85: How to Build a Sense of Belonging with Rajkumari Neogy

Sense of belonging is a human need. It's right up there with food and water. People will seek belonging in community, with family and friends, churches, book clubs, online, through social media, especially specialized groups, but also at work. With so many of us now working from home, feeling isolated, we are all likely losing that sense of belonging. My guest today tells us it goes a lot deeper than being bent out of shape because you were not included on a zoom call or left off an email at work. If someone says, ah, it's all in your head, Rajkumari Niogi would say, yes, it's in your brain. Your sense of belonging, relationships with other people, family and coworkers can come down to what is imprinted on your brain and from which side. Rajkumari is an epigenetic coach and executive consultant who approaches belonging from a neurobiological view. How getting in touch with any deep rooted trauma can help dismantle, dismantle toxic work cultures and relationships. People should not have to work or interact in a toxic environment. It's unfair and mentally unhealthy. This episode is for the person who is starting to recognize a need to show more empathy to team members, customers, perhaps in your community, but it's also for people who are suffering at the hands of it. I needed to hear about effective leadership, inclusivity and belonging from Rajkumari, especially this week. And so will you take a listen. Future generations will.

Thank you.

Hello, Rajkumari. I cannot tell you how excited I am to speak with you today on your topic. But spoiler, we're going to bleed into other topics. You're the perfect person to speak to this week. So hello.

Hello Molly. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm so excited myself.

And so your, your title, you are an executive consultant, an epigenetic coach, but sounds very, I'm sorry, very hoity toity, very, you know, academ. But you bring something very basic to human nature and that's why I'm so excited to talk to you. So Rajkumari, first tell us about the work that you do right now. What is your passion? What's your drive?

Oh, thank you. I am an executive coach. There are two words that I'm absolutely obsessed about, which is epigenetics and neurobiology. Neurobiology is simply how the nervous system operates and how it gets triggered and how it relaxes. Epigenetics is a little different. It's a newer science, if you will. And it really has come to light in some pretty astonishing ways. Epigenetics basically says to us that we carry the mindsets of our past generations, our parents, our grandparents, for over 200 years in our cellular biology. So that means that every single one of us on this planet is walking around with over 200 years of thoughts, strife, survival, scarcity, mindset, challenges, difficulties, joy, resilience, basically embedded inside their DNA.

So what you're saying, if I understand this correctly, that embedded ins are the thoughts, the emotions, the resilience of our ancestors back 200 years or over?

Yeah, absolutely. Of course, you know, they're kind of, if you will, registered or stored, as Moshe Seif calls it, biochemical markers or biochemical signals. And so we all carry, of course, neurochemicals, hormones, neurotransmitters, and the way in which our past generations experience life, whether it was through war or famine or just incredible difficulty, financial loss, even, that actually gets those stress markers. Those stress factors actually get marked in our DNA. And so as children, we kind of grow up looking for those stress markers and kind of scanning for when that's going to happen. Rachel Yehuda did some amazing research. She actually found that the children of Holocaust survivors actually carry the symptoms of PTSD from those who actually survived the Holocaust.

Oh, my goodness. So, as I said at the top that you were going to be speaking at a much higher level, however, you can bring it down to the core, and I can see what you're getting at here. It's that it's so embedded in us in terms of how we react in life today. Now, you are an executive coach, and I know you've worked at a number of top companies. Top tech companies like Facebook, Google, Adobe, Indeed, and Slack are in your work with organizations like that, when you work either in your profession or when they hire you as an executive coach, are the issues of someone at a tech giant the same as someone who maybe sells Apple phones at a store?

