Latest / Skin Anarchy / Beauty, Identity, and Raising Conscious Children with Dr. Shefali

Transcript

Beauty, Identity, and Raising Conscious Children with Dr. Shefali · Skin Anarchy

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have such a phenomenal guest with us today.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I am probably one of her biggest fans.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've been following her work for quite some time, and she is truly a thought leader and such an inspiration in the clinical psychology space, and her work really speaks for itself.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: So without further ado, please welcome the New York Times bestselling author and clinical psychologist, Dr.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Shivali.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Dr.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Shivali.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so honored to speak.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, so fun to be here.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm excited to dive in because you have spoken on so many important topics around parenting and all honestly psychology at large.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's such an important conversation, obviously, as you know, I mean, across the board when it comes to health.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to actually start by learning a little bit more about you and like what really got you into your field and what really sparked that interest for you in the beginning.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I always wanted to help people.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was just naturally that, you know, sensitive, empathic child.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: But then in my 20s, I began to become a seeker.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I began to under wanting to understand why we suffer and how to suffer less.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that took me to Eastern mindfulness and spirituality and meditation.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so in my work, I have now combined my Western psychology with Eastern philosophy, and I pioneered the movement of conscious parenting 16 years ago and wrote my first book, The Conscious Parent, in 2010.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's 2026.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Before there was any real focus on the parent.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now everyone on TikTok and Instagram talks about the parent healing themselves.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: But when I began this work 16 years ago, there was really no one talking about it, and I felt very lonely, and uh it was a scary thing to talk about because parents were not ready to face their own fears and to even look in the mirror to acknowledge that they could be a little bit accountable, a little bit at fault.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was not the thing you you told parents because we we grew up with the adage parents know best.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So back then it was very revolutionary, and since then I've written nine books.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: My my next two, number eight and nine, are releasing any day.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as we speak, they're about to hit hit the press and and come out.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and these two books, raising conscious sons and raising conscious daughters, are my gift to parents to give them a blueprint for how to raise children today in the digital era because parents are lost, children are undergoing the most acute mental health crisis of modern times, and parents are unknowingly messing it up.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Unknowingly.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Parents don't realize.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: And my book is to help them realize what the red flags flags are and how to combat these red flags.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's really, you know, it's so interesting what you just said because when we talk, we talk so much about longevity these days, you know, it comes up in almost every single topic.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every time I open the open my Instagram or something, I'm seeing longevity everywhere.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to emotional regulation at an earlier age, in that childhood phase, no one's talking about that.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to get your take on this in terms of like, where does that emotional regulation piece really come in when we talk about longevity?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you really view that overall?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: In longevity or in parenting?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think probably from the parenting side, but the longevity of a child and as a human being as we're growing up, you know, because longevity starts, as you know, like when we are born.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's really a concept that's within us.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, from the parenting perspective.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I always say you cannot regulate yourself emotionally if you are not willing to do the inner work it takes to begin to trace the cause of your reactions to something inside you, right?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: The reason we become dysregulated is because we react to the external world as if the external world is the reason for our falling apart.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing is willing to look in the mirror to say, you know, the trigger is on the inside.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when you begin to realize the trigger is on the inside, you now take the steps to regulate.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And to regulate doesn't just mean counting to 10, it doesn't just mean snapping a rubber band on your wrist.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: It really means that you are internally stable, meaning you are consistently stable, you have created an inner wellspring of power and bounty and stability so that when your flight gets delayed or your kid throws something at you, you are not taken off your internal central axis.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: You are able to stay on your focus and stay grounded.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if a two I remember as a mother when my two-year-old would unhinge, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm saying my two-year-old unhinged me.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I realize it's not her who's unhinging me.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: I am unhinged.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like I am a I am a hot mess.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm able to say this with humor, with complete lack of self-consciousness, because every person, especially parents, are unhinged to some level, and we need to look at ourselves in the mirror.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm able to be very self-deprecating, it's not even self-deprecating, just honest uh about myself because I'm willing to look in the mirror, and therefore I can work on myself.