Image: Episode 440 – Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide: How Conscious Awareness Shapes Leadership, Therapy, and Collective Healing. An interview with Pardis Mahdavi, Ph.D.
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How Conscious Awareness Shapes Leadership, Therapy, and Collective Healing: An Interview with Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Curt and Katie chat with Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, about the intersection of consciousness, leadership, and community healing. Dr. Mahdavi explores how awareness of our “inner state” influences how we lead, connect, and facilitate change—both in therapy and in the wider world. She shares how mindfulness practices, breath mastery, and intentional living can help us move from suffering toward what she describes as a “beautiful state,” transforming not only personal wellbeing but also collective energy and leadership.

Transcript

Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.

(Show notes provided in collaboration with Otter.ai and ChatGPT.)

About Our Guest: Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Image: headshot of Pardis MahdaviPardis Mahdavi is an author, educator, and entrepreneur. She has published seven non-fiction books and two edited volumes. She earned a BA from Occidental College, and two masters and a PhD from Columbia University. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Book of Queens: The True Story of the Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror (Hachette Books 2023), Riding (Duke University Press, 2024), Hyphen (Bloomsbury 2021), Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives (Stanford University Press, 2016), From Trafficking to Terror (Routledge, 2016), Gridlock: Labor, Migration and Human Trafficking in Dubai (Stanford University Press, 2011) and Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2008).
Her work has appeared in, among others, Time, Ms. Magazine, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. Mahdavi is an expert on human rights and education policy. Before stepping down from academia to found Entheon Journeys, she served as President at the University of La Verne, Provost and Executive Vice President at the University of Montana, as well as Dean at Arizona State University and the University of Denver after serving in multiple roles at Pomona College. She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Young President’s Organization and has been a fellow at the Social Sciences Research Council, the American Council on Learned Societies, Google Ideas, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Mahdavi is on the board of directors for the Lumina Foundation, the Human Trafficking Legal Center, and the Global Religion Advisory Board.
She currently lives in Arizona where she is working on her debut novel, Bad Trip Good, a grounded but soulful ride through the trippy world of sex, psychedelics, and expanded consciousness with three spiritual gangsters seeking to escape a world in turmoil. She loves yoga, breakdancing, and aerial silks. When not writing, coaching, or giving keynotes, you can find her upside down, traveling the world, or a combination of both.

In this podcast episode: Conscious Awareness and the Beautiful State

We invited Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, back to the podcast to discuss her work on the “superconscious revolution,” an emerging global movement toward collective awareness and intentional living. In this conversation, we explore how this framework builds upon mindfulness while also deepening its integration with leadership, community, and social consciousness. Pardis shares practical approaches therapists can use to help clients develop awareness of their “inner state,” bridge the gap between internal healing and external change, and reconnect with purpose and humanity in turbulent times.

Key Takeaways for Therapists on Consciousness, Leadership, and Healing

“Consciousness is about gaining an awareness of yourself and your relationship to the entire environment and society around you…The super conscious is really toning the ability…to pull the mirror back far enough to say, ‘Okay, why am I having this thought? Why am I having this experience?’” – Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

  • The superconscious is about awareness of how thoughts and emotions shape our internal and external experiences, extending mindfulness into a larger theory of consciousness and intentional living.
  • Therapists can teach clients to observe their internal state (“suffering” vs. “beautiful”) as a starting point for emotional regulation and decision-making.
  • The “beautiful state” is cultivated through small, daily practices such as meditation, humming, journaling, or breath mastery, not just crisis intervention.
  • Therapy should balance addressing trauma with nurturing prevention and wellbeing, focusing not only on what’s wrong, but also on building capacity for joy and connection.
  • Leadership and therapy alike are about energy: our state impacts those around us. Conscious leadership begins with awareness of one’s inner experience before acting or speaking.
  • True community healing happens when curiosity replaces critique, and people connect beyond identity categories to shared humanity and collective growth.

