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Our Live Better, Longer series (a thought-provoking interview series that takes a deep dive into longevity) is back with our seventh interview! Our host Kelly Stranburg, had an engaging interview with Aras Erekul, a lifestyle innovator who blends insights from holistic medicine, social sciences, and hospitality business to catalyze life-transforming programs and communal learning experiences.
As a result of his own life-threatening experience, Aras has developed a profound passion for promoting longevity through healthy lifestyle measures. His journey has taught him the importance of prioritizing well-being, and he is now dedicated to sharing his knowledge and expertise with others. Through his work, he aims to empower individuals to take control of their own health and wellness, equipping them with the tools and strategies necessary to live a long, healthy, and fulfilling life. Below are some selections from Aras’s interview (be sure to watch the video for the full interview!).
Kelly: Aris, tell our audience, who are you and what are you passionate about? Also, you have one of the most incredible personal stories I've ever heard so I think you should share that with our audience as well.
Aras: I'm from Turkey originally, and my passion in longevity started from the life-threatening part of my life. I used to be a cardiovascular surgery resident because that was the moment that I, in my youth perspective, was thinking that you could be most effective in someone's life. Like, it's literally life or death. I was training to become a heart surgeon and working 100 plus hours a week - my immune system collapsed after a year or so and started attacking my capillaries, including my retinas. I lost 50 % sight on both eyes and had to go through immunosuppressive therapy for a couple of years to revert it back. But most importantly, the ophthalmologist said, the situation was such that if I continued on that pace with tiredness, sleeplessness, stress, poor eating habits, this situation could come back in bouts and I could go blind by my thirties. So that was the gentlest nudge from the universe telling me this is not your path.
And when that happened, there were two questions for me. One, clearly, I have no idea what healthy living is about, starting with my own. And then when I started reading about “how do I find my wellbeing?” I realized that 80 % of what we were operating on could have been prevented by healthy lifestyle measures. So that brought me over to the United States to really focus on health, resort, and destination spa, development and management, because that was, and still to some extent, the nexus where the healthy living information is experimented on and is emerging and studied across the world (in the destination spas and resorts). And thankfully through integrative medicine, through functional medicine, and other modalities things are becoming more and more a part of our mainstream medical approaches as well but 20 years ago there was no such thing so I came over to the U.S. to be a part of hospitality, focusing on health.
Kelly: I love that you are willing to share that powerful story about your own journey. And I know it's probably difficult to share at times. You know, here you were this well-trained physician in cardiovascular health, and then it was impacting your own personal health and well-being. That's a powerful story to share.
Aris and I could sit here and talk about a variety of topics that we are both very passionate about when it comes to health and well-being to support an individual's longevity. But what I'd really like to talk about is community building and how community building in a workplace setting can actually support us in our personal lives. I know you've had some experience with that. Aras, can you go into a bit on why you are passionate and you know that that matters in our lives?
Aras: After coming over to the U.S. and doing graduate school, focusing on hospitality, the focus that I chose has become about “what are the components of healthy living?”, like, “what provides a healthy long life?” and the lowest hanging fruits as you have been covering on the individual level are your physical health habits. But then there is the culture that we live and breathe in, that really got stranded, especially as we witnessed globally during the COVID years and still to some extent continuing, when you are feeling disconnected. That connection could be with yourself, it could be with your community, it could be with nature and the divine in general, but in whichever way that one feels disconnected, then it starts a downward spiral. We are an ecosystem within ourselves that every part of us is connected to other parts. Our physical bodies are intimately related to our mental well-being and emotions, and that is intimately related to our community and family and friends and workplaces.
The place that I started was from the workplace because during COVID we were supporting 65 communities across the United States in 21 states, and with the workload and also the care for wanting to keep our residents safe and alive, the leadership teams (executive directors and managing directors) were really overtaxing themselves and starting to fall apart. And not that they were trying to, or not that they weren't doing their best, it just was simply an overwhelming situation and when things hit the most important thing is to be able to check in and support each other. That turned my attention into how do you build community and show up authentically, vulnerably with your truth in the workplace, so that you can move forward together as a team rather than pretend that things are all okay when things are not okay. How do you call it out and then how do you from there circle back to the service at hand that you are wanting to provide?
I also had the ability to observe in my personal life how relevant it was because leadership in a workplace setting is just one role that we play. But in our lives, we are the leaders of our own lives and we play multiple roles and in other people's lives, whether as a parent or as a child or as a sister or as a friend, it really doesn't stop in workplace. So, from there, my perspective has broadened into “what are the things that we can do in order to really show up for ourselves and for others to support each other's well-being?”.
Kelly: So, we hear this term often as “work-life balance”. I think sometimes when you hear “work-life balance”, you think here's work and here's life. I am of the mindset that they're intertwined. Our personal lives can impact us at work and what's going on at work impacts our personal lives. So, to try and separate them into two buckets is pretty challenging. How do you feel about that?
Aras: Yes, I'm with you. They cannot be separated. The important thing is for one to recognize their personal balance point. Being from a medical and metrics focused background, these days I work with the measurement system called “Be Well, Lead Well Pulse”. And what we measure is thriving in individual lives. So, “how do you thrive within yourself?”. And then, through 132 questions over 20 minutes we compare leaders’ well-being with 3,500 other leaders from North America and Europe. It comes down to “what is your personal balance point that you feel comfortable managing in your life?”.
We start with the stressors (it changes, it's a snapshot, nobody is a single frame and we are all dynamic), and the thing that comes up to me most vividly is a sailboat. Think of stressors in life as winds coming our way. It could be from work, it could be from personal life, it could be from within ourselves - certain dynamics like memories and emotions coming up when, without stressors, we do not move forward in life, it really is like the wind. We do need them. We have this unrealistic expectation, maybe set by the media, that a no-stress life is a good life. I don't agree with that because if you define stress as something that motivates you to do something, we do need that. However, just like the sailing analogy, there are good winds and then there are storm winds and there are hurricanes. So, to recognize what is happening in your outside environment, and to take the right stance for navigating your life is the most important approach. And that comes with recognizing where you are as an individual internally, and then where other people are around you, from a workplace point of view, but also personal life point of view.
Kelly: What is one simple tip that you would like to share with our audience that either they can easily embrace or adopt, or they can even use with the clients that they work with just to get started towards a path of longevity and wellbeing.
Aras: Recognizing that there are multiple parts of us within us, and acknowledging each of those parts, whichever is at the surface, is a big way to land in the moment so that you can share the biggest gift that you can share with anyone that you're with, which is your presence of who you truly are, which is unique just to you. So, from my end, the easiest way to access it is through box breathing. You exhale fully first, and then inhale as deep as you can, counting to five, hold it for five, exhale for five, and then hold it again five. So, it basically completes a box. When you do this three times (it usually takes about around a minute) it really resets your whole attitude. It is a normalizer, equalizer and grounding exercise that you can do with your loved ones to enjoy their presence more, or leaning into difficult conversations, or calm your anxiety if you are about to jump on a conversation where other people will be watching and you want to really share the best that you're able to. Whatever it is going on, bringing yourself to this moment through as simple of a practice as a minute is the gateway to know more of yourself and of the world.
For more insights and tips from experts and thought leaders in the health and wellness industry, be sure to check out our interviews with Michele Wong of Active Wellness, Anna Hall of the Purpose Equation, Mike Studer, Eric Levitan of Vivo, Tony Galvan of Vi Living and Kevin Jardine of FPR - Longevity. It's always eye-opening to hear different perspectives and stories in the field!