Shameless self care - guest Nimisha Kantharia

Start Time:: 00:00:02

End Time: 00:27:03.840

Jenn Wilson: Hello and welcome to this episode of the irregular humans. Podcast with me, Jen Wilson and my brilliant guest today is Nimisha Nimisha is all kinds of things, a parent, a surgeon, an artist and writer, and a mindfulness coach.

Jenn Wilson: But I think when I've heard what I've heard about Lamiche's story I love is that, like myself.

Jenn Wilson: she was a bit skeptical of mindfulness for a very long time, and now it's like the center of her world. So I want to hear all about your irregular story. Welcome, Namisha.

Nimisha: Thank you for having me, Jen. And well, I'm happy to be on

Nimisha: the irregular human podcast. Because I'm, a person who's felt very, very irregular, I think, somewhere in one of my bios. It even says that I'm a star shaped person trying to fit into a circle.

Nimisha: What is it square peg in a round hole in a world that's made for like round holes, you know.

Nimisha: not even a square peg. I'm like a star fitting into that square peg.

Jenn Wilson: Fantastic. Yeah.

Nimisha: How irregular I have felt most of my life.

Jenn Wilson: Yeah, we shape the wibbly, wobbly world around us rather.

Nimisha: Yes.

Jenn Wilson: Quite a bit into it. Yeah.

Nimisha: Yeah.

Jenn Wilson: So tell us about your journey, then, as an irregular person, and how you came to that description of yourself, and also your mindfulness, work.

Nimisha: Yeah. So well, it's all connected, in a way. So

Nimisha: I think people who are irregular in some way, in whatever way you know whether they're highly sensitive people or they are neurodivergent people as I am. I have Adhd, which wasn't diagnosed until I became a mom. And well, I was mom to a 2 year old when we found out.

Nimisha: And so my whole life I've always known there's something a bit off about me for want of better word to say to use.

Nimisha: but there's nothing that you could place the finger on, and to all

Nimisha: extent and purposes, for the outside world. I was just this normal person growing up right. I did fairly well in school. I was a good kid. Teachers love me. Parents of all my friends love me like nothing. Nothing that's wrong on the outside inside. I just felt wrong always.

Nimisha: And so it was great when I became a mom, and you know understood that I am highly sensitive. And then that went ahead, and I found out that I am an adhdr, and just so much of my life started falling into place. But you know, when you're conventionally, academically successful, and then you become a surgeon. And people look at you. And they think.

Nimisha: well, she's pretty much a normal person, right? Leading this average normal life.

Jenn Wilson: Your path, isn't it? You know you're happily married. You've got a family. You've got a.

Nimisha: Exactly.

Jenn Wilson: Career. But there's something feeling it just doesn't quite fit.

Nimisha: Exactly so. Yeah. And you know,

Nimisha: well, like we were talking about how lonely it can get, because when then, when you say I'm feeling all these ways off and odd. Then people are pretty dismissive about how you feel, because they're like.

Nimisha: and you

Nimisha: have everything, you know. Why would you think that way like you're obviously a success like you have degrees. You have certificates, you know. You shouldn't be feeling like an imposter or like you're a fraud in any way, or you shouldn't be feeling odd and off. But that diagnosis of Adhd was. It was a. It was a great help to me because it kind of just

Nimisha: so much clicked and made sense.

Jenn Wilson: Hmm.

Nimisha: And

Nimisha: that's why I guess I I've always identified with the irregular people and the people who are like

Nimisha: not quite

Nimisha: typical or normal, and I I don't say that in like a bad way, but you know just

Nimisha: but well, I didn't always seem to belong there, so mindfulness comes about from being a surgeon. What happened is that

Nimisha: I was having a pretty stressful time at 1 point in my surgical career I mean the surgical career. It is stressful. But

Nimisha: This was a combination of a stressful circumstances, but a really safe workspace, a very, very supportive workspace. And so I think it was the 1st time in my life that I felt like.

Nimisha: not consciously, of course, but that some part of me felt safe enough to fall apart.

Jenn Wilson: And.

