Siri K. Zemel, Ph.D., had just reached a new career peak in 2012. After working in private practice as a registered dietician and serving as executive director at an eating disorder treatment center. Yet despite her impressive career trajectory and busy family life, she felt something was missing.
“I was busy, but something in my soul was missing and unexpressed,” Dr. Zemel says. “I didn't know how to capture or channel it.”
Dr. Zemel began to investigate doctorate programs, eventually finding Saybrook University. The Mind-Body Medicine program in particular spoke to her. She saw Saybrook as a safe place to explore a spiritual part of herself that she had suppressed. “When I started Saybrook, I felt very fractured,” she says. “There was a part of me that was hidden.
Saybrook allowed me to tap into it.”
Dr. Zemel started her educational journey in 2012, enrolling in the Ph.D. in Mind-Body Medicine program. Having already worked in the health care field, she was particularly interested in mind-body medicine within health care, setting a strong foundation for her future consulting work.
While at Saybrook, Dr. Zemel only became busier. She had been promoted again to run a second treatment center, leading her to juggle her leadership role at the clinics, work with private patients, raise her young family, and earn her doctorate at the same time. Yet Dr. Zemel persevered, balancing her upward career journey with her spiritual exploration and Saybrook education.
“I kept advancing on the trajectory that I was on, but a lot changed internally, because Saybrook gave me the permission to go the other direction,” Dr. Zemel notes. “I'm very ambitious, and I always want to grow, but Saybrook invited me to slow down and to listen at a deeper level and integrate my entire being in all that I do.”
Once she graduated, Dr. Zemel continued her work with a revamped holistic perspective, integrating her humanistic values into patient care and staff relations. She then transitioned from direct patient care to systems-level strategy work, taking on a Chief Strategy Officer position with a larger residential center for both eating disorders and drug and alcohol abuse, while also leading a smaller eating disorder and integrative care clinic.
While Saybrook provided much in the way of her education, it also deepened Dr. Zemel’s spiritual self-confidence thanks to the likeminded community of “curious explorers” she met. Her cohort normalized her existence as a professional health care executive and as a spiritual explorer herself, though she still hadn’t fully unlocked that side of herself yet. As part of group work, her cohort encouraged her to dig deeper and share more about her experiences, something she never felt safe enough to do previously.
She finally brought her spiritual side to the forefront in 2021 when she published “Guided: Journey into the Unknown to Awaken the Soul and Live in Truth.” In “Guided,” Dr. Zemel shared her experience as a spiritual channeler through speaking in tongues.
In 2024, after taking a sabbatical to focus on her family, Dr. Zemel zeroed in on this side of herself even more. She conducts research with the Institute of Noetic Sciences to develop ethical standards for mediums and channelers. This work is emblematic of her own journey so far, bridging her professional rigor with her spiritual exploration. Dr. Zemel credits Saybrook for teaching her to slow down and focus inward, in turn giving her permission to prioritize her family, deepen her spiritual practice, and approach life with a more integrated perspective.
“That's really what my journey is about: the integration of both sides of myself,” Dr. Zemel explains. “It’s a slow journey, but I am letting that part of me fully and completely emerge. I'm not forcing it forward. I'm not strategizing in my own egoistic expectation of how the world sees me. I'm a partner in what wants to emerge through me, and that is very new and wonderful.”