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you work on yourself, you enter abundance, and when you enter abundance, these little these things begin to be little things.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And trust me, I've seen parents lose their shit over a three-year-old, a four-year-old.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because for us as parents, in that unhinged moment, it is not a little thing, it is catastrophic cataclysmic.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But if our best friend came inside and saw us, they'd be like, You are going crazy.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a three-year-old.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with you?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what's happening inside is that we're getting triggered because the child outside is excavating and touching on the pain points that we have carried in our own life from childhood.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I write about parenthood, is because the child will trigger you to feel exactly what you were never allowed to feel in your childhood.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if your child doesn't listen to you and you were not listened to as a child, you're going to lose your shit instead of just understanding that children have a hard time listening.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: You understand?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So emotional regulation is so important for longevity because if we don't have emotional regulation, we are disconnected.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if we don't have disconnection, we have a very poor quality of life.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day, our quality of life is determined by the quality of our most intimate relationships.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually profound.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I and you know, it's interesting what you said about feeling unhinged, and it's like we're so quick to like blame, you know, whether it's our children or whatever's here in front of us, you know, like this is my reasoning for feeling this way.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: But where do you think that balance starts for us as adults?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like understanding, like almost like viewing yourself, right, from the outside in and saying, these are my these are my pain points.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I know they're there, and I know that they can get triggered.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So how like where do we start on that journey of like that self-awareness journey?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, it is so hard to be self-aware.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: No one wants to be self-aware to the point of wanting to change.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: See, it's one thing to be self-aware.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I like the color blue, or I'm a, you know, I'm somebody who loves to read uh, you know, fiction.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: That level of self-awareness is not what we're talking about.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: What we're talking about is self-awareness to the point of being willing to change.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in order to be willing to change, you have to accept and admit that there is something to change.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: But if you are so, if one is so insecure and fragile, it's one thing to be self-aware to know these superficial things about ourselves.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I like the color blue, I want to be a doctor, I like traveling.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's another thing to be self-aware to change.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: That means we have to accept and not be fragile enough to not be able to accept that we are imperfect.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: We need to evolve, we need to shift, we need to adapt, we need to uh let go of our dysfunctional habits, we need to change our belief systems.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't want to change at that level, they don't want self-awareness at that level, they just want superficial self-awareness and they want the other person in their life to change.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's that's really interesting you said that because going, you know, coming to the the new books that are coming out, you know, I know you've written one about raising boys and one about raising girls.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this is such an interesting um topic because when I look at, for example, like I talk about beauty a lot on this podcast, you know, and I think with beauty, this realm of like mothers projecting onto their daughters and like, you know, a lot of that comes up, even if it's unknowingly.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to get your take on this in terms of like where do you think that really stems from when it comes to something like beauty or like the the appearance of a child or you know how they're projecting themselves?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where does all of that do you think um where does it stem?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness, this is the Pandora's box.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is just okay, it's a long history of a real FTAP situation for us women.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: When we used to live in more indigenous ways as hunter-gatherers, before the last 10,000 years, we lived in more clearly egalitarian ways, even though it was that men stayed in their lane and women stayed in their lane, but both were seen as very egalitarian in their contribution to the fabric of social life, and like in all animals in the animal kingdom, the female had a lot of power.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Even right now, the female in the animal, in the other animal kingdom, besides our animal kingdom of human, they have a lot of power.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: You see it with the peacock trying to get the pea hen's attention.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: He has to have the best plume of feathers, he has to strut around, he has to get her attention, he has to compete with the other males, he has to look fabulous.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: He had to look fabulous, yeah, not the female, yeah, the male.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at legends and and stories of of lore, you know, King Arthur, he had to, you know, show his skills as an archer in order to get the queen's attention.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: He had to take the sword out of the stone, Excalibur.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in in our Indian mythologies, always the king or the prince had to show his strength to get the queen.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Always.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: The female is and was the chooser, not the chosen, the chooser.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And when you are the chooser, you can sit back on your ass and choose, and let the let the male look all good, go to the gym, have hone up on his uh singing skills, you know, in the mannequin birds.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: People can look up mannequin birds.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: The poor male mannequin bird, oh my goodness, has to be the most amazing singer and chopper and dancer and look good.