Welcome to the heart-led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let's go. Let your heart guide your business journey.

It's with a dollop of delight, let me disclose, it's the queen of coherence herself, the fabulous and forward thinking founder of Quantum Clinic, the mentally magical maestro with a mental health halo, Dr. Katelyn Lehman. Get set folks for a captivating conversation. We're diving deep into her heart of her harmonious business venture unfolding her unique unison of both mind, body, and spirit sprinkled with a splash of soul right here on the heart led business show. Katelyn, welcome to the show.

Thank you so for having me.

I'm delighted to have this conversation with you today. I love everything that you're doing and we're going to get really deep into it. I'm sure, especially the balance between having a heart-led business and having a business. But first what is your definition of a heart-led business?

All right. I'm sure so many people answer this question in so many different ways, which is one of the things that makes the podcast special. but for me, what I would say when it comes to, how do I define a heart-led business, It's something that integrates more of a spiritual calling or a purpose or a mission driven heart-led or heart-centered aspiration or concept with the actual kind of day to day more logical operational functions.

Love that actually, I think that is the first definition that has both combined the heart piece of it, the purpose piece, the kind of purpose of people and the desire that people have of running a business with. The aspect of the business side of it. So thank you for combining that because it is important about what your business is and what inspired you to start it.

Sure. So Quantum Clinic is really a community mental health center. We're located in Los Angeles, just north of downtown in a beautiful little area called Elysian Valley. The word Elysian means heaven sent. And actually it's a really sweet community on the historic Los Angeles River. So there's a lot of community, organic community in the neighborhood, both small business and residential makes it special and unique in, in this urban metropolis. And yeah, so I come from a background in clinical psychology. I've worked in various. Community mental health and dual diagnosis treatment facilities, as well as forensic settings in my career. And, I suppose had taken some time off just prior to the pandemic when I had my son. And so as the pandemic was coming to an end and as he was, starting to be of the age where, you know he would, we would be thinking about putting him in preschool and things like that. I, Started asking myself, okay what would I like to do? How would I like to be of service? Asking not only myself, but my community. At the time I was enrolled in a business analytics program through the Harvard business school. And I just was learning a little bit more about the business side because certainly, As somebody with a background in clinical psychology, the heart side comes really naturally to me. Empathy positive regard, really genuine care for humans and their well being and, how can we improve this thing called life? But the business side was something I needed to learn and something I was excited to learn. Come from a pretty entrepreneurial family myself. Just decided to put existing, empirically based interventions together under one umbrella. And Quantum Clinic really is a model of preventative mental health care where we're moving the needle, so to speak, in terms of the development of healthcare systems to support whole health and human functioning, rather than The treatment of mental disease which is actually a big paradigm shift in our field, though. There's a call for, preventative care models and interventions to support people's well being ultimately how our, reimbursement systems and provider and payer network relationships are developed, are rooted in, the presence of a diagnosable disease, which warrants a treatment, right? So we're challenging that paradigm and saying, look, this is an empirically based service offering, which supports people in op, functioning optimally and, integrating psychological and emotional experiences that they've been through. Don't see necessarily that it has to be positioned as a treatment for mental disease because lots of people many different points in time in their life, go through adversity and stress and, stress and inflammation are attributable for, I think it's something like 98 percent of all disease. Yeah, so that, that's a little bit about it. we're excited.

That's great. And where did the name Quantum Clinic come from?

That, that's a great question. So I have always had a lifelong fascination with the intersection of science and spirituality. And the quantum realm or, from quantum physics, right? As that operates or moves through us arises in the form of sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts. So as, people who work with people our role and our, how we intervene with others is through that, right? Through what arises in people when they are given an experience to connect with their heart, and to truly rest certain I guess maybe use a big word here, but like phenomenal experiences arise within them. It they make meaning of that right through their, ability to interpret, to assign good, bad, or neutral to certain experiences. And ultimately that is always changing. But there's a lot of science looking at, the science of coherence and what that does for health and human functioning and. Quantum Clinic is like a it was a word and a website that was available. Hey that evokes that for folks.

Okay. Is taking a quantum leap part of that?

