Kate Henry [00:00:08]:

Welcome to Honing In, a podcast for creative thinkers where we’ll hone our skills, explore our passions, and nurture our dream projects into being. Hi everyone, welcome back to Honing In. I’m Dr. Kate Henry, and today I am interviewing my friend Shivani. Shivani Mehta Bhatia is a facilitator, advisor, and writer based in New York City. She works with senior leaders at justice-rooted organizations, especially queer folks and women of color, helping them use conflict as diagnostic information about power, culture, and what needs to change. She came to this work after a decade inside public health, crisis response, and community-based care, where she kept noticing the same pattern.

Kate Henry [00:01:33]:

The most persistent strategy problems were almost always relational ones rooted in power, story, and unaddressed conflict. She’s also the writer and host of Intimate Practice, an ongoing research project on tending, thresholding, and what it means to move through transition. I don’t have a question for you about thresholding, but I am writing that down because that is such a cool framework for a research project. Thank you. Welcome, Shivani. I’m excited to chat with you.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:02:04]:

Thanks, Kate. I’m so happy to be here.

Kate Henry [00:02:06]:

I’ll start us out with a question I like to ask all folks on the podcast, which is about projects. What are your thoughts on the concept of a project? Is it a helpful framework for you? Do you like to use another word? I know systems are important to your work, but I’m curious for you yourself if you like to use project.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:02:26]:

Oh, I do and I don’t. I spent a lot of time wishing that I were a person who were better at projects, I will say, and especially I think growing up in what essentially was a gifted and talented kind of program. I was a chronic procrastinator. I was so bad at projects for a very long time. And actually, I think the thing that changed it for me was more was textile artwork. So I am also a textile artist. I quilt, I sew, I knit. And that was, those are the things that kind of gave me a new framework for projects, almost like a quilt project, a sweater project.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:03:03]:

And also my quilt teacher is the wonderful Cody Cook-Parrott. As anyone who does anything in quilting should like take a class with Cody Cook-Parrott. But I have this one quilt that I did in their, their quilting, like quilting weekend class, I think. And I could not finish it. And I was really kind of beating myself up for not being able to finish this quilt. And they were like, maybe the unfinished quilt is the finished quilt. And it was just such a mic drop beautiful moment that I was like, yeah, okay, it’s finished. It’s finished.

Kate Henry [00:03:33]:

That sounds really good. That sounds like a, like a practice, a really nice practice.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:03:37]:

It was a very good practice. Yeah.

Kate Henry [00:03:39]:

Yeah. Wow. That’s dreamy. That’s lovely. I also was in gifted and like classes growing up and we had to do projects all the time. And for some reason, my sister and I always did projects with like animals. We were like, we’re going to raise chickens. And then we had chickens.

Kate Henry [00:03:57]:

Not always. So there was like another thing with like gerbils and we’re like, now we have a family of gerbils or something like that.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:04:01]:

But mine was like not actually called a gifted and talent program, but that’s like essentially what it was. And it was more, it was more middle school, but elementary school we did like egg hatching. I remember we had like the eggs in the incubator and then the chicks were born and we had to like take it. It was only in the classroom. And then yeah, I’m sure there’s others, more like animal projects. We did like a papier-mâché snake at one point.

Kate Henry [00:04:23]:

That sounds much cooler. I think my parents would have appreciated that a lot more to just be like, That makes sense. Sorry, now we have 10 chickens to take care of.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:04:30]:

That’s a pretty taxing elementary school project.

Kate Henry [00:04:34]:

They were, they were actually really cute.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:04:35]:

I liked it.

Kate Henry [00:04:36]:

I bet. I bet. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about the way projects fit into the work that you do. We just talked a bit about your personal projects, and I know you’re thinking of systems and strategy with your work. So another way to ask this question would be, how do you take something that could be like really big and nebulous or broad, like conflict, or you’ve used the language before, building a new world, which I really like. So how do you take something that’s like this big ambitious goal and put it into a contained project when you’re working with an organization or an individual?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:05:13]:

I think about this in a couple of different ways. I guess the other answer even to your first question too is I really think about practices a lot, even more so than I think about projects. And so, and that can be in a lot of different ways, right? That’s like ritual, that’s routine, that’s discipline, that’s like a practice of devotion. Like all of those things can be, I think, practices. And so a lot of what I’m teaching in my work, or a lot of what I’m facilitating in my work, is like relational skill building as a practice. Like, how do we practice together better? How do we be together better? And the reality is that like, you know, contracts are scoped in projects, and so there has to be a discrete like start and end date. So I do that in a couple different ways. I actually, the thing that I really like doing is working with people when there is some kind of a rupture that has happened, right? Like some sort of active conflict is happening, people are kind of arguing, arguing in a way that’s become really destructive, that’s maybe had some ripple effects out, and it usually feels really overwhelming.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:06:10]:

