Is modern medicine enough, or is true healing found in the connection between mind, body, and spirit?

In this episode of Beyond The Pills, we explore the transformative journey of Dr. Rajat Chand, a physician who stepped beyond the traditional boundaries of medicine to embrace the life-changing power of mindfulness and holistic wellness. Dr. Chand’s story is an inspiring reminder that wellness is more than just the absence of disease—it’s about cultivating balance, emotional health, and purpose in every area of life.

As a seasoned medical professional, Dr. Chand witnessed firsthand the strengths and limitations of modern healthcare. While it excels at treating physical symptoms, he recognized its inability to address the deeper causes of illness—stress, emotional imbalance, and a disconnection from self. This realization set him on a path to integrate mindfulness, emotional well-being, and holistic practices into the traditional medical framework.

In this episode, Dr. Chand shares his journey of bridging the gap between medicine and mindfulness, and why the future of healthcare must go beyond treating symptoms to truly heal the whole person. You’ll discover how mindfulness practices can empower patients to take control of their well-being, while also offering healthcare providers tools to reduce burnout and connect more deeply with their purpose.

Whether you’re a patient looking for deeper healing, a healthcare provider seeking inspiration, or someone curious about mindfulness, this conversation offers actionable insights and life-changing lessons that will inspire you to redefine what wellness means in your life.

Key Takeaways:

Why Modern Medicine Needs Mindfulness:

Dr. Chand explores the gaps in modern healthcare, explaining why physical treatments often fall short without addressing emotional and mental health. Learn how mindfulness fills these gaps, helping to reduce stress and promote lasting wellness.

The Mind-Body-Spirit Connection:

Discover how your thoughts, emotions, and physical health are interconnected and why true healing requires nurturing all three aspects of your being. Dr. Chand explains how mindfulness practices can create harmony within this powerful triad.

The Transformative Power of Presence:

Dr. Chand highlights the science and practical benefits of mindfulness, from reducing anxiety and improving focus to fostering resilience in high-pressure environments.

How to Integrate Mindfulness into Everyday Life:

Learn actionable steps to incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine, whether through meditation, mindful breathing, or cultivating self-awareness in moments of stress.

Radiating Wellness Beyond the Clinic:

Dr. Chand shares how embracing mindfulness can create a ripple effect, improving not just your personal well-being but also your relationships, professional life, and sense of purpose.

🎧 Are you ready to redefine wellness and embrace a more mindful way of living?

Tune in to this inspiring episode with Dr. Rajat Chand and explore the transformative power of mindfulness. Whether you’re navigating the challenges of healthcare, dealing with stress, or simply curious about living with greater purpose, this episode will empower you to take the next step toward true healing.

Stream now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and start your journey toward balance, mindfulness, and holistic wellness today!

Contact Dr. Rajat Chand:

📌 Connect with Dr. Chand on LinkedIn

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Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody.

Welcome to this episode of

Beyond the Pills.

I'm Josh Remini,

the pharmacist turned healer.

And today I have a very special guest,

already a really good friend of mine.

We have Rajat Shahan, he's an MD,

he's a board certified

radiologist who's based out of Austin,

Texas,

and he specializes in both adult

and pediatric diagnosis and intervention.

But why he's here today is

he served as an author and

editor of multiple textbooks,

as well as a speaker for

international medical

conferences on the topics

related to both radiology

and mindfulness.

So Dr. Chan enjoys cooking,

Brazilian jiu-jitsu, artistic exploration,

and spending time with his pets.

I love pet owners and lovers.

He will be a lifelong

student in yoga and aims to

integrate Eastern spirituality,

not only with his holistic

view of healthcare,

but also in teaching the

future generations of physicians.

Welcome, Rajat.

What's up?

How are you doing, buddy?

Thank you so much for that

kind introduction, Josh.

It's really wonderful to be here.

I'm doing great.

It's a beautiful Friday.

I'm just making my way from

Virginia to Texas to

actually start a new job.

And likewise, it's wonderful meeting you,

becoming friends with you,

learning about this podcast.

I think it's a great initiative.

Super exciting content that

you're putting together.

And it's just really great

to be a part of it.

So thank you for the invitation.

I'm doing great.

Yeah.

So let's get down into it.

Like, you know,

Who is Rajat?

Who is Dr. Chand?

Like, what do you do?

Like radiologists meets mindfulness.

What is that about?

Like, who are you today?

What is this?