Without a doubt. How it's couched, however, is very different. What we're coming in to examine is, hey, you know, I'm really struggling with getting a promotion. Hey, I'm noticing that I have a lot of conflict with this person. Hey, I'm noticing that I'm not able to deliver in the ways I need to deliver. Hey, I'm noticing that I'm getting in trouble because I'm not getting along with my. With my peers, or I'm being told that I'm not getting along with my peers. And so what we do is we dive into kind of the business outcomes. Okay, well, great. So let's look at your team. Let's look at who you are in the business and then let's dive deeper and let's look at what epigenetic patterning may exist transgenerationally that is actually driving this. I could give you a million examples. I could talk about how the head of product and a startup was actually labeled as a bully by his executive team. When we dive into the epigenetics, what we find is that his grandfather's father died when the grandfather was 8. And at 8 years old, this little boy had to go out and work to support his four siblings, himself and his mother. My client, labeled as a bully, was also labeled as unrelenting. Unrelenting and a workaholic. And just someone that they feared the most because all they cared about was just checking things off their to do list. So the core belief is titrated from that stress factor into my client.

So, Rajkumari, when someone brings you in to work with them, how do you uncover this? How do you know what his ancestors were doing 200 years ago? And the result is he's a workaholic. Like, you know, they didn't even have maybe electricity and now he's at a tech company. How do you uncover that trauma? Is it through discussion, through journaling?

Yeah, it's a great question. Very, very quickly because we don't have a lot of time. What we need to talk about are the business outcomes and how to actually manifest those. Business get the results. So in our very first session, we sit down and I say, okay, great. Today we're going to draw your epigenetic map. And they're like, what's that? And I say, very simple. We just actually draw a diagram of you, your parents and your grandparents. And for the next 40 minutes, I'm going to ask you very specific questions about what it was like to grow up with your father, grow up with your mother, how they grew up with their parents, et cetera. And I'm just capturing sentences that are coming out. This is not more than 40 minutes. And what I'm looking for are the patterns of stress, the patterns of disconnection, the patterns of dysfunction. I'm looking for rejection. I'm looking for despair, hopelessness. I'm looking for financial loss. I'm looking for someone who's been excluded because of religion or race or because they joined a political affiliation that was different than the family loyalty. All of those things are going to tie into that. Was there a sudden loss or a sudden death of a child or a parent where the child was 4 and their dad died suddenly? Those Types of things.

Okay, I can see that your sessions must be, must get very emotional. Now you're, you're, you're going in to, to discuss at the very least, or to help fix dysfunction. Are you doing it one employee at a time or are you doing it in a group? So in other words, how are you? I suppose you can't really fix a person, but how are you mending the anxiety or soothing any of the anxiety or dysfunction within the workplace?

Such a great question. Every single one of us has two hemispheres. The left hemisphere is really designed to measure, to compare, to evaluate. It's the fixer, it's the problem solver, it's the functional aspects of who we are. And it's a very important aspect of who we are because that's how we build companies. It's how we get results. The right hemisphere is all about relationships. It's relationship to the world, relationship to our colleagues, and primarily relationship to ourselves. What is also really fascinating is that unresolved trauma is held in the right hemisphere. So these ruptures, these disconnections, these emotions of pain, rejection, betrayal, abuse, whatever it is, are actually stored in different parts of our body, but also held in our right hemisphere. And when we start to build neural pathways from the right prefrontal cortex to the seat of our emotion, the amygdala, we're starting to create this beautiful robustness of relationality with ourselves. We have more compassion because concern, compassion, empathy, the concern part of empathy happens in the right hemisphere. And so when we start to really build those muscles of neural pathways on the right hemisphere, what we start to notice, strangely, automatically, by default, suddenly even, is, holy moly, this thing isn't happening anymore. I'm starting to feel calmer. Wow, I have less anxiety. This is simply because we are creating more relationality through greater neural pathways on the right hemisphere.

I'm not sure if you keep track of this information, but would it be accurate if I had to make a leap here that most CEOs, senior executives, business owners, entrepreneurs, are they typically more left hemisphere people, Whereas your maybe your communicators, your customer service, member services, whatever, their right hemisphere? Or am I just making it too basic? Am I looking at it the wrong way?