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the female is looking quite ordinary, and she chooses because she has the mating opportunity, right?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: She has the golden vagina, so to speak.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now look at what has happened in the last 10,000 years with us moving to agriculture and to the ownership of land and home.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, man has begun to own women and children and animals and the land.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And now suddenly they are like, Hello, we don't want to be the the the chosen, we want to choose.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you become the chosen.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the minute that began to change, and the female fell into the trap.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you can choose me.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now we foolish women are going around competing with each other.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Choose me, choose me, choose me.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the males are just loving it, loving it, and we idiots are just competing with each other, not realizing we don't need to compete with each other, not realizing we are the choosers, not realizing we have the golden vagina, they need us, and this is not about us against them, but we are killing ourselves, and so this is where it comes from.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: And now we are fully trapped in the beauty ideology and standards, which is a white, skinny, rich female standard, really, it's not a brown standard, yeah, it's a white standard, and we are all falling into the trap, and therefore we pass down to our daughters the same trap.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's really, really interesting that you said that.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad the the last thing you said about the standard and how it is still that skinny white female standard.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely like it's something that I just do not understand why we cannot as a society move away from this, you know.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I recently, it's interesting because I had a conversation recently where that came that came up, and I was talking to a an Indian model, and I asked her, I said, there is so much hate right now against women online about like Indian women, you know, and I'm like, I'm trying to figure out where the hell that's coming from because yeah, there's that it's crazy.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like I grew up as a millennial, I never saw it in my own, you know, uh friend group or whatever.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: But when I look online now, young girls are like, oh, well, they are saying this about me.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just the most terrible things.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wonder I'm like from a parenting side, if my child came to me after school one day or something, right, and said, Well, mom, they're saying that I smell bad or that I'm Indian.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I look like, you know, like something about my appearance, I would be enraged as a parent.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, my gut reaction would be like, Who do I talk to at school?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do I make it stop?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love for you to speak on this because I know that kids are going through, I think, you know, probably what we've always been through, but I think on a more broad scale now, with the way social media is evolving and stuff, you know.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to get your take on that in terms of what parents should do.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So first we need to understand that we are not living in a vacuum.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you think your daughter's beautiful and you keep telling her she's beautiful, it doesn't matter.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: If she doesn't look like the standard normative idea of beauty and perfection, she's not going to feel beautiful, and culture is going to tell her she's not beautiful.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you, as a parent, need to combat your that happening to your daughter and give her the skills and the tools to combat that.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the things you do is from a young age, you tell her, people are gonna tell you that because you don't have blue eyes and blonde hair and white skin, you are not so beautiful.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: But is that true?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you begin to teach her at a young age, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: You show her her little dog, and her dog has brown eyes, and you're like, Do we love the dog, even though they have brown eyes?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do we think the dog is beautiful?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, mommy.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think the dog should have green eyes.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, mommy, the dog has brown eyes.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the dog doesn't need to have green eyes, correct?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Same for people, and you begin to arm her in a very, very systematic way, with an awareness that people are going to tell her, you don't look like the standard.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, in my family, with my daughter, you know, you can see if people are watching YouTube that I have green eyes and my daughter has brown eyes.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew right away that people will compare her to me or say, Oh, your daughter didn't get your eyes, you know, such stupid things like that, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've literally heard people say in front of her to me, oh, so sad your daughter didn't get your eyes.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, are you a bloody moron right now?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: The child is listening to you.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The child is listening to you.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you and I know, you know, you are in the medical field and me through research, that blue eyes and green eyes are actually defective genes, if you want to call it.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're recessive, they're not the best genes that bring out the strongest eyes, they're actually recessive.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: My eyes are weak compared to brown eyes, okay?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I should not be happy about having brown blue eyes.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I should green eyes.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I should be happy if I have brown eyes because that's the best for the skin, for the for the sun and for the heat.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And my eyes are weak, okay?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, but because we live in an Anglo-Saxon, white, rich, industrialized culture, which is the majority, we have begun to idolize green and blue eyes to the exclusion of other eyes.