Dr. Maiysha Clairborne, MD on Neuro-linguistic Programming and the Roots of Racism
On today's episode, Dr. Maiysha Clairborne, medical doctor and trainer of neuro-linguistic programming, has us take a deep look at our automatic conscious, subconscious, and even unconscious conversations that keep us trapped in disease, poverty mindset, and fear of our fellow man.
Referenced in the Show
“Lost and Found: One Woman's Story of Losing Her Money and Finding Her Life” By Geneen Roth
“Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything” by Geneene Roth
Dr. Clairborne’s Bio
Dr. Maiysha Clairborne is an Integrative Family Physician, Master Practitioner & Trainer of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Hypnosis & Time Line Therapy®, & founder of the Mind Re-Mapping Academy. Through her NLP trainings, Dr. Clairborne focuses on helping men and women of color transform their lives by helping them master their thoughts, beliefs & communication, while eliminating fear, imposter syndrome, self doubt, negative emotions, & passed down trauma that get in the way of their ability to experience full joy, productivity & peace of mind.
Through her NLP/Hypnosis Trainings, Emotional Release Sessions, & Personal Transformation Programs, Dr. Maiysha teaches the people how to connect to the power of their unconscious minds so that they can be in the driver’s seat of their thoughts, feelings, behaviors and therefore the results they produce in their lives. Her own struggles imposter syndrome & self-worth is what inspired her to step outside the physician box, and now her trainings help people worldwide find their passion, purpose, freedom, and peace of mind in all areas of life.
Dr. Maiysha is a graduate of Emory University, completing her medical degree at Morehouse School of Medicine, and her Family Medicine Residency at Florida Hospital.
Full Transcript
Sarah Marshall, ND: Welcome to Heal. On today's episode, Dr. Maiysha Clairborne, medical doctor and trainer of neuro-linguistic programming, has us take a deep look at our automatic conscious, subconscious, and even unconscious conversations that keep us trapped in disease, poverty mindset, and fear of our fellow man. I'm your host, Dr. Sarah Marshall.
(music)
Sarah Marshall, ND: Welcome to heal. Thank you so much, Dr. Maiysha Clairborne for being here. I, God, you've been such a beacon of light and possibility for me since the very, very, very first day that we met at a conference. Ah, seven years ago, eight, maybe 2013. Yeah, because it was my first conference and, and this particular conference is a group of people from across many different industries who come together to talk about what is it going to take for us to transform humanity and to take care of the planet. So you have like, we have this wide variety of people.
And I remember somebody told me that my promise for the world, that transformation would come to the healthcare industry was coming out of another doctor's mouth and I had to go find you. And so you had a poster session and I came up to you and literally like things I had been saying to other people for the last two years, you were like, hi, I'm Maiysha Clairborne and this is what I'm up to and I'm really committed that doctors have satisfied and fulfilled lives and that health care produces these results. And I was like, everything I'd been saying. And so then it's kind of in love at first sight.
Maiysha Clairborn: It was, it was. And then the next year. Yeah, we did a breakout room together when I had a six month year old, my six month year old to San Francisco and we did a cool breakout room together.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. So it's been, it's been an awesome relationship watching you over the years and you have a very, I, my opinion, eclectic practice and approach to your career as a medical doctor. And so I want to hear about that today. And I also really want to start though with. What, what are you up to now? Like what are the things that are most important to you as a doctor and in the world of healthcare right now?
Maiysha Clairborn: Well, man, it's so interesting because what is what's important to me is, is similar to, what's always been important to me, which is that, you know, people who are healers, who are, you know, it went from doctors to medical professionals to now it's like all healers and healers come in all shapes, sizes and professions. Now I realize, right. And, but it's, it's that those who are self-proclaimed healers who are trained healers, especially in the industry have the, the most fulfilling careers and lives. So that's still hugely important to me. What's been added to that and especially has become clear to me in the last year, like with everything that's gone on with COVID and, and, you know, black lives matter and, you know, this whole political hot mess that has gone on over the past four years, but really over the past year it's been magnified.
I've come to realize that where I've been drawn into is an empowerment of black people and people of color especially, you know, having seen and been inside of, you know, the, the, the, the white supremacy culture inside a medicine as a physician and, and how much we, as, as and I don’t speak for black women, because I'm a black woman, but I know that it happens with black men is how much we've even normalized and internalize white supremacy culture normalized the systemic racism, because it's what you just grow up with.
