A Note from Dr. Priya Rao, Host
I created Open Heart because I felt a deep inner call, one that grew out of years of listening, both in hospital rooms and in the quiet moments in between. As an interventional and structural cardiologist, I’ve experienced firsthand how modern medicine can save lives. I’ve also seen where it leaves room for growth, where the human spirit, intuition, and emotional truth are urgently needed in our paradigm of healing.
This podcast is my way of weaving those missing pieces back in. Through curiosity-driven dialogue and creative storytelling, Open Heart is a space for honest conversations with doctors, healers, and wisdom keepers from all walks of life. It is where science meets soul. My hope is that it serves as a mirror, a balm, and a spark for something greater.
I am a second-generation interventional cardiologist and one generation removed from a family of farmers in India. That lineage shaped my worldview with precision and rigor on one hand, intuition and ancestral wisdom on the other. My own spiritual reconnection did not happen outside of medicine. It happened within it, in the catheterization lab.
In the midst of high-risk cardiac procedures, I experienced moments of stillness, meditative in nature, where intuition became my guide. I witnessed patients describe near-death experiences, surgical teams moving in unspoken harmony, and dreams arriving as premonitions. These moments revealed another dimension of medicine, subtle, mysterious, but no less real.
That awareness came with a cost. Like many, I faced burnout and the moral injury of working within a system that can feel depersonalized and misaligned. That rupture forced me to ask, what does it really mean to heal?
Today, I honor both the precision of Western medicine and the depth of ancient traditions. I believe healing is multidimensional, rooted in a “this and that” philosophy that embraces science and spirit, body and soul, seen and unseen.
For years, I wrestled with the fear of being fully seen. Over time, I’ve come to understand the quiet power of authenticity and the necessity of offering our soul-level gifts to the world. I now show up as all of who I am, physician, yoga teacher, intentional model, and podcast host.
Open Heart began as a self-funded passion project, a soul-led experiment in truth-telling, healing, and honoring what often goes unspoken in medicine. As we carry this platform into its next phase, I warmly welcome support from our community to help it grow and reach those who need it most.
This is my invitation to you. Arrive with an open mind and an open heart, take what resonates, and share it forward so together we create ripples of healing throughout humanity. I also invite you to share your thoughts here. This is a safe space for reflection, dialogue, and connection.
With Love,
Priya
