[DAWN GABRIEL]
Faith Fringes is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith in Practice, Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic or Impact Driven Leader, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network.

Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, host of Faith Fringes Podcast, recording live from Castle Rock Colorado, not only where I love to live, but I also work as the owner of a counseling center in the historic downtown. This podcast is a place to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. For those desiring deeper connection with God and engaging their spirituality in new ways, this will be a safe place to allow doubt, questions and curiosity, without judgment. We will be creating intentional space to listen in on other’s faith journeys, whether that is deconstruction or reconstruction, with the hope of traveling alongside you on your own spiritual path. If you’re interested in getting even more out of this podcast, grab my free email course Spiritual Reflections on my websitefaithfringes.com. Welcome to the podcast.

Hi, come back to Faith Fringes podcast. I’m Dawn Gabriel, your host, and I’m excited to be here today. Today we are going to be talking about one of my favorite topics, mindfulness, and some meditation. I don’t know about you, but when I first learned about this, it was something new. I was always confused what is mindfulness and what is meditation? And I think it was more in my late twenties that I kind of learned about it. I mean, I had taken a yoga class here and there, but I didn’t really understand what the importance of mindfulness is. And it actually was through my own questioning and thinking through it and I, of course, and Dawn style, I decided to take classes on it or a course and so I started taking some courses on it and learning and reading and studying.

Then I wanted to teach it to my clients and that’s kind of how I got into it, but it really became more intense to me when I actually started learning about EMDR, which is a mode of therapy that deals with trauma. So when you get EMDR trained, you actually are able, you go through the process yourself. So when I went and got training on it, and it’s a very long training and you have to have a lot of group hours and practice before you can say, you’re EMDR trained and you have to go through your own kind of trauma and working through it and I remember our professor was like, “You need to pick a trauma on a scale of one to 10.” That’s like a five, but of course, any trauma leads to bigger trauma.

So we all picked fives, but then we were all like freaking out and crying by the end of this training. But I promise it was an awesome training, but through that I started learning how important mindfulness and meditation is and healing. So I really got into it because it was more on a personal level on my own journey of healing. So I’m very excited today to kind of jump into this subject and take a deeper dive on mindfulness with actually a friend of mine who is publishing a book on it. My friend’s name is Dr. Kim Dwyer and I met her about 10 years ago when we did private practice in the same building and we just kind of met probably at the lunch room or something like that. Yes, so I’m very excited to introduce her to you.

She is writing a book and we’re going to talk about it in the show. Let me just give you a little background about Kim. She is a psychologist and she is a mom to boys and dogs. She’s very into rescuing dogs. I think she said that she’s rescued about 20 dogs. So I’m always seeing that on her Facebook posts. She also is dedicated to yoga and she’s a black belt in Taekwondo and she’s perfectly happy cooking a healthy meal in the kitchen or spending time in nature. With a PhD in Clinical Psychology, she has experience providing therapy and assessments in inpatient, outpatient, community, and school settings. About 10 years ago, she made the leap to private practice and four years ago she started a group practice and she’s learned a bunch of things along the way. She’s learned that as clinicians, they can be highly trained as clinicians, but not so well-prepared for running a business, especially a business based on relationships. So she started Intentional Private Practice. So she’s also a consultant for people who are wanting to launch, grow, and redefine their practice. So help me welcome today, Kim Dwyer.
[DAWN]
Welcome Kim.
[DR. KIM DWYER]
Hi Dawn. Thanks so much for having me.
[DAWN]
Yes. I’m so glad to be spending time with you today. I know we’ve actually talked a lot about mindfulness over lunch and lunches, I should say, but I’m so excited for my listeners to hear from you. So why don’t you just start telling us a little bit about how you got into mindfulness and we’ll go from there.
[DR. KIM]
Sure. I’m a clinical psychologist and was trained heavily in cognitive behavioral therapy, which as we kind of came into the early two thousands, there was a shift to bring in more Eastern-inspired thought into cognitive behavioral approaches. So cognitive behavioral therapy tends to be a very active approach of noticing thought patterns, challenging thought patterns, changing them, talking back to them, looking at probabilities, doing a lot of active stuff, even if it’s all happening inside of our mind or our brain at the time. And the shift of bringing in mindfulness, I believe helped people continue if they needed to do that kind of work, but also bring in more of a sense of acceptance that some of the behavior that’s going on in our brain is behavior. You know, we can think of thought as behavior and some of it is habitual and when we bring attention to it through mindfulness, then we can decide whether it’s something that we need to listen to and follow.