“You will be bounced out of the beautiful state — the minute you walk out the door. The practice is learning how to get yourself back into it.” – Pardis Mahdavi, PhD

Resources on Consciousness and the Superconscious Revolution

Relevant Episodes of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide

Meet the Hosts: Curt Widhalm & Katie Vernoy

Picture of Curt Widhalm, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcast; a nice young man with a glorious beard.Curt Widhalm, LMFT

Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com

Picture of Katie Vernoy, LMFT, co-host of the Modern Therapist's Survival Guide podcastKatie Vernoy, LMFT

Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com

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Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):

Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements)

… 0:00
(Opening Advertisement)

Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide, where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.

Curt Widhalm 0:15
Welcome back, modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy, and this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our practices, the ways that we practice and considering things that might not have been part of the I guess, forced graduate studies that we all get, and ways that we can continue to expand, the ways that we look at ourselves, the services that we can provide to our clients, and we are once again, joined by one of our favorite guests and good friends, Dr. Pardis Mahdavi, so thank you so much for joining us and continuing to share your wisdom.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 0:52
Thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s such a great honor to be on your show, and also so much fun to be able to be in conversation with two dear friends and people who I respect and admire so much.

Katie Vernoy 1:03
Thanks, Pardis, it’s so good to have you back. And for folks who maybe didn’t catch Monday’s episode, maybe you can let them know who are you and what are you putting out into the world?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 1:14
Well, I’m My name is Pardis Madhavi. I’m a medical anthropologist by training. I like describe myself as a recovering academic and a mystic cowgirl. I am somebody who spent 25 years in higher education. I’ve served as pretty much every role you can on the academic side of the house, Professor, Dean, Provost, President at a number of universities across America, and I’m now on a mission to help students of America, to help to start to address some of the pitfalls in higher education and to address some of the needs that students have, and kind of helping to build out this life academy that I think students are clamoring for and that the workforce is clamoring for as well.

Katie Vernoy 1:56
The first question that we have written down here is just very simply, what is the superconscious revolution, and I think for a lot of people, this might be a brand new term. So can you start with just what it is and help frame the rest of the episode for our listeners here?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 2:14
Yeah. So you know, back to who I am. I’m a medical anthropologist by training. So I did my PhD in medical anthropology at Columbia, and a couple of masters along the way. But medical anthropology is the study of how our mind, body and soul connects, and how our culture and our society have an impact on how we view and make decisions about that connection of mind, body and soul. And consciousness sits right at the center of all of that. It’s become kind of an overused word, but consciousness really, if you break it down, it’s really about gaining an awareness of yourself and your relationship to the entire environment and society around you. So a lot of scientific research has now shown that our collective consciousness, that our own awareness, that our minds, that this sense of what we might call a soul, that there is a connection, that we are connected at a deeper soul level. So the super conscious is really toning the ability to pull the mirror back. Sometimes the mirror is pressed up so far against your face that you can’t pull it back six inches. But developing the superconscious is basically being able to pull the mirror back far enough to say, Okay, why am I having this thought? Why am I having this experience? Why am I reacting this way to let’s say we’re sitting you’re sitting in traffic. This is something that many of us in Phoenix or Los Angeles or many urban centers can relate to, right? You’re sitting in traffic. You’re like me. I’m a single mom trying to get my kids to school on time, and I’m I’m sitting in traffic. And there’s a lot of things coming up for me. Why? Why is this happening to me? Why am I stuck in traffic. Why is it not moving? Why are my kids screaming? And then it’s me, me, me, me. Why is this happening to me? And I’m not even you know that starts to spiral. Activating the super conscious through techniques. and we can talk about everything from breath work and meditation to people are engaging with plant medicines. We can talk about that too, but you can access your superconscious in many different ways. And the superconscious revolution refers to the fact that at this moment in time, as we sit here in 2025 at this moment in time, there are more people that are developing an awareness of their consciousness. That are developing an awareness of, wait a second, these are thought patterns. So back to the example of, I’m sitting in traffic. The super conscious is activated when, instead of spiraling, you take a moment and say, Hang on a second. I am not my thoughts. I am not this, but rather, I’m having this experience, I can choose to either suffer through it or to release it and to try to connect back in with: Okay. These are my kids. Okay. We’re driving. We’re going to get there, and then the traffic kind of opens up and flows. Many people who work in this area talk about the superconscious revolution as being about focusing on your inner world? So, you know, we got to a place where our focus was so much on the external world. Can I buy a new car? Can I send my kid to this school? Can I buy a bigger the trying to control the external world and thinking that somehow that’s going to make us happy? There has been a shift in the last five years or so where more and more people are understanding that it’s actually our inner state that directly impacts the external world, and not vice versa. So when we can focus on activating the super conscious to choosing to live from a beautiful state or the right there’s only two state inner states, a suffering state and a beautiful state, as many of my teachers tell me, so if you want to move from a suffering state, then your external world, you’re going to see the traffic. You’re going to see all of that. But if you shift your inner state and you want to live more of your life from what’s called a beautiful state, that’s going to impact your external world. So the super conscious revolution is really about waking up to that.

