Laugh Your Way Out of Burnout: Dr. Rashmi Schramm’s Radical Path to Physician Wellness
Episode Description
What happens when a dedicated family physician hits burnout after 22 years in practice?
Dr. Rashmi Schramm opens up about her path from residency activism (securing a 15% raise for her program) through deep burnout, physical symptoms, and eventual transition to coaching, retreats, and teaching meditation and laughter yoga. The conversation covers arrival fallacy, the power of mindfulness practices rooted in her Indian heritage and Ayurveda, laughter yoga’s origins, Duke’s integrative health coaching program, and creating safe spaces for women physicians through retreats.
You’ll hear how they:
- Recognize and address burnout through self-compassion, meditation, and somatic practices
- Use laughter yoga and breathwork as accessible tools for physiological shifts
- Bridge clinical medicine with coaching and integrative approaches
- Build community and intuition to sustain change-making work in healthcare
About the Guest
“Remember who you are beneath the roles.” – Dr. Rashmi Schramm
Dr. Rashmi Schramm is a board-certified family medicine physician with 22 years of clinical experience. She is a certified coach, meditation teacher, laughter yoga instructor, and host of the Inner Peace and Power podcast. Passionate about helping high-achieving women reclaim energy and purpose, she leads retreats and coaching programs focused on mindfulness, intuition, and wholehearted living.
📍 Connect with Rashmi
Website: rashmischramm.com
Podcast: Inner Peace and Power
LinkedIn: Rashmi Schramm, MD
🔗 Resources Mentioned
Inner Peace and Power Podcast: Hosted by Dr. Rashmi Schramm
Laughter Yoga – Founded by Dr. Madan Kataria
Polishing the Mirror by Ram Dass
🔑 Top 3 Key Takeaways
- Build a Daily Witness Practice: Start and end your day with movement + meditation (even 10 minutes). When stress hits, pause, place your hand on your heart, and ask: “What am I witnessing right now?” This creates space between stimulus and reaction, reduces emotional reactivity, and reconnects you with intuition—essential for sustainable change-making in medicine.
- Use Laughter Yoga for Quick Physiological Reset: Try 5 minutes of laughter yoga daily: fake laugh with breathwork and light movement until it becomes real. It lowers stress hormones, opens your diaphragm, and shifts your nervous system. Great for busy clinicians—do it solo or with your team during a quick huddle. Childlike curiosity is the only requirement.
- Invest in Self-Compassion Training: Treat self-compassion as a core clinical skill. If medical education included a 6-week self-compassion course, it would dramatically reduce burnout. Start small: notice your inner critic during a tough shift and respond with the same kindness you’d offer a patient or colleague. Small acts compound into resilience.
🩺 About the Host:
Dr. Andrea Austin is a board-certified emergency physician, educator, and passionate advocate for system-level change in healthcare. As the creator and host of Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare, Dr. Austin brings curiosity, compassion, and bold honesty to conversations with leaders who are challenging the norms and reshaping medicine from the inside out.
With decades of experience in high-pressure clinical environments, Andrea has seen firsthand the cracks in the system—and the people working to repair them. Whether she’s mentoring residents, speaking on national stages, or recording with a fellow disruptor, she centers one theme: change doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens heart to heart.
💫 About the Show:
Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare isn’t just a podcast—it’s a pulse check on what’s possible.
Hosted by emergency physician and educator Dr. Andrea Austin, Heartline features conversations with healthcare leaders, innovators, and quiet disruptors who are challenging the way things have always been done.
Each episode explores real stories of change—from redefining leadership and communication, to reimagining systems built on burnout and hierarchy. This is a space for truth-telling, for asking better questions, and for reconnecting with the reason we all got into medicine in the first place: to make it better.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about progress—with heart.
Follow Your Heartline and transform healthcare today!
🎓 Upcoming Events & Opportunities
- 🔥 Recalibrate: Group Coaching for Physicians
Starting 2026, I’ll be co-leading Recalibrate with psychologist and coach Sharee Johnson. This 6-month group coaching program supports physicians in rediscovering mindfulness, meaning, and wholehearted practice. I'm an alum myself—this program transformed my career. Learn more and enroll here, and please share with colleagues who may benefit.
o Join us for this incredible one of a one-of-a-kind event in the heart of Australia at one of our most spectacular locations—Voyagers Resort in Central Australia in 2026.
o Learn from some of the world's medical leaders in compassionate care, and how heart-centered healthcare can empower and heal healthcare workers and their patients.
o For: Doctors, Nurses, Allied Health Clinicians, Healthcare Leaders,
Coaches and Supervisors of Medics, Patient Advocates and all healthcare workers.
o When: 29-31 July 2026
Where: Voyages Ayers Rock Resort, Central Australia
- Women in Medicine Summit | Chicago, Sept 24-26, 2026
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🎧 Thanks for tuning into Heartline: Changemaking in Healthcare!
🌟 Learn more and book a free discovery call today at andreaaustinmd.com/coaching.
Stay connected and keep making a difference:
✅ Subscribe to the Heartline newsletter for insights into reclaiming your well-being as a healthcare professional, improving teams around you, and transforming the system.
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📚Discover Dr. Austin’s book Revitalized: A Guidebook to Following Your Healing Heartline.
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