Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:00

Welcome to another episode of Voices in Health and Wellness. This is a show where we sit down with the practitioners, founders, and health leaders who are redefining what it means to thrive in this industry, both personally and professionally. Today I'm excited to bring to you a conversation that goes straight to the heart of one of the most pressing issues in our field, why even the smartest, most health, most driven health practitioners struggle with work-life balance. And to help us unpack this, I'm joined by someone whose voice carries real depth and experience, Ben Fleisher. Ben is a licensed acupuncturist, a certified zero balancer, and the founder of Woodstock Healing Arts, a multidisciplinary healing centre in upstate New York, known for combining clinical integrity with soulful, community-centred care. With over 20 years in practice, Ben's seen and personally navigated the full spectrum of practitioner burnout, boundary setting, and the emotional weight that comes with holding space for others day in and day out. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Ben. Thank you so much for your time today.

Ben Fleisher: 0:56

Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for having me.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:59

You're very welcome. So perhaps we could start at the top. Would you perhaps give us a little bit of um background into your journey and how you've led how that has led you to form the Woodstock Healing Arts?

Ben Fleisher: 1:12

Okay, great. Well, let's see. This story kind of begins with me in terms of my involvement with this work. It started when I was pretty young. Like when I was a teenager, I got interested in um Buddhism and meditation and yoga, just trying to understand what these concepts really were, especially Buddhism, the idea of um action and non-action and understanding um kind of yin and yang from that perspective. Um that hit me pretty young. And so when I finished, uh I went to school and I studied psychology and religion to try to understand how these things all fit together and worked on a developmental model that was like birth to death as opposed to kind of birth to 10 um in the West or um over many lifetimes in the East. So um tried to look at how those things can be integrated. Um, but I finished school at 20, 21, and was like, well, I'm not gonna be a monk and I'm not gonna be a therapist because I'm 21. Um, so what should I do? So I went back to school for massage therapy, studied for practiced that for a few years. Uh, lived in Colorado at the time. Um, and it was in the wake of my brother's death. My brother passed away at a young age. He was 31. I was 25. And in the wake of that, I was like, okay, I've I've lived enough. I like that's a major tragedy that most people don't experience. And I think I can handle what other people have to say. And I kind of left that experience feeling more emboldened to create a bigger container for my for my clients. Um, and uh so that's kind of how I got to the work originally, and then uh 10 years into practice, something like that. Um not even five years into practice, it was. Yeah, five years into practice in New York City. Um, and my partner and I, she got pregnant and we decided to move to the country and uh back to the town where I grew up. And um in I discovered it's not that easy to move a practice from New York City up to the country. Uh, you're starting over. And so, in doing so, I took from all the various places I'd worked in the city, um, I brought all that knowledge back here to create this. It's like an integrative wellness center here. So a whole host of uh mind-body disciplines, and we all work under one roof or kind of under one umbrella, and um try to bring together all the all the healers in this region to kind of like help them be more findable. Um and it's worked out really well. We're in our ninth year, we're just hitting the nine-year mark and um thinking about expansion, and it's it's going well. And so yeah.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 4:12

Well, congratulations on creating such an amazing space. And perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the the kind of people that are coming through the space and how the healers interact with each other to kind of provide the different elements to a patient's treatment plan.

Ben Fleisher: 4:25

Yeah, I mean, we've really see the gamut here. You know, we have a few chiropractors we work with and massage therapists and myself, a few other acupuncturists, um, and I do zero balancing. Um, so these the modalities all fit well in complement with each other. Um, so we often will we see everything to go back to that, like because you asked that question first, from you know, teenagers with high anxiety to a large aging population, a more geriatric care, if you will, um just like helping people navigate, you know, the the last 10, 20 years of their life, which is often like a lot of dealing with medical stuff. And um, and at least my role is largely to do with like helping them navigate it, not so much replacing or you know, anything like that. It's like just understanding how these things all fit together, um, and helping them avoid some of the common Western medical pitfalls of uh you know all the conditions that they don't really have great strategies for actually treating, maybe managing symptoms, but not really treating from the inside out. So um we kind of fill in with a lot of that. Um yeah, and we all try to interface as much as we can. We have with shared clients, we you know have our all of our confidentiality and HIPAA stuff in place, and yet, you know, clients for the most part would prefer um to have their their health professionals discussing their case. They've most people have discovered they get better care that way. So um it works out pretty well.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 6:05

Brilliant. So your role, obviously, you're still practicing and what your modalities are, but how do what do you do the other things that you do in your work? How does your kind of day pan out in terms of all the other responsibilities that you have in running Woodstock?

