Dorsey Standish: From Corporate Ladder to Corporate Meditation Guru

When confronted with a life-changing burnout, a two-minute-a-day meditation routine changed the course of Dorsey Standish’s life. Climbing off the corporate ladder, Dorsey immediately began sharing her newfound passion for meditation with the corporate world. Mindfulness would prepare her for her greatest journey yet: pregnancy and motherhood, which she details with vulnerable honesty with Dr. Gertrude Lyons in this not-to-be-missed podcast episode.

Dorsey Standish

Dorsey is a mechanical engineer, neuroscientist, and wellness expert who brings evidence-based mindfulness and emotional intelligence to clients worldwide. Her mission is to help Type A people like herself slow down, destress, and optimize their performance through research-backed brain health training. Dorsey holds a master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas and a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Dorsey’s teachings draw on her training as a teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction through Brown University and deep experience on regular 7-day silent meditation retreats. While Dorsey has studied with meditation masters, she believes that her best mindfulness teachers are her beautiful wife and two young sons.

Rat race burnout

Many type-A, box-checking, fact-based skeptics will relate to Dorsey. As a younger woman, she leaned into her natural talents for math and science and pursued engineering. She excelled in school and started her career with ambition. However, her go-go-go mentality leads to burnout. She was told to take time off and confronted with the “obligation” of healing from burnout.

Curious, she started to look at the science of meditation. Immediately, she was responsive to the benefits of her morning mindfulness practice. Refreshed and inspired by her new take on life, she quit her job and decided to get a Master's Degree in neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas. Today, Dorsey teaches research-backed brain training, mindfulness, and meditation.

Meditation and motherhood

Gertrude and Dorsey discuss at length some of the misconceptions about meditation. Dorsey underlines that there is no “right way” to meditate and that it’s not necessary to create a meditation practice around hours of discipline.

Being aware that you need to start a small meditation practice is already a big step. Awareness and mindfulness are like a plant sitting in the sun. The awareness hits you like rays of sunshine; however, growth does not happen overnight. Similar to a plant, people take their time to evolve and grow. When Dorsey started her mindfulness journey, she began with 2 minutes a day.

A simple meditation routine centered around a couple minutes dispels the myth that people “don’t have time” for meditation, a common message that both Gertrude and Dorsey hear when discussing meditation with women.

Another reason that women don’t take the time to meditate is because they have been trained to put everyone else first. Wellness for women is thought of as a luxury. Women give themselves permission to care for themselves only after serving everyone else.

Journey to Motherhood

Same-sex couples naturally have to make the motherhood journey a conscious decision. In Dorsey’s case, Her partner had already birthed their first child, Owen. Dorsey became involved when Owen was already 7 years old. In her case, everyone was really enthusiastic about having a bigger family. Before they married, they knew they wanted more children, and Dorsey had always dreamed of carrying a child.

During Christmas of 2021, they found out, unexpectedly, that some of Owen’s biological father’s sperm was available, which was an exciting prospect to give Owen a half-biological sibling.

Dorsey had many preconceived ideas about pregnancy but was taken off guard and reminded how much she would have to surrender to the process. She had challenges like morning sickness and fatigue, but the whole process strengthened her ability to surrender and show self-love.

Although she was planning on a natural birth, she had a giant, happy, healthy son that required a C-Section, and that taught her to show up and love the situation despite what she had planned. That’s not to say the process was easy; she grieved that she couldn’t birth the way she had planned.

Dorsey talks about needing to feel the difficult emotions and holding space for herself while she shifts kindly and gently. Honoring the loss of how you think things “should be.”

She had a similar experience with breastfeeding, her newborn wouldn’t latch or take to breastfeeding, so she had to start pumping, and that was another thing she had to accept as not going to plan.

Starting a meditation routine

Dorsey points out that you can’t think your way into a new way of acting. You have to feel and live your way into a new way of acting. Start by making the habit of 2 minutes a day. Dorsey encourages reducing the barriers of entry to a mindfulness routine. Bundle a new habit with an old one that is already ingrained. For instance, she started to journal by incorporating it into her pre-established morning routine.

Rewriting the Mot(her) Code

As the mother of a newborn, Dorsey is rewriting many codes and making decisions based on what serves her best. Her partner and she live by the philosophy that a happy mother can serve her children best.

This means rewriting codes around when it is best to return to work. For Dorsey, she was ready to travel and start working relatively soon after giving birth. This is because she feels her work feeds her soul. Again, this decision was a challenging one. Tears were shed, but she felt a shift by the third time she left for work-related business.

For Dorsey, rewriting the Mot(her) code means turning on the light and looking at the code, even when it’s uncomfortable, while drawing on resources of positive connection and inspiration to rewrite and reframe the codes that are our operating systems. It’s not about being perfect. The idea is to slowly shift every day to show up as a more healed version of yourself. To be the woman she wants to be in the world rather than letting someone else dictate that.

You can find out more about Dorsey on her website and social media platforms.

Website mastermindmeditate.com

LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/dorseystandish

Instagram instagram.com/mastermindmeditate

Other Social Media Instagram.com/dorseystandish

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