Mindfulness: What's in it for Me?

Inner Solutions' Clinical Director Jessica Heil speaks with Associate Director of DBT Services & Clinician Travis Hauck about the 'why' of Mindfulness. Also as a bonus in this episode, Travis and Jessica discuss a bit about the 'What' and 'How' DBT Skills and go into more detail about the 'What' skill: Observe.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Inner Solutions Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Heil. I own and operate Inner Solutions, a private practice clinic located in Calgary, Canada. Inner Solutions seeks to understand and help our clients by providing empirically supported treatments and evidence-based practices with compassion and expertise. This podcast will provide you with information regarding complex psychological conditions as well as treatments that are available. Hi everyone, welcome back to the Inner Solutions Podcast. I'm Jessica Heil, and today I'm here with Travis Houk. Travis is our Associate Director of DBT Services at Inner Solutions. He's been with Inner Solutions for goshes, I feel like it's been just about a decade, Travis. It's been a while now. And he is also somebody who is certified in mindfulness-based stress reduction or MBSR for short. And MBSR is an eight-week program that is designed to teach people the core skills of meditation and uh teaches them how to be able to incorporate mindfulness into their everyday lives. So today, Travis is going to be starting us on a bit of a journey. We're going to be doing a six-part series of this podcast where we're going to start to talk about some of the mindfulness skills that are part of DBT. Today we're going to talk about the first of those mindfulness skills, which is called observe. And it is one of the mindfulness, we call it a what skill. And Travis is going to share a little bit about what we mean when we say what is a what skill. But before we go there, I'm going to back up the bus. And Travis, I'm going to get you just to give us just a definition to start. How would you define mindfulness?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Mindfulness is intentionally living with awareness, bringing our minds to the present moment and allowing ourselves to be as non-judgmental as possible and to come back to starting again to really being present with our experience as it is right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

I love that. And why would you say that that would be important from a therapy perspective? Why is it that mindfulness is part of DBT?

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Mindfulness is part of DBT. Mindfulness is part of many other therapies. Because to be able to change any behavior, we first have to be able to observe and notice that it's happening and get really clear on what's actually going on so that we can determine intervention points and what we want to be doing differently with those particular behaviors, those thought patterns, those emotional contents.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah. If we can start to notice some of those things, then it really gives us an opportunity to be able to enact change. It's really hard to create any change in our lives if we're not aware of what's going on. But mindfulness gives us that capacity to be able to notice, like, oh, we are having, you know, a thought or an emotion or an urge before an action actually happens, like before behavior. And if we can catch those things, then maybe there's an opportunity to be able to change the behavior before it actually occurs.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, I would completely agree. And then on top of that, if we're talking about mindfulness throwing to a meditative standpoint, there's a grounding and a spaciousness, a peacefulness that we all carry within us that we can gain access to through these practices.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

For sure. Would you mind actually defining for us too what's the difference between mindfulness and meditation? Just because I I could see as confusing people because I brought up MBSR as part of a meditation program. So how would you define the difference between those two?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

The differences between mindfulness and meditation is in meditative experiences typically more of a formal practice where we stop what we're doing, we bring our attention to the moment, and we actually really carve out a period of time that we'll be doing this particular practice for. Mindfulness is incorporated into meditative experiences where we bring a mindful awareness of noticing where the mind is going and noticing what's arising, as well as bringing our intention to being concentrated and really one mindful about those experiences. Whereas mindfulness can be incorporated to any of our experiences that we're participating in, that we kind of slow with and that we can bring informal practices of mindfulness to everyday activities, such as making a coffee or drinking water, or washing our hands, mindful driving, mindful walking. We pretty much do every single thing of your life in a mindful method.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

And when we do that, what would you say is the benefit? If we can be applying mindfulness often enough throughout our day, then what's in it for us?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