Nimisha: And so I had this kind of

Nimisha: episode, which was almost like a physical ill health, where I kind of felt like throwing up every time I entered the operating room I felt like throwing up, and I had this racing heart. I had nausea. I had like I wasn't able to sleep at night.

Nimisha: and then we did all obviously being doctors in a hospital. We did all kinds of medical tests and checkups and everything, and there wasn't really anything that we could that correlated with symptoms like this. So they said, Maybe you're burnt out and you need to take a break. And I took a break. And I came back and things weren't better. And then I started really getting worried. Because I'm like, Okay, I'm in a supportive environment. But I do want to get back to the or that's that's that's my love. That's my work, you know.

Jenn Wilson: Hmm.

Nimisha: And

Nimisha: that's when someone suggested mindfulness. And it wasn't the 1st time people have suggested mindfulness to me like I live in India. I'm from India. We have these Vipassana centers which offer free 10 day retreats. It's really, you know, it's not going to be an expensive affair for you to be able to go into a meditation center or to join a meditation group near you, but I was always very, very resistant to it. I've been told. You know all my life that your

Nimisha: really hyper like do you want to calm down? Do you think you know you should? And I resisted it with all my might, because I was just like, no, this is part of my personality, you know. I'm not zombieing myself out, or you know, zening myself out. That's that's not happening. This is who I am.

Jenn Wilson: Yes.

Nimisha: Was a surgeon. I felt like

Nimisha: the attitude gave me a little bit of a

Nimisha: like. It was essential part of my surgeon. Personality.

Jenn Wilson: Yeah. Do you know what, Namisha, I really relate to what you're saying? Because, as I also late diagnosed Adhd. When people have said that to me, you know, when I've had episodes of being, you know, overwhelmed, or heading towards burnout, or struggling with life and all its infinite varieties of challenges and delights.

Jenn Wilson: People have suggested mindfulness or meditation to me. And I've tried it. And I've tried that. I've tried. I've like gone right? Yeah, okay, I can sit quietly and I cannot switch my brain off. I just it just was, you know, I go right. Let's think about nothing. And I think of about 150 things.

Nimisha: I'm so glad you brought that up, because you know, then what happened is, and this is relevant, because what happened is I was desperate by this point of time. So when my husband he was very tentatively, he was like, you know.

Nimisha: do you want to go for a Vipassana retreat like Vipassana is mindfulness, and I said, No, I don't want to. But since you're saying this and nothing else seems to be working, I shall find myself a book, and I had this subscription to this app called Scribd, which has, you know, books on it. And I went, and I looked for a book on meditation, and, as luck would have it, the 1st book that I came across was this book by Dan Harris.

Nimisha: called 10% Happier, and Dan Harris was a reporter. He was, and I think he teaches mindfulness. Now he does a lot of work in that space. But at that time he was a reporter. So he was in this high pressure job, and he had this meltdown on camera while reporting.

Nimisha: and he talks about his journey. It's a fairly short book, but he gave a lot of the science behind mindfulness which appealed to me.

Nimisha: and he really emphasized in that book something that I'm so grateful for, which is that it is not about emptying your mind of thoughts. It's not about becoming completely, you know, blank and empty, and blissed out, much as we would all love that.

Nimisha: It's not realistic for probably any humans, let alone neurodivergent adhdrs like us.

Nimisha: So he just said, you just have to become aware of it right? You.

Nimisha: He was talking about breath focused meditation. So you're focusing on your in and out of your breath and your mind wanders. And then you're like. Okay. I wandered and come back to the breath. And okay, I wandered and come back to the breath. And now it's been a decade since I practiced mindfulness.

Nimisha: I don't think I can go even 2 min without my mind wandering, but that doesn't matter, because the whole practice isn't coming back.

Nimisha: and in trying not to judge yourself when your mind wanders, which is very hard, but that's it. That's the practice. You just come back, you notice, and you come back. You notice you try not to judge yourself. You come back.

Nimisha: And so I was like, how hard can this be, you know, like, let me give it a shot. So I found an app, and I started practicing for like 10 min, and

Nimisha: in less than a week I was back in the or I was back functioning completely, like at 100%. And for me it was like a miracle. I was just like

Nimisha: I have been resisting this all my life, but like this is the perfect thing for me, and I wasn't worried because he had set the ground so well for me. I wasn't worried about my mind wandering. I didn't even know people thought that it was emptying your mind of thoughts. I just didn't want to sit still.