Katie Vernoy 6:24
I know that you’re speaking our therapist language. This is what therapy is about. This is being able to take the mirror back. It’s about being able to shift your inner state. And I feel like in therapy, the there’s been a shift in the opposite direction a little bit. Because I think there’s more of a realization that the things on the outside, whether I’m being oppressed, or whether I don’t have money to buy that new car, or some of the things that make real situations in the real world very challenging may not be able to be sufficiently addressed by getting into a beautiful state internally. And so it feels like there needs to be a balance. And I’m curious how that’s addressed within the work that you’ve been doing?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 7:11
I think, and I think you’re exactly right. And I think, you know, if we just say, Well, you know, if you manifest it, it’ll come. I mean, that’s just nothing that’s like, so trite, and that’s that’s definitely not at all what I think the work is about. I think it’s more about being able to dance in both the mystical and the mundane, right? And anthropologists, they say the sacred and the profane. You have to be able to dance between the two. And so if you sit on your couch and you just focus on manifesting, you’re not going to have money for that. That’s not going to work, right? So it’s more about developing that awareness of, okay, if I’m going to make a decision in my life from, what state do I want to make that decision? And so here’s what you know, here’s what I would what I would challenge people to think about, how many of the decisions that you made from a suffering inner state, fear, desperation, insecurity, hurt. How many of the decisions that you made from that state turned out well for you, right? I mean, we’re talking about, you know, categories, and we’re talking about developing intention and awareness. So you’re talking about, okay, how can I make enough money to go out and buy that car? Well, is it, is it really because you want to go buy that car, or is it about getting into alignment and getting yourself to a place where you figure out all right, where is the place where I can best fit in, in terms of making money? Where is the place where I can have alignment, where I’m making money and doing something that I love? How do I get to, I think, I think one of the challenges, and this is back to our conversation about education is somewhere along the lines we stop. You know, you think about like 100 years ago, right? Earl Nightingale writes a book, and it’s all about, you know, life skills and learning to listen to your intuition, learning to even understand who you are and like, what is your purpose and what are your values? And what are you about? We we’ve lost the ability, and we’re not necessarily teaching folks to take a minute to turn inwards and ask ourselves, like, what do I really want? You know, and I see this with young people all the time. They end up in college, and I’m like, Well, why are you majoring in biology? And like, Well, my parents told me to be pre med, even though that’s absolutely not what they want to do, right? So how do you first go back and you learn to develop that skill of turning inwards and saying, Okay, I’m going to make a major decision in my life, where I’m going to go to college, what I’m going to major in, what I’m going to do for a living, or who I’m going to marry, or, you know what, where I’m going to live. These are major decisions. And then start to ask yourself, Am I making that decision from a suffering state? Can I get myself into a beautiful state and from there, make a decision. From there and make the decision like, Well, no, I’m going to go to Occidental College and major in diplomacy and world affairs, which is what I did, where I met you, Katie. Because I am, I actually find human rights inspiring and fascinating. And yes, I’m the child of a doctor, and everyone in my family had been MDs. And, you know, there was tremendous pressure, but there was also at that time, a lot of teaching around No, find your path, purpose and passion. So how can you find your path, purpose and passion, if you’re not even learning to listen to yourself? There’s got to be a balance. Yes, the external world as well. But you also can’t forget the inner world. And you can’t just come to the inner world when it’s in crisis. So that’s what you know, therapy is like. You end up in therapy because everything’s falling apart. But how can you teach people, right, in public health language: prevention is cheaper and easier than treatment? How can you teach people to constantly be checking in with that inner world so that it doesn’t get so scrambled that then, you know? And of course, you can’t always and things happen in the external world. And thank God we have therapy. Thank God we have therapists. Thank God we have these tools. But we also have forgotten the basic life skills that help us take this step and then the next step and then the next step. And that’s what a lot of this work is about.

