Speaker 1 · 0:04To a lesser or greater degree, we've all experienced some kind of trauma. It's simply a part of being human. And as we deepen our mindfulness practice and become more aware of what's present in each moment, we may notice that painful, unprocessed trauma still lingers. In this episode, Sean Fargo offers practical advice on how we might expand our own and others' capacity to remain mindful even when this mindfulness brings awareness to pain or discomfort. We can begin this process by deepening our awareness of our own experience and by becoming more willing to share our learned wisdom with others who may be in similar situations. Please remember that mindfulness practice is not a replacement for therapy. Listen with care and self-compassion and practice within your window of tolerance. If this or any other episode triggers overwhelming, uncomfortable feelings, please contact your healthcare provider.
Speaker 2 · 1:21And I think that if there's a certain kind of person or a certain kind of situation, certain kind of challenge that we've had personally in our lives that can help enable us to reach others in that similar boat more effectively, and we will often find more passion and we can come across with more presence and energy and care. You know, all of us have different journeys and challenges, and I think that if we can find ways to reach people going through difficult times that we've ourselves gone through, that can add some more spark to our mission, our purpose, to our life. Not saying we all have to do this, but oftentimes that can be the secret sauce that can open all sorts of doors.
Speaker 1 · 2:26Our ability to hold space for the pain of others is limited by our capacity to be present with our own pain. As practitioners, we can work to strengthen the awareness of our own reactivity to certain triggers. As teachers, this includes awareness of how we may react to feedback and the experiences our students share with us.
Speaker 2 · 4:01As teachers, I think it's helpful to welcome feedback, to welcome authentic responses. Can we welcome it? Can we take it into consideration? Can we empathize? Can we feel for how they may be feeling and wish them no harm? Wish them well, you know, and make modifications where needed, or work with them one-on-one on the side, or find alternative practices they can do. As teachers, we can modify our teachings, or extend a olive branch, or at the very least, not judge. And as practitioners, can we work with our reactivity with mindfulness as well? The whole human experience, whether we like it or not, whether it's pleasant or not, whether we want it or not, whether we agree with it or not, whether it's tidy or not. Can we relate to it with this gentle moment-to-moment awareness? And what we find over time, the more and more and more and more we do this, the more we accept this moment as it is. Not necessarily agreeing with it or condoning it or liking it, but we accepted it as it is because that's the way it is. There doesn't need to be judgment or shame. Easier said than done. Far easier said than done. So you do want to be careful, you do want to listen and be open to feedback on what words suit the people you're teaching. Take that into consideration, and certainly not force anyone to feel like they have to adopt a certain word or certain instruction.
Speaker 1 · 6:55Giving and receiving feedback benefits both teachers and students. As teachers, we can learn from our students and also from experts in the field. Learning about trauma-sensitive mindfulness can help us navigate sensitive topics with greater compassion and skill.
Speaker 2 · 7:20One encouragement I have for all mindfulness teachers is to consider informing yourself bit by bit around trauma. I'm not here to like sound an alarm bell that you have to be extremely cautious with every word you say, per se. And I think it's very helpful for all mindfulness teachers to have that on their radar and to kind of know how to navigate sensitive topics if it comes up for people, especially in healthcare mental health settings. So I do recommend the book Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness by David Trelevin. It's sort of becoming required reading for a lot of mindfulness teacher training circles. I don't want to go into all the details right now, but I just do encourage people to at least have that on their radar.
Speaker 1 · 8:24David Trelevin is among the leading experts in mindfulness and trauma. In his episode of the Mindfulness Exercises podcast, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, he spoke about what it means to be a trauma-informed teacher. Here, Sean Fargo reiterates what mindfulness teachers might want to consider when teaching special populations who might be sensitive to certain triggers.
