Chris Cahill: In today's episode, we're exploring what happens when life looks perfect on paper, but your body is quietly telling you a very different story. My guest is Dr. Sonal Bhatia, a physician who rose to C-suite roles in Big Pharma, helped to bring breakthrough treatments to patients with rare disease, and then hit a breaking point herself. A mysterious rash that no one could quite diagnose became the doorway into a much bigger question. What if our real problem isn't disease, but dis-ease? The chronic I hope this conversation nudged you to look a little more closely at the places where you might be living in dis-ease. Those subtle signals from poor sleep to constant multitasking that you maybe wrote off as the cost of doing business. What I'm taking away from this conversation is that healing doesn't always start with a lab result or a prescription pad. It can start with a single boundary around your phone at night, a few intentional breaths before a meeting Sonal, welcome to the podcast.
Sonal Bhatia: Thank you, it's so great to be here with you, Chris.
Chris Cahill: before we jump in, why don't you tell audience little bit about your story?
Sonal Bhatia: My story is a little unique because I am a physician by training and I went into pharma and did some amazing things there, bringing breakthrough innovations, especially to patients with rare diseases. ⁓ then through my own health journey, realized that something was missing. I didn't know what it was. And I ultimately went ⁓
Chris Cahill: or 20 minutes of doing something that really restores you. If this resonated, share it with someone who's stuck in the grind and might need permission to find a new baseline. quiet imbalance we've come to accept as normal. In this conversation, we talk about normative misery, why so many high performers are living out of rhythm with their own bodies, and how ancient Ayurvedic wisdom, breath, boundaries, and simple daily choices can help us move from grind to genuine ease. If you've ever had normal labs but knew something was off, this episode's for you. Let's get into it.
Sonal Bhatia: started delving into the world of Ayurveda, which is an ancient science that's over 5,000 years old was able to cure myself without taking pills. And that's when I realized that we don't implement the learning. So I went and got a master's in Ayurveda and Integrative Health ⁓ started to just share all this with my peers, my friends, my colleagues, especially as we're all ⁓ living some sort of disease. Nobody is fully at ease. And it's the disease that we're totally out of sync with. And I needed us to get back as humanity into synchronization with who we are and how we can heal before we start to access some really innovation medicine that exists in our Western medicine.
Chris Cahill: amazing we ⁓ met a couple of weeks ago and I was fascinated the conversation that we had. And, one of the questions is you, you've had a lot of different and worn a lot of different hats. like you said, you've been a physician, you've held, executive roles in ⁓ major pharmaceutical corporations. Now you're helping leaders ⁓ heal, rise and thrive. From where you sit ⁓
Sonal Bhatia: What's broken today, in my opinion and from my lens, ⁓ is the fact that are working to live.
Chris Cahill: What feels broken in the way we define being well?
Sonal Bhatia: And the way we're working is not sustainable for us to have a healthy day, not a healthy week, or I'm gonna catch up at the end of the week and work out. It doesn't work that way. And so we've lost the rhythm of a human being in order to just perform. And we're performing so much that we forget to listen to what our body needs, the rest that it needs, the areas that we can adjust that are very small, they're subtle, but we've forgotten to listen to ourselves and those little signals. And when we don't listen over time, those signals become inflammation or even worse, cancer, why did we stop listening? Because we're overindulging on so much ⁓ everywhere, it's food, consumption, the work we do and the multitasking. All of these are compounding in how we're operating and we accept that. I call it normative misery. We've normalized this and it shouldn't be that case. So I'm here to now unravel what we consider normal and bring back the new baseline.
Chris Cahill: We're gonna dig more into that normative misery Before we do though, would you be comfortable telling us a bit more about your story? what was the tipping point when? Everything ⁓ looked right on paper, but knew something was wrong
Sonal Bhatia: look I had a C level role in pharma. So undoubtedly I had the stressors ⁓ working in a large corporation having a team that I was responsible for at a global level. So the timelines shifted because you were dealing with colleagues both in US and across the world. But it's when I started getting a little bit of a skin rash here, another one there, it was getting itchy. ⁓ I was covering my arms because I didn't want anyone to see it. And I just thought I had it under control, but underneath I felt something was wrong. And ultimately I went to my primary care doctor, who sent me then to an allergist who said, don't have allergies. You need to go to a dermatologist. And you know that ritual, Everyone's very specialized. I went to one of the top dermatologists in
Chris Cahill: Right.
Sonal Bhatia: New York City and he said I had poison ivy. Now I live in a building and a high rise in the city. So where did I get access to poison ivy? I actually questioned that and he said to me, no, no, no, this is classic book, bookcase. It's a bookcase scenario. Do you mind? I'm going to bring in my Durham residents to look at this. So I became a case study. and they came in, they took pictures. I'm sure I was being reported at some future webinar that they were all holding, but ultimately I got oral steroids as well as ⁓ creams and I took it home and strongly in my gut something was wrong. Like I knew I didn't have poison ivy because how did that happen? I didn't come into contact. So I chose to be the wrong patient. And I literally started to go online. And then I remembered I came across a book that was in my home that I purchased like maybe 15 years ago. And it was called Ayurveda for home remedies. And I was looking at rashes. And that's when I was like, what is my constitution according to Ayurveda? So I went on tools and I did my constitution and I realized that wait, it could just be things I'm eating that are overheating me and I'm not able to clear it from my system because I'm also under so much stress. And I've normalized stress and my cortisol level's high, but for me it felt normal. And I had two young kids at that time, so multitasking mom, corporate female leader, I was doing it all. So daily, I was making little changes to see what it was. And it ultimately was the food I was in taking. And of course, I also started to breathe. I don't remember the last time we stopped to breathe like Chris, take a breath. Let's just breathe. You see how instantly you slow down even in your speech and how you're talking. So I started to do breath work. I eliminated things like jalapenos that were overheating me because I am fiery as a constitution. And there were other elements like no more salsas, ⁓ within seven to 10 I kid you not, the rashes were gone and I didn't fill the prescriptions that I got. And that's when I realized, wait a sec, if I had taken those, that's great. Everything would have disappeared, but I would have continued doing what I was doing that was wrong and it would keep resurfacing and I would never know why I would just keep getting refills for the steroids. So that was my journey.
