Artfully Mindful

The Transformative Power of Mindfulness

• D. R. Thompson • Season 2 • Episode 41

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Want to learn how mindfulness can revolutionize your life? Join us as we sit down with Debby Germino, an Emmy-winning editor turned mindfulness and somatic coach, who brings a unique perspective from her extensive background in the entertainment industry. Debby shares her incredible journey from editing hit TV shows like "Smallville" and "Agents of SHIELD" to her passion for mindfulness coaching, illustrating how the skills of concentration and authenticity play pivotal roles in both fields.

We'll uncover powerful stories, including the transformation of an endurance athlete who turned to mindfulness meditation to enhance their training and mental resilience. From simple breath awareness to navigating the complexities of injuries and illnesses, discover practical techniques for integrating mindfulness into daily life. Debby also introduces somatic coaching, showcasing how body awareness can effectively address mental challenges like imposter syndrome and anxiety, reinforcing the vital connection between mind and body.

As we explore the broader implications of mindfulness, Debby emphasizes the importance of redefining self-worth beyond achievements and the value of community in meditation practices. The conversation extends into the corporate world, advocating for mindful business practices to improve employee satisfaction and well-being. With heartfelt gratitude, we celebrate the transformative power of mindfulness and its potential to foster deeper connections and compassion. Tune in to gain actionable insights and be inspired by Debby's remarkable journey and expertise.

Links for Debby Germino:
 
Email: debby@happinessintraining.com

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Happiness in Training Blog on Medium


Music: Muted - 'Patience'

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Note that Don Thompson is now available as a coach or mentor on an individual basis. To find out more, please go to his website www.nextpixprods.com, and use the 'contact' form to request additional information.

Speaker 1:

Hi, don Thompson here with the Artfully Mindful podcast and I'm so excited that today we have a very special guest.

Speaker 1:

It's a guest I'm going to be interviewing and her name is Debbie Germino, and Debbie is a mindfulness coach and a somatic coach and she lives in Los Angeles and has got a very interesting background in mindfulness and also she has spent some time in the entertainment field as an editor on some pretty big productions actually, some pretty big productions actually.

Speaker 1:

So that isn't going to really be the focus of our interview here, but she does have a very eclectic, interesting background and I think her background as an editor if I might say how impressed I was with that is it takes a great deal of concentration to be an editor. Seeing how impressed I was with that is it takes a great deal of concentration to be an editor. You really have to have an intense amount of focus and ability to eventually become a mindfulness teacher to start off with as an editor. So, anyway, I'm going to go ahead and, you know, introduce Debbie here and just ask her to please tell us a little bit about herself and anything that she wants to mention about her background in editing and entertainment or anything else, of course. So, debbie, please let us know a little bit about your background and just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, hi, thank you, Dawn. Thank you for that wonderful introduction and very astute of you to sort of recognize the concentration that it takes for editing. Certainly with your film background, you understand the job of an editor and the concentration and the focus that it takes and all the different variables involved in putting something together, and actually I think it lends very well to mindfulness. You know now that I've sort of been focusing my career in a different direction. I've sort of been trying to pull out, tease out the different, I'd say, skills and transferable skills right that can be used in other areas. So I don't want to get ahead of myself, so I'll back up a little bit and sort of start a little bit earlier and I guess I would say, if I'm thinking about just my history and how I got to where I am today, I'd say I'm probably a little bit like you, which I don't know if you would identify also as being a curious seeker, someone I think my whole life been interested in human nature, learning about the different ways of life and how people want to live a good life, and always interested in people's stories. And I had always, as a kid, was always really curious. I remember, even as a teenager, reading self-help books and wanting to understand how to live a better life, how to make myself happier and how to be helpful in the world. So, interestingly, I went on a lot of different paths as I started out college and wasn't really sure where I would, where I would end up, and I I ended up in film and editing because I recognized that telling stories was really at the heart of all my curiosity and telling stories could encompass so many different aspects, so many different subjects and aspects of human nature and people and how they lived, and I really found that that was a way that I could sort of quench my curiosity a little bit in telling stories in that sense. And so I really.