Like what life is great, right?

life is great life is you

know has to be great um

it's you know you gotta

have that perspective even

when it's not um you know

mindfulness is all about

making it great and how to

make it great um so you

know me in in my own personal journey um

starting, I guess, back in my childhood,

I was exposed to some of

the components of mindfulness,

meditation.

I would say overall from a

very superficial sense,

there was no deep pull from

my family to really be too

embedded in the philosophy

of the religion or spirituality.

Just kind of make of it

we would and adopt what we

want out of it and carry on

to our adulthood,

whatever we thought was

important about it.

So I had a little bit of a

basis of understanding of these

things mindfulness and

meditation growing up and

then started taking it a

little bit more seriously

just through my own natural

internal curiosity wanting

to know maybe a little bit

more about my roots but

actually the science and

the philosophy itself just

you know coming of age

going through undergrad

going getting you know

going into science biology

and pursuing medicine just

wanting to know you know

what is this thing behind

the mind and what it claims

to be able to do in terms

of not only you know aiding

in one's spiritual progress

but actually aiding in

one's health and you know

providing a good sound

environment internally and

even externally for somebody to

to live in and, you know, stay away from,

you know, potential chronic diseases.

And so, you know,

it's just something that I

wanted to learn more about

myself and just started

taking it up independently.

I would say, you know,

halfway through my undergrad years,

just thought, you know,

let me just develop a

regimented practice on my own,

see how long I can stick with it.

And, you know,

anything you start off as

can be a little bit rocky,

a little bit up and down.

But I think luckily for me

and I think for most people, you know,

commitment is the name of the game.

You stick with something long enough,

especially if it's tried and true.

And, you know,

so many people vouch for it.

it will work out for you.

It's just when it becomes a

natural part of your rhythm and flow,

something you feel

comfortable with to keep up

for however long you want.

And luckily I was able to

find that rhythm and flow

and it became a consistent

daily part of my life.

And fast forward a little

bit into my residency years,

really sort of faced with

some of the qualms of

modern day medicine and

just understanding from a

personal sense of how

actually this practice that I

that I luckily adopted not

too long ago is helping me

not only understand these issues better,

understanding how they affect me better,

understanding how they

affect my healthcare environment,

my colleagues, and not only understanding

the effect of the issues in

medicine and modern day

medicine and what they have

on the environment and

practitioners and providers,

but understanding how to

get over that and

mindfulness and meditation

being a tool to really

address these issues and

not only heal yourself,

um based on off of of what

you see and what affects

you um but also be able to

heal others which is also

you know the other part of

the equation um and being

able to do that in a way

that really comes from a

place of compassion and

equanimity um and so you

know as I progress in my practice

I started learning how

mindfulness is a tool to

really not only be affected by the issues,

but also continue to

provide excellent care to patients.

And so I just,

it was like two lines going

parallel in the same direction,

just making complete sense

in terms of having to keep

up the practice to be able

to continue to thrive in

such an environment.

um and then you know

becoming more progressed

and I guess more skilled

along those lines and

becoming more knowledgeable

in terms of looking into

the science more and

actually understanding you

know what is it about

mindfulness what is it

about meditation that

affects us what changes

happen in our body in our

brains in our minds that

really acts allow us to

adapt in such a way and be able to thrive

And then it just became from

there a natural inquiry,

curiosity turned into a passion,

into a hobby,

wanting to not only just

keep this information or

what I saw as a secret to myself,

but be able to spread that

message to others and say, hey,

there's a way to live beyond the stress,

live beyond the burnout.

And not only that,

but provide excellent care along the way.

Um, you know, to my colleagues,

to anyone I came across, um, you know,

and even to my patients, you know,

because our patients are dealing with the,

with the same issues,

not only affected by the

healthcare system due to a

number of different reasons, rising costs,

uh, you know,

inadequacies and access to healthcare.

I mean, you name it,

there's a laundry list of items.

Um, but also, um, you know, um,

finding compassion in themselves,

something that's really

important for one's health

and being able to avoid

certain disease processes.

And so,

I saw it as a multifaceted

tool to help not only fellow providers,

but also patients.

The curiosity hobby turned

into a passion desire to

educate as many people as possible.

And that's what I would say

has landed me here today.

Somebody who's just written

a recent book that talks

about the subject.

is sort of an A to Z manual

handbook that serves for

anyone in healthcare, really,

not really for patients,

but mostly for the provider side,

to be able to learn about

mindfulness meditation,

sort of as a blueprint in

terms of what it is,

how to integrate it into

your personal lives,

into your professional lives,

into your healthcare environment,

whether that may be clinic, an office,

medical education, you know,

administration side of things,

whatever it may be,

and to maintain the practice and to,

you know, to

and all the aforementioned

benefits that come through that.