Jenn Wilson: Yeah.

Nimisha: And so you know, of course, my mindfulness journey also evolved, especially after becoming a mother. I found it even harder to sit still, even for those 10 min. And so I started incorporating a lot more movement, based practices. And in fact, I came up with my own. Since I love art so much. I have this.

Nimisha: So in the traditional mindfulness you have walking meditation, which I've always found very hard, because for me, when I start walking, and I have to focus on the steps, you know, like you're taking a step. You're lifting your leg. You're placing your leg. You're lifting your next leg. You're placing your leg. What happens to me in my head is that I go straight to my 1st year of Med school. When we learned the anatomy and the physiology of walking. And so my mind is on this. Is it? Heel, lift? Is it toe, strike? And so I kind of get into a thought Loop.

Nimisha: So I struggled a lot with walking meditation. I'm much better with it now, but I came up with my own mindfulness at watercolor based practice. And so

Nimisha: that helps when I can't, you know, do the breath focus thing because I realize the breath focus also doesn't work when you have a respiratory disease, or when you have asthma, and I'm asthmatic. So when I have asthma and I'm stressed out, and I want to be mindful

Nimisha: trying to focus on my breath doesn't help, because it's an area of immense discomfort. So, of course, along the way and along like 10 decades of practicing mindfulness. And then the last couple of teaching it.

Nimisha: I came up with all of these ways in which mindfulness can be made to work for you, even if you're not the sit still, close, your eyes become blissful, empty your mind of thoughts, sit in a corner, go on the mountain, be in a retreat, because I realized the people who need mindfulness most are the sensitive ones, the ones who are busy.

Nimisha: busy parents with no time at all right, they're the ones who need it. And so if you're going to tell people, oh, take 1 h out and do this morning routine. It sounds amazing.

Nimisha: But

Nimisha: it just it doesn't work for a lot of people. And actually, to be honest, let's just be honest. Morning routines never sound amazing to me, because there's this autonomic drive that this autonomous drive that I have, which, even if I set a morning routine for myself, saying, I will get up, and then I will meditate.

Nimisha: I will resist it with all my might, because

Nimisha: it's something good, and I should be doing it so I prefer to incorporate mindfulness in my day. Throughout my day, you know, weaving it in weaving it in taking these micro moments, taking 2 min here, 5 min there.

Nimisha: and that's something everyone can do. You don't don't really have to meditate.

Jenn Wilson: Oh, so much so I mean, like, if you told me to take an hour to do anything in the morning, I would that that's just not gonna.

Nimisha: And I was an exaggeration. You know people people do it for like.

Jenn Wilson: I know it really works for some people, and I was talking to my daughter, who is a teenager and is also

Jenn Wilson: we're working out exactly what her neurodivergence is. But the idea of a morning routine, even imagining what a morning routine might look like is challenging. Never mind trying to put things in it that might last a long time and involve sitting still. Yeah.

Nimisha: So so. No, I and I do. I do find, you know, not just with mindfulness, even with things like gratitude, practices

Nimisha: an extremely grateful person. But I cannot keep a gratitude journal, because at the end of the day, if you tell me, be grateful.

Nimisha: I just I can't do it. It makes me mad. It makes me angry. It makes me feel like I'm settling for crumbs, even if I don't really feel that way. So I've realized that lots of things don't work. But but if I organically create an environment in which gratitude can well up.

Nimisha: which is where again, mindfulness helps me. Because if you are paying attention to things which are sensory, pleasing to you, and then you take that moment to kind of appreciate it and really lock it in not just say, Oh, this is so beautiful! The sunset is so beautiful, but like

Nimisha: make this habit of kind of stopping there and really taking it in with your senses, all of your senses, and then kind of locking in that experience for yourself, you'll find spontaneous gratitude welling up for all kinds of things, you know, like.

Jenn Wilson: On me.