Ben Fleisher: 6:19

Well, I I have an office manager here, so like I don't have to do a lot of the ad admin logistics. I mean, I I have a some degree of that, maybe in but like less than an hour a day. Um you know, it's pretty much to a minimum because I can I've passed it all. I delegate it all at this point, um, as much as possible. So I'm in the treatment room most of the day. And that's I I do uh because my work's like a combination of like deeply relaxing, very profoundly still and quiet work with zero balancing to uh trigger point acupuncture and you know clients yelling expletives on the table. You know, it's uh for me, that's like kind of how I keep it interesting. Is that in the treatment room itself, I have a variety of modalities that I use, right? So it's some trigger point acupuncture, it might be um zero balancing work, it might be nutritional counseling or uh test interpretation. Uh like I have do also have a functional medicine. You mentioned urine functional medicine, and to do a two-year training in that work, so I can at least interpret a lot of uh what people are working with. Um so a lot of it is like a medical translation almost for people.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 7:45

Thank you. I mean, you mentioned zero balancing, just for the benefit of those who are listening who may not know much about it. Can you just give us a very high-level overview of what that involves?

Ben Fleisher: 7:52

Yeah, happily. It's a type of acupressure. It works with how energy is held in the bones primarily. So you're doing very subtle adjustments to bones and joints. Um, and the effect is quite profound because uh they're the densest tissue and the strongest structure in the body, and therefore, even minor adjustments have really big effects. Um and it's kind of like it changes the it's like the water you're swimming in. It kind of changes how you experience yourself. It's really, really interesting work and really uh great resource for people.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 8:30

It's it's nice. Thank you. Um, you're holding space for others constantly. How do you stay grounded with that when the in the work that you do?

Ben Fleisher: 8:41

Yeah, well, the zero balancing training has like very strong emphasis on this, and that work I've been doing for 20 years. So um I don't even think about a lot of it now. Um, but in thinking over and talking to people about how they in general avoid burning out doing their work, I'm like, oh, these are all the things that we are trained to do. So that's um really being grounded and centered in yourself before you start to work um with every patient and taking the moment before you touch them uh to or before you read their pulse or before you uh you know really engage. Uh there's like a there's a kind of three-step process actually. I think of it like first you're someone's coming in and you're knocking the dust off. How how are you doing today? Was it okay getting here? How's things going today? Like, what's the most present? Um, that's step number one, and that leads right into like, okay, is there something deeper under the surface? Like, why are you actually here? And that's step number two is like, why are you actually here? And for like taking the time to frame the session with clients so you know very clearly why they're there. Um, and you know, that takes the guesswork out of that, and then thirdly, taking that moment, really grounding and centering before you start to work with them. So it does miles for me. Um, and then all the other things that help avoid burnout, you know, taking care of myself outside of here, uh taking a really deep dive into my own myself and like my own people pleasing and my own fawning and my own desire to help people, and the difference between that and actually showing up in a real authentic informed way with patients, and not just kind of doing it out of my ego's needs. Um, so doing that deeper work is a big piece of that. Um, getting body work outside of here is a big piece of that. Um making sure my sleep is good and my general tech hygiene, and I'm not glued to my phone the entire time I'm not here. Um, that's a big piece of that. Um, yeah, so there's there's a lot of little things you can do.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 11:15

So you clearly do um have a very holistic approach to looking after yourself. Have you seen any shifts in how other health practitioners, whether it's colleagues or people that you know in the space, show up to work, do they have a similar approach to you, or what might they be missing out on?

