Shownotes
What if the thing you have been calling wellness was never really designed to make you well? In this episode of Wellness Reimagined, Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart, a board-certified radiation oncologist and integrative healer, shares the journey that changed everything she thought she knew about health. After decades of Western medical training, it was her own body that finally asked her to stop optimising and start listening.
This conversation goes beneath the surface of routines and supplements and arrives somewhere quieter and more honest. Dr. Hart talks about childhood trauma, treatment-resistant depression, the myth of the mind-body-spirit divide, and why the most radical health act for many people is simply learning to hear their own intuition again. If you have ever done all the right things and still felt quietly unwell, this episode was made for you.
About the Guest:
Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart is a board-certified radiation oncologist with over 30 years of clinical experience, trained at Washington University in St. Louis. After her own journey through childhood trauma, treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, and insomnia, she discovered the Kundalini Activation Process (KAP) and the MAP Method, which became the foundation for her integrative healing practice. She now runs two practices: Healing by Hart, focused on holistic and energy-based healing, and Heart to Heart Cancer Consultants, specialising in trauma-informed oncology.
Key Takeaways:
- The division between body, mind and spirit is a myth. Dr. Hart describes how treating them as separate kept her unwell for decades. Healing happened only when she started addressing all three as one interconnected system.
- Success culture can be the thing making you sick. Overwork, under-sleep and constant productivity were things society called achievement. Dr. Hart recognised them as an imbalance that cost her health, and eventually her peace.
- Intuition is not a feeling — it is a signal. When we fill every quiet moment with noise, we lose access to the body's most honest feedback. Moments of stillness are not optional extras; they are how we stay guided.
- Simplicity is the rule, not a retreat. Our ancestors had clean air, clean water, whole food, sleep aligned with sunrise and sunset. Most of what feels complicated in wellness is noise we have added on top of something that was always simple.
- Start with what keeps you alive. Before any wellness protocol, breathwork comes first. Then hydration with filtered water. Then whole food. Then sleep quality. Then the air you breathe. These four or five basics are the foundation everything else rests on.
- Your definition of well is yours alone. What works for one body may not serve another. Listening to external rules without checking them against your own experience is the most common way people keep getting lost.
Connect With the Guest:
Mentioned by Dr. Hart in the episode:
- Healing by Hart (holistic and energy healing): https://healingbyhart.com
- Heart to Heart Cancer Consultants (oncology practice): https://h2hcc.com
Episode Chapters:
[00:00] Questioning the Rulebook — Why this episode exists and what Wellness Reimagined is really asking (approx.)
[03:30] What Wellness Actually Means to Her — Dr. Hart redefines healing as reconnecting with body and intuition (approx.)
[08:00] Thirty Years of the Wrong Answer — How a radiation oncologist's own health broke down despite doing everything Western medicine said (approx.)
[15:00] The Myth We Were Never Told — Why treating body, mind and spirit as separate things was the root of the problem (approx.)
[22:00] Society's Definition of Success — On overwork, motherhood, burnout and the oxygen mask you keep forgetting to put on yourself (approx.)
[30:00] The Optimization Trap — When the pursuit of health starts costing you your peace (approx.)
[38:00] Where to Start Tomorrow — Breathwork, water, food, sleep and air: five basics that form the honest foundation of well-being (approx.)
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Transcripts
00:00:08 Rasmeet: Welcome to Wellness Reimagined. I am RA Smith, and this is the show where we stay curious instead of certain, where we question the assumptions we have absorbed about health, and ask what actually serves a real human life. Tonight we are exploring how much of mainstream wellness might be missing the point, and what a more integrative, honest version could look like. So come with an open mind rather than a fixed one, and let us reimagine this together. Together, I am joined by Doctor Nasreen Hart. What I love about Doctor Nosheen is a refusal to accept that the easy answer, the way she holds both the rigor and the curiosity at once. Nosheen, it is a real pleasure to have you here.
00:00:55 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you.
00:00:57 Rasmeet: Yes, it's my pleasure. So before we get into the bigger questions, I would love to start, you know, with something personal that when you think about your own definition of being, well, what is it different today from what you might have said about it, you know, earlier in your life.
00:01:17 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Um, yes. Um, I guess wellness for me or another way of defining it, healing for me is reconnecting with my body and with my intuition. Because I believe if we are reconnected with our body and intuition, we have all the answers inside of us. We do not need any external resource to tell us what we need to eat, when we need to rest, and what is good for us.
00:01:53 Rasmeet: Right. And I want to begin with your story, you know, rather than the theory, because I think it grounds everything. So take us back to a belief about health or wellness that you once fully accepted, or, you know, something you followed faithfully because before you began to question it, what was it and why did it make so much sense at that time? And what eventually made you pause and wonder that whether it was actually serving you?