And a big thing that I do in the way that I kind of approach it, I think about it like going to the hospital, going to the ER, right? Like most people, when they, most organizations, especially when they have some kind of rupture, it’s, we have to kind of scope it or contain it because, you know, 20 people can have 20 different stories about what’s happening. So when you go to the ER, when you go to the hospital, they have like 4 hours to figure out what’s happening and they triage it, right? We do like, you have an active bleed and we need to stop the bleed because we’re going to get you into surgery and do your cardiac bypass or whatever and just make sure that you are stabilized, right? And so that’s kind of like the first thing that I do with organizations when there’s a rupture is we stabilize. And then from there we can do the, like, that’s like a mediation, right? And from there we can do more of the practice of like, you need some physical therapy, you need some accountability practices, you need some repair agreements within commitments to each other. We like do that practice and we do that for a little while. And then from there you can kind of graduate into physical therapy into lifestyle change kind of stuff that might be happening, which is more of the, you know, in that hospital metaphor, but that’s more of the policies, procedures that an organization or team might need to… there are agreements or values or whatever that might need to be in place to say, and this is what we want to do going forward, right? This is how we show up together. These are our opportunities for practice. So that’s like a scoped project in some ways, And it also, I think, helps projectize the practice, like kind of making it a little bit more discreet and making it a little bit more contained also, so it doesn’t feel like this overwhelming thing of like, we have to just change absolutely everything that we do. When I work with people one-on-one, it’s a little bit more of like a coaching sort of thing where it’s like, you know, we co-define what are the things that you want out of this 3 or 6 month container, and then we move from there.

Kate Henry [00:08:02]:

I really like this metaphor that you… I’m someone who loves to think through metaphors and finds it’s really helpful for grasping things. And I really like, as you were describing your process, that you’re both using the metaphor, which I imagine is… some folks really feel like, oh, I understand that. Like, that could feel like give them like a ground to stand on in that. And also, I like that you wove throughout it the actual terms that you’re using, like if it’s like mediation or things like that. Like those are, I’m guessing, you know, that like folks might be maybe like not know precisely if they need mediation or if they need this sort of like scoping of policies or something like that. So.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:08:46]:

Exactly. Most of my work or most engagements that I end up starting start with a diagnostic. Like there’s literally a diagnostic that is what is the culture that’s happening right now? What is the equity work? How well has it gone? What’s what are the problems? How do we scope it? How do we triage it? And then in the same way you would go to a doctor and say, here’s my symptoms, here’s what I’m seeing. And then you have that external party who can help kind of put everything together and say, okay, here’s where we need some intervention. Here’s where you’re actually doing really well, and the other person maybe needs some intervention. And here’s something that is actually really structural at play. Here’s something that’s, you live in a food desert, or you are working in the nonprofit industrial complex. And so that’s what this is going to look like.

Kate Henry [00:09:27]:

Wow. I loved reading in your bio that your current work is informed by this really rich history of experiences and training you have. So that includes public health, crisis response, community-based care, all things that I’m sure make you really good at your job now. And I’m curious, how do you feel that your like the work that you’ve done, your history, and that informs the approach you do now to your work, which is really aimed on facilitating, writing, advising, speaking, things like that.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:10:00]:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, that’s a great question. There’s, I think, a few different directions I could go with that too. So maybe I’ll just start with my background is really in public health and in public health, I was a facilitator and I was a facilitator before I knew what facilitation was. And it also very quickly became like my favorite part of my job. So the other kind of part of that, which we will probably get to with that thresholding energy, is my like, the content area that I was working on was, I was doing birth, sex, and death work. I have always kind of like… my background’s always been in birth, sex, and death work, which is all about thresholding kind of work.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:10:36]:

But in public health systems, I was doing a lot of facilitation specifically of this group of people who analyze every single maternal death that happens. So every single person who dies during pregnancy or up to 1 year postpartum of whatever reason. It could be, you know, cancer or during childbirth or getting hit by a car. We, like, analyzed every single one of those deaths and had to figure out what happened. How did, if at all, discrimination or systemic racism play a part? Was it preventable? And, like, what were then policy changes that were gonna come from that? And so it was this, like, very intensive facilitation, as you can imagine. I was doing this for, like, 4 years for 35 or so people across community folks. We had doulas, we had midwives, we had policy folks, we had OBs and, like, OB-GYNs and family doctors and kind of the whole gamut of anybody who could be involved or have something to say, essentially, or have some expertise in kind of what happened. And that is a group of people that was contentious sometimes and really disagreed.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:11:36]:

And we were, like, advising the CDC on how discrimination should be measured. Like, those could be really fractious conversations. And then after I did that for a number of years, the pandemic hit, and I was then facilitating a health equity working group, which was, like, essentially our job was to design a health equity strategy for the pandemic response for a state. While the pandemic was raging. And we were doing everything from, like, contact tracing and implicit bias trainings for contact tracers and how, like, vaccines were gonna be distributed to incarcerated folks or not, and how we were going to do, like, a long-term economic resilience plan for the state and also, like, try to get some disability justice in there for, like it was just everything kind of under the sun. Which, again, was this, like, very kind of intensive space. And so my job in both of those domains was was subject matter expertise, but it was also facilitation. It was mostly facilitation.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:12:29]:

And all of that was like, how do we disagree better? Like, how do we learn how to disagree well? How do we learn how to like, hear what other people are saying and actually like, synthesize all that information and get it to sort of the next place that it needs to go? And also like, have that information meaningfully change people’s lives or deaths for in a lot of cases. So that was my start to facilitation work.