Speaker 2 · 9:09Personally, the sort of breakdowns or the points of re triggering have happened with veterans. Like that's for me where it's been most predominant. Regardless of the context, it's always helpful to have these precursory practices of establishing a sense of safety. And I think rapport with the teacher is really helpful, getting a sense of you know what's around them, giving people the option to stop any exercise at any point, you know, allowing them to leave the room if they need to, or you know, and as mindfulness teachers, we obviously don't want to judge anyone for having an experience. We want to honor what's true for people. Sometimes when people do feel triggered, sometimes they'll want to tell you their story, which makes sense. If you're in a group setting where the story may not be appropriate, then it can be delicate in how you interact with them. And so it takes tact and care. And sometimes it's helpful to say, you know, thank you for wanting to share your experience with us. We care about you. And because we don't have that much more time to review these practices with everyone, would it be all right with you if maybe we spoke at the break and I could listen to your story or support you in a more personalized way? Would that be all right with you? Saying something along those lines can be helpful, honoring their story, but asking them to maybe share their story with you later, or if they want to share their story afterwards with the group, that's fine.
Speaker 1 · 11:16While it is important to be sensitive to trauma, we must take care to work within our experience level. Being trauma-informed doesn't, on its own, qualify us to treat our students' trauma. As mindfulness teachers, our goal is to bring awareness to what's present while minimizing harm.
Speaker 2 · 11:49We don't want to call up terror, we don't want to call up you know near-death experience if we're not sort of clinically trained to handle that. We don't want to call up significantly unhealed trauma, but we can call up things within people's window of tolerance, within our wheelhouse of healing, but to go in baby steps. So I acknowledge that part of our course it can be vague because it does depend on your background level, which is also why we keep emphasizing trauma-sensitive mindfulness too, because we don't want you to re-trigger people, and we don't want you to harm anyone, essentially.
Speaker 1 · 12:57Minimizing harm as best we can is often mistaken as a directive to fix, change, or mend. But the healing process is not about ridding ourselves of pain. Suffering is an unavoidable part of our humanity. Instead, we can heal by strengthening our presence and self-awareness.
Speaker 2 · 13:22We all have different experiences, different emotions come up in all sorts of situations. And when we're mindful of our emotions and our perceptions, where we really open to the rawness more and more, the more we're self-aware of what we're carrying. And the more self-aware we are, the more empathic we become to others because we know what that might feel like because we feel more of that. Now it's difficult to be empathic with everyone in all situations because we haven't been through all situations. But the more self-aware we are, the more empathic we just naturally become, and the more empathic we are, the more opportunity there is for compassion. So there's kind of this step-by-step process that happens, you know, more mindfulness leads to more self-awareness, leads to more empathy for others, which leads to more compassion for others. Assuming that the mindfulness practice is actually mindfulness, where we're actually opening to the raw experience without judgment, where we sense into the fear, we sense into the rawness, we sense into what's actually here and tend to it moment to moment to moment to moment without trying to fix it, without trying to change it, without trying to rationalize it, without trying to tell a story around it, to actually hide it, really. So assuming it's a real mindfulness practice, then that leads to truer self-awareness, which leads to greater capacity for empathy and compassion.
Speaker 1 · 15:36Real mindfulness practice entails opening to the entirety of our human experience. And as humans, although we may be mindfulness teachers, we too have experienced great pain. What do we do then when we are triggered while teaching our students? Should we continue to guide practices for others? And how?
Speaker 2 · 16:06You may want to consider for now temporarily trying other meditations for a little bit to kind of get out of that cycle and practice other kinds of practices that may not trigger or associate with your past as much or quite in that way. So maybe practices that you feel like you have more ability to stay present and that your prefrontal cortex won't get hijacked, you know, certain meditations that have extra locks on the cockpit doors, and to maybe have a game plan, you know, where you are able to, okay, so at this part of the meditation, this is usually when I get you know washed away. This is where my 13-year-old self comes up, or whatever it is. Like, so how do I preempt that in my experience where I can stay engaged? So, what are you know a few things I can be curious about? Can I stay with my anchors? Can I maybe take some extra deep breaths in that time period? Can I practice it at home, you know, a few times, maybe speaking into that professional microphone and see if I can train myself to stay present through leading those kinds of meditations. And then finally, my third suggestion or invitation would be to, in conjunction with your work with your therapist, to also consider some hardwiring happiness meditations. When I say hardwiring happiness, I mean Rick Hansen's specific meditations in which you're doing the HEA, but you're also doing the L of linking this say positive experience with specific sort of quote-unquote negative experiences from age 13 or 14 or 15, so that you can start to rewire how you relate to some of those experiences so that they're a little less overwhelming, but to follow the specific instructions in Rick's work on the linking part of the heel H E A L practice. But again, I would kind of defer that to your therapist and maybe work in conjunction with that or see what your therapist thinks about that practice. So, in other words, my first suggestion would be to try other meditations for a little bit temporarily. Second would be to practice the more emotional meditations and kind of work with it and train yourself to figure it out.