… 11:18
(Advertisement Break)

Curt Widhalm 11:18
At first glance, a lot of this seems like mindfulness. How is this adding to what a lot of therapist’s traditional idea of what mindfulness is?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 11:29
So I think mindfulness is the practice, but the superconscious is the theory and the framework. So if mindfulness is okay, what you’re doing to access your superconscious. The superconscious revolution, or or having an awareness of your consciousness is the theory or a framework by which you choose to live your life. So some people practice mindfulness, but they don’t choose, they absolutely I mean, I know tons of people who practice mindfulness, but they don’t choose to live their life from this state of intentional awareness. They may practice it. They may do meditation, especially when they’re in crisis. I had a friend, you know, just text me yesterday, and it was like, I had the worst day, the absolute worst day. Everything went wrong, so I decided to sit down and meditate at the end of the day. And I’m like, and I’ve been on him for months and months, and said, Listen, if you start your day with 10 minutes of meditation, things will be different. If you choose to live your life from this state of wait, first, let me get into this place of calm, let me set an intention, and then let me make a choice that and obviously things are going to go wrong. There are many mornings I meditated this morning at 6am and then at 630 everything went wrong with my kids. They, you know, their somebody left their, you know, flute at their dad’s house. Their homework is over here. We forgot lunch. Of course, I’m not saying you’re going to live your life in Zen. But if you set the intention of this is what I want for my day, then less likely to, you know, okay, at 8pm which is when this friend of mine texted me, be like, Okay, now I’m going to sit and meditate because I’ve had a horrible day. Yes, he’s going to deploy the mindfulness practice, but he’s not choosing to live his life from a framework of consciousness.

Katie Vernoy 13:13
And it seems like that is using the physiological benefit of mindfulness, of let me calm down my nervous system, let me get into a more focused space, versus let me prepare for how I want to intentionally live my life. And to kind of reflect on what you’re talking about, how there is kind of this connection between people and there’s there’s this element of the superconscious that is somewhat collective. I think there’s there’s heaviness and there’s fear and there’s a lot of concern that the life at least the United States, but obviously the ripples are being felt everywhere, and other other countries have other things that are going on. So I don’t want to minimize anything. But it feels like we are in a very dangerous spot where creativity and joy and authenticity and individuality and many different identities are under attack. And so getting to a place where we can actually find that beautiful state feels very challenging. It feels sometimes it might even feel decadent, or it might feel selfish. I need to be out sacrificing. I need to be on the streets, or I need to be advocating, or I need to be doing something. What advice do you have in that space?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 14:41
First, I want to say, I think, you know, we have to be super clear about, you know, it’s so trite, but they say they put your own oxygen mask on first kind of thing. I think we have to be really clear about how important it is for each and every one of us to take care of ourselves. And to really do our best to connect to other consciousness, right, to connect to other people and and you know this concept of quantum entanglement, right, which we’re all familiar with. Something that’s happening over here, an experience that I might be having over here in Phoenix, Arizona, is connected to an experience you’re having Katie in LA and Curt, right? We’re, we’re having an experience of quantum entanglement right now, energetically, we’re connected as woo as that sounds. Sciences have studied this, right? Something happens in one part of the world is impacts, you know, energetically another part of the world. And, you know, nature has plenty of examples of this, right. There, the scientists have uncovered the networks of the forest floor, for instance, right mushrooms communicate through the networks of the forest floor from, let’s say, California to Oregon to Washington. Okay, so we know we have a connected consciousness, and we also know that one person or a set of people experiencing negativity can really impact. So let’s think about one or a group of people that are get intentionally day after day, getting themselves into a beautiful state that also has positive ripples. And I think that that’s what a lot of people are. There’s hope in that, right? There’s hope in this collective Listen, we’re going to get together, my group six, 6am 40 of us get on Zoom and meditate together. That’s not insignificant. Or, I mean, maybe 40 people in a big city like Phoenix, but, but, you know, we do believe we are elevating the vibrational frequency because we are putting something good out into the world, and we’re doing it from a beautiful state. Yes, I think that, you know, there, is there always more we can do? Yes. But are there also forces that we can’t control? Yes. So if I sit here and I spend my entire day worried and angry about the news, and, you know, believe me, I’m Iranian, like my home country was attacked, like, I mean, believe me, I could sit here and have that spiral, absolutely but what would that do, exactly, as opposed to deliberately getting myself into a beautiful state and calm state, and then going out and moving in the world from a beautiful state, as opposed to from an angry state? I think that I can impact the world in a much more positive way when I put that out. And then, you know, when I seek to deliberately connect to other people, deliberately connect to people at a consciousness level, as opposed to coming in, you know, I think I recently did an interview when the Iran attacks were happening, and I spoke and a rabbi spoke, a rabbi for whom I have great admiration, and I have had the opportunity to connect in with him. Now you might say, well, Iran and Israel, you know, but we connected at this human level. And we both sat down and we said, this is a human tragedy, and so now we need to address this at a human level. And I think being intentional about connecting to people’s consciousness, as opposed to people’s story of who they are, or the story of, well, I am Iranian, I am Democrat, I am this. There’s so much story and mask and performance. How can you, like, take that aside for a moment and connect at a human level, and then what does that bring? What does that unfold? If you are seeking to connect with somebody from an actual beautiful state of curiosity or openness, it’s gonna be very different experience than when you walk into a protest and you’ve got the other side and everyone’s screaming at each other. It’s just gonna be a different experience. And so, you know, you get to ask yourself, which one’s going to be more impactful?

