Your Calm Is Your Child's Best Drug, with Hunter Clarke-Fields

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Hunter Clarke-Fields was a painter. She had a graduate degree in art education, a high school teaching job, and what looked from the outside like a creative life. What nobody could see was that she was white-knuckling her way through it, cycling between intense highs and pits of despair she could not explain, having panic attacks in the hallways before she had any tools to handle them. She reached for yoga, then for books on mindfulness, and read about it for years before she finally, at 27, sat down and actually tried.

She set a timer for 10 minutes and sat there thinking the whole time. She was certain she was doing it wrong. But two months in, she looked back and realized she had not fallen into a single pit. Not one. For someone who had been cycling into darkness every couple of weeks for most of her adult life, that was not a small thing. It was everything. And it sent her down a path she never expected, one that eventually turned her into the Mindful Mama Mentor, a podcast host, a mindfulness teacher, and the bestselling author of Raising Good Humans.

Hunter now teaches mindfulness to parents all over the world, with over 20 years of meditation practice behind her and two daughters who, she will freely admit, grew up slightly allergic to the whole thing.

 I wanted to have this conversation because I think mindfulness gets written off as vague or soft, and Hunter makes it anything but. She explains what is actually happening in your brain when you blow up at your kid, why longer exhales are not just a cliche, and what she calls the Three R's, a framework so simple you will remember it in the worst moment. She also says something about feelings being like toddlers that I keep coming back to. 

If you have ever thought that mindfulness is not for you, or that you are too far gone to start, this one is for you.

You'll learn:

• Why Hunter spent two months certain she was meditating wrong.
• The part of mindfulness most people skip that changes everything.
• Her Three R's for the moments you most want to lose it.
• What she says feelings are like, and why it reframes everything.
• The one thing she would tell a struggling parent to try today.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Hunter Clarke-Fields website
• Raising Good Humans Book
• Mindful Mama Podcast

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Transcript

Hunter Clarke-Fields

[00:00:00] Hey, hunter, welcome to Hope Stream. I am thrilled to have you here today talking about all things, mindfulness, parenting, mamas, all my favorite things. So thanks for joining me. Thanks, Brenda. I'm happy to be here. I've listened to your podcast. I actually, just this morning I was listening to your, you did like a really cool, like the top five of 2025 episode. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Which was. Amazing. I used to do those and I ran out of energy this year podcast, so I didn't do one, but I was like, oh, that's really smart. I like that. How did you choose, well, did you choose the most downloaded or how did you choose those? Yeah, yeah. I just choose the most downloaded. It's it's a little unfair waits it because time passes towards those in the beginning of the year. True, true. So, but whatever, you know, it's just one way to, one way to do it, and then it's an. Every year. It's kind of interesting to find out who gets in there. Yes, exactly. Well, 

[00:01:00] you, so, oh my gosh, there's so many things I wanna talk about, but first of all, you have a podcast, you have a ton of information on your website. You have an incredible book, several books, and I would love to know how you got into that. Like, how did you tumble into this entire world, a variety of podcasting of mindfulness. I would love to hear that story. It is a little weird because I mean, I was working as an artist, as a painter. I have a graduate degree in art education. I was working as a painter. I was working as a high school art teacher until it was kind of like second killing my souls, kind of how I felt about it, because I was actually a highly. I mean, I still am a highly sensitive person and really prone to intense ups and downs and mm-hmm. Um. People would see me and they'd say, oh, you're so enthusiastic. But then it would be these corresponding pits that I would fall into in life. Mm-hmm 

[00:02:00] and as an art teacher, man, it was just, I was in a tough school and it was like the only art, it was just, it was a lot. I would have panic attacks in the high school. It was pre mindfulness practice. So it wasn't for me. I'd gotten to this point in my life where I was kind of teaching art privately. I was really into yoga and mindfulness, and I'd been reading about mindfulness for a long time. I started reading about mindfulness maybe when I was 17 and then finally when I was sort of 27, I started to actually sit down and practice. So I guess it was around the time I was still teaching. I was kind of desperate for something there and I could see that for me yeah, well, of course reading about mindfulness is wonderful. It's soothing. You realize everybody suffers. You realize you're not alone in the craziness of your brain. It's really lovely to read all those words, but lo and behold, it is actually way, way, way more effective to actually do the practices 

