S1E9: Transforming Law Enforcement Through Mindfulness: Suzanna Hasnay's Mission

Overview
In this episode of PausePoint: The Podcast, we're joined by Susanna Hasnay, a retired FBI agent and founder of PoliceSpirit. Since 2012, Susanna has pioneered the integration of mindfulness into law enforcement, training teams from the FBI National Academy to specialized EOD bomb technician units. With her background in dance, business, and kinesiology, she adopts a holistic approach—'Train the Body, Train the Mind, Feed the Spirit.'

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Guest Bio
Suzanna Hasnay, a retired FBI Special Agent, founded PoliceSpirit, LLC in Fredericksburg, VA, to enhance officer well-being through mindfulness-based strategies. Her career with the FBI spanned from 1997 to 2017, where she began her mindfulness journey. Suzanna’s academic background in Dance, Business, and Exercise Science and Kinesiology uniquely positions her to integrate movement into her training programs. She holds advanced yoga certifications and a Mindfulness Coach certification, which she utilized to introduce mindfulness and yoga to the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team and specialized bomb technicians.

Her initiative, PEAK, a mindfulness-based training series for mission-critical teams such as SWAT, pushed the boundaries of traditional law enforcement training by incorporating yoga, meditation, and discussions on mindfulness for decision-making and connection at work and home. Despite initial resistance, her work has led to a broader acceptance of these practices within the law enforcement community, emphasizing the need for ongoing leadership support to continue these transformative wellness initiatives.

What You'll Discover This Week:

• Holistic Training for Law Enforcement: Learn how Suzanna combines physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual practices to enhance officer well-being and resilience, advocating for a balance beyond traditional tactical training.
• Personal Journey and Professional Transformation: Explore how Suzanna's personal experiences with mindfulness significantly shaped her professional methods in law enforcement training. 
• Leadership’s Role in Mindfulness Integration: Delve into the critical importance of supportive leadership in successfully adopting and sustaining mindfulness programs within law enforcement. Understand how leadership support in ideology and resources is essential for f

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Transcript

 Welcome to PausePoint the podcast, your ultimate destination for reclaiming your time, revitalizing your spirit, and saying no to burnout.  I'm Felisa Wiley, CEO and founder of PausePoint, and I'm here to ignite your journey towards a more balanced and mindful life.  Join us each week as we delve into practical tips, inspiring stories, and expert advice designed to integrate mindfulness into your daily life. 

We'll explore mental health tips, discover ways to strengthen work life balance, and find methods to reduce your stress.  Whether you're new to mindfulness or seeking to deepen your practice, we're here to spark action. It's time to reclaim our time, take more breaks, and infuse our lives with moments of peace and rejuvenation.

Join us starting July 15th for our debut season, where we'll share practical tips, inspiring stories, and expert advice to help you thrive in today's fast paced world.  Let's create a mindful world, one pause at a time. 

Welcome to PausePoint, the podcast.  Today, we're joined by Susanna Hasnain, a retired FBI agent and founder of Police Spirit. Since 2012, Susanna has pioneered the integration of mindfulness into law enforcement, training teams from the FBI National Academy to specialized EOD bomb technician units. With her background in dance, business, and kinesiology, she adopts a holistic approach.

Train the body, Train the mind, feed the spirit. Join us as Susanna shares her transformative journey and the impact of her work. Susanna, welcome to PausePoint, the podcast. Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Well, first of all, thank you so much, Felisa, because I was very excited, and I know we've been talking for a couple months, and I was so excited to be with you today, and I'm mostly excited for you, frankly, and your new, basically, new podcast, and I congratulate you for starting it, and I do believe, I know we've talked a little bit about this one on one together, but you're the future of this, and your support and Your wonderful ability to promote the practices of mindfulness will go a long way and Now more than ever this is these are practices to really hone in on so I'm really honored to be here So thank you for the invite.

Thank you, of course and I i'm a retired fbi agent and I have just over 20 years of experience as a federal law enforcement officer and we'll probably get into that a little bit and You know every I do believe Everything we do in life leads to something else. I do believe that. And I'm in law enforcement for a reason.

And I think one of the biggest reasons is to do what I'm doing now. And now that's, that sounds different from coming from a law enforcement officer, that being a law enforcement officer is the pinnacle of what you're going to do. And that's your purpose. And it was my purpose, but I think my even higher purpose is what I'm doing now.

And so that's what I'm really excited to talk about. I retired from the FBI in 2000. And I created a company called Police Spirit and it's based out of Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is where I live. And for your listeners who don't know where Fredericksburg is in Virginia, we're essentially right between Richmond, Virginia and Washington, D.

C. And we're very close to Quantico, where the Marine Corps base is and where the FBI Academy is, where I spend a lot of my time as a teacher, as an agent, and all of that. All that work and all that experience led me to what I'm doing now. And my company, Police Spirit, was created basically to give back to the profession that I loved and to the people that I loved.

Even though a lot of those years, those 20 plus years, were not easy. They're not supposed to be. Nothing in life really is that's worth doing. They weren't all that glamorous sometimes. Sometimes they were pretty glamorous and I got to do some really amazing things. So I call it the high highs and the low lows of being a law enforcement officer where you can be at the pinnacle of just this amazing work and giving back to the community and working great cases and teaching.

Awesome topics to fellow law enforcement officers. And then you also have to work with the dung heap low lows of being a law enforcement officer of stress and trauma and bearing witness to just things that are not pleasant in this world. And then all that stuff in between, which is where the vast majority of our lives are spent.

And with those 20 years of law enforcement now creating this company called Police Spirit, literally the vision of my company, Is three words of full health, full, healthy life. That's the vision of my company. And the mission is, and I primarily work with law enforcement, public safety and security professionals, but not solely, but that's my primary audience, but it's to educate.

And inspire a whole health way of enhancing, sustaining performance, health, and well being. So, whole health. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritual work. All four of those through that whole person. And as I know, and I know as a law enforcement officer, we spend a whole lot of time on tactics, techniques, policies, procedures, firearms, firearms.