Like I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and there are certain things that happen that, you know, now I could tease out the say, Oh, that was.. that was not cool. Right. And then at the time it was just shrugging off, shrugging it off the shoulders because it's like, this is just the South. You know, so that's, that's what I what's really important to me is to really begin to heal the unconscious conversations that give white supremacy culture that give racism that undo the, the, the unconscious trauma that has, you know, led to all of that stuff that's going on now, you know, the unconscious trauma, that intergenerational trauma that we experienced as, as people of color as, as black people and to, for those. You know, allies, white people who want to do the work to really begin the UN or dismantle the, the unconscious conversation that led them to have their biases. And that's the work that I do now. That's the work that I'm steeped in now,
Sarah Marshall, ND: And that's a whole, we're going to get into it. You've been working in neuro-linguistic programming, correct. That's the area you've gotten trained in. And so the, I, I've only heard of it. I know. I haven't like, I know what that is and I bet I don't, or I don't have the whole grasp of it, but I know it's a tool that gives people access to how to reprogram those unconscious conversations because they're, they're running in the background. And, and what does it take to bring those forward? I also would like to talk to you about, like, what do you see, or what have you seen as some examples, either for doctors or for patients on either side of the fence of those situations where white supremacist culture or our white privileged masculine culture up to this date has been an impact on people of color in medicine specifically? Like what does that look like?
Maiysha Clairborn: Well, I mean, let's just take COVID. I mean, if we want to like take the most recent is, is, is COVID and who has been disproportionately affected by COVID is black people and people of color black and Latinas, you know we have been and, and it's, and it's. It has to do not just with the fact, well, just overall black people and people of color have higher morbidity and mortality rates. Now you look at maternal mortality rates and black women are much, much higher. So all of that is, has to do with the unconscious bias, the white supremacy, the white supremacy culture, but let's just take COVID, you know, we know that it has just ravaged our community. And that's because, and, and, and most recently, I don't know if you've heard of Dr. Susan Moore's death. She's a black physician, black female physician out of I think it was Iowa, Midwest. Midwest is very nebulous to me, I hate to say it, but geographically challenged, but I believe it was, I think it was, it was Iowa. But she, she got COVID, she was hospitalized. And initially she was being taken care of by a white male and a white female nurse, white male doctor, white female nurse, and the way she was treated the way she was denied pain medication, she, she, she literally told the physician that she was having short of breath and was, and was told, Oh no, you're not having shortness of breath.
And so it's this type of treatment.. now she was a physician, even her MD could not save her. Right. And so you can imagine if this happened to, and ultimately she got transferred to another hospital. Where she received, she reported, you know, she kind of called on a video saying that she was seeking adequate care, but I bet it wasn't too little too late.
She had to like strongly advocate for herself once that they did the chest CT. And they saw that she had infiltrates in her lung. She had this pneumonia in her lungs and then they gave her more pain meds. Then they gave her appropriate treatment. But yeah, for those who don't have that degree, for those who cannot advocate for themselves and keeping in mind that families are not able to come in, these people are all alone, you know...
Sarah Marshall, ND: And from inside the disease state, our brains, aren't working super well. If at, you know, even close to you, I mean, to be able to use words, articulate brain inflammation is known to be a part of COVID and many other conditions. I mean, that's, you know, a place where we're really struggling right now and I've… I'm certain there's, you know, these different subsets, a co a culture that I'm more connected to are white males in economically suppressed communities where every single time they go into a hospital, it's like, well, you're a drug seeker automatically considered to be, you know, not actually here for whatever.
And I just had a personal experience of this happen very recently in my life where my sister's partner went into an emergency room and three and a half days in the hospital, they didn't identify shingles. He was in pain, head to toe and it was just like this whole. And then he finally got out of the hospital and it was actually me and his wife that worked it out.
Then we represented the case back to a physician that he was able to get care from. And it was five days after the initial onset. Now I can't say exactly what happened in that circumstance, but because of COVID his wife, wasn't able to actually be with him in the hospital. And there was a whole advocacy breakdown that we dealt with for four or five days until we could get this sorted out.
The nurses had even seen the typical zoster rash and the doctors never dealt with it. And there was just this whole conversation of like, well, I know you're in a lot of pain, but we're going to give you ibuprofen. And that was the only conversation. Now that might've been medically relevant. Like I said, like, this is a, it's always tough with these isolated cases, you know exactly what the circumstances were, but I know there's just, there are these medical biases that we are dealing with it is impacting many different people's pain and care levels that are getting, you know, what's, what's the solution to it. I recently was talking to someone about, you know, that analogy that if the airline industry operated like the medical industry, nobody would get on an airplane. In terms of heart, you know, what can we do to start to break out of this? But I think there's both the hard tangibles of checklists and strategies and structures, but that's gotta come from a different context because I think there's been an attempt to start to put more of those things in, but it doesn't remove like you are dealing with these unconscious biases that we walk around with, from our own upbringings, from our own training.
Whatever medical school, we went to whatever, you know, mentors or doctors we had and the biases that we inherited from them, you know, like you've said, they're unconscious. They go, you know, underneath the radar, we don't even realize they're happening until the statistics start to show it like where we can see people of color, you know, Latinas and blacks all the way through this entire COVID epidemic are dealing with far more consequences of not getting the medical care that they need that would have made a difference in their cases. And some of that's directly at the level of the emergency room. And some of that's the lack of resources in the communities they live in.
Maiysha Clairborn: Right. And I think, you know, it's, it's just, it magnifies what's already been there. So it's not like it's nothing new under the sun. Right. It's just that it magnifies what's already been there. And because, you know, we've suffered just in general as a nation, as a world, but particularly as a nation, so many deaths due to COVID. And then when you look at the proportion of deaths that are black deaths, you know, then you're like, Whoa,
Sarah Marshall, ND: Proportionate to the actual percentage of the population. Yeah. Yeah.