Chris Cahill: I have heard that over and over again and I've experienced it as well, Is the subspecialties look at only what they see? And I mean, you're a trained physician and they were telling you, it's poison ivy, even though you know it made no sense. I had Lyme disease many years ago and it was the same scenario. I got sent to an allergist. Allergist was like, yeah, you might probably have allergies, but I had to bounce around until someone... you know, zoomed out and said, no, you have Lyme disease. it ⁓ routinely and you have to be your own patient advocate sometimes,
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, and I love what you said about zooming out because that is the whole premise. Look at us as a full system and not just for the one thing we're coming in with because sometimes it's something else And this is the last thing that's manifesting. And the skin is one of the largest organs in our system. And usually when something's in the skin, there is an imbalance in our body, but we never think of imbalance. We think of, me the band-aid, let it go away. I don't want to see it, therefore it doesn't exist. But the imbalance stays and becomes a chronic issue over time if we don't take care of
Chris Cahill: Yeah. And what you're talking about is zooming way out. ⁓ I I heard you recently at a conference talking about disease and dis-ease. so can you, can you tell the listeners a little bit more about that?
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, I mean the word disease actually when it originated back in the day, it was never meant to be disease. It was just the state of a human body when it's not in balance. That is where the word dis-ese came up and it had a hyphen back in the day. And eventually we just started calling it disease, which is everything that shows up that a doctor treats is disease. But in essence, what it means is you're no longer in balance. Now, what do you do? Do you get back into balance or do you just put a band-aid or give yourself a pill to take away those symptoms? We have access to wonderful medicines to allow us to do that. But does it... go away from the disease state that we're in and the answer is no. It doesn't resolve the disease. The only way to resolve the disease is to understand the crux of why you're in this state. What caused you to be unbalanced? It could be a gut issue. It could be a mental issue. It could be a stress issue. It could be a lack of sleep issue. There's so many different parameters that won't get considered when you're getting that one pill or those pills to treat it. Now, I'm not talking about chronic diseases like inflammation and cancer, because once we get to those, we absolutely need the medicines that exist out there. But before we give those seven to 10 years for that to manifest, there is disease happening in the body. And we need to learn to listen inside what that little signal, you you always know it, but you're ignoring it. You're like, don't know, my head feels fuzzy today. ⁓ it's probably because I didn't sleep well and you move on with your day, ⁓ today I have a headache. I don't know what's driving this, but it's probably because I was on my devices for too long. So you're always constantly telling yourself what is causing your disease. But remember in the room when I asked, I think there were like 200 ish people in the room and we asked, How many people here believe they're in dis-ease and almost everyone raised their hand? Which means there is awareness. The question is, how do you get back to a sense of ease, which is healthy, which is balanced, which is a state where you're feeling like you're in balance with the synchronicities of your day and the night, that you're sleeping at night, So that's... ⁓
Chris Cahill: Yeah.
Sonal Bhatia: was my concept around disease and how we can start to look at it a little differently so that we start to heal ourselves internally before we're seeking something bigger and more powerful.
Chris Cahill: Yeah, so essentially what you're describing is you can have labs that look normal, something ⁓ still doesn't feel right. So you have keep looking.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, well, labs take a while to manifest. you may, a human body will always have the signal well in advance of when the lab actually tracks it. By the time the labs track it, it is now a disease that a doctor can treat or start to explore further. But the signal often happens well before and you may still look on paper and on labs as fine, you're fine, there's nothing wrong, but only you know that something is. So what do do in those situations, Because you're going to different doctors and saying, my gut says something's wrong, doc, but everything looks fine on paper. Yes, Western medicine, we treat labs, we have beautiful scanners, we are looking at ⁓ is the disease, give me the organ dysfunction and I will fix it, But there is another science which is something's off, what's going on, how's your digestion, how's your sleep, what are you troubled with, and fix that so that those labs in two to three years don't become abnormal and now you truly have something that needs treatment.
Chris Cahill: we were talking a little bit about some of these devices that you can use now to get real time info, Like an aura ring or a loop ⁓ tracker, know, how do you use those with, with people that you work with?
Sonal Bhatia: or a ring. Well, I have clients that have moved into the Oro ring. So this is becoming the new place, And the amount of data that it can provide to you is phenomenal. know, heart rate variability. gives you a sense of how you're sleeping. And those tools exist even if you have an Apple watch or a different type of ring. There's so many devices out there. But when you can look at your stress levels in the moment where it can tell you you're engaged or you're stressed or you're in recovery mode, how your day is functioning, how much movement have you done, maybe you should consider a little more movement or you've exercised way too much, it's time for you to recover. These are all beautiful steps to keep yourself in balance and in rhythm and know when you're feeling something. you can look into a device and say, what's going on? It's not perfect, but it is a lot better than the times when we had nothing and we just wondered what's wrong
Chris Cahill: smiling because ⁓ got a Garmin ⁓ watch that I was wearing and I put it on during work and it started buzzing on my wrist and it says, it appears you're agitated, you should take a breath. ⁓ And so it was during ⁓ a debate we were having, but it picked it up ⁓ gave me instant feedback. And ⁓ always remember breath moves energy and energy moves emotion,
Sonal Bhatia: Wow.