Curt Widhalm 18:45
What do you think for therapists that a lot of the traditional therapy misses about being able to get here? Because I can imagine that a lot of our audience is listening like, yeah, this sounds really great, and it takes a lot of deep work. And as Katie said, this is probably pretty hard and takes a lot of intention and work to get there. What do you think about our current mental health system that’s preventing us from being able to do this even more intentionally as a field?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 19:15
I think in some cases, and certainly not every case, but I think in some cases, in the field, there can be a tendency to constantly fixate on, what’s wrong. What’s wrong, what’s wrong, what’s wrong? This, have this trauma, this trauma, this. And of course, you have to, you have to face your trauma, to let it go. One of the frustrations that I had in my experience, and that many of my you know, students that I talked to have had with their experiences. And it’s not, it’s certainly not the case across the board. But there’s, there’s many people have experiences, or I will speak for my own. My experience for many years of being in therapy, was I never felt like they were trying to get me better. Like, I just it was like, we’re just gonna keep talking about this. We’re gonna keep coming back and, you know, here are some tools for when you’re in crisis. But the prevention piece wasn’t as talked about. The like, what are all the things you do, and, and, and then, what is your state? How do you shift your state? That that choice from where you want to live your life? We don’t talk about the state. We talk about what’s happened, rewiring sometimes. There’s can be a little bit of an over focus on the negative, in some cases, as opposed to, well, what is that? What is that more desired outcome that you, how would you change it? How would you live it differently? But big, the biggest challenge I see is not enough of a focus on your state. How do you learn to shift your state, and especially to set the intention of living in a certain way? And when you’re bounced out of that, and you will be, we all know you will be bounced out of the the beautiful state. You will be bounced into suffering the minute you for me, the minute I walk out my my bedroom door. I’m hit with things. How do you though get yourself back into a beautiful state? What does equilibrium look like? What does being in a beautiful state even look like or feel like, and how do you know when you’re in it? And how do you know when you’re not in it? And I think that is something that there hasn’t been enough focus or discipline, at least in the Western tradition. Which is, you know, why, for me, as a medical anthropologist, I’ve been studying a lot more, you know, Sufis and Persian traditions, from India, a lot of the traditions from India, Qigong, like those, the Eastern traditions, because, remember, 1000s of years ago in the East, the concept of the individual didn’t exist. It was really about the collective. And so there was a very, very strong intention set for always elevating the collective. And you had people who were priestesses, healers, most often women, actually, whose responsibility it was to keep the collective, let’s say vibrational frequency high, by teaching people to constantly pay attention to their state, how their state impacts the collective and how the collective impacts their state. So I know that this gets into some of the Jungian theory that came later, but when you look at the Eastern traditions, this focus on your state was very, very rigorous, and we don’t have as much of that anymore.

