#219: Your Burnout Survival Guide w. Dr. Neha Sangwan

Sep 21, 2023 | HEALTH, MENTAL - EMOTIONAL, The Gabby Reece Show

Listen: Apple | iHeart | Spotify

On this episode, I have a very special guest joining us. She is none other than Neha Sangwan, an incredible author and doctor whose new book “Powered by Me” is making waves in the self-improvement world.

What makes Neha’s book so unique is that it’s not just a regular read. It’s like a workbook that guides you through a journey of self-discovery. Whether it’s your mental practice, physical health, nutrition, emotional well-being, spiritual growth, or even your relationships, Neha breaks it all down into sections.

In today’s fast-paced world, it’s crucial for us to reconnect with ourselves. Neha’s mission is to help us do just that. She wants to empower individuals to understand their values, desires, and priorities, regardless of societal expectations or cultural norms. This is a journey that we must embark on ourselves, and Neha provides the tools to guide us along the way.

The book itself is a testament to Neha’s dedication and thoroughness. It’s like having a personal coach guiding you through each step of the process. Ultimately, it’s up to us to determine what we need more of and what we need less of in our lives. Neha’s book gives us the roadmap to make those crucial decisions.

So, get ready to be inspired and empowered as we dive deep into the world of self-discovery with Neha Sangwan.

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Show Transcript:

Hi everyone, welcome to the show. My guest today is Neha Sangwan. She has a new book out called “Powered by Me.”

And this is an incredible conversation because not only is this book like a workbook, that not only gets you to figure out what things are a drain and what things are a gain. So, whether it’s your mental practice, your physical practice, your nutrition. Your emotional practice, spiritual practice, even your friendships and community.

And she breaks it down section by section and gets you to say, hey, on a scale of one to 10, where are you at? What’s boosting you? What’s taking from you? How can you improve that? Her whole thing is really about burnout. This is a high performing, hard charging doctor that really had it in her mind.

Like I want approval. I want to love. I’m never going to say no to people. I’m just going to do everything I can to get that. And she burnt out. And I think we live in a day and age where the closer we can get to. Who am I what are my values really what do I want to be spending my time on what’s going to feed me where do I get that space to understand that regardless of where we come from what our culture is what the expectations are how do we arrive on that on our own and Neha really this is.

This is her mission. She wants to share this. She, it’s personal to her. She’s experienced it. She’s compassionate. She understands, yet the book is so thorough. It’s like a workbook and she breaks it all down in the ways that you can answer those questions for yourself. Cause at the end of the day, nobody can tell you how you’re feeling or what’s.

Important to you and what you need less of or more of. And so, I really appreciated this conversation because it’s somebody who’s lived it and gone through it and managing it and really can share it. So, I hope you enjoy,

I always feel like when someone. Has gone to school and done as much work as you have, it was a disservice to call you by your first name.

[00:02:39]Neha Sangwan: No, it’s about feeling connected to humans, and I find wearing a white coat while other people are like, naked shivering under a paper-thin gown, me using fancy language and calling them, ” Gabby,” and they call me “Dr. Sangwan” it just feels, it feels separating to me.

And so, to me, it’s more about humans. It doesn’t matter how much school I’ve had. It’s more about like how easily and authentically do we get to connect as humans, regardless of what our life experience has been.

[00:03:10] Gabby Reece: I couldn’t help but think that. So, your new book, “Powered by Me”, which congratulations.

[00:03:15] Neha Sangwan: Wait, how did you get one? Oh, they sent you one. I just got it. I just got my hands on it.

[00:03:23] Gabby Reece: I would love to know just out of curiosity how you got into this type of work because there’s something intimate and deep. And I was just curious what drew you to this type of work.

[00:03:37] Neha Sangwan: Do you mean medicine, or do you mean healing burnout?

[00:03:41] Gabby Reece: I think medicine and then what moves you because you’ve had a practice for a long time and now this seems to be the next iteration of, I’m seeing people going through all these things now it feels like I need to address burnout with just that process.

[00:03:57] Neha Sangwan: So, I’d say so if we go way back my parents are immigrants, I’m the middle daughter of three.

We were raised in Michigan, but when I was three months to two years old, my grandparents took me to Africa and my grandfather worked there for the United Nations. And so, he was on assignment. And they took me with them, but when I came back, it was the biggest trauma, really, probably of my life, which is a two-year-old who thinks her grandparents are her parents, but really finds out that now her parents and her sister, who’s three and a half, and she’s two are really her family.

And I, from that moment forward became an eternal people pleaser because I just didn’t want to get sent away again. I didn’t know what I did wrong to not be able to be with who I thought were my parents. And I spent a lifetime shutting down my emotions, thinking that I had done something wrong and being bullied, et cetera, and I didn’t know how to communicate.

So, my dad wanted me to be a son who was an engineer. I couldn’t do the son piece, but I could do the engineering piece. My mom wanted me to be a doctor because her parents. wouldn’t allow her to be that because if they’re in their culture and their generation, how good of a mother and a wife can you be if you’re always on call and you’re always at the hospital?

So, my mom wanted me to do that. My dad wanted the other experience. I was like, all right, everybody can stop fighting. I can do them both. Cause they’re not mutually exclusive. And what I’d say is engineering taught me to be a root cause problem solver. It taught me to be very practical, whether I’m talking about how we take steps to improve our health or how do we navigate the murky waters of our health, or how do we navigate the murky waters of our heart? So, I come with an engineering mind and then I went into medicine, which gave me a lot more people interaction, which I loved and. It took me a few years before I burned out. I burned out three years into practice as an internal medicine physician.

And when I burned out, it was such a big wake up call for me. Because first, I didn’t know what this thing was. No one had ever taught me about it. And so how did I get through 31 years of my life, or at that time, 33 years of my life? And not know this thing. Nobody talked about it because it was one of those things that was considered a failure.

It was one of those things that was considered, you just can’t hack it. You’re, why are you on medical leave? Are you kidding? Someone’s paying me and I’m not working. So, it was really a big sign of weakness. So, I had to go through what’s amazing is it cracked me open to my real life because.

What I learned starting at 30 really was about how our inability to communicate makes us physically ill. And my patients understood it. They knew when they were in for their heart attack, they would tell me all sorts of things that caused the stress that caused the heart attack to happen. They knew what happened, but I was still catching up.