Ben Fleisher: 11:32

Hmm. Um, I mean, yeah, I think everyone has a similar approach in terms of like, you know, somewhat knowing, oh, I need to keep myself nourished. If I don't take care of number one, how can I take care of anybody else? I think most people have a general sense of that. Um but I I've spent a lot of time now really thinking about how to implement it in my life. So um I don't know, some of the some of the tips are like, you know, balancing your workload so it's not all the same thing all day, every day. And often, especially with new therapists, you see that they've learned one thing in school, they want to do that one thing all day. And um, that just doesn't last all that long. You have to find ways to mix up what you're doing, um, whether that's your manual skills or your um you know therapeutic strategies with people, um, or whether it's just a mix of like I'm gonna be also developing the secondary revenue stream and I'm gonna spend 20% of my week thinking about how to do online sales for these products I made, or whatever the thing might be. Um, but finding ways to diversify it so you're not just doing the same thing every day. Um I think that's really important. Another thing that I think is unique that I've heard over the years is a unique uh thing that I embody that I don't think is super prevalent is um to just have like basically no space for the idea of competition. I just I don't believe in competition when it comes to this work. Um and I think a lot of people really spend a lot of mental energy and waste a lot of mental energy trying to compare themselves to other practitioners or um you know trying to understand if what they're doing is good enough, all that. It's just I really really emphasize there's no competition. Everybody needs help in one area or another when it comes to their health. That's an innumerable number of people. There's no shortage of clients, there never will be. And um it only really reflects poorly on you as a practitioner when that when you're uh too caught up in that. Um, and that's what clients smell. They don't smell that you did all these trainings, they smell that you feel competitive. Um, and no one likes that feeling. So, you know, especially when you're interpreting what an orthopedist thinks or what a um what a cardiologist thinks or what a podiatrist thinks about a certain patient, you know, you got to be very careful to really respect uh respect each one of them um and find a way to speak what you find to be true within any of their medical feedback, what's the valuable piece of information, and and know wherever they get relief is great. It doesn't have to come from you, it doesn't matter.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 14:48

Thank you. Thank you. No, it's really helpful. Um, I suppose if you're working in the holistic space and we tried to be holistic in the work we do, do you think there's a pressure to be everything to everyone? Has that gotten worse, or has it just got louder?

Ben Fleisher: 15:03

I'd I mean that's the thing. That's like you're you're talking your fingers right on it, you know. That's the thing I'm talking about. Like, you don't need to be everything to everyone. That's like the one of the biggest pitfalls right there, is trying to be. I mean, I'm a huge proponent of knowing your scope and then referring out and referring out and referring out. Um because also just it all comes back. Those practitioners send people back to you. You don't you you don't really need to think small-minded about that. Um so yeah, there is always that pressure, but I I I feel like more and more uh more and more people sadly realize that they need to be their own best advocate, and therefore no one practitioner or doctor is gonna have all the answers. Um, and I think more and more people uh have woken up to like you need to be able to take a stand for your own health, and that's how you interface with doctors, and what uh you know, finding your your trusted practitioners to speak to, and um and if any one of them thinks that they're the end all be all, they're wrong. Chances are what about the people around you?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 16:24

I mean, do you think there are um support systems are missing for practitioners generally? I mean, so you have a um take quick care of yourself, you're very insightful, you reflect on everything, but I guess not everybody's like that. And what kind of things would be helpful for other practitioners?

Ben Fleisher: 16:40

Yeah, I mean you're totally right. I think community care is like the key, the key thing to self-care is like um really practicing uh regularly, practicing opening up what is really going on with you with different practitioners for your own both professionally and personally and health-wise. Um that that's like a huge thing, and it in the really the way to be the best overall practitioner, in my opinion. Um so like we are not actively doing it here at our center, but for a while we we did um more like team building, uh kind of group supervision stuff, um, where we would get together and talk about clients and talk the client cases, I should say, and um, you know, different approaches and strategies and kind of professional support like that, and kind of peer supervision, um, which I think was really valuable, is really valuable. Um, but any kind of, you know, the more you can live in community, that's kind of like the end all be all. That's where we're all trying to get comfortable to have a you know, nice, healthy window of tolerance of being good and being bad and being good and being bad, but being in community and not having to be perfect all the time. Uh again, getting back to that idea of like that practitioners need to have it all together and they need to have everything together personally, that they can't have any, they can't be messy in any way personally. You know, all the ways that we try to internalize perfectionism is just is like not very healthy.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 18:33

Thank you. Um so Woodstock Healing Arts is a business, and I'm just interested to know whether there are any particular challenges or bottlenecks you've had to overcome recently to do the work that you do in your center, or if there's anything that's still left that you're that still bothers you, troubles you, you're working on trying to solve.