And very often our thoughts are important and we should listen to them, but sometimes they’re habit thoughts that don’t serve us very well in the moment. And those are the kinds of thoughts that are helpful to notice and observe, maybe have some wonder men about where they came from, or if they’re telling us something about our value system or other things, but sometimes they’re just habit and we can label them and separate from them and continue doing what’s in our best interest. So I think clinically and therapeutically, that’s a super helpful approach and as I read more practice mindfulness myself did some retreats and things like that, I just really saw how useful this is and how it can permeate everything in our life.
[DAWN]
Yes. I love that. Not only are we learning new things as clinicians, it actually impacts our personal life. And then you mentioned you went on retreats. Were those personal retreats or were those retreats for your profession or both?
[DR. KIM]
Some were more professional training and some were combination, personal, but certainly I think that’s part of this profession. We bring our personal into it and our understanding from our own personal experiences can color and broaden maybe how we can use that material to help our clients. So I would say definitely a little bit of both.
[DAWN]
Yes. And I remember, just to tell my listeners, Kim and I actually met years ago when I first started my private practice. I was in solo private practice before I started my group and Kim and I actually happened to be down the hall from each other. And we met, and Kim, you were one of the first right as I was starting to learn about mindfulness and you mentioned you went on a silent yoga retreat and I was like, “You had to be silent the whole time?” So was that one of the retreats you’re talking about?
[DR. KIM]
Definitely. And that was powerful. There’s just some beauty, I think, in sitting in silence and just being present to your thoughts and there’s the good, the bad and the ugly that comes with that. But it was definitely a transformative experience. I think those kinds of retreats can be really helpful to jumpstart a practice or learn some skills and then take something. We don’t sit around in silence through our lives on meditation cushions or doing yoga for multiple hours a day. At least I don’t, but to take a practice like that and bring it back to your life and just maybe incorporate a new skill and see how that works in day-to-day living.
[DAWN]
Yes. I’m glad you brought that up actually, because I think when people think about mindfulness, I know sometimes when I first heard it, like when I first heard you say that, I thought there’s no way I can spend a whole weekend without talking. That was before my kids probably. Now I get it.
[DR. KIM]
Now you can sign up for that.
[DAWN]
Yes, totally. I’m like, “Yes, please.” Now, if someone is wondering, well, first of all, what is mindfulness and do I have to sit on a, like, thinking of the eat, pray, love scene, like I read the book, but the movie with Julia Roberts where she is in silence and I was totally freaked her out, but can you explain the different types of mindfulness maybe or what you think mindfulness?
[DR. KIM]
Yes. So I think the most basic definition I’ve ever seen of mindfulness, which comes roughly paraphrasing from Jon Kabat Zinn is mindfulness is bringing focused attention to the present moment without judgment. And when I think about that, I hear three things. So the one is focused attention. So the goal of mindfulness meditation, which might be different than the goal of other flavors of meditation, like there’s lots of them out there, but the goal of mindfulness meditation is to increase our attention. So we’re not going into it with a goal of feeling like we’re floating on a cloud and everything’s piece and angels playing harps in the background or whatever that might be. We’re looking to increase our attention and the reason for that, for working to increase our attention in formal practice, then we can bring that into the rest of our lives, which is like informal meditation, living our life.

We can use that skill while we’re driving, while we’re working, while we’re in conversation, while we’re having dinner. But we can bring our full attention to the present moment. What gets us in trouble a lot of the time certainly with anxiety, I think also with low mood and depression is where our thoughts are going. So anxiety is almost always unless, you’re in an anxious or anxiety producing moment, most anxiety is future oriented. It’s anticipatory and ‘what if’ kinds of thinking. And a lot of low mood is I believe backward thinking, like thinking about things that went wrong, remorse, guilt, regret disappointment, not that there’s anything wrong with any of those emotions, but when we choose where we’re going to put our focus, we can bring our focus back to the present moment where a lot of the times we’re doing okay, maybe everything’s not perfect in our lives, but we’re functioning.

