We are all familiar with functional medicine and perhaps even functional fitness, but have you heard of functional joy? Our guest for this podcast episode is Radha Agrawal, a successful entrepreneur and the author of the book Belong. Radha joins us to discuss her organization, Daybreaker, which spans 28 cities and five continents with a mission to foster joy and community.
Daybreaker’s very first events in 2013 were community dance meetups held early in the morning that aimed to replicate the positive aspects of nightlife while excluding alcohol. The scope of their work continues to expand nine years on, but dance is still their primary tool. Radha is now writing another book and developing a curriculum to teach clinicians and others to systematically foster joy in their communities. Community is a factor critical to chronic disease prevention and reversal, so we invited Radha to share her extensive experience with this powerful predictor of health outcomes often overlooked by healthcare institutions.
EvoMed listeners have access to a 25% discount off a DOSE membership with code “EVOMED”.
Click here to get the discount!
Download the episode to learn about:
- Consciously building communities
- How to foster joy for yourself and your patients
- The importance of hospitality and designing welcoming spaces in medicine
- The biochemistry of joy (D.O.S.E.)
- And much more!
If this episode uplifts and inspires you, we encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues and community.
James Maskell: Hello and welcome to the podcast. This week, I am super excited to bring on my friend Radha Agrawal. She is a serial founder in many different spaces. She’s an author. We talked about her book, Belong. We talked about her business, Daybreaker and D.O.S.E. She’s done many other things outside of that. You may be familiar with her sister, Miki Agrawal. Together, they created Thinx. And there’s many other things that we’re going to talk about on this session. But why we’re talking today is because she is pioneering the field of functional joy. And functional joy is a way of really understanding: How do we facilitate patients and people and people listening to this to actually experience joy? It’s a practice.
We’re going to talk about two acronyms, D.O.S.E. and what that stands for. I think that’ll be really interesting to anyone who’s a biochemistry geek. We’re going to talk about the acronym of BIOCHEM and what that means for actually practicing joy consistently. There’s so much that we spoke about with belonging and community. It was a really interesting 45 minutes. I think anyone listening to this will get a lot out of it. And I hope that you can join us in going to goevomed.com/dose to find out more about how you can start to practice, join for yourself and help your patients to practice as well. Thank you so much and enjoy Radha.
So, a warm welcome to the podcast, Radha Agrawal. So great to have you here, Radha.
Radha Agrawal: So good to be here, James. Thanks for having me.
James Maskell: I’m excited to jump into all the different aspects of what we can talk about today. I really appreciated your book, Belong, and we’ll talk a little bit about that. And I think we both have a passion for really understanding community and belonging, and we’ll get into that. But we’re also going to talk about prescribing joy, which is something that I think a lot of doctors in my community, when I say those words, will really resonate because ultimately, they’ve chosen to leave conventional care to practice in a new way. And ultimately, joy is such a powerful force.
But I want to take it right back to the beginning. So, in late 2013, I was just at the beginning of thinking through the first Functional Forum. The first Functional Forum was February 2014 in New York. And so, there was obviously a lot of interesting energy brewing at that time because that was the first ever Daybreaker. So, why don’t you just talk us through where that idea came from, what it was, and what the early days of Daybreaker looked like.
Radha Agrawal: Yeah. So Daybreaker is all about transformation, all about coming home to your own self-expression. And sort of, I think we started off eight years ago really as a morning dance party. And the idea was to turn nightlife on its head and take away all the negative aspects of nightlife, like the alcohol or the drugs or the mean bouncers, the negative experience of nightlife, but keep all the beautiful aspects of nightlife. So, the dance and the dressing up and the play and the joy and the wellness.