I think it's a great generalization. I think it's a great place to start. So I would say yes. There's an HBR article that talks about how 70% of first time CEOs experience isolation. That's because they're hanging out in their left hemisphere. They're all about Solving. They're all about trying to get the results. They're all about function, function, function. Make sure it happens, make sure it happens. How do we fix it? How do we get this? And there's no sense of relationality. How we don't feel alone is when we are in our right hemisphere. And so the trick is to become phenomenal leaders, is to really master the vacillation between the left and the right so that you can actually see people as human doings from the left hemisphere as well as human beings from the right hemisphere. Because you've got to get the right people in the right role to execute those business outcomes. Right? We know this, but we also want to do it from a place of inspiration, trust, empathy, compassion, hope. And we motivate them by being in relationship with that. Let me give you a story. And he was four down from Brian Chesky. And one day, Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, came in and told his team, hey, we need to do all these things right away, right now. And most of the people were like, hey, that's too much. I don't know if we can do that. And my client was like, I'll get it done, let's go. Right. And he did. He got it done. And he was promptly fired. Oh, why? Why was he promptly fired? Because even though he got it done, he left bodies in the wake.

Oh, interesting.

Right. And so when we start to realize that there is such a deep, absolute, critical, essential need to see people as people and as functional roles in a company, that's when we start to create this holistic, cohesive, inclusive, psychologically safe culture. Okay?

So as we talk about inclusivity right now, for someone listening to this, if they're like me, they're thinking, oh my goodness, which hemisphere am I falling in right now? Am I more to the left or to the right? Especially someone who might be senior leadership, a CEO, they might, you know, run an organization and they're wondering, you know, how. How am I perceived? I'm sure there's a much deeper level of approaching this, but for someone just sitting and listening, is there some quick self audit for them to tell that they aren't being as inclusive as they can, or not tapping into that right hemisphere?

I would ask that person to look at their 360, if they have them, what's the feedback they're getting? What's the organization effective score? What's their management effective score? What are they hearing about themselves? So that's the first place I would start. The second thing is I would start to really ask them how do they show up at meetings? Are they getting defensive when people give them feedback? Are they interrupting people when they're talking? Are they needing to take over the room? Like how, what, what's their behavior? And all of that's going to titrate down to the epigenetic patterning. That's not a problem. We'll find that easily, no issue there. But our essence of who we are is a perfect sandbox to really explore what's going on and how we're showing up with others by looking at that feedback.

Right.

To see how we're showing up and how we can start to shift if we don't like what we're seeing or if we're getting feedback that's not optimal.

Oh, I love feedback. That's way in my lane of public relations is always take feedback in because it's free information. It's like a focus group. You're finding out about yourself. Now let me ask you the counter side of this.

Let me just jump the feedback.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Because this is really important. If we are hanging out in our left hemisphere during a one on one when we are getting feedback that most likely can be perceived as a threat because we don't have capaciousness and connection to ourselves. So we are looking at this feedback as new information that is blaming us. The left hemisphere takes in new information by understanding it through blame. So it can't actually process this properly. But when we move into our right hemisphere now we can do active listening. Now we can actually get curious. Now we can ask questions. If we're hanging out in our left, we're immediately countering that feedback with all of the data, the list of accomplishments, how it's not so.

Raj Kumari, it sounds as if you're saying. What I hear is that if you have an extreme left hemisphere person, they're probably narcissistic. They have a healthy dose of narcissism. Because just what I know at my most basic level is they do not like negative feedback. They do not like feedback period or hearing anything about themselves and they push it away and create chaos. But there are very healthy people obviously as well too that that reside in the less in the left hemisphere.

I'm not an expert on narcissism at all. There are many folks on the planet who are. I know that unworthiness, a core belief of not feeling worthy drives a foundation of shame. And when that happens repeatedly over days, weeks, months, years, decades, there really is a protective shield around that person.

Absolutely. So that that ties in perfectly with what you're saying. Now, of course, I don't want to focus and dump on all the left hemisphere people. There must be some limitations to people only being using the right hemisphere. I mean, obviously, that's the carrying, the emotional, the relationship. So someone who may have a cognitive bias towards this right hemisphere, is it all unicorns and sunshine, or are there some limitations if you're 100% present on that side of your brain?

I really appreciate this conversation. I want to be very clear. We need both hemispheres.

Good. Okay.

