Episode 318 - Dr. Janelle Hallman, "Mindfulness and the Presence of God, Part 2"

If you need to listen to the first half of the conversation, click here -> Episode 317 - Dr. Janelle Hallman, "Mindfulness and the Presence of God, Part 1"

Welcome to another episode of "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." In today's podcast, Michael continues his conversation with Dr. Janelle Hallman, diving deep into the practice of mindfulness and its transformative power. In this episode, Janelle opens up about her struggle with feeling disconnected from her body and how mindfulness played a crucial role in her journey towards reconnection. Together, they explore the significance of paying attention to bodily sensations, how our bodies help us understand and process emotions, and the concept that "everything belongs."

Michael and Janelle also discuss the integration of body, mind, and spirit, emphasizing the importance of being present and cultivating a relationship with God. Janelle guides listeners through a mindful breathing exercise, encouraging us to redirect our attention from mental chatter to the present moment. Discover how mindfulness supports spiritual growth and healing from trauma and brings a compassionate and nonjudgmental perspective into everyday life. Tune in and learn how setting your mind on the things above can lead to meaningful and practical changes that restore the soul.

Transcript

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If we do it for a while, it's like our soul, our body, mind, emotions, and will is enjoying the relaxation. But at a certain point, our body and our brain goes, uh uh, not gonna do this anymore. Too much relaxation equals, uh, danger. Right. Something's gonna happen. You can't let go. You can't let go of that much control. Right. Um, and so have you experienced that with clients? Oh, gosh. And so I was actually, at this point in time, I can say I'm thankful for that long period of time of just, like, grunting through it, because I realized the whole point of mindfulness is to notice your thinking, because all these thoughts and voices are coming in and parts are getting activated, is to notice your thinking and to come back to your body, to come back to your breath, to come back to the present moment. And so I really got that. I mean, I really understood that and then committed to practicing it, because this is what I hear from clients over and over again. Janelle, I've tried that, and it doesn't work. I've tried that, and it doesn't work because my mind just keeps thinking, and I go, yes, let's talk about that. Because the goal is to not stop the mind thinking, and the goal is to not empty your mind of thoughts. Because I had a seminary professor, when he heard about mindful meditation, he totally trashed it because he thought the goal was to empty your thoughts, and that if we empty our thoughts of goodness in God, then what's going to come in to our thoughts? And it's like, no, that's not mindfulness. Mindfulness is to notice your thinking. If the thinking mind is taking off or if some voice is saying, janelle, you don't have time for this. You've got to get back to work. You know, you notice the thinking, and then you come back to just, oh, yeah, I'm right here, right now, and I can feel my breath coming back to the breath. So a lot of people say that if you do have a really strong monkey mind, they call it monkey mind because the mind is thinking and jumping all over the place. Is that what a great opportunity to build the muscle of noticing, because you have so much material to notice, rather than the person who has a more settled mind is like, oh, yeah, the practice is coming back to the present moment, letting go, noticing the thoughts, letting the thoughts pass, because I do. And coming back, bringing your attention back to your body, back to your breath, back to this moment. That's the muscle building. Yeah, absolutely. So I agree with everything you said and there are times we both worked with clients who their trauma that's coming out is so dysregulated that they're physically unable to sit still and they may need to go for a walk and listen to the birds. Absolutely. A while back when I was. A while back when I was really stressed out, there's a 1 mile loop around our office park. And I would go out and I would just mindfully try for probably 30 seconds at a time is as long as I could get while I was walking, how many different birds I could hear, and then I would focus on one bird call and then another whistle. And I think I got up to seven one time and then I bumped into a phone pole or something like that. But I just can't say enough that this is something that requires perseverance and don't give up if you're starting it and you're not successful, because there really is no such thing as not being successful at it except for not trying. But it also strikes me. No, you go ahead. Well, I was just going to. I was just going to respond to, I'm glad you brought up trauma, because this practice, in its formal form of sitting and stillness, can trigger a lot of trauma, people with trauma. And so this can still be used and practiced, but it's going to be much smaller spaces. And there's so many ways to be mindful right throughout the day. Like you just described, the 30 seconds of just listening to the birds or 30 seconds of just movement and feeling your body as you move. 30 seconds of just taking in a nice deep breath and breathing out through your mouth. These are all mindful. This is being mindful. Now we're talking about being mindful. A lifestyle versus just the formal practice. Yeah. I'm reminded of how