00:02:20 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: So I am a radiation oncologist. So I went through all Western training to become a physician first and become a radiation oncologist next. But due to a significant amount of childhood traumas, I was suffering from treatment resistant clinical depression, PTSD, panic attacks, and insomnia. And like a very good Western medicine doctor, I followed all the recommendations of Western medicine, many prescriptions, thirty years of therapy, and I was not getting any better. And that is when I questioned Western medicine. And in fact, it was through energy healing, specifically Kundalini activation process that I got my health back and opened my eyes into a holistic way of looking at health.
00:03:29 Rasmeet: Okay. And, uh, when you know, the moment you first doubted it, what did that cracked open for you?
00:03:39 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Um, you know, I, we were trained as Western medicine physicians that the answer to every question was in a prescription in a bottle of medicine. And that was really not true. Uh, what was necessary for me was to find balance in my life, pay attention to the basics. Meaning that first of all, I needed to understand that division between body, mind, and spirit was a myth, and that I, as a human being, was just one unique system where the balance between my mind, body and spirit was absolutely necessary. And I needed to address all of those in order to be a healthy human being. And only when I did that, I. Then I found my health.
00:04:42 Rasmeet: Okay. And there is something refreshing in hearing some someone, you know, admit that they once believed something that they have since outgrown. And we treat our health convictions as permanent, that when really they are snapshots of, you know, what we knew at that time? I think a lot of people listening are feeling that quiet permission to question the routine that they have been, you know, quite cunningly, not because it was wrong, but because they never actually asked if it fits them. That willingness to question is exactly the same spirit that this show was built on. So let us go underneath the surface of a wellness conversation, because I think there is something it consistently overlooks so much of what we sold treats symptoms in isolation are and turns wellbeing into a checklist to perfect. So when you honestly, you know at what mainstream wellness fall shorts, what is the deeper thing that it tends to miss or the part of being human, it cannot quite fit into a label or a routine.
00:05:53 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: You know, I live in the United States and, um, uh, we, I believe the society misguides us by defining success. For example, as a physician, I was extremely overworked. I was working too many hours. I was, uh, I was sleeping very few hours. I was very stressed out. And society was defining that as success, that I was very productive. Uh, but the truth was that I was living a life completely out of balance. Uh, I was not only a physician, I was a young mother. I had a young child. So I had too many responsibilities and I could not create that balance. And now when I look back, I recognize that all those definitions were wrong. And, uh, I now very much emphasize on having eight hours of sleep at night. I recognize that that is not only very necessary for my body, but is also necessary for my soul and mind. Um, uh, I, uh, put a lot of emphasis on, um, uh, nurturing my spirit in terms of a spiritual work, whether that is meditation or whether that is, uh, Kundalini activation process. So, um, I believe that this, uh, very critical point of my life is the balance, the balance of paying attention to nurturing my spiritual journey and all of that, uh, as opposed to what was defined for me as quote unquote success, which was a very, uh, unbalanced life.
00:08:04 Rasmeet: Right. And stay with that for a second. And why do you think that we keep searching for that checklist even when parts of our senses that it is incomplete.
00:08:16 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Uh, you know, um, I think there's a lot of, uh, at least in the society I live at, there's a lot of pressure and expectation, especially for us women, that we have to be a lot of things at once. We have to be a very good mother. We have to be a very good wife. We now we work in society. We have to be a very good doctor. So we constantly want to meet all of those expectations. And we put ourselves at last. But, um, recognizing that, uh, just like the analogy that when you're at the airplane, you put the oxygen mask on your own nose first before you put the oxygen mask on somebody else recognizing that if you are not a healthy woman, you cannot be a good mother, or a good wife or a good doctor or whatever you're doing. Uh, that that recognition is very, very important.
00:09:25 Rasmeet: And that lands because what you are describing is the difference between managing a body and tending to whole person. And that checklist is comforting precisely because it gives us something to control. But that control is, you know, not the same as care. And I want to bring this down into ordinary day now, because that is where these ideas either help or harm and the pressure to optimize that does not stay in theory. It shows up in how we eat, how we move, or how we judge ourselves. At the end of day, that did not, you know, go as we planned. So in your experience, what are these everyday ways this optimization mindset actually undermines well-being and the moments where the pursuit of health start costing us our peace.
00:10:13 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Um, that's, that's a very, very good question. And, um, I believe I personally believe in, uh, a disciplined routine. Uh, that is that, uh, for, for everybody that might look different, but I have to, uh, for example, um, do my meditation every day. I have to get enough sleep every day. I have a very, uh, strict routine. Uh, when the sun set sun sets, I minimize my exposure to light. I minimize my exposure to social media, to blue light. Uh, we not only need, uh, hygiene for our body, but also we need a spiritual hygiene. And unfortunately, these days with social media, internet, email. If we don't have that kind of hygiene and we are constantly bombarded with information, with emails, with phone calls, like after five p m, I do not open my email. I do not receive phone calls. I, I start settling my body and mind getting ready for bed time. I settle into my evening and my friends and my colleagues know that that is not negotiable. So everybody has to find out a way of creating hygiene not only for our body, for their body, but also for their mind and spirit. And that is the way to create boundary where we can protect our health.