Speaker 1 · 19:37Experimenting with different types of practice while noting how each feels in our body helps us personally and also helps us to better guide others. One practice we might play with is close versus zoomed out awareness.
Speaker 2 · 19:59It's hard to generalize, but a lot of people find that zooming out can be helpful for pain, staying in the body, but just kind of expanding our perspective. I know with childbirth that can be very helpful. So I've heard, including with loving kindness, you know, kind of concentrating loving kindness on a very small point or expanding it throughout the body, even like breathing practices, playing with the breath in different parts of the body. You know, with emotions like anger, I kind of find it helpful to do both. I like zeroing in on the sensations of anger, or the heat, the contraction, the tightness, and really getting a sense of exactly where those sensations are most predominant in my belly, my chest, my heart, my shoulders, my head, zeroing in on those different sensations. But I also find it helpful to expand out too, to notice oh, yeah, there are many areas of the body that don't seem that affected by the emotion. Or to notice that my awareness is typically maybe more concentrated than it needs to be. Like sometimes I might forget the lower half of my body when I'm angry. Might forget that I have arms. It's because I'm so focused on the sensations in the center of my body that I forget my extremities or my limbs. So expanding out can kind of help remind me, oh yeah, I'm breathing, I'm you know, standing on the ground. Maybe I'm holding myself in a very specific way, but can I expand back outwards to notice my full experience? Try zooming in and out with every experience and see what is useful for you and see what you notice.
Speaker 1 · 22:07With this practice, we may notice our window of tolerance expanding over time, allowing us to remain present with feelings or sensations that once felt too intense. However, zooming in and out is just one of many methods we can use to stay within our window of tolerance.
Speaker 2 · 22:35Giving people choice during practice and not forcing anyone down a road that's too intense. You know, with breathing, we can feel the belly rise and fall, but where it's more of a belly thing rather than a breath thing, even though they're tied, or sensing into the breath in and out the nostrils, sensing the bottoms of the feet on the ground, or even just starting with sensing into any part of the body that feels pleasant or neutral. Maybe the hands feel pleasant, maybe it's the cheeks or toes, it's somewhere pleasant, and kind of hanging out there for a while, and then moving through say more neutral places, and then if any place in the body feels quite unpleasant, then just kind of sticking with the mildly unpleasant parts of the body and bypassing any part of the body that's maybe a little intense for now, but all the while building the capacity to be with more and more intensity over time, you know, with more care and curiosity and courage, but that takes time to be able to build to, but like sometimes it's impossible to prevent people from being re triggered by something. It happens. Sometimes one person may have had a traumatic experience around something that we could never have imagined. Something from left field. And we might use that word, and they may felt triggered and they might blame you. In my experience, it doesn't happen all that often, but occasionally it might happen. So we can hold that with care and apologies and compassion, but sometimes that happens and there's nothing we could have anticipated. But we can do our best to use some trauma-sensitive principles for the majority of people that will be very helpful. But we also can't walk on eggshells too much.
Speaker 1 · 25:20Thank you, Sean, for that reminder that we can do our best to be trauma-informed, to offer choices of practice, and to remind our students of their agency. As mindfulness teachers, may we continue to develop the wisdom and skills necessary to help minimize harm, while at the same time encouraging courage, presence, and grace in the face of hardship. In the end, we cannot control the experience of another. But we can do our best to be mindful of minimizing harm. If you'd like to learn more about this topic, listen to our previous episode, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, with David Trelevin. May it help you teach with greater skill and compassion to improve your own and other people's lives.