And so, on stress leave at 33 years old, I started researching what’s the root of this? What is this? And I, we didn’t have, Google going on then and all these things. It was a lot. It was hard. We had just started all of this. And when I figured out that stress causes or exacerbates more than 80 percent of all illness, I thought to myself, why aren’t we asking people what’s at the root of their stress?

I’m a hospital doctor. Why before I, when I stabilize someone, if I know that this is the root of their stress, their ailments, why am I not asking them about it? And my colleagues basically said to me, just like you wouldn’t order a test or a diagnostic procedure that you didn’t know what to do with the result.

Nor would you ask a question that you don’t know what to do with the answer and that infuriated me and so for the next 20 years it has been my passion my you know My mission really to heal myself and then to translate it into a way That we can fill in the gaps to help heal others.

[00:08:33]Gabby Reece: Everyone is so different and it’s interesting because I would imagine culturally, you’re taught to be very stoic.

And I know in a way we’re I’m big interested in your take on this where we’re in this place. Of I almost feel like we’re now in hyper feeling, but we’re not actually getting to still even though there’s more expression and oh, I’m I need a mental health day. I still think to your point, though.

I don’t think people are still getting to the root of it. So maybe they’re not being quite as stoic. Like maybe I learned through sports, and you learn through your family and being a daughter of immigrants because it’s like, hey, listen, you’re going to get your education. You’re going to perform.

But I think we were in this over correction. I still don’t think we’re dealing with the root. I would be interested from your point, like how that showed up as somebody who’s hard charging, hard performing and stoic. How did the burnout and you talk about it in the book, but how did that not only show up for you, but how were you willing to honor it?

[00:09:35] Neha Sangwan: Listen, it was not a linear path. I had to go through, feeling shame and beating myself up and, worrying what everybody else thought of me and what I’d say before I really get into that is I would say it’s almost like the Me Too movement where when you open up that people may have been abused or there’s pain somewhere, okay, and people can do #MeToo, and they can write that on social that you have taken one step, which is the step of them, acknowledging and becoming aware of something that they may have put in the attic for their own survival. And so now, when they see other people being courageous, they’re willing to at least take that step.

But Gabby, this is why your podcast is so important. You’re practical. And what I think is causing, I don’t think we’re overcorrecting. Not at all. I think people don’t have the how. It’s a great, they want this desperately. They would heal it if they could, but their family of origin hasn’t taught them this.

Our education system taught math and science and social studies, right? Like we’re teaching things other than this. Their work environment says, keep work at work and home at home and, though it up and keep calm and carry on. Society says, faster is better. Profit over people. Do more with less.

Every message they’re getting from everywhere is giving them the indication that they’re not okay. And that there is not a path here and you need to figure it out. And when the dam of their heart overflows. With emotion that they can no longer keep in. We then blame them for it. There’s something wrong with that.

We need to be the ones. We have the responsibility, I really feel. Those of us with a platform, those of us with the ability to speak and write, and it’s our job. Just like back when my colleagues said, why would you ever ask a question you don’t know what to do with the answer? All I could think to myself is, they’re expecting us to figure it out.

If it’s not our job, whose job is it? Because you go to EAP, Employee Assistance Program, if you’re struggling, do they do? They send you to me. Now, what do I have in my arsenal? I have a prescription pad that can give you some time off. I give you some cocktail of medications to get you to sleep, to get, do, help you lift your spirits from depression.

But 10 days or a month later, I send you back in the ring for round two with no awareness about how you got there, no understanding of the patterns underneath, and really no shot at being able to succeed. And that’s why I wrote this book, because I just thought, wow, that’s what it felt like for me. And if we don’t have the answers, we better figure them out.

[00:12:58]
Gabby Reece: This book really has some very clear, and I’m excited to get into it about ways that people can take charge and measure what’s a gain and what’s a drain and things like that, but I’m just curious, how you present both things at once, because I also think we’re saying I have all these feeling, but there we do celebrate a little bit the victim mentality.

So how do we launch into both?

[00:13:25] Neha Sangwan: In a real way, I think every complex problem we face the way I think of it is me. We world people say, oh, Dr. Sangwan. Are you somebody saying that it’s somebody’s fault for burning out? Are you saying that what the World Health Organization says in 2019, which is that this is unmanaged stress in the workplace?

Are you saying that it’s the world we live in, and we can’t do anything about it? I’m saying yes and it is all those things. And you have choice. So, I’ll give you my example. I’m a doctor. I just told you how driven by people pleasing. I was how badly I wanted to be recognized and appreciated and celebrated by my family, the Indian community, and the world at large.

Once I took ownership that I wanted that recognition and love. I stopped blaming my parents for this. A great coach once said to me, you’re upset with your parents for making you do this. Who applied to medical school? Who did all those problem sets in engineering? Who did 36-hour shifts?

They weren’t doing them. They didn’t make you do anything. There was something you wanted more, that you were willing to put yourself through it. My older sister was like, that sounds boring, not interested, right? And so, if any of you out there have siblings, think about how your siblings react completely different than you do to the same parents, the same home, right?

Whatever’s going on, the first thing I’d say is, yes, there is a “me” component. No, it is not my fault. Okay? But were there ways I contributed to it? Yes. I used two 16-ounce ice cold Mountain Dews, plus a king size Snickers bar, and I could stay awake for 36 hours straight. Okay? Yes, it was survival. So, I don’t get mad at myself for that.

I say to my coping mechanisms, and each of you listening, just for a moment, reflect on what when you need to get yourself over a deadline, when you’re exhausted, but you’ve got to get through a drive, a deadline, a presentation, whatever it is, what’s the time-tested strategy that you use? To get you over that finish line because we’ve all got so I don’t get mad at those.

I thank them because there was a time in my life when I didn’t know how to do it better than that. And so, I say thank you to that strategy because it was a summer fling that became a bad marriage. It started to become how I lived and that’s not okay. Then people pleasing came in early.

Okay, that’s me. Bullying behavior, me saying yes to working in a trauma center that was understaffed and thinking I needed to become a partner. And yes, there’s cultural piece of this also, and then there’s the world piece, right? All the things, someone calls out sick and we don’t have a backup plan and all of it.

So, I have more load. So, when you think about a difficult problem that you want to solve. Think about the me, we world and figure out what parts mine that I can affect and change. How can I say, what if saying, what if instead of saying yes to an overnight shift, I said yes to a good night’s sleep. I have choices, but you know why I never said that.

Because I was so interested in getting an A. I wanted everybody to think I was like the rock star member of the team that would save us from every time we were understaffed, take care of my patients. I wanted to get an A and that ended up leading me right into the brick wall of burnout.