Chris Cahill: So to your point, if you can even take a quick breath, it can change things.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah. And you know, I love that you talked about energy right there because you know, we are humans, we have bones, we have muscle, we have skin, but we also have energy. And none of our modern detectors are telling us about energy. They're only telling us, well, your blood is abnormal or here's an organ or a muscle or your bone is broken or not. But that energetics that you have fills the rest of the cup. And that energy is how you show up to your meetings or to your family. And a lot of these assessments that I do tell you what is your constitution. Are you a fire? Are you an air? Are you a water type of constitution? Which gives it gives you lot of insight on how you show up and how you do work and when you eat your main meal and what kind of foods you should eat. And this is all Highly logical, but we don't think it. It's not our type of language in our modern day. so, energy is huge and that breath work shifts energy. And when you ⁓ that high energy, you can be in a neutral place so that when you're having this conversation or debate, you're actually going to ⁓ something that's not gonna trigger someone else and can navigate the conversation.
Chris Cahill: Or you can normalize the misery and not show up well. So tell me more about that.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, as you know, did a tech talk a few months ago and the whole notion is we are living in a society where we normalize misery. We accept the fact that we're miserable doing certain things. Like nobody wants to be up late at night and feel so groggy and the next morning that they're drinking three cups of coffee to just make it through their first two meetings. We've normalized that. I'm exhausted. I'm just gonna grab another cup, What does that It creates this unwired but tired mindset that we have at night and it impacts men and women equally. I know a lot of talk is going on about perimenopause and menopause and it's true, but men are feeling it too. And I'm trying to tell everyone that this normalization of misery is for all of us because we are accepting this new way of being that doesn't align with our health and well-being. And the question is, how do we say no? No is a full sentence. How do we say no? I am not going to look at my phone because my boss is going to send me an email and then I'm going to get all wired because I will have to respond because that's how we are. Or, yeah, I choose not to respond, but I actually looked at the email. So now I'm thinking about it for the next two hours instead of sleeping. The culture has to shift, but we individually can start to say no and say, listen, I have boundaries. I have family. ⁓ need to take care of my health. Who's going to say no, you can't do that. ⁓ And will check in in the morning at working hours Our future generation is doing this beautifully, by the way. And I'm so excited to see them start to change. what we've already made as normalized misery. They don't look at it that way. They're like, why? Why am I gonna do this? I don't need all these hours. I actually don't even want a company phone. Remember when we switched from Blackberry to iPhone and we're all so excited, now we're hooked to it. We sleep with it, right?
Chris Cahill: So, I mean, that's a big one for me is no, I do not sleep with it. I don't even want it in the same room. You ⁓ to draw lines, And ⁓ how do encourage people to start? Because there's so many places you can look.
Sonal Bhatia: Well, the one you just said is maybe the hardest, but it's the quickest healing mechanism because let's be real, all devices have EMF. If you're wearing an aura ring, you can actually put it on airplane mode when you sleep. So you're not getting the interaction, Your phone, my phone is out of my room ⁓ that's a rule. And I tell my kids the same. I'm not sure they always listen. But my phone stays out and when I wake up, there's nothing to look at. There's only me and myself and I and I can take breaths, I can do some yoga movements, I can go for a walk before I go into reaction. Because the moment you pick up your phone, you're reacting to something that comes up. And I really encourage my clients to start your day with purpose. And the way to do it is to not have the phone dictate what your purpose is and dictate what your intention is. Without it, you've creating your intention. You're like, ⁓ today I'm going to accomplish these three things. So that is one way. And the second that I think is very important is humans are now meant to multitask. When we're shifting from topic to topic We're never breathing. We actually just jump into the next path without even thinking about it. We think it's natural, but our cortisol is just spiking, spiking, spiking and staying in this steady high state. We've normalized what high cortisol is as normal. It's not normal. Normal is when you go on vacation and you're like, wow, I feel amazing. ⁓ The of amazing should be every day, not just when you go on vacation. It should be the moment you enter your home and you're in a safe zone where you can actually feel calm. It should be when you're having lunch. It should be in between meetings when you sit and look at your emails. But we should never be multitasking. And we think we're good at it. We're actually not good at it. We're inefficient. We would accomplish so much more if we did one task at a time and move on to the next.
Chris Cahill: I made that mindset shift because you actually cannot multitask. You can task shift ⁓ to your point. There is no such thing as multitasking. So I about how do I efficiently task shift? how do ⁓ you plan for it versus react to it, I think is kind of way
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah. Yeah, and you know, a lot of people are telling me now about ADHD as new diagnosis or a mild ⁓ version of it. And I think the research is still out on this, but a lot of it has to do with us switching tasks so rapidly. that we are not able to focus and concentrate and complete something. Like we're just go, go, go, go, go. Now, just think of this for a second. We're all delving into AI and using it in different ways. But imagine if we gave AI task, but we gave it five tasks and say, go do them all five. I think it would start asking questions like, wait, which one do you want first? How are these related? And they're probably not related. Even a robot can't multitask. You have to be very crystal clear on what you're starting, what you're ending with. And that's a tool. So why are we as humans trying to pretend that we can multitask?
Chris Cahill: Yeah. And I think if we, if we just accept that as that's what high performance looks like, that's essentially normative misery.
Sonal Bhatia: beautifully beautifully put.
Chris Cahill: So ⁓ had said earlier that the culture has to change. What we rewarding inside of these corporate systems that almost guarantee ⁓ this and normative misery?