So that's the long and the short of it.

I'm happy to sort of iron

out anything in between, but yeah,

what can I clarify?

There's so much in there.

I've got all of my notes

written down from just that,

like so cool.

We're definitely going to

get to your book because I think

You talked about parallels, right?

Like it's a parallel to like

what I call and it's funny how you meet,

right?

Like you're doing what

you're doing for your profession,

like this healthcare profession.

We got to talk about...

stress and burnout in health

care we got to talk about

um the backed by science

piece because we're both

scientists right we both

learned from the language

of medicine or west

medicine right md pharmacist

And we've had our own health journeys,

right?

These journeys of healing

ourselves and being called

to help others and the

parallel of using it.

I loved how you said like

using it in your day to day,

not only for yourself.

But to teach your patients,

to teach the healthcare system,

that's broken.

It's obviously broken.

We know that it's broken.

We're the sickest,

richest country in the world.

So there's so much to unpack here.

So I'll try to guide some of

these questions because...

They're all amazing in this

parallel universe we're

both in is like I'm

literally in a process

right now of running

pharmacists through a

burnout reversal program.

And it's all based on mindfulness, right?

It's based on like we can

talk about the science of

like heart math and

neuroscience and moving the

brainwaves and and how it

relates not only to our own

personal well-being, but it also

even in the energetic field,

it translates over to your patient.

It translates over into them.

I love what you're doing,

but was it always this way for you?

Tell us a little bit about,

take us back to this time where,

because when I think of healthcare,

it is super stressful.

You're an MD.

You went through

undergrad you went through

like you went through

medical school you went

through your residency

you've gone through all

these processes and it's

super stressful in other

words it's almost like a

rite of passage right tell

tell the people listening

like what was it like going

through that process of

like you know you'll sleep

when you're dead philosophy

of like if you don't work a

hundred and twenty hours you're failing

And that's my I might be

undervaluing that a little

bit or underestimating.

So take us back to where you

went through school.

Did you always use this mindfulness?

Were you already like there

or was it there a place

where you're like something

else has to click here?

Yeah, so.

There's no wrong answers to

these questions.

That's why they're beautiful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, they're great questions.

So again,

I think my own independent

mindfulness meditation practice is

just luckily started

alongside my education.

There was no sort of point

where I need to pursue

mindfulness meditation in

order to help me get over

the qualms that I'm

experiencing in education

and in modern day Western medicine.

It's just luckily something

that I started early on and

Luckily that I adapted into

my life in terms of a

continuous ongoing daily

regimen and then found that, wow,

this tool that I just luckily adopted,

I would say in the thick of

my residency years is

something that is really

helping me face these

issues that I'm experiencing that

that I don't really align

with that are bothering me

in the sense of medicine

being a profit driven model

that there's so much

greed and power struggles.

There's a wonderful quote by Paul Starr.

He's an author.

He's a professor of

sociology at Princeton.

And he says,

the dream of reason never took

power into account.

And I think that's so

applicable to medicine and

kind of the problems that

we're facing in medicine.

It's an institution that

should be based off of

reason and

interconnectedness and lack of greed.

But it's just so usurped and

consumed by those issues.

And a lot of it comes down to

you know, just aforementioned greed,

the need for power.

So, you know, experiencing these things,

you know,

face to face in my medical

training and then just realizing, wow,

like this tool that I've

adapted is really helping

me kind of understand

myself and others through this process.

But not only that,

overcome it as well and progress,

you know,

from a personal and even

spiritual perspective.

And it's just,

it's funny it's one of those

things and it's like uh

it's it's like you know

there's a good and bad and

everything from a

non-dualistic approach it's

like gosh I really had to

be in the thick of the

struggles of a really harsh

environment in terms of

training but it's those

types of environments

especially when you're able

to keep up a practice like

this that will really even

you know allow your

progress to take off from

an exponential um um you

know manner um you know

being able to practice

mindfulness and meditation

in not the best of

circumstances gives you

that much more ability to,

to progress in terms of

being able to acquire its

benefits and even advanced spiritually.

So I think I was lucky, but, um, you know,

obviously it's one of those

things that you look back on it.

Do you,

do you wish you could have avoided it?

Um,

it's hard to say because I

wouldn't be here where I am

right now if I if I if I

didn't have you know the

the the training and and

the circumstances that I

went through um and so yeah

um to look to I guess go

back to your question um

you know were things always

this way they they

they started as separate

entities kind of moving

alongside one another.