Speaker 2:

I had a long career in film and television and, as you said, you know, I've spent about 16 plus years editing, mostly in television, scripted television. Years editing mostly in television, scripted television, different shows, like I started out on Smallville and Agents of SHIELD and National Geographic's Genius. I worked on two seasons of that Fargo and actually won my first Emmy last year for a little-known show on Netflix called Lost Ollie. Congratulations, thank you.

Speaker 2:

And now you know, since I guess it's been probably four years now that I've been sort of on a quest, pursuing other things and the entertainment industry has taken a big turn for the worse in the past couple of years, certainly since the writers strike and the actors strike last year, and it's just going through a big retraction on a lot of other different interests and pursuing this real interest in mindfulness, meditation, in taking that, it's interesting because when I think about it, it really is that same thread that editing was fulfilling for me, that curiosity in human nature. As an editor, I get to watch dailies and I get to watch actors perform and I get to choose the most compelling and most interesting emotion and most real emotion. That's what we're doing as well. We're doing that internally with ourselves, and when I work with someone one-on-one or in a group setting, it's the same thing. We're understanding each other. It's all about helping each other understand our own stories and the length of our own stories.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's interesting because there was a phrase that came to mind for me, which I don't know. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it did seem to be sort of like searching for the authentic, and I mean in terms of I was just envisioning you in the editing room sorting through various nuances of a performance and looking for the most authentic or what's working the best, or whatever, and then I sort of left and, and now hopefully in an okay way.

Speaker 2:

I love that. I love that phrase actually searching for the authentic, and I think that's absolutely correct.

Speaker 1:

It's a tagline on your website.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think we don't have to credit me.

Speaker 1:

But I think that the whole idea of helping people to find their stories and to have stories being a driving theme or factor behind your practice and your desire to help people is really great and, as a matter of fact, what I'll do is I'll go ahead and segue, unless you'd like to mention something else. I'll just really. You sort of answered the question in a sense of how you became interested in mindfulness and somatic coaching, but maybe we could deal a little bit more with the specific arc you might say of how you segued from what you were doing rather to relatively recently. I mean, I'm not saying you didn't have an interest. Obviously you had an interest in meditation and mindfulness before that. But the segue of this recent segue into mindfulness and somatic coaching, I mean more specifically what that has been like or how that occurred. If you could speak to that, that would be great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. So it's interesting my interest in mindfulness meditation initially was very, very practical. I was an endurance athlete about I think this started about 13 years ago, which is when I started my meditation practice and I was beginning to train for marathons and triathlons. And somewhere along the way I heard that meditation could be useful and endurance training could help with mindset, could help get through long hours of training. I'm really enjoying it. It's giving me a different outlet outside of my career and I wanted to do the best I could do with it, and so I started mindfulness meditation and really at the very beginning I just I literally would just sit down and set a timer and just sit. I didn't really have any instruction, I didn't listen to a guided thing, I just sat. So eventually I got some. I found some teachers and I got some guidance and some more formal training, and so I evolved my practice.

Speaker 1:

I have one big question for you. But please continue. Yeah, In terms of that experience, but please continue.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so that really, and I guess what happened was I did notice benefits. I noticed a lot of benefits throughout my life as I started that just sort of gaining more confidence just giving me. It did help with my training for sure. Mentally. It gave me a lot more mental stamina, I felt, and I guess eventually to bring in to answer the somatic coaching part that didn't come until quite a bit later. You know, I practiced for many years and I just I got more and more into the practice and it helped me in ways when I was suffering for other reasons. What ended up happening is like the training, the endurance training that I was doing, ended up sort of taking a wrong turn for me and I had some injuries and some illness and things kind of led me away from that. And mindfulness, meditation is really what helped me get through a lot of that, because it was a big struggle for me to get through that and it wasn't until I did the teacher training meditation, teacher training that the somatic coaching became an interest for me.

Speaker 1:

So just for those people that are not that familiar with the term somatic coaching, if you could give just a quick definition of what that means.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for asking that. Because that certainly is a term that most people don't know Often, I'll change it a little bit and say mind-body coaching. That still is something that people don't necessarily understand, and so I guess what I would say is a simple way, maybe a way that can be a little more accessible to people, or at least a term that people are a little more familiar with is a life coach. So it's dealing with a lot of those same issues.

