Pala Medicine

10/23/2025

Dan Harris and the 10% Happier app brought Dr. Suraiya Simi Rahman access to mindfulness training and talks when she was an attending teaching and supervising pediatric residents at the inpatient unit at LA County Hospital in Boyle Heights. On long night shifts, in between calls and patients, she would sit on a cushion in the call room and meditate. In that small, windowless room, going inward brought inner awareness and rewards of greater patience, resilience and well being. All things her students, her children and her family appreciated, surely!

We know what happens next — she goes on to teach these techniques and do them with her own trainees and medical students, mentors medical students through the pandemic and becomes a medical student coach.

As a medical educator, she found the topics that weren’t being taught in medical schools, yet, and highlighted their relevance to physician wellbeing and prevention of burnout.

She asks her residents to take sometime to think about the big questions: how do we make meaning of the trials and triumphs of medical training and practice? How do we hold it all?

How do we learn to manage being present in the midst of unending trauma.

In a trauma center serving the underserved in Los Angeles, this was even more relevant and urgent.

Through practicing integrative medicine in this way, Dr. Rahman founded Pala Medicine with her husband Rob Matthews.

It brought together all the teachings that Dan shares here, and demonstrates so well. His delivery, cadence and awareness of the audience’s emotional state, is an educator’s dream. We learn best when we play at the intersection of fun and interesting and relevant.

This talk is all three. Happy learning!
And thanks for sticking with me through a moment of integration coming full circle! ✨⭕️

10/18/2025

We get to create everyday.

That is the miracle of it.

That we get to rise up and do it all over again, for a few more times, finite, is the aching beauty of it.

This practice has brought me back to the days I watched my father leave the house in a starched while coat early in the morning, only to return smelling of sunshine and antiseptic after a day at the hospital. A day spent in service. A joy like no other.

The audacity of this dream has brought me back to his father, who healed others and brought life saving medicine to his village and town. The strength of finding your own path, deeply etched in our Bengali character — “ekla cholo re”, a phrase that encompasses that spirit of quiet revolution that Tagore captured.

I feel their quiet hands guiding me, stilling my anxiety and reassuring me, this is the path.

To all the versions of our patients who walk through these doors, every drop in an ocean, an ocean in every drop. You confirm for us our common humanity.

Our Fridays have left us in amazement at the bravery of these souls who say, “Enough. I will not suffer any longer.” And take the first of many steps to reclaim their peace.

It’s all One.

10/16/2025

Would you like to hear Leonard Pickard on the Too Curious MDs Podcast?

10/07/2025

Burnout almost ended his career—here’s what brought him back. In this episode of Too Curious MDs, Dr. Joe Sherman, a physician coach, opens up about hitting burnout—and the simple shifts that brought him back to a sustainable career. He shares practical tools you can use now and a grounded take on psychedelic-assisted work with real-world integration.

10/07/2025

2025 was our first local psych3delic conference and boy did it deliver!

From the get go this conference was special — small, intimate and in a very non-conference type setting. York Manor is quirky and old and beautiful, and hosted us all in a way that felt familiar, warm and welcoming. I heard someone say, this conference made me feel right at home.

As a small business it was exciting for us to have our own booth, inviting people to explore all the various ways we like to work with our community — whether you’re a practitioner looking for a prescriber, a parent exploring ketamine therapy for their adolescent or young adult for treatment resistant mental health conditions, or just new to the space and wanting to learn more through our podcast, we have something for you!

There is nothing like watching the fruits of your labor, the love you poured into an idea, reach out and touch people. It’s so rewarding to hear, “I heard the podcast and it helped me with my own journey.”

To think that this is still just the beginning. As Leonard Pickard noted, the best is yet to come. More and varied molecules, AI driven discovery, precision diagnostics and therapeutics, personalized, functional and integrative medicine — we are but a drop in this ocean, this ecosystem of practitioners, vendors, service providers and healers — all focused on one thing: healing people, one person at a time.

