The PLA Podcast
A podcast from the Physicians Leadership Academy
The PLA Podcast
PLA Podcast Episode 3 (Feat. Jan Glowski, PhD) "Five Minutes to Sanity: Why Doctors Are Too Busy NOT to Meditate"
Dr. Stephanie Costa talks to meditation coach Janice Glowski, PhD and PLA founder Phil Cass, PhD explore how meditation serves as the foundation for the Physicians Leadership Academy, rooted in the belief that we are fundamentally complete and whole as people.
• Meditation helps physicians create "islands of sanity" in challenging environments
• The practice helps us recognize that our thoughts, especially judgmental ones, are not reality
• Research shows meditation changes both brain chemistry and structure, cultivating greater stability and compassion
• Consistent, brief practice (even just 5-10 minutes daily) can be transformative
• Finding community support significantly increases success in maintaining a meditation practice
• Small moments of mindfulness throughout the day can be integrated into busy physician schedules
• Meditation helps physicians be fully present despite challenging circumstances
• The practice develops greater capacity for deep listening and attunement with patients
Welcome to the PLA podcast, where we hope to provide an easily accessible platform for our PLA alumni that reconnects you to the mindset, the teachings and the community of the Physicians Leadership Academy at the Columbus Medical Association. I'm Stephanie Costa and I'm joined by my co-host, Phil Kass, the founder of the Physicians Leadership Academy, and today we have a wonderful and familiar guest that's joining us that I know most people just find great comfort in hearing her voice, and that's Janice Glowski, our meditation coach for the Physicians Leadership Academy. So welcome both Janice and Phil. So welcome both Janice and Phil. And Phil, you've known Janice for such a long time and I know you call her a dear friend. All of us have met Janice, but, as her friend, could you introduce her to us in a way that others may not have heard from you before?
Speaker 2:I would be very happy to do that.
Speaker 2:You know, when we first started to think about this academy, we asked ourselves what's the deep operating principle here, and we came to the conclusion that it was the notion of basic goodness, that we fundamentally believe that people who are the faculty, who are the participants, are essentially good.
Speaker 2:That also meant that the partner to that is meditation, partner to that is meditation, and so, as we thought about that and I thought about that because I've known Janice, as you said, these many years there was nobody, nobody that came to mind but her, in terms of being able to convey the practices of meditation that are concomitant with the notion of basic goodness. She's that, that's the root of this whole academy, and it's who Janice is and who I've known over these years, and so it's been. I think part of the reason we all love to have her, part of this is because this is her love to have her. Part of this is because this is her, and I feel grateful for the opportunity to be in friendship with her, and I know other people do too. There's utility to meditation, and I'm sure Janice will address that today, but fundamentally, what this is is her ability to convey basic goodness and its relationship to meditation. That, I think, has been fundamental to the PLA.
Speaker 1:So beautiful. Janice, I don't know how you feel if you need a tissue right now or you're ready to just jump in the thing?
Speaker 3:No, I think we need to take a break. You're ready to just jump in the thing? No, I think we need to take a break. Thank you, phil. That's the feeling is very mutual actually. To both of you, I'm glad to be here today.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're so glad to have you. And I know, janice, as I interact with alumni from the PLA time and time again I hear how much they really crave reconnecting to that PLA mindset, the teachings, the community, and so many times alumni mentioned that they miss being with Phil and spending time on the cushion with you. And PLA really is this place of familiarity and comfort and support. And we have a meditation refresh coming up later this month, on April 27. So I'm hoping people will refresh with us then. But what would you say, janice, to our, our community of alumni who are really wanting to reconnect with their practice?
Speaker 3:That's a great question, because there's no point on the path of meditation and the path of practice where one isn't asking themselves how do I reconnect, or how do I stay connected, connect, or how do I stay connected? Or and I think it's maybe Robin Wall Kimmerer said this the best, where she said you know, it's a human's job to remember, to remember, and both the practice of meditation and walking the path has everything to do with just remembering, to remember that we are fundamentally complete already. We're fundamentally whole as people, as community, as society, and there's that wholeness has a quality of. We say goodness, but it just really means complete without any elaboration needed, without any elaboration needed. So just remembering, to remember is the main thing.