Kate Henry [00:12:59]:

Wow. While you were talking about this, I, I like wrote down a note for myself. I was like, how did you take care of yourself? Because I almost expected you as you were saying that to be like, and then I went through a period of very severe burnout.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:13:11]:

I did, yes.

Kate Henry [00:13:11]:

And didn’t work for a year, you know?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:13:12]:

Like, that’s like, that’s what came to me because I’m like, I imagine that’s exactly what happened. Yeah.

Kate Henry [00:13:17]:

Like, uh, and the, the, I realized too, the question of like, well, how did you practice self-care during that time is like, like, not, you know, like perhaps you were like, I’m trying to keep my head above water. It’s like, you know, so I don’t know, like, how did you, how was that experience for you as an individual moving through like such intensive, high-stakes work for that many years in a row?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:13:40]:

I mean, I loved it, honestly. I really did love it for a lot of it. I also burned out really hard afterwards. I, that for sure. I mean, that’s why I started the work that I’m doing now in a lot of ways is I did take a health sabbatical for 3, 6 months, whatever it was. And then started doing my own practice because I just, I couldn’t do big picture work anymore. I couldn’t do systems change work anymore. Yeah, I was completely fried.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:14:08]:

But I also, I did, I mean, I got my dream job in my 20s in a lot of ways, which was like very lucky and really was my dream job. Like, I got to do some really incredible work. I got to meet some really incredible people. And it, and it, I, there is something like profoundly meaningful about watching that, like, watching a project like that sort of turn into something and, like, live on. Like, there, you know, we— data that I had a hand in creating helped make sure that, you know, a state of 7, 8 million people had expanded postpartum Medicaid, which is like, that’s phenomenal. That’s incredible. That, that’s like not a thing that makes sense to me a lot of the time and also is true. So, yeah.

Kate Henry [00:14:51]:

Yeah. Well, bravo. When I think about conflict or conflict resolution, you’re the person, the expert who comes to my mind, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. I’m sure that you are also the person who comes to folks’ mind when we think about conflict. And I loved in a recent essay you wrote, it was called “How Conflict Becomes a Design Input,” you ask these questions. “what if conflict isn’t the problem? What if conflict is the information?” And I really love that framing. I think that many folks, including myself, are used to thinking about conflict as something that we’re averse to. Like, “Oh, I’m conflict-averse.

Kate Henry [00:15:32]:

I don’t want to do that.” And like, or for whatever reason, “I’m a people pleaser,” or like, it like literally causes anxiety attacks. Like, there’s many reasons, right? So I think when we think about conflict, it might be like, “I don’t want personal conflict because it makes me feel uncomfortable.” But you also use this language for conflict as the locus of transformation, which I’m sure even just folks who’ve listened thus far to our conversation today are like, “Yeah, that checks out with the way you’ve described your approach.” So could you tell us a little bit more about conflict and I want to say like how you approach it in your work? I know you talked a little bit earlier around how you are developing, you know, specific projects with organizations or But I guess I’m generally curious, like, how did you come to this focus on conflict? And tell me a bit more about your approach to it, because it doesn’t sound like you’re like, conflict is scary. Let’s… I don’t know, like there’s something, it’s more than that. It’s more than just like, you’re conflict averse and now you’re not conflict averse.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:16:37]:

I mean, I came to conflict because I felt like I was really bad at conflict.

Kate Henry [00:16:42]:

There you go. That makes me feel better.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:16:46]:

Because I was also really conflict averse. And also, I actually, I mean, that’s kind of a glib answer, but I, but also because I had conflicts that went really badly. I mean, you asked how I was like taking care of myself in that work. We lost some of those battles. Like I, you know, I was doing health equity work for the pandemic and we could not get incarcerated people vaccinated in the ways that we wanted to. Those were like high stakes things to lose. I have had relationships end because we couldn’t handle conflict well. And those were, like, really devastating losses.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:17:17]:

