Day 202: Dr. Soram Khalsa

April 20, 2010 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“I believe things happen on an inner level before they happen on an outer level, so I will literally, through my meditation and my decades of meditation, be able to see in my mind’s eye, if you will, what I want to create, and then it’s a question of maintaining the focus on that intent to create.  And then I am able to watch it manifest.  And so mostly I get things done in the outer world by starting with the inner world.”

.

.

Right click here to download…

.

Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Dr. Soram, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and let me apologize right up front if I mispronounced your name.

Dr. Soram Khalsa: It’s fine, I’m used to it.  It’s Dr. Soram, and that’s what my patients call me because I don’t like to be formal.  My first name is Soram, and my last name is Khalsa, so it’s just, you know, I call my patients by their first names; I think they should call me by my first name also.

So thank you for having me on.  I’m delighted to be part of this Project, especially in our society now where, you know, all the news is depressing and the conditions are so difficult.  And I don’t watch the news that much personally, but I was watching it last night, and I found after 10 or 15 minutes I was just getting depressed and affected myself, and I just shut off the news.  You know, I’d rather read it or, you know, look at it on the internet.  But I think inspiration is what all of us need in this day and age to keep going to get through these difficult periods till we can get into the white light again.

Toni: Thank you so much for that, and also for being here.  When you think of the word inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does that happen?

Dr. Soram: The people I inspire the most obviously and straightforwardly are my patients. I have a very, very busy practice of integrative medicine here in Los Angeles, in Beverly Hills, and so I see patients all day, every day during the week, and with every medical condition from breast cancer to chronic fatigue syndrome to fibromyalgia to ulcerative colitis, diabetes, heart disease, migraines.

And people who are sick, you know, you have an illness, very often get saddened or depressed, and so I think the people that I most inspire are my patients, because my attitude about health is that a disease is really a “dis-ease” and what we need to try to do is bring the “ease” back in.

And so, because of my own spiritual background and spiritual approach to life, I bring a lot of hope and positive expectations to people, and encouragement, and it’s really a great honor to be working with these wonderful people that come to me to help them to improve their health and well-being.  Mental attitude and psychological attitude is an important part of getting well from serious diseases.

Toni: Can you give us an example of how that happens?  Obviously, you can hear the passion in your voice, and you know who you inspire, and that attitude about health is so very important – can you give us a really good example of a transformation of inspiration that’s happened?

Dr. Soram: Yes.  I think the biggest transformation occurs in younger women who get breast cancer.  Women come in … I see women now in their later thirties and early forties who have been diagnosed with breast cancer.  These are women really at the peak of their life; they usually have one or two children.  They’ve, you know, only been married eight or 10 years, and in the middle of that they are suddenly diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease – breast cancer – and so I see many women who come to me for integrative medicine support while they’re getting the traditional oncology care of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, and a lot of them are discouraged and depressed about what they have to go through and about how the chemo is going to affect them.  And we are able, with integrative techniques — whether it be nutritional supplements, herbal medicines, acupuncture treatments — to help women to feel reasonably well, even through the worst types of chemotherapy.

I almost always try to give these women spiritually oriented books, even if they are not religious people.  Everybody, especially my type of patients that are interested in integrated medicine, realize that they have a higher spirit, and books to read that can encourage them and uplift them.  I’m very fortunate to work with an oncology therapist that we have part-time in our office who does … she’s a psychotherapist that specializes in cancer patients and patients with chronic disease.  So I usually hook them up with them, and the patient up with her, and basically the feedback that we get from patients is that they are so emotionally positive about it, that the event of the chemotherapy and going through it becomes not such a bad experience.

I’ve been very complimented by several of the oncologists that I work with, when they tell me that they can walk out in their waiting room and see the people waiting for chemo, and they can spot which ones are my patients.  I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what they have told me, because they look better, they look healthier because of all the integrative support they’re getting, and their psychological attitude is one that they can win, and they’re not going to be beaten down by this.

Toni: The next question of the Project is, how do you help others explore their potential?  Now the obvious would be their health, the potential of getting better, I would imagine, but what I’m hearing from you as well is that there is a greater potential here that you also tap into.  Can you explore that a little bit with us?

Dr. Soram: Yes.  Well, it comes from my own personal life.  You know, I’ve been a Sikh and doing yoga for almost 40 years now, and I’m just delighted to see Los Angeles and the country, you know, just having so many yoga centers of all varieties.  Things that I started doing close to 40 years ago now are finally becoming commonplace, and so everybody that I see.

Most people — not every single person, but 80% to 90% of my patients – relate to the idea that they have a spirit within them.  And as I have grown personally spiritually over the years, I try to encourage people to find, again through sometimes initially starting reading books, but sometimes I will refer them to a therapist who has a spiritual orientation, or I will talk to them about that.  And certainly I will always encourage them, because I think basically our health and well-being very much is connected to our spiritual state of well-being.

It’s very interesting, Toni; one of the questions I have on my initial interview – I do a 45-minute new patient physical – is I ask this question of people who have an illness, and you know, we’ve gone through every organ system.  “Do you have back pains, do you have migraines, you know, how’s your diet?”  Then I look at them and I say “How’s your spiritual life?”

I get amazing answers.  Some people will look at me in the eye and they’ll just start crying, and they’ll say “I’ve forgotten about my spiritual life.  Oh my gosh.”  It’s just a profound impact that comes over them, right from just one question.  And other people will say “You know, I really should pay more attention to that.”  And then some people will say “You know, that’s what I live for.”  But it’s a very simple question that I as a physician can ask of a patient that really orients them towards reestablishing the connection if they don’t have it.