Maiysha Clairborn: Right. When the percentage of the population that's actually black is lower than the percentage of deaths. That's happening in the black community as a result, right?
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah I don't have the specific statistics for that. Although we could definitely pull them up and we'll have them in the show notes for this episode. But what struck me recently in this, you know, came out of president Biden's initial agenda speech was that, we're 4%, the United States is 4% of the world population and we have 25% of the COVID cases in this country.
So that kind of disparity, then you layer on top of that, the disparity of okay. Of those 25% of global cases, here's the number of deaths. And then, you know, African-Americans and Latinas are X amount of the population of the United States, but they're a higher percentage of the deaths from COVID and you get that same kind of disparity showing up right there. So a wise one, what can we do about it?
Maiysha Clairborn: Well, you know, honestly, I think continuing to have conversations like these is key because I think what, what typically happens is, and this is, you know, we're speaking inside of the medical community, but this is just at large, is that, you know, something happens, a disparity is, is named, you know, there's, there's some uprising about it initially, and then it's business as usual.
Right. Because. You know, people get on with their lives and they forget. And I think that's why we continue to have continued to loop inside of this statistic, both medically and let's, let's start talking about police, you know, brutality police murders, and the enforcement of the use of force in the, in the, in the police field.
Right. And so, you know, blacks lives matter has been around for a very long time. And the, the uprising, even from as far back as Trayvon Martin and before that's, that's been a conversation for a long time, but it wasn't until you know, the world was sat down in a pandemic, then they had to watch a black man be kneeled on his neck, kneeled on for eight minutes that then it became a worldwide phenomenon.
But I think, you know, I did a lot of, I think it was a couple of weeks ago. What's the highest intention. There is a highest intention because now you can't unsee that you can't No that right. That information, and yes, you can go back to business as usual, but then that's magnified that magnifies the problem.
Right? This is the problem. We go back to business as usual. So I think that there is, there has been a transformation on like or a conversation started unlike ever before and awareness unlike ever before. And I think though the way is to keep these conversations alive, so that, you know, corporations began to look and say, you know what, I want to do this work, I want to make this change. You know, governments, police forces, right. I don't believe the, at all that the, the answer is to defund the police, but to reeducate and, you know, re take a new look at resources, you know, that, that there's what can we do as a community, as we gleaned these awarenesses to begin to shift that narrative.
But the only way we're going to do that, a sustained conversation about it to stay in conversation with forward movement. Cause to talk about it is just talking about it right but forward moving conversations that inspire people to say, you know what, I want to do this deep work. And to be honest with you, Sarah, one of the reasons I do the work that I do with neuro-linguistic programming is because I believe that the work to be done is at the individual level first because the system is made up of people.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that so often we attempt to address something at the system level, at the organization level with a new policy, or they outline new values. But if those values are laid on top of an existing paradigm, we will then filter those values through the same paradigm. Like it doesn't alter anything.
And in the work that, that I have done in the realm of transformation, which I will just mostly call me doing the work to get a new view about something I didn't see it that way before. The places in my own life that have made the biggest difference is when I have done that at the individual relationship level and like, A personal example for me of this was I was engaged to be married to a man and he had two daughters and his, and this is when we met, when this relationship was happening was when I first met you.
And his ex-wife obviously was very much involved in our lives as the mother of his children. And for a while, you know, she had been in his life for 14 years. She was 14 years, my senior among other things. So she was much older than me and I had this whole disparity of like, She was untouchable unreachable and I, and I of course had my mental construct of who I had decided this woman was based on, you know, whatever exposure I had. And there was just no way that that was going to work for the lives of the children. And I knew from the work I had done in my own life, that the number one way to handle this was to actually build a relationship with her.
Like to get connected to who she is as a human being to learn about her, find out about her life, her hobbies, her interests, what she struggles with, like make her a real living, breathing, human being. It didn't mean that we had to be best friends. And so I reached out to her and I asked her if she would be willing to have coffee, just her and I, because up until that point, it always been involving the kids or involving my former, you know, whatever.
So we started meeting every two weeks for coffee. And the transformation in our relationship. And we just started, like, we were on opposite sides of a lot of things. You know, I was the new woman moving into her life. There was a lot there that was like, but we both chose to come to the table and have the conversation.
And I just learned about her. And of course, because, you know, oftentimes we date similar people. So we had a ton of common, cause there were like all these overlaps and we didn't walk out of there like bosom buddy friends, but there was a mutual respect. Fast forward three months later because this all happened in the Netherlands, so it was a whole foreign country component. I'm at a baby shower and she sits down next to me to make sure she translated everything in Dutch to English. So that I'd be a part of the conversation. And like that was two months after we had gone through this initial stage of getting to know each other.
Like you're saying, is that the individual level and it's specific relationships, us being willing to go get connected to people that we wouldn't otherwise talk to. We wouldn't otherwise have in our field and like totally turning myself inside out. I've struggled internally with like my fear to come to these conversations about black lives matter, because I just already know I'm ignorant.
