I'd say I share that wish to help the common good.
00:25:51
Speaker
And one way to do that is to help individuals. So I'd like to ask you a few questions. Farah can ask them as well. I don't know if you have our interview questions handy.
00:26:03
Speaker
um But the first one is as follows. What are some of the common emotional and psychological barriers that keep people from pursuing greater well-being?
00:26:15
Speaker
I'm um glad that you're centering this on well-being because truly, i mean, to be able to respond to trauma is is ultimately a desire to stimulate a life-giving ah response in individuals, families, and whole systems.
00:26:35
Speaker
And wellbeing is the goal. And wellbeing, of course, is a, is a term that really needs to be defined because one person's wellbeing is not
Redefining Well-being
00:26:46
Speaker
necessarily the others.
00:26:46
Speaker
And, So I would start with that definition of well-being, which I think of as a um ah condition which improves all outcomes, basically.
00:27:00
Speaker
And so whether one is an individual who has more well-being or less well-being, The degree of well-being is going to lead to different outcomes in one's life. And that could be as micro as how I made my sandwich today, yeah you know, or how I perform at my job or how I drive ah drive on the roads today.
00:27:24
Speaker
So that well-being is just a fundamental condition, which then drives all other experiences in our minds and our hearts, and also exterior experiences um in terms of the product we put out into the world.
00:27:43
Speaker
And among those products being the relationships that we have ah in the world. So well-being is critical, critical um ah resource for all of us.
00:27:57
Speaker
And many, many a times when we think about stress in our worlds, we're oftentimes really relying, think a little too heavily on the concept of resilience.
00:28:09
Speaker
ah I happen to really strongly promote resilience in the work I do and how I speak about well-being. And yet I think that resilience is necessary for a good life, but it's not sufficient.
00:28:24
Speaker
And so the other piece is ah integration. It's not enough, again, back to resilience, it's not enough just to be coping with every stress. There's more to life than that.
00:28:34
Speaker
And so our humanity comes from what what I'm calling integration, and that has features of meaning-making, connection, and deeper, more durable insights about relationships.
00:28:46
Speaker
What's going on with me? What's going on with you? What's going on in the world? And i think that's what really adds and rounds out how well-being is ah ah a function of both resilience and integration working together.
00:29:04
Speaker
Barriers ah include, first of all, the more stressed I become, the less conditioned i become to deal with more stress. And so um just like a muscle, there's a point after which the muscle is less able to lift more weight.
00:29:23
Speaker
And there's a point after which the and the muscle can be injured and then needs a whole lot more rest. And in the same way, I think one of the key barriers to well-being is actually the depletion that people have, and the level of fragmentation, the opposite of integration.
00:29:45
Speaker
The level of fragmentation oftentimes makes it challenging to properly prioritize one's well-being because there's so much else going on. We've compartmentalized parts of our lives, and one of those is Well, I'm going to get back to well-being when I can.
00:30:03
Speaker
So the better approach is to have a ah way to make well-being more sticky. And you could use literally sticky notes on what I'm going to do.
00:30:17
Speaker
you know if If it's on my mirror that I see in the morning, if it's on the car dashboard, I can create small ah reminders of um what I'm going to do. Of course, we all have smartphones and and we can get an app to do that.
00:30:32
Speaker
Many people will be excited to get the next app for a for habits and other people are completely exhausted with all the notifications and cannot take another app.
00:30:45
Speaker
So I think really the The residency that I did after psychiatry, preventive medicine, is dedicated to finding solutions that work truly in real life, like how to create effective behavior change and have those behaviors be sticky.
00:31:05
Speaker
that That has actually been my life's work, um you know, really. the The content has been well-being and trauma. The process and methodology has been behavior change.
00:31:17
Speaker
And part of that is not really spouting off um or being very cautious not to just provide people a list of tips and tricks on how to deal with stress and how to be more well, but to lead people and systems through so sustainable approaches that will actually serve in times of crisis.
00:31:44
Speaker
That's amazing. A lot of my patients will talk about the fatigue they feel around wellness and self-care and trying to do all the right things all the time, coming home exhausted and then exhausting themselves you know with like another endeavor when really well-being can look like you know having a cup of herbal tea.
00:32:10
Speaker
doesn't need always be the the heavy lift. I think think get that is... Oh, I just wanted to add with that, Farah, that all of the many simple things that we actually do that in some do support our humanity and and our joy or our calm, frequently what we want to do is tag those experiences and say, that's one thing I did. That's one thing I did, you know?
00:32:39
Speaker
or even before I do it, rather than doing it, so speaking about in the past tense, I'm about to take, I'm about to take the shower after work. And that's going to wash off a little bit of what I've been carrying around, or I'm going to have this, uh, this cup of tea.