Absolutely. I think that's it's cute. I like that the quantum leap people think of quantum, like a quantum leap is a really big change, but it's really small change. And cumulatively the, all of these very small changes that we make in our lives what contribute to the bigger changes. And the more transformative radical outcomes that are possible when you begin to focus on. Yeah, absolutely. And part of my moniker in, in my coaching business is that I'm the impact pilot. And I am a. airplane pilot, single engine. But one thing that they teach us is, always checking your coordinates of the destination that you're going. Because if you start off in Chicago, going to LA, but you're off by just one degree, you'll end up in San Francisco or Mexico. Yeah, because the point of origin bifurcates dramatically

Yeah. And it's the same for business and life. If you don't keep navigating properly to the right coordinates, you're going to be off by hundreds and hundreds of miles at the end of a year, two years, 10 years or things like that. Yeah. So I like that. That definition is really cool. The quantum piece. And part of what, when you were talking about, not being a diagnosable mental illness, that takes me back to just, DSM, whatever we're up to. So five, okay. So you don't need to necessarily. Have a DSM diagnosis to then work with you in terms of that mental.

And I think it is such a, there's so much stigma associated with addressing. Our mental and emotional experience, of how I perceive it as somebody who is in this field and, in California, right? The hippies and all that stuff, right? We're a little bit more open to, alternative Ways of experiencing ourselves and that is the stereotype associated with California for sure. But despite that, I think there, there's a real yearning right now in our collective for spaces and places where we can come together in community to process this experience that we've all been through. This is, these are unprecedented times in many different ways, both geopolitically, environmentally, culturally, there's so much. But, in, in our, in the culture, In the broad, in the broader cultural context, there's a lot of change happening, right? Massive change, AI, the digitization of most everything, right? Including this conversation, right? yeah, so it's and we as human beings don't necessarily have the capacity or the some people talk about it, how we have 21st second technology 19th century psychology, right? Like we're still at the level of the human, we haven't really evolved that much to be able to steward this. advance that we're seeing on the planet with integrity and with the kind of foresight and wisdom truly that I think is necessary for us to be able to navigate this hurdle. Where, in some regards it feels like we're running towards the end of a cliff towards our own extinction event.

And it seems too that, we have that primal brain has not evolved as well. And so we're constantly in this fight or flight that there's a saber toothed tiger behind us, but there isn't. It's You know, somebody that's bullying us or something like that, rather than that's actually going to kill us.

Or actually it can just be there's, when we talk about it from the psychological perspective, it's perceived threat. The brain actually cannot differentiate. And again, the brain is not the generator of our experience. It's more of a receiver of this, quantum foam, so to speak, the fluctuations in this quantum foam, but our body mind, the more primal parts of our brain actually cannot differentiate between imaginary and real experience. So lies the underlying. Of our intervention with Quantum Clinic is it's about facilitating entrainment into that state of what's called coherence, which is, when the heart and the brain actually are operating in harmony with one another, biophysiological energetically neurologically kept neurochemically it, it creates a cascading effect where then the. The cortical regions of the brain can begin to, be online, right? And the sort of more primal or reptilian parts of our brain become regulated through the afferent traffic, the traffic of information and energy flow that comes from the heart to the brain, and then creates that sort of down regulating effect in the central nervous system. Because so many of us run around. In this sort of frenetic, only up here in our mind space, a big part of the intervention is how do we then bring people back into their bodies? yeah and, there's nothing revolutionary about that. You talk to any, psychologist or master's level clinician they're, this is what we do with folks, right? But our position really with Quantum Clinic is that It should be conceived of and accepted within the broader, healthcare system as as a wellness benefit, right? As something that should be accessible, affordable, and

Available too.

Available. Yeah.

Interesting. Episode 60, which was with Dr. Rob Kelly. He was talking about a very similar type of just that connection of the heart and the brain and, we're programmed from early age trauma to each and even generational trauma, like trauma that happened to our parents before. And it's that first thing in the morning, you talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed, it doesn't have to be that way. And we can reprogram ourselves.

Yes. And that's really what's so beautiful about the science of plasticity, right? Or neuroplasticity is just that how malleable we are as human beings when we allow ourselves space to begin to do that process. But it's not something that can be imposed on us, right? It's not something that can be swallowed. Like a pill, metaphorically, we can talk about these changes as something that need to be transmuted or digested and move through us. That is true, but it has to come from within. Truly, it has to come from an individual who says, you know what? isn't working for me anymore. This old way that I learned my ancestors and my family and my life experience it's not working. And so I want to be the person who can show up to create those changes inside of myself. And, so there's this delicate dance that we do around, space for what is possible while also modeling that, it is a practice. It's not just something that you can.