And really sort of invite an experience of connection in a time of day where we’re usually sleeping, which is the morning. So, imagine waking up at sunrise and going to the top of the World Trade Center or an iconic location, like the Museum of Natural History or the Kennedy Center or the Sydney Opera House. And you’re dancing at 6:00 a.m. with a thousand other people before going to work, all drunk on life, all high on your own joy. And the experiment, the idea eight years ago, was again really to turn nightlife on its head and bring the world of wellness and morning life together in a way that touched people meaningfully.
James Maskell: Yeah, it’s so great. Well look, I could tell you, and we didn’t know each other then, but we did one on a boat, I think in early 2014. And I lived in New York then, and I was there, and I experienced it. And I was very excited to see, I guess, boundaries being pushed and new ideas for connection and community. So I guess, what did you learn early on about what was happening there? And what did you learn about community in those early days?
Radha Agrawal: Yeah, so the first thing I think I realized is that every single human wants to belong. Every single one of us wants to find our tribe and feel that exhale of, “I’m home.” And yet, in this country, particularly America and post COVID, one in three Americans have zero friends to confide in. And this number has tripled in the last 30 years. So, what I learned from creating Daybreaker is just how hungry we all are for connection. And how, when you create an environment that is intentionally designed, that beautiful deep connections can be made on the dance floor and in a time of day, again, where we’re typically in bed sleeping. So, it turns out studies have shown that we actually are the most optimistic, we are the most social, we’re the most ready for connection in the morning when our energy’s the most full.
And so, I think the work force, the work environment has forced us into socializing after work hours. And because we’re tired after work, we have to hop ourselves up on drugs, alcohol, coffee, things that actually help us stay awake rather than really aligning with our circadian rhythm. Whereas all the doctors listening, as people listening, it’s like, we want to be in bed at night, and we want to be up when the sun is up. And so, the biggest thing I learned early on about belonging and community is actually to understand where our body is and when we want to actually connect in the first place.
James Maskell: Yeah, that’s beautiful. Well, I want to get into all of the biochemistry a little bit later, but I guess I just want to give you props here because, in the time between then, I moved to Venice, California from New York in 2015. And then quite abruptly ended up moving to Sacramento in 2018, mainly because I just recognized the importance of family for the health of my daughter and for her mental health and her emotional health. And also, just giving myself a strong foundation so that I could continue and deliver the mission. And I would say, early on in that time, I was in a sad place because New York was so fun, not so fun with kids, but it was fun at the beginning. You know, I lived there for a long time. Venice was really fun. And now I’ve moved to Sacramento where it was not quite as fun, and I was still doing my business virtually.
But, in that time, I was recommended your book, Belong. And my wife and I actually read that book at that time and actually, through that process, became very intentional about the community that we wanted to create for ourselves in Sacramento because we really didn’t know anyone. We had a few family friends. We went to this new school, which was one of the reasons why we moved to Sacramento and started meeting some of the parents. But in those early years, I would say that a lot of the things that we did were a reflection of a conscious process of trying to work out what community we wanted to build. And as a result of that, we’ve certainly… I’ve built community for myself that has transformed my groundedness because I realized that that was something that I needed. So, I’ve been in a men’s group here for the last three years and spending a lot of time with emotionally mature men because, ultimately, I recognized that that was something that I needed. Through the school, obviously, we’ve had a couple of different iterations of that but really found our people with regard to the school.
And then even back in Venice, we did things like beach cleanups. There’s no beach, so we did some environmental type of stuff because we were like, “I wonder who we’ll meet. What kind of a person shows up for that kind of event?” And so, through all of those, we built this new network here in the Sacramento area and now up in the hills that really deeply reflects who our core values as a family and what we want to be part of. And I don’t think, it certainly wouldn’t have been as consciously executed had it not been for that book at that time. So, I’m really grateful for that.
