When Dr. Reena Kotecha found herself having a panic attack in the cereal aisle of a supermarket, she knew something was wrong. As a doctor, she was used to diagnosing and treating others, but when it came to herself, she found that she had “a personal blind spot.”
“As a healthcare professional you hold this identity of: I am the caregiver, not the caretaker. I’m meant to be the ‘strong one’—the one who’s got it all figured out,” she says.
The Importance of Self-CareBy chance, she met a woman who became her meditation teacher, and from there everything began to shift. “When I first sat down with her, I just cried for the first 20 minutes,” she recounts. “And while most people would ask, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ she just said, ‘Shall we take a few breaths?’ And, you know, in those moments, I felt a little lighter.”
In medical school, Dr. Kotecha learned about the human body, but she wasn’t taught an important lesson: how to listen to it.
“This is what drives me—supporting healthcare professionals so that they’re able to not just do their best work, but show…