I think the benefit to being mindful is really to be present with your lived experience, no matter if it's pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, we have the opportunity of really getting the richness of life. I often describe if you feel like life is becoming monotonous or boring, or you're kind of spending time being on autopilot and not getting the pleasantness that is experienced, that you have the opportunity to reduce any forms of suffering or pain by actually being present with it and disconnecting from the attachment that we have to it.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, for sure. And that that's I think a lot of what can sometimes happen for our clients when they come to therapy initially is that sometimes that autopilot's happening, they might be experiencing a bit of like a numbness towards some of the emotions that might come up, or sometimes it's it's the opposite, right? It's like really, really intense emotions, but then an attachment to some of the interpretations of those emotions. So things like I can't stand this, there's no way I can tolerate this anymore. And oftentimes it's those types of narratives that are going to create the uh the intensity of the pain that we're experiencing. And so with mindfulness, what we're trying to do in DBT, amongst other things, there's lots of things we're trying to do with mindfulness in DBT, but if we can start to just observe what is there using using the facts, using descriptive language, and trying to be mindful of resisting the urge to go into things like interpretations and assumptions, then oftentimes we're going to find that we're able to reduce the suffering in that moment when we're present with what is in this moment.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah, exactly. And I think really in DBT, the core element that we're aiming towards is to be able to practice with mindful, whether it's meditative experiences or informal practices, to practice with these skills that we're we planning on talking about so that we can get to a state of wise mind, that we can be in that state of peacefulness, that serenity, that place of knowing and intuitive understanding with as many activities as we possibly can, because we're way more skillful when we can be in our wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

For sure. Well, let's talk about the skills then. So in DBT, we have six different well, uh, and again, there's actually quite a few more mindfulness skills in DBT, but we are going to be talking about six specific ones as we do the series of podcast episodes. We're going to talk about the what skills and the how skills. There are three what skills in DBT, and there's three how skills in DBT. Um, Travis, would you do just kind of a broad explanation of when I say what and how skills, what do we mean from that?

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Of course. I think how I often hear it talked about is the what skills are what we're doing while we're practicing the practice of mindfulness, formal or informal. Uh, and the intent of practicing a what skill is essentially to be able to practice getting to and accessing wise mind. I'm reading recently where we were talking about one of the experts was describing the what skills, really observing, describing, or participating is ultimately helping us get to the level of participation in life to be in that flow state in our wise mind and maintain that as long as we possibly can. And then when we notice that we've lost it, we start over back with observing, describing, and then finding flow again and participating. And it's just a repetitive pattern again and again and again, starting over.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

So the what skills are what we do to be mindful, and then the how skills are really like how we do it.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Yeah, exactly. The how skills being being non-judgmental as best as possible, or noticing when judgments arise, being able to be one mindful or concentrated to notice when the mind is wandering away from the object of our attention and how to be effective and to edit or do what works and to practice with getting our objectives met, getting our relationship goals met, and really being self-respecting in those practices and doing what works to reach our goal. And in meditation or mindfulness, the goal being to be part of the present moment and to allow all things to be as they are.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah. And when we can do that, then generally speaking, we're going to have a greater well-being, that our mental health is going to be more robust when we are able to apply these skills. That that's really what is so important to be able to be present with what is in order to be able to move towards that wellness. And we'll talk about as we go on with these podcast episodes, we're going to talk about each of the skills, those what skills and the how skills. And we will go into detail about why they are important when it comes to our mental health. So definitely we'll have lots of conversations around that. For today, though, we are going to focus on the first what skill, which is observe. How would you describe observe, Travis? What would you say would be kind of the main points of the observe skill?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

I think how it's described often is observing is considered probably the most simple of those what skills. And at the same time, probably one of the hardest ones. There's a difficulty to being able to observe and to stand back, to notice a sensory experience outside of ourselves or to notice an experience arising inside of ourselves, whether that's thoughts inside or emotion content that's occurring. And then to kind of be able to step back from it and allow it to come and go without that attachment, without that clinging of needing it to be a particular way. Marcia Linehan, who created DBT, often talked about observing is like being a lawn and allowing whatever season or whatever climate, whatever weather, whatever occurrences come up to allow that to flow past us, whether it's sunshine, whether it's raining, whether it's sleet, whether it's snow, or whether it's even a lawnmower going by, that we can accept this experience and let it come and go without needing it to be different than it actually is, because that's often where suffering comes from.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah. So just noticing what's happening and letting go of the expectation of change or the hope for change, like really just kind of being with what is. And kind of on that like raw sense, I'm going to say, like it's this is really about trying to notice things before language. We're not creating a narrative around things. We're just truly being with those sensations that come with being human, whether that would be body sensations or the thoughts that we might experience of noticing thoughts without thinking about thoughts, observing an emotion without necessarily saying this is the emotion that I'm experiencing. So this is kind of that like pre-verbal experience. Could you say more about that? The pre-verbal piece of observe.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Of course. I think that's really the essence of it is this is observation is a skill before object language. So it's before putting a description onto an event, whether described outside of ourselves or inside of ourselves. One of my favorite ways of looking at describing it is kind of like that we're standing and the events that are happening outside or inside of ourselves are like a cascading waterfall. And that with the observed practice, we have the ability to kind of stand back from that waterfall, that we are kind of in a nook or a cave, uh, a dry spot, and that we can watch those events happen and cascade down that waterfall, and that we're not getting caught up in the stream, the stream of consciousness, the stream of thinking, the stream of interpretations and desire for things to be different, that we're kind of just watching that experience happening and allowing, really in DVT language, radically accepting and letting it be exactly the way that it is over and over and over again. And the reality is we're gonna get caught up in it. There's gonna be times where we notice that we get swept away by that current. And then, like I said earlier, we come back, we start again, we dedicate, we uh set an intention to stand back and to watch it occur and to notice without putting words on it, that we can really sit in what's called in Buddhist practice, they call it a beginner's mind, with this really curious sense of letting it be and being really with the richness of those experiences.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Why would we do that? Well, what's in it for our clients or for ourselves?