Physical training, all that we absolutely need. And I'm not dissuading any of it, but we are, we were, and definitely still are missing a big piece of that. And that's training the mind and fulfilling our spiritual being. As we go through the course of being a law enforcement officer, I retired at a really high point at a really good place in my life, personally and professionally.

And like I mentioned earlier, it wasn't always like that. And that led me to this mindfulness journey, but I was very fortunate to leave at a really good space, and I was not bitter, I was not burned out, although I can name on more than two hands the number of colleagues and friends that did leave their law enforcement careers that way, and many of them did not, many of them left healthy.

That's really wonderful, but a lot of people don't. And I wanted to hope to change that. And when I left, I did two things that were my favorite two assignments in the FBI. One was being an FBI National Academy instructor. The FBI National Academy is a 10 week program. It's been around for dozens and dozens of years.

It's a 10 week program for state and local and international law enforcement officers who are at the command step level in their journey as a law enforcement officer and I was very fortunate to be able to do that. It's accredited through University of Virginia.  It's all college is part of that and that was probably the favorite assignment and that's where I began to introduce mindfulness, which I know we'll get into, which I've introduced mindfulness and yoga into the National Academy.

But when I left in 2017, I ended my career at the Critical Incident Response Group and it's all, well, all tied together. I ended my career at the Critical Incident Response Group, which is a headquarters division that in, to make it simple, to simply put, oversees Most, not all, but most of our mission critical teams in the FBI, for instance, hostage rescue team, crisis negotiators, field SWAT teams, behavioral analysis, behavioral scientists, that's what they're famous for, Bureau's famous for.

The crisis management unit is the unit that I retired out of. And what did we do? It was a fantastic unit with great people, great work. And what we did essentially was train for and deploy to critical incidents. And major special events across the country, oftentimes around the world. A special event, for example, recent ones would be the RNC.

The big special events, the Olympics, is another one in Paris. And then we also, like I said, train for and deploy to various field offices, and that was, of course, the Due to a crisis that had happened there, whether it was a shooting, a terrorist event,  to help support those field offices to not only be ready for a crisis in our training, but also respond to the crisis and then help them.

Hopefully help recover from it as well. So that was a really important unit. It's a really important unit in the FBI. And I was honored to be there. And prior to retiring about 10 years into my 10 years before that. So I was probably halfway through my career. So that late, not really in my career. I.

Really was struggling personally and professionally, and I was in the FBI Cleveland office at the time. This was before I became a National Academy instructor. And I was married to a really wonderful man who, thank God, he is one of the closest people to me in my life to this day. And I love him dearly and we're tight.

And he's a wonderful, we call each other our adventure buddies, and we trek to the Himalayas together. He's just a lovely person. And then, but at the time, our marriage was not doing well. It was in really bad shape for a lot of reasons. And I'm not going to blame it all on the career because that was frankly only a small part of it.

We had some personal trauma with the loss of babies and things like that. And we just didn't realize how much that was. Not only eroding our marriage, but eroding our souls and especially mine and to his credit I mean he he was really working on it and Trying to work past all the trauma himself and also trying to help me at the same time And I was like, oh no pushing it away and I was in a really bad place and I didn't realize that I didn't realize how cumulative Stress and trauma and now I know it's unprocessed stress and trauma going all the way back to childhood and go all the way back there, all the way back to childhood, all the way through a primarily high stress occupation and then add on the personal stressors, how much that was creating someone and that someone is me.

that I didn't particularly like anymore. And I wasn't really happy with how I was responding to the world, if that makes sense. I wasn't really happy with the energy I was giving off. And the interesting thing, at least interesting to me, was that  I've always been a very physical, decent athlete in my life.

I was a dance major in college, and I know moving from dance, I got my master's in business, to FBI is like a very strange trajectory. That's called a diversified program, so I was definitely not the norm coming into the Bureau, but I was always a physical and  pretty athletic person, and that outlet, that physical movement was always what I thought was enough to get through anything, and it built my resilience, which it did.

It built my confidence and my ability to move through hard things. But I found that once I sat with my suffering, for lack of a better way of putting it, when I sat with my suffering, I really allowed myself to feel it, which at the time I didn't know was mindfulness, but it is, I found that all that physical work was not enough.

In fact, I was using my physical body. To numb my pain, if that makes sense. So I started, I started to exercise more. Because it's one of those where, if I run five miles today, maybe if I run seven tomorrow, I'll feel even better. So you, it's basically like taking a drink. One feels good, two feels better, three feels great.

So that, so, exercise became maladaptive to me. I started drinking too much. All those things, all that maladaptive behavior that, frankly, law enforcement is known for. I would say we're abnormally brilliant at maladaptive coping behavior because we're trying to numb our pain. Because culturally and, uh, culturally in law enforcement, it's very difficult to express your suffering in a way that doesn't look like you're weak, because you can't hack it, and you know the drill, right?

I'm pretty, pretty sure all of our listeners will understand that when I say that. So I sum up on mindfulness.  This is finally when I left Cleveland, our marriage broke up, I went to the National Academy at Quantico, so I moved back down to this area, began teaching National Academy, and I discovered mindfulness.

I just stumbled upon it, and I, Devoured the research behind it, and at the time there wasn't a whole lot, in terms of, especially related to law enforcement, but now we have some really solid, amazing research in how mindfulness is supportive for law enforcement, health, well being, and performance, but I stumbled upon it, I read a lot about it, I started to take yoga, and the ironic thing about yoga, and that was about 2013, the ironic thing about yoga for me, is that when I was a dance major in college, Essentially forced, I don't know how else to put it, forced to practice yoga occasionally for injury prevention.

Nothing but the mind. It was all about injury prevention. And we were already flexible, but it was more for injury prevention.  I hate it. I'm like, this is boring as hell. . So I hated it. And it's, to me, I find it ironic that now I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a mindfulness teacher as well, and I always tell my students now in yoga, whether they're law enforcement or whether they're, that's all my students here at a local dragon fight, yo yoga studio here in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

I always say that yoga finds you. You don't necessarily find it. And once you're hooked and you got the bug, and you see what it does for you, it's pretty amazing. And I'm pretty sure we'll get into that a little bit as well. Anyway, so, I added these mindfulness practices into my own life, and I found that they were making a difference.