Sonal Bhatia: The first thing we're rewarding is the ability to see that people are constantly on. And you do get rewarded if you're on later in the night, because in essence, if you're responding, and we all know it, if you respond to that email at night, you feel that your boss is gonna view you ⁓ great performer always available always accessible, That is that needs to change I remember when I had direct reports I First of all would not send an email late at night I would schedule it for the next day or wait till the next day There are times when things are urgent but being a physician to me urgent means someone's having a cardiac arrest So my level of urgency is very different and I always remember as an example of what truly urgent is. But as leaders, we can make the change by simply not allowing that to be a positive. And not that they are saying, great job, you answered my email last night. They're not doing that. But they're also not saying, please don't respond to my emails. And sending an email late at night saying, please do not read this in capital letters in your subject line is absolutely useless because we will read it. Don't send it. Send it the next day. it, schedule it. have, co-pilot now. You can schedule things. It's beautiful. But that is where it starts because I don't think they're meaning intentionally to do that. But we now operate in a global 24 seven.
Chris Cahill: Right. Don't send it, schedule it.
Sonal Bhatia: work system and now we have to really have good boundaries and guardrails on what the workday is and respect people's time with family, respect people's time with themselves. We don't spend time with ourselves walking in nature, sitting in nature, reflecting on that connectivity within us. That is when we get the signal if something is wrong, but more importantly, it signals us into ease and that ease needs to start with the workforce stepping away from this 24-7 grind. The grind is not human. The grind is robotic and we actually will perform better when we're engaged in work in the hours we need to and when we're resting in the hours that we're supposed to.
Chris Cahill: So how do you help people find that balance, because ⁓ a of people have accepted the grind, If I don't do this, it's not gonna work. How do you show them a different way?
Sonal Bhatia: I request for them first of all to give themselves permission. Are you willing to find an hour in your day where you can give permission to do something that's not work related? if you start your job at eight just to show up, can you show up at nine and use that one extra hour doing something more mindful? Maybe I want to meditate for 20 minutes or go for a walk for 20 minutes. Those changes start to give them the ⁓ permission to create a boundary at the beginning, but also boundary at the That transition from work to going, whether you're commuting to home or switching from your home office to your living room, there needs to be a very ⁓ clear transition of I'm putting my phone down, I'm shutting down my laptop and I'm going for a run, a walk, a gym class, a meditation, Everyone has something that they love to do, but they never have time to do it. And I asked them to incorporate 15 to 20 minutes in a day. In a day. ⁓ And that their meditation. ⁓ I had a client showed me ⁓
Chris Cahill: Yeah.
Sonal Bhatia: She loves playing the violin and she hadn't done it in so long, but it's sitting in her house and she works from home. And I'm like, you're not back to back all the time. Is there any time when you're having this dip in energy and yes, it's the two to 3 PM where everyone grabs a cup of coffee. I told her, why don't you play the violin just for 15, 20 minutes and see what happens. And We weren't measuring anything. I just wanted her to acknowledge how she felt. And so what she acknowledged was she didn't need a coffee burst. She actually got an energy burst and she went on to the rest of her meetings with a lot more energy positivity, less reaction, But why? Because her cortisol level that was so high immediately dropped. For her, that's meditation.
Chris Cahill: Yep.
Sonal Bhatia: Meditation isn't just sitting and going Zen like ⁓ that's everyone does it differently. Like my son plays basketball. I'm convinced that's his meditation. Similarly, she did that, but she had the aura ring on and later on she, she sent me a screenshot showing that she was at a high stress and in those 15 minutes she went to recovery and it was evident in her numbers on her device. I wasn't shocked because I knew that something's happening that's positive. But that was data and I'm a scientist at the end of the day. So I love the data correlating with it. And all she needed is 15 minutes. So now she knows when she's in the stress mode and she knows exactly what tools to use to get out of it. And it doesn't require a caffeine boost, which is not going to eliminate from your system by the time you go to bed because it takes 13 hours to metabolize, right?
Chris Cahill: Yeah. Meditation is an interesting one because a lot of people say, no, I can't meditate. but I think like going for a walk is meditation. spending time in nature is meditation, doing something you love, call it flow, call it meditation, call it whatever you want to call it. if you take the time to do that for me, it's amazing. The problems I'll solve or the ideas I'll generate. Cause I stopped trying ⁓ to do it just be quiet.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah. Exactly. Be quiet and all those problems are clouds and the clouds are passing by you and you're just observer. And you're like, I don't need to deal with this right now. I'm just going to be silent and observe it. And next thing you know, you, you relax so much that those problems don't feel like problems anymore. They're just situations.
Chris Cahill: if someone out is struggling with normative misery or disease, one tangible thing you would give as advice to help them to get out of it?
Sonal Bhatia: All depends on what's driving their normative misery, whether it's personal, professional. But I think there is one thing we can all do is center ourselves back. And it's as simple as taking one to two breaths in the moment. Because the moment you do that, you're doing a bunch of things. All your vitals are going back to normal. Your cortisol is dropping and you are actually connecting back. inwards. And the more we start to do that, the more we realize what we want to do versus what we're expected to do. And then you can start to go down that rabbit hole of how do I start saying no, a complete sentence and create boundaries. But to me, breath work is so simple. It's active breathing because we are obviously all breathing passively, but it's the active breathing. The moment you do that, we can actively breathe and think at the same time. So the problem goes away, the active breathing comes in, and suddenly you start to recover from this normalized misery situation that you're in.
Chris Cahill: I for me, would say acknowledge that something's not right too and be okay with it. And then, ⁓ you know, take breath, take a few breaths and ⁓ start to chip at it one little thing at a time.
Sonal Bhatia: Mm-hmm. Yeah, this too shall pass. That's what I always say, this too shall pass.
Chris Cahill: for sure. So is there any topic that I didn't ask you about that you wish I would have?
Sonal Bhatia: No, think you and I can take any of these topics we've discussed and then go further deep into each one of them and it would be amazing because even like when you think about the corporate sector and how we're all grinding, there's so much that can change at the top level, but even at a bottom level and eventually get to that middle zone where people are smiling a lot more, right? They're living, living. It's about living forward and That's the goal here is humanity needs to live forward and not be feel stuck. Yeah.