[00:17:39] Gabby Reece: We’re so scared and a lot of our communication and being wrong or being shown that we’re wrong or, we react so intensely and when you have that curiosity, you’re not so wound up in how am I? What’s the outcome? How am I going to look in this? And I also wonder how we’ve gotten taught because I really went through this for a long time until my twenties. I always joke that my husband’s the one who taught me to apologize. Because he was easy about it. And I was very prideful because that was a weakness.

And I didn’t grow up in a trustworthy house where I learned that. That skill where you’d say, hey, I was, I’m sorry, and someone didn’t hold it against you, or they actually apologize to you, even if you were the kid, whatever. But that when you can look in curiosity, it’s amazing how quickly we can get through a mountain of misunderstandings, much faster than we thought and it’s also learning that you know what that person is also different from me and maybe in certain things we’re never going to be like, okay, I totally in lockstep with one another and that’s okay too.

[00:18:46]Neha Sangwan: You bet. It’s what makes life fun.

What makes life fun and interesting. If you and I look the same, thought the same, didn’t have any differences and opinions and views, it would be boring. So yes, I think that’s true. You brought up something big. So, my parents said I was the hardest of the three girls to raise. I was the most defensive and stubborn.

You’re right because I was on lockdown. I was on lockdown that if I said anything or did anything or made a mistake or wasn’t a superstar, perhaps whatever I didn’t understand before would happen again. And so, then when I got bullied, I really shut down my emotions even more. And so what I’d say is growing up – acknowledge that I did something wrong now. What’s interesting that I realize is an apology.

First, a bad apology will cause much more damage than no apology at all. So, I wouldn’t give someone an apology like this. I said, I’m sorry. Like, why are you still bringing that up?

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. So that experience is useless. And so, the way that I think about it is. A sincere apology and I’ll say maybe I took credit for something you did in a meeting yesterday. Okay. If I did that for me to give you a complete apology where I said, hey, Gabby, I didn’t like the way things went yesterday.

Can we do a take-two? And you’re like, sure. So step one is thinking I need to think about why I did this and what’s motivating that and how it might have made you feel when you and I had worked on some project. I know this is a hypothetical, situation, but how would that have made you feel when I took credit for your work?

Right and took full credit in front of our peers. Next is, so think, why did I do it, feel, how might you feel from being on the receiving end of that, saying the words, I’m sorry, or I apologize. Yep. Literally saying them. Not it was, I already told you I felt bad. No.

I’m sorry. And this is the most important step telling you what will be different because I’m apologizing. And then lastly, asking you, is there anything else? So, it would sound like this. You got to give me a second, because I’m just doing it in real time here. Hey, Gabby yesterday in our meeting, I know we worked on this project for the last few months, and we decided I was the one because I’m more comfortable to speak in front of the group.

I’m going to be the one representing us. I know at the end I was supposed to call you up and we were supposed to answer questions together. I think there was some part of me that kind of took over and I was like enjoying it a little too much. Maybe it was like the attention or whatever it was, but I can imagine that it must, you must have felt left out, or you must have just felt completely unappreciated and dissed by me.

Not to mention nobody really knows how hard you’ve worked. Is that true? And then I must like, you have to say yes, but, or no, but right. So, then I go to, I want you to know that I am so sorry. I value our friendship and I saw the look on your face when I did it. And I just want to tell you. That I am going to write an email to the team, and I am going to let them know that I forgot to include you.

And I really made a mistake. I’m and I want to make that right. I want to know how you feel about that. And is there anything else that I may have done? That has caused us not to speak for the last 24 hours.

[00:22:50]Gabby Reece: I really appreciate the way you laid that out. And that’s a very, that’s like a professional environment. Do you think, because sometimes I see, I have three daughters and sometimes I see certain parenting things that seem to be a movement where, at times, they put a formality, a little bit of a formality about the way that they break things down with their kids in this sort of, this different type of parenting where there’s different, almost a better communication, but it almost gets a – it feels a little kind of stiff and professional for me I was just curious your point of view like I’ve had times with my kids where for example They’re saying they’re mad and I recognize right away, Hey, I blew it and I’m just curious. I’m looking for real feedback. For me within that is like keeping that intimate tone with people in a friendship or a partner or child, which is like you know what, I I blew it and I’m sorry and I’ll do better in this way. But do you know what I mean? Being thorough but being still intimate.

[00:23:57] Neha Sangwan: You bet. So, you’re exactly right. It’s funny. When we built these tools, it was almost like having to reverse-engineer what I was doing. Okay, what am I doing?

Oh, wow. I acknowledge how someone feels, and I’m thinking about what it must have been like for them. And when I apologize and I tell them what will be different, there’s a way in which, so first of all, if you’re somebody who’s just coming to this work, what I want you to know is the framework’s helpful, almost like guardrails, but make it your own because if you’re doing it this way, people who know you are going to be like.

That doesn’t sound like you did somebody teach you how to do that? Because you sound like you’re canned. Now, with your kids and your partner, even bigger awareness. So, what I say to them is, tell whoever your family is. So, let’s say they do a workshop with me, or I’ve done a town hall with them and they’re like, oh, Dr. Sangwan, I’m buying my book for my husband. He really needs it. And what I say to them is, I think a better idea might be for you to read it and then share with your family and your partner like, hey, I got, we did some communication work on health burnout relationships, and I’m learning to use some new tools so I can be a better listener in our relationship.

Would you give me feedback if I’m doing well or if I’m not? So, when I try it might not, it’s like riding, going from a tricycle to a two-wheel bike. It’s because I know I’m not going to do it quite right. You’re the one that I know will know if I’m getting better. So, what I do is I let people know that something’s changing, I give them a heads up, and then I enlist them in helping me so they don’t feel threatened by it.

And then there’s this piece with family with love, with personal relationships. Where it gets messy, it’s messy. Okay, we’ve cleaned up a lot of things in the corporate world. And I just have to say that I believe that what’s underneath there if you have trust and mutual respect, that’s where generous intent comes in.

And so, if you have generous intent, you’ll allow somebody else to get messy. Because they’re struggling, and they don’t mean it. Against you, they’re just angry, or they’re really upset, or whatever it is, and then you want them to. I remember my little niece. I don’t have kids myself, but I run youth groups for Gen Z, and I have taught kids from 5 years old to 28, and those aren’t just kids.