[00:03:00] than it's to just read about them and and I started, I had done a yoga teacher training in 2005, and they made us do some sitting meditation. I was like, oh, I can do this. So then I came home and I started practicing, and I remember I sat down for a sitting meditation. I set a timer for 10 minutes, and I did this for a couple of months and I was, remember feeling so frustrated because I was just like, I sit here thinking the whole time, I can't do this. What's wrong with, you know? And mm-hmm but then I looked back and it had been a little over two months and I realized that I hadn't fallen into any of these pits of, oh, despair of not being able to handle life at, I hadn't fallen into any in that time at all and that was unheard of for me. Like that was just a huge, huge game changer for me. 'cause before then it would be every. A couple times a week or every 

[00:04:00] other week or whatever, it just would happen pretty regularly and so I realized I was able to recover from, you know, difficulties. So even though I felt like I'm just sitting here thinking the whole time and this isn't doing anything, there really was something that was happening and it wasn't actually making a profound change in my life. Wow. That is kind of similar to the experience that I had, I felt like I am doing this wrong. When I first started, I started using the Insight Timer app because I was like, I need some guidance and I remember the same thing. I was like, I was so critical of myself, I'm doing this wrong and I have this thing playing, but I'm over here thinking about 10 other things. And then at point, one of the teachers said like, come back, because you're probably thinking about something else and I was like, oh shoot, I got caught. Right. That's, I was  by the recording. 

[00:05:00] I got caught by the recording and then he said, the fact that you came back and you're aware that you came back means you are being mindful. Yeah,  and it totally changed everything because I thought. Oh, okay. Did you ever have that feeling like, I am doing something wrong, or just sort of like, what is this all about?  Oh yeah, completely even up until I remember I did my mindfulness meditation teacher certification a number of years later, and I remember being in this giant room full of all these people meditating. And one, I used a tool that for me had gotten me through a lot of meditation, which is I studied a lot in the Plum Village tradition of Han and he has these little sayings and this saying really just is, help me so much and it's, as you breathe in, you think calm and as you breathe out you think peace. And as you're breathing and you think smile, and as you breathe out, 

[00:06:00] you think release. And it's lovely 'cause it rhymes and it really is helps, it's like sets you right up to the intention of what you wanna feel calm, you wanna feel peace, you wanna release things. All of those things and I remember thinking, using that in this like great big hall of people. I'm thinking, oh, this isn't the instruction they gave me and I must be this imposter not really doing it right, because I'm using some other technique that works for me. But yeah, of course we all think that, and we all think, I can't do this. It's pretty common. I think meditation is the kind of thing that you can't do wrong in some ways. If you have the intention to sit, and I think maybe the way to do it wrong is to like listen to something that gives you no space for silence and just, is maybe talking all the way through or something like that. But if you're practicing and you're practicing to give yourself a little space for

[00:07:00] silence and you're floundering. And you're failing, like that is actually doing it, right? Like that's the thing about it is it's so simple, yet, it's so hard and it's so kind of it's this kind of, I kind of think of meditation as this weird brain hack that they discovered, you know, 2,600 years ago and that it, and it's very, very counterintuitive for what humans evolve for if you think about it, right? Like we evolved to survive, so we evolved to skin for threats and we evolved to get things done and kind of like the checking off the to-do list that's like very natural and evolutionary for humans to just be moving forward all the time. So to stop and to, you know, tune into maybe just a couple of your senses is really strange for people to do. But it, and it's very hard, but it really does have some amazing benefits for us.  Yeah. Well, and I would love to have you share what your sort 

[00:08:00] of description or definition of mindfulness is, because I think it can feel for somebody new, it can feel a little vague. It can feel a little overwhelming. It can feel a little like, don't really know what that is. I think it's becoming more obviously, in the mainstream. But what, how would you describe if somebody said, hunter, what, what's, how do I be mindful? Or what does it mean? What does it mean if I'm being mindful? What does that mean to you?  Well, to be mindful is to practice, to just keep bringing your attention back to the present moment, something in the present moment. So it's always usually something with our senses, sights, sounds, sensations, and we do this bringing our attention to the present moment. This is very crucial part of the definition of mindfulness with the attitudes of kindness and curiosity or you could say 