Chris Cahill: Yeah, I agree. This has been a fascinating conversation as usual. I think we could go way deep on a lot of these conversations. So I'll have to have you back on another one in the future, but thanks so much for your time.
Sonal Bhatia: Thank you, Chris. This was amazing
Sonal Bhatia: Thank you, it's so great to be here with you, Chris.
Chris Cahill: before we jump in, why don't you tell audience little bit about your story?
Sonal Bhatia: My story is a little unique because I am a physician by training and I went into pharma and did some amazing things there, bringing breakthrough innovations, especially to patients with rare diseases. ⁓ then through my own health journey, realized that something was missing. I didn't know what it was. And I ultimately went ⁓
Chris Cahill: or 20 minutes of doing something that really restores you. If this resonated, share it with someone who's stuck in the grind and might need permission to find a new baseline. quiet imbalance we've come to accept as normal. In this conversation, we talk about normative misery, why so many high performers are living out of rhythm with their own bodies, and how ancient Ayurvedic wisdom, breath, boundaries, and simple daily choices can help us move from grind to genuine ease. If you've ever had normal labs but knew something was off, this episode's for you. Let's get into it.
Sonal Bhatia: started delving into the world of Ayurveda, which is an ancient science that's over 5,000 years old was able to cure myself without taking pills. And that's when I realized that we don't implement the learning. So I went and got a master's in Ayurveda and Integrative Health ⁓ started to just share all this with my peers, my friends, my colleagues, especially as we're all ⁓ living some sort of disease. Nobody is fully at ease. And it's the disease that we're totally out of sync with. And I needed us to get back as humanity into synchronization with who we are and how we can heal before we start to access some really innovation medicine that exists in our Western medicine.
Chris Cahill: amazing we ⁓ met a couple of weeks ago and I was fascinated the conversation that we had. And, one of the questions is you, you've had a lot of different and worn a lot of different hats. like you said, you've been a physician, you've held, executive roles in ⁓ major pharmaceutical corporations. Now you're helping leaders ⁓ heal, rise and thrive. From where you sit ⁓
Sonal Bhatia: What's broken today, in my opinion and from my lens, ⁓ is the fact that are working to live.
Chris Cahill: What feels broken in the way we define being well?
Sonal Bhatia: And the way we're working is not sustainable for us to have a healthy day, not a healthy week, or I'm gonna catch up at the end of the week and work out. It doesn't work that way. And so we've lost the rhythm of a human being in order to just perform. And we're performing so much that we forget to listen to what our body needs, the rest that it needs, the areas that we can adjust that are very small, they're subtle, but we've forgotten to listen to ourselves and those little signals. And when we don't listen over time, those signals become inflammation or even worse, cancer, why did we stop listening? Because we're overindulging on so much ⁓ everywhere, it's food, consumption, the work we do and the multitasking. All of these are compounding in how we're operating and we accept that. I call it normative misery. We've normalized this and it shouldn't be that case. So I'm here to now unravel what we consider normal and bring back the new baseline.
Chris Cahill: We're gonna dig more into that normative misery Before we do though, would you be comfortable telling us a bit more about your story? what was the tipping point when? Everything ⁓ looked right on paper, but knew something was wrong
Sonal Bhatia: look I had a C level role in pharma. So undoubtedly I had the stressors ⁓ working in a large corporation having a team that I was responsible for at a global level. So the timelines shifted because you were dealing with colleagues both in US and across the world. But it's when I started getting a little bit of a skin rash here, another one there, it was getting itchy. ⁓ I was covering my arms because I didn't want anyone to see it. And I just thought I had it under control, but underneath I felt something was wrong. And ultimately I went to my primary care doctor, who sent me then to an allergist who said, don't have allergies. You need to go to a dermatologist. And you know that ritual, Everyone's very specialized. I went to one of the top dermatologists in
Chris Cahill: Right.
Sonal Bhatia: New York City and he said I had poison ivy. Now I live in a building and a high rise in the city. So where did I get access to poison ivy? I actually questioned that and he said to me, no, no, no, this is classic book, bookcase. It's a bookcase scenario. Do you mind? I'm going to bring in my Durham residents to look at this. So I became a case study. and they came in, they took pictures. I'm sure I was being reported at some future webinar that they were all holding, but ultimately I got oral steroids as well as ⁓ creams and I took it home and strongly in my gut something was wrong. Like I knew I didn't have poison ivy because how did that happen? I didn't come into contact. So I chose to be the wrong patient. And I literally started to go online. And then I remembered I came across a book that was in my home that I purchased like maybe 15 years ago. And it was called Ayurveda for home remedies. And I was looking at rashes. And that's when I was like, what is my constitution according to Ayurveda? So I went on tools and I did my constitution and I realized that wait, it could just be things I'm eating that are overheating me and I'm not able to clear it from my system because I'm also under so much stress. And I've normalized stress and my cortisol level's high, but for me it felt normal. And I had two young kids at that time, so multitasking mom, corporate female leader, I was doing it all. So daily, I was making little changes to see what it was. And it ultimately was the food I was in taking. And of course, I also started to breathe. I don't remember the last time we stopped to breathe like Chris, take a breath. Let's just breathe. You see how instantly you slow down even in your speech and how you're talking. So I started to do breath work. I eliminated things like jalapenos that were overheating me because I am fiery as a constitution. And there were other elements like no more salsas, ⁓ within seven to 10 I kid you not, the rashes were gone and I didn't fill the prescriptions that I got. And that's when I realized, wait a sec, if I had taken those, that's great. Everything would have disappeared, but I would have continued doing what I was doing that was wrong and it would keep resurfacing and I would never know why I would just keep getting refills for the steroids. So that was my journey.