Nimisha: And like a I don't know, like a bird shopping, and like waking up

Nimisha: on the right side of the bed instead of the wrong side. And you. So I found that especially for, like a lot of irregular people, neurodivergent people, people for whom all of these really great positive psychology and conventional practices which are amazing in theory. They don't work in practical for a lot of us, and then we feel even more wrong. So this is this is like my passion project, you know, when good stuff makes you feel worse about yourself because it doesn't work for you.

Jenn Wilson: Yes.

Nimisha: Yeah. So for me, it's like a big thing to tell people. No, it can you? You can.

Nimisha: You can make it work for you in your way.

Jenn Wilson: There's all that we do that shudding on ourselves, don't we? And I mean it.

Nimisha: Oh!

Jenn Wilson: It's quite well known the idea that should is a problematic word, and that when we're telling ourselves we should do something, we're not being kind to ourselves, I think should, is so much more

Jenn Wilson: insidious and painful than other other words like you have to, or you must, because should has that kind of moral high ground.

Nimisha: He was just going to say the moral imperative, you know, like should. This is the way it should be done, and especially if you're a person who's always felt like wrong growing up. But you don't quite know why.

Jenn Wilson: Yes.

Nimisha: Then then you're always looking for those shoulds. You know. You're looking for someone to tell you. It should.

Jenn Wilson: As sensitive and neurodivergent people. A lot of us are very sensitive around issues of justice and social justice. A lot of the people I work with neurodivergent or not are purpose driven. They want to make a change in the world. They want to be a good human being and make a positive contribution. So you can end up being really frustrated and angry at yourself when you're

Jenn Wilson: somehow failing to do that, and failing to take care of.

Nimisha: Exactly exactly, and so that you know it becomes like, well, this is it, you know, and especially the way the clickbaity way, like a lot of media presents things I know growing up. I should look for these self-help books and self-help articles, because I always felt there must be a formula for not feeling the way I feel there must be this formula. Eventually, I realized it's not like a formula as much as it's a recipe, and the recipe is self-acceptance, like radical self-acceptance. You just

Nimisha: flood yourself with so much compassion that there isn't room for shame, you know, but.

Jenn Wilson: It's a practice.

Nimisha: It's a practice. It's not something that's happening overnight.

Jenn Wilson: No, absolutely. I love that. It's a practice I always talk about consent. You know, my work being about it being a practice. And also, you use the word noticing.

Jenn Wilson: you know, and I think that that just taking a moment to notice

Jenn Wilson: what's going on outside of you, around you and inside you is powerful, isn't it?

Nimisha: Yeah. And I've realized I've seen this in my own self. I found myself using the word, noticing a lot more than say attention, or even just mindful. And then I noticed that a lot of other people, a lot of kind of writers on this

Nimisha: sort of fringe narrative. But you know the ones who are trying to shape a different narrative for the world. They also use this word noticing, and I've realized that noticing just feels gentler, whereas pay attention is very much like school like, pay attention to you. You don't pay attention at all. You know this. There's a lot of baggage around that word, whereas noticing is, is much more gentle. Observe.

Jenn Wilson: It's more of an invitation, isn't it? It's more of a connection rather than a demand or a coercive kind of feeling to it.

Nimisha: Yeah. And so I did want to say this as well, you know. So the thing about mindfulness and you you touched on it is that a lot of people feel like because we use the word mindful in the English language as well. Mind the gap like, be mindful of Xyz, or be mindful of reading the whole legal document before you sign it. Right? So we use the word mindful to like, pay attention and be aware of what is happening like. Look around you. The people don't understand, or they don't realize

Nimisha: that minds that awareness is just one piece, the awareness and the attention and the noticing is just one piece. The other piece of it which is really important

Nimisha: is compassion.

Nimisha: It's compassion and kindness to yourself. It's loving kindness, and I feel like this gets missed because I missed it. For the 1st 5 years I was so focused on that attention and that attention helped me right. It calmed me down. It kind of

Nimisha: it was almost like medicine, was my anti-anxiety. Sorry meditation was my anti-anxiety anti-anger pill.

Nimisha: I was skipping the compassion part altogether. I started getting frustrated with myself like this is happening all the time right like, why am I behaving like. I was aware of my patterns, but I was frustrated because I wasn't changing them. That's because the change comes from being compassionate accepting yourself.

