The Power Of An Integrative Approach with Beena Patel

Welcome back to the doctor body mind soul podcast. My name is Dr. Jude. And this is a podcast which explores how we can integrate modern medicine and alternative therapies to help you get the holistic health care that you deserve. I will be speaking to healers and seekers, researchers and authors who will share their experiences and the evidence to help guide us all to Holistic Health. Let's do this. Beena Patel is a physician assistant to his work. It's an oncology at some of the top cancer institutions in New York City. But having had cancer herself at the tender age of 21, she is experienced both personally and professionally, that a more integrative approach to cancer care is sorely needed. She now incorporates alternative healing modalities to help people heal from the inside out. Well, hello, Beena, welcome.

Thank you, Jude. I'm so excited to be here.

Well, I'm really excited to be here, Beena, it's just really nice to speak to fellow medical professionals, healthcare professionals, health care providers, those who have experience of working within hospitals, surgeries, who have a similar experience, I guess, and seek the similar desire for more holistic, more holistic, integrative approaches.

Yes. So I also just want to share, I love the synchronicity with our backgrounds, because I feel like this is just going to make for a very empowering conversation based on both of our experiences. So I feel that when I was working at some of these top cancer institutions, every provider really did think in terms of best practices based on evidence based medicine, I really wanted the best for patients. And a lot of times I saw these patients were frustrated, because we would go in as a provider and tell them one thing, but then based on what insurance would provide. And a lot of times, I saw that not only did this interfere with the most optimal care patient could receive, but now they're having even more anxiety, they might be feeling even more depressed. And what do we usually offer these patients, a consultation with a psychiatrist, which is not wrong to do, however, that usually leads to medication. However, it was not often the answer. And I would hear these from these comments and feedback from patients themselves, saying, I want to wean off this medication because I feel all these other side effects, which we know when you're getting cancer treatment, or any type of rigorous treatment course for whatever disease someone might be experiencing. These medications can interact with one another. And so until we see people holistically and really get to the root cause we're adding fire. And so I really want to stress that I'm not opposed to medications. Many of us have used some type of medication in our lives, whether it's pain reliever for a headache, and it has been helpful. However, I believe in bridging the gap between medicine, alternative healing and seeing patients holistically. And when we do that more patients feel empowered over their care. Has there ever been a greater need for holistic health care than now? I feel that we should all ask ourselves that because I believe that when we get to this, this root cause of what we're experiencing and really understand that healing transcends beyond just the physical body. Physical body is important. But it goes beyond that. And there's so much more there's integrative approaches, we're going to see healthcare in a new light. And I truly feel that even healthcare workers are going to have less of a burden through this knowledge.

It's so interesting that you're talking about this because I was speaking to a acupuncturist, a few podcasts ago. And he said something very profound to me, which was when you take the spirit out of a system, the system becomes dispirited. And I think that what you're speaking to is that when we're working in a disparate system, so a system which Yeah, disconnects us from that desire, that that true innate desire to help someone when it's so hard to sometimes provide that help for the health care provider. That is so dispiriting because you know, it's the that has a real impact has a real impact on our ability to provide care for someone else. Like, it shouldn't be that hard. But sometimes it really is. I mean, I was at work yesterday, and it was, at times baffling to be confronted by the number of hoops I had to go through in order to get someone the help they needed. And if I hadn't done that, they wouldn't have received the care that they they did, and that could have had really devastating outcomes. And yet, I don't have the energy and no one has the energy to jump, you know, through 10 extra hoops per patient. And, and so, yeah, it's difficult, it's difficult, and it's having an impact on healthcare providers, which has an impact on the care that's provided. And we're seeing record numbers of doctors in this country, giving up their license to practice. And we are seeing, I think the statistic is four in 10, junior doctors who are wanting to leave the profession within the next five years, and I'm talking to you on a on a day that the junior doctors are striking. So, you know, on the surface, the strikes are about, you know, about P. But this is never around p and p is just a reflection of how society values the work that's been done. And I don't think health care providers are feeling valued, like deeply valued, and that when that occurs, it has a has a trickle down effect into how that person can show up for work, how they can provide the care for other people, if they're not feeling cared for. They can't care for others in the same way.