Chris Cahill: I have heard that over and over again and I've experienced it as well, Is the subspecialties look at only what they see? And I mean, you're a trained physician and they were telling you, it's poison ivy, even though you know it made no sense. I had Lyme disease many years ago and it was the same scenario. I got sent to an allergist. Allergist was like, yeah, you might probably have allergies, but I had to bounce around until someone... you know, zoomed out and said, no, you have Lyme disease. it ⁓ routinely and you have to be your own patient advocate sometimes,
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, and I love what you said about zooming out because that is the whole premise. Look at us as a full system and not just for the one thing we're coming in with because sometimes it's something else And this is the last thing that's manifesting. And the skin is one of the largest organs in our system. And usually when something's in the skin, there is an imbalance in our body, but we never think of imbalance. We think of, me the band-aid, let it go away. I don't want to see it, therefore it doesn't exist. But the imbalance stays and becomes a chronic issue over time if we don't take care of
Chris Cahill: Yeah. And what you're talking about is zooming way out. ⁓ I I heard you recently at a conference talking about disease and dis-ease. so can you, can you tell the listeners a little bit more about that?
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, I mean the word disease actually when it originated back in the day, it was never meant to be disease. It was just the state of a human body when it's not in balance. That is where the word dis-ese came up and it had a hyphen back in the day. And eventually we just started calling it disease, which is everything that shows up that a doctor treats is disease. But in essence, what it means is you're no longer in balance. Now, what do you do? Do you get back into balance or do you just put a band-aid or give yourself a pill to take away those symptoms? We have access to wonderful medicines to allow us to do that. But does it... go away from the disease state that we're in and the answer is no. It doesn't resolve the disease. The only way to resolve the disease is to understand the crux of why you're in this state. What caused you to be unbalanced? It could be a gut issue. It could be a mental issue. It could be a stress issue. It could be a lack of sleep issue. There's so many different parameters that won't get considered when you're getting that one pill or those pills to treat it. Now, I'm not talking about chronic diseases like inflammation and cancer, because once we get to those, we absolutely need the medicines that exist out there. But before we give those seven to 10 years for that to manifest, there is disease happening in the body. And we need to learn to listen inside what that little signal, you you always know it, but you're ignoring it. You're like, don't know, my head feels fuzzy today. ⁓ it's probably because I didn't sleep well and you move on with your day, ⁓ today I have a headache. I don't know what's driving this, but it's probably because I was on my devices for too long. So you're always constantly telling yourself what is causing your disease. But remember in the room when I asked, I think there were like 200 ish people in the room and we asked, How many people here believe they're in dis-ease and almost everyone raised their hand? Which means there is awareness. The question is, how do you get back to a sense of ease, which is healthy, which is balanced, which is a state where you're feeling like you're in balance with the synchronicities of your day and the night, that you're sleeping at night, So that's... ⁓
Chris Cahill: Yeah.
Sonal Bhatia: was my concept around disease and how we can start to look at it a little differently so that we start to heal ourselves internally before we're seeking something bigger and more powerful.
Chris Cahill: Yeah, so essentially what you're describing is you can have labs that look normal, something ⁓ still doesn't feel right. So you have keep looking.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, well, labs take a while to manifest. you may, a human body will always have the signal well in advance of when the lab actually tracks it. By the time the labs track it, it is now a disease that a doctor can treat or start to explore further. But the signal often happens well before and you may still look on paper and on labs as fine, you're fine, there's nothing wrong, but only you know that something is. So what do do in those situations, Because you're going to different doctors and saying, my gut says something's wrong, doc, but everything looks fine on paper. Yes, Western medicine, we treat labs, we have beautiful scanners, we are looking at ⁓ is the disease, give me the organ dysfunction and I will fix it, But there is another science which is something's off, what's going on, how's your digestion, how's your sleep, what are you troubled with, and fix that so that those labs in two to three years don't become abnormal and now you truly have something that needs treatment.
Chris Cahill: we were talking a little bit about some of these devices that you can use now to get real time info, Like an aura ring or a loop ⁓ tracker, know, how do you use those with, with people that you work with?
Sonal Bhatia: or a ring. Well, I have clients that have moved into the Oro ring. So this is becoming the new place, And the amount of data that it can provide to you is phenomenal. know, heart rate variability. gives you a sense of how you're sleeping. And those tools exist even if you have an Apple watch or a different type of ring. There's so many devices out there. But when you can look at your stress levels in the moment where it can tell you you're engaged or you're stressed or you're in recovery mode, how your day is functioning, how much movement have you done, maybe you should consider a little more movement or you've exercised way too much, it's time for you to recover. These are all beautiful steps to keep yourself in balance and in rhythm and know when you're feeling something. you can look into a device and say, what's going on? It's not perfect, but it is a lot better than the times when we had nothing and we just wondered what's wrong
Chris Cahill: smiling because ⁓ got a Garmin ⁓ watch that I was wearing and I put it on during work and it started buzzing on my wrist and it says, it appears you're agitated, you should take a breath. ⁓ And so it was during ⁓ a debate we were having, but it picked it up ⁓ gave me instant feedback. And ⁓ always remember breath moves energy and energy moves emotion,
Sonal Bhatia: Wow.
Chris Cahill: So to your point, if you can even take a quick breath, it can change things.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah. And you know, I love that you talked about energy right there because you know, we are humans, we have bones, we have muscle, we have skin, but we also have energy. And none of our modern detectors are telling us about energy. They're only telling us, well, your blood is abnormal or here's an organ or a muscle or your bone is broken or not. But that energetics that you have fills the rest of the cup. And that energy is how you show up to your meetings or to your family. And a lot of these assessments that I do tell you what is your constitution. Are you a fire? Are you an air? Are you a water type of constitution? Which gives it gives you lot of insight on how you show up and how you do work and when you eat your main meal and what kind of foods you should eat. And this is all Highly logical, but we don't think it. It's not our type of language in our modern day. so, energy is huge and that breath work shifts energy. And when you ⁓ that high energy, you can be in a neutral place so that when you're having this conversation or debate, you're actually going to ⁓ something that's not gonna trigger someone else and can navigate the conversation.