But when I do what I say to them is, and what I did with my niece is whenever I say to her, honey, do you want to talk about it, Simran? And she’d be like, no. And I’d say, okay, honey, it sounds like right now you want to cry it out. You want to yell it out. You have a lot of feelings you need to have right now.

I want you to know I’m right in the family room. And so when you’re ready to talk it out. You come see me and if there’s something about allowing that space and not maybe making people bad or wrong because of it, because that’s the only way that they’re going to be willing to try to do it differently if we help.

Then, with acceptance of how things are, and then we offer them a path to us.

[00:27:26]
Gabby Reece: So, in “Powered by Me,” you really break this up into sections. I’d like to just travel around and go one by one. And of course, you’re speaking my language when you start with the body, and you get into physical energy.

And I’m just curious. You know why you chose to do it system by system what, what has shown up for you and your practice that this is just the easiest way to get people to understand these opportunities to conserve energy, so they don’t get burnt out in work or in life.

[00:27:59] Neha Sangwan: Listen. I think the world doesn’t know how to handle this global epidemic that we’re facing.

And if I am truthful about it, I have my own path here, but in the last 20 years, working with thousands of providers and tens of thousands of patients and companies, people in companies, humans, what I’ve seen is people get to burnout as uniquely as their own fingerprint. So, my goal was. If I’m going to help solve something like this.

I must demystify it from being this like global overwhelm. I must personalize it to everybody listening, reading, whatever it is. And then I must give them powerful tools on to get out of it. Otherwise, it’s only going to be for a subset of people. It’s only going to be for women. It’s only going to be for men.

It’s only going to be for health care. It’s only no. This is like a human experience. And so what I thought is. People say to me, why didn’t you include money? You should have spoken about money. Okay. First, it’s long enough. It is. Yes. It’s true that 70 percent of people say financial stress is their biggest stressor. That’s true. But when I, my goal Gaby is if the world is like a big oak tree and there are branches and one of them is financial stress, and another one is bullying, and people have all these troubles and stress shows up in certain ways.

My goal is to go to the trunk and the roots of the tree so that if you understand where you’re having, where you are on the spectrum from burned out to fully charged, it can be figured out by whether you have a net gain or a net drain of energy on a physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual level.

I’m not talking to everybody. And so, it had to be as general as the net that I saw in these 20 years. That it could include everybody. It had to be as personal and specific as your fingerprint. And it had to be practical. Because you can’t awaken someone to this experience. And then not leave them the tools to get out.

That’s the thinking behind how I did it. And that’s why it’s taken me this long. My path would have been through the seer, feeler, people pleasing, and that’s it. But that’s not wide enough. That’s one way, right? It’s a lot of the stories I’ll tell, or I would be someone in boundaries who had two porous of boundaries.

I was like giving everyone, I was the feeler, I was relationships are what my currency is. But what about the people who think about that, who don’t think like that? And I think,

[00:30:47]Gabby Reece: Speaking about talking about all the branches you mentioned in the book, it’s like, these might be the things that you worry about.

And one of them was money. So, it’s getting people to understand if they can get a handle on their spiritual, their physical, their mental, their community, all these things that they can solve, all of this. So, on the physical, you go, you’re extensive. It’s interesting because what I get reassured of having these conversations all the time is that no matter what all the conversations, whether it’s your gut health, your emotional well-being, your cardiovascular health, they still all come back to the same exact roots.

On the physical section of the book, for you, what are the key things that you were really trying to get people to understand and pay attention to?

[00:31:41] Neha Sangwan: We have become masters of overriding the most important communication we have, which is our own physiology.

Tells us and gives us the earliest signals that something’s off. So, if we go back to the example of maybe me taking credit for your work at work, sitting in that meeting, the moment I did it, you knew you would have known because your stomach would have started turning. Something would have started happening.

Now, what you do with that discomfort is the next step, which are the coping mechanisms. What are those strategies? Whenever I’m really exhausted, it’s that mountain doing stickers that were 20 years ago. That’s not me now, but we have to do the number one thing. If you want to tune in sooner if you want to be able to change.

Direction: pay attention to what your body needs from you because it’s the best communicator ever, and it has a unique way of talking to you. Somebody, for me, its throat constriction stomach turning. Do you know how your body lets you out of your comfort zone?

[00:32:50] Gabby Reece: For me, I’ll start to get like almost a burning in the top of my head.

And if I’m having chronic stress, like something, my whole lower half, hips and knees are constantly inflamed. I can feel them. I start walking like I’m like a toy soldier for sure.

[00:33:05] Neha Sangwan: Okay. So how early you can decipher this, and you see how different you and I are radically different. Like I can’t tell you to look for throat constriction, and you can’t tell me to look for, whatever it is.

Each of us needs to become accountable and responsible for tuning inward. And for people who don’t know how to do this, what I would say to you is, this is what I do. I ask people to take like a stone, something smooth, an air pod, something that fits in your hand, and just hold on to that. Because if something changes emotionally in a conversation or in a meeting or whatever it is If you can’t feel something, at least know that you can feel this in your hand, and that will open up your, after a little while, if you, maybe it’s a few meetings, maybe it’s a few weeks, it will open up your ability to start feeling your body.

And if you can’t, what I want you to know is you become a master at serving in the external world. You are a master to what the external world wants from you, and you’ve forgotten to counterbalance your inner world, n equals one, to the outer world that we revere so much, n equals 10, people in a double-blinded, placebo-controlled study say that x, y, z happens.

We listen to that over our own bodies. And what I’m saying is we must do both. Now, if I talk about food as fuel, I talk about food stress and energy movement as joy and sleeping your way to health. One thing I’ll say is if you’re not sleeping, you’re not going to catch up. There’s no way because people think it’s a big waste of time sleep, and they can shave off time from sleep.

They think they’re like sleep if it’s a waste of time, what I think they don’t know is. It might be a waste of time regarding their external to-do list getting checked off, but they might not know that their body has an internal to-do list that needs to happen while they’re sleeping. And so if you can’t, and there’s three things, three things that go on.

Listen, there’s more than three, but I’m going to simplify it to three. Memory consolidation is the integration of everything you learned in the day. Number two, the physical repair of your muscles if you’ve worked out. Your immune system. There’s literally physical repair. And third is emotional processing.

Flushing of your limbic system in your head, your brain. If somebody cut you off, you got really upset at your partner, you got mad at your children, you, whatever it is. When you sleep, your body heals those things. It helps you begin to heal. So, if you start cutting sleep short, which of those three do you think it prioritizes?

