How To Stay Balanced At Work

DR NATWAR SHARMA is a member of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health (MRCPCH), and has served and trained in the pediatric intensive care unit of Apollo Hospitals, Chennai, India. During the course of his work as a pediatric intensivist and a therapist of alternate healing, he faces the usual difficulties of coping with stress at work and the challenge of staying emotionally detached from his patients. Here he is interviewed by DR VIJI Balasubramanian about how he finds balance and rejuvenation amidst a hectic schedule.

Q As a therapist, how do you nurture and nourish yourself so that the work with your patients does not affect you in a negative way and at the same time actually helps them to heal?

There are three things my guide told me: first, to maintain absolute confidentiality when dealing with a patient or client, because unless I give that space to them they cannot open up to me. Second, not to judge anybody, because the moment I judge I’m finished. That judgment will not only destroy my ability to help but it will also affect my client energetically. I may not tell that person, but energetically it definitely has an effect. I have noticed that.

There is a wonderful quote from Autobiography of a Yogi: “The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames.” There are no exceptions. So who am I to judge? Just because we are traveling in a boat, the fact that you are sitting in the front and somebody is behind does not mean that person is inferior. You are still in the boat. If you are born on this Earth as a human being, that means you are born with baggage. Your baggage may be smaller; his baggage may be bigger; her baggage may be darker; yours may be lighter. But baggage is baggage. For example, whether it is a golden prison or a steel prison, it is still a prison. So who am I to judge?

The third thing is not to resonate, because if I start resonating with somebody else’s problem I cannot finish my work. I must let go of it otherwise I can’t deal with a person of that nature. So these three things are quite important.

Q And how do you cultivate these?