Those were very, very devastating losses. When I, like, kind of came back and started analyzing that, and when I came back and started in the way that I do, like, piecing it all together or trying to, like, even tear it apart a little bit or try to find all the threads, I kind of came back to this place of, like, we didn’t know how to disagree with each other. We didn’t know how to, like, respect each other’s humanity while still disagreeing with each other. And for a few of those, I remember feeling like I didn’t have language to validate that person’s choice to do whatever they wanted to do. Not in the health equity incarcerated people example, not in that one, but in other relationships that ended, I didn’t have language to validate that person’s choice and also be like, “And you’re really hurting me in this way,” or, “I can see where I’m really hurting you in this way.” And I think when I started to tease it apart, I just felt like we could be doing this so much better. And so I became kind of obsessed with it, honestly. I became sort of like just really obsessed with like, how do we learn to disagree well? I think the other, the kind of last piece of that too is like, I think for those of us who are really justice-oriented or equity-driven or like wanting to build a better world in some way, shape, or form, a big part of that is that we don’t actually know what that world looks like, right? We have not actually lived in that world yet. And so what we are trying to build is something that each of us have a different kind of version of a dream of, or we might have a kind of collective version of it, but we also have many different individual collective versions of that.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:18:57]:

And so I think a big part of building that is actually we have to be able to disagree about the reality of it, right? We can have this shared vision, but how we actually get there takes a lot of work, and we might really disagree. And in order to work through that disagreement, we have to be good at conflict or get better at conflict, be practiced in disagreeing generatively together. So yeah, that’s sort of like the how I came to it. In terms of the like now how I approach it is when I’m facilitating, when I’m mediating, or even when I’m like coaching people on, or like a team, a group, or an individual person on like how to approach conflict or kind of how to break it down, I think the biggest reason that a lot of people, a lot of us are afraid or averse to conflict is because we’ve had really traumatic experiences with conflict. So I think there’s like, it’s a very real thing. That’s not something that I want to like gloss over. I think that we, most of us have had pretty traumatic experiences with conflict. And so when it happens, we like really run away or we people please and kind of give up and we have these sort of trauma responses around it.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:20:03]:

And so part of my work is to like really validate that as like, those are, those are real patterns. Those came from something real. And also to say, and then how do we make this version of it less scary, right? How do we make it so that we are not traumatizing each other when we are in conflict together? And the how I do that, or the kind of breakdown of that, is like, I have a storytelling framework essentially that I work with folks through on like, what are the facts of what happened? What’s the body experience of what happened? What’s the emotional experience of what happened? What are all the stories that we’re telling each other about what happened? What are the stories I’m telling about myself, about like this conflict, about the situation? And then this really big piece around, and what are the power dynamics at play? What are the positional the identity, the structural, the systemic, like how is all of that influencing this? Because the vast majority of conflicts are often traumatizing in some ways because there’s this sort of positional power or identity power that is like weaponized against each other in some way, shape, or form, or that we experience potentially as much heavier than somebody else intended it. And like that impact is going to be a really big part of that conflict. So I think it helps cut through the overwhelm, right? Conflict can be this very overwhelming experience, this very like flooding kind of experience. And if we can tell better stories about it, if we can kind of break it down into these smaller sorts of pieces, I think we get much farther into it.

Kate Henry [00:21:27]:

Thank you. That makes so much sense as you break that down and describe your process. Brings up a question for me. I know that you have an expertise in working with folks when conflict has occurred. And I’m curious, do you ever have folks who, or organizations rather, that like reach out to you to be like, oh yeah, how can I proactively prevent it? You knew what I was going to ask before I even said it. Like perhaps, yeah, for whatever reason that they’re doing it, my hope is that they would be like, we have good ethics and we would like to do this, right? But like maybe they’re like, we don’t want crisis management later, you know? So I don’t know, like tell me a bit about that.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:22:04]:

Yeah, totally. I love this also because it really is, I mean, this is like the public health nerd in me, honestly, right? Like, this is the difference between public health and healthcare, which I have experience in both. And certainly I can do the, like, you know, the post-crisis moment, but I love doing the preventative work. And it really is, that is like the skill building around what are the frameworks, what are the tools, how do we practice this early on? And a lot of the work that I do with organizations now is around like culture change work. Like, how do we kind of assess where we are as a culture? What is our culture of conflict and disagreement? And how do we build a more more generative culture together. So yeah, I do a lot of preventative work with teams, and I love that work, actually.

Kate Henry [00:22:50]:

Hmm, that sounds really strengthening, like nourishing, strengthening. I really like that a lot.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:22:55]:

Yeah, yeah.

Kate Henry [00:22:57]:

I’m going to take us a little bit away from conflict. We’re going to come back to it later. Sure. But I definitely, I certainly want to ask you about intimate practice and thinking about tending and thresholding. But before that, let’s think a little bit more broadly around just the creative online presence that you have. So in addition to the work that you’re doing with groups, like through, like consultancy and supporting them, you have a really lovely online presence, both with your writing and the videos that you’ve done. And this is like educational content that you’re sharing with, with general public. And I’m curious how you approach the topics and the frameworks that you’re teaching if you’re doing it for like a more general online audience where like, you know, like perhaps it’s like siloed with folks who have elected to, you know, maybe like on LinkedIn or something like that to, to see that content versus something that you’re like tailoring specifically for a client, which I am assuming is like very relational.