Katie Vernoy 22:38
You said that there’s some strategies that you have for getting into a beautiful state, or making that decision to live in as much as you can within a beautiful state. What are those?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 22:51
So I think some of it, you know, and Curt, we talked about mindfulness practices. Meditation. I mean, I can’t underscore enough meditation. And that’s we all say that. And people are like, well, I can’t meditate. I can’t sit still long enough. I can’t, you know. And I tell people, if I have nine year olds, if I can get groups of nine year olds meditating, I think we can get most people. And what you know, start with just hum. Can you hum for 30 seconds at a time in the shower, you have to close your eyes. Just get in the shower. Hum for 30 seconds. That is you meditating. That is you calming your nervous system. So you go from humming for 30 seconds to humming for a minute. You inhale and then you hum on your exhale, or just a three minute guided meditation. Can you then go from 30 seconds to three minutes? You know, do 30 seconds for a week, then do three minutes for a week. Then can you go or for a month, then can you go from three minutes to nine minutes? You know? You take it step wise. Another really important tool is breath work mastery. Right? The breath, the breathing is something that you know, we don’t even pay attention to how we breathe and how the breath can, you know, we teach people box breathing or count to 10 or what have you. But there’s so many different types of breath work Mastery which are about actually tapping into energy and and feeling it right. Like chi breathing is a really good example, fire breathing, prana, breathing, take your poison, just breathe and breathe with intention. You know, I think having that, that breath work is, is, is a really important nodal point. You know, we teach it to young people all the time now, and it really helps them to de-escalate. So you’ve got meditation, you’ve got breath work, like deep breath work, and you’ve got breath mastery. Those are two different things. Breath mastery is, you know, that’s 30 minutes a day of actually learning how you master your breath to give you energy, and it’s just an incredible process. I think, you know. Journaling, right? I helped to teach a course called The Artist’s Way we start with something called the morning pages, three pages a day of writing. Those can be important tools. Again, because those all of that meditation, breath work that teaches you where you’re at. And one of the things I tell people when you’re meditating, every time your mind drifts and you bring it back, that’s a success. That’s not you failing. You know, people say to me all the time, I try to meditate and my brain is like, ping ponging all over the place, all over the universe. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s a success. Every time it ping pongs and you bring it back, you are succeeding. You are succeeding. And so you know, learning how to do that then. And then you take your breath work mastery, and from there, you start to recognize, Oh, wow. Like this is how you know, when you start to tap into energy, you can start to feel and read collective energies, and then you can understand quantum entanglement. But it’s a, it’s a process. And so you go step one, and then you go step two, and then step three. And then, you know, for many people, they want to go, they want to go deeper. And you can get very deep with things like breath work, with things like e tea ceremonies or cacao ceremonies. You know, I have friends, and I’m, you know, I get to enjoy cacao ceremonies here, where you intentionally partake of a, you know, a very natural fruit or, you know, and and then you set the intention to connect with where that food or fruit came from. And then you set the intention to release things. And then, now, of course, as we know, you know, things like plant medicine, psychedelics, you know, ketamine, psilocybin, everything, Ayahuasca, Iboga, Ibogaine, you know, we can talk about all of those, and that’s just sort of, where do you want to go with it? You know, I think there’s, there’s many ways, but, but the basic tools is, you know, the breath, the meditation, the mind, moving, moving meditations, walking meditations. And to me, the breath mastery. We talk a lot about breath work right now, but breath mastery, which is, you know, if people are interested, please reach out to me. Breath mastery is something that has changed, you know, certainly my life and the life of many young people I work with. Just teaching them mastery over their own breath has been transformative, too.