Radha Agrawal: That really hits for me. And that was, of course, the intention of the book, which is… You know, we all know how to do this. It’s so intrinsic to the human experience. We all know the feeling when we feel an energetic connection with someone that really aligns with our values, aligns with their interests. And that feeling of, “Oh my gosh, this person gets me.” We know that feeling because maybe we had that with our mother or someone in our life. And if we haven’t, it is your human right. It is each of our human rights to feel that sense of connection and belonging. So, for you to, first of all, have recognized that that is the foundation of joy and groundedness is such a beautiful reflection. And then to have gone and done it, which takes the most courage. And I think that’s really a big piece of belonging is that it deeply goes hand in hand with courage.
And for you to move to another city to be with your kids and your family to start them in a school that really aligned with your collective core values. And then do that courageous work of intentionally building your community. That’s how life becomes more and more rich. And the two things I always say about building community is one, is showing up. So, consistently showing up for your friends for those intentional moments. And the second is the courage to show up in the first place, to actually put your shoes on, to actually not just be like, “Eh, I’m going to Netflix and chill.” Or, “I’m too tired.” Or, “I worked too hard today.” To actually hold your social commitments up as a really important bar of joy in your life. And so, I love that you did that for yourself.
James Maskell: Yeah. I really want to reflect on what you just said with regards to what we’ve done here at the Evolution of Medicine. The first thing that I’m the most proud of is that what started as a meetup for doctors interested in functional medicine in New York, at one point in 2016/17, we had 400 meetups around the world in every continent, apart from Antarctica, where groups of doctors were getting together and watching the show and building community. And ultimately, I would say I’m always grateful for those people who decided that they wanted to lead, who decided to say, “Hey, I’m going to start this.” And plant the flag.
Radha Agrawal: Yes.
James Maskell: But also, the people that show up every month. In my community here in Folsom, California, doctors, coaches, chiropractors, nurses show up every month because they value being with their peers. And ultimately, what I’d recognized in my eight years leading up to the Functional Forum is that there were so many amazing doctors doing so much amazing work in the world, but ultimately, a combination of them using different languages about what they did, even though what they did was similar and having a quite introspective… Not only having a few conferences a year where they could actually connect with like-minded people meant that you could have two people doing very similar work down the road from each other, and they’d never met.
And I just felt like that was such a loss to the progress of the functional medicine movement because, ultimately, so much value can be delivered peer to peer and person to person. So, I guess, if I look back at your businesses now, I see, you have Belong the book and then you have Daybreaker and so forth. And you’ve had other ones historically as well, I know with your sister, Miki. Why is this theme now emerging into community and belonging? And why have you taken this on as your mission and what you choose to do in the world?
Radha Agrawal: Yeah, so first of all, I love that you created this community across the country and created meetup groups that people were courageous enough to plant their flag in the ground to do it. But I think for me, what I realized in my research on communities all around the world, Daybreakers in 30 cities around the world, we’re a community of over half a million people and on all five continents. And one of the things I noticed across cultures is that the root cause of all social problems is our lack of belonging. When we don’t belong, we are more prone to drug abuse, alcoholism, gun violence, political polarization. I mean, every major social issue that you can think of today comes from a moment of, “I didn’t belong.” “I didn’t belong,” therefore this person is now a narcissist. “I didn’t belong as a kid, and therefore now, I’m a bully.” “I didn’t belong as a kid; therefore now, I’m pursuing money, power and fame as sort of my hope that will actually help me belong in the first place. And when I get to this money, power, and fame, oh wait, I’m still lonely. Why is that?”
And so, what I realize across culture is that we have put so much emphasis on our professional careers and on our romantic partnerships. But we have rarely, if ever, put any emphasis on friendships. And that friendships becomes the, “If I have time category.” Or, “If there’s hours left in the day, maybe I’ll go meet my friend for dinner.” And what I realized is in my own life—and I can speak for my own experience—is that when I actually shifted my entire life from, “Oh, profession first, family first, and then friendships second, third, and fourth.” To family and friendships, let me put actually friendships really even at the top of the food chain because from the place of friendship, I can show up for my family better, I can show up for my profession better, I can show up for myself better feeling that sense of a foundational trust fall with a community of people that really want me to succeed in every area of my life.