[00:35:55] Gabby Reece: It’s very approachable but very clear about this. I love the idea that, in a way, when someone explained to me what happens to your brain, that basically your brain gets rinsed. And I, when I heard that, I was like, Oh, that’s so interesting. I don’t know if it was like the eighties that we glorified like I don’t need sleep, but somehow, we’re still in that.

And now we’ve got these devices that really can give us a sort of mindless, endless entertainment that we’re all addicted to. And you don’t make movement this sort of rigid. Part of the practice, but it’s having to be inside there somewhere, some kind of regular physical movement.

[00:36:32]
Neha Sangwan: Honestly, Gabby, it’s born of my own resistance to movement that I am one of those people. There are a lot of things I’ve been able to do. I eat whole foods. I eat it regularly. Even when I travel, I’m farm to table. I am good to my body. I sleep well. My energy is consistent.

Except what is not consistent for me is working out. And what I realized is when I was that little girl that came back from Africa, I went and asked people back then, what was I like, what happened to me? And they said you cried for 26 days, nonstop, you just didn’t stop crying. And this, I made this up, I don’t know if it’s true, but I have a feeling that I checked out of my body as a child because it was too painful to be in it.

So, when I started playing tennis and I started doing gymnastics and I started doing all these things, it became about winning. It didn’t become. Being about me enjoying my body. And so, then it was about accomplishing, everything got turned into achieving for recognition, love, belonging. And I have a very, I’ll never forget this, I loved gymnastics so much, and I was good at it.

One summer I grew four inches, in a summer, and suddenly couldn’t, I didn’t have enough core strength to lift my own body on the bars. And I remember the coach saying to me, hey, you’re not strong enough anymore to lift your own body. So, in front of the whole team why don’t you call your parents? Cause you won’t be on the team anymore.

And I felt like my body had betrayed me. This thing I loved so much, right? So, there’s experiences like this that happen in our lives. That we don’t realize our big milestones. And so, I started not to trust my body. I started to push through it rather than partner with it. And when that happens, so to me, I would be remised to be telling people to be on a regular work out and do, I just want to find a way to make it fun again, to be in my body.

And this book certainly there, there’s going to be books written by athletes who are going to have a different opinion of how you do this, and I want them to give their perspective. Mine is more about how hard it has been and what if we could find joy in our movement and wouldn’t that be the way that we could sustain it.

[00:39:11] Gabby Reece: When you get a relationship with movement that really is a reflection of yourself it does become so much easier to be consistent and talk about curiosity. You can bring that curiosity to that world too and say that’s interesting. I’m scared. I’m intimidated to try that, but it intrigues me.

I would definitely would have. Never been in gymnastics with you, Neha. I’m six-three. And when I look at that, I’m like, what? It’s like a completely different math. When I see them move their body, I’m like, whoa, what language is that?

So you also talk about stress and hormones. I would be remiss to cover not remind people can we just, remind people about stress and our hormones.

[00:47:12]
Neha Sangwan: Okay. So, hormones are important. Your thyroid, which is right over your Adam’s apple right here in your throat.

Okay. It is the engine of your body. It fuels every cell in your body. There’s a whole complex system, right? You got the hypothalamus, the thyroid. You’ve got a pituitary and then your adrenals. So, where your adrenals are is they’re perched on your back right where you’re right on top of your kidneys.

And those are probably the most important because they’re the stress mitigators. So, when you get cut off in traffic, when something surprises you, when you’ve got to run and flee because you’re in danger. That’s adrenaline. Adrenaline is the short acting version and if that adrenaline goes on for a while, soon you’re pumping out something, the longer acting version, which is cortisol.

The problem with caffeine is it’ll get you through, but when it becomes your daily practice and now, you’re saying make it a double, caffeine stimulates cortisol. And so, there’s ways that you’re stimulating your body. What happens when you your body doesn’t have more cortisol to give what happens when you run out of it because we’re not made, like the body is a system of feedback loops. It depends just like any machine on feedback it loves routine and rest. Except, what does our society revere? Extremes. When you are the gold medal athlete. When you are the doctor who works 36 hours. No wonder we’re confused. Because what we get recognition and love and appreciation for in our world is not necessarily what our biology needs to be, to feel good and be healthy.

So, what I think we’re moving into, Gabby, in our world is understanding that paradoxes must exist. That routine and rest are as important as energy, charisma, dynamism, and striving that maybe there’s, and if we can figure out in our physical world, how to give our body what it needs, which is routine, and rest and biology thrives on that it loves to exert and then repair.

It loves that cortisol highest in the morning. That’s why you wake up. You’re like, oh, I’m awake. Can’t go to sleep because cortisol is the highest. Cortisol then drops throughout the day, and that’s why you’re sleepy. That’s why you’re ready to go to bed. So, everything about biology is the cycles and the feedback and all of that.

And somehow, we’ve gotten really focused on the extremes and external. And I just hope, in “Powered by Me,” people start to remember that. Because that’s why I think we’re out of balance.

[00:50:23] Gabby Reece: And I heard somewhere that also because of threats we could see from, let’s say if we’re talking about biology, it was something you could see in the distance, usually coming and then our response to that threat would increase or cortisol or whatever would increase as it got closer, but because we’re looking at our phones all day long at this sort of close situation, and then maybe people’s negative comments or things like that, that we’re having an inappropriate amount of these kind of responses that aren’t really happening, but we’re having a physiological response and I find it so interesting that even sleep, for example, people find a way to make that competitive I’ve got my ring on, and it told me, so it is. I think even that’s fascinating. Sometimes I go, Okay. Don’t you just want to rest and not worry about liking making that also a competition.

And I appreciate people use metrics to stay motivated, but I would also encourage them to have certain things that they do only for the sake of doing it for themselves. Like You wake up and you go, I feel good. I feel calm and not go to your office and be like, anyway, my heart rate variability and I’m like asleep.

It’s Oh my God. Because even that now is a competition.

[00:51:39] Neha Sangwan: It’s the flip side of that, which is what is wrong with me? I already had eight hours of sleep. I shouldn’t be tired. If you’re tired, listen to your body. So, it’s, and the thing that you said earlier, let me let me give a little bit of light to this.

Your body doesn’t know the difference between your thoughts, what are real and what’s imagined. So, the reason you know, this is because if you’re having a nightmare, somebody is chasing you, you’re falling off a cliff someone’s breaking in. I don’t know what the nightmare is, but whatever it is, when you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating, heart racing, completely panicked.