[00:09:00] non-judgment and compassion. You know, the idea of, we practice not to judge ourselves and our practice, we practice to be kind to ourselves and this is all to sort of counter sort of the natural, very normal reflexive judgment and criticism that our brains like to do, but that don't make us very peaceful or very grounded or very happy. So yeah, being mindful is always being mindful of something, right? So we are, there's always an object to our mindfulness. We're mindful, you know, often when we do a meditation practice, which meditation is kind of like the gold standard for practicing mindfulness, we might be mindful of our breath. So we might be feeling our breath come in and out, or we might be mindful of sounds like birds outside or even your heater, your air conditioner or the sensation of sitting, something like that or, you know, and as a parent we can be mindful, we can use our kids as like an object of meditation, 

[00:10:00] and that's really actually a beautiful thing. Like when they're little, we can, you know, practice to be really present and we can practice really mindful listening where we're, and in mindful listening, we're just like, when we're practicing mindfulness of breathing. We're noticing when our minds wander away, which they do and then we're coming back and we're coming back with kindness and curiosity, so we're interrupting reflexive judgment and we're practicing to be open and curious about what is actually here right now. So it's this process of kind of beginning anew again and again, and again and again and yet, if this is a little vague and weird, I guess, because you are working with your mind, but I kind of think of it as it is like, I think at some point we're gonna think of it the way we think of exercise now. You know, like back in the day people used to think about people who went to the gym and exercise as like those guys in like one shoulder leopard print 

[00:11:00] onesies with like big barbells, you know? And it was a little weird and extreme and then eventually started to catch on 'cause it's is great for your body to take care of your body and I think kind of mindfulness is going through that evolution too, where it can be seen as a little weird. You really don't have to put your hands in any kind of weird or funny position at all. You can sit in a regular chair, you can sit in a lazy boy but it is a way of training our minds. So that we can be present and this ability to be present for what is, is this ability to a, like really tolerate and move through difficulties and realize that we will survive. We'll be okay. We'll move through something and it will pass and then also, B, it gives us the ability to be present through wonderful things and joys and really be aware of those things. So sometimes when 

[00:12:00] we don't practice being present when we don't have any kind of mindfulness or slowing down practice. We're inadvertently practicing like go, go, do, do next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing. Right? That's kind of the other, that's the default and so when we're practicing that, we tend to think like, oh later on, when I get to the end of this to-do list, then I'm gonna be present. Right? Or, you know, when I get everything done, when I get to that vacation, then I'm gonna be present with my family, with my kid. And then you get to a place where you're like, okay, I've designated this time. It's okay for me to stop doing and to start being, and then you can't.  Yeah. And that is heartbreaking, right? That is heartbreaking because. I dunno. It's like you, you've just trained your mind not to be present for so long and there's a, there's this quote that really kind of drives me in this work that I do with this, and it's from the Zen Master Tik Han and he said, when you 

[00:13:00] love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there? Mm. And it's like, Ooh, mic drop. Yeah. Just gives me the chills. Even thinking that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so hard to be present today with obviously devices and we as parents are on our phones or our iPads or whatever and so are the kids and I see like I have to work so much harder at trying to be present and like you said, to really listen with our kids. And not be, yes, I'm hearing you, but I'm thinking about what I have to do and I'm thinking about tomorrow's call and I'm thinking about, and to be really present with them is an act of mindfulness, I think because sometimes, we just think of like listening or problem solving, but just the act of being present.

[00:14:00] Is being mindful because you're making that choice, right? Mm-hmm of I'm gonna be here with you 100% and I just came back from a two day event where there I was there with like 75 women and a lot of them were therapists, which was amazing and what I noticed is so many of them were so present when I was talking to them, and it was a noticeably different than when I talk with other people, and I could tell that they were really making an effort just with eye contact standing close to me, you know, just like with body language and it felt so good. Yeah. It was like, I feel like I'm being seen and heard right now, and I just have to believe that they probably have a strong mindfulness practice of their own to be able to give that to people. Do you find that that's true?  Yeah, 