So, for me, I’m a mother of a three-year-old daughter. When I actually started focusing on friendships as a priority, community as a priority, actually, my business went up. My revenue numbers went up. My home life was so much more grounded and joyful, and I didn’t put all of my emotional need on my husband. I put more of my emotional need across more of my friends. I was able to actually have more friends with whom I could share struggles with, or I could listen to their struggles and feel a sense of commiseration with them. And so, I think, especially doctors, my sister’s a doctor, she spent 20 years studying medicine and so has been in this routine of professional career, family and, if I have time, of friendships.
And only now, as she is in her mid-forties, top of her game, she’s like, “I’ve already reached the pinnacle of what I could do as a doctor, now what?” And she’s realizing that she really feels lonely, and she really wants more connection, more community. And so, she reached out to my sister and I and we’ve become to develop a deeper friendship and a connection with my sister. And it’s just been this incredible blessing in our own lives. But I think for me the biggest piece of all of this is to really prioritize community, to prioritize friendships, to really intentionally seek them out because every area of your life will improve from that place.
James Maskell: Yeah, I love that, and I’m really grateful to hear you say that. And I definitely resonate with it. And I think it really speaks to why for the last three years at the Evolution of Medicine the focus has really been on of popularizing group medicine. Because ultimately, many people end up in the doctor’s office because they’re lonely. And that loneliness either means that they want to connect with medical professionals as someone to talk to or their social isolation is actually significantly contributing to their chronic illness. And in the book, The Community Cure, I talked a lot about just the rates of these major chronic illnesses that are exacerbated by loneliness and how social isolation…
Radha Agrawal: Of course.
James Maskell: …is the biggest driver of all-cause mortality, more than alcohol, more than smoking, all of these different massive public health issues that we’ve put a lot of money into. And yet isolation was driving more of it than anything. And our society has become more and more isolated over time. Technology, COVID, all of these different areas have sort of exacerbated it. And what we’ve seen is that if you could build a community inside a medical practice—where you could introduce patients who want to get off medication or get healthy to each other—there was real power in that. And that if we could now develop extended episodes of care where people have enough time to develop friendships, that you were sort of killing two birds with one stone in that now you were solving loneliness. But you were also giving people an empowering community structure by which they were able to actually work on healthy behaviors together and hold each other in support and connection. And now that I’ve seen that, I can’t unsee it, and I just see the need for it everywhere I look.
Radha Agrawal: Totally, absolutely. And it’s interesting, I was talking to my sister who runs a clinic at Johns Hopkins, and we were just talking about her clinic and the experience of… We were talking about her wanting to build community inside of her clinic with her patients and her staff and all of that. And so, when I think about just practice in general, or whether it’s a doctor’s practice, whether it’s a business office environment. To really invite community in those spaces, we can’t just be thinking about patient care or just be thinking about the task that needs be accomplished at the office. We have to be really thinking about the holistic experience.
And I think, that’s really what I think we do best at Daybreaker, which is experience design. When someone walks into a doctor’s office or a clinic, what music is playing, what colors are in the space. What are the doctors or what are the admins or the receptionists inviting you in… Do they have a sort of dialogue cheat sheet of welcoming the guests? If it’s just a person that the clinic is hiring, is there a very simple dialogue experience that we can share with? I wrote this out for my sister of just how to greet someone at the door, how to ask them what’s happening in their family, what questions you can ask them to make them feel more connected and in community. So, just building an entire ecosystem that is so simple, a very simple playbook, so that doctors who are already so busy with patient care don’t have to be thinking about, “Oh gosh, what color should this be? What music?” Can there be a very simple playbook that can be open sourced? And so I’m happy to share what I share with my sister, with all the doctors to help them create community inside their house. And I’m happy to offer that for free to doctors. I can share that with you, James, if you want to share that out as well. Or we can—
James Maskell: Yeah, let’s put that in there. We’ll make sure that’s in the show notes because, yeah, I think that’s mission critical. I had the fortune of working—at my first job in this industry—in a clinic that had owners who had been in the spa industry for 30 years, before functional medicine existed and naturopathic medicine, where taking cash from people became a norm in medicine where it wasn’t before. And in the spa industry, they had learned that long ago because they really recognized the value of welcoming people as guests and making people feel special there, so that was my first job. And I think just experiencing that very fortunately was such a juxtaposition. Where now, going into very cold, very bleak doctor’s offices, and then wondering, “Okay, well, why don’t patients like going to the doctor? Why do we have such a dysfunctional…?”