And you look around, it’s pitch black and nothing’s happening, but your biology doesn’t know that. So, your biology doesn’t know if what you’re thinking, it responds to what you’re thinking, whether it’s real or imagined. So, for the people who have anxiety, who run anxiety about money, about their children, about the next promotion, about not having enough, not being famous enough, pretty enough, thin enough, funny enough, rich enough, I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is for you, I want you to know that when you run.

That anxiety or that fear, your body thinks it’s real. And what you want to do is flip this around. Athletes who are going to do a 30-foot dive have been trained to the opposite of this, where they are imagining the perfect dive. They imagine Super Bowl in a halftime, imagine carrying the trophy, imagine the victory, imagine going over the, the line for a touchdown.

There’s also guided imagery, which is if you’re somebody who has anxiety, soft belly breathing, safe place, guided imagery. What if you could imagine a place that was safe? uncomfortable for you. So, in medicine, before people go into surgery, I have them do a guided imagery to help their mind be calm, help their physiology calm down.

Because what I want is them to go in a state where their immune system can be healed, that they can take care of themselves. And now studies show that people who do this Need less pain medication, are discharged earlier, they heal quicker. And so, there’s a real science to all of this and I think, Gabby, one of the biggest things I want people listening to know is that our inability to communicate makes us physically ill, whether it’s with ourselves or with each other.

And if you go to your doctor because you have some physical symptom, let’s say that somebody’s saying, I have chest discomfort. They come in and they get an EKG, blood work, even an echocardiogram, let’s say, or a stress test. And the doctor comes out and says to you, you’re fine. Okay. Nobody says to themselves, I want to spend the day in the ER.

Okay. So, you don’t feel fine, but someone just said, you’re fine. What they’re really saying to you is there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is your heart is a pump and it’s functioning well. There’s no heart attack and it’s your heart is not physically compromised. Here’s what I would ask you to do.

Pay attention because there’s something on your in your mental energy, mental, emotional, social, or spiritual energy that is not getting addressed. And it’s showing up in your physical body to get your attention. Do you have any idea what that might be?

[00:55:24]Gabby Reece: You sectioned this off to physical energy, mental energy emotional, social, and spiritual, would you be willing just to give me an example in each of those sections of a drain and a gain, a net gain, and a net drain so people get this understanding of some of the languages in these sections.

[00:55:43] Neha Sangwan: So, the thing I wanted to tell you about is. Too much of anything becomes a weakness. So, when you have the physical energy mastered and you’re using it to avoid feeling, then you will push through your body, not partner with it. So, every one of these has a too much, too little, too much, too little. And that’s why I’m saying the world…

Reveals us for the extremes, but biology needs the middle. So, we got to figure this out to help heal ourselves. Okay, so physical energy. One of the questions the way that I would have you assess that is I would ask you how satisfied on a scale of one from one to 10 where one is not at all satisfied and 10 is highly satisfied.

How satisfied are you? With your food, energy, sleep, and movement now, food, whole foods evenly, throughout the day sleep, that you wake up feeling rested in the morning that you get 7 to 9 hours of not just quantity of sleep, but quality energy that you have consistent energy throughout the day and, movement that you have a way to joyfully move, Multiple times a week in your body.

So, when somebody gives themselves a scale, let’s say they say 10, seven, six nine. So, I say, no problem. Thank you for your honesty. Now I’d like you to tell me what would make the six, seven, and the nine, a 10. So, get really clear to yourself. Why did you rate that for yourself? There’s no right or wrongs here.

There’s you getting clear because you need to know what that automatically tells you what you would need to do for yourself to be satisfied. So, I don’t give them standards, which are mine. I asked them what they would be satisfied with so that they can see if they’re not if they gave themselves all tens.

Physical energy might not be where they need to be focusing because they might be really satisfied with how they feel, how they’re eating, all of that. Okay. Mental. So mental energy is about how we form our thoughts. So, as you can see for me, when I was little, if anything went wrong, I decided I must have done something wrong.

That is called personalization. If I made anything that went wrong your fault, that would be projection. I’m projecting onto you. If I made it about something bigger than me or you, God, the company, our parents, jerks. Oh my God. Mother Nature never cooperates. That’s generalization. That’s bigger than the two of us.

So, the first thing you want to do in your thoughts is to figure out where do you tend to default? Are you somebody who automatically goes to blaming other people? Are you somebody who automatically makes it your fault? Are you someone who doesn’t want to get into conflict and only picks something bigger than everybody involved so you don’t have to get in a fight with anybody?

So, this one, what I would do to assess. Your mental energy is I would ask you to write down, when you’re in the shower, you’re on public transport, you’re driving down the street, whatever it is, you’re in the zone. What are the thoughts that go on repeat the 3 thoughts that go on repeat when your first thing waking up in the morning, or you can’t go to bed.

What’s running through your head. Write those down and then check in with your body. Are they giving you a net gain or a net drain of energy? So, you’ve got to illuminate them. Now if we moved into emotional energy, I would be asking you, where in your life do you avoid difficult emotions or conflict? Is it at work? Is it at home? Is it in your primary relationship? Is it with your friends? Is it where you volunteer or your charitable? Where is it? Where’s it? Someone else? Where are you avoiding emotions or challenging conversations? Because now I know where you’re having a net drain of energy. And then I would flip it and I would say in those same areas.

What gives you joy? What, where do you, where can you play? Where, what gives you joy? So, pay attention. And then you look at all of that. You see how many you’ve checked, you check in with your body, and then you can write whether you’re having an overall emotional energy gain or drain. When you move into social, this one’s easy.

Write down the five individuals or groups of people you spend the most time with online. Or in person, just write them down and as you’re writing them down, pay attention to whether your body is constricting, tightening, heavy, tense, or open and expansive and light. Because it’s going to be easy for you to then look at the five people or sets of people you spend time with and see the big picture and notice whether which way it’s leaning.

Lastly, in spiritual energy, people have a lot of charged ideas about this, and they probably think, why is spiritual energy in a business book? Let me tell you, I think it is. The most important section. Why? Because the way I speak about spiritual energy, it’s about what matters most to you.

It’s about what you value. It’s about maybe for some people, it’s family for other people. It’s health for other people. It’s work and ambition and money and status and fame. I don’t know what it is to each person. Knowing what you value most allows you to create alignment between how you spend your time, the decisions you make.