I know there's a lot, like I was raised in a relatively white suburban area in upstate New York. And there was just not a lot of relationship there for me. And so I've watched myself not like… I want to have the conversations and then part of me, there's an internal resistance. It's like, you're going to look like an idiot and that shows up.
And I just, now I'm like, I don't care. I'm bringing that to the table. And if it means a little emotional moment for me, when I say something that doesn't land well, or actually isn't honoring the other person, then I get to discover that in that moment and make the correction and like the courage to come to the edges, like that.
Maiysha Clairborn: And I think that's what it takes is the courage to be uncomfortable. You know, it's interesting. My yoga teacher you know, I'm a Yogi for 14 years now, I'm losing count. And my yoga teacher, when all of this happened, she called me and she was like, Oh my God, I just have to apologize. I have been so blind, you know, and, and, you know, we had this beautiful conversation about it and she was like, well, how can I help?
Like, what can I do? I, I want to do something. And, you know, the first thing I said to her was guilt will not solve any problems, right? I mean, I get it, you know, the way I sit, the way I languaged it to her was, you know, I get right now, some white people's eyes are bleeding after seeing that. Right.
Because it's, if you, if you didn't know and it, and you, and you see this type of thing and you're like, Oh, and you see the inhumanity of it. Then you're like, and you can connect it to the inhumanity of it. Then you're like, what? This is what's been going on all this time, you know, like that's, that's the response.
And so, you know, I get to have compassion for that. And, you know, then there was, well, here's some resources, here are some books and and she started a book club. And so now in my yoga community, they have a book club and I, I facilitated a conversation amongst the community just to answer questions just to, you know, get, get the sense of where people were.
And, and a lot of them, a lot of the community, they were like, you know, we shouldn't be putting the burden of this on you to have. And I'm like, it's not a burden if I'm willing to come to the come to the conversation, you know? So I think that The courage to be a little uncomfortable, the courage to mess up and the willingness to be open enough to just listen and understand, like, try to understand you won't understand that you'll never fully understand, right?
Like that's, that's a piece too, like understanding you'll never fully understand, but, but, but then the effort to, to try to hold that empathetic space is important. Right. And to keep being willing, to learn how to be in conversation appropriately, you know with, with people of color and what's appropriation and what's, you know biased and, and, and here's the other thing, you know, just to, to flip the coin, right.
There's the whole internalized white supremacy culture amongst black people. There's internalized racism amongst black people. And then, you know, we have our own biases. And so, cause I, you know, I, there's lots of conversations of what black people don't do. This is a white person thing to do. This is a, you know Asian person thing to do, you know, and that goes across the board.
So it's not like we're without bias. It's just that, you know, The impact of the bias nationally has been detrimental to our culture for the last 400 years.
Sarah Marshall, ND: I had a... right as the black lives matter movement started to come to a strong undeniably difficult to ignore head this summer. You know, it was just like, there was… and to be honest I really do think that I am one of those people that, that, that movement at that moment in time is what made the difference in my life. And it wasn't like anything I had heard about Floyd's death, his murder, like, that wasn't like, my brain was like, Oh, I had no idea that was happening. My brain is like, Oh yeah but when it's a single story in a single story, in a single story, I just didn't get the scope of it. I really didn't. And then that started to alter, there was some incredible YouTube videos. There was some amazing work that got put together that just like, you know, Had me sit back and have to just take in the, the size of the level of what we were dealing with.
And I had a dear friend of mine who is in the fitness world, tango towns, come on the podcast. And we were talking about what he confronted in himself as a black man who had grown up in South central LA inside of the gang community and then made it as a professional athlete because in that realm, that was your only real, it was like, you're going to be an athlete or criminal.
And he tried criminal for a while and then went to athlete and like his evolution through that. And then he shared about this incredible moment when he woke up literally and got that he was a man first and he was black. And had took apart, for him, I would imagine that was probably unconscious conversation that came forward, where he had been living inside of being a black man and there was a view he had, there was like this coloring of his world inside that context. And when he opened the context to, I'm a man and I'm black, like this whole thing shifted for him. And he talked also about that same thing of noting his own internal biases and the things that he had to start to confront where he wasn't willing.
You know, he now lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is predominantly white area of the world and he's like, you know, now people are people and there's people who are kind and there's people who are unkind and he shifted his relationship to it as being viewed through the filter of race.
Maiysha Clairborn: Yeah, and I think that that's, I mean, that's, that's, I love that, that context and we need to reach a tipping point where that is the case. Because there's been so much dehumanization of, of other races, you know, black people and Latinas and, you know, I mean, I speak to a lot of Indian doctors who immigrate here and, you know, they w they see it as we see it in, in that culture as well, Brown skin like Brown and dark Brown skin. There's that. There's the dehumanization of darker skinned people.
And so I think that it is, there has to be that I'm a, I'm a person first, right person first then I have a culture, you know because it's not just about skin. I mean, it's, it's made to be about skin culture, but skin color, but it's there's culture behind it. So I'm a person who feels like, yes, we all believe the same color.