Radha Agrawal: Exactly, exactly. And they’re such simple and easy fixes. And yeah, it’s actually a framework that I created around joy that I’m building a whole teacher training program around for doctors and patient care practitioners all around helping themselves—but also their patients, also all their colleagues and employees—understand how to actually architect joy around them both physically and mentally. And I’m happy to share it. Yeah.
James Maskell: Well, let’s dive into that because that’s what I wanted to talk about really today is that I know that Daybreaker is building a new arm and that’s really about prescribing joy. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you here on the Evolution of Medicine podcast mainly because I think our community of doctors more than any other community of doctors—maybe on the planet—is ready for this conversation. I think, as I’ve seen the functional medicine world evolve, a lot of doctors that come into functional medicine at the beginning, they’re still sort of in the old mindset of diagnose and treat, but they’re just using different tools. They have slightly different tests and they have supplements instead of drugs. But as doctors get into this and do it for a long period of time, I think what they start to recognize is that the leverage points for real, personal transformation is in like, can you have patients experience awe and joy and connection and those kinds of things?
Radha Agrawal: Exactly, right.
James Maskell: So, we’ve been talking about functional medicine for a long time. This isn’t the Functional Medicine Forum, this is the Evolution of Medicine Forum, because it evolves beyond. Functional medicine is just like a bridge whereby people can understand things like systems biology and root-cause analysis. But ultimately, I’m kind of hoping that this conversation is going to launch us into a whole new era when we can start to talk about like, “What is it that really engages people into their transformation?” So, talk us through joy, where it comes from, what it’s made up of, some of the biochemistry, and where Daybreaker is going in a journey to help more people experience joy.
Radha Agrawal: Yeah, so, first of all, I love the Evolution of Medicine and what can be on the other side of it. And so, for me, that looks like where there’s functional fitness, there’s functional medicine. I’m actually authoring the Field of Functional Joy, and I call it functional joy because joy, when we think about how can we sort of support people’s joy, currently, it’s through pharmaceuticals, it’s through, of course, mindfulness practices. But is there actually a field of functional joy that we can train healthcare practitioners into as an additional certification, so that they can actually go into every patient conversation, not just with functional medicine as a lens, but also functional joy as a lens as well? So, I’m writing and authoring this entire curriculum at the moment around functional joy. And over the last many, many months, years, I sort of built out this whole rubric and have now designed this framework that I call BIOCHEM, which is an acronym. BIOCHEM, which is interesting, biology, chemistry, the biology of your body, the chemistry of your mind.
If you can really understand the functionality of both though the lens of joy, we can really biohack our happiness, right? So, what does BIOCHEM stand for? The B in BIOCHEM stands for your brain. So, your brain, how is your brain wired for joy? So, I look at that through the lens of your D.O.S.E., an acronym that I coined, which stands for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. Your four happy neurochemicals spell out the word dose, which is crazy. And that lives inside the B of BIOCHEM. How is your brain wired for joy? How can we actually teach our patients to unlock their happy neurochemicals? Through movement, through brain-body biohacking, right? So, we developed a whole program all around helping you unlock your four happy neurochemicals through not just talk therapy, but through actual movement practices, which we are the first ones to do in partnership with UC Berkeley and the Greater Good Science Center.