The boundaries you draw and your ability to take risks and innovate in a world changing this fast is dependent on how much you trust yourself. So let me also in the spiritual energy, I also talk about sacred exchanges between us, that piece that you were saying, where we are all being taught that we’re much more different than we are alike.

I didn’t even get into gaslighting, but essentially when human beings are intentionally undermined, when their trust is intentionally undermined, that is often what has been happening in our society. And when you want, for money’s sake, for clickbait’s sake, you’re willing to create drama that boosts people’s adrenaline repeatedly.

You’re now part of this whole problem, which is consistently us now becoming addicted to the adrenaline, right? So, in the spiritual energy, the most important thing, and then there’s purpose and meaning feeling appreciated and valued. There’re several things. I find these universal. Some people find their connection in the spiritual world through their faith.

Some people find it in the next generation. Some people, what they believe in is science. Whatever it is, these things are all important for you to be able to know and name about yourself, and once you know them, it makes decision making much easier. So, the questions I ask in this section are, where do you take risks?

You take risks on a physical level. I don’t know the rest of where you take risks, but I’ll tell you, I take risks on a mental, emotional, social, and spiritual level, not on a physical level. So, what you know about me then is. I, where I take risks is where I trust myself, where I do not take risks is where I do not trust myself.

So, when I ask you, where do you take risks and where do you not take risks? Oh, some people won’t take risks in financial spending. Some people won’t take risks in the emotional arena, but they will take risks mentally and physically, but they won’t take risks socially. Or spiritually, right? So, wherever it is, it’s just an indication of, oh, wouldn’t this be a great place to start building self-trust?

So that I, what if you don’t even know what you value? So, what I ask you are things like this. If you don’t know what you value, no problem. We can correct that quickly. Write down a time you felt deeply valued and appreciated, what was happening, and what was important about that. What are three things that someone could say about you when you weren’t in the room that would really matter to you?

And if nothing’s going there, then the last one is pick someone in the world that you admire. Someone you know, someone you don’t know, I don’t care. If you admire them, write down three qualities that you value. You admire them for, and surprise, those are some of your highest values. So, these are some of the things that I go through in each energy section.

[01:05:07]Gabby Reece: And I just, I wanted you to go through that because I really, and I meant it, it’s like you’ve really gotten very detailed and there’s, notebook sections. People can write things down. There’s a lot of opportunity for people. Because I, I appreciate learning through my own lens, but being maybe encouraged or directed and it’s not you saying to me, hey, you should feel this or believe this.

It’s what do you think and feel about this? How is that going for you? And so, each individual person has that opportunity. Which also ties back to the accountability, which I like, because it’s not you telling me, hey, move like this and eat like this and feel like that and believe in this.

You’re saying, let’s talk about that. And it’s done in a really organized, but soft and natural way that people can, explore that you touch upon how anxiety and anger, like they can be good and bad. And I think it’s important. That we, it’s like being having feeling angry or feeling anxious doesn’t mean that we’re we have anxiety.

It’s maybe we’re feeling anxious that these aren’t things to be afraid of that. It’s also a little bit of it can be quite good.

[01:06:21] Neha Sangwan: And I like to say emotions are not that are bad. I like to say that they are more like, an indication of how you’re relating to your life in this moment, the experience of your life in this moment.

They’re like, if we were human GPSs, they’re the blue dot that says you are here. And so, is it important to know where you are so that you can navigate where you want to go, right? If you know where you are, whether to get on the highway and go north or south. from where you are. So, when people don’t acknowledge their emotions, imagine having a GPS system that didn’t tell you where you are now.

And that’s why it becomes hard. So, what I’ll say is, anxiety is a very normal experience. In fact, it’s based in fear. It’s very helpful. It is your body’s way. Okay, your brain at its simplest, very simplest function is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. If there is anything that is in the past has hurt you, upset you, damaged you, caused trauma.

You want your body to be letting you know that stay away from there. Steps are dangerous. Riding a motorbike is whatever it is that in the past has informed you. Our brain is keeping us safe and that’s its job. And so, you want… To feel be able to feel all emotions, but what you this is the trick. The reason people don’t want to feel them is because emotions are tied to your physical sensations.

It’s uncomfortable sometimes to feel them. And so, if it’s tied to your heart racing, stomach turning, butterflies, sweating, whatever it is, we’re like, oh, I can’t be in control of that. But here’s the thing. You must feel, reveal, and heal them if you want them to move through you. And the danger and the damage that happens by us numbing and scuffing emotions is that they get stuck inside us.

Emotions are energy in motion. They need to move through you, and when you don’t acknowledge them, it’s like holding a beach ball under the deep end, and then lactic acid builds up in your arm, and it starts hurting, and it starts hurting, and soon that beach ball is going to come flying up at the most inopportune moment.

And so, it’s going to come out, the question is, at what pace, at what intensity, at what level of ability for you to decide you want to reveal, feel, and heal it, are you going to allow?

[01:09:12]
Gabby Reece: Like you, I love the idea of choosing it instead of you won’t get the choice and it’s going to happen anyway.

Have you been able to, I’m just curious, have you influenced your family’s dynamics and communication through your own not only things that you’ve learned and practiced? How has that gone?

[01:09:35] Neha Sangwan: Gabby, I will say it is the hardest thing in the world to do with the people who have known you and put you in a box, which is, you never communicated. You were the one that was defensive. You were the one who, what I will say is when I started to change my older sister, I will never forget. I must’ve been 33 or 34 years old. And she always plans like the family events, and she did all the social stuff. I was the academic athletic person growing up and then when I got into residency and things like, or had the hospital, I had certain holidays that I had to work. You either take Thanksgiving and New Year’s or you take Christmas, you decide. I remember her saying, this is where we’re going for the holidays this year. What days are you going to fly in?

And I said, oh, I can’t make it. I’m working at the hospital. I’m on call. And she said, what did you just say to me? And I said, no, I can’t come. I’m working. And she hung up the phone and did not talk to me for months because she said, I don’t know what kind of culture in, but you’ve never said no to me in your life.

And at that time, I had started learning about communication and healthy boundaries and all these things. And I would tell you it was a rough start. I tried to enlist my whole family. With me, because I wanted them, I thought I had finally found the answer to how we might be able to have healthy conflict and we might be able to do all these things.

And really what I’ve learned is that’s why earlier when I said to you. Please enlist the people that you want to do this but enlist them in giving you feedback on how you can be a better partner, how you can be a better mother, how you can be a better sister. Don’t tell them they need to do it because that only brings up resistance.