Kate Henry [00:23:54]:

It’s based on their specific needs and their specific context. So the question here is like when you are teaching in something like a blog post or something online, like, how do you approach… do you approach your topics differently if it’s more general or like, very hyper-tailored to an individual?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:24:13]:

When I’m working with clients within an organization, there’s usually like, very specific topic areas that we’re working through, or very specific like, fractures that we’re working through, but the themes kind of are always the same. And so the kind of work that I then write about or teach about. Well, what I will say too is when I’m writing or teaching online, it is really because it’s a question that’s plaguing me and I need a place to kind of figure it out. And writing about it feels like the way that I kind of explore it and understand it. So I don’t know that I’m doing a ton of tailoring there. Obviously, I’m very big on consent and confidentiality, and so I will, like, I never kind of bring specific experiences to a more public audience, But what I find is that most of the dynamics and conflicts that people feel very protective of, even within organizational context, thematically, they’re the same kind of across the board. We learn about conflict, most of us learn about conflict from our families of origin, right? From these very childhood patterns of how we see conflict happening, and that gets replicated in the workplace, that gets replicated in your neighborhood organizing group, that gets replicated in your mutual aid network, that gets replicated in your school’s PTA, program. It gets, you know, those patterns and dynamics are not really that different in a family context or in a chosen family context or a neighborhood place-based sort of context versus an organizational context.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:25:52]:

I’ve had a lot of clients after I worked with them in organizational settings be like, this is changing how I parent my kids. You know, like it’s changing how I fight with my spouse. Like those are, that’s the kind of feedback that I get. So So yeah, I think I’m figuring out still how to bring this to a broader audience or how it could be useful to a broader audience. I think part of why it lends itself really well right now to organizational work is just because that’s where we tend to invest in it. That’s where we tend to have a practice lab to kind of work with it. But the skill sets are really the same across contexts.

Kate Henry [00:26:29]:

That makes so much sense. This makes me think too, like you mentioned, like folks are like, oh, this is helping me with my, like, with parenting, right? Like, it makes me think of like, I have for many years have participated in like a group therapy group where I practice, we all practice like mirroring and validating and how to not project your experience to folks and stuff. And it definitely has informed and improved my interpersonal things. And I remember too, like in my 20s when I moved to Northampton to go to grad school, like getting welcomed into this really wonderful queer femme group where, like, I had never practiced direct communication. I didn’t know what it was. And just, like, learning how… what it means to be held accountable and what it means to have, like, reparative conversations or something. It just kind of blew my mind and was so amazing to learn those skills in my 20s, which I had, of course, had never learned for many reasons, right? So, but that comes to my mind as well, where it’s like, oh, these, like, like having a place, a safe space to practice these things have become habits that I can then bring to other places, which is nice.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:27:36]:

Yeah, completely. And I mean, to have a safe space to get it wrong also. I think so much of it, we like don’t often have safe spaces to get it wrong and to like blow up on each other sometimes and then be able to repair that, right? Then to be able to be like, yeah, okay, that was really messed up of me and I shouldn’t have exploded in that way or whatever. Or I did explode in that way and here’s the impact of what happened and I need to own that. And I’m not a bad person for that necessarily. There’s no kind of moral judgment or weight on that. It can be a space to kind of practice it out. I don’t know.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:28:09]:

I keep thinking of that phrase, like, “Be gentle on each other and harsh on the system.” That really feels like the kind of ethic behind a lot of this, of we are living under these very oppressive times. We are living under really harsh realities in a lot of ways. And I think that’s an invitation to be softer with each other, and we get to practice that in a lot of different spaces.

Kate Henry [00:28:32]:

Yeah. This is like, I think, a thing for my personality, but I always feel very loved and respected when my friends or like folks do hold me accountable. If I have done or said something that caused harm, for folks to tell me that, like, it just feels like a very like, I feel very I feel very loved and honored to be able to show up in that way, which is like, I don’t know if you had asked me that 20 years ago, I would’ve been like, what the hell? That’s freaking terrifying.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:29:00]:

You know?

Kate Henry [00:29:00]:

But like, it’s like, I don’t know, like it’s something that definitely I have developed enough practice with it that it’s something that even if it does like, you know, make my nervous system a little nervous, it does it. I don’t know. Someone cares enough about me to want to have a healthy, whatever word you want to use, relationship with me.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:29:20]:

Yeah. When I teach about that, in mediation, but also just sort of generally when we’re, when we’re like talking about, it’s like a bid for connection, but it’s a bid for repair in some ways. Like that is an act of intimacy. It’s an invitation into intimacy. It’s an invitation into vulnerability, and it’s an invitation into deeper relationship. And so we can… that’s like exactly that. It’s like an act of love to say, hey, you hurt me in this way, right? I’m only going to do that if if I care about the relationship enough to repair it, if I care about the relationship enough to like want something different or more or deeper or better. Like, we let go when we’re done, right? When we like, when we say…

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:29:56]:

if I’m not gonna if I don’t bring something up, it’s, it’s either because it was small and minor and I need to like let go of it myself, but often it’s because I’m done with a relationship and I’m not interested, or I’m willing to pull back on the relationship, right? To let it be a little bit more shallow, and for better and Yeah.