Ben Fleisher: 18:52

Um, we don't have any any major hindrances now. Everything's operating pretty smoothly. Um we're potentially expanding, and part of that, one of the things that we've looked at in the past and we're looking at now is how to create like a community fund so that more um lower income people can get services, um, how to set it up legally, like just how to run something like that. And we I just haven't cracked that yet. Because it's it's a tricky thing. You have to, some people say it has to be a separate entity that would you know, own that money until it's spent. And there's just some logistics I haven't worked out around that, but that's um the community care piece is what I haven't cracked in terms of our center really being able to support our community. We did like community acupuncture here twice a week for years, um, but it just was unsustainable. It's a really tricky uh model after a while, for at least the way we were doing it. Um so I want to crack more into that, like uh more of a community fund concept.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 20:06

Well, all the best with that one. I think it's a very worthwhile thing to be doing. Similarly um, on the other side, what's some of the successes, things you're most proud of in your model?

Ben Fleisher: 20:16

Um well, I mean, it feels great to be part of this community. Uh we have about 20 or so practitioners under this umbrella. Um and 10 years of working together, we have a really strong web here of practitioners that um that just in and of itself feels really great, you know, knowing that that people can land with any of us and will probably from there end up in the right hands. Um it's a great feeling. That's a great feeling into itself.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 20:52

So and if you if you had a sudden influx of new clients next week, obviously a nice problem to have, um, what would be the first thing that would break? And hopefully none of you or your colleagues?

Ben Fleisher: 21:05

Uh well, I don't think uh we would just run out of space eventually, but I don't think anything would break.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:14

And you talked about expansion, is that um within your current premises, or are you looking to sort of set up other centers or branches? What's the what's the feeling there?

Ben Fleisher: 21:23

We might open up like another another uh like an annex in in our the same town here, but just in the other side of town.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:31

Cool. And if you had a magic wand and you could fix one thing in Woodstock um tomorrow, what would that be, if anything?

Ben Fleisher: 21:39

Uh well, if anyone listening knows anything about Woodstock, New York, uh, it would be to fix the housing market. Has this real dearth of affordable housing here? And uh for a clinic like this, that works out pretty well because we end up getting a population of people who have a lot of money. But in terms of living here, it's not so great. It's very difficult uh to pay all the bills, and um it's very difficult for our community to find real legs. Uh we don't have enough workers, etc., because the people who unless you're earning a lot of money, it's hard to afford to live here, etc. So there. Please wave the wand.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 22:29

Okay. It's a theoretical wand, I'm afraid I can't solve the problem. Um, and is there anything you would do differently if you were to start your business again tomorrow? You've been in the space for a long time, you've been on a journey. If you could do it all again tomorrow, would you do anything differently?