We need both hemispheres. It's just like water. What happens when you have too much water? We have flooding, we have destruction. What happens when you have not enough water? You have drought, you have arid land, you have lack of crops that can grow. But what happens when you have just the right amount of water?

Ah, nice. Okay, what does happen? So what are you looking for in the end? Who is the person that is absolutely. Is it epigenically sound? Like, what are you striving for?

So really about creating sound safety in the moment when a person speaks up in a meeting and they have a disagreement or a different thought, that that is welcomed and not shunned or dismissed. And when we have all of the parts of us fully on board, fully online, we can hold that. Let me give you an example. Just last year I was invited to go and speak to. I was coaching a client ahead of people at a tech company here in San Francisco, and she asked me to come in and talk to her CEO and her 12 direct reports around trust. I'm in the conference room or talking. The CEO suddenly turns to me and says, hey, I have this question about trust. I get really excited. So I jump up and I start actually whiteboarding my answer. So my back is turned toward everyone while I'm writing my answer on the whiteboard. And all of a sudden I hear from my client who yells out, wow, your handwriting is really shitty.

To you.

Absolutely. And in front of everyone. So this is a moment where you can think about, what would you do at this moment? Right. How would you respond? And if I were fully located in my left hemisphere and totally really about getting defensive and not being able to receive that feedback, I would snap. I might walk out, I might say some things that aren't pleasant. I might lose that contract, whatever. Right, right. But in that moment of stress and I'm hanging out in my right hemisphere, this is actually what I did. Still facing the board, I took a deep breath and a very slow exhale. When we do that. The exhale actually allows for our lungs to secrete acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is a neurochemical that communicates to our brain that we're safe. I take a deep breath, I exhale, I turn around and I do two things. I communicate verbally and non verbally. My nonverbal communication to her is I extend out my arm palm up so that I'm basically creating a bridge. And then I asked her, what's going on? That is it? And she said, well, I'm frustrated right now because I really want clarity. I really want to be able to. Not to waste someone's time and blah, blah, blah. She went on for a while and maybe like a while, 30 seconds. And I said, aha, so you're wanting a sense of clarity? And she said, yes. And the whole room calmed down and we started talking about this. Later she texted me and said, everyone in my team thought that we actually planted that debate. That discussion. And the power of being in the right hemisphere during moments of conflict, during moments of stress, can absolutely shift the energy, shift how we're about to handle this really difficult moment.

Now, in your example, someone called you out publicly, you know, and there would be some shame and embarrassment that would go with that. Because of your expertise, you knew how to work in that situation. What if this happens to someone else? They're in a meeting, someone senior level calls them out for their shitty handwriting.

Yeah.

What, they can't come back and say, tell me more about that? Because a boss would say, oh, I'll tell you, there's the door right there. You know, it could go sour fast. How is someone listening to you right now? Your words right now. Then how are they tapping into that right brain when there is dysfunction or some toxic environment that they're always working in? Other than that deep breath, which I'm a huge fan of the breath, huge. What could they do? What are some of the tools that they could use?

Well, let's be very clear. 20 years ago that happened to me, I would have said some very unpleasant things and walked out. Okay, let's be very clear.

Me, the pen would have been flown. Oh, you want to see a mess?