And I think it's… The point is not to see color because it dishonors the culture. And I think that that's one of the things that happens amongst people who are like, well, I'm not racist. I don't see color. Well, that's, you know, like I, I had a, an interaction with a white acquaintance friend, I come, you know, we had, we met and had some really good conversations and then all the black lives matters sort of stirred up and, and I did a live on something and then, you know, there was a comment like, well, you know, you know, I have I'm not racist, I married a black man and I have, you know, my, my, my biracial children. And I was just like, no pass, because you have to, you still have to examine the biases there. Right? The, I don't see color dishonors the culture in any, in any case, in any case. What the, the, the, you know, Indian culture that let any of the Mexican versus Honduran versus, you know, to like really separate out that people have specific cultures and practices and things that have been invented, African culture, the different, all the different lineages and tribes, it's beautiful to really honor that, right.
And then we make it about black and white or black, white, and shades of spectrum of shades, right? So that's, that's the thing… It's courageous.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And, and that's what, I mean, I just love what you just, you just gave me a whole new way to interact with this. Cause I hadn't quite gotten there and it's like curiosity about culture.
I mean, I'm a world traveler and I love going to new cultures and just being the outsider and showing up inside of it and it finding out all the crazy things that I do that they're like, what is wrong with you? White American person. And like getting to be a part of that. Like, I love it. And I, I, long time ago, you know, I've spent a lot of time in Latin America about over the last 18 years, I've traveled 18-20 times to Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico. And I had noticed one of the places I stirred up my own bias was I noticed that when I am in Mexico, I'm clear, I'm low man on the totem pole, in a sea of people that this is their world and their life. Then I moved to Scottsdale Arizona, and suddenly I was inside my own American culture of white supremacy and I would encounter the Mexican working class, many of which were undocumented immigrants, especially in Arizona and I watched myself interact with them differently. And it was like, it was, I think it was coming home from a trip from Mexico. And it was like, I stepped off the plane right back into these old.
And I was like, Oh my God. Like it, it hits, struck me internally, how much I would interact with people differently because of the physical location I was in. And then I was in their country it was one way and then when they were in my country was another and I was like, what is this? They're my, who, what this, and none of which actually lined up with my personal values of compassion and integration and cooperation and getting to know people and the love of diversity. So I love what you just said because now I get to be on a conversation about being curious about culture right where I'm standing, with anybody that's in front of me.
And to not assume that I know anything about what their culture is based on just their presentation to actually get curious about it, find out. Cause you know, one of the things tango talked about is he's not African. He's like I don't, I've never been to Africa. I don't identify with African culture.
Like I'm an LA kid, you know? And it was awesome to hear him talk about that. So like, Just because a person even looks a particular way. You don't know diddly squat about their culture, like ask, find out what is their culture about. And often there's so much to be surprised because of we are melting in the pot more and more, and you may have no idea.
And then I also had a girlfriend who was white blonde, blue eyes, and she was born and raised in Columbia, in South America. And because she'd gone to American schools, she had no accent, but her entire life as a child and growing up was Colombian and she would say I'm Colombian and people would argue with her that she was American and it's like just all the different ways that we do that.
So I do want to talk a bit about neuro-linguistic programming and NLP, because it's an amazing tool that I know very little about. So can you tell us just a little bit of like, what is that?
Maiysha Clairborn: Yeah. Yeah. W I, you know, before we jumped right into that, I just, I just want to say that I, I love the conversation. I love the courageousness of stepping into the group growth and the awareness and I think that, you know, you had asked the question earlier, what can we do? And I think these conversations are critical, critical, and you know, I it's, it's getting curious, there was something around getting curious that you said, like getting curious and asking about culture and, and being, Oh, it'll come back to that, come back to me. But anyway, neuro-linguistic programming… I'm going to tell you guys about that. And then while I'm talking, my unconscious mind is going to bring it all back to me and I'm going to like jump in and do it and do a sidebar, okay? It is a, a tool I like to call it a set of tools embedded in a methodology. That's what I, I just kind of like how I, how I relate to it.
Right. It is a way of thinking, being, speaking and it, it it's the process of getting connected and integrated with your unconscious mind, right? The conscious mind integrating with the unconscious mind so that you can have access to those, those automatic programs that you're running and have access to actually shifting and changing those, right?
Being at the, at the driver's seat, in the driver's seat of your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and, and values. And so We as people, we have this brain, that's kind of like a computer and we get these programs installed in us from a very early age via our parents, you know, family members, teachers, school, friends, know all of these things, these, these experiences that we have we get these programs installed these values, these belief systems.
And as we grow older, You know, there are circumstances that reinforce these values and programs. And then after a while the programs just become automatic, they give us our beliefs and they give us our values and they give us our behavior patterns. And we don't always realize that we're running these programs.
And so then we make choices based on unconscious programs. And, and so what. Neuro-linguistic programming does is put you back in touch with those programs, how you came to be, how you came to think the way you think, and then gives you the tools to shift that if you'd like to, because that programs will work for us, some programs have made us successful.