I was sleeping better, I was kinder, I, Basically began to nourish my friendships more than I had before. I was more present for not only my family, my friends, but I was more present in my work. I was more attentive to my teaching in National Academy. I became a better instructor because of it. I was a better listener.

And I'm like, huh, this stuff, there's something to this. And So, while I was a National Academy instructor, I thought, why not start talking about mindfulness and yoga and bringing in mindful movement into National, into the National Academy. So, I saw a magazine, the cover of a magazine, it's called Mindful Magazine, on the cover of this magazine was a, an amazing person, who's a dear friend of mine now, my mentor.

He was a lieutenant in the Hillsborough Police Department in Oregon, outside of Portland. His name is Richard Gehrling. He's a pioneer in this, and he went through a lot of crap, trying to introduce mindfulness in the early days, when he was just thought of as this weirdo. person who came in talking about meditation and yoga and Love and gratitude and all those concepts that were completely foreign in law enforcement So I basically saw him on the cover of this mindful magazine and I cold called him And I basically I call it stalking him And I called him at his department and he called me back within an hour And of that I believe was within an hour that certainly that same day That I call him and we had this great conversation about introducing mindfulness into law enforcement.

He talked about his struggles and why he did it. And I said, why don't you come to the National Academy? And so I invited him to the National Academy to teach a couple blocks in mindfulness, never been done before. And I created my own feedback form because to be perfectly honest with you, I didn't trust the way the feedback was done.

I didn't want anybody to change it or anybody to  Goof around with the numbers. That was me at the time. I'm like, this is so new. I was getting so much backlash for it to be honest. I didn't, I put together my own kind of hand written and done feedback that I handed out to my students. We had about 40 there's around 46 cops in two different classes and 45 of them said it was amazing, was excellent feedback and said, what is this?

And, How do we get more of this? And I need to know more about this. I've never seen this before. I've, I've heard about this, but I never really knew what it was. And so I was like, huh, odd is something here. And. It was not well received at the time by leadership there, and that's just where we were then.

It's not dissing anybody, or the unit, or the division, or the organization. It just wasn't where we were. Even back in that, at that time, it was now 2015, and that was done, so it wasn't that long ago. It was less than ten years ago. We just weren't there yet, and And I made a bunch of rookie mistakes by getting in the face.

This is a bad idea. I'm just warning everybody out there listening to get in the face and be pretty belligerent with leaders saying, why don't you understand? This isn't, I'm paraphrasing, but why don't you understand how important this is? If you would just listen, if you would just try it. And it just doesn't work.

You can't force feed this on anybody. In fact, this kind of training should never be mandatory and Holy Spirit and the team I work with in my company and with Rich Girling, we always tell law enforcement agencies, do not make this mandatory because you can't force feed somebody to talk about mindfulness.

You just can't do it. And so that was my rookie mistake. So I, I took myself down a couple notches because I really wanted to make this work. And. Ironically, once I, when I left National Academy and moved over to the Curriculum and Response Group, this is where it comes full circle, into the Crisis Management Unit, I had this amazing Unit Chief, um, Michael Hartnett, who I've actually done some work for in his new job, his post retirement job, in this arena.

And I had a wonderful Assistant Director, his name was Greg Cox at the time. Of, of, uh, President Response Group, and basically, they wanted to try it. They had the courage to say, I don't know what this is, but I wish I had it. When I was early on in my career, so why don't you start talking about it? So I did, with our Special Agents in Charge, with our Assistant Special Agents in Charge, with our Crisis Management Unit in general, and all of a sudden, ears were peaking.

And, uh, Bosses were starting to listen. Not all, but it was way different than it was even three years, two, two years prior. When I was retiring, I was about ready to leave the FBI.  Completely, and just go off with my police spirit and work with state and local law enforcement, work with Rich Gerling out in Oregon.

And, I was asked to come back to the FBI, and in part, to come back to the FBI  to talk about this work. Introduce it. So I was like, deal, I'll come back and do it. I had no intention, but I did. Came back, I'm so glad I did. At the same time, a, the human performance coordinator at the time, his name, and I'm not going to say his name because he's just amazing, Brian Malczewski, Who's with him to this day, and he was a human performance coordinator at the time.

He was very forward leaning, very progressive thinker in this area of physical and mental emotional training.  We heard about each other. We met up. We talked about how do we introduce yoga and mindfulness into high performance teams? And so that's what we did, and we brought in yoga to start with, and that was in 2018 at this point.

We brought in yoga to the hostage rescue team. They'd never had it before, and it became a Something that still resonates over there. There's fits and starts in program development. People come and people leave. Leaders change, etc. And so it's been fits and starts. But I didn't give up. And we just kept it going for a long time. 

Where my story is, where it led me to this, it starts, so to sum it up, it starts out personal with personal, your own personal story, which we all have, and how you can take that personal story and give back to others this practice that I'm a firm believer in that makes us better humans, better decision makers, and pretty much better law enforcement officers.

And mindfulness is the foundation for every decision we make.  I'm going to take that to the bank because it's a  It's the foundation for how we regulate emotion, for how we perceive others, for how we can connect with friends and family and with people out in our communities, those who we serve. It's a foundational training and mindfulness gets stuck in this wellness bucket, Felisa, and I know I think we, you and I have talked about this before, it gets stuck in this wellness bucket, which it is part of the wellness bucket, in that bucket, but it's so much more than that.

Mindfulness. Is the baseline 101 training for how to be A fuller, richer human being and have a healthier, more productive, more intentional life. And I firmly believe that. 

I am in complete agreement. And Suzanna, you have such a powerful and inspiring story. So thank you so much for the work that you've done and just taking something that improved your own life and recognizing the need and how it could also improve the lives of others in law enforcement.

One thank you for being here so much. I'm really excited for this, but I, you gave us so much to talk about, so I want to take it a hundred steps back to where it all began, because you mentioned that you studied dance, and then you got your master's in business, and then you did a complete 180, and then somehow ended up in the FBI. 

How did you even get there? 

That is a question of a century that, uh, my parents are no longer with us, but I know my mom, I don't think she ever figured that out until the day she died. Like, how did that happen? I have no military and no law enforcement in my family. At the time, I didn't. I do now, which I, which is really fascinating to me.