Speaker 2:

So I like to work with people who struggle with confidence, who maybe struggle with imposter syndrome. Because of my experience in the entertainment industry, I understand what it's like to be a creative, to be in high pressure situations, and understand all of the anxieties that can come from that. So the type of coaching I like to do is working with people who want to improve their sort of mental game, but in a way that also works with the body, because the body is not separate from our mind and there's a lot of really practical and easy ways that we can work with the body to alleviate some of the stresses that come up in the mind, such as ruminating thoughts or negative thoughts. There are a lot of ways that we can work with the body, finding stress in the body and then releasing stress in the body. That then helps to calm the mind and soothe the mind in a more of a bottom-up approach to coaching. So that's how I would maybe define mind-body coaching.

Speaker 1:

So just to return back to the question, that was very helpful, thank you. To return back to the big question that I mentioned and it sort of relates to what you just described, related to your coaching and somatic coaching when you first sat down to meditate, without any real instruction, let's say, at least not. Maybe you looked it up on the internet, got a little bit of a hint here or there, but most people, when they sit down and meditate, there's just a lot of chatter in the mind, and I was just curious when you first started to meditate, did you encounter that and how did you deal with that? If indeed, that was your experience, or were you able to just sort of naturally, organically, able to quiet the mind and intuitively felt that was the right thing to do? How did you approach it? Without a lot of mentorship, so to speak?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question, and I think all of that is true. I think I did certainly encounter a very busy mind, restless, uncertainty, like what am I really doing here? Is this really helping anything, right? Those those sort of initial doubts that come up, like what I'm just sitting here, and especially coming from such a culture of doing and achieving and accomplishing it. It was, it was difficult to about it.

Speaker 2:

So I, like I said I would, I would start a timer, and it wasn't, it was, it was a count or a stopwatch. So I just started and see how long I could go for without you know, until I was like, okay, I'm done, I can't, I can't take this anymore, Right, and so I would just sort of see, okay, each day, could I, could I make it a minute longer, you know? Could I make it longer than I did the day before? So it was, I kind of turned it into a little game. Okay, gotcha, that's, that's clever. Yeah, wow, I don't know, you do still think it's meditating, but certainly it is not. And I did. I think I knew enough to at least pay attention to my breath and sort of use just the breath just to relax myself a little bit, and so that was a little bit of the you know the kind of mental game that was going on in my mind at the time.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, I did it didn't take too long before I sought out some more instruction, yeah, but I mean I do think it's interesting as an athlete though, because when I for example you know, whenever I watch, I love the Olympics because there's so many different types of sports and you can get exposure just because you don't ever see them, except for sometimes at the Olympics. You've never seen some of these sports, but I'm always impressed by the level of concentration of some of the athletes, and I often think of their concentration, from the level of concentration of some of the afferweeds, and I often think of their concentration from the standpoint of meditation. It wasn't a while ago where we'll hear somebody talk about mindfulness or meditation, but it does. And the, for example, diving I mean some of the divers are just incredible. It's like as if they just empty their mind completely and go into like a Zen state before they do the dive. You know that type of thing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you bringing that up reminds me of a practice that I did do. That I had learned about at that time was visualization and talking about athletes. That's a lot of what they do, right? When you see them yeah, the divers, I think of the swimmers doing the same thing. A lot of them are sort of visualizing having a great race. Right, right, right, right, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so I, yes, exactly, thank you, thank you, I wasn't aware of that, but you reminded me, so Thank you, I wasn't aware of that, but you reminded me, so thank you for that. But, yeah, the visualization aspect of it, which I think comes out. There's a whole school of thought regarding the power of positive thinking and visualization and how that can be very effective in a variety of endeavors, which is essentially a meditative practice, really, I guess you know. Yeah, so another thought. I think we're sort of on track, okay, we're basically going through the questions, but one thought that came to mind and it kind of really, you know, having read your essay, your article on Medium, related to, I'll just call it, being patient, you know, having a certain amount of patience, and this is a little bit off script, but I think it sort of naturally lends itself to what you're talking about. Is that a lot of what you're saying? It seems to me that you probably have a natural tendency to be a patient person. Maybe I'm, I mean, maybe I'm. Maybe we would disagree with that, I don't know, but certainly it seems to me in editing. Editing requires patience and a certain ability to be alone with yourself and to be patient and to not be hard on yourself and to sort of allow things to occur, have sort of a sense and faith in the fact that it will sort of work out. So I'm pulling a couple different ideas together there.

