In my twenties I lived at Satchidananda yoga ashram in Buckingham, VA. I took an atypical three-year “sabbatical” between medical school and residency. During this time away from medicine, I lived at the ashram, became a yoga instructor, taught yoga professionally, created a mind–body skills course for adolescents, studied nutrition and herbalism, trained in energy medicine, explored astrology, made art, and studied with healers in Peru. Medical training was challenging for me. Yoga, meditation, nutrition, nature, art, energy medicine, astrology, and herbs were part of my healing. In time, they became part of the “medicine pouch” I can draw from to help others.
To make a long story short, I did eventually return to medicine. I was committed to becoming a new paradigm physician. Currently, I am working online as a holistic psychiatrist, writer, and educator. Up until December 2019 I was the “integrative psychiatrist” on staff at the Chopra Center in Carlsbad, California.