About
Introspective Spaces
Our Mission
Introspective Spaces is a social enterprise dedicated to building reflective spaces for healthcare workers.
We believe that the wellbeing of healthcare workers is inextricably linked to the wellbeing of patients and we cannot change the healthcare system unless we are able to care for ourselves and each other.
Our mission is to create contemplative community spaces to support healthcare workers with:
1. Deconstructing and processing moral distress as spiritual injury
2. Creating space for healthcare workers to reconnect with themselves and each other
3. Reimagining a new way in healthcare
Our wildest dream is for all people in healthcare to live authentic, engaged, and meaningful lives rooted in caring, contemplation, and courageous action.
Anu Gorukanti, MD (she/hers)
Worldview: Hindu/Buddhist
Anu Gorukanti, MD is a public health advocate and pediatric hospitalist who is passionate about health equity and racial justice. She went to undergraduate and medical school at Saint Louis University and enjoyed her time there building her campus Interfaith Alliance, serving as an Interfaith Youth Core Better Together Fellow, as well as leading Interfaith retreats in medical school. She completed her residency at Stanford University and is enjoying the challenge, growth and immense vulnerability of navigating experiences as a new physician-attending.
She is passionate about social justice and the role that reflection and contemplation play as building blocks for revolution (as inspired by many theologians, spiritual leaders, and activists before her). She strongly believes that understanding who you are, what you value, and where your values come from can lead to a meaningful and authentic life. She is deeply inspired by her incredible community of colleagues, peers, and friends and ultimately hopes that making spaces for reflection can lead to long-lasting relationships, renewed meaning and purpose in our lives as well as reimagination and revolution of our healthcare system. In her perspective, social change should always honor and incorporate both the individual and systems-based approach.
She is deeply grateful for her interfaith friendship and partnership with Laura, her community of friends, family, and her amazing husband who have supported her in trying to build a non-traditional career in medicine.
Laura Holford, RN (she/hers)
Worldview: Contemplative Christian
Laura Holford, RN MSN, is a community health nurse, oncology certified nurse and nursing educator who sees moral distress moral injury as a spiritual injury and thus has turned to spiritual, reflective, and contemplative interventions to find wholeness, empowerment, and agency. Liberation theology led her to train as a masters prepared nurse at University of San Francisco.
Throughout her experience as a patient facing off with a melanoma diagnosis, and chronic health disease, she became increasingly interested in the whole-person / biopsychosocial approach to health and is interested in shaping health outcomes or both provider and patient through behavioral, social, spiritual, and emotional determinants. Combined with her background as a campus minister & lay community pastor of a Christian Interfaith church, she enjoys nothing more than accompanying people on their healing, reflective, and spiritual paths.
Like many mystics before her, she believes that contemplation and action cannot be separated and finds herself naturally helping others’ build reflective, imaginative, and spiritual practices to ground their action and work in the world.
She is thankful for all who support Introspective Spaces behind the scenes - family, extended family, friends, therapist, caregivers, and fellow healthcare workers. This community wouldn't be possible without their support!
Our Team
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Retreat Coordinator
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Shreya is a Sonographer/ Radiographer who is passionate about achieveing a good work-life balance. Training and working in Australia as a Radiographer and later as a Sonographer she learnt that healthcare is an increadibly emotionally demanding job. After moving to the states and working her way back into the medical imaging field she found that a lot of burn out came from not just the emotional struggles of caring for patients but the lack of resources and focus on building a good work-life balance for healthcare workers.
She is passionate about using her creativity to assist organizations that aim to provide resources and work towards improving the access to mental health resoucres for the healthcare community.
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Operations Manager
Statement of Inclusivity
In building Introspective Spaces, we aim to create spaces built on the principles of inclusivity and justice. We are committed to creating inclusive spaces and to calling out heteronormativity and cisnormativity in medicine. We welcome all healthcare workers who identify as a member of this group, including and by no means limited to, trans folks, two-spirit individuals, non-binary persons, genderqueer persons, and all marginalized gender identities. We also name that medicine is a space that is ableist and is unwelcoming to those who have disabilities. We commit to doing our best to make accommodations to ensure our event is accessible to all interested participants.