Speaker 1:

But I was wondering, when you're thinking about just to go to your article here in Medium, could you just sum up in your words some of the ideas that you were trying to express in terms of the sort of endless quest for you? You call it the endless stream of starting lines. I was wondering if you could just speak to that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. I recall that time when I was sort of writing that, and I won't say that I'm completely past that point, but I do think I've come a long way since I wrote that. I don't remember exactly when I wrote that one, but oh 23.

Speaker 1:

Oh, 20. No, it was relatively recently Okay.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah, I think about that because, like I said, I've had sort of a bumpy ride with the endurance events and endurance races and it was something that I was really into and a really strong part of my identity got taken away. It was a big shift for me to now contend with something that felt like such a big part of me is now not here and I noticed. That is when I really began to notice that there were both benefits and also a real not sure exactly the right word a, a, a, a challenge with it. There was, there was an unhealthy aspect to the racing and and that's that's what I was getting at with the, with the endless line of starting lines I, I I.

Speaker 1:

I actually related to it very specifically in terms of this sense of needing to have these affirmations of self-worth, and I spent a lot of time because I would say that you know, just for the sake of full disclosure, is that my and I think you sort of mentioned this too is I was a very shy kid. I mean, I was an introvert, like on steroids. I was an introvert and I'm a lot. I'm more extroverted now, but I still hold within me this sort of introverted kid and I've spent my life trying to, you might say, gain confidence through a variety of different paths.

Speaker 1:

And so what I sort of settled in on was this idea of helping other people, getting out of my own headspace and so not being so concerned with, well, what is it that's going to boost my confidence and move me that next step forward, from that next starting line, whatever that happens to be? So I sort of shifted my perspective, I'm trying to shift my perspective, but it doesn't always work, and I still will tend to come back to this sense of well, how is Don doing? Is Don accomplishing what he wants to accomplish? But, on the other hand, I started thinking about well, what is it that other people want to accomplish, or what is it that I could do to help them. And so that's been a way for me to sort of shift the perspective from that sense of needing to constantly have that affirmation, of needing to constantly have that affirmation of self-worth, which is, I think, you know, I think many, many people have that, you know they're always, we're always seeking for these ways to affirm that we have validity, but we don't really need to do that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, it's our culture, right, it's our culture. Congratulations. How's it feel to win your gold? And then the very next question is what's next for you?

Speaker 1:

Right, right, exactly.

Speaker 2:

Right, and it's just this. It's just endless, this endless stream of starting lines where it's like, ok, you did that, now what's next? Keep going.

Speaker 1:

That wasn't good enough, you've got to find the next thing I'm telling you that devy, that perspective, that that insight, it's got an incredible amount of wisdom in it. So I hope that, uh, people will you know, after they hear this interview will look up the, the medium blog, exhausted from racing to an Endless Stream of Starting Lines. I really enjoyed it and I think it will prompt you to consider our endless quest for accomplishment. And maybe it isn't always so healthy, that's right. So, yeah, I really appreciated that. And you know, in terms of the types of how do you work with people, I mean, how do you, what do you find useful in terms of establishing a relationship with a client, or how does that evolve for you? How does that evolve for you? Or what do you think are the key components of having a successful situation with a client or somebody that you're seeking to assist?

Speaker 2:

I think the first step is always really getting clear on what they're seeking, on what their intention is. Why are they coming for coaching, what are they looking for, what are their values, what are their goals? And because I like to use a lot of different modalities, you know like I like to blend in mindfulness, I like to blend in the body and some of these other like visualization, a lot of sensory practices can be very useful. I like to bring in journaling and working with creativity journaling and working with creativity. So really a successful relationship depends on just the trust that they have in me, that the person has in me, and that we can co-create thing together and building that relationship at a pace that feels manageable and everyone has their own pace that works for them right.