Speaker 1:I know, janice, you've used the terms before coming home to ourselves and that we're a better version of ourselves when we feel really comfortable and at home within ourselves. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, I think there are a lot of stressors, there's a lot that in society and in life in general that pulls us away from ourselves.
Speaker 3:It pulls us into our heads, into our thoughts, pulls us away from connection to each other, toward doing rather than being. It pulls us into sort of spaces of modernity where we are separated from community and relational spaces. And I think one of the things about PLA is the entire 10 months is a relational space, and meditation begins as a relational space of getting to know ourselves, maybe for the first time, maybe in a way that we've never quite listened to, who we really are. And so when we sit down on the cushion and we begin to kind of settle in to our bodies, settle into our felt living experience of who we are in the moment, that can be sometimes scary, sometimes surprising, but usually refreshing and touching. You know, to actually touch our beating hearts and to feel our bodies for the first time in a quiet way can be very powerful to what's happening inside of us, because the medical field just requires us to be working at such a frantic pace.
Speaker 1:Phil, I'm recollecting back in 2020 at the early part of the pandemic, and I remember the two of you hosting some virtual meditation sessions for alumni, because people were meditating not just at those virtual sessions, but because they had had that mindfulness and meditation training in PLA. Phil, what did you notice in PLA alumni at that time in the pandemic?
Speaker 2:So what did you notice in PLA alumni at that time in the pandemic, because they had that skill set. So one of the things we talk about and we may want to talk more about that in did the meditation was creating an island of sanity for those evenings and for the people who participated, and I think they were craving all of it, were craving all of us were craving um that, those islands of sanity we were all creating, desiring sanity, and so this was really a response to that need for a space with each other to be able to be remember. As Janet said, remember to remember that we are sane human beings.
Speaker 1:I remember when I bumped into people at that time alumni, they would just say you know, I'm looking around and I think I'm navigating things a little bit better than my peers who may not have that background in meditation. Janice, can you speak to how meditation helps us with whatever situation might arise?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the practice of meditation over a period of time you know, just take the PLA, for example, over a 10-month period begins to actually cultivate the capacity to be fully present in whatever situation it is and to be able to be present with everyone at whatever our mind state is. So a physician may be very agitated, may have come off of a very difficult situation and they need to move on immediately, without any break, into the next room, into the next situation, the next relationship with another patient, and meditation brings about the capacity to come back to oneself while still being fully engaged and present for the other person. So it's the foundation and the ground for deep listening. They can listen then, to themselves and what they feel in their bodies in relationship to what's happening in the room, because it isn't all just an intellectual exercise, you know. They become much more attuned to what's happening overall. They begin to listen more deeply and pick up on a lot more, I think, than maybe what they would have had they not had the practice of stabilizing.
Speaker 3:And there's also just the. You know the, the biology of it, and there certainly is much more research. The science is pretty clear now that the, the brain chemistry changes, even the brain structure changes as a result of meditation practices, and different practices result in different changes. So we know that it actually that that compassion is cultivated further, stability is cultivated further. So I think it just prepares it really prepares people to be in a world that can be very trying, can be very difficult, and yet they're called upon to do extraordinary work.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's really about it's kind of like cultivating the capacity to be their own support in that present moment team member, roberto Benzo, will talk about how they've used the mindfulness training up at Mayo and how medical teams in very acute situations you know, running codes or in the ICU, and the differences between teams who have been trained in meditation and mindfulness versus those who haven't, and pretty significant differences in the outcomes Positions. You know it can be a good thing but it can also lead to really us being hard on ourselves and leading to burnout. But we have tendencies toward perfection. How does mindfulness help us deal with that?
Speaker 3:I don't know a single person in the past I don't know how many decades that I've been practicing and myself and teaching people how to practice I don't know a single person who hasn't been hard on themselves, who hasn't discovered their incredibly judgmental mind and the critique, the ongoing critique am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? How is this supposed to be? How is it not supposed to be?
Speaker 3:And I think when you have individuals who have had to work so hard to accomplish their goals, and that path, that path of becoming a physician, means getting an A, it means getting the right answer, it means always kind of doing the right thing, very goal-oriented they have to be, and being perfect means that one can be good at what they're doing.