I have a nephew who's an NYPD, and I have another nephew who's a OD operator in the military. I'm really proud of both of them. But when I was about 10 years old, FBI agent. How? Why? I have no idea. I really, it wasn't because I was watching A show or anything like that. I wasn't fascinated with policing. I don't know what it was.

There was something about the FBI I wanted to be a part of. I didn't basically, I probably didn't even know what they did. I just, they were law enforcement. And so it was always in my head as a little kid. Of course, my parents thought I was nuts. I was just being a little girl going, Oh yeah. Okay. Okay, honey.

Well in fact they didn't even let women in when I was 10 years old or basically they just started letting women in when I was 10. So there wasn't even a common. woman thing to even want at the time and so He was a pretty serious dancer. I was like I said, I was a dance major at the University of Akron, Ohio I danced professionally for a while  And my wonderful mom, mostly my mom, said, she called me Susie, she said, Susie, that's great, you want to be a dance mage, you want to be a dancer, she said, please, just get your master's in something practical, 

please just do that, please do that 

for me, and I was like, okay, mom, well, I did some work for the Ohio Ballet, and While I was still dancing and the general manager of the Ohio Ballet was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Madison.

I have a tie into a colleague of mine who I work with now. Just, just don't know how life works until it does. But anyway, she said, hey, why don't you go to UW Madison's Business School, and in fact, why don't you look at the Arts Administration Program, which was one of the, it was one of the primo arts administration programs in the country.

At the time, they only took ten people a year into this program, and I went, okay, so let me combine my love of the arts, with business because my body was already starting to fail me at the time as a young person and I officially retired from dance at the ripe old age of 24. Well, that kind of thing. But so I went to business school and I got my master's in that.

Fast forward, way fast forward. I moved to Cleveland and I'm looking for a job all over the country in arts administration. I find a job at the Great Lakes Theater Festival. In Cleveland, the link to Great Lakes Theatre Festival to somebody famous is Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks was an intern at Great Lakes Theatre Festival when he was like a really young person, long before my day, right?

But that's pretty awesome that he was there. But, I started working for Great Lakes Theatre Festival as a community relations manager. I was using my business background. By that time, I wasn't dancing anymore. I was about 20.  Um, and so I needed some other physical outlet. Right? And so, being Cleveland, I started running, and I always liked to run when I was a kid, but as a dancer through my childhood as a teenager, I was never really quote unquote allowed to play sports because back then, ballet teachers can be a little nutty sometimes too, but they think that, you know, they think that if you play a sport, you're going to change your musculature, you're going to get hurt, you can't dance. 

Some of it legit, some of it was just not accurate. So I didn't play sports, although I love playing sports in my backyard with my friends, and I love sports. So finally I could run. I could always, I was always a decently fast runner as a kid, and so I thought, let me just go run. And so I started running in Cleveland with this lunchtime group, all right, this lunchtime group, and they Happen to be FBI agents, but a bunch of, not all of them, but several of them were FBI agents.

I started to run with and then My job changed from arts administrator to getting into corporate wellness because I was key I was kept moving into the physicality  of business now again I kept working my major using my major still but now moving into because working in arts administration just wasn't physical enough for me I just needed there was something else.

I wanted to give and so I moved over to work for British Petroleum Or BP oil and gas and they were based out of Cleveland at the time and so this lunchtime group Was made up of agents some BP America employees and then some bank employees We all used to meet up at lunch and then go for these runs, right? 

Well, I started racing. I started getting on the racing circuit and I distinctly remember this one race I did was a five mile race in a town called Bay Village, Ohio. It was called Bay Days five mile So shout out to them in Cleveland Bay Village, but after the race I was invited Like an after party with beer and food and all that after you do a race and I'm, and it was at an FBI agent's house, right?

So I go there and  the agent was talking to me and he said, Have you ever thought about being an FBI agent? So I talked to him, I told him about my 10 year old fantasy world. And he goes, why don't you just do it? And that's what happened. So serendipity and not knowing where life's going to take you is true.

We all know this.  You really realize that my mom used to always say things happen for a reason, but you don't always know until much later in life and that happened for a reason. And so that's how I became an FBI agent. By pure accident and by connection to the sport that I love running and to people who I really got along with really well and beer and wine for a beer and wine party and pretty, 

pretty amazing how that works.

That is amazing because the world just works in mysterious ways. And I'm so happy that It fell, it  fell in front of you and you just took it and now here you are, like, giving back to your community. So that's, so you've worked with, you've been a lead instructor, you've worked with teams like the FBI's hostage rescue team, you've worked with, like, SWAT teams.

What are some of the main characteristics that you see in people who are in these high stress fields? 

They're highly resilient people. They're inherently highly resilient. In fact, law enforcement in general tends to be not always, but tends to be more resilient than the average person. There's some data behind that, but once you get to that elite status of  For example, hostage rescue team, you've been through a lot, you've moved through a lot, you've worked with a lot, you've seen a lot, you've done a lot, and you're inherently more resilient than even the average agent.

So, there's definitely that high resilience. They're exceptionally smart  in terms of awareness. They're attuned to situations around them, and not only that, but they're very intuitive, I guess is their way in.  Talking to people, in understanding the emotions of other people, because they have to be. They have to, they have to work with de confliction.

They have to work with people who are at a very heightened state. on the other side of their mission, right? Some bad guys and good guys in their heightened state and being able to distinguish between the two. So, those two are, are very, are, are highly resilient, very intuitive people, very intuitive and thoughtful.

And what I found, and I, I don't want this to come out the wrong way of somebody listening to this, but they're kind. Really kind people. And kindness, it doesn't necessarily mean nice, right? Any, any jackass can be nice, really, but, like, kindness where you Kindness can be brutal. You can tell people when what the hell are you doing kind of thing, you know, gentle, inspiring way.

And you can also be spirit where you're just very giving and in a humble kind of way. So that I really, those are the three characteristics of characteristics. I really noticed about them. And the piece of being in a high stress environment like theirs, I don't want to speak for them. I don't pretend to be one of them.