Chris Cahill: Or you can normalize the misery and not show up well. So tell me more about that.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah, as you know, did a tech talk a few months ago and the whole notion is we are living in a society where we normalize misery. We accept the fact that we're miserable doing certain things. Like nobody wants to be up late at night and feel so groggy and the next morning that they're drinking three cups of coffee to just make it through their first two meetings. We've normalized that. I'm exhausted. I'm just gonna grab another cup, What does that It creates this unwired but tired mindset that we have at night and it impacts men and women equally. I know a lot of talk is going on about perimenopause and menopause and it's true, but men are feeling it too. And I'm trying to tell everyone that this normalization of misery is for all of us because we are accepting this new way of being that doesn't align with our health and well-being. And the question is, how do we say no? No is a full sentence. How do we say no? I am not going to look at my phone because my boss is going to send me an email and then I'm going to get all wired because I will have to respond because that's how we are. Or, yeah, I choose not to respond, but I actually looked at the email. So now I'm thinking about it for the next two hours instead of sleeping. The culture has to shift, but we individually can start to say no and say, listen, I have boundaries. I have family. ⁓ need to take care of my health. Who's going to say no, you can't do that. ⁓ And will check in in the morning at working hours Our future generation is doing this beautifully, by the way. And I'm so excited to see them start to change. what we've already made as normalized misery. They don't look at it that way. They're like, why? Why am I gonna do this? I don't need all these hours. I actually don't even want a company phone. Remember when we switched from Blackberry to iPhone and we're all so excited, now we're hooked to it. We sleep with it, right?
Chris Cahill: So, I mean, that's a big one for me is no, I do not sleep with it. I don't even want it in the same room. You ⁓ to draw lines, And ⁓ how do encourage people to start? Because there's so many places you can look.
Sonal Bhatia: Well, the one you just said is maybe the hardest, but it's the quickest healing mechanism because let's be real, all devices have EMF. If you're wearing an aura ring, you can actually put it on airplane mode when you sleep. So you're not getting the interaction, Your phone, my phone is out of my room ⁓ that's a rule. And I tell my kids the same. I'm not sure they always listen. But my phone stays out and when I wake up, there's nothing to look at. There's only me and myself and I and I can take breaths, I can do some yoga movements, I can go for a walk before I go into reaction. Because the moment you pick up your phone, you're reacting to something that comes up. And I really encourage my clients to start your day with purpose. And the way to do it is to not have the phone dictate what your purpose is and dictate what your intention is. Without it, you've creating your intention. You're like, ⁓ today I'm going to accomplish these three things. So that is one way. And the second that I think is very important is humans are now meant to multitask. When we're shifting from topic to topic We're never breathing. We actually just jump into the next path without even thinking about it. We think it's natural, but our cortisol is just spiking, spiking, spiking and staying in this steady high state. We've normalized what high cortisol is as normal. It's not normal. Normal is when you go on vacation and you're like, wow, I feel amazing. ⁓ The of amazing should be every day, not just when you go on vacation. It should be the moment you enter your home and you're in a safe zone where you can actually feel calm. It should be when you're having lunch. It should be in between meetings when you sit and look at your emails. But we should never be multitasking. And we think we're good at it. We're actually not good at it. We're inefficient. We would accomplish so much more if we did one task at a time and move on to the next.
Chris Cahill: I made that mindset shift because you actually cannot multitask. You can task shift ⁓ to your point. There is no such thing as multitasking. So I about how do I efficiently task shift? how do ⁓ you plan for it versus react to it, I think is kind of way
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah. Yeah, and you know, a lot of people are telling me now about ADHD as new diagnosis or a mild ⁓ version of it. And I think the research is still out on this, but a lot of it has to do with us switching tasks so rapidly. that we are not able to focus and concentrate and complete something. Like we're just go, go, go, go, go. Now, just think of this for a second. We're all delving into AI and using it in different ways. But imagine if we gave AI task, but we gave it five tasks and say, go do them all five. I think it would start asking questions like, wait, which one do you want first? How are these related? And they're probably not related. Even a robot can't multitask. You have to be very crystal clear on what you're starting, what you're ending with. And that's a tool. So why are we as humans trying to pretend that we can multitask?
Chris Cahill: Yeah. And I think if we, if we just accept that as that's what high performance looks like, that's essentially normative misery.
Sonal Bhatia: beautifully beautifully put.
Chris Cahill: So ⁓ had said earlier that the culture has to change. What we rewarding inside of these corporate systems that almost guarantee ⁓ this and normative misery?
Sonal Bhatia: The first thing we're rewarding is the ability to see that people are constantly on. And you do get rewarded if you're on later in the night, because in essence, if you're responding, and we all know it, if you respond to that email at night, you feel that your boss is gonna view you ⁓ great performer always available always accessible, That is that needs to change I remember when I had direct reports I First of all would not send an email late at night I would schedule it for the next day or wait till the next day There are times when things are urgent but being a physician to me urgent means someone's having a cardiac arrest So my level of urgency is very different and I always remember as an example of what truly urgent is. But as leaders, we can make the change by simply not allowing that to be a positive. And not that they are saying, great job, you answered my email last night. They're not doing that. But they're also not saying, please don't respond to my emails. And sending an email late at night saying, please do not read this in capital letters in your subject line is absolutely useless because we will read it. Don't send it. Send it the next day. it, schedule it. have, co-pilot now. You can schedule things. It's beautiful. But that is where it starts because I don't think they're meaning intentionally to do that. But we now operate in a global 24 seven.
