Meet Priya Bhasin | Occupational Therapist & Director/Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Priya Bhasin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Priya, let’s start by talking about what inspires you?
I am inspired by balance. The balance between work and play.
The balance between holistic and western medicine.
The balance between doing and being.
The balance between working preventatively and working reactively.
The balance between symptom management and treating the root cause.
The balance between researched based and clinical evidence.
The balance between individualized and standardized healthcare.
The balance between parent and child.
The balance is often not black and white.
The answers are often in the gray.
I am inspired by that gray, and how I can make it feel gray for my clients.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Hi, I’m Priya and I’m the owner and founder of Begin Balanced.

I’m a pediatric occupational therapist, former teacher, and a toddler parent. I’ve spent over 16 years helping children and families on the east and west coasts live full and happy lives through holistic therapy, coaching, and education.

Year after year, I’ve helped children overcome major issues with attention, social skills, handwriting, visual-motor coordination, and more. In some cases, their challenges are innate and require ongoing management, but in many cases tackling these issues—and avoiding the precursory pitfalls—in the first two years of a child’s life can make all the difference in ensuring or restoring full function.

This realization, coupled with my own experience and insight as a parent, is why I’ve shifted my focus from playing catch-up through corrective therapies in older children, to empowering infants and new parents with the preventative tools, education, and support they need to thrive.

The services I provide to parents and babies fill the gaps in our current healthcare system that offers constant prenatal care for mom, but then drops the ball as soon as the baby arrives. Our system often fails mothers and infants in their 4th trimester and the 1st year of baby’s life. This can lead to stress, guilt, fear and late-night googling for answers.

Even as a healthcare provider, I had difficulty accessing culturally competent services I needed or having my concerns validated. I was made to feel like I was wrong. I wasted valuable time when I could have been resting, healing and chilling with baby. Instead I was feeling stressed, upset, confused and frantically googling into the night.

And you know what? The providers who told me I was “creating a problem where there wasn’t one” were wrong. There was a problem. We’re on track now, but it was an awful experience even though I had all the connections to get the right services quickly.

It’s my mission to save as many families as I can the stress we went through! And by the way, I will always address infant and maternal health together, because wellness for mom and baby are intertwined. When I was stressed out and confused about what next steps were, so was my baby.

I help parents save time researching and worrying so that they can parent infants and toddlers with more confidence. If parents want some help with tummy time, a little peace of mind about developmental milestones or your child needs a Balanced Babies OT approach for a specific concern like a “flat head” spot, torticollis, difficulty breastfeeding due to oral dysfunction, TOTs (i.e. lip or tongue ties), Begin Balanced is for them!

I have the clinical expertise, I’m a developmental specialist and I’ve been through most of these challenges myself as a new parent. I am big on a team approach while balancing the need for not having too many appointments all the time. I’ve often been called the “quarterback” of a team, helping to prioritize various services at different times, even if that means I step back for a few weeks or months so that we don’t overwhelm baby and family. What’s best for the family and child is my priority. And, I promise, I will connect you with the right provider or team if I can’t help you or something is out of my scope.

Listen, it takes a village. Many of us don’t have our village (yet), or our villages are a plane ride away. I am honored that families allow me to be part of their village so that they can spend less time worrying and more time showering, sleeping and connecting with their baby!

Here’s what sets me apart:

A holistic approach. I am committed to looking at the whole child and family, not just one aspect of function. Everything from an infant’s birth experience, to their home environment, foods they eat, and the toys and equipment they use has the potential to help or block them longer term. When you work with me, I consider all of it.

Integrated, multi-disciplinary expertise. By combining science, psychology, education, nutrition, health and wellness I am able to provide holistic, balanced services. I have the knowledge, hands-on expertise, and additional insight from being a parent myself. My background as an educator means my passion for helping children runs deep. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I’ve stayed current with latest trends and research.

Practical services, tailored to the family. By offering services one-on-one, often in a family’s home environment, I am able to integrate treatment plans into each family’s existing setup and routine. We work together to find strategies and develop tools that are practical for them and tailored to their family dynamics and values. There’s no judgement, only curiosity about how I can provide the most helpful services for each family.

Honesty and transparency. I’ll only recommend services and equipment that are necessary, and that I would use myself. I will only agree to work with a family if I think I can truly help them. I don’t want anyone to waste time or money and I will refer them to a different practitioner, specialty or service if I feel they would benefit more from working with them.