Some programs have made us successful to a point. You know, like for myself, it was always, you know, I'm, I've got this, I'm going to do this and I'm going to figure it out. I'm gonna figure it out myself. And, you know, that got me very, very far until it didn't. So one day I needed my community and and it was a lot of hard lessons learning to me and my community...
Sarah Marshall, ND: I’m just laughing because this is so right where I am in my life. Yeah. I'm incredibly driven stubborn to a fault in terms of like, when I want to figure something out, which makes me a great diagnostician. I'm great in that realm of medicine. And I've got a very strong go at alone, genetic, not really, but programming, you know, that's like buried in me and this year getting diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, was it still is the best thing that ever happened to me because it's literally taken away a whole bunch of my ability to just run this whole ship by myself and it's great. It's forcing me into a whole nother level of teamwork and community and like looking towards what I want to build and having to shift that. And I don't wish on anybody, a crisis to have to confront, which is often what happens is it takes a crisis, a death, a job loss, something that has a shakeup.
And those are the places that, that there's an external force that works against us. Okay, fine. But could I maybe do this without having to go through the trauma first? You know, and that's what I get access to from neuro-linguistic promo-programming, I get that that could be a tool for that.
Maiysha Clairborn: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and the thing about it is that. You know, and this is why I love getting this conversation out there is because it is, it can be more preventative in nature, just like, you know, you're, you're a you're, you're a doctor and, and you, you delve in the prevention of disease. That's, that's your, that's been your sweet spot.
And as an integrative doc, myself, you know, like prevention is key. And so in this work of neuro-linguistic programming, It is all about, you know, can you get at the source before the trauma happens before the, before the, you know, I, I used to say either you, you sit down or God will sit you down.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yup. Yup. Totally.
Maiysha Clairborn: Before God has to be like, man, sit down!
Sarah Marshall, ND: Do not pass, go do not collect $200.
Maiysha Clairborn: So this gives you some of that access. And one of the things I love about it. Is that it is trauma informed because you know, you talked about the genetic, right. Well, we know that there's epigenetic consequences to wellbeing and there's intergenerational trauma, right? So this has the capacity to unhook that, that intergenerational poverty mindset, trauma, you know even, even from a physical standpoint, you know, the beliefs about our own wellbeing, it has the power to on hook that. One of the things I love is is that you know, you can believe whatever you want to believe about the process, but if you do the work of the process, the process works.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. That's like half of the medicine I prescribe. People are like, I don't really know if I believe in homeopathy. I'm like, that's okay. Do you believe in your cell phone? They're like what? I'm like, yeah. It's all the same. It's actually based on the same technology. You don't even worry about it.
Maiysha Clairborn: Exactly. Yeah.
Sarah Marshall, ND: But that’s so, again, not as new to this, I mean, it's been an area I've been familiar, but I haven't really taken it to study. Where would people start? Like, do you want to find a practitioner? Are there courses like, if you're interested in starting to look at your own programming, where would you start?
Maiysha Clairborn: Well I would, you know, there's, there's lots of ways. It depends on how deep you want to go with the work. Initially, some people want to just learn a little bit about it and there are books. There are lots of books on that. I think there's like one called NLP essentials. If you really want to, if you're like, what are those People who was like deeply analytical.
You can, you can buy the structure of magic, which is by the founders, Richard Bandler and John grinder. And, and, and they go deep into it. So there are some books that you can start out with, help you to understand, but if you want to do the deep work, I recommend one of two things. You either contact the practitioner, you know, or you learn it, you learn it yourself.
And both of those things I'm available for, of course. But I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to say, because I think I get this question. I think it'd be, it'd be valuable to sort of distinguish conscious mind and unconscious mind, unconscious subconscious and unconscious mind, because I think that some people get confused about what's, which is what, so, you know, we're thinking about doing deep work or unconscious mind work. We're we're thinking about that. If you, if you, if you can imagine it like the iceberg that the Titanic ran into and at the top of the iceberg, you know, there's the saying, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Well, that comes from somewhere at the, at the top or the tip of the iceberg, this is your conscious mind because all of the things, the things that you think about you, you consciously remember you you're aware of, you know, These conscious movements, the sensory that the bringing of the sensory input, that's all conscious mind phenomenon.
So then you have like the part of the, the iceberg that's sort of just below the surface that you can still see a little bit of it. And that would be considered subconscious, right? They're not like, not immediately aware, but if you got quiet, you might, you might hear whispers. This is where some of the emotions lie, this is where some of, some of the beliefs lie, in your, you know, some of your opinions and things like that. Those are sort of subconscious stuff. Then you get down to, and some of your emotions are like that because our subconscious. Programming as well. And then there is the entire rest of the iceberg...
Sarah Marshall, ND: which is what, like 75% of the mass of the iceberg or something like that. Yeah. It's huge. Yeah.
Maiysha Clairborn: It's huge. And that is all the unconscious mind. And that is like your deeper trauma, your deeper fears, those your, your, your childhood installed values and beliefs. Any intergenerational. Things that have, that have been passed down to you, all of that is unconscious programming.