I never did. Never will. But I know that they put a lot of pressure on themselves. They themselves, the agency, puts a lot of The high expectations for them, the public has high expectations for them, so the expectation to be perfect, for lack of a better word, is there. And as you can imagine, that creates a lot of pressure, creates a lot of stress, and sometimes creates a lot of trauma, when things don't turn out the way, the way things are planned or sometimes the, your training fails or, Sometimes a mission may not turn out the way you want it to, and there can be some trauma that goes with that.

So, that I would say is, those are the standout pieces to me. And it was very challenging to work with them, to meet them where they are. And they want to be better humans. And I found that really, what's the word, heartwarming? I don't mean to sound corny, but they really want to be better humans. And They're fallible, too, like the rest of us, and so that I saw, too, and that was endearing to me, because it's like, okay, they make, they say dumb things, too, sometimes, and I feel better about, okay, this, it normalizes them, you know what I mean?

It normalizes me, and so it's just, it was really an honor to have worked with them for about six and a half years. I'm really proud of the work that was done there, and I hope it just, it continues, but it ends and flows in this arena, and That's just part of the work. 

So,  so now how do you tailor, how do you tailor your courses and your classes to meet those needs? 

A couple ways in the, in the physical piece, the yoga piece to it, which is where we started this whole journey with them. I spent a lot of time watching how they move, watching their training, close quarter battle and talking to people about where their injuries tend to occur on the  physicality of it, where injuries tend to happen in the hips and the back are really common.

Shoulders are really common, wrists are really common. And so looking at that, how they move, like their requirements. What they need. They're highly athletic people. So they're very physical people. And what I did notice is they tend to overdo versus underdo.  And so the injury rate can be quite high, not just because of what they're required to do, but also because of their determination to just do it, to just do it and to keep pushing the limits, which is, which we need that in that arena, but we need that.

But talking to them about balance is challenging to balance it out. So that was one way. Understanding that they deploy a lot. So they're gone a lot. They're on the road a lot where the training or actually deploying to real events is constant for them. So they're on the road a lot. So they're away from their families.

They're away from their routines. They're with their teammates who they love and away from the families that they love and the friends that they love. And so that's a very important piece to talk about. And managing  that side of their work is really important to talk about and how mindfulness can. Be a piece of that  very much.

And then offering a variety of training from not just myself, but from subject matter experts and researchers in this arena, like we're like Richard Gerling. And this is where I want to bring university of Wisconsin Madison back full circle. I run it. They went to school there, but Chad McGee, who's this amazing nationally known meditation teacher, primarily for athletes, he's the first director of meditation for division one level.

Athletic department. A researcher and clinician named Brian Shires out of UCLA, so he's out in LA, bringing those kinds of people with tremendous credibility and bona fides into the training arena, adding myself in there with the law enforcement background and the yoga background, the physicality piece of it.

And then bringing in agents who, agents, there's so many smart agents out there, Felisa. There's an agent who worked with us who was a neuroscientist before he got in the Bureau. There's another agent who's a SWAT senior team leader who has a PhD in exercise physiology. I brought him in to work with the teams as well.

So it's basically bringing in the right people. So it's not just the message you deliver, right? Because the science is a science, right? It's not just the message you deliver, but who delivers it is key for, I hate the term buy in, but I'm going to use it, it's key to the, to buying in and that's basically how it started.

That's how we specifically tailor the training. The science is there, right? Which is important to talk about the science behind mindfulness for elite performers, adding the practices that, that are useful to them, that are proven in. In special forces and the military branches and in athletes bringing all those concepts in to their Environment  really important and then the yoga piece is just tailoring it to how they move Now and I don't mean to say it this way, but I'm gonna say it not using a really fluffy language If that I think you know what that means really fluffy things ain't gonna fly with them so just speaking like a normal human being and then gradually bringing in the You Some of the philosophy behind yoga, because yoga is a warrior practice.

Yoga began with men. It didn't begin with women in L. A. That's not how it started. It was, it began with men thousands of years ago in India, and they were all warriors. It was a warrior practice.  Mindfulness practices, whether it's meditation, gratitude setting, or whether it's the physical practice of yoga, is a warrior, they're warrior practices, it's built for these, it's built for these guys.

So I'm not surprised that it, it, it gravitated towards them, and that so many of the guys over there have glommed onto it, and are doing things on their own now.  And that was my whole goal over there was for them to not rely on me or rely on one of our team specialists that come in, but to actually infuse these practices into the daily rhythms of their life.

And many of them have, and some of them are on the cusp of doing that. Some of them started, just like everything, some of them started and then it eased off a little bit.  You get out of the fold for a little while, like all of us do. You found a habit, frankly, and then bringing them back. And so that, that's the importance of sustainability and consistency in this training is really important.

Not just with elite teams, but with all of us, just like anything. And so that, to me, that's the biggest challenge in working with elite teams. Elite teams and working with law enforcement in general, and specifically the FBI, is a consistency in the sustainability for a lot of reasons. It's the organization has to have an appetite for it.

They, it has to be supported by leadership, both in their own participation and financially, right? Things do cost some money, right? And also it takes time for a cultural shift, right? And so the ebbs and flows are normal where things start, right? Things fall apart for a while, and then a year or two later, they build back up again.

And that's because leadership changes, and people's needs change, and leadership priorities change. And so I, I don't fear that things go away for a long period of time. They always come back. In my experience doing this for over a decade now, they always come back. Right? They always come back and because that's how powerful these practices are.

And I have a question. Well, I have a lot of questions, but this question is how long does it take for the lessons that you teach to take hold? 

Oh, if I can answer that, I'd be a very wealthy woman. Here's the thing that, that we instill, not just me, I talk about it as a team, because we're a team of people that do this, is that we instill, you have to do your own work.

Was that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make the horse take a drink, right? That kind of, whatever that old expression is, but, that's why the training, the consistency, the initial training, It's really important, giving them a foundational baseline of these skills, really important. And then the sustainability, like how do we sustain this, infuse this into your strength and conditioning, infuse this into your tactical training and firearms training, keep infusing it so it becomes frankly normal,  but trying to keep it going is, can be problematic.