Independence is a shared goal. I provide families with lifelong tools to achieve their goals and manage difficulties. I will provide services until we decide together that our goals have been met; for a family to not require my services any more is the best outcome! Though I do love hearing from families for years to come for updates; it warms my heart to get holiday pictures and development updates sent to me from clients I worked with years ago! There is a real need for quality infant, maternal support postpartum, but nothing is more fulfilling than when a family feels ready to “fly” on their own!

Flexible working relationships. Every child and family has different needs, schedules, and preferences. That’s why I offer a variety of scheduling options, and I’m open to working with you in ways that work for you. One of my skills is to use what you have at home for therapy, so my materials are flexible too!

Here’s the bottom line: due to many changes in the world, greater use of technology, living farther from our villages of support, child development changing trajectory, kids getting more chronic illnesses, extensive use of baby gear, less movement for babies, and other factors like more people breastfeeding (and having challenges with it) – being a new parent is REALLY HARD.

However, with some education and empowerment, I believe that this generation of children and parents can “take back” development and be empowered to ask questions and challenge outdated knowledge and uninformed marketing of baby gear that they are bombarded with. We can CHANGE a generation of babies and families and give them back their health and peace of mind so that they can THRIVE!

Here’s how I got here:

I have been successfully running my business for almost 6 years. It was terrifying to take that initial leap of faith, quitting my “day job” and flying solo. It has taken hard work, late nights, mistakes, checking my ego, giving up clients who were not a good fit (and yes, that meant giving up income!), learning, learning and more learning.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I think some of the most beautiful parts of the San Francisco Bay Area are actually just outside of the city itself!

I would start by driving them north over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands for a magnificent view of the bridge.

Next stop would be Tiburon, which I think rivals the Amalfi coast and other popular destinations in Europe.

For lunch, we would hit up a local favorite, The Marshall Store which is a relaxing, quiet oyster and lunch spot on Marshall Bay. I’m nervous to share about it, because I’m worried it will get overcrowded!! But, I’m definitely a more the merrier type person, so there you go!

Other things we would do after that amazing first day in the bay:

* A farmers market; you’ll never taste fruit, veggies and meat so fresh as in California!

* The Ferry Building in San Francisco, especially on farmer’s market day!!

* Hiking at Tennessee Valley in Marin (an easy-medium mostly flat hike to the beach)

* Goat Rock – a drive up north past the city for salty air, crashing waves and unreal “am I really lucky enough to be alive” views

* A food tour:
Hawker Fare (everything is amazing, but try the crispy rice ball salad which is not a salad at all haha!)
Elephant Sushi (I recommend the Hyde Street Location and the flaming roll – comes to the table on fire and is basically the best thing you’ll ever eat!)
Chicken Rice at Rooster and Rice or Gai Chicken Rice
a sushi burrito or two at i’a poke,
KoJa kitchen for a “rice burger bun KoJa” (choose the bbq short rib koja & kamikaze fries!),
Ritu Indian Soul Food (everything; approved by my parents who are master indian food chefs themselves)
Besharam (try the Shrikhand cheesecake) where you can instagram the heck out of yourself with the amazing wall art
State Bird Provisions: I love how they come around with the most inventive items and you can decide if you want them or not – a fun experience

Some dessert:
* Vive La Tarte – I despise cheesecake, and I think theirs is to LIVE for
* Craftsman and Wolves – the sexiest looking deserts you’ll find anywhere; try their rebel within savory muffin is delicious & the coco nibs financier (gf) is another favorite
* B Patisserie – anything pumpkin flavored here is my fav, but it’s all amazingggg
* Yasukochi’s sweet shop – the coffee crunch cake (doesn’t taste like coffee) and is basically the best cake I’ve ever eaten
* Neighbor Bakehouse (twice baked croissants, everything croissant, ginger pull-apart, the cinnamon bostock, omg can I go now?!)

There’s so much more, but I’ll stop there for now. You’ll probably need a few weeks to do all of this anyway!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I am who I am and where I am because of the support of my parents. They came to this country so that I would have better opportunities for education. They lived at the edge of their budget in order to prioritize opportunities for their children’s education and growth.

Speaking of education, I would also love to shout out:

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Go Blue!) for the rigorous academic opportunities

University of Illinois at Chicago’s Occupational Therapy Program for teaching me how to problem solve and critically think through even the most difficulty clinical cases

Teach For America for providing me with the opportunity to develop leadership skills early on, while working in a community which I continue to support and prioritize in my work.

And finally, but equally importantly: Every client, family and child who has taken a chance to trust me to work with them. I wouldn’t be here without them!

Website: www.beginbalanced.com

Instagram: @beginbalanced

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyabhasin/

Image Credits
Taryn Rosenberg