Right. And that is the thing that actually runs the show. That is a thing that runs the show. And that unfortunately, sometimes is the thing that sinks the ship. Right. Cause you don't see it coming. Don’t see it coming. So it's, it's why it's so important to pursue this kind of work early on. And what I will say is with people that are, how do I recognize that I need to do this deeper work?
Right? This is a question I get, well, how do I know that I need to do deep work? Well, I always say, if you are, if you are running into some of the same obstacles over and over, or the same obstacles across areas of life, then you might want to look at that there's a deeper issue that you cannot see. You know, I say how you do anything is how you do everything.
And so if you're noticing, you know, there's this, this theme across your areas of life, of, of difficulty, or if all of these areas of life are good, but you got this one area like that, you just cannot get together.
And then you get this one thing over here, and then you kind of just want to give up, consider doing deeper work there, right? Because you might find even that area of life, that's not, you know, that's not doing what you want it to do is somehow impacting the rest of it.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And I know, like throughout the last 10 years of my life, I've watched that happen around like glass ceilings for me in my career and in my finances and one not directly through NLP, but actually it was through a book that I read Lost and Found Your Access to Everything and it's by Geneen Roth and she also wrote Women, Food and God, and she is this woman who has lost and gained over a thousand pounds in her lifetime and she's had every eating disorder we know of and she has said her greatest pain is her greatest gift because she eventually healed a relationship to food and our body through mindfulness.
And it was like, 30 year journey. And she wrote this book, Women, Food and God, and it went gangbusters. Like she made millions of dollars off of it. Well, then she got caught up in a Ponzi scheme and lost all of her savings. So then she wrote Lost and Found, which was about losing millions of dollars and then her access back to it.
And she has these, like, it's probably more subconscious work. Like those sentences where you fill in the blank. Like I am fill in the blank, Rich or poor in relationship to money, or, you know, rich people are blank, money is blank, and it just kind of let that consciousness happen. And in reading that book, I saw one was my mother won't love me if I make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. And there were these specific conversations that had happened between me and my mom over time where my mom is a major humanitarian. Like she's just for the goodness of all people and us taking care of each other. And so there had been some like quips and some conversations about rich people, but she didn't actually use that phrase.
And it was just interesting, but she'd say things like, you know, a quarter, a million dollars was like a huge amount of money and I'm like, $250,000. Like I kind of would like to actually make that kind of money in my life, you know? And, and I started to run into this thing with her. And after reading that book, I actually went and had a conversation with her about it.
And, and like we worked through and she actually said like, yeah, I take responsibility that some of these conversations I laid on you and there was this whole, like if I have more, someone else has less and it was like, you know, Which in many physical realms is true, but then in the energetic realm, it's infinite, you know, so those were some of the ones I dug out, but I can also know that, you know, you can look in the area of relationships, you can look in the area of your health. You can look in the area of business and like so many different things. And where I'm at now is like, my life is great, but it has me be curious, where else am I restricting myself? Where could I have more freedom? What, you know, in particularly in growing, you know, my business beyond an N of one with just me, which I now have Kendra my producer.
So I've gotten to two and that was a huge breakthrough for me this last year, working with her. She's so professional. She brings so much to this podcast and it's given me access to recognize what a greater team inside of, you know, health education is where I'm headed next is like. I've been in private practice for 12 years. I love what I get to do on the individual level. And I have a boutique practice of like 50 clients. I'm not committed to only impacting 50 people a year, you know, but the way that I work with people intensely, I don't want to double that to a hundred with me. One-on-one like, then we get into patient-physician, heal thyself, how do we take care of ourselves?
You know? And I'm not. You know, you've dealt with like burnout in doctor moms. You've dealt with that conversation, big time of what physicians are dealing with. And like, I actually just read the 2020 Medscape survey that comes out every year about physician satisfaction in lifestyle.
Maiysha Clairborn: I haven't read that one yet.
Sarah Marshall, ND: It's good. And there's one whole section that says; I S I'm gonna, you know, I'm re I'm spit balling the numbers, but we can look at the report, but it's something like up to 30 to 50% of physicians would take a pay cut between 10,000 and $50,000 a year to have more work-life balance. So just 50% would drop their income significantly...
Maiysha Clairborn: I love Medscape. I love that Medscape report. I read it every year because they always add a new element, you know, like a new statistic that you, you, it makes you think. And that's one that wasn't in last year,
Sarah Marshall, ND: they did a whole bunch of work, especially given COVID and what physicians are dealing with and the impact. I mean, and this was a physician survey. You can extrapolate it out to the entire healthcare field. I mean, I have patients who are ultrasound technicians, who are occupational therapists, who work at all levels of medicine and they're all struggling this year, you know, it's been nuts.
Maiysha Clairborn: Yeah. I mean, I I've, I coached them all and I see I'm like, Ooh, nurse practitioners, PAs, you know, like you said, art..respiratory therapists and you know, the techs all the way, all the way, to, you know, even the food service people and the, and the waste management people. I mean
Sarah Marshall, ND: just the operational staff. Absolutely.