Kate Henry [00:30:14]:

Yeah. I mean, I also do that too sometimes. Yeah, for sure. I joke that it’s because my Venus is in Scorpio where I’m just like, I’m good. This is just like fine. But that’s also maybe why, you know, I do crave that intimacy of the accountability and repair. Yeah. That’s beautiful.

Kate Henry [00:30:31]:

All right. Tell me about thresholding. What do you mean when you say this? I didn’t ask you to prepare to talk about this, but I’d love to hear more about intimate practice. And I love that you call this an ongoing research project. So could you tell me Can you tell me a bit about that and the tending and the thresholding work that you do with that?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:30:50]:

Yeah. That actually, that ongoing research study work is kind of new language for me actually as of like this week. But I sort of landed on it and I was like, why am I so obsessed with like this version of it? And I’ve been a researcher for a long time, so I was just like, these are just questions that I am, I feel like I’ve been asking my whole life in a lot of ways and needed a place to work them out. So I think, I mean, in the same way I said my, like, online work is very much like questions that I have for myself or questions that I have about the way that we work together. That is really what intimate practice is. For Thresholding, I mentioned that my, my background’s in birth, sex, and death work. So I, um, have been a birth doula, I was a sex educator, I was an abortion doula, I was a rape crisis hotline counselor. I did this, this death work pretty intensively for a lot of, like, public health systems kind of So I have kind of through my public health work always done the very human and the very 100,000-foot systems view.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:31:50]:

I’m kind of always going between these two different dimensions of it. And I think a lot of the work that I do organizationally, but certainly the vast majority of work that I do in this research study work is kind of trying to bring those two together. How do we do this on-the-ground interpersonal work in a way that shapes and changes big picture systemic work? And then vice versa, what do the systems that we teach us about intimate work. I very much see the way that patriarchy, misogyny, racism, kind of all the rest of it, live in very human experiences and are, like, replicated in very human experiences. I think we tend to kind of push them off as, like, that system that is out there of white supremacy. And the reality is that they very much, like, lives within us, and it lives in our very intimate interactions. And I think of that as thresholding because I think there’s, like, there’s transition space there. There is, like, we have the opportunity to do something differently every single time we run into an instance like that, or a question like that, or a moment that kind of confronts that.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:32:54]:

And so, yeah, that’s like where intimate practice as a concept came from, as like an ongoing series of questions came from. Yeah, it feels like the thing that I just need to figure out is my life’s work.

Kate Henry [00:33:07]:

Ah, this also feels like it has very Scorpio energy.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:33:10]:

I have no Scorpio in my chart, actually. But I get that a lot.

Kate Henry [00:33:16]:

I’ve like, like, just, I don’t know, it’s like, I mean, this is such a stereotype, but like Scorpio being like, okay, we’re going to the depths of the ocean together, you know, like, real intimate, real fast. But I love that you get to continue to do research with this. And I love, love, love the, what it means to like bring together this, like, you know, 100,000-foot with like the lived experience. I’m obsessed with Venn diagrams, and like, it’s just like so fascinating to think about, like, I don’t know, the actions that would occur to bring those together.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:33:49]:

Yeah, I’ll say also, this kind of answers your question earlier too about like how I came to this work, is a relationship of mine that ended pretty traumatically was exactly of like this dynamic where like, the dimensions of privilege and oppression that were at play were like ones where where I very much felt like we understood that. We were swimming in the same water, right? We kind of knew what that was. And what I found in both intimate work and also in the organizational work is that often there’s this sort of intra-community conversation that needs to happen of the ways in which men of color will weaponize misogyny against women of color, or the ways in which queer folks will kind of weaponize other identities against each other,, right? And most of the time that’s not intentional. Most of the time it’s because of the ways that we’ve learned to be out in the world. And the thing that I kept on finding is that most of us don’t live at this binary of either privilege or oppression. We very much live both together all the time. And if we’re not kind of understanding how to do that together all the time, if we’re not understanding how to to like repair along those lines in these like really intimate ways, we lose each other. And we also experience this like very intensive betrayal, I think, that comes alongside it.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:35:09]:

And I see that a lot, and I see that as like something that stays really quiet. It’s like not a thing that we talk about nearly as often when it comes to the systemic issues or when it comes to conflict. We kind of like, it could… we can kind of keep that superficial. But if we really dig under the layers, there’s like, there’s privilege, oppression, and betrayal, and kind of how that all operates swimming in the soup together.