Take a shot. Yeah.

poof! exactly.

So how do you balance then doing this great work and still making a profit and running a business?

I'll be just be transparent. We're very much in an early growth stage. So we have investment and we're working towards developing those relationships with payers. Yeah. later today, I'll be presenting to the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health service area for leadership team, right? We have a proposal in with them. Tomorrow, I'm speaking with the payments innovation team at medicare and Medicaid. And, thank you. We, I, my role really is to, to be an advocate for this type of prevention based service and to build that network. We are in a position where our direct consumer growth has been steady and we're very proud of the impact and the outcomes that we've seen in our first just shy of 2 years of business. But we. are, still, there's still room for growth. And certainly with a business model like ours it is predi its success is predicated on our ability to establish these relationships with payers. and so we're doing that. And, we'll see how it goes. It's yet to be determined. One of the, one of the things that I think is really unique about what we offer is that flotation therapy, which is our core service. We combine elements of biofeedback training and also expressive arts in our space. But flotation therapy was actually developed at the National Institute for Mental Health back in the 1950s by a guy named Dr. John Lilly, who was a neurologist who was also happened to be psychoanalytically trained. And so there was this whole movement towards an understanding of consciousness and how healing can be promoted through an exploration of like our inner environment, right? And yet therapy as a as an intervention it's very popular, like in, it's on TV shows and, in movies and stuff like that it sits outside of the realm of what's traditionally conceived of as a mental health intervention, right? Because I'm not doing something to you, right? That's the model of psychotherapy, right? Like I, I, as the all knowing wise clinician am supposed to use my knowledge and superior education to you, the person who is suffering with anxiety, to then intervene with my language in such a way that you then develop the awareness. Inside of your own self and somehow feel better, that's how we think of mental health treatment. and actually coming from a family of psychologists and, becoming one myself, I'm like, Oh my goodness. How interesting, because really it's more about in my own personal journey and experience, has provided these services, but also received them. Like it's about the relationship. Yeah. It's about being held and supported. And it's that's something that we all need to learn to do ourselves. We need to learn to become that, supportive inner voice that more loving and compassionate and forgiving. Person inside of our own heart and mind. And that's not something that I can do for you. You have to do it for yourself. So we provide the space for you to do that work and are here to support and love and, listen and presence for folks. But I digress. It's interesting. It's an interesting journey.

Yeah. So are you still working within the insurance realm or is this outside of insurance?

Right now we're all private pay. We do accept HSA and FSA spending accounts. So this is pre tax dollars that often, know, employers you can sign up for through your employer. So we do accept HSA and FSA accounts. And, and, we recently underwent an accreditation process and all these things take time to build those relationships with employers. So, we're working towards it.

So is the flotation tank, is that a primary piece of the care then? To just, and is that, and I've not been in one, but I've always been just fascinated by it, but just the lack of sensation, right? So it's completely dark or somewhat.

So yeah, in sort of the imagination of the user, it's often this like austere, completely dark and silent environment. And you can go come to Quantum Clinic and have an experience that is similar to that. But in our facility, these are really luxurious, spacious, six and a half feet long by four feet wide. Yeah. Cabins with a foot and a half of highly salinated water. The water is kept at body temperature. You do have some user choice as to whether or not you'd like a low red light or some twinkle in the sky. yes lovely design feature. Some people are understandably a little bit like, Oh my gosh, what am I going to find when I. close my eyes and go inside, right? So having the option to have some lights on that, but that when you close your eyes, you may not be aware of them is important for some folks. And then we play sounds. We play frequencies in the tanks. Just. to support brainwave entrainment and allowing people to access deeper states of relaxation. But yeah, so the experience is unique every single time. I myself float about once a month is a good cadence for me. but really there's a lot, there's a lot happening when you come to Quantum Clinic on the front end, in terms of our educating people on the concepts behind heart brain coherence. We do a guided biofeedback driven meditation. And then really the encouragement and the invitation to folks is to continue that practice while they're floating. and that's really remarkable what comes up for folks. We deal with all sorts of issues from, trauma. I recently worked with somebody who expressed claustrophobia.