Thomas Keating writes in several of his books. He talks about this kind of meditation centering, prayer, mindfulness, as a form of divine therapy, and that if we do it long enough, that unconscious material is going to come up, and that's what we can then again be with. And it just strikes me that this practice is really a practice in building the muscle of surrender, and surrendering over and over and over to the fact that love is there and to the fact that there is no need to judge or to beat ourself up. But even the muscle of nonjudgmental acceptance is a kind of mindfulness, and one that is oftentimes the very first thing we have to reckon with. Because if we're constantly evaluating, judging, and beat ourself up for having thoughts or getting distracted, we won't get very far in it. Right? That's right. Because that's part of the posturing, is can we come to our experience, even our internal experience, with all those voices and judgments, can we come to that with compassion and openness and be with no judgment and that's that in and of itself? Yeah, I think, Michael, that's probably been one of the bigger life changing things for me, is to just find that non judgmental, compassionate stance, because that has now extended into my bigger environments because, you know, it's been built up. And there was something else that you mentioned. Hold on, see if I can grab it again. Um. Oh, surrender. Oh, my gosh. Uh, that's when I started realizing that's exactly what is being developed here. Because all the years where I've been told to surrender to God, it's like, how do you do that? How do you do that? I want to surrender to God. What does that look like? How do I do that? You know, I just never really felt like anybody gave me tools to set your mind. And that's another one. Set your mind on Christ. Set your mind on things that are above, that are good and holy. It's. How do you do that? How do I set my mind? And the practice of setting, literally setting my mind, for instance, on awareness of my breath, I've learned how to set my mind. But, yeah, the surrender of. I am just going to be with letting go of my thinking. I'm letting go of judgments about my situation in this moment over and over and over. Because my mind happens to be maybe busier than a lot of minds, but it's over and over. What a beautiful way to wow. Because I'm letting God be God in these moments while I can be still and know that he is God. And it's an actual experience that I have of surrender and being still and. Knowing that I'm God. And that's what I needed. I wanted to know how to do. I wanted the experience. But how do we do this? Yeah. Yeah. It becomes something very concrete and practical that we can do. Not to change as a direct result of the exercise, but as an indirect result that something happens. It's almost like a beach ball that is under the water that's inside of us. And by doing this practice, it lets the ball rise up. And then you find yourself having patience or having kindness or gentleness or something like that. You mentioned the verse about setting your minds on things above. And we talk a fair amount on the podcast about Colossians three, in one shape or form or another, because that's the passage where it talks about, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, and self control. Patience, and not clothe others with that. You've got to clothe yourself first. But so in Colossians three one in this passage I memorized a long time ago, it says, since you've been raised with Christ, therefore set your minds on things above, set your heart on things above. And if you think about it, God is not actually above. Heaven is not up there. The word that Jesus used for heaven is among us and around us, and very, very near to the point where Dallas Willard paraphrased the Lord's prayer of our Father who art in heaven. He would paraphrase that as dear father, always near us and here with us. Yes. So therefore, set your mind on the place where God is, and to the believer in Christ, God is within. So we're setting our mind on this inner place, this inner sanctuary. And as we set our mind there, it's not this mystical thing. It is our breath. It is an embodied experience. And there's just so many podcasts that we could spawn off of this conversation. But talk a little bit more, Janelle, as you did at the beginning about the importance of embodiment and maybe some of your journey, as I know that you're in Enneagram three and you get a lot done and you have walked fast, but, like, how has that embodied part been a struggle for you, and how have you experienced transformation? That's probably another just huge, huge thing for me. And I think that's because I was so disconnected from my body. I just was in my head. Okay? And that, and by the way, a lot of clients come in in the same state of just, they're busy, busy. They're doing great, meaningful, sacred work, but something doesn't, it's not working anymore, because when we split off, you know, this part, and are just really literally living in our thoughts and our belief systems. And sadly, we've been taught, I think, too much to believe the right thing, to know your beliefs, to stand in your beliefs, somehow that's what's going to save us. So I was very, very disconnected from my body. And I think that's why when I was introduced to this basic sense of mindfulness, of, let's just say, follow your breath. Just notice your breath for about five minutes. I think that's why it had such an impact on me is because that was the first time I was really beginning to connect with my body and really notice it and really feel all the different sensations that