Yeah, you know, you bring up such an interesting point. And I had an eye opening experience that made me realize just about everyone is frustrating the healthcare system. And a lot of it is not the patient's fault. It's not the providers fault, a lot of it is this isn't to blame. But a lot of it does come from administration and works its way down. There's bureaucratic 's that go into this, that are beyond most of our control, for the most part. And yet, I don't want to sound powerless, and say there's nothing we can do. Because there's advocacy, there's ways to empower people with this knowledge like we're doing with the podcasts and the work you're doing. And so I want to shed a light to anyone who feels like this might be resonant for them that if they feel that they're also just really angry and pissed off the way things have been, you're not powerless, you can use your voice to stand up just like you're saying the junior doctors are doing today. It's not necessarily about the pay, they're frustrated, they don't feel valued. And so now they're speaking up so that they can be heard, so that they can be seen and what they're experiencing. There's a reason we're all angry collectively, we want to change this.

Can you tell me? What would be the first three things you would change about? Current cancer care? To make it more integrative? What do you think would be the first three things you think need the most immediate attention?

I love that question. And you put me on the spot with that one. So I would say first thing is empowering patients. What do you feel you need? Is it therapy? Is it psychiatry? Is it Reiki music therapy, yoga, Nidra, there's so much available, and sometimes they don't know sometimes they get overwhelmed with the options. That's where I would take the hand and educating them. Because if they don't know, it means there's room to learn. And they deserve each patient. I don't care what their socioeconomic status is. I don't care what their insurance is. I understand that there's obviously financial concerns that can go into it. But I still think it's every providers duty to give the full range of options to patients, and then let them decide. The second one that I would say is I would have an integrative medicine practitioner on the team, not a console I would actually have on the team, as the initial consultation. After you go through the diagnosis and tell the patient these are the options. This is what we think the treatment course would be. That would be best for you. This is what the evidence based medicine showing this is what the the latest research is showing. Give them all that yes, empower them and also have an integrative medicine practitioner come in and tell them also just so you know, these are other tools that are available for you so that patients can start to feel peace, some sort of piece from the get go rather than going into the hospital being admitted and thinking what's going to happen because I had cancer at a young age and when you go through something really A traumatic like cancer or disease or illness, there's, there's different things. It's traumatic, and whether people know it on a conscious level or not, your spirit actually leaves your body when you're stressed out. And until you do the healing work to bring your spirit back into your body, which is what I feel integrative medicine helped me with so much. You're just operating from this place of, it's not whole, you're not grounded in your body, your soul is almost fragmented. That's how I describe it. Because you're still in that place of trauma, whether you know it on a conscious level or not, most people don't know I didn't either, until I started doing yoga and meditation, making a daily practice, that I was literally calling my spirit back to me, and letting it know it's okay to be in this body. And we're healing and I am whole, exactly as I am. And we're going to be okay. And so that is why I felt so strongly about putting in consultation requests for integrative medicine.

So you, so you experienced real benefit yourself from an integrative approach, because you had a team in your cancer department, who could be consulted. And I'm really hearing that they offer alternative options alongside the conventional approach. So that so that patients have have have have, have options basically have choice. Is that how it works in the States,

so they have the option, but at the time that I was diagnosed, no one provided that for me, no one said, this might be an option for you, based on the six months to one year of noticing this ongoing brain fog that I was experiencing, that's when I realized something is off. And I really want to explore other modalities. So I actually had the intuitive nudge to start doing yoga, and going to other healing modalities, turning to them to see what it could provide for me, based on how much it helped me, that's when I went into the hospitals and realize, okay, more patients need to know about this, this is really important, so that they don't have to suffer for six months to a year or more thinking what's going on, and then going back to their providers and being prescribed more medications and more medications, because that is not the answer. So by the time I started working, it was a no brainer. I advocated for Integrative Medicine from day one.

I mean, it's, you know, a person our own personal experiences, and they speak or speak to myself and, you know, are so powerful. So, you know, having experienced deep healing for myself, I now feel like I really want to offer that to others. And so it sounds like yeah, that is the wounded healer archetype, isn't it? It's a strong one's a strong drive as some driver to to help others. And so I want to go, I want to talk more to your experience around the impact of, of offering integrative care, not only for patients, but to health care providers. I think we spoke before we recorded this, that we've both found integrative societies and communities in our respective countries. And this has been really affirming to find health care providers with a similar perspective, can you share the impact of integrative care on you as a health care