Jenn Wilson: Yes.

Nimisha: And you know, allowing that that compassion to gradually move you more and more in alignment with your own values and your purpose, not the shoulds imposed on.

Jenn Wilson: So important again. You know a lot of the clients I work with. The people in my world really, really struggle with that compassion to self. They're deeply compassionate to everyone else.

Nimisha: Yeah.

Jenn Wilson: But recognizing that, you know, if we want to be the change we want to see in the world, then that means treating ourself with kindness.

Nimisha: Absolutely. And so you know, apparently in

Nimisha: in the Tibetan language, the word for compassion includes self-compassion. You cannot have true compassion without having self-compassion, and sometimes it kind of sounds harsh to say it. But if you're being compassionate to everyone else, if you're treating someone else to a different standard than you treat yourself.

Jenn Wilson: Hmm.

Nimisha: That little bit of hypocrisy when I remind myself of that, I mean, this is not to say I'm judging anyone else who does it. But for me, when I remind myself, well, okay, Namisha, you would never talk to your daughter like this, or you would never say this to a friend who's struggling, and I can see that I'm holding myself and other people up to different standards.

Jenn Wilson: Hmm.

Nimisha: Then that helps it click like, you know, this is hypocritical behavior, Namisha. You have to treat yourself the way you have to try to treat yourself the way you treat other people. So this is not to say I'm judging everyone else who's compassionate. I want to make that really clear. But I find it. You know the cognitive dissonance between the 2. It kind of helps me to see it more clearly.

Jenn Wilson: Yeah. Oh, I really get that. And I think that

Jenn Wilson: you know, there's all sorts of cliched statements around it. But that thing of of

Jenn Wilson: thinking about how your best friend, or or your someone who cares about you would speak to you in this moment, or how you would speak to someone else who you had compassion for, who was suffering. The way that you are is really powerful. Actually, it's it. Cliches are cliche for a reason, and I think.

Nimisha: Exactly.

Nimisha: And so that's the thing.

Nimisha: One of the mindfulness practices is a loving kindness practice. It is a practice where you start with the person that you have, like the most pure goodwill, for, like your beloved being like, you just want good stuff for that person. So usually, that's that's a child, or sometimes it's a pet.

Nimisha: or it's a really dear friend. And so you start with that person, and you say these phrases, and of course you can modify the phrases, but it's along the lines of May. You be filled with loving kindness. May you be held with loving kindness! May you be happy and healthy. May you feel safe!

Nimisha: May you be at peace! And so you generate that compassion for that person! Then you move on to yourself, so I love that practice so much. I've done so many variations of it on like my, I have this 100 days of mindfulness, meditation on my Youtube channel right now. And so I think today's day 71, yeah, today's day 71. So I've done 70. And so many of those practices are around different versions of this compassion practice.

Nimisha: because

Nimisha: it just works. If you, if you start doing it often enough, 1st offering that person compassion, then taking those feelings and turning it on yourself, then on your family and friends, then on like neutral people, you know, people you encounter in the day. But you don't really have positive or negative feelings about then, strangers, then the whole world. It.

Nimisha: It helps. It's like you said. It's a practice, and it's a cliche, but it gets you into that frame of mind of, you know, constantly offering

Nimisha: these, this goodwill and this

Nimisha: loving kindness to people around you, as you, as you move through the day, and then once it becomes a habit, you know, there's so many times I'll be passing through in my day, and I'd just be like offering Meta. We call it loving kindness, which is Meta to anyone who's passing me by right. It's not costing me anything. I don't have to say it out loud to them, but in my head it puts me into that state of compassion towards

Nimisha: a random stranger.

Jenn Wilson: Hmm.

Nimisha: A stray dog on the road.

Jenn Wilson: Hey!

Nimisha: A person I see in my hospital every day, or you know, whatever.

Jenn Wilson: Yes.

Nimisha: So, yeah.

Jenn Wilson: And you know there's another cliche, and I always struggle with it. Actually, I don't know if you're in any way a fan of Rupaul and Rupaul's drag race. I know.

Nimisha: I follow, I follow them.

Jenn Wilson: Yeah, I'm not very well versed with their work.