So I'm not sure if I'm answering your question properly. Okay. But It can be problematic, but it's a long term, it's a long term process individually to give them the practices they got to practice. We can't force them to do it. And then the organizational support needs to go together. So that how long it takes to work is case by case.

I've had guys tell me that they begin to notice that they're sleeping better.  They're not as angry anymore, right, that they're more present for  their significant others at home, or for their kids, or for their friends, they're more present for the world.  Those don't happen overnight, and you know the first people to, to see that is not you, usually.

It's usually the person who knows you best, or the teammate that knows you well, says, Hey dude, wow, I remember, I remember when you were like XYZ a couple years ago. What the hell happened? You would have gone off on that one. What happened? I believe that's how these practices begin to work. And I know that's what happened to me is that my family, my friends started to notice it before I did.

And you did answer my question, by the way, so thank you. But you also mentioned organizational support and then Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned that at first, initially, you had a lot of pushback and then soon agencies started coming to you and now there's like a slower adoption. Do you see these organizations being more open to these kind of lessons and supporting their officers? 

Yes, I do. I do. And again, it's ebbing and flowing. So, it's a leadership issue. And I, I didn't really start emphasizing that until probably about two years ago, um, when I saw some challen some renewed challenges in the FBI and where I was working trying to instill this and keep it going with our SWAT teams and not only SWAT teams, but with our EOD folks, our bomb guys, and, and evidence response team.

Folks went, it, it, I do see more of a willingness to try than I ever did now, but I still don't see a little bit more openness depending on the leader, but I still don't see the true action by leadership to support this. With not just words, with their own participation in it, their willingness to participate, their willingness to do their own work is really important.

This is not, oh, Felice,  I'm just going to give you this training because I'm going to fix you, which is not the, which is truly not the way this works, but leaders doing their own work. So they can really understand this better, be better leaders for it.  That's where I see it going, that there's much more, to summarize that, there's much more willingness to try it.

Because guess what? The research is behind it now to support it. I'm the person that says no more excuses because I'm sick of hearing that crap about what is this kind of weirdo? Soft, meditating, yoga, what is this kind of, what kind of, no, there's really solid science behind this now, so I don't even want to hear that anymore, but it does take courageous leaders to come in and not only pay for it, find the money for it, I would say either it's important or it isn't, if you espouse to the wellness, well being, and the resiliency of your people, you have to Show us your money, show us the support, and I realize there's financial issues all around the country and all across the government.

I do understand that, but it's looking at prioritizing the health and well being of  your personnel because without them, you ain't got nothing, right? And you're just the healthy minds make healthy decisions, which make healthy organizations. Which make for long term good decisions, great output, more respect of the organization itself.

So yes, so I do see that happening. However, I do still see a lot of lack of leadership support and participation in it and But again, it only takes one or two of those courageous men or women to come forward and go, let's do this. And fortunately, I see some of that happening in the environment I'm in now.

I mean, over the last month or two,  a changeover of leadership, and that's a wonderful thing. So I have a lot more hope again. 

And I want to go back because you mentioned  Yoga, and then I think you said the word soft. So when you say soft, I think it's vulnerable. Do you think that there's generational or gender differences when it comes to, oh, hearing this and being like, oh, we want to take this on and just like that openness?

I would say the answer is yes and, right? Yes. And there's more to it than that. Now we  When I was out, when I was out on the road with our team, it was called P. E. A. K. by the way, it was the name of the program, which is no longer around, which is unfortunate. I hope it comes back and the FBI, but we were around too.

There are 18 SWAT teams now. And one of the most popular, I hate to use the word popular, one of the most receptive audience for talking about vulnerability was SWAT. And it was fascinating. And, but it was having these deep, thoughtful discussions about what vulnerability meant, what it was all about.

trained to them, most, not all, but most SWAT operators are men, not all, but most are. Culturally and societally, what vulnerability meant to them. They would talk about, this is what I thought vulnerability was, and what I was told it was, that it was weak, that it was soft, and all that stuff we just talked about.

But now, there's, there's some great science behind what vulnerability really is. And one of my favorite researchers out there is Brene Brown. And she, That's her, the crux of her work has been in vulnerability and shame and she explains vulnerabilities, you can't be authentic without it and she, she described vulnerability in three ways that really resonate with our tactical operator community is vulnerability is Working with uncertainty, working with risk, and working with emotional exposure.

And if you think about that, in a tactical situation, there's uncertainty, there's risk, and there's emotional exposure. All three. That's vulnerability, right? That's vulnerability. And that, working from who you are authentically, that's where the toughness is. Putting it another way, If we don't talk about vulnerability in law enforcement, whether male or female officer, I mentioned earlier that we in law enforcement are abnormally brilliant at maladaptive coping behavior because we're trying to numb our pain 

and 

we're trying to cover up our vulnerability.

We're trying to cover up who we really are inside. We're trying to cover up our fears and not just fear of, I'm not talking about the general fear. I'm not talking about bravery. I'm talking about fear of failure, fear of looking lesser than. Fear of not being enough, right? It's frankly easier to numb that through overexercising, which we get rewarded for because the more physically fit, especially when you're in, in, in the Elite Operative Communities, the more physically fit you are, the more rewards you get, the more kudos you get, even though you might be suffering inside.

So, the more we work with our own uncertainty, our risk, and our emotional exposure, the stronger we get. Because it allows us, our vulnerability allows us to lean in to our own suffering. When we lean in to our own suffering, And we keep leaning into our own discomfort. We can actually do something about it as opposed to running to those maladaptive coping behaviors.

And none of this is judgmental because I've pretty much done everything, right? Running into those standard coping behaviors, which frankly are accepted in law enforcement through overexercising, drinking, but maybe being a general asshole too, is, is a sign of suffering, right? Because you're, You dehumanize yourself, you dehumanize the people in front of you because you're so over, you're so overwhelmed with this unmitigated stress and trauma.

And being vulnerable and noticing that you are struggling is key to being better. Not just better at your job, because it will make you better at your job, because you're not going to sustain a career, a healthy career, if you're flailing, if you have maladaptive coping behaviors, if you're that general asshole, if you can't sleep, if you're eating improperly, all that stuff that all matters.