And then it came to a

realization that this is

something that's actually

gonna help me drastically,

not only through my training,

but in my personal life.

And ultimately when I'm

practicing autonomously as

a physician to provide

really holistic healthcare

to my patients.

And I think our patients,

know the difference.

I think our patients when

they meet a provider, they

compassion and the ability

and and just your general

interest in their care from

the from the view

perspective of

interconnectedness seeing

someone as you see yourself

and not just as something

that's going to add value

to your practice or

something that's just going

to you know um

you know help you from a

from a material perspective

um you know that's

something that people I

think pick on pick off

right away yeah and I think

it's really important what

you said earlier just now

was also really important I

want to touch on this

because what we're talking

about right now is what I

and I think you believe is

like this new present

future of medicine right but

we have a big challenge issue.

Our healthcare system is broken.

And the fact that it's

broken is because it is profit centered,

right?

We know big pharma, we know big business,

we know big insurance,

healthcare in this country,

is a business first this is

why I started my own

pharmacy which turned into

a health wellness center

like all doctors and

pharmacists and health care

providers that's the first

question I ask a pharmacy

student that comes to learn

from us here is why did you

get into pharmacy and they

say I want to help people

right so we all want to be healers

But then we get trained, right,

as doctors and pharmacists

in this Westworld medicine

of allopathic disease, diagnosis,

treatment.

And then what are we taught?

Like, we find out your problem.

which is not patient-centered.

We prescribe you a drug and

put you in the system,

and we tell you the drug is

supposed to fix you or heal you.

But in fact, for chronic conditions,

we all know that that just

masks the symptom of the problem.

And it's funny, in the drug monographs,

because in pharmacy school...

I'm dated.

I did it pharmacy school in

the nineties is you'd pull

out the package insert and

the very top of it would be

in conjunction with diet

and lifestyle changes, take this medicine,

but we kind of skip over that.

And so we,

you and I are talking about

bringing these mindfulness

practices into ourselves.

I love what you talked about the,

I call it the merging, right?

The merging of your

your parallel world of, Hey,

I'm doing this for me,

but it's actually really good here.

And it just fit nicely.

So we got to talk about this

because this wasn't the case for like,

you didn't learn this in medical school.

Like you should treat

yourself first and you

should go within and close

your eyes and be mindful.

Like,

So let's talk about, because what you do,

right?

You want to teach future

generations of physicians

and you happen to go along

this journey and now we're

figuring out the science,

which is our Westworld brain,

our scientific brains need to say,

this has to match the thing, right?

We talked about before this conversation,

like there's

Lots of peer-reviewed

journals and studies now

with mindfulness and

neuroscience and

neuroplasticity and how it

affects the body and how

this body-mind connection is a real thing,

not a woo-woo shaman's been doing this.

So this podcast is about

ancient wisdom meets modern

science for true healing.

So one, we got to talk about that.

But before we talk about that,

I want you to talk from

your own perspective about

the issues we're having in

healthcare today as it

relates to the stress and

burnout and emotional

wellbeing issues we have in

healthcare as it relates to providers.

Like, yeah,

because because when you went

through med school,

I'm pretty sure it wasn't

the easiest experience of

your life and all the

students that you saw.

But then you become a doctor

and you're already like

tell people about not only

what mindfulness does, but before that,

let's talk about stress

burnout as it relates to

being a physician.

And the continued,

I call it the feed forward

cycle because the six

minute visit and the profit

first and all this stuff,

we're bringing all that on.

And so healthcare is a super stress.

How do we, how do we,

The brokenness for me,

we're in one of the most

stressful positions of any

provider or or health care

or not even health care of

any profession.

But we're supposed to be the

people helping people get well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

let's talk about the problem and then

let's talk about that solution,

because I think we're on

the same wavelength on the solution part.

Right, right, right.

Gosh, okay.

So it's like, I want people to know, like,

from the doctor perspective, like,

what's the normal day look like?

And how is that?

How does that work from the from the?

Yeah, so, you know,

why is it broken for you?

Yeah,

I think it goes back to the these

sort of main core issues that we've,

you know, talked about greed,

uh profit driven model uh

power struggle hierarchy um

this lack of

interconnectedness just

seeing something and this

just material sort of

acquiring attainment perspective

of, of training and a job.

Walk,

walk the person who's listening or

watching this,

like walk us through the life of how,

how we're actually as providers,

all doctors, pharmacists,

healthcare providers,

they want to do well.

They really want to take care of people.

Absolutely.

But there's so many roadblocks for us.

Totally, totally.