00:12:09 Rasmeet: Right? And what is the one small way that you would invite someone to loosen that grip, that start, you know, if someone wants to start it tomorrow.
00:12:18 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: That's a very, very good question. Um, I, I have a morbid way of looking at it. I would say, uh, if you were looking at, uh, the most dangerous things, what is the first thing that would kill you? Right. So you would say, if I don't get enough oxygen, that would be the first thing that would kill me. Right. And if if I don't get water, if I don't get food, if I don't get sleep. So depending on what is that your system needs most. So I would say start with breathing. We don't really breathe well. And when we don't get enough oxygen, nothing works well in our system. So start with introducing some kind of breath work in your daily routine. And then when it comes to water, uh, make sure that you're hydrated. And not only that, make sure that you're drinking a very good filtered water that doesn't have all these chemicals. Then pay attention to what you're eating. Unfortunately, our food is so very unhealthy these days. Make sure that you're eating organic and you, um, uh, choose whole food rather than all this refined food. And then pay a lot of attention to the quality of your sleep. I would say these four are perhaps the most, the most important factors. And then pay attention to the area breathing. Filter the air you're breathing. These are really essential for everybody's health.
00:14:00 Rasmeet: Right. And I really appreciate how concrete that is, because the harm is usually hidden inside something that looks, you know, vicious and the tracking that becomes an anxiety, the discipline that tips into self punishment, or when wellness turns into one, you know, more way to fall short. It has quietly stopped being wellness. So I want to close on this long game because the noise does not stop. Someone finds a more grounded, honest relationship with their wellbeing. And then there is a new trend or a new wave of of pressure that pulls them right back into the chasing and comparing. So how do you help people stay rooted in their own definition over time? And how do they relate to the moments that, you know, they get sweep up again without deciding that they have failed.
00:14:52 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Again, that is stillness in us. As I started by saying that healing is reconnected with our body and our intuition. As long as we don't have any moments of stillness in our day, whether that is meditation or breathwork, whatever it is. Moments of silence where you can hear the whisper of your intuition and your body when you're always busy with noise of podcasts and YouTube and this and that, and you're constantly searching for answers outside of you, it's always confusing. But when you have moments of silence, when you can go in and reconnect with your own intuition, you're always guided. And I think we have to learn to rely our on our on own inner voice and our own body guiding us. Uh, what is that is working for us? And what is that is not good for us.
00:16:02 Rasmeet: Right? And if you let go of every rule about wellness, you have been told to follow and listen only to what your own life is asking for. What do you think it would actually be telling you?
00:16:16 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Um, I think that simplicity is the rule. Everything outside of us is making it too complicated. Like, oh, take these ten supplements and do this and do that. Um, it's in reality, it's very simple. Our grandparents and ancestors lived a very, very simple life. They woke up with the sunrise. They went to bed with the sunset. They lived in the nature. They grew their own food. They had clean air, clean water, very, very simple. I think we have made things too complicated.
00:17:00 Rasmeet: Right? And if someone listening has been doing everything right and still feels unwell, what is the one thing you you know, most want them to walk away with tonight?
00:17:12 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Uh, I don't think there is. Um, there is such a thing as everybody doing everything right? Because what outside sources are telling us that this is right for you might not be right for everybody. Everyone else. One of us is unique. Something that is right for me may not be right for you. For example, I became a raw vegan two years ago, but I don't walk around, tell people everybody should be raw vegan. You should listen to your body and find what fits your system, your body, and, uh, listen to your own body.
00:17:57 Rasmeet: Right. So, uh, machine. Where can our listeners find you and your work? And if they want to keep reimagining this with you.
00:18:07 Dr. Noushin Izadifar Hart: Sure. Uh, they can find me on my, I have two websites. One is healing by Heart and heart spells as h a r t that is for my energy healing and, uh, my advice on how to stay healthy. And if anybody is interested in me as an oncologist, they can to my other go to my other website called Heart to Heart Cancer Consultants. The website is letter H, number two, letter H, letter C, letter C dot com.
00:18:45 Rasmeet: Right? Thank you. This was wellness reimagined, doing exactly what it sets out to do, questioning the things we were told not to question. What is staying with me is your reminder that control is not the same as That a perfect routine can still leave the most human parts of us unattended. And to whoever is listening right now, especially the one exhausted by trying to optimize their way to feel whole. I will leave you with this. You do not have to own your well-being by doing more. You are allowed to question the rules you never agreed to, and tonight you can begin building something gentler and truer, a kind of health that finally has room for the whole of you. So thank you. It is really great having you here today.
