Wendy Dainin Lau, MD: Learning to Unlearn

Dr. Wendy Dainin Lau speaks about her journey from working as an Emergency Medicine physician in some of New York’s busiest hospitals to living at the Prajna Mountain Refuge with Roshi Joan Halifax, travelling to Nepal with Upaya’s Nomad’s Clinic (of which she is now co-director), and ordaining as a Zen priest. For Dainin, the path has been one of unlearning: unlearning what her socio-cultural conditioning has taught her about what it means to be in a female body; what it means to be a daughter; what it means to be “spiritual”; and what it means to be a healer. Dainin discusses the fear that can arise in these liminal spaces of unlearning in which some of our most cherished identities are in flux. She encourages us to continue practicing through these intense and transformative experiences, and to not isolate ourselves but share what we’re going through with a teacher or trusted friend. The practice of unlearning can be (and very often is) painful; and yet it’s only through this shedding of what we already know that we can learn who we really are.