In this episode of Open Heart, Priya Rao, MD sits down with Pavla Haluskova, a yoga teacher and intimacy guide whose work focuses on nervous system safety, embodiment, and honest self-expression.

Together, they explore why intimacy feels harder than it should, even for people who are competent, accomplished, and deeply self-aware.

In this conversation, they explore:

■ Why so many people feel disconnected from their own desires, even in close relationships

■ How professional training and high-pressure environments can quietly shape how we relate to our bodies

■ The ways people learn to make themselves smaller to stay safe, wanted, or accepted

■ How intimacy breaks down when the nervous system is overwhelmed or on guard

■ What it can feel like to lose access to aliveness without realizing it

■ Why talking about intimacy often brings up shame, fear, or avoidance rather than clarity

■ How slowing down and paying attention to the body can surface needs we did not know we had

Pavla Haluskova works at the intersection of body awareness, nervous system regulation, and relational honesty. Her perspective is grounded in lived experience with people who feel outwardly capable but inwardly disconnected. In this conversation, she offers language for experiences many people recognize but rarely articulate, especially around intimacy, safety, and self-expression.

Follow Pavla Haluskova

Website: https://www.pavlayoga.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unleashthefeminine_pavla

Top Moments

00:00 Introduction to Sacred Sexuality

01:37 The Power of Voice and Embodiment

05:52 Challenges of Women in Hyper-Masculine Fields

08:01 Understanding Masculine and Feminine Energies

14:58 Nervous System and Trauma Work

20:01 The Role of Safety in Intimacy

27:16 Transcending Relationship with Emotions

28:33 Differentiating Wants and Desires

30:43 Reclaiming Sexuality and Soul Calling

34:18 Intimacy and Childhood Conditioning

38:48 Opening to Sensuality and Presence

40:51 Living with an Open Heart

44:48 Connecting with Ancestral Wisdom

47:31 Embracing Purpose and Sharing

Hosted by Priya Rao, MD

Website: https://www.openheartpodcast.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/priyaraomd

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyaraomd

Open Heart is a space for grounded conversations about where systems, training, and conventional frameworks fall short of lived human experience. The show explores what happens when logic, competence, and achievement no longer explain everything we feel.

Many people sense that something is missing in how they relate to themselves and others, but they do not have clear language for it. This conversation does not offer fixes or formulas. It offers recognition. It sits with the tension between capability and disconnection, and invites curiosity about what intimacy might require when safety, presence, and honesty are brought back into the room.

Subscribe to Open Heart with Priya Rao, MD for grounded conversations with people who are curious about intuition, meaning, and different ways of understanding healing and human experience.

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Hosted by Priya Rao, MD, this episode features Dr. Kerri Glasner, a gastroenterologist diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and often fatal bile duct cancer.

They examine what it means to face a life-threatening cancer diagnosis as a physician and how surviving a liver transplant reshaped how she practices medicine, understands pain, and lives her life.

What’s Covered in This Episode:

◼️ Being diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma as a young physician

◼️ Understanding your own cancer prognosis through medical training

◼️ Chemotherapy, radiation, and qualifying for a liver transplant

◼️ ICU complications, extreme pain, and not being believed

◼️ Loss of control and vulnerability after becoming the patient

◼️ Returning to clinical work before being ready

◼️ Medical PTSD and avoidance after critical illness

◼️ Leaving an academic role after surviving cancer

◼️ Reprioritizing family, time, and work after facing mortality

◼️ How surviving cancer changed how she practices medicine

Jump to Key Moments

00:00 — Diagnosing bile duct cancer as a physician

03:00 — Prognosis and treatment decisions

11:40 — Chemotherapy, radiation, and transplant eligibility

16:50 — ICU trauma and loss of control

22:15 — Severe pain and not being believed

27:45 — How illness changed her medical practice

31:00 — Leaving an academic role after trauma

36:15 — Returning to work too soon

41:30 — Belief, survival, and meaning

45:45 — What living with an open heart means now

In this conversation, Kerri shares what it was like to receive that diagnosis as a physician and new mother, fully understanding the prognosis from her medical training. She walks through undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, qualifying for a liver transplant that most patients with cholangiocarcinoma never reach, and surviving a complex surgery that included a liver transplant and a Whipple procedure.

Kerri describes the complications that followed, including liver necrosis, pancreatic leaks, prolonged ICU care, and severe postoperative pain. She speaks candidly about being told her pain was “out of proportion,” the loss of control that comes with critical illness, and how different the patient experience feels when you are on the other side of the bed.

The conversation also explores what happens after survival. Returning to clinical work before fully recovering. The quiet pressure physicians feel to function as if nothing happened. Medical trauma and avoidance after time in the ICU. Why going back to the same institution where the trauma occurred can be destabilizing. How becoming a patient changed the way she listens to pain, intuition, and fear in her own patients.

Kerri also shares the life changes she made after surviving cancer, including leaving an academic role, moving closer to family, working fewer days, and redefining what matters most. She reflects on faith, uncertainty, intuition, and what it means to live with an open heart after facing mortality.

This is the first time Kerri has shared her story publicly.

Hosted by Priya Rao, MD.

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Website: https://openheartpodcast.com/

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EECP is one of the most evidence-backed therapies in cardiology that many physicians still don’t fully understand, and even fewer feel confident explaining to patients.

Guest & Resources:

Michael Gratch - Founder & CEO, Flow Therapy

Website: https://flowtherapy.com/about-us/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gratch-8557266/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/flow-therapy-eecp/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/flowtherapyeecp/

https://www.instagram.com/mbgratch/

X (Twitter): https://x.com/FlowTherapyEECP

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlowTherapyEECP/

YouTube: @TrinityHeartCare

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Introduction to Flow Therapy

01:18 Michael Atch's Personal Journey

03:06 Founding Flow Therapy

07:12 Challenges and Triumphs

21:51 The Technology Behind Flow Therapy

26:29 Flow in Life and Medicine

26:59 Exploring Healing Modalities and Rural Medicine

27:31 Incorporating Flow State into Therapy

28:50 Biofeedback and Patient Experience

30:39 The Interrelationship of Focus and Behavior

32:36 Challenges in the Healthcare System

34:51 The Role of Food and Parenting in Health

37:15 The Impact of Stress and Emotional Health

39:41 The Influence of Technology on Society

49:13 Advice for Navigating Life's Challenges

51:56 Living with an Open Heart

In this conversation, I sit down with Michael Gratch, Founder and President of Flow Therapy, to talk about what it actually takes to build a healthcare company centered on EECP, or enhanced external counterpulsation, inside a complex medical system. Michael’s journey began with one patient, his grandfather, who had undergone multiple bypass surgeries, stents, and had no remaining revascularization options. Quality of life mattered, and there were few answers being offered.

EECP is not alternative medicine. It is a noninvasive cardiovascular therapy supported by decades of research, offered at major academic centers, and covered by Medicare. And yet, access remains limited, adoption uneven, and understanding incomplete. Michael shares how that gap between evidence and availability became the catalyst for building what is now Flow Therapy.

If you are a doctor who has ever struggled to explain EECP to a patient, questioned why effective therapies remain underutilized, or felt the strain of practicing inside a system resistant to change, this conversation will resonate.

✨ Subscribe to Open Heart with Priya Rao, MD to hear more conversations where modern medicine and spirituality meet, where we remember that healing is as much about consciousness as it is about care.

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Instagram: Instagram.com/openheartthepod

Website: https://openheartpodcast.com/

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