And I think it goes back to

this whole dream of reason

forgot to take power into

account and the way that we

define power and the way

that we define it is having and money

and, you know, hierarchy and, you know,

separating yourself from

someone else based off of, you know,

just how much you've

accomplished or what your titles are or,

you know, these types of things.

So this whole dream of

wanting to do well and help others,

you know, it's there.

It's very real, as you mentioned.

That's the most...

common reason that people go

into this profession is

they want to be compassionate providers.

But all these issues that

we've talked about do an

injustice to the system and

essentially set people up

for failure because the

reality of the situation is

that when you go through

all this training,

you go through all this education,

you land on the other side,

you get your first job,

you're immediately, you know,

sooner than later,

you're immediately faced

with the reality of the situation is that,

all right, there are outcomes.

There are, you know,

you have to be not only a

very responsible, very, you know,

intelligent and capable physician,

but at the same time,

while providing excellent care,

you have to meet demands

and you have to make sure that, you know,

your wherever your work

environment is whatever

your revenue model is that

it's that it's thriving and

that you're an equal player

um and for many individuals

that that can end up me you

know meaning taking on a

significant amount of work

that maybe you thought you

know in your in all the the

glory of of your profession

and providing compassionate

care and kind of

what that does for your

ethos that you thought you

could take that on and you

could do it day to day.

But the reality of the

situation is that it's impossible.

It's really,

really difficult for

individuals in this type of

environment to meet

those types of demands and

at the same time, by the way,

live out this lifestyle and

to a level of comfort that

they thought that they

would be able to acquire and maintain.

And it's just sort of this

sort of vicious revolving cycle of

this having this perspective

of acquiring this material

perspective of making money

for the organization,

but also acquiring the next

thing and just acquiring more in life.

And, you know,

once you are able to meet the mark,

and you know, make the CEOs happy,

then you know,

it's just about making sure

that you make enough at the

end of the day to make sure that your

your life is comfortable and

you're always sort of just

seeking comfort on a level

that's defined by

materialism and material

needs and desires.

And you just consistently

want more and more and more of that.

And you're always just

chasing the same things over again.

All right, meeting adequacy marks,

meeting productivity levels,

okay,

making enough of a paycheck to have

the things in life that I want.

And, you know, this,

the process and how

medicine is structured sets

us up to be that way.

It creates our minds to be

concerned about only these things.

And

It doesn't matter who you

are and what you do.

When you saturate the mind

and our egos and our

self-referential thinking

process with these main

things that matter most

importantly in life,

you're constantly just

going to be worrying about those things.

And then slowly,

as you're acquiring more and more,

as you're meeting these marks,

the stress and the burnout,

which is directly related

to these things in your

mind and other things you

have to worry in your mind,

uh whatever it may be the

education that you're

providing or the lack of

education that you're

providing your health

outcomes how good they are

how bad they are how well

your patients are doing

their long-term outcomes um

you know your interactions

with people at work not

only at work in your

personal life and your

family how those things are

being you know effective

all these things are

contributing to basically

the stress of the mind

which then basically as you

and I are well aware

translates to the stress of the body.

And so, you know, that's,

I guess the long and the short of it is,

you know, it's a system,

it's unfortunately,

it's an issue that's

created by and perpetuated

by the system and how the

system is created and run.

And, you know,

we are just unfortunately

blind to the process as it's occurring.

We think that we're meeting

the market and we think

that we're acquiring so

that we think things are great,

but slowly, incrementally,

the stress is building up,

the burnout's building up, you know,

until we maybe get to a

breaking point where we

don't understand why things

aren't going the way

that they should or why am I

having chronic stress?

uh whatever it may be uh

obesity insulin resistance

substance abuse all these

things that we use as um

you know um the way our

body our our body reacts to

all this or the way that we

may try to escape these

types of um you know issues

which is a huge piece right

totally because what you

said there's two things

like the system is stacked

against us because we go to these

We go to these large institutions.

There's a high amount of

education needed to be a

provider these days.

Pharmacists and doctors, they're doctors.

They go through this

doctorate program and then

they got to get the skillset.

And so you spent this big,

huge period of time because

you really feel like you

want to help other people

you have a ton of debt and

the reward at the end of the tunnel is,

well,

you can make a good living and you

can do what you want to do,

what you love to do.

And then you get in the system.

I've met plenty of doctors

and now pharmacists are

trying to get out of the

system because the systems

failed them because once they get in it,

it's like now they're in the rat race.

So they have to cover their

debt and they're not paying

actually able to do what

they thought they were supposed to do,

which is help people.