So, the B in BIOCHEM, is your brain. How does your brain work? How can we really understand your brain? We developed a joy quiz as well that you would take to also understand what your neurochemical makeup is so we can prescribe you the correct movement practices to unlock each neurochemical. So, that’s the B.
The I in BIOCHEM is your identity. How do you identify yourself, right? Do you identify yourself as someone who is depressed, anxious, socially anxious, introverted, extroverted, joyful? What is your identity? Is your identity someone who is, “I am someone who is healthy naturally. I am someone who is… I’m unhealthy. I come from an unhealthy family.” What is your identity? How can we really work on your identity as a human so that we can actually begin orienting your identity to joy, orienting your identity to more opportunities for wellness and community and positive, non-toxic relationships? So, identity: What is your identity?
So B-I, the BIO, the O is opportunity. What are the opportunities in your life? What is your opportunity to build a career for yourself that really aligns with what you are passionate about? What is your opportunity with where you come from socioeconomically? Do you have the opportunity to go to higher education? Do you have an opportunity to have good mentorship? Let’s look at your opportunity in your life and where you came from, that’s so important.
Now let’s move on to CHEM, the C in chem is community, of course. Who are you’re surrounding yourself with? You’re as good as the five closest friends you keep. I’m running through these very quickly, but this gives you an example of how we’re thinking about functional joy, right? So community, who you surround yourself.
With the H and CHEM is history. Where do you come from? Were you bullied as a kid? Did you come from an abusive family? Were you sexually abused? Did you come from a family that really supported you, that really gave you wings, that had a big family to surround you with? Did you grow up with your whole family abroad or just your nuclear family? What does your history look like? Which really dissects where you came from to understand your joy patterns from before so we can then begin programming how we orient your joy for the future.
The E is your energy. How are you cultivating your own energy? How do you see yourself energetically? Are you someone that radiates positive energy? Are you someone that radiates negative energy? Are you someone that radiates anxious energy? Are you someone that radiates optimistic, magnetizing energy? What is your energy like? How can we actually help you understand your energy? This sixth sense that we don’t often think about as a superpower, but how can we harness your energy to begin magnetizing the joy, the life of your dreams? And some people don’t realize how important energy is to actually be a beacon of magnetization, but it really is such an important piece of that.
And finally, the M, which of course doctors understand, is the mechanics, the mechanics of our body. How does our body work? Our organ function, our sleep patterns, our food, our nutrition. Our mechanics are very much the functional medicine side of things as well. So, I would say functional medicine falls in several of these categories, but particularly the mechanics of our body is a big piece to dissect in that piece and that functional joy rubric that I designed. So, that’s a very rapid-fire functional joy foundation that we will be teaching in this curriculum.
James Maskell: Awesome. Yeah, just as a reflection on that, so about two weeks ago, we had my team retreat in Utah, and we were all in Park City and this awesome ski house. And one morning, we started with one of your 33-minute episodes and that included some light yoga at the beginning, some meditation. And then into about 15 minutes of dance and movement. And not everyone participated, but those that did, I think, started the day in a really joyful and powerful way. And we just literally all felt what it felt like to be as a community of people together, participating together, doing these things together, and I think it’s really exciting.
So, let’s talk a little bit about how people who are listening to this can get involved. For everyone who’s listening, if you go to goevomed.com/dose, D-O-S-E, we’re going to have all of the details there on how you can get involved and how you can start to work with Daybreaker+ to prescribe joy to your patients. We’ve been in it as an organization, doing it ourselves and really enjoying the process. And it’s so cool that here I am, I have a yoga studio that I go to about 15 minutes away, but ultimately, I don’t have a morning dance club that is right around the corner from me because it hasn’t got to that level. But ultimately, I can facilitate and experience that in my own home with my wife, with my daughters, whenever I want because ultimately, that’s been something that’s now available to me. So, how do you see this working? How can doctors get involved? And when they go to that link, what are they going to get?