Jenn Wilson: Well, Rupaul, at the end of each episode of drag Race says you've got to love yourself or otherwise. How in the hell are you going to love anybody else? Which is a nice phrase?

Jenn Wilson: And I can see why they say it.

Jenn Wilson: However, in my experience

Jenn Wilson: I am I by loving, by putting that loving compassion that you're describing, and kindness, and out into the world as you're describing. I can then also find that love for myself, because I'm in a loving state of mind of like I love my cat. I love my dog, you know. Start with something easy.

Jenn Wilson: something innocent, something that.

Nimisha: That will not hurt you.

Jenn Wilson: Easy to love, and that is not harmful, and that, that, you know, is that you can easily give unconditional positive regard towards.

Nimisha: Absolutely. Yeah, you start there. And so I I really like that. And

Nimisha: for me, it's like a 2 way practice, like, just like I said, with the noticing you notice outside. And then you notice what's happening inside you when you see that beautiful sunset, you're that bird chirping, or whatever. So it's a sensory experience. But then you also notice how it lights you up inside.

Nimisha: It makes

Nimisha: you feel that's what helps you lock it in. And so it's the same with compassion, you know. So if you, if you offer it to your pet or to your child, or whoever your beloved being is.

Nimisha: take a moment to see what compassion feels like inside your heart. What does love feel like inside you?

Jenn Wilson: And.

Nimisha: Sometimes it can be so odd to talk about love without, you know, people thinking it's sentimental or it's cringy. But actually, love is immensely powerful. It's just that

Nimisha: we just talk media and stuff distorts it so much.

Jenn Wilson: Yeah.

Nimisha: And and of course, you know.

Jenn Wilson: Down to this this little idea of romance, which is one form of.

Nimisha: Romance, just one form of love, and then, even with maternal love, or with parental love.

Jenn Wilson: Hmm.

Nimisha: It. It can take this. You know.

Nimisha: self-sacrificing, giving everything up for your child. Kind of martyr quality.

Jenn Wilson: Hmm.

Nimisha: Which which which isn't.

Jenn Wilson: You know. Yeah, sure, parents have to make accommodations and compromises for their children, like, no doubt they have to, and they should, and a great deal. A great number of parents absolutely do the best that they possibly can with with the resources they have.

Nimisha: But that's not all there is to that love, and when we reduce it to just that self-sacrifice we lose out on so much richness, and

Nimisha: dare I say, power.

Nimisha: That is in the force of love. So, yeah.

Jenn Wilson: Oh, Yamisha, it's absolutely beautiful to hear you talking about this. I'm so grateful for you and for your practice, and for the work that you've done that I've engaged with a little, and I will engage with more. After this conversation around making this whole mindfulness thing more irregular and more accessible to those of us who have busy brains and busy lives, and who are a bit wibbly, wobbly, not a

Jenn Wilson: don't fit the standard. Thank you so much.

Jenn Wilson: If people want to find out more about your work and your approach to mindfulness, or do your 100 days on Youtube, where can they quickly find you. I will put links in the show notes, obviously. But for anyone who's listening and hasn't got time to read stuff.

Nimisha: So on Youtube as well as on Instagram.

Nimisha: at magic with Namisha. So it's the same handle for both.

Jenn Wilson: -

Nimisha: And I actually forgot to give you the Youtube handle in the show notes for some.

Jenn Wilson: Right, we'll get it. We'll sort out.

Nimisha: And my website is notjustmindfulness.com. So

Nimisha: any of these ways, yeah, I'm I'm fairly active on Instagram. Even if I don't post, I'm usually there. So

Nimisha: stories and dms and all. I'm I'm always happy to engage with people like I love connecting with people. It's 1 of those

Nimisha: things that makes me really happy, especially like in the online world, where it's easier to find the irregular types.

Jenn Wilson: Absolutely, absolutely. And that's how you and I met through. You know, the online business networks and things. And I spotted kindred spirits here of.

Nimisha: Yes.

Jenn Wilson: Irregularity.

Jenn Wilson: Namisha, thank you so much for being here on the irregular humans. Podcast. Thank you.

Nimisha: Loving me.

Jenn Wilson: Bye.

Nimisha: Bye.