I'll show you a mess. It's that flip the table emoji, right? Yeah, exactly. Yes. So I had zero capacity to hold that kind of tension and conflict because of what my own personal, unresolved trauma. Now I do what I do. So I actually have spent a trajectory, tremendous amount of time working through my own stuff. And in so Doing what have I done? I have built out my own right hemisphere neural pathways and I have increased that muscle exponentially. It didn't take, it wasn't overnight, didn't take three months, it took years. But I come from an incredibly traumatizing background, so it probably took me longer than most people. Let's just be clear about, about that. But the way in which I stayed committed to building out those neural pathways and really doing the work and really resolving that trauma allowed me to stand in a place of being able to hold conflict. For someone who has not yet done all of that work, there is an opportunity to do many, many, many things. Bessel Van der Kolk, who is a leading trauma specialist here in this country, who wrote the book and is author of your body keeps score, a book I highly recommend for people who have experienced a lot of trauma, really talks about how we resolve trauma is by re inviting mind body connection. And that there's a plethora of ways to do that. Meditation, yoga, journaling, any body activity, physical activity, laughing, hugging. Moshe Seif, who's an epigenetist, who's a very famous epigenetist, who I adore, did this really interesting study where he talked about that there was these mice that were traumatized and this gene turned on that showed epigenetically that they were traumatized. But what he didn't realize was that these little baby mice ran over to adult mice to get snuggled. And as they were getting snuggled, they were secreting a chemical neurochemical called oxytocin. This is a chemical. And what was so surprising in this study was that this gene that showed the trauma after getting snuggled over time turned off. So they were no longer showing symptoms of trauma. Right. So that's a right hemisphere experience.

Right? Right. Yes. And a lot of mothers are familiar, you know, familiar with that, with that soothing drug. Now I hear a lot of self reflection, obviously, you know, coupled with this dedication to, to, to the soothing and to thinking differently and treating people differently. Do you work with people at all or do you have any thoughts on externally? What if you have someone who is, that walks into a room, they're in an environment where they are right hemisphere, they know how to communicate. They, they, they include people, but they happen to work in a toxic environment. Is there something that they can be armed with to help them deal with a person who isn't as self realized?

I mean, there's probably a ton of people walking around all day long would like that. Right. You know, this is such an interesting question because someone who is fully aware or is more self reflective than the average person will probably notice the toxicity in that organization, the toxicity in the culture. It's really a question of how long they can withstand that, what they're getting in terms of appreciation and recognition, what their own personal values are and how they want to impact the organization. So oh what a.

That is an answer for the time. I like that you took it to a greater level. It's do you want to be in that environment? You aren't necessary. You can't necessarily change an entire culture. But you can change your relationship to that culture by leaving that culture and going towards a place. Now, Rajkumari, the one place I wanted to end which is really should be at the beginning. I know that you talk a lot about, I mean really where all roads here lead to a sense of belonging and how important it is. Could you share just a little bit more about this idea and this physical need, emotional need that people have for belonging?

Absolutely. You know, so I talk a lot about how belonging is actually. Stephen Porges, who is an author of the book called Polyvagal Theory has a technical term for belonging and it's called neuroception. And neuroception really is the system that is designed in our bodies to scan for danger, for safety and for life threatening situations and people and excuse me. And we come to this planet. We are born with a predetermined sense of belonging because of our epigenetics. Depending upon how our ancestors have survived the stress factors they endured, those are going to be encoded in our DNA. And so we're going to come as children already with the awareness and attention to all of the factors that came ancestrally that were experienced ancestrally. The wonderfully awesome thing is all of this can be rewired and it's so easy. It's just through that level of self connection and the rewiring of the right hemisphere. There are so many things that you can do as an individual to start to resolve that sense of trauma. And really kind of, as we say in the tech world, up level your sense of belonging. The first thing you can do is something called SSP stands for Safe and Sound Protocol. This is actually something that was designed by Stephen Porges. If you want to do this activity, I invite you to do it. I have it and I would gift it to the audience listening. I just need to reach out to me through my website. The second thing that you can do is you can purchase Sarah Payton's book called you'd Resonant Self. It's A really wonderful book that examines and invites this whole journey about reconnection on the right hemisphere. And the third thing that you can do is to join my bootcamp that's happening. It's called the Biology of Belonging boot camp. And it's starting January. January. Wow. Covid brain.

Covid brain, exactly. June, perhaps.

Is that the J. June 20th Pacific Time, 9am to 11. It's free. It's six weeks. We're going to be doing a deep dive into belonging and really understanding belonging at its core. The traumas that impact belonging and to really kind of start to transform the world and ourselves.