Kate Henry [00:35:30]:

Thank you for pulling that apart, but also bringing that together in the way you just described that. I’m curious to hear if and how the focus of your work and the questions that you’re seeing folks ask now about conflict and strategies are shifting over time, or are there specific questions or things that you’re seeing folks exploring right now as they’re endeavoring to make meaningful change? Which is part of the work that you are supporting folks… I mean, maybe all of the work that you’re supporting folks on, on this.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:36:06]:

I will say, when I started out consulting, I started… or like a solo, you know, self-employed practice, I started out as a DEI consultant, mostly working with government agencies, which went really well. And a big part of why I like professionally came to, or like, you know, started a business essentially focused on conflict work is because One, the DEI funding dried up, but it also because all of the organizations that I had been working with were suddenly faced with these very intensive questions that were exactly about like, how do we deal with this very destructive change all of a sudden? Right? Like so many organizations lost funding and lost funding really dramatically or had to reprioritize their funding really dramatically. A lot of people, a lot of people lost their jobs. Like I worked with so many people who were just either under threat of losing their job for months on end or whose colleagues colleagues had all lost their jobs and they were like kind of reeling in the aftermath of these very destructive layoffs of like half the field of whatever field they were working in kind of getting decimated. And so a lot of the last year or so has sort of been in this like reeling space, I would say, of like, how do we respond to any of this? And now, or like, I guess like, yeah, probably about it, but 6, 9 months ago, but the last 6 months-ish, I would say people are kind of more in this space now of, okay, we like, whoever’s still left, we survived that. And we have to be surviving this for the long haul. And we also still have to be making change for the long haul, right? Like, how do we respond to atrocities? How do we respond to genocide? What is our place in responding to genocide or not responding to genocide? What does it mean if we respond to genocide and then lose all our funding and cease to exist as an organization?

Kate Henry [00:37:54]:

Then what?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:37:54]:

And, like, is that actually a sacrifice that we want to make or don’t want to make, right? Like, those are some of the questions that people are starting to ask. I would also say, I guess underneath that, there’s sort of this existential question of how do we still make change under this moment, right? However we’re gonna define this moment or however this moment is sort of defined for different people, right? Sometimes that means Sometimes that means not using words that were used before, and sometimes that means really intentionally using words that we are told we’re not supposed to use. And different people, different organizations are going to make different choices about that. But what I’m really interested in is the intention and the choicefulness behind that choice, behind choosing that move or choosing that behavior. Do you know why you’re choosing that? As unreactive a place as you possibly can be. Like, how, basically, how do we resource you or your team or your organization or your group or whoever you’re kind of working with, your people, to be able to make choices about how you move from here, given everything that we’re up against?

Kate Henry [00:39:04]:

I see this a lot with… I mean, because my work, I primarily work with academics, and like seeing this within like the realm of academia in the US, where like, yes, folks losing jobs, folks losing funding, but also folks in different locations, like for example, needing to post their syllabi publicly so the public can review them before a semester starts or something like that to check that there’s no language that people don’t want to see in there. And I like the way you describe the work that you’re doing with folks. I don’t know if this feels true, but it sounds a bit like giving folks some agency when they are existing in a system where they may not have full decision-making power or thing like like that, right?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:39:46]:

And a lot of how that system operates too is by expecting people to give up agency before it’s actually demanded of us, right? And so part of that is also like, where do you really not have agency in this? And where do you still have a lot of agency but you’re being asked to give it up before it’s, you know, before you actually have to, right? And so there’s, I think, also some like discernment in that too. And there’s practice in that. And there’s like resourcing and courage and all the rest of that in that. And like, you know, context in Yeah, I’ve seen it for a lot of higher ed folks in terms of like how, how research agendas are happening or how, how teaching agendas, like you said, syllabi are happening and like how, what, how faculty recruitment is going, right? Like a lot of that, those kinds of decisions, right? Those are all prioritization decisions. How, what is like a department strategic plan going to look like? Like how does that change under the current circumstances?

Kate Henry [00:40:39]:

Yeah. I mean, I’ve also seen in academia some folks like sharing ways to get around these obstacles. Or like, don’t use this word, but use this word. Or like, they’re only going to actually be checking at this point, and after that you’re free, you’re fine. Or here’s how to tell if there’s like, I don’t know, someone sneaking around and trying to catch you doing this or whatever. So like, that’s also heartening as well to see folks pushing back in that way. Yeah. I like this too because it’s like, not just like preemptively like capitulating, but also like, I don’t know, not just preemptively being like, “Well, fuck this.

Kate Henry [00:41:13]:

I’m leaving then. I’ll just leave this career then,” you know, like, to be like, “No, let’s see what I can do in this space here.”

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:41:22]:

Yeah. And having even, like, agency and choice in that. Like, sometimes leaving is the right call, and sometimes staying is the right call. And, like, you get to make that decision for yourself. Your people get to make decisions for themselves. And, like, how do we resource that choice as well as we can?