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, idolize whatever eyes you like, but you cannot idolize eyes or skin color to the exclusion of other colors and pretend like this is somehow superior.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: But we all know that the white race has decided it is superior and decided to tell all the brown people that they are inferior.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And brown people have largely believed it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where we as parents need to come in, not to put white people down, but to not put ourselves down and not to give white people the idea of perfection.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: When I came from India to America, I 100% had brought into uh my awareness, I brought with me this awareness that I'm inferior compared to white people.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: I had to do a lot of work in America to realize I am damn good enough.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it took me a long time.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I look, you know, I look, I can pass as something else than Indian, but in my in my psychology, I had been so embossed with this idea that to be Indian is to be inferior and white people are superior.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm just talking frankly, that I had to do a lot of work to undo that and to find beauty in myself.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: I did not find beauty in myself.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I did not find beauty in my hair, in my skin color, in my contrast, in my in my thick thighs, in my in my curves.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it took me years, decades, and it was only in my late 30s, actually, once I became a mother, that I decided to change the internal script of beauty standards and favor it to myself and to people who look like me.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it took me a long time.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I mean that's that's such an important message.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, also like on the topic of like just also motherhood in general.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like mothers, you know, we try our best, you know, you can always try your best, but I think it's always there's always a disconnect between like, you know, what should you be doing and what, you know, like what are you doing?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to talk a little bit about this in terms of like if you are a mom of a boy, of a son, you only have sons, you don't have daughters.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: How do you navigate that world of like, well, I wish I could see myself, you know, out here in the world?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I wish I had a daughter to like kind of look at, you know, like how do you approach that as a parent?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because I know I've seen that a lot, you know.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a mother raising a son alone, you need help.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: You need to go get some adult trusted men around because boys need male role models.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that this may sound sexist, reductionistic.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't mean it to be.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Boys need women around too.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: But after, you know, the age of nine or ten, as they're approaching puberty, they need males to tell them about puberty and their sexuality and how to integrate their desire with restraint, just like a young adolescent pub pubescent girl needs a woman to guide her through that phase.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're a single mother, go get help right now.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: The most important thing for a son that we need to know is that boys are wired physically, they are very physical creatures.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying every boy, I'm not saying girls cannot be physical, but for the most part, boys have testosterone 50 times more than girls, you know, a lot of testosterone.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just talking about the range, it could be 15 to 50.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that testosterone gives them the drive for risk taking and adventure and pursuit and the unknown.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's how our ancestors could go out and hunt for food in the dark of the night.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: We women are wired with a lot of estrogen, which is the uh enhancer for oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we Wired for connection and relationships.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: That is, doesn't mean we are lesser than many feminists who listen to this think, oh, she's putting me down.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not putting you down.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great, amazing, fantastic skill and strength to be a connector, to be in relationship, to be the networker, to be the community builder.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants to go out in the middle of the night and hunt for deer?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So let the male, let the male do it, you know.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And if you go to any construction site and look up at the at the cranes, who is up there?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is the male who is doing it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then I don't hear the feminists going, let me do it, right?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm trying to say is that there's so much beauty in being a male, and there's so much beauty in being a female, and you can identify with whatever you want.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: But biologically, neurobiochemistry in in that way, we have very unique hormonal blueprints, and there's so much beauty there.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So, as a mother or father of a boy, we need to understand boys are wired to be physical.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: So don't try to make him use his words, try to have intense face-to-face conversations with him.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: He's not going to want to do it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: He does it through action.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you want him to go brush his teeth at the age of three, make him look for his toothbrush in a scavenger hunt.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you want him to be regulated, let him move, make him physically exert himself to the point of exhaustion.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you want him to feel focused, give him a purpose, let him help you with the light bulbs, let him help you bring the laundry in, let him help you carry your bags, invent work for him to do the work so he feels like he's competent and he's contributing.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: A boy who doesn't feel competent or contributing will wither away.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: And all that testosterone energy that is being used in a chair with a video game is going to eventually erupt in drugs or substance abuse of sexual violence or aggression out in the world.