Speaker 3:And meditation is an opportunity for physicians, maybe the first time in their life, to sit down with themselves and watch all of that come up, to actually see, hear, feel those thoughts, thoughts, and begin to kind of unpack and unravel those just by sitting and letting them self liberate, you know, just to notice first of all that they're there, to notice maybe for the first time, that they are actually being really critical of themselves and learning how to recognize that their thoughts are not the soul of reality, they are not the essence of reality. In fact, the thinking may have very little to do with reality at any given moment, and particularly judgment. So it's maybe it's the first time that they start to have a direct experience that's not filtered by analytics and self-criticism.
Speaker 2:Maybe a chance to actually challenge those beliefs of perfection, right yeah?
Speaker 1:How about any coaching insight here, Phil, as far as that intersection of perfection and mindfulness and that challenge that you just mentioned?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks, steph. It's almost every coaching relationship that I have with physicians, but I coach other people too. It's to Janice's point. It's endemic to we as human beings point. It's endemic to we as human beings, I think. So, yeah, so is it true? Is perfection true? I think most of us, when we ask that question, would say no, it's not true. And even being able to say perfection is not true is a really important freeing thing for people. It's also like saying people say to me all the time I can't get done, and I'll ask them oftentimes what does done mean? There are myths that we live with. Perfection and done are two of them, and so I think meditation is a chance to see those things for what they are and to challenge them and to ask ourselves is that true? I think that's one of the beautiful things about meditation is to be able to ask ourselves is what I'm thinking about myself really true?
Speaker 3:That's really well put, phil. That's really well put, phil. That's really well put. And it's um it. What we're thinking may be completely real to us in our reality, and it may not be at all true. Um, and so, yeah, meditation allows us to kind of see through that, and I think another aspect of it is um it. It allows for a different kind of openness and a different kind of freshness, to become familiar with being in a space that's more open, you know, more receptive and actually stronger. It cultivates the capacity to be actually very open. It cultivates the capacity to be actually very open, listening, gentle and also quite confident, quite confident and strong at the same time.
Speaker 1:So they sort of go hand in hand, you know, the more one opens through the practice of meditation and cultivating awareness, the sort of strength and confidence develops alongside it. One of the things I hear so often from people is I don't really like to meditate because when I get quiet with myself, then that's when I start hearing the judgment, that's when I start hearing you know voices from earlier in my life. Can you talk about pushing those away, because that can be an obstacle to that openness.
Speaker 3:You know, if you're initially afraid of and I'm going to use some air quotes here what you might hear in the silence, yeah, I think this comes back, steph, to the idea of the view, you know this view that we are fundamentally already complete and whole. If we held a different view in the PLA, we were striving towards something or we were going to be improved at the end of this, then meditation could be a pretty uncomfortable and dangerous space, right, Because we're going to find out all the things that are wrong with us and we're going to have to fix all those things, and this is really a path of opening and discovering without necessarily having to do a lot with the content. So in this particular form of meditation Samatha Vipassana, mindfulness, awareness practice the content isn't especially important. The content is very important in psychological inquiry, in contemplation, so doing formal contemplations.
Speaker 3:That's a different practice, it's related, it's a good partner for mindfulness meditation. But in this basic meditation that we, that we do with the pla, the content is not particularly important. It's just being able to come back, being able to let go of that content and coming back to the felt sense of the body and connecting with like reality as it is. So, um, but if we're, if we're, there'd be really no point in it if we thought we were just going to discover how awful we are right so well and I wanted to just fall out.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, phil, you know we listen to podcasts because I think sometimes we feel like I don't know enough or I'm going to listen to this so I can become better. So I just want to state, you know, the whole purpose of this podcast for our PLA alumni is not to help you become better. You know, that is the beautiful thing about the Leadership Academy, that you know we think you're whole and you know so wonderful, just the way you are, the way you are.
Speaker 1:But can this podcast and can mindfulness be used to just create that clarity and that self-acceptance.