[00:15:00] I think so. I mean, I think about that act of, you know taking an hour and putting your attention completely on somebody else with kindness and curiosity, right? That is a, an act of mindful listening. Like each day, each day they're practicing that if they're good therapists, they're practicing really mindful listening. They're hopefully not like, you know, allowing their minds to wander like enormously, right? The mind does wander and it will a bit, but yeah, and it's so healing to be really heard that way. You know, I really, really think that, you know, it's interesting you have some, I talk about this a lot in the context of parenting and I was thinking about that my oldest daughter's 18 now, and she, a few years ago, she must've been about 16 and she has a chronic pain issue and she was really mad at me and my husband for something and it was kind of hard to take and I was like listening and it was hard to take and I, at first it was so uncomfortable she was mad and I was, 

[00:16:00] it was so uncomfortable that I, we were near the entry of my house and I grabbed a broom and I started sweeping and I realized, oh, what am I doing? Okay and I realized what I was doing, and I put the broom down. I sat down kind of there at this ottoman, and I practiced to just feel my body, feel the sensations in my body. 'cause you know, we call it mindfulness, but it's really about being embodied. There's a, it's about feeling sensations. You feel, I felt the sensations I breathed, I grounded myself and it was interesting. It didn't take very long, but I, she just sat down right next to me and kind of slumped her body against mine. Oh. And it was so interesting. It was like this just instinctive act of co-regulation, and it helped her to just really calm down and I didn't say a word, you know, I just practice to be present and it can really be a palpable shift and a 

[00:17:00] change in for people who are really listened to that way.  That's a beautiful story and I would love to have you talk a little bit more about mindfulness in parenting. And you know, our listeners have kids in very difficult situations with substance use and dealing with some mental health issues and they can get very dysregulated right? And so, and I love what you said about co-regulation, but when we're in those moments, maybe there's a heated conversation or we're arguing, or you know, we're trying to prove our point, but I'm right, you're wrong or you're lying. How do we interrupt that pattern of, you know the moment to do what you did? Like? I'm fascinated by that.  Yeah, the habitual reactivity, right? Yes. Like we're not really in control of what we're saying or how we're 

[00:18:00] reacting very well in moments like that. We're just in this, we're just responding. We're in fight, flight or freeze and they're in fight, flight or freeze. And our dysregulation is meeting their dysregulation. It's really hard 'cause we feel each other's feelings. That's just how humans work. Yeah, interrupting those patterns is really hard.  Just, is that like master's level mindfulness or can any  No, no. I think it can be parent do it. I mean that's one of the reasons why I was, you know, why I wrote Reason Good Humans and was that I would found myself really reactive, like when my daughter was two and she's intense and just, I had this big temper and I was like. I was perpetuating a pattern in my family for my father of yelling and you know, aggressively yelling and just scaring her and just this reactivity that I didn't want, but it was coming out and it's very familiar, right? This idea of like, how do we stop

[00:19:00] this once this train is in motion going, oh my gosh, going 90 miles an hour. Yeah, it's incredibly hard. I think it takes. You know, it takes some time, and it takes much more than, oh, just pause in that moment because I remember being in those moments and being like, yeah, well, how do you pause in this moment? You're just like, you're losing it and so that's actually one of the reasons why I am a big proponent of a regular mindfulness practice right, because, and mindfulness meditation practice, because we're reaching for a muscle in those moments that we don't have, that we haven't developed right we're reaching for this muscle of non-reactivity, which is, let me pause and feel what I'm feeling without responding and fixing or doing anything. Mm-hmm.  And that is incredibly hard and you just don't have the muscle if you haven't like practiced it, it's kind of like, we wouldn't send our kid to like, I don't know, the Little League World Series without them, practicing 

[00:20:00] regularly with a coach, learning the swing, getting the muscle memory, all that stuff. When you're in a really heated, intense moment with your kid where a lot is at stake and that reactivity is kind of steamrolling the moment, that's the equivalent of your Little League World Series and if you haven't practiced for it, it's really, I can tell you what to do, but if you haven't practiced, you don't have the muscle to do it. Does that make sense?  It does and I think it just reinforces why it is so important to have, even if it's five minutes in the morning, 10 minutes, whatever you can squeeze in. 'cause the other thing I hear a lot, I'm sure you do too, is, oh, I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that meditation thing. You know, I don't have time in the morning and I love what you, what, how you compare that to like, going to the little League World series or whatever, because you do have to prepare and you do have to take the time to learn 