Right.

And so this is feed forward system,

but then it creates that

perpetuating stress with

the downstream effects of

stress is insulin resistance and obesity.

And then what you said is

like numbing the stress

with the things on the

outside that aren't so good for us.

And then we get substance

abuse and burnout is real.

So thank you for bringing that up.

Like,

healthcare burnout,

like people don't realize

suicidal ideation for

healthcare providers is at

the top of the list.

So

We know there's a problem.

We know it's in.

And so the reason you are so

called to do this as a

provider for providers, mindfulness,

talk to us a little bit about, well,

talk to us a little bit

about the science from your perspective,

because I want people to

realize we can say this

stuff as we've already been through it,

but we,

you're seeing a ton of

physicians and you're you

work in a hospital system

and you're radiologists and

you've got all these

different people in the

system and they're they're

not all like you right

they're all pretty much

burnt out and on the end of

both they're burning the

candle on both ends they're

super stressed out and we

can help them but talk to

us a little bit about the

solution here like

mindfulness to you

meditation what has it done

for you and then

What is the science here?

Tell us a little bit from your perspective,

because this will obviously

flow into what we're doing here,

but tell us a little bit about that,

because I think it's

important for people to

hear it from the doctor who

understands medical terminology,

but also this is stuff that

people have been doing for

thousands of years, right?

So talk to me about the science.

I love the science of this stuff.

We're bringing the ancient

wisdom into the science piece now.

Yeah, you know,

it's all pretty straightforward,

I would say.

You know,

looking back at this model

physician that we have who

wants to do great,

who wants to provide passionate care,

compassionate care,

and then ultimately gets

trapped in this model that

doesn't do justice to their aspirations,

what they really,

who they really want to be

as a physician.

not only does this person

have to live and work in this model,

they have to do what they set out to do.

They have to be that

compassionate physician day

in and day out.

They have to make lots of

sacrifices to be that person,

whatever it may be, waking up early,

limiting their involvement

in outings or vacations or whatever,

just trying to be

disciplined in that aspect,

but also trying to be

disciplined in being a

compassionate provider.

And those two things are

really hard to do.

They're,

especially in the environment that

healthcare providers have to work in,

being compassionate and

making sacrifices are just

adding to the pressures on

a certain individual.

So it's not easy.

It's not easy to provide

compassionate care day in and day out.

So you basically look at

this model where somebody

is trying to balance these

two things that make them a

wonderful not only person but physician.

And then you look at the time in between.

And the time in between when

they're not working and

they have this time off and

they want to be, you know,

they want to relieve themselves.

What is the main issue

that's not letting them be

someone who's mindful or

present or finding joy in

their everyday circumstances?

And it's what we've already talked about.

It's the stress, it's the mind.

It's this thing in our mind

that continuously makes us

think about ourselves.

And in this environment

where we're facing really hard work

We have to provide excellent care.

We have to be cognizant of our outcomes.

We have to reduce our risk

and responsibility.

We have to train other people.

We have to do that in an

excellent way as well.

Oh,

but also I have to make sure that the

business is running.

And I have to make sure that

I'm making enough money at

the end of the day to live comfortably

our mind has no other

possible way to escape

these components that are

just basically the things

that saturate us and that

we're gonna constantly

think about because it

brings us back to us and

our survival in this world

and our perception of

living as a thriving individual.

And so the whole science

behind it is basically

breaking that cycle of

thinking about me and my

issues and the problems that I have.

And instead of being

consumed by anxiety and

fear in the time that I have off,

you're able to actually

live in a way and

experience the world with more joy,

self-compassion,

appreciation for your

everyday circumstances and

and everything you experience.

And then that's the puzzle.

So it's like, how do you make that happen?

It's how do I not pay

attention to my problems?

How do I not pay attention

to these things that are

really important that

affect me daily in my work

and in my personal life?

All of the anxieties and the

fears that we accumulate

that we're constantly thinking of.

It's basically breaking this

self-referential process in our mind.

And there are a number of

different networks in our

brain that contribute to

this self-referential process.

But the main one is called

the default mode network.

And you've probably heard about it.

And there are a number of

different networks in the brain.

There's a salience network.

There's the central executive network.

But basically the default

mode network is the brain's

way of basically

continuously thinking about itself.