You cannot sustain a healthy, high performing career without vulnerability, which allows us to be who we are, 

the 

accepting of the fact that maybe, I'm suffering because the data supports.  The scientific data for law enforcement officers supports that we will, not maybe, not could be, but we will be stress injured, probably multiple times in a law enforcement officer's career. 

Hiding from our own suffering, instead of hiding from our own vulnerability, instead of numbing our pain through all those maladaptive coping behaviors we talked about, why not, since we know we're going to be stress injured, the data supports it, why don't we work, with injury? Why don't we work on injury prevention?

We do that physically all the time. How do we prevent injury as a runner, as a cyclist, whatever, you name it, right? How do we prevent injury as we get older? Why not talk about normalizing stress and trauma in law enforcement, right? And with that comes vulnerability, even having that discussion. Normalize stress and trauma as part of the human experience and definitely magnified as a law enforcement officer because the research supports it.

Yeah. So 

I'm really tired, Felisa, of talking about stress reduction because we don't reduce  what we see as a law enforcement officer. We don't reduce what we experience as a law enforcement officer. You don't reduce bearing witness to suffering because you're going to see it. You don't, you don't reduce Organizational stressors, meaning moral injury of your own organization, maybe turning on you or your own bosses turning on you, which happens, which get, which happens.

It just happens in any profession, right? So you don't reduce all that stuff. If we talk about, if we normalize all of that, then we can actually work with it. So we can do something about it because we know it's going to happen. If that makes sense, prehabilitative work, we have open, honest discussions starting in our new agent training academy, start those discussions now, not just about only mindset and only sports psychology and only like bigger, faster, stronger, and not only talking about that's important to talk about, but can't we do both and talk about what stress and trauma does to a law enforcement officer that when it's unprocessed because the data supports that it's going to happen. 

What, what is predictable is preventable kind of thing, which comes from Gordon Graham, who's a longtime cop and speaker out in the circuit. That's what I see. That's what I've seen. And that, and that's where vulnerability comes into play and the importance of talking about vulnerability and shame, frankly, especially with elite operators and elite performers in the law enforcement profession.

Really important. 

I completely agree on it. It sounds like the tough work comes from when you are that open and authentic with ourselves. 

100 percent and vulnerability doesn't mean Oversharing and things. It doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't mean curling up in a ball and giving up. That's not what I'm talking about at all.

In fact, mindfulness is quite the opposite of that. It gives you the strength to realize that you're feeling something here. So, but you can only feel if you allow yourself to feel. And sometimes that feeling is not pleasant, right? And that's where vulnerability comes from. Right? To have the, these big blockades and these brick walls that we put in front of us so we don't get hurt or so we don't show damn, maybe I'm suffering or maybe I just want to be a really good human being and my job right now in this environment is not allowing me to be all I am, all I want to be because I'm not being authentic.

Maybe we should address that. And I, I did find, and I could say, I think I could say we, I could speak for our, our PEAK team, that we did find that these were some of the most compelling discussions that we had were about, was about vulnerability and shame and frankly, gratitude and love. Who would have thought?

I thought when I first got into this training for tactical operators or EOD operators, that all they want to talk about was being a better operator at work.  Quite the contrary.  They wanted to be better fathers, better mothers, better friends. And so, that was very heartwarming to me, and also, I realized the impact that this training can have on the physical, mental, and emotional and spiritual longevity of a law enforcement officer.

You just blew my mind. You've given me so much that I want to also  dig more into because you're shining another light that I don't actually, I've never gotten from, um, when I think of like law enforcement. Like, when you mentioned earlier that, like, those elite teams, like, high resilience, I was like, okay, I could see that, smart, I could see that, but then when you started talking about, like, thoughtfulness and, like, kindness, I was like, whoa, that's a good point.

Like, at the, when I think of law enforcement, I actually, I, of course, they're people, but I don't, to me, I see them as  law enforcement, that's what they are, they're law enforcement, but now you're like, oh no, there's, there's a human behind it, like, when you're talking about, like, the maladaptive coping mechanism, like, oh my gosh.

You're offering, like, a very human centered perspective on, like, the lives that they live, and I'm like, my mind is just blown right now. 

Oh, yeah, it's because it's a side that we don't really see, right, in the public space. We don't see it unless you love a law enforcement officer or that law enforcement officer is in your family or you're around them.

You are one or you're around them like me. When I was teaching for the FBI National Academy, Like I said, it was the best assignment I had in my whole time at the Bureau. It, they were so inspiring. And Wanting to make a difference, you know, and  dealing with their suffering was something nobody ever talked to them about.

Working with their suffering, because they weren't supposed to have any. 

You 

know, they weren't supposed to have any, or at least, they weren't supposed to have any openly. And it's,  it's still a factor, it's still a problem. And I know we're trying to reduce the stigma of that. And there's less than there was, but unfortunately, I think sometimes the stigma gets a stigma.

And then there's some trainers and folks out there, well intentioned, but calling law enforcement officers who are struggling, broken or damaged or whatever, you name it, down the list. And then you'll find that law enforcement officers call themselves that as well. And that's not helpful. And we know in terms of recovery from suffering, that's not helpful, but it's very normal to have language like that in it.

And unfortunately, when you have outsiders saying, oh, you're broken and I can fix you kind of mentality. It's just really not supportive of moving forward in law enforcement, because you're not broken. You're not a victim of your profession. You're going to be stress injured. And I'll go back to it, because the data supports that.

You're going to be. So let's stop making this about being broken. 

Yeah. Let's stop 

being a victim of a profession that, A, you chose, right? And B, Hopefully you love and the point is you want to, for sustainability and optimization as a performer in law enforcement, you want to sustain not only your capacity as a law enforcement officer, but you want to sustain your capacity to love your profession throughout your career and remember what your purpose was and why you did it.

There's, there were times, Felicia, that I would, and I haven't done this in a long time, I, I think I need to come back to this, is I would go around the room, I was, when I talked to agents, whether they were SWAT or whether they were case agents who weren't part of SWAT, out in the field, I would, once in a while, I'd go around the room and I'd ask them, why'd you become an FBI agent, and I would see this, like, deer in headlights going, I forgot.