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Oh my goodness. I mean, have you eaten a peach before?

SPEAKER_00 12:56

I have indeed eaten a peach.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Would you rather me hand you a peach and allow you to eat and devour that with mindful intention, or would it be more enjoyable for me to describe what it is like to eat a peach?

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, I think actually that's a great way of saying it. So if we can sit there and be present with all those sensations and and truly experience them, right? Experience the taste of the peach, experience the texture of the peach, really just be, again, be human with the peach, right? Like have that moment with it, then we're gonna have a greater experience of satisfaction or positive emotion, assuming we like peaches, of course. And if we don't, then even that, like being able to experience the aversiveness of a peach if we don't like it, is still human. It's still living compared to if we get stuck in our head and just kind of like think about the peach or be on autopilot about the peach and not even realize, right? Like we could eat it and not even realize that we did it and not actually have any any satisfaction around it. I often think about in before learning mindfulness, there would be times where I would eat something that I would have expected to be quite tasty, like a chocolate bar or something that I usually would enjoy. But I'd be thinking about something that had happened in my day or like just being like completely distracted. And then before I know it, I look down and the chocolate bar's gone and I I haven't actually stopped to enjoy it. Then there's that disappointment of, oh, I don't have another chocolate bar to be able to enjoy right now, right? Like that experience is over and I didn't actually get to savor it. That's where I think what you're saying, right? That observe skill, if we can really slow it down and actually be present with it, then the likelihood of us actually experiencing some joy in our life is going to increase exponentially.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Absolutely. Even just talking about mindful eating, my brain jumps to being curious and having the richness of the first spoonful of your favorite soup compared to the tenth spoonful, there's a difference in that where our brains can go on autopilot or think, this is familiar. I already know all that I need to know about these flavor palettes that come up. And in reality, if our practice is observing and we've decided to be mindful of that experience, each one of those spoonfuls, each moment of that experience, whether it's the sight, whether it's the smell, whether it's even the sound of the slurping that happens, each moment-to-moment experience, there is something that's just greater than what we often will notice when we live life mindlessly, when we go on those autopilots, when we don't really be present with those experiences. And we lose out. We miss out on amazing opportunities. And as you said, whether it's something that's painful, whether the soup is quite hot, we have the experiencing of noticing and observing that, which gives us information about, oh, maybe I want to slow this down, maybe I want to blow on that soup before I keep doing it. So it leads us to problem solving, it leads us to doing things differently through awareness.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah. And I think that's so important what you just said there too, because as much as right now we're talking about relatively, I'm going to say simple practices of like mindfulness towards eating, simple to talk about, not necessarily simple to apply. But if we were to increase this to kind of like how do we apply mindfulness to our real life problems, when we can learn how to be present and observe something like a peach or like that first sip of soup, if we can really hone in on those skills and become more proficient with them, then we can start to apply these in in all sorts of places in our life. Like, how do we observe what's going on at work and really stay present so that we're going to be better performers at our job? Or how do we really observe what's going on in our relationships using just the facts and observing if we start to go into something like interpretation and choosing to insert a pause there and instead come back to the moment and observing what's actually going on, doing things like that can help us avoid potential conflicts. Like it's just that there's so many places where our lives can be better, right? We can have a higher quality of life if we can learn how to stay present with what is happening right here in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Which is the practice, right? Again, it sounds so simple in the essence of it. And the reality is this is a life skill, and it's a skill that will be practiced for years to come once we really get the reinforcement of it. I've been practicing mindfulness for well over 10 years on a day-to-day experience. And guys, oh, it's still a challenge day after day after day. And when it lands, when it hits, when I'm present, I tell you, the life is life is just an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Yeah, it really does increase that quality like significantly. I would agree with that. Like the difference of the times where I'm staying present to my life and really taking it all in versus the times where I am stuck on that autopilot is just like it's night and day. You've talked about mindfulness as a practice. And I I really want to emphasize that piece of this that mindfulness, when you start to endorse it, it is important that you consider it to be a lifestyle change. This is something that we are practicing over and over and over and over again for a series of like many days, weeks, months. And like you said, Travis, we want this to become something that is kind of like a lifelong journey because there's going to be times that we feel like we have more capacity to stay present. And there's other times if we're experiencing a lot of dysregulation or if there's stressors where mindfulness is really tough. And that's all normal. The goal is to keep on practicing regardless of how you feel like you're you're doing, right? Like there's no good, bad, right, or wrong when it comes to how we practice mindfulness or how present we are. It's absolutely normal for minds to do what minds do, which is they think and they go off in all sorts of directions. So the goal is in mindfulness that we're going to notice that our mind has gone where we don't want it to go, that it slipped, and we're going to catch that and we just bring it back again to whatever it is that we're trying to focus on. So today we're talking about the observe skill. The goal of this particular episode and the practices we're talking about would be just to bring the mind back to observing something, whether it would be observing a body sensation, a thought, something in your environment, urges, actions, etc. So just noticing those things without putting on a label or necessarily adding words, that's that observe practice. But again, the practice itself is actually a noticing that the mind slipped and just bringing it back over and over and over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Yeah, absolutely. I think really more than anything, if this is a skill, it's