And what we're able to do

through meditation training

is we're able to weaken the connectivity

that network in the brain

and we're able to amplify

and strengthen connectivity

of the other networks and

the communication between

the frontal lobe and namely

the limbic system which you

know controls things like

our our memories our fears

you know things that are

more associated with our

mammalian or more primitive

brain and that allowed us

to survive in our more

primitive environments and

when you strengthen certain

connections and you weaken other ones,

basically what you're

allowing your brain to do

is create a new type of

connection between or

you're trying to modify the

connection between the

frontal lobe and the limbic

system so that you are able

to not give your attention

or pay so much time towards

this self-referential thought process,

which is the default mode network.

And so that's that I would

say is in a nutshell what

we're trying to do.

We're trying to lessen the

control of the default mode

network and we're trying to

increase the strength in

the activity and

connections between other

networks that allow the

frontal lobe and the limbic

system to communicate in a

way that's new for us that

we haven't really had the

opportunity to experience before.

And then

When you're able to do that,

you're able to basically

enter a zone where there's

there's just less thought.

There's just less thinking overall.

And as mentioned,

the thinking about me or I-ness or,

you know,

what is going to help me in my

survival as this related to

my fears or anxieties.

And so a lot of the growth

that comes through

meditation and mindfulness

comes in that space of clear thinking

um you know essentially

nothingness um quiet the

mind right right exactly um

this quiet zone where

you're able to notice new

things that you normally

wouldn't notice either

within yourself or in your

environment um and and um

develop new appreciation for

these types of things.

Where in your normal day to day,

you don't give yourself

that opportunity to even

realize that there is a

space like that that could

potentially exist.

So, yeah, it boils down to, I would say,

these new connections,

this communication between

the frontal lobe and the

limbic system kind of boils

down to a few major things.

One is attentional control.

So deciding where we're

going to give our attention,

how much of our attention

we're going to give it.

And the other the other

thing is emotional regulation,

deciding what our response

is going to be to the

things that we experience

and how much of an

emotional response or what

type of emotional response

we want to give to that experience.

And it could be anything

from pain or fear or anxiety and then.

When you come to this clear

space of being able to

evaluate things with less thought,

you're able to train your

mind in a way to say, you know what,

I don't need to be as

reactive to this thing that

I normally have given X amount of

my fear or anxiety response to.

I don't need to even appreciate pain,

even physical pain in a certain way,

compared to how I normally would have

in the past,

and your brain sort of teaches

your mind and your body of

a new way of living and

experiencing and reacting

to basically everything around you,

not only around you, but within you.

So that's what I would say,

without getting too much

into the different anatomical components,

just keeping it basic at the networks,

understanding the

connection between the

frontal lobe and the limbic system,

and then realizing that the

two major players that

we're trying to modify are our attention,

and the control of our

attention and the emotions

and the regulation of our emotions,

which includes actual

physical response to pain.

Yeah,

I firmly believe that like a lot of

the way,

the way I like say this stuff too,

is like the limbic system

is like the older brain.

It's the mammalian brain is

the fight fighter flip freeze.

We w it's, it's there for a purpose,

right?

We, we can't survive without that part,

but we've survived because.

You know, we can run from the tiger.

We don't get eaten.

We go back to grazing.

Right.

Well,

all mammals can get themselves out of

that.

There's no default for them

to stay in fight or flight.

They don't get eaten.

They literally shake off the

energy and they go back to

their thing like nothing happened.

But we have this thing called this nice,

beautiful front brain, this neocortex,

this frontal lobe,

like all this creative space.

And you're either in fight

or flight or you're in rest and digest,

right?

Sympathetic, parasympathetic.

You can't be in both.

And so I try to teach people, like,

if you're in fight or flight,

you can't be creative.

You can't be in your zone.

You can't do the things your

beautiful human, like,

evolved brain can do

because you're still in

that limbic state.

I'm still fighting.

I'm still freezing.

I'm still here.

And so I love what you kind

of you kind of parallel the

default mode because people

get defaulted into that mode.

In other words,

people are in fight or flight.

Seventy percent of the time.

But we're not humanly evolved to do that.

So how do we get out of the

default and circle that

flywheel backwards is through meditation,

is creating those new

neural networks and

allowing us to create a new default,

if you will,

which is more in line with

where we're supposed to be, right?

So I loved all of that.

That's beautiful.

All right, let's talk about...

your book, let's talk about like bringing,

bringing providers to this place where

we're moving them from

survival to creation.

We're moving them from this

state of stress and burnout

into this place where they,

no matter what the stressor is,

their perception, like,

I love what you said is like,

it's not just the awareness

and where you put your awareness.

It's also the emotional awareness.

gravity to what you put to

it or how long you extend that out,

because we're all stressed.

We're still in this environment, right?

As health care providers and in the world,

for Christ's sake,

like everybody's stressed.