Speaker 2:

Some people want to dive right in. Other people need some time to get to know you a little bit and even get to know themselves. So it really depends on the history of the person that I'm working with and what their goals or intentions are with coaching and really how open they are to change. Because as much as we can say we want change, it can be pretty scary Even when it's good change. So it's interesting I've been working with this theory on imposter syndrome Because I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to because I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to and what I've been noticing in myself and through my own practice of meditation and different body practices.

Speaker 2:

What I've been learning is that, for me, a big aspect of imposter syndrome comes with my difficulty of taking in the good, and this can even relate back to the starting line issue. Right, it's like the endless stream of starting lines. Once we achieve something, are we taking even a day to soak that in, to actually say, oh, I did that or I got to this level? And I relate it also to ritual. This is another aspect of it that I like to work with and I like to bring this into my own life and I'm trying to incorporate it more into coaching as well. Is really establishing rituals to mark events really good at this.

Speaker 2:

When we're kids right, we have all sorts of ways that we mark growing up. Right, we have all sorts of graduations we graduate from. I think now there's even more graduations than there were when I was a kid. You know it's like they graduate from fourth grade and fifth grade and sixth grade and junior high and then high school, and we have all of these markers to say, hey, you did that, we got to this level and there is something that happens when there is a ceremony like that, there is a marking in your life, you say, ok, I did that, I got there, and then you can, you absorb that a little bit and I think, a big aspect of imposter syndrome, at least for me. As I said, this is a theory, so you can let me know how you feel about this too, if or if it resonates at all. But I think it's the fact that we don't necessarily have any kind of markers for stages of adult life.

Speaker 2:

Certainly, when I got my first job in the entertainment industry, you know it was wonderful and maybe I went out to dinner or something, but it again was that endless starting line OK, well, there's the first job, and then, did any, was there any any kind of ceremony? When I became an assistant editor and then when I became an editor, it was just like. It was just like, oh, let me get to the next thing, just kept looking forward and I never really looked back to say, oh, I did that. Someone thinks I'm good enough to do this, I am good enough to do this. Right, I even take it in for myself.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, and so I really think that this idea of taking in the good and processing that, letting ourselves have that moment, that we have gotten to that level, really has a lot to do with whether or not we feel like we're worthy or whether we have made it or not.

Speaker 1:

That's very interesting. And as you talk about that, I was reflecting back on because I worked in corporate America quite a while. Often you know, not so much recently I've sort of transitioned away from my corporate life to rush to the next thing, rush to the next project, and not to invest in these moments of celebration, which did happen earlier in my career and just in my observing of corporations in general. They would have parties, they would have celebrations, they would have lunches. I'm not saying that these things don't exist or don't happen now, but maybe it had to do with me being a consultant and not an employee, which is another issue. This idea of trying to nurture an employee with having those kinds of ritual feedback loops that say you're doing well, or thank you, or great, it's just OK, all that's out the door, it's all about efficiency. You're just a contractor, You're just a gig employee, let's move on to the next thing.

Speaker 1:

And then I could see that happening in editing a lot. I mean, you're hired as more or less a gig worker and you move from one assignment to the next without any real celebration of the last one, unless you take a break yourself, and I noticed that within my field. But even there, you know, I noticed, even within the context of the corporate attitude towards employees, it's a slow shift to a more. I mean, I'm not saying it's universal and some people might disagree with what I'm saying and maybe they work for a great corporation that celebrates them in a real positive way, and so maybe I would be immediately contradicted by some people. But my experience has been that there's this slow tendency of corporations to really have I wouldn't say I know we're segwaying into a whole different area here of economic reality, but the companies become less concerned about that and more concerned about their investor relations than they are with their employee relations.

Speaker 1:

And so part of what just to plug, center for Mindful Business, a little bit part of what my thinking about, because that's one of the organizations that I've been involved with. We're just slowly rounding it up, but one of the ideas behind it is to reintroduce this idea of having good employee relationships. Yes, yes, so great, because that's exactly the heart of it. It gets back to celebrating these milestones and celebrating these, you know, celebrating your employees, celebrating your successes, and by God, I guess we need to do it ourselves if nobody else is going to do it for us. I don't know. I guess that's sort of.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's such a good point really, because what you're saying there is so true of the entertainment industry. Most of us, even you know, as an editor, I'm in the union, most of the crews, if you're on a union show project basis. So we're hired for a particular project, we're not, and then once that project ends, we're on our own to find a new job, and so it becomes really there's no investment in the employee to get you to be good at your job or to improve. To get you to be good at your job or to improve Basically, if they don't like what you're doing, they fire you or they don't bring you back again, and that's the feedback that you get is like, well, they must have liked me because they brought me back, or I guess they didn't like me because I wasn't asked to. Yeah, right, and so that's the extent of the feedback.