[00:21:00] and I think there's also an element of, I remember when I would have, when my kids were little, this was before we had any kind of other struggles, but when they were so little and you know, I two little boys and they're in the car and they're fighting or whatever, and I could just feel like there's first a physical sensation that like my heart's racing and my mind gets kind of fuzzy and I've learned to recognize that as my kind of, as the, like, you know, on your car dashboard where you have like the warning light, engine light, that's my check. Like something bad is about to happen here and tap then to be able to tap in to, okay, I'm breathing in, I am breathing out. Or the one that you said I love about with the smile and the, I can't remember what it was, but that was beautiful. I'm gonna, I'm gonna write that down.  I'll share with you again, but you're describing it beautifully because really that's exactly 

[00:22:00] what you need to do, Brenda, in those tough moments, is you have to recognize, oh, here it is. I'm going down that path. Here it is. I'm in that moment, that moment that I, that we've been in before right? Is that, is mindfulness, is like awareness, present moment awareness. Oh, here I am. My shoulders are getting tense. My kid's getting upset. We're kind of saying the same things we've said to each other before, it's all happening again right here. And if we can have that awareness, that is like the key, that is the key that unlocks the door because at first you may have that moment of awareness, and then continue down with your sort of repetitive response, you know, reactive response that is not so skillful. But then eventually you're gonna start to have that awareness. And be able to make a choice, you know, because when you have that awareness, it's like a little mini interruption of the pattern, right? Mm-hmm. Oh, here it is. I'm in that moment. I'm 

[00:23:00] starting to get frustrated. I feel my jaw. Oh, ding, ding, ding, ding. Here it is and that is this little mini interruption in the pattern is where then you can make a choice. And this is where it really helps to have chosen ahead of time or practiced ahead of time. Right. So when I encourage people, and it's very similar to sort of like how to stop yelling, one of the things is I invite people to not just assume that you're gonna, I'm going to choose a different path. No, you're not. How's that been working for you? Right? Like, it's just like, how's that going?  How's that going for you? Because we don't have. We don't have a lot of willpower in that moment, right? We are cut off from our, the thinking, slower thinking part of our brain prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for problem solving, creativity and verbal ability. And we're in our limbic brain, which is, you know, our reactive part of the brain, fight, flight, or freeze. So we have to 

[00:24:00] decide ahead of time, how do I wanna respond in this moment and like. So a, I call it the three R's recognize what you're feeling. Oh, I'm starting to feel frustrated. I'm going down that path. Second R, remove and then recognize includes this, like naming it, name it to tame it, that Dr. Jan Siegel talks about this and that, they've actually shown that it lowers the cortisol stress levels in your body. So I'm feeling frustrated. Just to say that is like a huge win. So you name it, recognize it. Remove yourself if you need to. It may mean like I walk five feet away and I turn my back on the situation for a second, and you may say, I need a second, or I need a minute.  Mm.  So if everyone's safe, if everything's, if everyone's safe enough to do this, you remove yourself and then you, the third R is use your resources and you recognize. I am in a reactive, nervous 

[00:25:00] system activated, dysregulated place. I need to calm my body so I can use my brain, right? So. Then resources. Resources can include like one that I think is so potent and simple and effective is just longer exhales and it's sort of cliche to say breathing deep breaths, right? But it's actually quite, the reason why it works is kind of interesting, like as you inhale, each inhale is a little mini fight flight or freeze activation in the nervous system and each exhale is like a mini opposite rest and relax response in the nervous system. So if you say breathe in for four and exhale for six and you do that three to six times, you're kind of forcing your body out of fight, flight, or freeze, right? So that you can make a choice. You can even shake it out, like shake your arms and shake your 

[00:26:00] legs and this is why I talked to the Robert Polsky, who's someone I admire greatly, who wrote a book, one of his books is called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, which I think is great. Oh, I love that and why don't zebras get ulcers? Because, you know, they're like being hunted on the Savannah. They should be so stressed out, but they're not because they, you watch 'em, they're like dogs. They shake it out. Like they shake it out 'cause stress. Is your muscles getting tight? It's like all of that. And so you get to, it's these are all physical important things, right? Like to longer exhales, you can shake it out, you can forward fold, you can and then you can do things like, you know, you could put a hand on your heart and say, this is not an emergency, or I'm helping my child, you know, something like that. But you wanna decide ahead of time. That I'm gonna practice these resources. You may wanna think about it, you may wanna put it up on post-it notes. You may 

