Building Resources, Hacking the Doctor OS: Introducing Some Strategies in Weeklong Intensives
Prefer to listen than read? Scroll to the bottom to stream or download the narrated version.
A few months ago, I wrote about the Doctor OS: what functions at a subliminal level and directs virtually autonomously our performance as doctors. By performance, I mean what we do and how and why we do it. We devote a tremendous amount of attention to what we do as physicians—making diagnoses, developing treatment plans, and rendering care. Almost everything about how to be a doctor is presumed to be characterologic and in place before we start our training or absorbed along the way, mostly by watching more experienced doctors, discerning what is acceptable to us and others, factoring in what seems to work and what doesn't, and striving to fit in. Let's call these survival skills. It's also what is referred to as the hidden curriculum. Influenced by our inner world and the outer world, these orientations and skills can be nuanced, and they have deep roots in our individual psyches and professional culture, but they are predominantly unconscious and therefore rudimentary and less developed than they could be if we were more conscious of them. What would happen if they were less hidden?
The Forge of Meaning and Purpose
The how and why of being a doctor usually only get attention when we are suffering professionally or personally. This is a pity. It's a pity because the forge of meaning and purpose in the work of doctoring derives substantially from the how and why. Continually answering these questions is also what helps push us into new terrain, beyond enduring, where we can thrive. We don't just short-change this dimension; we see it as trivial, completely optional, an extravagance we can't afford.
Weeklong Intensives—2024 Plans
I propose that the how and why questions are where the juice is, the elixir. So I've been working on ways to take a long quaff, to achieve a deep watering of our parched inner landscape. The idea of week-long Intensives is to unhitch from our daily routine to travel deeper and farther into rich domains of practice and discover resources that are often hidden in plain sight. These are things that govern our experience, typically without our realizing their impact. They fly under our radar. The topics that interest me stand to immediately improve our day-to-day experience and personal well-being. At the same time, they also help us become more articulate about the conditions of practice that support healing--ours and our patients'. They are practical and profound, elemental, and foundational. The exploration of each Intensive's theme happens on multiple levels by engaging the intelligence of mind, heart, and body. The location is chosen to amplify the theme, to be stimulating restorative, and fun. I specifically eschew the notion of "retreat" because it invokes escaping from ourselves. Instead, by coming home to ourselves, we can find restoration and inner reservoirs we forgot about or never knew we had. You will be transported by these experiences that will enliven the connection between the inner world and the outer one. Here's a preview of the Intensives I am working on for 2024. What do you think?
Where and how do we seek and receive counsel in our journey as doctors? Where and with whom do we address the epic questions? Accountability and the private nature of doctor-patient communications necessarily create isolation for physicians. We stand outside ordinary experience and the security of the collective. We often don't share even with our colleagues the doubts and vulnerability we feel or the burden of responsibility we carry. When we turn to psychotherapists or spiritual advisors, we often have to decode so much about the details of our work that getting to the heart of our concerns can still feel elusive. We will explore sources of inner and outer guides in this intensive, how to find them and ask for their help. These will include what our dreams, symbols, and imagination deliver and how to interpret their often cryptic messages. We'll investigate ancestral wisdom and the long tradition of medicine and what it asks of us in the modern age. We will tap the often undervalued wisdom of elders by curating our "inner council of elders" as described by author and Jungian analyst Sharon Blackie. We will learn about True North groups and how continuity and trust in a small group can help participants evaluate choices that help them stay true to their course. We will be at a contemporary hermitage, far off the beaten path in Umbria, in a place of luxurious simplicity that will nurture our turning to find our guides.