For some of them, you know what? You know how normal that is? It's really normal because you just get so spun up and get caught up, frankly, in your own bullshit of life and things that are happening to you without realizing that you forget what your meaning is, or your meaning and purpose. And we know that meaning and purpose and the brain is very powerful for mindfulness, for being present, for  feeling like you belong in this world.

Bye.  I didn't want to get into PTSD and suicidal ideation, but when you start losing your purpose in your meaning, things look pretty bleak. And so keep sustaining that is work. But not, so I'll go back to that, your individual, the deep dive, deep, personal, reflective work is imperative. In order to do that, you have to be vulnerable to discovering what's there.

Because it oftentimes ain't pretty, right? In tandem with the support of your organization, number one, your leadership that truly supports it, not says, oh, Suzanna, she's really difficult, and she's got a problem, and, and she needs to go get fixed, or we just don't want her around anymore because she creates whatever x, y, z, and that's not helpful, and that's old school, and the only thing I hear in that kind of conversation is old.

That's all I hear in that. And it's like, we got to get away from that. And so we're still struggling with that. We still are. But with generations like yourselves, and I see it, um, and I saw it, I don't do the same more, but I saw it with our new operator training school, which are the new guys coming in, new operators coming into hostage rescue team is there around your age, maybe a little bit older.

In their early to mid thirties, most of them, and they're, many of them, not all, but many of them are all in for this kind of work. They want more, and the reason I know this is because they've told me that they want more. So I'm hoping that leadership listens to them and says, Hey, Maybe we should really start infusing this type of training, not just, not just a few blocks of training here and there, but really make this part of the culture of elite performers and the FBI, which then, in tandem with that, they tend to be the informal leaders in the Bureau, and then guess what?

The other agents start to listen to that going, Oh, well, these guys are doing it. So maybe I should try it. So does that make sense? And so you get the leaders, like the top down, bottom up analogy, where the, when I say bottom up, be like the field agents that tactical operators are participating in this and they're promoting it.

And then the leaders do the same thing. And that's how the culture changes. That's how the culture shifts. 

That makes 100 percent sense, and I'm so happy that the next generation of operators are coming in here and they're like fully embracing the work that you're doing, because I, I'm excited for them.

I'm really excited for the future. Me too, and 

I, what I wish for is that for the leadership, whether it's federal law enforcement, whether it's state and local law enforcement, to really take hold of that and really listen to that, because that's your future generation. And they don't necessarily want to be like the people my age.

Who were, who were injured all the time, physically, mentally, emotionally, right, and really struggled. We don't have to struggle long term. We just, we shouldn't have to do that. They don't want to. Does that make them soft? No. To me, that makes them damn healthy. They want that sustainability as an operator, as a, as an agent, as a father, and all that. 

Spouse, all of that. They want that longevity.  And so they're, what I'm hoping is that leadership listens to that. If you don't practice it and you don't have sustainability, guess what you lose? You lose the ground that you've made, like the headwind that you've made. And they start to, like, without practice, things start to fall, right?

You start to lose the habit, and then the culture never shifts, right? And so then, the new guys coming in, no matter how much they wanted it, if the old, frankly, old culture is saying, well, we're going to focus on strength and conditioning more, we're going to focus on this more, if they're not buying into that, then, If they're going to have very little choice, they're going to get pulled into that fold.

And I'm talking that in general. I'm talking that in law enforcement in general across the board. So that's why that top down, bottom up theory that I like to use is so important. And now we have this, like you said, we have this captive audience of young people coming in. The word mindfulness, I didn't know what the hell that was.

When I first, I didn't know what that was. I wish I did. And they want to talk about that. They want to talk about love and connection and gratitude. And They want that. So why not have that discussion? Because it will only make you a better operator long term. So for the organization itself, it's primo.

It's like, to me, to Suzanna, it's a no brainer to do it. And it really doesn't cost that much money. Does it cost money? Yeah, but things that are worth it do, right? It does. So either it's important or it isn't. And so I hope we get to a point where it's more steady, where it's more like, Let's keep this going and not just offer bits and pieces and random classes here and random training here.

That's, there's no, that's really not helpful. I don't, it's better than nothing. Honestly, it's better than nothing, but it's not sustainable. 

No, consistency is key and I'm in complete agreement with you. And I don't think the term mindfulness was coined until the 1970s or something like that. 

Correct. Yeah. 

At least in the Western world, for sure. In the Western 

world, that's correct. It's like a, I don't think my mom, like, knew what this concept was either. So, it's new, but it's like, more research is being done, like you mentioned earlier, like the science is behind it, and it's good for the organizations, it's good for the operators, like, and the individual.

Like, it's, to me, it's also a no brainer. Yeah, 

it's foundational. It's foundational skills training. That's what I say. In law enforcement, it's just as foundational as learning how to shoot a weapon accurately and properly and accurately. It's just as important and foundational as learning how to run a case because between the ears, if that's unhealthy,  Nothing is going to be healthy.

It just won't be. I don't care how great of an athlete you are. Because that's going to fade too, without the mental training. Frankly, the training of the mind. Without that piece, why isn't that as important as training the body? Why isn't that as important as training in policies and procedures? And  arrests and search warrants and all that, which are obviously very, that's the crux of our work.

Right. But behind all that is a brain. 

And I know we're coming up on time, but what are two things that you'd like listeners to take away from this conversation? 

Two things. Oh, you had to do this to me, right?  Number one, let me reiterate. If I may, let me reiterate two things I've already said, just to summarize it. 

Mindfulness is bigger than wellness. Okay. Number one, mindfulness is bigger than wellness. And number two, we can train to be more mindful at any age. It's never too late to be a better human and to be more present ever. 

I like to end on that note. Suzanna, thank you so much for your time. This conversation was really eyeopening and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Thank you so much. And thank you so much for what you're doing. And I really appreciate it. And you're going to do great things. I can't wait to see every bit of it. 

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Passpoint, the podcast. Our debut season is packed with enlightening conversations featuring thought leaders, burnout prevention specialists, authors, and mindfulness coaches.  Together, we delve into topics like effective stress management, burnout, goal setting, and transformative mindfulness techniques. 

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