provider? Yes. So with integrative care, first of all, finding the different societies has been so instrumental to my journey because it's, we need community and we need other people who also share a similar perspective on where healthcare has to go in the future, this new paradigm of healthcare that we're opening up to, I think, as a provider, for me, I was always really good with using my days off going into deeper self care, and I don't just mean the deeper self care, as in taking a day off and doing a little bit of yoga. That's how it began. But then going into really, really deep healing, getting Reiki done on me because even healers and providers need their own healers and providers and we need to feel supported. And so, I've been finding that a lot of other clinicians in the societies for Integrative Medicine, these organizations for Integrative Medicine, they're actually they know that they're healers too. So once I became a Reiki healer, I started using some of my days off do Reiki on myself and outside of days off during the workday, I would actually take moments to myself to do meditation. I did this often, especially when times got really stressful. And I know it's like, how can you find time to meditate when your day is so crazy, that's usually when you need the meditation even more. And that's when if I couldn't find space to have 15 minutes to go deep into my breath, what I would do is go for a walk, even if it was in the unit, just a mindful walk, shutting everything out, maybe putting my headphones on letting a coworker know, I need a little bit of space, I'm feeling stressed out, they would say, Yeah, feel free to ask for support, you need it, which was always open for me. But being open to understanding that meditation, healing, yoga, breath work, these are tools available to us, too. It's not just for the patients. And the first step is really asking ourselves, what do I need in this moment? How do I feel? We don't ask ourselves enough times in a day, how do I feel we just autopilot go from one thing to the next. And so integrative medicine is going to shift everything, not just for patients, but also for health care providers, because who needs it more than the people who are providing that care as well?

Yeah, I have an interesting story, to share around that which as when I've gone to do i Alaska, in, in Peru, at the temple of the way, the light I've taught this talked about this many times before on this podcast, but they've started to hold retreats for healthcare practitioners. And so it is beautiful. It is and the shamans who were there, I didn't go to a specific retreat for health care workers. But they said that their first their first retreat for medical practitioners, and they'd never experienced such a lot of dense, dense energy. They've never had a story after anything, anything like that. And I just thought, wow. And then, you know, I go, you know, look back on a shift that I did just yesterday. And sort of really just take note of the amount of illness, stress, trauma death, that we do that we are in such close proximity to all the time, and don't necessarily know how to process and although I think it's useful to check in with ourselves, and how we feel, but I think that we actually really limit our vocabulary around our emotions is so limited, that sometimes we can only sometimes we only can describe how we feel as stressed, tired, hungry, happy, you know, we've got very limited emotional intelligence, in general. And so it really limits then our ability to really check in with how we are feeling that can be really an enigma to so many of us who have not had access to more spiritual healing modalities, which have trained us to tune in to really start to describe and explore how it is we are feeling so although I think that's a really useful question, a lot it can it I think it can be quite a limited one, for those of us who have an really learned how to describe or even understand how we actually feel, especially healthcare providers, whose and I'm talking from an experience of the emergency department and I know and oncology department is similar in terms of its pace, and demands, so yeah, it can be really difficult. So for anyone listening, and they sort of, are sort of might be rolling their eyes, like checking in with how they feel. It's like, I don't know how I feel. I just feel constantly like, you know, stressed, like noise I see you, I see you it can be hard to know how you do feel. But I think there's a real invitation in quiet moments. To start that process of curiosity into what it is that you're feeling and then Hmm, just ask that question again, like, how am I feeling? And how does that feel? How does that feel in the quiet moments,

and also educating, right, because we came into medicine, knowing that it'll be a lifelong journey of ongoing education. And that is something we knew when we signed up for me, it was never going to be a one and done process. And so I'll share this that a lot of my clients are very emotionally disconnected, like the women that I work with, they're very not in tune with their emotions. One of the things I tell them to pull up and I send it to them, too, is a sheet that has the different feelings, and values and needs that people have. And so these are tools that are easily accessible, you can Google it, and it's literally a sheet that you can hold on to, to start training yourself, what am I feeling, that's something we can do every day, I've done it for almost a year. And it changed my life. And so now it's just a part of me now I'm able to access more emotional or broader emotional vocabulary. And so I just want to share that these weren't tools that were accessible for me either at some point in my life, and I had, I had to educate myself on it.

You've talked about integrative medicine, you've talked about that already being used, at least in some capacity in some American hospitals. And you've shared the importance of that, in your own experience. Where would you where do you think? What do you think the future of medicine looks like?