Radha Agrawal: Yeah, so at the link they’re going to, first of all, get a free quiz to give to their patients, a free joy quiz. So, it’s a 50-question quiz that we… It’s actually a 35-question quiz that we designed with UC Berkeley and the Greater Good Science Center, who are the top behavioral science lab on the signs of happiness. And this quiz is essentially going to give you a personalized prescription to your joy practice that you would then fill on our platform, which has 300 to 500 joy practices on the platform from yoga, dance, meditation, breath work, visualization practices, sound baths—all kinds of different—forest bathing, Qigong—all focused specifically on joy. We also just launched a masterclass series on joy as well with Chip Conley and Marion Williamson and all kinds of top teachers in the science of joy and mindfulness. And one of the biggest things for us is that it wants to be a manageable amount of time. So, it’s 11 minutes or less.
So, inviting your patients to do… It’s an 11-minute experience, a facilitated movement, a brain-body movement practice that you would do in the morning. So, we just call it Wake Up and Dance. So, the whole idea is inviting your patients to start their day with joy through an 11 minutes or less movement experience that we’re calling just Wake up and Dance, which is every morning, if you and your family get out of bed and you wake up and dance, life is going to be so much more joyful. And so, just giving that as the initial carrot for your patients will get them enrolled into this whole interest in pursuing joyful practices because it does take effort to be joyful. It’s not a given or a guarantee. It is a practice. So yeah, you go to dose.daybreaker.com or Evo, your link actually, and they can sign up there. And again, the joy quiz will give each patient their own personalized journey for what practices to practice every day.
James Maskell: Super fun. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, so check out goevomed.com/dose, D-O-S-E. We’ll put that in the show notes, and you can have access to all of that information. Look, I want to just say thank you for taking this on. I think it’s interesting to see where this would emerge from. Where would it emerge from? Would it come from a doctor? Would it come from a morning dance party creationist? Where would this emerge from as an idea? I’m really excited to be a supporter of this because I recognize the joys of practice. I’ve made efforts in my groundedness in the last three years to actively facilitate that. And I recognize how it’s impacted me. And I want this for everyone because I know that it’s not something that is available to everyone. But ultimately, it is a practice.
And thank you for making it so digestible because ultimately, what we’ve seen from functional medicine… Like functional medicine was a great idea and it is a great operating system, but unless it’s organized in the right way and designed in the right way, only very few people can ever know it, could ever experience it, and can ever do it. And so, it takes thinkers to work out how to package it and organize it and deliver it in such a way that it maximizes the potential of its influence and its potential itself. And so, I’m involved in that, I think, day to day in functional medicine and really thinking about, “How does this become the standard of care?”
And then, I’m grateful to other people who are really thinking about that. And I think that just the words functional joy will be deeply resonant for many people who listen to this and communities as they go out. So, thank you for building it. Thank you for sharing it. And I’m excited to see the feedback from our community as they take the quiz, they understand: Do they need dopamine? Do they need oxytocin? In what proportion? That was really insightful for us as we all did the quiz on our retreat. And then also to actually get in the habit of practicing joy. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. So, thank you so much for being part of the Evolution of Medicine podcast.
Radha Agrawal: Thank you James for having me. This is so exciting.
James Maskell: All right, so we’ve been with Radha Agrawal. She is the founder of Daybreaker. She’s also the author of a number of different things, including Belong. I highly recommend that book to you, especially if you’re making a transition to a new physical location, which I know a lot of people have done during the pandemic. I highly recommend that book from my own experience. And if you check out Radha, we’ll put her details in the show notes. There’s a lot more that Radha has done that we didn’t talk about here today because we wanted to focus in on functional joy and this concept. But so much to learn and thank you so much for being part of it. This has been the Evolution of Medicine podcast. I’m your host, James Maskell, and we’ll see you next time.
Subscribe
Download
Click here to download this podcast
music provided by intomusic.co