[00:27:00] wanna practice pausing. You know, even if you don't, you're not ready for a full blown mindfulness meditation practice of five minutes a day. That's okay. Maybe like wake up in the morning manned and don't touch your phone and just sit on the edge of your bed and breathe 10 deep breaths every morning so you practice pausing. Right. Yeah. So some kind of practice. So you're, when you're in that moment and you want to pause and you wanna interrupt the pattern, you're, you know what to do. You've done a little, little bit of hitting practice, right? Mm-hmm.  I like that. I love the three Rs. I wrote them down because I think it's. I love having something that's easy to remember, especially, you know, in the moment. And I think we underestimate, or at least I would say I have underestimated the power of the physical, the break that just a physical, like you said, like shaking your hands or your arms or doing, you know, 

[00:28:00] putting your hand on your heart. Like sometimes it takes that physical sensation to break the response that you would normally have. So I think that's really powerful and it doesn't have to be anything crazy, and I'd love to hear how this has sort of played out in your family, is I've noticed as I have leaned more into being mindful, it's definitely made me more present and calm. And I've noticed that it is really, impacted my kids. Hmm. You know, and they don't live with me anymore, but they did for a couple of years while I was kind of new to this and you mentioned co-regulation, so I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about how we can use this as a tool to sort of change the whole family dynamic and what you've seen in your family. Yeah. I mean, it is. Our kids are kind of terrible at doing what we say, but they are really good at modeling, you know, at doing what we 

[00:29:00] do and we are modeling for them how to live a life all the time and they may have different, they have definitely have different circumstances and different genetic combinations and different challenges and all of that. But we can model things. You know, for me, I've seen that in, well, my daughter, my daughters kind of growing up with the Mindful Mama mentor made them a little bit kind of allergic to mindfulness. I know. I was gonna say, did they just hate that?  Oh yeah. Yeah, they just hated it. So I was always a little jealous of people who would say like, yes, I'm teaching my kids like mindful breathing before bedtime, and I'd be like, oh, I wish, but it's been interesting. So my daughter has like a chronic pain condition and as she's navigated that, one thing that's ended up actually helping her a lot is some very gentle yoga and she was she kind of hated and thought it was dumb and was, but now she 

[00:30:00] will ask me to lead her through a practice. She does it on her own and so she's actually taken this up as a tool for coming into her body and being more present and being more regulated and so that's been really, really lovely to see that. Yeah, they're kind of taking things up in their own ways. I remember my second daughter who is in field hockey, she said, oh, mom, our coach, led us through like, a meditation practice at the beginning of the season. And she says like, all proud of her coach and she thought it was so nice, you know? And I was like, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. You know and I've also seen my oldest daughter. She like tried TikTok on her phone and then after six months she just, she didn't like how it made her feel. She was aware of that. It didn't, she didn't like how it made her feel and she took it off. So I've seen these sort of like, you know, pieces where there's this value. That we're not, we're trying, have to, 

[00:31:00] I have to hold back sometimes from like saying, you know, it would be really helpful here, honey and I try to do that, but yeah, it's seeped in anyway, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. What you said that they're really good at not listening to what we say, but they are excellent at doing what we do. So we need to be mindful about what we do. Because they are going to repeat that. I think that's something that we also sort of underestimate is, well, I'm over here doing my thing and they are just like, I think of just the little like scanning, you know, they're scanning. I know we think they're not paying attention, but Oh man.  Oh man, they are. Another thing that I've heard folks say, and I would love to get your thoughts on it, is they sort of think. If you're doing meditation and all that, that you're just suppressing your emotions, like you're suppressing those emotions. Like nobody can be zen all the time and you're just trying to stay calm 