00:32:57
Speaker
And as this tea makes its way through my, uh, my mouth and, you know, my, my throat digestive system, ah that it is also sending, you know it's soothing me through and through.
00:33:11
Speaker
i mean, these are small metaphors. and I think that for many people, a narrative where they they actually claim with agency, they claim what I'm doing for myself and and then feeling the self-efficacy of having done it.
00:33:28
Speaker
those are Those are small wins that actually add up to being the care that we need to withstand the world's injustices ah and inconveniences all along.
00:33:45
Speaker
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I feel like in Western culture, wellness has become so commodified. It's like the tyranny of wellness. And, you know, I'm on social media and every two seconds there's a post on research shows that you do this, research shows that you do that. You take this supplement, you eat that food, you do this exercise.
00:34:07
Speaker
If everyone followed every piece of wellness advice that gave them 10 to 11% more wellness, they wouldn't have time to be living and present for a split second.
00:34:18
Speaker
And Farah, I wonder if that speaks to what you're seeing as well, this kind of like defensive rush to wellness. as a kind of a mindless way of coping with well-being stress and trying to prescribe well-being in a way which is likely to fail and is often devoid of true self-compassion.
00:34:41
Speaker
eight do see a lot of that, I think. that it has something to do with the way you know New Yorkers live their lives, um that there are not a lot of moments where people are...
00:34:58
Speaker
sort of willing and able to truly be present. So staying fit looks like going to a workout class or, you know, going and, and doing something.
00:35:12
Speaker
Everything is in such close proximity that I think sometimes the schedules and the um obligations, even if they're good things can be, it can feel like adding one more thing.
00:35:25
Speaker
Like perfectionism. Yeah. I agree about the the risk of commodifying self-care and and wellness. ah For me, the antidote is reminding people that self-care is actually part of the larger ecosystem.
00:35:44
Speaker
i call it something to the effect of care of self and others. And I think that's the That's truly what our goal should be. I mean, for me, because I work with um with people who in some way or the other are helpers, healers, or protectors, it makes a lot of sense because frequently self-care is almost seen as seen as self-indulgent, or I don't have time for that because other people are suffering more than than I am.
00:36:12
Speaker
But if if we can put it into the context of care of self and others is what's important, then what happens is that, a yes, please care for others. B, when somebody comes and tries to care for you, that's important. You accept that care.
00:36:27
Speaker
And yes, care for yourself and then give care to one to your own colleagues. And so it becomes a virtuous cycle, um I would hope. And frankly, one does not have to be professionally a helper, healer, a protector to be able to to reside in this ah paradigm, because all of us have parts of ourselves that are helpers, or healers or protectors to others.
00:36:56
Speaker
And so I think if we can embrace that, just remembering that not to be taking in self-care or wellness as a as it self-indulgent or atomistic, ah self-centered approach, but it's part of a larger system self-indulgent,
00:37:17
Speaker
We care for others. We accept care. We may accept care that's being given by my own self, self-care, but that it is alone, the be all and end all. And I mean, hey, if somebody could commodify the care of others, I'd i'd be quite interested in that. um because we we could certainly use more fueling of that um that sort of existential ah compassion that the world could use more of.
00:37:50
Speaker
I think there are some people trying to do it, but I don't know if they've had much success. Well, people make the case that the world is in a much better place than it's ever been.
00:38:02
Speaker
Steven Pinker is one of those, the the angels of our better nature. You know that crime and disease and all those things have gone down over the centuries. When the world is in a more stressful state, it's easy to be pessimistic.
00:38:19
Speaker
It's important to be realistic also. And so certainly, you know, there's a lot of inequity in society. And I'm curious, Siddharth, if you could envision a world where there weren't all of these obstacles, but what do you what do you think you'd like to see the world be like?
00:38:39
Speaker
Well, ah i'm I'm very familiar with how Pinker has argued that by all the numbers that we have less sources of material suffering. And I think we should celebrate that.
00:38:54
Speaker
And I think we should keep building on that. And certainly with technology, there are a number of ways that I envision that we're going to succeed at reducing the ah the that the material forms of suffering.
00:39:08
Speaker
I'm not quite aware of how our inner states and the sense of um well-being, whether we have higher levels of it now or lower levels of it. I certainly know that um there's plenty of um people who are speaking about all of the concerns of course, in the mental health crisis, ah how social media and increasing isolation, reduced human contact are enormous threats to society.
00:39:43
Speaker
And so what I would love to see is for people to take ah to take seriously that we can be methodical about promoting social ah well-being in um our families and our systems and our society.
00:40:01
Speaker
And that would include, i mean, ah system is not well if there are inequities. A system is not well if you're the if you're asking people to be resilient to inequities that are preventable.