Speaker 2:

Unless you were like me, where I started having meetings with my showrunners at the end of every season that I worked on, to ask for their feedback, to literally ask them hey, is there anything I can do better? Is there anything that I did? Well, what you know? How can I, how can I improve what I'm doing? And every, every one I did that with was always a little taken aback because it's not, it's not standard and it's not something that happens and they're not used to being able to do that. So I love that you're talking about the Center for Mindful Business, because I really think I mean I would love something like that in the entertainment industry, because, you're right, there's even less incentive in the entertainment industry to do that because it's not an employee that is necessarily going to be back or going to be around for a long time, but we need it just as much as typical employees do that are at a corporation for long periods of time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean I do think that if you were to I mean I'm taking this strictly on observation there's no reason. I mean maybe I could do a little research to back it up. There's probably been a study or two about this, but you know, just the shift of the economy to this gig situation, I know it's so prevalent and it has its—there's many aspects to that, which is a whole other discussion. Right, it's really not for our interview here, but it does relate to mindfulness and it does relate to coaching and people having to deal with these people out there that are suffering the ramifications of this corporate and or work culture, because a lot of, I think, trauma and stress comes out of the work culture. It certainly comes out of family as well, and it can come from a variety of different sources, but work can be a big aspect of creating, you know, a situation that's conducive for stress.

Speaker 1:

Yeah absolutely, and maybe even trauma, you know. Yeah. Or enough. Oh yeah, and so okay, you know we talked a little bit about, I mean, how, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and talk to you about a specific service, what's the best way for them to do that? Well, I'm going to list your Web site, of course, at the in the description of the podcast. I'll have your Web site link at the at the bottom. Is that the best? I see that's the best way to reach out.

Speaker 2:

Well, my Web site is kind of under construction right now, so it's not. It's unfortunately not the best at this point, but anyone that wanted to reach out to me could just email me at debby D-E-B-B-Y at happinessandtrainingcom, which I will, of course, list as well. Yeah, yeah, you can put that in there and I'll give you a couple of links to my drop-in class that I hold on Wednesdays. I have a drop-in meditation class on Wednesday mornings on Zoom. That actually I said Wednesday morning. I'm actually going to be shifting that to evening. Okay, I said Wednesday morning. I'm actually going to be shifting that to evening to some schedule changes that I'm having, but I will be offering that.

Speaker 2:

So that's an easy way to just if you want to practice meditation. That's an easy way to just see if we'd be a good fit or just get some community. I'm really trying to build a stronger community and help people build their meditation practice and work on it together, because I think that's a part of meditation that's not talked about enough is that it really is about community. We often think about it as sitting alone by ourselves meditating, but we get so much more value out of it when we are in a group, in a sangha, together really and sharing our experiences. We learn so much from each other and you learn so much when you hear other people's experiences rather than being just stuck in your own silo. It can really help to have a teacher and have a community that you work with.

Speaker 2:

And then also I do free consults, 30-minute consults for coaching, if anyone would be interested in doing any kind of either mindfulness meditation coaching to help you build your meditation practice, or the mind-body coaching that I was talking about. And I also do stress release as well, and those are similar to the mind-body coaching but it's even more body-centered. Where it's stress release, we literally work on completing the stress cycle and releasing unprocessed emotions, releasing emotions that are kind of stuck in the body, that maybe we've swallowed down because it wasn't appropriate at the time when they came up. And all of these emotions and the stress that gets stuck in our body, that energy. It can manifest in all sorts of ways, like chronic pain in the back or chronic fatigue or digestive issues or ruminating thoughts. Release some of those things so that you end up feeling a lot better by the end. It just ends up overall health and wellness really skyrockets with those types of sessions as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, really, that's wonderful. It really impressed me about your background, which I think would, you know, lend credibility to what you're saying, is that, as an athlete, you have to be very aware of your body and what's happening with your body. You have to really you know that mind-body connection has to be very real. I mean, it can't be a theoretical construct. You have to actually, you know, work with your body. That's right.