Kate Henry [00:41:36]:

Yeah. Yeah. Makes me think of when I left, like I knew 2 years before I finished my PhD that I wasn’t gonna stay in academia. And it was very freeing. And also folks were like, well, why did you waste your time on the PhD if you weren’t gonna stay? You know, like it was just, I was like, well, I don’t wanna, I can’t, my body can’t handle it. That’s why, you know, I’m chronically ill and I can’t do this.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:41:57]:

Totally, totally. I went to a public health conference 2 years, I think after I left public health., and they were presenting data about the public health workforce and like basically the public health workforce burnout after the pandemic, or I mean, yeah, during, I suppose, but like at that point in the quote unquote after of the pandemic, and they were presenting all these data and I was like, I am in every single one of those data points. I have left the field. I got burned out. I am a woman of color. I’m a chronically ill person. I was pushed out in a lot of different, or like for a lot of different reasons. Yeah, I like, I, that I am your poster child of those data right there.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:42:32]:

And it was so surreal to be at this public health conference having left the field and also be like seeing data about just how dramatically the field had changed and how many of us had left the field because of how intensive that time had been.

Kate Henry [00:42:47]:

I think about this with the work that I do, like many of my clients would self-identify as being chronically ill. And that’s work that I really like to do to support folks who are. And I often think about this in terms of like, How do we change the system of academia for grad students and professors so that it will be more accessible and supportive and will not, you know, reward overwork in a way that is truly inaccessible? And also, like, I don’t know the answer to that, but I can help people navigate it right now. You know what I mean? So like, I think about that work where I’m like, well, the system’s kind of fucked, but like, if you want to be in the system, I still want you to be able to get your tenure. You know, so like, I think about that as well where it’s Sometimes I beat myself up where I’m like, I’m not doing enough. And I’m like, well, you know, you’re helping people who want to stay, who want to be in this system, you know, like to try to thrive in it, right? I’m sure this is also in industry and in nonprofit, like in all of the spaces.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:43:49]:

It can’t just be academia.

Kate Henry [00:43:52]:

Completely. Completely. Yeah. Okay. Well, this could be 3 hours, but we’ll start closing up. I want to close this out by asking a question I always ask folks, which is, what is something that you’re honing in on right now?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:44:09]:

Yeah, I mean, honestly, the thing, the first thing that came to mind feels so cliche given so much of what we talked about, but I feel like I’m honing in on intimacy right now. Like, a lot of the work that I have done in my career and a lot of the work that I do even now still feels like very… I work with a lot of hard things, you know, like I work with a lot of, I have worked with a lot of hard things. And like, conflict and death work and whatever else, like, these like very destructive patterns. I did a lot of equity work where it was calling out, you know, supremacist behavior all the time. And I’ve sort of wondered to myself often of like, am I just like only working on things that are bad and not things that are good? Like, not in this… in this very like simplistic binary sort of thing, or this very simplistic, you know, destructive versus joyful, regenerative kind of thing. But I think the core of like why I do any of that is because I am actually really hopeful. Hopeful about it. I’m like actually like secretly very optimistic about it.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:45:07]:

And I think the core like little seed of that is, is intimacy. It is like connection. And it is, I think it’s so beautiful to like be seen in the ways that we see each other, to be like witnessed in the ways that we witness each other, to create pleasure and joy and desire and intimacy in all these like really tiny, tiny little ways. So I think that’s what I’m honing in on.

Kate Henry [00:45:26]:

That’s beautiful. And I, I think that that’s a great answer, like, for someone who thinks about and practices and supports folks and, like, intimacy, like, moving through conflict and thinking about that. Like, that’s awesome that that is something that means so much to you that you’re reflecting on right now. Where can folks connect with your work online, and do you have anything coming up we should be keeping our eyes out for?

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:45:52]:

The best place is really the newsletter, Intimate Practice. It’s a weekly newsletter that goes out on Sundays, and the link… or to sign up, it’s at shivani.co/links. That’s kind of where all of my stuff is, but the newsletter really is the best place. I’m kind of tweaking how it’s going to be. I’m kind of wanting to go a little bit deeper into it. I don’t have any like events or anything coming up at the moment, but that is going to be the best place to find it.

Kate Henry [00:46:16]:

Well, thanks for chatting with me. This has been really delightful. I feel really like warm and cozy.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:46:23]:

Me too.

Kate Henry [00:46:24]:

And also hopeful, you know? Like, I’m leaving this conversation feeling really good, and I hope folks who listened at home are feeling that me too.

Shivani Mehta Bhatia [00:46:31]:

Thanks for having me, Kate. I love chatting with you. We could, like I said, do this all day. Well, we’ll have to do it again in the future. I can’t wait.

Kate Henry [00:46:38]:

I can’t wait. Thanks, Shivani. Thank you. Yeah, I know I’m honing in. Thanks so much for joining me. You can learn more about honing in and my work as a productivity coach on my website, katehenry.com.