And so, I’d say that we have had a tough time. I’ve learned to draw boundaries and I don’t do certain things. I don’t go on some family vacations that don’t feel Okay, to me. But here’s what I’ll say in the end. Our family may not be as structured and pretty looking as it used to be, but it’s more real and the time we spend together is more authentic and everybody gets to choose what works for them. And by the way, the lowest common denominator is what you get to do. If one person wants you to spend 10 days together on vacation, but somebody else has a boundary that three days is enough. Three days it is right. And the people who want to stay for 10 can stay for 10. But I rock the boat.

And in Indian family, there are times that I said, I know I’m coming to visit everybody and no shenanigans. I’ll be staying in a hotel half a mile away and I’m going to rent a car so I can leave when I need to. And I will be there. I will be there to celebrate my niece’s play. I will be there to do these things.

But I need this space and freedom and independence to be okay saying yes. This is what I need to give you an inspired yes.

[01:12:54]Gabby Reece: And then finally, just last two, and we touched upon it, but I just, it’s just worth repeating just the insights to simplify the approach and navigate conversations to gain understanding and resolution just because I think sometimes people feel overwhelmed, they get in the emotion, they’re afraid, they get defensive maybe just a sort of a step by step reminder to people about having those hard conversations, but that with the intention towards an understanding and resolution.

[01:13:29] Neha Sangwan: So, the biggest thing I’d say here is it’s about centering yourself first. So, something happens, and you notice that your physical sensations, you’re feeling off balance, your, heart is racing, your shallow breath, your muscles are tight in that moment.

Your only job is to slow your own breathing down, soften your abdomen, lower your shoulders. You can do this in a meeting. You can do this at a dinner table. You can do this in traffic, anywhere that you are. And once you relax your abdomen and breathe in so deeply that your abdomen moves out on the in breath and your belly button moves back towards your spine on the exhale, do it three times.

And if you’re in a dialogue with somebody else, ask them a question like, can you tell me what you mean by that? Tell me more. Because if you need to buy yourself some time, get curious, not furious. So, you must know your body’s sensation. The moment my throat makes it so I can’t breathe. I know exactly what’s happening, and so I know I need to give myself that breath, so I get curious, not furious.

Next thing you want to do once you ground yourself is you want to shift into generous intent. So, you’re listening, not just the words that someone’s saying. Not even just the emotions that they’re experiencing, you’re tapping into that. What you’re really listening for is what they value. If we go back to where you and I were in that fake fight about me taking credit for something that you had done, and you said to me, it was just so unfair what you said and what you did.

And I just can’t believe that you would do that to me. Now, as I’m listening to you, I’m hearing betrayal, I’m hearing sadness, I’m hearing disappointment and heartbreak, really, that trust could be broken. So, when I’m listening to you, I’m not trying to plan my rebuttal to you, I’m listening to you.

I want to metaphorically come around to your side of the table, and I want to understand what happened. Then, once I listen to that, I can now say, wow, all right it sounds like you value fairness, you value, loyalty, you value community and collaboration, and I think I may have violated those.

There comes accountability. And then you say, listen, I care about you. I care about you a lot. I’m sorry that I did that and what can I do to make it right with parenting?

[01:16:27] Gabby Reece: Do you think that the number one way is to model it and then? Obviously when kids get older, they can take their own interest, but I’m curious if you feel like hey, that would be your best shot at giving these skills to your children.

[01:16:45] Neha Sangwan: So, I think about it in any relationship. I think about it in leadership at work. I think about it as a parent. Only be as honest with your children as you want them to be with you. So, when you choose whether you’re going to tell them something, whether you’re going to approach a subject, whether you’re going to have an honest conversation, just ask yourself, like, how honest would I like them to be with me?

And then your job is to model that. So, when you apologize, you’re not being weak. You’re in fact showing them that sometimes people make mistakes and there’s a path to connection that comes from this. And one of the biggest things I think we’re missing around the next generation is we try to take away their pain and disappointment.

And I think this is a lot of what I coach parents on, which is. You are the one that is going to be the softest place for your child to fall. And when they feel disappointment because a relationship they got talked about at school, people, someone didn’t talk to them, they talked about them and they found out when their favorite best, their favorite.

person in the whole world. Their bestie no longer wants to be friends with them. Those are the moments not to be mad at the other person, but to be there to help them learn how to handle disappointment. Because if you don’t teach that to them, your job is not to make it all okay. Your job is to be there to teach them.

Sometimes the world doesn’t go the way that you want it to. And when it doesn’t. Your feel your feelings and this is a safe place for you to say what you need to say, and you have be safe in your body in this family in our relationship because if they know this. They will seek out partners and friends that they know this is what love feels like, that they can be imperfect, imperfectly perfect.

And so, I think the role modeling, there is no bigger way as a leader, as a parent, as a partner, as a sibling in the world. I think the people who. Invest in themselves are not selfish. They are the ones who rise in leadership in the world, whether they have a title or not. They are the biggest influencers, the biggest impactors.

Like the biggest impact is made by people who live what it is that they, want to have happen. They’re aligned with their values.

[01:19:28] Gabby Reece: Neha, thank you for writing this book and thank you for your, just your generous time and I just really appreciate how thoughtful and how much work you put into this.

[01:19:38] Neha Sangwan: Oh, thank you, Gabby. It’s just an honor to be here.

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you want to learn more, there is a ton of valuable information on my website. All you have to do is go to GabrielleReece.com or head to the episode show notes to find a full breakdown with helpful links to studies, research, books, podcasts, and so much more.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out and send them to @GabbyReece on Instagram. And if you feel inspired, please subscribe. I’ll see you next week.

About Dr. Neha Sangwan, CEO and Founder of Intuitive Intelligence

Dr. Neha Sangwan is an internal medicine physician, international speaker, executive coach and corporate communication expert. Her private practice and corporate consulting focuses on empowering individuals, organizational leaders, and their teams with the tools for clear, effective communication. She addresses the root causes of stress, miscommunication and interpersonal conflict, often healing chronic conditions such as headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and burnout.

She consults with organizations such as the American Heart Association, American Express, Apple, Kaiser Permanente, and Google, and has shared her journey on the stages of TEDx Berkeley, TEDx San Luis Obispo, and TEDx Babson. She is the author of TalkRx: Five Steps to Honest Conversations that Create Connection, Health and Happiness.