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because testosterone is a dangerous hormone, cannot sit in a chair and just play video games all day.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Testosterone will involute and mutate and explode.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that is such an important topic that you bring up.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it was honestly one of my biggest questions for you was this idea of on social media, on the internet, all the time we're seeing, you know, women are going through more assault.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're going through a lot more domestic violence.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think the stats are just getting worse and worse every year.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the conversation always arises of what can we do as parents at a young age for our children, whether it's the girl or the boy that we're raising, to make sure that they understand that their actions have repercussions, that they, you know what I mean, they have to be accountable.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love for you to speak on this topic, especially from the perspective of a parent raising a boy, because I think there's a lot of like a big gap in the knowledge we need in terms of what should we be teaching boys from an early age so that they develop this intrinsic respect for their the female counterparts out here, you know, in the world.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, yeah, the reason I wrote this book, Raising Conscious Sons, yeah, is because parents don't have a blueprint for raising conscious masculinity.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And boys are lost.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: They are being told not to be like a girl, but don't be like an asshole.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: So he's like, How do I be?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to be.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And many fathers don't know how to emotionally regulate themselves, leave alone help their sons.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: So boys are a missed population, and we keep getting angry with the adult man, but we don't ask what happened to this man in childhood to make him like this, right?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: We keep getting angry with the man.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: We need to go deeper and ask, how do we raise the boy that will that will one day become this man?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So, what can we do differently so that this boy doesn't become this man who is a perpetrator, sexual abuser, pedophile?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do we help our sons?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I've given a whole blueprint.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's seven pillars, and every chapter has conscious tools that if you follow this with awareness, you will change the game.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the main things for boys are these.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, they're wired to be physical, everything is through the body, not through the words.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: They need to express themselves physically.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, boys feel as deeply as girls, they are as sensitive as girls, they just show it differently.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, boys need to feel purposeful and contributing, and that's what gives them capacity and confidence.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Number four, boys need a tribe, they need their brotherhood, they need their uncles, their mentors, their cousins who are male.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: Number five, boys need to be initiated into their sexuality.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: If they're not initiated into their sexuality and just left to have a wet dream at night at the age of 14 and ejaculate into his socks and nobody even talks to him, the boy is going to feel shame as if something is wrong with him.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that shame is going to make him eventually be the cheater, the liar, the betrayer.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: But it starts from childhood because no one initiated the boy into his healthy sexuality.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, boys need to be held accountable.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: From a young age, we need to teach them.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: They are not mama's boys, they are not here to be coddled or protected.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we will we will co-regulate with them and we will help them through their emotions, but we will hold them accountable.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So when you begin to teach boys accountability, say say sorry and mean it, change your behavior, acknowledge what you did, understand your boundaries, respect other people's boundaries.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: When you do wrong, be accountable, right?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: That takes a lot of emotional safety.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if boys learn to be accountable, they will grow up to be accountable men and take care of women and children.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I also have this question of you know, in Eastern cultures, it's a huge thing about, you know, everybody wants a boy.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody wants a, you know, to a son.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the thing.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I we're both Indian and I grew up in this culture of watching this happen all the time.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like my aunts and everybody, uh, uh, you know, did you get a son yet?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have you had, you know, what are you expecting?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it becomes this almost pressure of like, if you don't have a son, you have failed as a woman to reproduce.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love your take on this and this understanding of where do you think that comes from?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what do we do as now modern-day women who are still battling the stigma coming from multiple cultures, you know, as as parents also.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, on one level, it is understandable biologically that people may want sons because sons are the male, the male sperm is how we expand the species.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, male sperm is the proliferator, the male sperm is the one that goes and uh, you know, promulgates and spreads the genes to the next generation.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it makes sense that you want a boy.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: But when you want a boy to the exclusion of the girl, that's that's really a very rigid, old-fashioned, narrow-minded, very primitive way of looking at life.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because the the male can go and spread the seed.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Who the hell is going to nurture the seed?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: In whose body are you going to nurture the seed?