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Curt Widhalm 27:05
You’re talking about how you practice this personally, and you’re alluding to some of the ways that you work. Talk about how you incorporate this into your work, and especially down that leadership path.

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 27:20
Yeah, you know, I think that, I think that we don’t spend enough time, you know, when we train leaders, I think we don’t spend enough time on their state, on their inner state. We teach leaders, you know, grow your business, marketing, you know, network, do this and that. And you know, how do you get the right team and how do you…? But we don’t spend enough time teaching leaders look at your own inner state and then think about how your inner state is impacting your team. You know, there’s so much that’s not said, you know, and leaders, especially just their presence, carries so much weight. So every word that leaders say reverberates across their organization, and, you know, with a massive, massive ripple effect. And so much of that is not necessarily the words, but it’s also the energy that the leaders bring to their words. And so I’ll, you know, I often will work with leaders and they’re like, Well, I didn’t say anything. All I said was, we got to do this better. And my team freaked out. And I said, Okay, well, what were you thinking when you walked in, like, how what was, what was just the state that you were in, what was the energy that you were bringing to that moment? And then how can we start to shift that so that, before you walk on stage and address your 2500 employees, and then, you know, impact their state. How can we get you in a more beautiful state so that then when you get on stage, or when you walk into that board room, that then the energy behind the words that you are speaking or writing, you know, we’ve all gotten that email from our boss, or we’ve all sent that email as a leader, where you’re like, ooh, that email did not sound good, you know. And even if the actual words on the page are, you know, we are announcing that people will leave, you know, on Friday at three, which is a good thing. There’s something about it that’s like, there’s something off here, you know. And a lot of that is that there is this intent, this energetic intent, that comes through the words. And so I think as leaders, we’re not, at least when I was, you know, kind of going up the leadership ladder. Nobody ever taught me that, you know, no one ever taught me how important my state was for the entire organization.

Katie Vernoy 29:45
You’ve talked a lot about how a person, a person’s state, can impact the state of others, and a little bit about, I think this is what you’re talking about, enlightened leadership. But it seems like part of what you’re really talking about is developing community, and developing community that is seeking to improve whatever it is: the world, the state of the individuals within it, that type of thing. How do we support the development of community during this time?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 30:20
Well, I think having the conversation about it is really important, so we’re doing it as we’re sitting here. I can’t underscore that enough. I think community is the salve for us. You know, when, when things were really tough on college campuses, you know, a few years back, and I was in a leadership role, people asked like, Well, why were things so calm on on your campus? And I said, because we focused on community. We doubled down. We invited people to connect at the level of of humanness, and we invited curiosity over critique. So we invited people to come. That’s that sort of tapping into that consciousness. And as a leader I had, I role modeled that. I role modeled that my entire leadership team role modeled that. The, you know, okay, tell me you’re upset, like, let’s get curious about that. You feel that your needs aren’t being met. Tell me why. Let’s, let’s talk about, how are you feeling, you know, so that, so that people don’t introject their anxieties onto everybody else. It’s like, let’s take a step back. Let’s ask ourselves, why am I feeling this way? What is this feeling I am feeling? Why am I feeling it? And then how is it impacting how I’m connecting with the community? What kind of community do I want to be in? What kind of community do I want to be a part of? And I think that one of the things that’s been at least inspiring for me, and, you know, people say these are, these are challenging times, and I don’t disagree with that. But it’s also right, you know, Rumi says the gift lies closest to the wound, right? It’s, it’s in these times of wounding that, you know, these wounds can become scars through, through the way in which, you know, we let the light in, you know. And I think one of the things that’s been inspiring for me is the, the establishment of these communities of collective consciousness, community. If you’ve seen more and more of that pop up, you’re seeing more people say, Okay, I’m going to put down my, you know, political. We’re just going to pause for a moment the political, the you know, maybe the religious or what have you, and I’m going to talk to you as you. I’m going to talk to you as Curt and you as Katie. We’re going to talk as three humans, not as the identities or the frameworks that we’ve been told we are. I’m going to talk to you as a human, not as someone with a PhD. I’m let’s, let’s, let’s connect in here and see what is, what is our collective consciousness asking us, and what kind of a community can we build around just this conversation? And you’re seeing more of that. That’s what I mean by the superconscious revolution. People are more aware of their thoughts, and they’re more aware of their masks. And I think people are more curious now to find ways to connect and build communities that are about about growth. You’re seeing, obviously, the huge explosion of a personal growth industry. And what is it like, the $1 trillion altered states economy, I think, is what people call it. You know, that’s the all the plant medicines and all that. But all of that is just speaking to, you know, putting words on and numbers on the fact that more people are waking up, and that, some people say the reason that more of the plants are even showing up, why are there so many plants now for the plant medicines? People say that’s really because the community is asked for.