a practice. And if we find ourselves or have found ourselves ever learning any skill, I mean, I certainly wasn't good at driving sticks the first time that I tried. I wasn't guild at walking the first time that I stood up and let go of the table. The reality is this is a practice that we come back to over and over again. We build the muscle of the mind by bringing our attention back. And really, like if any of us have ever owned a puppy before, the truth is when like John Cabot Zen, the creator of MBSR, talked about when we when we practice with mindfulness, it does have to do with that starting over. And when we're training a puppy, just like we're training the mind, uh, the puppy has a tendency, you can tell a puppy to sit and walk away. And the reality is it's gonna get up and run right after you. It's gonna nip at your heels or jump on you. And the the truth is, in in practice, in mindfulness, we want to as best as possible try to catch our minds when we go into criticism or judgment, when we go into kicking the puppy. The mind is just a tool. It's problem solving, it's trying to help as best as possible. And what we're trying to do in practice is get control of the mind. So we want to continually pick up the mind that is the puppy and put it down and push its bum to the floor and say, stay, sit, wait, just stay right here, this anchor point, this thing that I've decided to pay attention to, to observe, and it's gonna wander. That's really the acceptance of it. There's no possibility. There will be times where your mind stays still and kudos. At the same time, the moment you notice the mind is sitting still, you often, I mean, in my experience at least, you lose it. You're like, yay, I'm I'm here. Oh, wait, now it's gone. And instead of kicking the puppy, shaming yourself or criticizing, call it a win. You notice that it went somewhere else. Come on back, sit down, puppy. Be here now, right in this moment. And when it gets up and runs away again, well, that's just what puppies do. And we don't want to kick puppies. That's actually really quite mean.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah, yeah. And and kicking our own minds is actually really quite mean to us, too. I mean, as being quite judgmental to. Towards us. And that is going to be one of our house goals when we eventually get to it, is that we're going to learn how to be non-judgmental to ourselves as well as to others. So we want to be non-judgmental to our puppies. We want to be non-judgmental to our minds. And um, and all of that's going to lead towards some greater well-being for us when we can learn to apply these skills. I love that puppy metaphor. I think it's just so perfect because that is exactly what a mind is like. It truly is. Okay, why don't we let's do a practice? Let's uh would you mind guiding us through an observe practice so that our audience gets a sense of what this would look like when we're actually doing it.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah, of course. I'd love to guide us through a practice. So maybe we'll do more of a what would be considered a formal practice, where we bring our bodies to as best as possible into stillness. And that doesn't mean if we can't sit still or the body moves sounding to shame or kick the puppy again. We're just going to see if we can bring our attention one mindfully to sense experience in the body, noticing what sensations are here in a now. And when we notice our minds, not even an if, when we notice our minds starting to go into describing, seeing if we can get really curious and start over, observing that experience of sensation or sensory experience without putting words to it, almost as though it was the first time that we'd ever had an experience of being present and really noticing that part of our body exists. So in this practice, you might choose to allow the eyes to close if you're comfortable in our space that that's possible in. If not, that's okay. You can practice with your eyes open, and Marshall Linahan up and encourages us to keep the eyes open, to practice being awake in our mindful practices. So finding whatever posture is comfortable for you, trying to sit in a way that's you won't fall asleep, that you'll remain awake. And dropping the attention down into your feet, starting to notice what's there. Notice the temperature of the feet. And again, the mind is likely to start quickly describing it's too hot or they're sweaty or going into criticism or evaluation or even just putting words on it. See if you can really notice what is the sensory experience of the feet right here, right now. Can you notice and observe with curiosity the toes? Maybe that's the space between the toes. Maybe that's one toe that stands out. Maybe you're noticing sensory experiences under the skin or atop the skin. Like a tension or a burning, a heat, or a coolness. And see if you can just let them be there without putting those words onto it. Just allowing. And maybe you move up if you want. You can stay there if you choose. If the mind's already wandered, that's okay. Starting again, being kind with it, recognizing that's what minds do, that's what puppies do. Maybe moving into noticing where you might notice the breath today. Are you a human that notices it in the nostrils? Observing as coming and going in the chest as the chest rises and falls, feeling that rib cage underneath the skin? Or is the belly as the diaphragm pushes down and the belly pushes out? Can we really bring that richness, that curiosity to really experiencing the breath? Almost bringing what I might consider an amazement, a sense of awe towards this experience without having to control it, without having to change it. Just letting the body be as it is. Even observing the points of contact, where your body is being held, how gravity holds us to a chair, the floor, observing where there is a sense experience, where you notice a pressure, or where there's an absence of drawing your attention right here and now. Just letting your wisdom guide you. As quickly as it happens, where we notice with curiosity, the mind is likely, especially as we begin these practices, to start jumping into describing. Trying to come back, starting over. Noticing as best as possible without words. Maybe seeing if it's possible to carry this observation, this mindful awareness with you even for the next thirty seconds. Can you stay present? Can you bring this into my life? And if you haven't already, if your eyes were closed, opening, beginning to come back to the moment, the space around you in the environment.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Yeah, so that's a that I love that practice. I think that's a great one for people to start with because it's something that you can use anytime. Like your body is always with you, right? The breath is always with you. And so when we can start to utilize some of these parts of self as a way to practice mindfulness, then it's nice because you can do it anywhere, right? It's not like you have to have like a certain physical item with you to practice. It doesn't, you don't have to be in a certain environment. You can just, you could do this anywhere. And as much as Travis just walked us through a formal practice with a, we'd call that one a guided practice where you're hearing his voice and it's directing you to be able to focus on certain body parts, et cetera, you could do this for yourself.