my body feels. And so then there's a lot of stories I could share around that. I mean, I feel the vibrating, tingling aliveness in my hands and legs and feet almost constantly every day. And if I just take a moment to just feel my body, I feel my aliveness, which just kind of delights me that this gift of life, I've never. I never had an embodied gratitude for life before. I was like, my head knew I should be thankful for life, right? My life is a gift from God, so my head knew, but I never had an embodied gratitude of just, like I'm feeling my own aliveness, I am taking the next breath that God is giving me. So, okay, I'm getting off track, but went down that bunny trail. The real power that this has had in my life is to be able to be aware of all the tightness and tension in my body. That is a red flag. Whenever I'm noticing tightness and tension, it's time for me to check in. What else am I feeling? To ask myself what emotions are present? What other sensations do I have? And listening. If there's a message in the tightness. And. And that's where the thinking mind, you know, will, we need the thinking mind. It's not bad to have a thinking mind. We need the thinking mind. That's where the thinking mind might actually then capture a message of, you know, what is. What is going on? Is it an underlying anxiety? So I'll sit and explore, you know, am I fearful about something? Am I overworking? Am I burned out? You know, what is going on? So I use my body now in probably a primary way that I never, ever did. I always started with my thoughts, thinking, thinking that they rule, that they have all that we ever need to know. I learned to listen to my emotions more, so I was already down that road a little bit more of paying attention to my emotional world and not fighting quite so much my emotions. But now I have this amazing thing called the body that never lies, that speaks truth. That took me a while to begin to trust that that that was true, but it's an amazing. It's amazing on now, I have all of these facets feeding into this center place of wisdom for me to know my own truth, to know truth, and to be guided, you know, by what my body is needing as much as what my emotional world is needing, as much as my thinking mind, who gets very, very tired, you know, is needing. So it's been. That's a huge, huge, huge piece. And I think I move my body now in the world with awareness, so much more awareness, which is a gift because there's so much good to encounter in life. There's also a ton of suffering, and that's part of also our human condition and human experience that can be faced and felt and made us richer and more compassionate beings. So, yeah, as you talk about, Janelle, as you talk about the embodied self and the emotional self and the cognitive self, it sounds like what you're describing is integration. Would you use that word? Yes, I would. Wholeness. Talk about what? Yeah, so talk about what integration means for you. All of me. All of me, rather than the exclusion of parts of me. And that even takes us into the psychological realm as well. Right. But all of me matters. All of me counts. All of me gets to be tended to. Now, in the past, I ignored. I ignored my body, totally ignored the symptomology of my body, which, of course, leads to a lot of unhealthy and it leads to literal problems in the body. And then emotionally, I wanted to ignore and avoid all difficult emotions. So I resisted and fought difficult and negative emotions, which meant I was fragmenting also parts of me that we're feeling the pain or feeling whatever difficult, disturbing emotion there was. And so all I had was good emotions. Kind of wanted to be with those all the time. And then all my thoughts, which were a bit crazy and psychotic at times. And that was like me. That was. So my identity was very tied to up here in my performance and doing a. Not realizing that there's so much life to be experienced back to. I think you're the one that mentioned abundant life. Not even realizing that I am missing out on half, probably at least half of what could be experienced in life if I were to open and honor the creation that God has established in my being, which is my body, which has been so denigrated, frankly, by christian theology, unfortunately, the wonder of our bodies and my emotional world and as well as all these parts of me that are here for a reason, whether it's to help me survive or whether it's carrying my pain or whether it's that core, core place, right? Made in the image of Goddesse. So it's integrating all of that. All of it belongs. All of it belongs, which I never understood for years and years and years. Yeah, I love that phrase. Everything belongs. Richard Rohr's book, Richard Rohr about a centered life. Can you talk or model for us? Because I'm sure there's a lot of people who are hearing this saying, I want that. And you've either opened my eyes or clarified some of the ways that I've been hearing about this. But would you take some time and walk through maybe a basic mindfulness meditation or exercise? And I just want to say in advance that if someone is driving a car, that you not close your eyes and do this while you're on the road or the highway. But this is something that maybe you can come back to around 50 minutes into the podcast to listen to Janelle and to walk through this for practice. Yeah. Yeah. Would be delighted to. Okay, so wherever you might be sitting, just seeing if you can get comfortable. And if it feels comfortable to close your eyes, or you can just lower your gaze, just closing your eyes and. Your mind might be thinking a lot. Of thoughts right now and just noticing. What