I was recently interviewing a man who had spent four years studying in Nepal under Dr. Naram, the same doctor who has treated the Dalai Lama. He was a Nepalese healer known for what could only be described as miracles.
This man — a researcher by trade — sought out the doctor because he was skeptical. He wanted to disprove the whole thing. So he watched, studied, and kept his disbelief close. Even when he saw this doctor spending six, maybe ten minutes with each patient, and how they walked out changed... he still couldn’t believe it.
Until he got desperate enough to bring his father, who had an incurable terminal diagnosis, for treatment.
He sat in the waiting room thinking: I’m wasting my time here. This is not possible. He can’t help my dad.
And then his father walked out... with light in his eyes, a pep in his step, and a spirit that hadn’t moved through him since when he was healthy. He walked out of that room believing, for the first time, that he was going to heal.
It took his father six months to heal completely.
When this man asked Dr. Naram how — how was this possible? — the answer had nothing to do with medicine, or technique, or even his years of training.
Dr. Naram told him that his father had arrived having already lost hope. He had been seen by doctor after doctor who looked at the broken parts and declared them in need of fixing. The story he had been handed was that he was a collection of problems.
Whereas Dr. Naram saw this man as whole.
Yes, there was illness. Yes, there was imbalance. But the imbalance existed inside a wholeness that had never actually left. And when his father walked into that room, he felt that. He felt seen, understood, and received in that.
This man told me that Dr. Naram had turned to him and asked:
“Do you know what the greatest human need is?”
The man said, “well — it’s love, isn’t it?”
The doctor shook his head and laughed. It’s close enough. It’s up there. But our greatest need?
Is to be understood.
When I heard that, chills ran down my spine.
I saw myself in it immediately. I saw my clients in it. I saw my entire body of work in it.
I saw all the times I cried out for love. All the moments I relapsed into old patterns and behaviors — anger, disconnection, feeling unlovable, feeling unworthy. And yes, there were people who were giving me love. But what I actually needed in those moments was for someone to see me. To understand me.
Have you noticed how your entire nervous system exhales, when you feel you’ve been understood?
That’s what Dr. Naram gave people: not a diagnosis, not a treatment plan — he simply saw them as whole, and they felt that.
It’s what shifted my own coaching practice, too. The work was never really about fixing people or solving their problems. It was about seeing them in their wholeness and supporting them to remember it. And when that’s what you bring into a room — not problem-solving energy, but genuine seeing — something changes. People feel it. They exhale and the energy that was previously stuck, can finally move through.
(There’s a thread here that connects directly to what happens when you’re in a high-stakes conversation and you lose yourself — I wrote about that in The Skill That Will Save Every Relationship: The Lost Art of Human Connection, and it’s worth reading alongside this one.)
In the audio, I go into where this pattern shows up in leadership specifically — the meetings where someone’s agenda is really a cry to be understood, the feedback conversations that go sideways because both people are waiting to be seen before they can actually hear. I share the specific shift that has changed how I navigate those moments... and what happens in the room when a leader stops trying to fix and starts trying to genuinely understand.
If you’ve ever left an important conversation wondering why it went wrong despite your best intentions... this is for you. And this work is also deeply connected to what I explore in The Real Cost of Not Being Understood — worth reading alongside this one.
And yes, it requires something... It requires that you can be present enough to hold it.
This transmission is for the leader who knows how to perform presence, but is ready to actually live there.
TAKEAWAY: You can't demand to be understood. But the next time someone shuts down or gets reactive, try this instead: stop trying to get your point across, and get curious about what they actually need to feel heard. Watch what changes.
Articulate: You have a vision. A book, a stage, a movement, a room you need to lead differently. But when you open your mouth to communicate, it doesn’t quite come out the way it lives inside you. This cohort is where you learn to speak from the place that actually moves people and carries your vision forward. Learn more.
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