And we're amazing that they were able to do that in the confined.

Yeah. Yeah. Her case was admittedly, I would say mild to moderate, but again, she came in with a desire to confront this irrational fear. She, people who have claustrophobia often know that it's irrational that they're afraid of enclosed spaces. And, but they just don't quite feel capable of confronting that. And if you read about the treatment of claustrophobia, actually, the gold standard is exposure with response prevention, is what we do. So we do work with people in that way. And then, just, we also get like couples who want to come in for a date night. Because we have couples tanks on the other, the opposite side, we get a lot of expectant mothers, especially in the 3rd trimester, because it's really wonderful place to just connect with your heart and with your unborn baby. But also takes away the. The, the effect of gravity on the body. So it, it feels really nice. If you're really pregnant and you want to lay in a salt pool, that's a nice experience. So we get it's a real, it's really sweet to see how we get the whole the whole range of human experience come through.

You ever pipe in self talk or is it just the frequency?

No, we're not doing, we're not doing verbal instruction. Actually, there is in the very beginning before the frequencies cue the invitation to again, focus on the energetic center of your heart, to a life affirming or positive emotional state and imagine that energy radiating throughout the body. is a technique called focus, activate, radiate, which we're working with people shift their physiology, right? and so that's the invitation that's, that comes on in the beginning, but then the sounds kick on and those are very intentionally and specifically designed support, hemispheric synchronization in the brain and promoting that sense of deep relaxation and surrender. then we play the tones of the chakras to wake them up. And then we play frequencies associated with psycho emotional processing, letting go of the past frequencies.

What's the frequency that's really popular? Is it like 4, 4, 4 32? So I play that every once while in my office when I'm doing not deep work, but like when I want to trade on something and it works so great. So much done today.

and we think of it as oh my god, it's this really, like it's like silly. We're all secretly doing it. But then we feel woo for talking about it's very powerful. Sound is being used, like at UC San Diego, it's being used to ablate tumors. Ultrasound, in Western medicine, they often, sound is used often in the non audible range for various things. Many, different procedures use that, but very few, it's not really been adopted in the audible range. And that's what we're doing, right? We're saying there is. there is actually benefit to the application of auditory frequency protocols that you can hear and feel right. And having a, have a connection to and there's lots of science to, or literature to, to support that, but it's not it's not well understood in context of our traditional western...

Yeah, no doubt. So I want to go back. We were getting close to the time, but I have one question here that I wrote down earlier. You said that you came from a family of entrepreneurs. How did that shape? You're starting this business, right?

How did it not, my, my dad's dad had a a small business layman, layman and sons where they sold. to restaurants in the Midwest, right? So the refrigerators and the ovens and the, the things that was their business. So he came by that. And then he, he's the only 1 in of his brothers who went to college and, became a CPA and was very successful in Silicon Valley. When I was growing up in business. And so I had that modeled for me that through, work ethic and, consistency and determination and discipline these are not necessarily associated with qualities of the heart, but, discipline, waking up every morning and committing to, to an activity and to focusing yourself relentlessly. Towards that aim, in the service of supporting others in the service of creating something for the greater good, I think is incredibly powerful. Yeah, that, that's, been a big part of my journey is having that modeled for me. And then also the the kind of continued support.

That's awesome. And that it was heart led back then as well. It sounds like, yeah, others. Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah. That makes sense that it comes down. That's beautiful. Awesome. How can people learn more about Quantum Clinic and the great work that you're doing there?

Sure. So you can definitely check us out at quantumclinic.com. We're on all the social media handles at Quantum Clinic USA. a YouTube channel, but if you go to the website quantumclinic. com, you can find all of our handles. And then for me personally, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook at drkatelynlehman.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Katelyn, for coming onto the show and sharing your expertise with everybody. I certainly appreciate it. I know our listeners appreciate it as well. So thank you very much for that. You're welcome. And thank you listeners and watchers of the show for tuning in today. I, we really appreciate it and make sure you're checking out everything that Caitlin's doing. And we've provided all of those resources down in the show notes. So make sure you're checking that out. And if you could do me a solid favor, and that would be to give the show a rating and review that helps spread the word about the show and helps other find it and get the help that they need for starting a heart led business. Just like Katelyn has done as well. So until next time lead with your heart.

You've been listening to the Heart Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.