Toni: And then do you help them try to find that?

Dr. Soram: Yes, I do.  One thing that’s very … I care very much about is that I never try to promote my particular spiritual path onto other people.  I encourage people to find what’s right for them.  So I will suggest this type of book, or that type of book, or some people have a background of an Orthodox religion, Judaism or Christianity, and within those traditions there very spiritual paths within them, and I will encourage people if that’s what they relate to, to look for the spiritual side of their organized religion within their religious tradition.

Toni: What inspires you?

Dr. Soram: Well, my biggest inspirations of my life have been my dear spiritual teacher, Yogi Bhajan, and my wife, Kulwant, and they have really, between the two of them … and there is one other lady, a dear personal family friend, Guru Amrit Khalsa.  They have helped me to grow into the being that I am.

And when Yogi Bhajan found me, I was finished.  You know, after graduating from Yale, I was burned out.  I went through one year of medical school, and I got what is now called chronic fatigue syndrome; that was not even recognized back in the 70s when I was in medical school.  They told me it was a psychological, psychiatric problem.

And I met Yogi Bhajan, and he sent me to change my diet, he sent me on intensive yoga program – this is in the early 70s, Toni – there wasn’t a lot of yoga happening in America then – and within two months of this very intensive yoga practice, my chronic fatigue syndrome was gone, and I was able to go back and finish medical school, which had been my heart’s desire since I was a little boy.  At six years old, I wanted to be a doctor.

So from then, he inspired me and still … you know, he passed away about five years ago, but his memory and the very personal time that I had spent with him as his physician as well as one of his close students … for the privilege I had of 30+ years of being with him almost every day had a permanent effect of inspiring me.

I really regard the word “inspire” … I look at the root of that word, and it’s from the Latin “inspiratum” — which I happen to be one of the few people that actually studied Latin that is still around in high school — and inspiratum means to bring the spirit inside you, to bring it in, and we can do this with yoga with our breathing when we inspire, when we inhale.

We’re breathing energy in, just like when we exhale we’re getting the poisons out of our body.  And for me, Yogi Bhajan brought my spirit into me, and it’s like he permanently emblazoned it into my life, and my wife has been such a wonderful support in every aspect of that.

So they are the most important inspirations, and they continue to be such today, and I’m fortunately able to feel the presence of my spiritual teacher, Yogi Bhajan, with me even though he is physically not on the planet anymore.

Toni: What a very, very fortunate man you seem to be.

Dr. Soram: Thank you, I feel so.

Toni: Yeah, by the way that you speak about what inspires you.  Do you ever have days that you think to yourself “Gosh, you know, I really could use a little bit of inspiration here,” and find yourself reaching for specific or consistent tools?

Dr. Soram: Yes, yes occasionally.  Fortunately, not very often.

Toni: What are they?

Dr. Soram: My tools are meditation and yoga.  And Yogi Bhajan left us with so many meditations, literally thousands that are all codified now in books, and we have meditations for depression, we have meditations for anxiety.  And I do meditations and yoga, of course every day, but I will do extra.

I also have become very experienced with a technique called “emotional freedom technique.”  I don’t know if you’ve heard of that.  It’s called EFT, and they are changing it now to call it “meridian therapy technique” (MTT).  This is a technique of tapping acupuncture points, which I really like that idea because I do acupuncture here at my office and been doing for over 30 years.

By tapping acupuncture points, certain points, while you’re talking about what’s bothering you, whether it’s anxiety or anger or upset, and doing it in a very specified way that inspired the training that one gets, within five or 10 minutes, anxiety can just be literally diminished by about 90%.  And so I also use that as a technique, and then I also do physical exercise besides the yoga.  I like to swim, and I do biking, and that helps relieve stress and tension as well.

Toni: And thank you for that.  The final question of the Project is, what do you do to explore your own potential?

Dr. Soram: That’s a great question, Toni.  To explore my own potential is mostly through inner work.  I believe things happen on an inner level before they happen on an outer level, so I will literally, through my meditation and my decades of meditation, be able to see in my mind’s eye, if you will, what I want to create, and then it’s a question of maintaining the focus on that intent to create.  And then I am able to watch it manifest.  And so mostly I get things done in the outer world  by starting with the inner world.

Toni: How would you tie together what you do to explore your own potential to what you do for others?

Dr. Soram: I think that they’re completely linked; the better I get at my potential, the more I am able to inspire and encourage others to reach their potential, just almost like a magnetic phenomenon.  If I’m vibrating at a high level, then that helps the person I’m with vibrate at a higher level.  And so that’s how I would link my working for my potential with helping others to get better closer to their potential.

Toni: And what I heard you say is that what’s very important for your own potential is that inner work, and that’s that question that is the non-medical question, and it’s the question about the spirit within them, that inner work that you do, and you help them to seek within their own potential; that was the link that I heard very loud and clear as well.

Dr. Soram: Yes, that’s absolutely true.  Absolutely true.

Toni: You have given us all a lot to think about, and a different way to look at illness, and also to look at inspiration and the work that you’re doing.  We will provide people with a way to explore what you do by your website and so forth at the bottom of this interview, and we can’t thank you enough for taking the time away from the busy schedule that I can only imagine you have to be part of the Get Inspired! Project.  It’s been a true gift.

Dr. Soram: Thank you, Toni.  I appreciate this opportunity, and I congratulate you on running this wonderful Project that you’re doing.  Thank you.

Toni: Thank you so much.  It’s been a pleasure.

Dr. Soram: Mine too.

___________________________________________________________

For more information about Dr. Soram Khalsa:  DrSoram.com

.