I think the future of medicine is going to be a more integrative approach. And I actually believe it's because there's a lot more organizations opening up for more integrated healing is not necessarily being conducted in the hospitals directly. But the more organizations and companies start empowering people to be more knowledgeable about mental health and emotional health and wellness as a whole, we're going to see so many different avenues. And so I truly feel in the future, we're going to be having a mix of eastern and western philosophies. And will it take time to educate practitioners? Yes. However, I think that, like I said, before, we all came into this field, knowing it will be a lifelong journey of education, and whether or not you believe in it, I believe that we all came into this work for the common good of patients to really help them on their path. And so even if we didn't believe that this was the answer, we still have the right to educate patients on what is available to them, if it could potentially help optimize their care. And I truly feel that integrative medicine is going to blow up in the best way, in the next decade or so I think it already has. And there's a lot of people becoming a lot more vocal. There's so many conferences and summits, that people are discussing this work, a lot of doctors are actually transitioning out of standard health care practices and opening up their own practices where they can share more integrative healing techniques. And so more patients are learning. And I've actually had a lot of clients asking me about my own work and how I shifted from oncology to this space, and what was my journey. So more people are becoming knowledgeable, and it's just about continuing to stay up with the education and being open to new possibilities. And look at the generation that's even below us. They're all about what's new. They're trendy, and they're just starting all these new revolutions, I feel they're they're constantly keeping up with everything that's new. And so if this is what we know, the future is going to entail with AI and all these other things coming up, we can either stay stuck in our ways and say, Well, this is what I know. Or we can move with the current of life and expand the possibilities for what it means to have true holistic health care. And so yeah, my there's a whirlwind whirlwind of an answer, but I truly feel the whole of it is that we're going to be moving towards a more holistic approach. And I think more patients are going to be asking for it above all.

Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. So just to round off this conversation, Beena. Where can people find out a little bit more about you, and and what work you're currently involved in right now?

Yes, thank you. So the easiest way to work with me, you can check out my website, the yoga movement nyc.com, as in New York City, it's nyc.com and also my Instagram, which is the yoga movement. And the work that I'm primarily focused on right now I have two offers. It's heal your life, which is my signature program. It's around holistic health and wellness coaching, but it's so much deeper. I really I want to stress that it really is about everything I discussed the energetic, the spiritual healing, to really understand why a person is feeling stuck. Women don't just wake up and feel stuck, we're in constant motion change is always happening. So we get to the root cause of that, so that they can create a life that feels intentional, that feels fulfilling, where they're able to track what they want the love that they want the abundance that they want the success that they truly desire, not by societal standards, not the status quo, but what their heart really desires. And I'm also coming up launching an offer called the goddess code, I just want to mention that is my esoteric side coming out full force. And it's really to help women come into their feminine essence, because I do feel that is a missing piece. And this isn't to shame anyone, this is how we were raised, we work in a very over masculine culture, where it's always about being the mind and thinking and pushing and hustling and going after more. But what this has done is, a lot of women don't feel that they're enough. They don't feel that they're valued. And this program is self paced. It's self study, there's energy healing, there's transmissions and you can shift the energy instantly. That's what I want women to know that you can listen to a person's voice, you can shift your energy instantly, you can receive a healing, you can heal yourself, you can do it instantly to shift the energy of whatever you want to attract. You don't have to stay stuck in your emotions, you can clear them and create space for more healthier emotions. And that's how you build on these little steps that actually create a compound effect on bettering your health and your outlook and having a more positive perspective on life. So I'm launching that on July 1, I do have a discount that I'm offering right now, if anyone's interested, they can find that on my website. And yeah, I'm going to be hosting more retreats. That's where my spirit is calling me and I do feel that I'm going to most likely also be providing retreats for healthcare providers, I feel very strongly about burnout. And I really want more people to know that there are so many tools to help you it does not have to be energy healing. That's one modality, a really helpful one, I believe. There's also therapy, there's coaching, there's, if people feel that that's what they really need their psychiatry, there's so much I don't want it to sound like one is above the other. It's about coming into that space of trusting your intuition honoring what is right for you. We're all unique. We're all different beings. And so this is really about getting in touch with yourself. And that's the work that I'm here to teach to teach people to really understand your intuition. Listen to yourself. And for the women who feel like they feel like they're called to reach out to me trust that. And if not, I wish everyone the best. Because if you trust your guidance, you're always going to be led to what you need.

If you trust your guidance, you're always going to be led to what you need. Yeah. I love that. And yet trust sometimes to trust and be such a hard, hard lesson and, and, and such a such a difficult ask sometimes I've got that word tattooed on my arm so that I always be reminded to, to trust. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your passion, your experience, your courage. And, yeah, I put all of the links to the all of the relevant bits and bobs that you've mentioned, in the show notes people can reach out and connect with you in person. So thank you so much for for for being here with me today. Of course, thank

you for having me.