unknown 29:33

Right?

SPEAKER_00 29:34

There's there's nothing stopping you from taking a couple seconds in the day to be able to focus on, say, one body part and just notice like what can you observe about the sensations of that body part. And when we're able to put the brain, the mind on that one body part, then that means in that moment, the mind is not on the worries of the day. It's not on the things that are causing us anxiety, it's not on the things that are the problems in our life. And therefore, it's giving us a break from being filled with the things that can cause us overwhelm. The more often that we're applying mindfulness to something that is neutral or potentially even positive, like the peach, then the more moments in our life where we're not going to be feeling overwhelmed and distressed. And so I think that's another piece of like what's that the question I keep asking, what's in it for us to practice mindfulness, is that oftentimes we're going to have these moments that are going to feel okay compared to moments where we're really stuck in our head and thinking about all the problems of life. Well, I think that's probably a great place for us to stop for today. I hope everyone learned something and that you can take something away from this idea of how we practice the observe skill in DBT. Travis, I just want to say thank you for your time and your wisdom. And I'm really looking forward to getting into the other five core mindfulness skills during some different episodes here in the future.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited too.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Thanks so much for listening. If you found today's episode helpful, please go ahead and leave us a review. And you can also follow the show so that you don't miss out on any future episodes. For more information about us, you can check out our website, www.innersolutions.ca.