[00:32:00] and I know that that's not necessarily true, but I am not an expert in meditation or mindfulness, so I would love to get your thoughts on that of, are we suppressing our emotions when we're doing this or are we hmm. I think of it more as like I am, I'm trying to regulate my emotions. Like you said, you had the high highs and the low lows, and I did too, especially when my son was struggling. Some days I thought I was just absolutely mental. It was like, so I never, I don't know. I think it's just a tricky thing to think about. Yeah, I see what you're saying and I think it does, it's there's some like minor grain of truth to that in that you're like, your prefrontal cortex becomes more highly developed. Your amygdala, which is c to fight, flight or freeze becomes less dense and less it actually shrinks and so in some ways like that the prefrontal cortex has impulse control, right? And things like that. So it kind of gives you a way to yeah it 

[00:33:00] is maybe you are suppressing the urge to scream at your kid, right? Like, or the impulse to scream at your kid, right? Yeah and, but you do need to release that at some point. So there are mindful ways of practicing, feeling those feelings and releasing them and processing through them. I mean, honestly, I feel like it's only to the benefit that I learned to not scream at my kid yeah, it's not like you wanna, it's also a practice of digesting the feelings, right? It's not just like, we were taught when we were a kid, like, don't cry or go to your room right? Like, we were taught to suppress feelings and then when we couldn't suppress 'em anymore, we would drown in them, right? We would just be like a mess and either exploding or just destroyed, right? And incapacitated, right? So we the kind of natural way in some ways, like the way we go through things in regular life is we're sort of suppressing and then we're drowning and we're kind of going back and forth between these two things and that's a little unhealthy. So when we're practicing to, we're 

[00:34:00] mindfully practicing using mindfulness. We're practicing to feel and observe those feelings, is that we're, what we're practicing to do is to completely feel the feeling, but to not react to it. So in my body, if the anxiety is coming or if the frustration is coming, I am completely aware and feeling the tension in my jaw, the tightness in my chest, the discomfort, you can really observe and notice what the, I've gotta get outta here feeling, feels like physical sensations and it turns out this is a way of digesting your feelings, right? I feel like feelings are like toddlers, like they're need to be seen and heard, or they're never gonna go away, right? I think there's this pulling out your legs and so this gives us a way of digesting those feelings and the thing was, for me, it's certainly not, I'm feeling calm all the time. That's like some kind of bypassing that's not very healthy and not really great modeling for your kids. You don't wanna 

[00:35:00] pretend to be calm all the time. And anyway, they can see through that BS real really quickly. It's just that you can return to calm more quickly and easily because what I notice, and actually it kind of goes back to when I very, very first practiced meditation, I had this couple months, I realized, oh, I'm not falling into these pits. And it took me a while to kind of think about that and figure out why. Why am I not falling into these pits? Because I still felt all the feelings. I still felt everything, but I recovered faster and what happened with me is that what happens with a lot of us is that we feel a feeling and then we start to think a thought. And the thought leaves us down into a little further into the feeling, and then it makes us feel worse and then we think more thoughts that lead us down. We go into this kind of downward spiral of our feeling and our thinking. Yes. And when we're practicing a mindfulness practice. We can feel the feeling and think the thought, and then we're like, oh, look at that thought. Wow. That's not that 

[00:36:00] helpful. That's not a very helpful thought. We can interrupt it and so then we feel the feeling and then we recover more quickly because we're just not going into the downward spiral that we, that I used to go into anyway. I mean, at least that's how I experienced it. So it's not like you're suppressing feelings, you're still feeling everything, but you're interrupting the patterns. Yeah. And what you said about the recco faster recovery, I think is mm-hmm. Also really important because we don't wanna have the expectation of, well, now I'm doing all this meditation and mindfulness, like I shouldn't have these episodes where I'm feeling, oh yeah, it's doesn't remove all of that. But what you said is really perfect, which is you can recover faster and you can be more in the observation mode of, oh, look at all that anger I'm feeling, or look at.  And it gives us a lot of compassion, right? When we start to see all the different ways we're suffering, right? Mm-hmm. It gives us a lot of compassion and 

[00:37:00] self-compassion when we're kind to ourselves, when we have difficulties. It's actually quite practical. It helps us to get back up more quickly rather than if we're harsh and mean to ourselves and we leave ourselves incapacitated. So mindfulness and self-compassion really kind of go hand in hand and they develop together. So that also helps it enormously that we can just be understanding and kind to ourselves. Yeah. I know you work with a lot of moms, do you see moms having a difficult time with self-compassion?  Yes. Yes. Me too. Me too. It's just so, it's heartbreaking.  Yeah. And I encourage people if they need to kind of use their kids as a motivator to practice self-compassion to do that. But I do think it's heartbreaking. I think it's a remnant of our patriarchal culture that sees women as resources to be used up and we sort of still see ourselves that 