We look forward to working with our community to continue to adapt our space and appreciate your feedback!
Statement of Solidarity
Our solidarity and inclusivity statement is designed to more explicitly outline our commitment to anti-racism and equity as we continue to learn and grow in our personal and professional journey. We stand in solidarity with the BLM movement and all movements that work to end the dehumanization of BIPOC communities across the globe.
Group Commitments
In creating these reflective events, we seek to build spaces for women of different backgrounds to come together to breathe, reflect, and build community with one another. In this commitment, we seek to create a space built on mutual respect, listening for understanding, self-compassion, and trust. We do not tolerate language or behavior that intentionally causes harm to another member of our community. Regardless of intent, we hold all members accountable for the impact of their words and actions and expect disagreements and harms to be acknowledged and remedied as appropriate.
We name our commitment to centering racial justice in our work.
We acknowledge the reality of the racism and white supremacy embedded in every aspect of the current healthcare system. We also recognize that healthcare traditionally has been and still remains a space where BIPOC communities suffer racism and harm from colleagues, patients, supervisors, and larger systems. Thus, we are committed to centering racial justice in everything we do.
We name our commitment to rest and reflection
As Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry teaches us, rest and reflection have, for centuries, been denied to people of color because their bodies were primarily viewed as tools for production. As a result, we acknowledge that rest and reflection have been and are activities of the privileged and the oppressors. We are in agreement with Hersey’s prophetic witness that rest and reflection is not only a spiritual practice but a racial justice and social justice practice as well. Without rest and reflection, there can be no revolution or transformation. Please use the link above to learn more about Hersey’s work. #A56258
We name our commitment to transformation and liberation
The love ethic for transformation and liberation that much of our work is grounded in comes to us by way of Black theologians and scholars. We acknowledge their outsized influence in giving us a vision for liberation from white supremacy and capitalism. Thus, we commit to centering Black voices in our continued work to provide space for deep reflection, connection, and ultimately MLK’s vision of the “beloved community.”
We name our commitment to accountability
As the people who are creating this space, we recognize our privilege and the ways we have benefited from the structures of systemic racism in our country. We feel it is our particular responsibility to be part of the solution. We commit to continued learning and deep work on our own anti-racist journeys and we welcome all feedback and accountability to Black and other communities of color.
We name our commitment to inclusivity
We acknowledge that the healthcare system was created for, and defined by, the white male experience. Healthcare has traditionally marginalized individuals who do not identify as white and male, with non-cisgender persons, particularly people of color, facing the worst consequences of that otherization.
We name our commitment to creating inclusive spaces and to call out heteronormativity and cisnormativity in medicine. Our event is open to anyone who self-identifies as a member of this group, including transwomen, two-spirit individuals, non-binary persons, genderqueer persons and all marginalized gender identities as well as cis-women. We also name that medicine is a space that is ableist and is unwelcoming to those who have disabilities. We commit to doing our best to make accommodations to ensure our event is accessible to all interested participants. We are looking forward to working with our community to continue to adapt our space and appreciate your feedback!
We name our commitment to learning
We are continuing to learn in our personal and professional journeys towards anti-racism and equity and welcome collaboration from our community. In particular, we’d love to continue to build our commitments together. Please share with us any commitments you are working on or commitments that you’d like to see added to our space as we continue to learn, reflect, and grow together.
We welcome all feedback that holds us accountable in increasing our language and work to be more gender-inclusive and racially just. Please email us at introspectivespaces@gmail.com for feedback or any questions/concerns.
Community Engagement Values
With our goal of building a safe and inclusive community, we'd like to share a few of our safe space rules. We look forward to building these rules in collaboration with our community, please email us at introspectivespaces@gmail.com for rules you'd like to see added.
Commitments:
Respect
Use “I” statements
Use everyone’s pronouns
Mutuality
We want everyone to participate collaboratively with each other
Conscientiously make/take up space
Humility
Remain open to accountability and feedback
Commit to dismantling medical hierarchies
Compassion
Listen for understanding, not to respond
Respect each other’s right to be human
Confidentiality
Commit to keeping what we share as a group confidential