Katie Vernoy 33:43
I think there’s another piece to this that you’ve been mentioning, but I wanted to spot a, put a spotlight on. So much of what’s discussed in the world and the popular news, whatever it is, seems to center around identity, around obviously political party. There’s a lot of what you described as masks or ways that folks are being labeled and and in this you’re asking people to set that aside and come from the human space, come from curiosity. I love all of those things, and I think there are folks that are going to find that a hard pill to swallow, and so I’m just curious how the opt in is for that? How that is discussed? How we respect the human here, that that is deeply tied to one or more identities, and saying, let’s, let’s allow those to exist, but not be centered in this conversation. What does that look like for folks who are especially for my marginal life, folks who have been asked to throw those identities to the side and discount them for so long?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 34:51
Yeah, and I certainly am not, I’m not trying to say, like, discount that and or discount the experience at all, at all. I think our lived experiences are what make us who we are. I guess the the opting in, the walking in, is first getting curious about ourselves, like first turning inwards and getting curious about me, as opposed to feeling bad about me, or feeling I have something to prove, or feeling I’m not enough. Just get curious about what are these identities? What are these experiences? How do they make me feel? Why do I hold on for this one more fiercely than that one? Why do I hold on to the this one, but not that? And getting curious about you, about yourself. I think that’s the first step is turning that curiosity on yourself, and then turning the curiosity on the people you know, towards the people who are closest to you, maybe your family here, or maybe not. Maybe it’s your kids, maybe it’s your partner, but approaching them with, well, really, what, what is it that makes them like, what is it that makes them human? And again, I’m not, I’m not saying, you know, to to like, erase all the history of what makes you you. I’m saying, Get curious about it. And again, it’s not about, well, accept everyone, accept all humans. That’s not it. It’s more, ask yourself, how it makes you feel? How does it make you feel when you interact with somebody from a place of criticism, as opposed to interacting with somebody from a place of curiosity, and by no means am I saying everybody should be friends and love everybody. I’m just saying, can you get curious about your own inner state and and then take that and get curious, well, what, why is this person who I experience as hateful? Why are they so hateful towards me? Like when you approach them with curiosity and you’re like, Well, what part of your story makes you that way? It’s pretty, actually disarming. And then you do suddenly get to this place with this person who you thought you had absolutely nothing in common with, and you’re like, wait, what like you you had? You know, and again, not to say that everybody’s had the same experience, but more so that curiosity opens your own heart. And to be able to move in the world, not just as an open minded human, but as an open hearted human, is a much more profound way. It’s a much lighter way of moving in the world is with an open heart and an open mind. And curiosity opens that heart.

Curt Widhalm 37:22
This sounds like something that takes a community to really be able to be consistent with. Where can people find out how to be a part of your community and learning more about all of this?

Dr. Pardis Mahdavi 37:36
You can read more about me on my website, www.pardismahdavi.com contact me. I’m very well connected to a number of communities across the country that are building around collective consciousness and and really just trying to find a way to make things better for themselves and for the people around them. And so if that’s something you’re interested in connecting in with. If you’re interested in elevated consciousness or any of these mindfulness techniques, please let me know. I’m happy to help and happy to connect you in with the right group of people as well.

Curt Widhalm 38:12
And we will include links to all of Pardis’ things in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. And follow us on our social media. Join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group, to continue on with this and all of the other conversations that we have over there. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Dr. Pardis Mahdavi.

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