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you can keep having sons, and then where will the his seed, his precious seed, get nurtured?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be in a female's body.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: The next reason why I know in India parents like to have boys is because there's less accountability, right?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: The boy can go and spread his seeds and his genes, and he's not getting pregnant.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: The price for being a female is much higher.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: We are, quote unquote, physically weaker.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: We can get pregnant, we can get raped a lot faster than a boy, and we can get, you know, into motherhood without our conscious consent.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it is very difficult then.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: We have it's a costly price.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Motherhood is a costly price, it's a lifelong sentence, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, of course, grandmothers, uh, you know, parents don't want their family, you know, to uh have that risk.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a risk to be a girl, it just in terms of our sheer uh physical uh vulnerability, right?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: There is a risk.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't go out at night in New York City walking on the streets as modern as I just don't.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know it's a risk to be a woman out on the streets at night.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now you can fight and scream and say, but why, but why, but why, but why?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer is because nature, you know, created one who is physically stronger and one who is emotionally stronger.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that is just the way it did it.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I'm talking in broad stereotypes, but it is the truth.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And a little bit of leaning into the truth, of course, you can be flexible and you can create your own definition of what it means to be a woman and a man, but there is a biological truth that should not be denied, it should be celebrated.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, as parents, I wrote, you know, the reason I wrote two books, this one is Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons, is because I wanted parents to recognize how differently wired boys and girls are, and how we can celebrate these differences in our approach.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: We can tailor our approach to the hormonal differences between boys and girls and actually do much better.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, to answer your question about Indian parents, on one level, it's biological, they want they want the boy, they think it's like superior, but it's not.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And number two, they don't want the liability that comes with raising a girl.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, no, I know.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a really I mean, I find it to be such an interesting phenomena psychologically because it doesn't, I mean, we live in such a modern time, you know, that's what my brain keeps coming back to, where it's like girls are doing everything now, you know, and we still battle this every single day.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where, I mean, obviously not in the US and the West as much, but you see it on trickle down in society on so many levels, you know, whether it's education for young girls, whether it's opportunities, whether it's even if they cross those hurdles and they get over and they have these beautiful careers, they still face so many questions, so many, you know, issues.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it, I know for very, very successful women that I know as colleagues, they still have this trauma that they've been carrying their whole life, you know, and it doesn't come up till they have these established careers and they sit down with themselves and they're like, wait a minute, my entire life I was kind of told, like, oh, I wish you were a boy, you know?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I that kind of thing.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, I've I've heard it.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've heard it many times.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it just breaks your heart, but it's also like, well, that's a reality that we're dealing with as well.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then you see many women, I know you and I could fall into this category where we we are so trying to be good enough that we overdo it, right?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: We become these super competent mothers and and adults.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're overachieving.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know you're an overachiever, I'm an overachiever.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I often wonder is a part of it my my trauma response, you know, is is it like, am I going so much?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because somewhere I learned that to be a girl was not good enough.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I need to keep proving myself, you know?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where, you know, because these days we have so much emphasis on you're a woman.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, you know, it stops stop complaining that you're a woman, just go do what you got to do.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like on the flip side, I'm like, there's a real trauma burden that's coming for very, very highly competent women right now that are incredibly high achieving women.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that component of like, we don't even get to talk about it.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even get to voice this.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and then you look at the parenting side, and it's like, well, if you're now that high achieving woman and you're raising children, how do you make sure that your child now doesn't carry that same trauma, you know, and like go on and then become that high achieving girl, but no trauma this time, you know?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like And that's why I wrote the book Raising Conscious Daughters.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: I give a blueprint for how I raised my daughter and how others could raise their daughters.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and I was very conscious of my trauma uh as an Indian woman, and I did not want her to feel the things I felt.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so I overdid it, I think, and I raised a real, you know, real badass now that I have to deal with, who's a pain sometimes.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: But but I would rather have the problem of a child who is so rooted in their own power, but it makes it difficult for me to control her, versus have somebody who I can control.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the important thing we have to understand as mothers, especially of daughters, is that they will in many ways absorb our ways of being.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they will watch how the father treats the mother if it's in a straight household, and they will watch how the mother is being treated in general, but mostly they will watch how the mother treats herself.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: So when I see my daughter confident, you know, or not have the body issues I have, I'm in shock.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, honestly, I'm like, I have so many body issues, how does she not have them?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's because I was quite diligent in teaching her that she should not focus on her looks.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was growing up, no one told me that.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I got a lot of validation and attention for my looks.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I immediately coupled my identity with my looks.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I made sure, and I want all parents to understand it's so important for daughters to be told, stop focusing on how you look.