Speaker 2:Bill, I'm sorry, no, no, no, it's fine. I was just wanting to add that when we sit and these things come up and we come back to the meditation and we let them pass through and we don't as Jim Drescher says, don't invite them to tea, we end up also understanding there's something beneath the thinking, that actually what fits beneath the thinking is worth being able to sink into as well, so that when we do this frequently enough, it exposes, in my experiences, but it exposes the thinking, but it also exposes another level of being that is beyond thinking, and I think that's where we're talking about. This basic goodness shows up. So there's levels of this, and when we meditate and we don't invite it to tea, we can actually enjoy the tea without having to live with the judgment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, phil, I'm thinking about how that is that connection to ourselves that you just described, the connection to who we really are, right, kind of.
Speaker 3:That's actually the point of connecting to others too. That's the place at which we truly can connect with each other, with patients. So I think that's another really important part of it. So we're caring for ourselves by practicing, we're allowing others the physicians are allowing for others to care for them. By holding the space, the physicians are allowing for others to care for them. By holding the space, creating the environment of the PLA, and then allowing themselves to be cared for. And that's a big step for physicians. Even just caring for themselves for the sake of it is difficult to do, but allowing others to care for them, others to care for them, and then from that place to actually really have their leadership come from that place of connection creates a very different situation. And I think that's part of what you were getting at at the beginning, stephanie, about how having and Phil too, about the PLA having both the meditation practice and also these kind of other inquiries, other ways of looking at leadership, they go together really well.
Speaker 1:The two of you are talking about using meditation to get to this deeper level. So you could hear that and think, oh my gosh, I've got to really spend a significant amount of time in the practice of meditation. I'm just not sure I can make that happen. Your response to that we're all so busy, but we also see the benefit of carving out time for this, but still it's hard.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm curious about we haven't approached it this way, but I'm a little bit curious about perfectionism in physicians and how that might be used to encourage five minutes a day.
Speaker 3:10 minutes a minutes of not doing anything, sitting for 10 minutes or five minutes a day, literally just sitting and engaging with the practice is transformative.
Speaker 3:It's transformative and you know there are a lot of studies that sort of suggest that 20 minutes is kind of optimal and you know people think about it that way. But in my experience, people who practice regularly five to 10 minutes a day, it makes all the difference. And then something shifts us at a certain point and there becomes a kind of craving for it. There becomes a craving for the practice and it's no longer curiosity, opens up some relief, some real sanity happens. And even some of our physicians who come into the PLA with meditation, they they already talk about, you know they're in the ER and they already talk about how it's transformed, the way their experience is in the ER, how things just they're going just as fast as they always did, but somehow there's more space and somehow they see more clearly. So while this practice is not to make a whole lot better physicians, you know, to improve performance or something like that. It does have this byproduct of creating greater stability and greater presence and attention in a situation, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:To your question, steph. We are in the midst right now of doing interviews of alumni, and one of the questions that gets asked is what about your meditation practice? I have been hearkened. Most of them will say I've been reading them as they come in. Most of them will say I don't have time for a 20-minute practice. Every day, however, I do find myself between patients catching my breath. Coming back to myself, I do find myself before I'm sitting in my car for a minute before I go in to my house or to my practice. So for me, it's heartening to see that people are adapting and adopting their own ways of practicing, even though they sometimes feel a bit guilty that I don't have time to sit for 20 minutes a day. They're figuring out ways and I'm hearkened by the interviews. I'm seeing it consistently.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, in coaching it's all about consistency that leads to transformation. Not necessarily, you know, I'm going to sit down for 20 minutes and follow quote the rules of meditation to get the most benefit, but just that consistency. And, janice, as you said, just five minutes. And most of us could exchange five minutes of scrolling or five minutes of watching TV or you know whatever it is for that benefit and that thing that people crave once they've been in that meditative space consistently. So in coaching we also look at things like we'll reframe situations to help people see things a little bit differently. Situations to help people see things a little bit differently.
Speaker 1:What other things about meditation? Perhaps a reframe in how we think about meditation? You know I've I've seen people will say, well, once I get all of my to do lists done, then I'll let myself go meditate. And you know we could say instead well, how would doing the things that you need to do in your day be different if you put meditation first on your to-do list? Other things that you could acknowledge or offer for people who might benefit from reframing meditation and how they incorporate it into their life.
Speaker 3:I think what Phil was describing how the physicians find space in their daily life, throughout their day, to stop right, To stop and just reconnect with their bodies and just sort of let go of their thinking mind for just a brief moment. Every time that happens it strengthens the capacity to come back.