So

Talk to us a little bit about your book.

What was the inspiration?

Because I love this.

I love this concept that you're bringing.

Like you said, it's not new,

but it's so needed.

If we could get mindfulness in...

I have this vision of having

meditation classes in my pharmacy,

like after hours,

bringing people in and

teaching them that this is it.

And teaching providers,

like we've already chatted about how,

well, when, it's not if, it's when,

the retreat for all of this

is going to happen for providers,

but talk to us a little bit

about your book, the inspiration from it.

Cause you're,

you're a well-seasoned author

now and you're,

you're integrating all this and you're,

you're now it's about the

future generations, right.

And getting people now.

So talk to us a little bit

about your book.

Yeah.

The book, you know,

as you hit on it in medicine, right.

Mindfulness in medicine.

Yes.

Cool.

Yeah, right.

Mindfulness in medicine.

And, you know, as you've hit on, it's,

it's,

we're not trying to reinvent the

wheel here.

We're, we're, we're packaging old,

you know,

well respected and validated from us,

even from a from a current

scientific perspective um

science into um into health

care and in all different

spaces and whatever that

may look like whether it's

um for the individual

physician who just wants to

make it or provider who

wants to make it more a

part of their own personal

lives whether it's a clinic

a medical department you

know medical education

a blueprint for anyone in

healthcare who wants to

find this way out from this

cycle that's not getting

them the wellness results

that they want or is not

allowing them to be the

holistic type of

practitioner that they want to be.

a handbook that defines what it is,

the basic science of how it works.

It includes multiple recent

publications that support

all of this stuff along the way.

There's also some appendices

in the back that serve as

an anecdotal guide for

producing research.

We found some really good

recent articles that have

been published and got a

couple of the authors to

agree to put in their

experience in terms of

putting together a study in

mindfulness in the

healthcare space and kind

of how they went about doing that.

So for anyone who's

interested in producing research,

that could be a very

valuable guide to just

glean some practical information from

from those authors in terms

of how they went about it.

There's also,

in terms of medical education

and training,

for anyone that's interested

in making this potentially

a more part of their training program,

kind of what that would look like,

how that would

how they could go about it,

how to facilitate access to

and even structure a

training program for both

the teacher and the students.

And even at a more

far-reaching perspective of

what this would actually

look like if it were

integrated into medical

education and graduate

medical education training,

what the ACGME milestones

would look like if they

were adapted to include

mindfulness as a measure in

terms of a proficient

doctor who's ready to go

out in the world and

provide compassionate care.

So it touches on, you know,

obviously there's a lot

that we could have written

and expanded about,

but it touches on some of

the more general aspects of

healthcare as you would expect

to be touched upon and how

to integrate mindfulness

into all of them.

Yeah,

that's mostly what the book is about.

What was your other question following?

No,

it's a big thing because here's the deal.

Mindfulness, meditation,

the research is irrefutable now.

We know it's so important

for immune function and

pain and everything because

it really does connect the

mind and the body together.

And so, in fact,

I recently got privy to a

new peer reviewed study

that shows that like sixty

six zero health conditions

can be improved within one

week with mindfulness.

And so we know that this works.

And then I love how you're

like moving it to how does

it relate to me?

So this is a handbook for

medical providers in any

part of healthcare that not

only can help themselves,

but also help their

practices move in that direction.

So it's not just if mindfulness works,

it's we know it works.

And now how do we integrate

it directly into the

practice of mindfulness?

of your specific modality, right?

That's awesome.

I love that.

The second piece was you

referred to it like, well, Anne,

we've painted the picture of the future,

right?

Because I know you're really

passionate about this

because it's who you are now.

It's like you want to teach

future generations.

So how do we get these in

the medical schools as part

of the curriculum?

How do we get these into the

pharmacy schools where

we're getting people there?

So I love how you've touched

on the science.

You've touched on the

practical aspects of doing it,

how to actually get done.

Because I think a lot of people think,

you know, first thing I say is like,

I don't meditate because

I'm not good at it.

It's like,

there's no such thing as not

good at meditation.

If you can close your eyes and go within,

you're pretty good, right?

So we know that.

So there's this part where

you get them through that process.

And I love that.

And then you also...

Then you move it into the medic.

So there's this,

it's like that fusion again.

We talked about it,

like moving in now into the profession,

but I always love this piece because in,

in healthcare or what we,

I call sick care now, but in healthcare,

when we're trying to people

make people less sick,

we don't have to really do

what we teach in that space.

Like, but in well care,

you really have to do you first, right?