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: How you look is the is the least interesting part of you.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: How you look is like at the bottom of the list.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, you can look nice, but it is so boring because after somebody tells you you look nice, then what?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Looking nice has no value except it's a little bit of a dopamine booster, especially and only if you're having sex with the person.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it doesn't even matter.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, for the most part of your life, your looks are your most boring part, and there are other things that are so interesting.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Your kindness, your compassion, your hard work, your ethics, your integrity.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I encourage parents, and I I teach this in this book, Raising Conscious Daughters, a step-by-step blueprint.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do these things regularly, and I talk about what not to do, and you would raise an empowered daughter.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love that so much.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad that you decided to take this on and write these books because I just feel like for modern parenting, like there is no, there's no blueprint.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know there's never going to be like a solid blueprint, but there needs to be some guidance, you know, because of all the reasons we've just discussed.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I kind of my my closing question, I I really want to get your take on this idea of like the equality, um, the equality conversation between boys and girls.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know that, you know, as parents, we want our children to feel like you are an equal, you know, everybody's equal, but then not strip away things like the masculinity of the boy and not strip away the feminine feminine side, right?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd love for you to speak on that in terms of that balancing component of, you know, raising children.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everybody's equally human.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: But this idea of equality is misguided, it's lacking, it's not complete.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: I like to think of things like equity and egalitarianism, where there is a consensus that we all are equally human and we all have a piece in the in the puzzle.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: But but if the man is 6'5 and he needs to eat two chicken legs, and the the child is nine years old, then in that moment, the child is not going to eat two chicken legs, is the child, right?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like we know as an adult to child, the child needs to eat less.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: But as women to men, we're like, oh, why is he eating two chicken legs?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: I need to eat two chicken legs too.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's because he has different muscle structure and different brain chemistry and he's bigger.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes we women get very nitpicky on what it means to be equal, but I think for the most part, people are understanding that we don't need to seek absolute equality in terms of one for one, one for one, because that we are not designed to be in any way, shape, or form even similar.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, men and women are so freaking different.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, every man I meet in my couples' counseling will tell me, oh my god, she thinks I'm like her.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think like her, I don't look like her, I don't look at the world like her, I don't have thoughts and desires like her, I don't experience sex the same way.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, on every level, the man is very aware he is so different.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we women need to understand that when we get married, we are marrying a freaking different creature.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like we think, oh, we're such good friends, we go bowling every night.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: You are willingly getting into bed with a different creature, and you will not understand this creature ever, and they will never understand you.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can barely understand yourself.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if we understand that we're willingly, wantingly marrying a creature that we just have no foundation of understanding for because we're not male, and they need to understand that about females.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think men understand they cannot understand women, but we women are a little bit delusional.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: We think we can understand men because they're so simple on some level compared to us, but we don't understand how simple they are.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like we just can never get it, right?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: They can they can move on, they can let go, they're getting married tomorrow, they got divorced yesterday.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: How did that happen?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're still crying, they've they are having three children by the time we finished our heartbreak.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: How is that possible?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's possible because they have testosterone and we have estrogen.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, at a very basic level, that is the differentiator.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah, I mean we have testosterone too, and they have estrogen too, but that the levels, you know.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I mean, I I I love that you are addressing this because I think, I mean, honestly, when I look at like being a millennial, when I look at our generation of women, like we're so hyper-focused on like you were saying, like the equality component.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's wonderful, but we have to acknowledge that there are differences.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: We can't ignore that there are major differences in just biology.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I love that.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for the explanation.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good that there are differences.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: We should not want to ever, ever be like a man.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: We should only want to be treated humanly.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in terms of our cognitive contributions, we should have equality, yes.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of the ways the world is going to treat us, it is going to treat us differently, but it should not treat us any less human.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Dr.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Shvalley, this has been so amazing.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: You are so amazing, and I'm so excited about the two new books coming out for all of our listeners.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: You guys have to go grab them.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: They are going to be game-changing.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I already know.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I hope you buy it for your family, raising conscious sons, raising conscious daughters.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: I promise you, they will give you a blueprint for how to raise children in the modern, anxious, and chaotic world.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I will link everything in the show notes, guys.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you scroll down and check everything out.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you so much, Dr.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Shafali.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: This has been truly an honor to host you.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.