Chris Cahill: Right. Don't send it, schedule it.
Sonal Bhatia: work system and now we have to really have good boundaries and guardrails on what the workday is and respect people's time with family, respect people's time with themselves. We don't spend time with ourselves walking in nature, sitting in nature, reflecting on that connectivity within us. That is when we get the signal if something is wrong, but more importantly, it signals us into ease and that ease needs to start with the workforce stepping away from this 24-7 grind. The grind is not human. The grind is robotic and we actually will perform better when we're engaged in work in the hours we need to and when we're resting in the hours that we're supposed to.
Chris Cahill: So how do you help people find that balance, because ⁓ a of people have accepted the grind, If I don't do this, it's not gonna work. How do you show them a different way?
Sonal Bhatia: I request for them first of all to give themselves permission. Are you willing to find an hour in your day where you can give permission to do something that's not work related? if you start your job at eight just to show up, can you show up at nine and use that one extra hour doing something more mindful? Maybe I want to meditate for 20 minutes or go for a walk for 20 minutes. Those changes start to give them the ⁓ permission to create a boundary at the beginning, but also boundary at the That transition from work to going, whether you're commuting to home or switching from your home office to your living room, there needs to be a very ⁓ clear transition of I'm putting my phone down, I'm shutting down my laptop and I'm going for a run, a walk, a gym class, a meditation, Everyone has something that they love to do, but they never have time to do it. And I asked them to incorporate 15 to 20 minutes in a day. In a day. ⁓ And that their meditation. ⁓ I had a client showed me ⁓
Chris Cahill: Yeah.
Sonal Bhatia: She loves playing the violin and she hadn't done it in so long, but it's sitting in her house and she works from home. And I'm like, you're not back to back all the time. Is there any time when you're having this dip in energy and yes, it's the two to 3 PM where everyone grabs a cup of coffee. I told her, why don't you play the violin just for 15, 20 minutes and see what happens. And We weren't measuring anything. I just wanted her to acknowledge how she felt. And so what she acknowledged was she didn't need a coffee burst. She actually got an energy burst and she went on to the rest of her meetings with a lot more energy positivity, less reaction, But why? Because her cortisol level that was so high immediately dropped. For her, that's meditation.
Chris Cahill: Yep.
Sonal Bhatia: Meditation isn't just sitting and going Zen like ⁓ that's everyone does it differently. Like my son plays basketball. I'm convinced that's his meditation. Similarly, she did that, but she had the aura ring on and later on she, she sent me a screenshot showing that she was at a high stress and in those 15 minutes she went to recovery and it was evident in her numbers on her device. I wasn't shocked because I knew that something's happening that's positive. But that was data and I'm a scientist at the end of the day. So I love the data correlating with it. And all she needed is 15 minutes. So now she knows when she's in the stress mode and she knows exactly what tools to use to get out of it. And it doesn't require a caffeine boost, which is not going to eliminate from your system by the time you go to bed because it takes 13 hours to metabolize, right?
Chris Cahill: Yeah. Meditation is an interesting one because a lot of people say, no, I can't meditate. but I think like going for a walk is meditation. spending time in nature is meditation, doing something you love, call it flow, call it meditation, call it whatever you want to call it. if you take the time to do that for me, it's amazing. The problems I'll solve or the ideas I'll generate. Cause I stopped trying ⁓ to do it just be quiet.
Sonal Bhatia: Yeah. Exactly. Be quiet and all those problems are clouds and the clouds are passing by you and you're just observer. And you're like, I don't need to deal with this right now. I'm just going to be silent and observe it. And next thing you know, you, you relax so much that those problems don't feel like problems anymore. They're just situations.
Chris Cahill: if someone out is struggling with normative misery or disease, one tangible thing you would give as advice to help them to get out of it?
Sonal Bhatia: All depends on what's driving their normative misery, whether it's personal, professional. But I think there is one thing we can all do is center ourselves back. And it's as simple as taking one to two breaths in the moment. Because the moment you do that, you're doing a bunch of things. All your vitals are going back to normal. Your cortisol is dropping and you are actually connecting back. inwards. And the more we start to do that, the more we realize what we want to do versus what we're expected to do. And then you can start to go down that rabbit hole of how do I start saying no, a complete sentence and create boundaries. But to me, breath work is so simple. It's active breathing because we are obviously all breathing passively, but it's the active breathing. The moment you do that, we can actively breathe and think at the same time. So the problem goes away, the active breathing comes in, and suddenly you start to recover from this normalized misery situation that you're in.
Chris Cahill: I for me, would say acknowledge that something's not right too and be okay with it. And then, ⁓ you know, take breath, take a few breaths and ⁓ start to chip at it one little thing at a time.
Sonal Bhatia: Mm-hmm. Yeah, this too shall pass. That's what I always say, this too shall pass.
Chris Cahill: for sure. So is there any topic that I didn't ask you about that you wish I would have?
Sonal Bhatia: No, think you and I can take any of these topics we've discussed and then go further deep into each one of them and it would be amazing because even like when you think about the corporate sector and how we're all grinding, there's so much that can change at the top level, but even at a bottom level and eventually get to that middle zone where people are smiling a lot more, right? They're living, living. It's about living forward and That's the goal here is humanity needs to live forward and not be feel stuck. Yeah.
Chris Cahill: Yeah, I agree. This has been a fascinating conversation as usual. I think we could go way deep on a lot of these conversations. So I'll have to have you back on another one in the future, but thanks so much for your time.
Sonal Bhatia: Thank you, Chris. This was amazing