Speaker 1:

From that standpoint. I mean it just tells me, because I'm not such an athlete. I mean I do have in the past like maybe to play golf a little bit, but I do. Really I think that athletes, you know, they just have that embedded in them. You know this ability to really go beyond the theoretical and into a sort of mind-body connection in a way that other people might not have. So I think that, you know, probably gives you a little bit of a leg up in terms of being an effective coach.

Speaker 1:

In that regard, that's my pitch to my listeners. In that regard, that's my pitch to my listeners. And also, again, I think I found you to be a very patient person and I think that being an editor has probably helped that. But you just seem to be a very composed and patient person and that, I think, is a good attribute for a coach as well. And that, I think, is a good attribute for a coach as well, because you know you can't be. I think that you know and you may have a thought or two about this is that when you're coaching somebody, I don't think you can, really you can't force them to move forward. You know, immediately when you get this feeling of forcing anything forward or trying to dictate anything. It's completely wrong. I mean, it's just not. That is not the way to go. It has to be a completely organic flow.

Speaker 2:

Well, as I said, everyone has their own pace right. It's my job as a coach to to really intuit what that pace is and to work with that person to help them feel comfortable and help them know that that their pace is fine, whatever pace that might be, is their pace and that we will work with that. A lot of coaching, just it, really comes with that building that relationship and really really being able to help a person see their own value and there is nothing more important to me than that is really helping someone to see their own value because they have what they need already.

Speaker 1:

So I will almost contradict myself by what I just said, but I think that when you think of sports and you know I think of all the teams I mean I have UCLA basketball, for example. I love UCLA basketball. I mean that coach is going to be, you know, bossing them around and telling them what to do and you know, being very emphatic. And in that context coaching is a very forceful thing. And I would think that, even within the realm of mindfulness and somatic coaching is that if you establish a relationship that's a coaching, life coach relationship you know you could prod somebody maybe a little. You know somebody maybe a little.

Speaker 1:

You know you're not going to, you know, beat them over the head with something, but you certainly are going to be able to, you know, in a healthy way, sort of you know again, it's sort of like influencing them in a positive way to move in a certain direction that you see could be beneficial. But that's a you know. I think it's an interesting discussion point, but I think in general probably correct me if I'm wrong most of the mindfulness coaching. You're not going to be. It's sort of like, like you said, intuitive pacing of the situation. You're not going to try to move somebody faster than they're willing to move. You know they can't. They're just not going to be able to do it.

Speaker 2:

And really it's about helping them to find their way, because they have the answers right and they know, and a coach is there just to point that out and to remind them when they've forgotten or they've lost their way. But it's sort of like keeping them, keeping them within the lines and keeping them within the riverbank Right so that they're they're staying. They're staying in the river and they're in the flow. They're staying in the river and they're in the flow. And when they get off track a little bit, where we kind of guide them back, to guide them back to themselves, is really the ideal for it.

Speaker 1:

Excellent. So in essence, you're almost like a mirror To their, to their, to their best, a mirror to their best self, right, their true self, exactly yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's probably a good place to leave it. I just have to say thank you so much for you know being willing to have this interview and I'll get it. You know, we'll get it posted as soon as possible and, if you know, I'll close it out here and then we can talk for a minute or two about the next steps. But anyway, bottom line, thank you very much and we'll get this out there and have people listen to it and I look forward to that happening.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you. Thank you very much for having me, for inviting me here, and thank you for the work that you do and with this podcast and all the other things that you're doing to help bring mindfulness and help people really go deeper into their relationship with themselves, which only helps to connect us more with the outside world and brings us more compassion. So I really appreciate the work that you're doing here with the podcast.

Speaker 1:

Thank you very much. I'll take that as a plug and I appreciate it. Okay, debbie, I will talk to you soon and we'll get this out there and get it uh, you know messaged out no-transcript.