Maiysha Clairborn: Look at what you’re ealing with operations, all of that. Right. So, yeah, no, I, I get, I I'm interested. I'm going to go and look that up now and check out the Medscape.
Sarah Marshall, ND: So before we wrap up, the last thing I would like to hear about is like, what are you doing now? Like, what is your cause you've moved on from private practice. Is that correct?
Maiysha Clairborn: I have, I have…
Sarah Marshall, ND: Awesome. And how long were you in private practice?
Maiysha Clairborn: Oh, you got, let me see. I was in private practice for 10 years. Actually. I sold my practice on my 10 year anniversary. Yeah, I did. And and I stayed and I will say that, you know, I saw my practice.
So I came out of residency in 2004 and I started my practice in 2007. And then I ran that for 10 years and I stayed, you know, I kept my foot in clinical, you know, for the last three years, this was the, this is the year that I'm like a hundred percent stepping out cause I've done some supervision work and I don't, I don't see it, I see, you know, I say I keep my pinky toe in it. That's what I, but this, this year is the year that I actually am cutting the ties. And it's, it's a challenging conversation, internal conversation to have like the deal with myself and my, with my emotions. But I really just discovered, like, I'm complete, not that I don't like it it's just that I'm complete with everything that's in the horizon working with, you know, I have a, I have a co-authored book called Conscious Anti-racism that, that I I've I've we've put out, we put out back there in December and we are myself and my partner, Jill Wiener, she's a physician here this locally in Atlanta, we're doing corporate anti-racism trainings. So w w mostly with health care organizations, but we're starting to branch out with that. And we tend to start with like boards and, and execs the C suite. And so we're doing top down because they're the decision makers, right? And and so there's that piece that I'm doing now. And then with my personal company, the mind remapping Academy I'm both training and I do, you know, one-on-one work, but I'm mostly am focusing on training others in the technology of neuro-linguistic programming in hypnosis.
I certify coaches like the training as a foreign one. So that's what, what I do Primarily now is I run that those training programs are the four year. We just started our January training next one's coming up in April. And and then of course, for people who still want to do like the, the, the personal breakthroughs work, I do that work with them as well. That deep work.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Well, we'll have your contact information and your websites will be in the top of the information for this at this edition of Heal the podcast. It'll all be on Sarah Marshall ND.com. So people can get the resources for all of it because you, I mean, you know, you're a wealth of knowledge.
We could get into all kinds of things, but I really appreciate you coming and being here with me and you know, for me, I noticed, nah, this wasn't real but in, in telling the truth, conscious thought was like, Oh, I did my black lives matter podcast. Right? Like, Oh, like I did it and we can now move on. And I'm like, no, no, like I'm not letting you know, so it was so great to have this appear again and come back up to the consciousness cause it just keeps it present for me. And then all the way through the work you're doing with NLP and being able to help people be trained in and also deal with their own personal biases. Like thank you. Thank you for doing that work.
Maiysha Clairborn: Well, it's my pleasure. I have to say it's been, you know, I was called into that work. I had no idea that I would be called into the work. Right. And I, and I think that, you know, initially it was just, Oh, I want to train people in NLP and hypnosis, and then it became like, it's much deeper. So I'm so grateful to be able to have these conversations. I'm grateful to you for inviting me into this conversation. My old friend!
Sarah Marshall, ND: yeah, I know. It's so great. Your son's now six, six and a half, is that right?
Maiysha Clairborn: Yes. Yes. He's almost six and a half now. And and so it's, it's. Man, it just, it just goes to show you, you want to know how much time has passed. You look at the kids and look at their development, but this work has taught me so, so much.
I mean, even the work that we've been in together, the transformational work that we've been in together. And I believe that that's sort of the catalyst for me getting into, you know, and for me, you know, standing for something so much bigger that I would have never, you know, there was a part of me that was like, who am I? Who am I to speak in this way about this stuff? Right. I'm not an MBA. I'm not a sociologist. I don't have a doctorate or master's in sociology. And you know, I don't have the PhD in education. I don't have all of that. And, and I do have, you know, my, my own experience in the healthcare system as a black woman, having grown up in the South, I do have the training that I have in the unconscious mind.
And I do have that context of transformational work and what it takes to, you know, to move the needle. And so I appreciate platforms like you that allow me to continue to remind myself that my voice is needed.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. My dear, Maiysha Clairborne for everything. And until we get to do this again.
Maiysha Clairborn: Yes, ma'am.
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Sarah Marshall, ND: Inspired by the success of Heal, we are now a community of over 2000 incredible healers. We will be launching some courses and workshops in 2021. Be the first to know about them by joining our mailing list at SarahMarshallND.com. Thank you to today's guest Dr. Maiysha Clairborne for conviction and power. For a full transcript and all the resources for today's show, visit SarahMarshallND.com/podcast. Special. Thanks to our music composer, Roddy Nikpour, and our editor, Kendra Vicken. And as always thank you for being here. We'll see you next time.