Total Health: Dr Supriya Blair On How We Can Optimize Our Mental, Physical, Emotional, & Spiritual Wellbeing
Move your body. This includes stretching and yoga. Yoga, in my opinion, is a wonderful mind-body-spirit tool to lengthen, strengthen, and release.
Engage in rhythmic activities that use both sides of your body. Rhythmic, soothing activities, like walking, helps strengthen the brain’s corpus callosum, which, in turn strengthens the connection between our right and left brains.
Many ancient traditions around the world believe ‘wellbeing’ or ‘bienestar’ is a state of harmony within ourselves and our world, where we are in balance mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
As a part of our series about “How We Can Cultivate Our Mental, Physical, Emotional, & Spiritual Wellbeing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Supriya Blair, a licensed clinical psychologist in New York State. She is the owner of Dr. Blair Psychology, LLC, a holistic telehealth therapy practice. Dr. Blair helps clients refine, define, and tune into their mind-body-spirit needs through mental health therapy, mindfulness training, and spiritual counsel.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
Thank you for having me! I was born and raised in upstate New York. I’m a child of two hardworking, dedicated, and loving immigrant parents. Growing up biculturally primed me to be very attentive to the world and diligent about navigating the “firsts,” as a first-generation-born American. My parents left India when they were young adults to create a life for themselves here. As a side note, there is a lot of pressure moving to a new world and raising children in a completely different culture. It can be tough for both generations, who have their respective set of challenges.
From an early age, I was perceptive to emotional and behavioral patterns around me. I was a curious child, interested in how people were related to each other and how things “work” in the world. I probably people-watched even before I knew what that meant! In school, I was the kid that always raised my hand with a question! Looking back, that was a blessing: I worked through a lot of self-consciousness by asking the question anyway.