Ben Fleisher: 22:51

Um not really. Nothing major. I mean, I wish I knew what I know now earlier, but um I don't know if there's a shortcut to that. Um you know, I don't know. It's been such a learning journey here. You know, this center in the nine years we've been here, we've had like we tried different business models, we've done it three different ways, and I know the way we have we're doing it now works pretty well, um, which is like a uh kind of combination of um marketing uh services and rental services, as opposed to having every practitioner work for the center as a subcontractor. Um, like we're trying out this model and it works well. And I I say nothing would really change because each thing we've done, even the things that didn't work, nothing was a catastrophe, and it's how we got to what I feel most comfortable with, which is what we're doing now. So um I mean there must be something I would do differently. Probably it would be something like actually do better self-care earlier on, uh, like really take it seriously from the get-go. Um and you know, the I also uh thinking back on my history, I think of it like when this place started, but I was already 10-15 years into my practice at that point. And if I forget, in the beginning, beginning, I did all kinds of things that were beyond my um capacity, you know, like I would take clients too late or on the weekend or working just weird hours or too long a session, or um not really owning what my sessions were, what I needed to be successful as a therapist, but you know, catering more to what my clients needed. And that balance was quite askew in the beginning. Um and honestly, it's like I found zero balancing, which is now uh almost 20 years ago, and that helped really course correct a lot of that, um, so that it was more to do with the a balanced interface between me and the client and not um me doing everything I could to make them happy. You know, it's like much more I can hold them with the highest personal regard and treat them exactly for who they are, and I don't need to compromise my integrity. Um, I do wish I got that earlier, but I still feel pretty blessed. It was in the first like five years or so of my practice that I I got really good mentorship around that.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 25:51

So thank you. Yeah, we've been talking a little bit about burnout, and obviously that was really in the context of you know your practices that you do to try and protect yourself and you know what's going on with other practitioners. But what about burnout more generally, perhaps in the people that you serve, the clients that you serve? Where are we at with that in society?

Ben Fleisher: 26:12

Well, you know, everyone's at least you're in England, so things are a little different, but everyone here is beyond burnt out. I mean, I live in a very progressive town in America, you know. Um the people experiencing the least degree of burnout is people whose lives are built around their own meaning, that they're the change they're creating in the world on a small scale, in a in a hint, like a way that they can physically they can really relate to what they're doing. Um, I think for people who are not working and are you know more at the whim of society and what's happening, um that's more challenging. I think for everyone, what's happening in society is really challenging. I think the politics of the day are uh morally draining, morally challenging. And that um, you know, I'm certainly seeing the last year, the last 10 months of um greater and greater levels of despair and frustration and um it affecting everybody way more than I would ever expect. I don't know, it's just I'd never thought society would be a place it's at either. So um, but I guess as a remedy, I think it's about what can you do that you where you feel change, however big or small, it doesn't matter. Um, but you're in action, you're you're making change yourself, and um you're not completely uh passive recipient of all the bad news that's been happening.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 28:05

Thank you. It's really interesting. And um, so what does the next chapter look like for you and Woodstock Healing Arts? What's on the cards for the next six to twelve months?

Ben Fleisher: 28:14

So um, so at the center, as I mentioned, we're looking at this expansion, kind of crunching the numbers, see if it works. And um, and then me me as a practitioner, um the two things that are like my forefront, like what I'm what I'm expanding into, one is writing and the other is teaching. So I'm teaching a zero balance in class this coming weekend here in Woodstock, and then uh hopefully plan to keep going with that every two or three courses a year. And then uh I've been writing and gonna keep working away at the writing, seeing where that goes.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 28:54

And are there any things that you're sort of actively saying no to to protect your energy? Because we have been talking about burnout a lot, and it's very easy to get over um over committed with things. Is there anything you're kind of turning down?

Ben Fleisher: 29:08

I mean, clients. Uh that's what I'm turning down these days, or just booking out further into the future. Um uh, I mean, and then, you know, there's so much that I've already kind of gotten used to saying no to that really take me out of my practice. Um so, you know, I don't drink, I'm just, you know, like pretty clean living, eat well, you know, so all that stuff. Relationships are pretty healthy. Um I'm doing a lot of saying no to like, no, I'm not gonna come pick you up at school because you feel like coming home early. A lot of saying no to my kids, but otherwise, like um just the normal stuff. Normal saying no when I'm too busy to. Clients. Or if they're just it's outside of my scope, or it just doesn't, if it doesn't feel like someone I uh I'm gonna be the best fit for, I'm very, very happy to refer people out.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 30:12

So on that note, Ben, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. Really interesting hearing about you and your work at Woodstock Healing Arts, your insights on burnout, and some very good advice you've given about how you look after yourself, but how that could translate to how we can all look after ourselves, not just as practitioners, but people in society in general. So thank you so much. Um, really appreciate the conversation.

Ben Fleisher: 30:35

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.