Speaker 2:Agree that people don't hold up a mirror that says this is perfect meditation and figure out as I think alumni are doing what works for them. You know to your point, first thing in the morning I have a. My practice is preferably first thing in the morning. There are times when something is so much on my mind that if I don't get it done, if I don't sit here with the computer and get it written out, it'll be completely disturbing to my meditation. So there are times when I'll sit down and do something that I need to do and then sit. We adapt to what works for us and there's no particular gold standard. I think the important thing is do it, figure it out for yourself, just do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember one of the best things that I heard someone say was I am too busy to not meditate. You know, I am so busy and this is somebody who was who double booked meetings would have meetings walking from one building to another with people you know incredibly busy and he would say I am too busy to not practice. I have to do it, which is a pretty powerful statement. Yeah, and and as it just to do it, it does. It does require discipline. Right, it does require discipline, but it can be a gentle discipline. It can be just a kind of surrendering to the practice, surrendering to actually just engaging, and then, once you begin to do it and you sort of surrender to it, a great teacher once said you know, race yourself to the cushion, whatever it takes to get there. But it can be a general discipline also.
Speaker 1:It seems again that perfectionistic tendency, but to actually look at the week ahead and think about, well, where could this work this week, and really plan for it and then stick to it.
Speaker 1:Or, you know, combine it with something else I know, janice, you've told people in the past to do it while you're brewing your coffee or to, you know, feel the snooze in the morning, allow yourself to hit the snooze button, but don't go back to sleep and really really feel with all of your senses those nine minutes. For me it seems counterintuitive. But lately, sometimes, after I exercise in the morning, I give myself five minutes after the workout to just pause for five minutes. And you guys know I'm a big fan of lying down, meditation. So to lie down and just really feel my body after I've worked it out is really a wonderful feeling and almost like a reward for the exercise and gets me in the right mindset for the rest of the day. So the point is, what works for you as well works for you as Phil and I think also you know, having having community around meditation.
Speaker 3:you know I love that the PLA alums have connections to each other and there's, you know, pla to kind of alumni events just for that, just to keep the community going and building that. You know some who have they're on the same app and so they know when each other is practicing. You know those kinds of things, having community and other people who are practicing, can be extremely helpful. You know, like a like a meditation buddy.
Speaker 1:Janice, I remember a few years ago you told me this the success of meditation is really dependent on whether or not you have community. And when you first said that, I assumed that you meant I had to have people in the room with me meditating and you said no, no, just knowing that you have this community of PLA and that there are people in that community that at any time, may be meditating, that provides the community and support that you need to be more successful. So that was a really, really good acknowledgement of the importance of community and how that community is it just is community, and how that community is it just is so well. I want to wrap things up.
Speaker 2:Any last thoughts that either of you have. I'm just grateful, steph, that you saw the importance of this podcast. It is an act of remembering, to remember, and so I'm grateful for your invitation to do this.
Speaker 3:And I encourage us all just to do it.
Speaker 3:I think in a space like this we'll also just we'll talk about almost abstractly about meditation, you know, and we talk about it as a kind of thing that's out there, that we do, and I think it's really important to recognize that the path of meditation is one of deepening and that when one can engage over a period of time with practice, that it can actually deepen and that our capacity to remain open and to kind of have fresh experiences of the world and to not live with the tyranny of habits and negative and, you know, sort of judgmental thoughts or the the kind of tyranny of habitual patterns that are not, that don't serve us well, um, there, there is no end to the deepening that can happen. So, while it can be as much as just five minutes or fitting it into the day or you know something like that, meditation and the path of practice can take one all the way, you know, toward truly non-bias engagement in the world, and that could be a good thing right now in the world, and that could be a good thing right now.
Speaker 1:With that, I will just let that be the bow on the top of this podcast. Thank you both so much, and we'll look forward to connecting with all of you on the next PLA podcast.
Speaker 4:In the meantime, don't hesitate to reach out to us if we can support you in your meditation practice, take care. We hope today's conversation has inspired and equipped you on your journey as a physician leader. For more resources and to learn about applying to the PLA, visit us at physiciansleadershipacademyorg.