Oh, that sounds wonderful. So I will include all of that information within the show notes and people can find that on their phones and on the. On the website. This biology of belonging. So at the time of this recording, it's. It's. It's a week after the murder of George Floyd. We are in an environment right now of tension, riots, racism, exclusivity. It's. It's just rife with raw emotion. Right now at the top, when you had talked about how our ancestors and how they lived and what they experienced is imprinted into our DNA, my first thought, when you said 200 years ago, I'm thinking 17th, 18th century, I thought of slavery.

Yeah.

Rajkumari, could you tell me, based on your work and where we are right now, speak. I want you to speak to the white person right now. Tell me what you know in your experience. What is the impression in a black person right now that someone who is not of color may not get or may not see exclusion? Inclusion is so important and so many white people say, oh, I'm not racist. I want to. I include everyone. I don't see color. But a statement like that is an exclusive statement. What can you speak to in terms of understanding this idea of an exclusion, especially as it relates to black people this week, this time, you know, June of 2020.

So I can only speak for myself. I can't speak for anyone else. What I can say is that exclusion is incredibly detrimental. When we experience exclusion, what happens in our brain? Is it actually registered as physical injury? When I experience rejection, when I experience not being warmly welcomed, when I experience being disrespected, interrupted, humiliated, dismissed in some way, the pain centers in my brain light up. And if these pain centers in my brain light up repeatedly, week after week, month after month, whether I'm in a meeting with an executive team or a human being on a planet in a community, that is not welcomed, imagine the trauma that is occurring in that brain we talked about the right hemisphere holding unresolved trauma and how important and essential it is to heal that unresolved trauma. Just like any injury, what does the doctor say? You gotta heal, rest, stay in bed, don't exercise that thing. Don't, you know, don't do too much. We have to resolve the unresolved trauma through rest. But if we are constantly re injured, if we constantly disregard the doctor's orders and get out of bed and walk on that knee or that ankle, or continue to do whatever it is that is hurting ourselves, that wound, that trauma doesn't heal or it takes significantly longer, Right? That is what is happening. There is not an opportunity to resolve this trauma in the ways that it needs resolution. And so how we bring about that resolution rather than just as a physical injury when we stay in bed. What we need now is transparency, authenticity, accountability and empathy. There's these beautiful talks in Sierra Leone call Fumble talks, where villages who have fought against each other, killed and pillaged and murdered each other actually went through these reparation talks. And the healing. There's a beautiful New York Times photojournal essay on this. I think it's 2000 or 2001 about the amazing transformation that came to these villages from the. These talks and processing that unresolved trauma and allowing the tears to flow, the emotions to emotions to come forward, the discomfort to be held, the level of growth and healing that occurs when what has been excluded for so long gets re included, gets acknowledged and honored is life altering. And that is what we need to do.

Oh, beautifully said, Rajkumari. You have absolutely summarized beautifully, I think, what so many people, you know, erase, you know, from today and going two centuries back, what they're experiencing. But also you brought it down to just a very personal level, just bringing it to one person. That transparency, that authenticity, the accountability, the empathy, which by the way, is straight out of my playbook. I talk about it all the time. We need this from a human perspective and a business perspective. I think our culture, society is craving it right now. And they're also craving what you are teaching and what you are offering. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. And I'm so happy it happened now, this week because you talk to at the core, like how people feel this need and want to belong. And when people feel they belong, the good that can come from it.

It's been an absolute honor, Molly. Thank you so, so much.

Thanks, Raja Kumari. I really appreciate it. And I will make sure to let everybody know about. I'll include in the show notes the information about the ssp, the safety sound protocol, the book that you recommended and of course your boot camp. So if anyone listening to Rajkumari today, if a light bulb went off in your left hemisphere, your right hemisphere that this is something that you want to work on or you want to learn more about. I highly, highly encourage you to participate. Rajkumari, thank you so much and all the best to you.

Thank you Molly. Take care.

My thanks to Rajkumari Niyogi for speaking with me about these critical interpersonal issues in the world workplace and in our society. Especially now, especially these weeks. For more information on the boot camp that Rajkumari mentioned, the Safe and sound protocol tool and the book recommendations please check out the show notes or on my website for all the information. Thanks so much for listening. We'll speak to you again next week. Bye for now.

Sam.