I leave this conference having long forgotten the words I spoke and the response I received — but this feeling of spaciousness, hope and community is one I carry forward in my body. Undeniably shifted.
Purposefully aligned.
Unquestionably in the right place.

💖🙏🏽✨

10/04/2025

Today we are talking on a panel about ketamine assisted therapy for mental health.

What can one say that feels relevant at this moment?

This moment when the spirits of many many molecules both natural and man-made are rising up, again, to help humanity choose love over war.

To quell the war in our hearts and in our heads. To see clearly, crisply and truly the nature of our conditioned existence, and to act from that place, even when it feels hopeless. Especially when it feels hopeless.

To hear a godfather of psychedelics speak, Leonard Pickard, who has led a storied life, and yet remains unbent, joyous, kind, compassionate and utterly human. A spiritual journey is made of both light and dark, and both are teachers and both are healers.

Accumulated human wisdom feels like the most fragile thing of all these days —

The one that says, don’t forget to unwrap the ugly gift.

Remember you’re not alone.

Reclaim your agency, your birthright as a human.

And a lesson from the Ant Story — we humans, when everything is stripped away, still retain the need to care for something. An animal, a plant, a planet, each other. It’s the essence of who we are, we cannot, we must not, allow that to be forgotten.

As always, I’m indebted to the hands that carried me, cared for me, saved me, healed me, honored and loved me, and are with me every step of this journey. 🙏🏽

10/04/2025

10/02/2025

Pala Medicine — .rahman.md and and are getting ready for 2025 Conference in

Feeling the energy of community gathering together for healing; the connections yet to be realized; the new opportunities and doors that may open just at the next table! New friends and old mingle & projects are born and uplifted. We are excited for the events, the people, the all vegan menu and music and healing events throughout this spectacular weekend! How lucky are we to have this in our backyard!

We are honored to host a booth as well as present on a panel on Day2 on Ketamine Therapy. Come visit all our healing friends at the various booths!

10/01/2025

Keith Kurlander is a coach and psychotherapist who helps high-performing individuals break through long-standing patterns and create deeply fulfilling lives. He specializes in guiding people struggling with mood issues like anxiety and depression, relationship challenges, financial missteps, addiction, and complex PTSD.

Keith is the co-founder of the Integrative Psychiatry Institute and Integrative Psychiatry Centers and co-host of the Higher Practice Podcast. Holding a master’s degree in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology from Naropa University, he’s spent over a dozen years helping people integrate cutting-edge mental health practices with meaningful personal transformation. His own two-decade journey of overcoming severe mental illness fuels his mission to show what healing and thriving are truly possible.

09/25/2025

As a combat veteran, I lived for years in denial of PTSD.

Then the pandemic hit, and the sound of helicopters and empty streets sent me into overwhelming, visceral reactions I couldn’t ignore.

My first experience with ketamine was just an infusion drip with music—no guidance, no integration. It helped a little, but it wasn’t until I found a therapeutic model that everything shifted.

Through exercises like body mapping, writing, and honest integration, I began to bring my unconscious wounds to light.

In this episode of Too Curious MDs, I share my journey.

09/25/2025

As a combat veteran, I lived for years in denial of PTSD.

Then the pandemic hit, and the sound of helicopters and empty streets sent me into overwhelming, visceral reactions I couldn’t ignore.

My first experience with ketamine was just an infusion drip with music—no guidance, no integration. It helped a little, but it wasn’t until I found a therapeutic model that everything shifted.

Through exercises like body mapping, writing, and honest integration, I began to bring my unconscious wounds to light.

In this episode of Too Curious MDs, I share my journey.

>> Watch the full episode here

09/24/2025

October 2nd Thursday 10am in Pasadena, CA
Pala Medicine Experiential for Small Group of 6
Expertly facilitated with soundbath and meditation.

Book Now: https://palamedicine.com/small-group-event/