Planned Location: Eremito, Umbria, Italy
Tentative date: June 2024, Sunday arrival to Saturday departure
Expected cost: $3600 (accommodations 6 nights, meals, one 90-minute massage, swimming pool, opening and closing sessions, daily yoga and myofascial release practice, interactive sessions)
Participants: 12
Balancing priorities is important, but how do we manage that when our identity is entwined with and expressed through our calling? Can we ask for more than turning off or on various streams of our existence? The purpose of this Intensive is to turn to face experiences of stress and anxiety and tame them. How can we befriend these messages from ourselves, hear their concerns, answer and defuse them? We will work with theory from interpersonal neurobiology, touch into the transformative potential of trauma, and work with somatic approaches to unlocking experiences stored in the body. By understanding how some of the self-discipline tactics we intentionally cultivate to meet the challenges of medical education, training, and practice render us more susceptible to complicated stress and secondary trauma, we can begin to unwind habits and migrate to more beneficial strategies for life and work. Many prosocial behaviors can tip into a shadow realm where they can undermine our inner reserves—called Edge States by medical anthropologist and Upaya Zen Center abbot Roshi Joan Halifax. We will talk and work with our bodies near the sea on the island of Pantelleria, midway between Sicily and Tunisia. A feast of the senses.
Planned Location: Parco dei Sesi, Pantelleria, Italy
Tentative date: September 2024, Sunday arrival to Saturday departure
Expected cost: $3700 (accommodations 6 nights, meals, one 90-minute massage, local transportation, an excursion, daily yoga)
Participants: 12
Our training and covenant earn us patients' trust so that we are granted access to the most intimate spaces of body and psyche. From the anatomy lab to the physical exam to the operating room, our conduct is choreographed in ways that are often unconscious. As beginners, we have awkward introductions to this private realm and sanctioned touch. Gradually the crossing of boundaries becomes more familiar and even rote. Could we know more? Neurobiologically, all of our senses from within our bodies and from without bridge our thoughts and engagement. We use sight, touch, smell, and sound to make diagnoses. Our inner sensations signal engagement before we can even process it mentally. Is it possible to refine in nonverbal ways our attunement and communication? Can we build trust, signal accompaniment, and experience harmony in our encounters with patients and coworkers? Could we be more comfortable in our own skin at these frontiers of engagement and have a stronger healing presence as a result?
We will work with Biodanza, techniques from music therapy, and healing touch (massage) as well as conversation in this Intensive. We will be in astoundingly beautiful natural surroundings and enjoy thermal baths. Come prepared to give and receive.
Planned location: Brucke 49, Vals, Switzerland
Tentative date: mid-October 2024, Sunday arrival to Saturday departure
Expected cost: $3800 (accommodations 6 nights, meals, one 90-minute massage, one thermal bath visit, opening and closing sessions, daily yoga and myofascial release practice, music, Biodanza, and massage sessions)
Participants: 10-16
This Intensive is for premedical students who are matriculating into medical school. Thresholds are places that are different from borders, interfaces or frontiers. They are places where we are at least temporarily suspended in a transition, where we leave one way of being behind and move forward into another that is yet unknown. This experience is meant to demarcate the threshold of entering medicine, to explore what is being shed and what is being taken on. In addition to listening to the dreams and embracing the sacred intention of this journey, we will contribute to building foundation for it. It is easy to be swept along in the program of studies that as yet overlooks some fundamental preparations for the work and life and doctoring.
Planned Location: La Ventana Hostel, La Ventana, Baja California Sur, Mexico
Tentative date: June 16-22, 2024, Sunday arrival to Saturday departure.
Expected cost $1800 (accommodations 6 nights, meals, juice bar, smoothies, twice daily yoga, introduction to free-diving, overnight excursion to Isla Cerralvo, swimming, stand-up paddle boarding, hiking, mountain biking, Missing Curriculum sessions)
Participants: 14-16
Tiny Private Intensives—Stay Tuned
I am also working on setting up some tiny, private Intensives. These could be solo excursions or include up to 4 participants. We would work together on themes or transitions that are significant for you, nestled into an off-the-grid private Alpine hut. We would walk, talk, bathe in a mountain stream, gain perspective, carve a path. Stay tuned.
Parting Note
A parting note. I realize these offerings are way outside the usual professional retreat or exotic vacation even though they have a little of both. There are lots of things you love now that probably seemed strange or frankly distasteful when you first encountered them: coffee, scotch, and a 10k run come to mind. Give these a chance to marinate for a bit and see what happens. You might be surprised. I hope so.
As always, I honor your journey and our hard work of doctoring. I'm interested in your experience--please reply to this email or schedule a 15-minute conversation with me here if you'd like to connect.