[00:38:00] way, that we're valuable if we kind of use up all of us ourselves as a resource and that's a shame because we don't wanna model that for our kids. No one really does. No, it's not helpful and yeah, using the kids as a motivator, I love that as a way to start. And then my hope is for women in particular to then realize, oh, I don't even have to do this just for my kids. Yeah. I can just do this for me. Yeah. You know, I am enough of a reason to want to tap into all of the resources that I can. Hell yeah. To have a better existence, right?  Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah and then you can circularly you can go back to say, oh, is that how I would want my kid to feel? Right? Would you want my, your kid to feel like they are enough of a reason? To feel good, then I should feel, you gotta pra you've got to live what you want your kids to learn. You've gotta model it. Mm-hmm. And it's okay if it feels uncomfortable to practice 

[00:39:00] self-compassion. It's okay if it feels weird to be kind to yourself. It feels weird at first. That's okay. That's fine. It's still very practical and very healing and very helpful. It just makes all your relationships easier. We always talk about, well, we have to have a full cup to be able to pour into others and I'm really, I don't know what it is right now. I just, I'm on this kick of, but even if you don't have to pour to others, you still get to fill your cup. Yeah. I mean, but the thing is, it's inevitable that we pour into others because humans are, we enter our, with each other. We are, nobody is living completely separated from every other human being. We always are interacting with each other and touching each other and so if you can make yourself healthy and happy and yeah, if you can be like Han, he was a refugee from the Vietnam War and he used to say like, there would be these crowded boats of 

[00:40:00] refugees from the war, and they would be sort of overcrowded. And if the seas got rough, if everybody panicked, it would be terrible. But if one person could stay calm and grounded, then everybody would absorb that and feel that and it could save them from drowning. So I think that you know? Yes. Just do it for yourself. Absolutely. But yeah, nobody's completely by themself. We don't live on an islands ourselves. Although sometimes we wish we did, we wish we could just escaped to an island. Well, I know I have to let you go, but if there's a mom in particular who's listening or a dad and things are really rough at home right now. Kiddos are really struggling. There's a lot of kind of friction. What's one practical tip that you would give them to just start to tap into some of the benefits of mindfulness?  Hmm. 

[00:41:00] I mean, I would say give yourself that time to pause. Maybe just take those 10 deep breaths by the bed. Put your hand at your heart. I'll repeat it so we can all remember. Yes, please do.  As you breathe in, breathe in. Calm, breathe out. Peace. Breathe in, smile and breathe out. Release. Yeah. And that is a practice of freedom, right? Freedom from, yeah, from all the suffering. Just taking a moment to tap into that thing that is really innately in all of us. We innately have some peace, some calm, all of that. So just take a moment to water those seeds. Yes. Thank you so much. Oh my goodness. It's such an important subject and I think for me, in the work that I do, I believe this is really at the 

[00:42:00] center, at the core of being able to make change in your family. You know? Yeah, I really do because if you're not aware and you're not mindful of yourself, of the impact that you're creating on others, I think of it as my personal weather, like what is my personal weather bringing into? A, you know, relationship or into a room or into a conversation if I'm a storm and I'm just like, it's really important and I'm so glad to have you on because it's difficult for me to articulate it because that's just not something I've studied. It's something I've practiced, but I haven't studied it. So I appreciate your ability to help us sort of with some of the practical stuff, but also just the wisdom behind why this is important. I really do. If you're listening and you have not tapped into anything mindful related, first of all, grab Hunter's book Raising good humans, human. I was like, I was gonna say 

[00:43:00] incredible humans. And I thought, that doesn't sound right. But I knew it was in that it's raising super humans. Yes, raising good humans and just maybe try those 10 breaths in the morning or whatever you have the capacity to do because it is actually a game changer. So thank you so much for your time. We'll make sure there's links in the show notes to all of the resources so that you can tap into everything that Hunter's got. And thank you for being here. Thank you. This has been lovely. I appreciate it, Brenda. Thank you so much.