00:40:16
Speaker
And so I think systems should be really vigilant for the opportunities that we have. to bring more people together, to ah identify the fragmentation in our lives, and and to take it seriously, to not, I think the economic and technological challenges forces of the world ah really do favor more and more isolation.
Challenges of Modern Isolation
00:40:47
Speaker
And so it's going to take quite a bit of effort on our parts to raise the alarm and to provide really um durable solutions to um the fact that it seems to me, um i don't have the research on this, it seems to me that it's easier to make money in ways that that are isolating for people rather than connecting for people.
00:41:14
Speaker
That sounds right. um I know we're sort of winding down for today, but I'm wondering if there's anything that, you know, we didn't ask about that you'd like to say or how and where people can find you and learn more about Greenleaf.
00:41:30
Speaker
Of course, but I know you're editing this. i want to say something more about the earlier questions. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It just occurs to me that I'm speaking to both of you who have professional practices and hey, you make money, but you make money through connecting people and connecting people with their inner parts. So I should i should revise what I said earlier by saying that I think that it's easier to make money at scale, at larger and larger scales.
00:42:02
Speaker
in ways that do not connect people. And I think it's oftentimes the micro scale that is, that is, that's very difficult to copy and paste, copy and paste, that that does connect people.
00:42:15
Speaker
And so I was just, I'm almost actively trying to make sure I'm integrated in speaking to both of you as I think about that conundrum. I think that's the challenge.
00:42:27
Speaker
um When I said, well, a lot of people are trying to do it is how to, you know, scale something like what we do. And I just resolved to know that there's not a there's not a way to do that, and that there's not a shortcut.
00:42:44
Speaker
um And, you know, people with our training could work 24 seven, but, and and not build anything bigger than what we have.
00:42:55
Speaker
um Yeah, yeah. it My my ah two daughters oftentimes reference the fact that they watch my dog who's looking outside the window and they refer to it as slow TV.
00:43:12
Speaker
And again, slow TV doesn't doesn't seem to be monetizable. ah But it is, it's all those small, those small moments, those very embodied human moments that seem to be um ah so, um so impactful to us. And, but also easy to, to just zip past and get to the, get to the true TV, the real technological TV and, and, and forget the slow TV that's in front of us.
00:43:48
Speaker
yeah There's a whole conversation there about the commodification of attention and doom scrolling and social media and the way that the human brain can be so easily hacked.
00:44:03
Speaker
And maybe part of well-being, I'm thinking, is learning how to unhack your own brain. Oh yeah, right. And so with that, thank you very much, Dr. Shah. It's always a pleasure. Can you let us know where people can learn more about you? And please mention, if it's still relevant, your meditation recordings, which are excellent.
00:44:23
Speaker
I appreciate the invitation. So people can find my work and what we do at greenleafintegrative.com.
00:44:35
Speaker
And I'm always ready to have a conversation with people who are curious about how to grow this work ah with ah organizations and teams.
00:44:48
Speaker
in particular. And secondly, yes, the guided meditations are streaming on several platforms. um I can definitely send you a link to share, but also on Apple TV, on Apple music, YouTube, ah they're, they're, they're free to listen to on YouTube, but if you have Spotify or Apple music, they're also available there.
00:45:13
Speaker
um If people would just look up, um, My full name, ah probably you find like 40 or 50 different guided meditations. But the ones I'm most excited about are ones that are associated with yoga nidra, which is a kind of ah ah a sleep-like state, which helps people with integration or better sleep.
00:45:38
Speaker
itself And people often say about yoga nidra that you could do it for 20 minutes, but feel like one had slept for two or three hours. That's subjective, of course, no studies to show that.
00:45:51
Speaker
um But I think it's it's an exciting way to do a guided meditation. And other meditations are related to workplace stress.
00:46:01
Speaker
ah particularly how to deal with setbacks and adversity, or if people are transiting to a difficult job site, um either by plane or by driving to a ah difficult and difficult meeting even, there's ways to prepare ah that my guided meditations are focused on.
00:46:22
Speaker
And I really appreciate all of the people who have suggested the different meditations that they would need to be useful in their lives. So I want i want to thank all the individuals that have put their trust in in this work. Thanks very much. Thank you both.
00:46:45
Speaker
Until next time, from Farrah and Grant, thanks for listening to Doorknob Comments and please feel free to reach out with suggestions or feedback. And if you have a good experience, please take a minute to leave a good rating.
00:46:59
Speaker
Lots of stars. We love it. Thank you. Remember, the Doorknob Comments podcast is not medical advice. If you may be in need of professional assistance, please seek consultation without delay.
00:47:15
Speaker
Take a pill and never get old.