is the nature of your thinking? All the voices that you might be hearing, thoughts, maybe judgments, maybe even analyzing, just noticing. And then just see if you can redirect your mind by bringing your attention on your breath. So, I know this may sound strange for some of you who have never done this, but where you really want to notice. Coming with curiosity to your breathing. And maybe starting by taking in a really nice deep breath through your nose, filling your lungs, and then exhaling through your mouth, taking another nice deep breath, exhaling through your mouth, and now just allowing yourself to breathe naturally in whatever way that feels good to you. But we're going to continue to explore what is it like to breathe. So just see if you can notice the air coming through your nostrils when you breathe in, noticing the outflow when you breathe out, whether that's through your nose or through your mouth. See if you can notice the rise of your chest when you breathe in. Then noticing how the chest falls or droops when you breathe out. See if you can bring your awareness to your belly. Just see if your stomach is soft. Your belly is soft. Invitation to just let go of any tightness there, or trying to hold your belly in. And then just as you breathe naturally, just noticing if your belly moves. And also at this point, you may notice that your mind is thinking. You might be thinking about something later today, or you may be. There may be voices that are not being so kind to you right now in the moment, or the thoughts may be going somewhere else. Just being really gentle with yourself, no judgment for having thoughts. And just gently see if you can redirect your attention back to your breath or back to your body. Some of you will have awareness of your whole body, but just noticing right now the cushion beneath you or the cushion that may be behind you, just feeling your body, and then just gently coming back to your breath again and see if you can just notice the rhythm of inhale and exhale. Maybe checking in with your shoulders to see if your shoulders move when you breathe, then noticing if your breathing is shallow. And it might be no judgment in that. This is just to notice. And there's no right or wrong when we're noticing. Noticing is to just take in whatever is present, whatever is true, whatever is here for you. So just noticing. Does your breathing feel shallow and maybe. Short breaths. Or does your breathing feel deep where you're really inhaling and filling your torso and releasing long, slow releases? Just noticing. And you can play with your breath. You can try taking in deeper breaths or maybe even trying shorter, shallow breaths. To just see what it's like. So we could continue to just move through different places in the body, just checking in and noticing if there's tightness. We could check in with the sounds that you might be hearing in the room you're in, the temperature of the room on your skin. And there's so many ways to just stay present to this moment, to just what is right now and what your full embodied experience is in this moment. So taking in another nice, big, deep breath through your nose, exhaling through your mouth, and then just gently opening your eyes. That was relaxing and wonderful. And I had to work with that part of me that was evaluating and judging, and I, gosh, so desperately needed to pause like that. Thank you for that. Yeah, but isn't that. I mean, those parts are just going to come up. Our thoughts like that are just going to come up. And so that doesn't mean you're not doing it right. Sounds to me like you did great. Because if you just come back and. I use the exhale often to let go of that thinking, I just let. It go and come back and feel. My breath, feel my body in the chair. That's mindfulness. It's just noticing what is. Yeah. Yeah. You've been a part of some of the conversations around here at restoring the soul, where I've been doing yoga for six months, and I've been doing it pretty regularly. Intensely. And the most common frequent comment that I get from my instructor, and I mostly go to classes with the same man who instructs, and he's really knowledgeable and somatically oriented. He'll just come up to me and he'll lay his hand on my shoulder and he'll just say, breathe. Because over a 1 hour class. I'm holding my breath all the time. And, you know, spiritually speaking, a big metaphor for me is I get to exhale. You know, God says, exhale, you don't have to hold your breath. Yeah. So even in such an embodied practice, that's the work. I just want to end with this big thought. I believe that although scripture says that God is a God of the past and of the future, that he's the same yesterday, today, and forever, that God only exists in the present moment, that he doesn't exist in the past, because the past is history. It's gone. He doesn't exist in the future. The future is now. Wait, it's now. Not here, but. Right. He's there in the present moment. And the physician Gabor mate said that addicts despise the present moment. And I believe that we're all addicts. And there's a moment, there's a way where we have to cultivate, and this is par excellence, the practice, to be able to cultivate being in the present moment, to practice the presence of love, to practice the presence of God, and truly to come home to ourselves, which our deepest self is right here. Yes. So this has challenged me and encouraged me today, and I know that will challenge and encourage a lot of listeners. So, Janelle, thank you for this on mindfulness and can't wait to have you back on the podcast real soon. Thank you, Michael. It's been great.