Physiologically we’re probably doing okay and it’s our mind that’s taking us into these other places. And I believe there’s nothing wrong with going to those other places, going into the future and thinking about planning and prioritizing and all those great executive function skills that we have or going into the past and examining our choices and our decisions and how that’s impacted our life. But when we do that, let’s bring our full attention to those places that we can be really effective at those processes rather than having that be the constant background chatter in our brain when we’re trying to, for instance, have dinner with somebody that we enjoy and want to share their company or work or bring our attention to recreation or leisure. You know, let those things have your attention in that moment.

So that’s the first part, is it’s focused attention and learning to train our ability to shift and direct our attention. The second part is bringing full attention to the present moment. So I talked about that a little bit, coming back to the right now and the third part is without judgment. So it’s getting out of that judging mind that is going to evaluate, is this good? Is this bad? Is this helpful? Is this unhelpful, all of those pieces. And again, there’s a time and place for those things as well, but mindfulness is about kind of bringing curiosity as opposed to judgment. Judgment infers some comparison to a concept that we may have already formed about something. So if I’m going to look out the window and say, “Oh gosh, it’s a gorgeous spring day.” Which sounds like a pleasant thought to have and it probably is, but if I’m going to say it’s a gorgeous spring day, then I’m comparing whatever I’m seeing out there with some other concept in my head of what a gorgeous spring day “is supposed to look like”.

If I’m going to bring mindful awareness without judgment, I’m going to look out the window and notice like what shade of blue is the sky right now? I’m going to notice what I hear. I hear birds chirping out my window right now. I’m going to notice the way the clouds look. They’re kind of fluffy and there’s not too many of them. I’m going to notice the temperature of the air, the smell of grass and pollen and whatever else is out there right now, all those kinds of things. And maybe on some level that kind of starts to form that concept of what kind of a day is it, which we could argue is a little bit judgmental, but I can also have a moment like where I’m really just aware and experiencing what’s going on around me.
[DAWN]
Yes. So it sounds like you’re kind of slowing the process down instead of just looking outside and saying it’s a gorgeous day, you’re taking in all your senses. You’re noticing colors, you’re hearing the birds chirp, like you’re slowing down in the moment. Like you said, being very aware of the present.
[DR. KIM]
And just being very, very intentional. You know, the idea of like the judgment, the concepts, we apply those very, very quickly to lots of different situations. And it helps us navigate the world quickly. You know, we can make snap decisions and judgements based on a small amount of information, which from an evolutionary perspective is probably helpful to us, but from a nurture my self, my brain, my body, and take a care of myself, you know, sometimes we miss a lot when we do that. So it’s being extremely intentional, and rather than we going quickly to a judgment, it’s taking in all the information that’s around us.
[DAWN]
Yes. And most people in my own personal life, and then even sitting with clients, most people don’t even realize they’re making snap judgements. Would you agree with that?
[DR. KIM]
Yes.
[DAWN]
It’s like our brains are made to judge and they’re made to move quickly, like you said, from a survival instinct. But then when we get so used to that, what are we missing if we just live like that?
[DR. KIM]
Oh, wow. Yes, who knows [crosstalk] we’re probably missing a lot and we’re probably doing it all the time, but when you think about like two people in conversation, if I’m talking, if I’m speaking and you’re listening to me, like we’re doing right now, I have to first formulate, you know I have some idea of what it is that I want to say that’s probably happening at some pre-verbal level. And whatever it is is going to get weighed down. That’s probably the wrong word, it’s going to get impacted, or it’s going to be subject to whatever concepts I already have formed. And then I’ve got to get that into some linguistic processing. So it comes together as words and I’ve got to get that down into some motor planning that my mouth knows what to do with it and then I have to actually form those words and articulate them.

And you’re listening to me and you’re filtering it through like all of your concepts and the same, like almost reverse channel like your hearings sensations that get translated into signal, neurological signals that the auditory processing parts of your brain to say for into speech. And there’s so many points there where the concepts that we’ve already formed are going to filter what comes in and what goes out. I might make assumptions about what I’m talking about, that I think “other people already know”. So I’m going to blow through that stuff really quickly. You’re going to make assumptions probably about what you anticipate that I’m going to say. So you’re going to be filtering what I say based on what you’re thinking about and you’re probably going to be thinking about how you’re going to respond to me so there’s part of your brain that’s already moving into a different zone rather than kind of staying in that, like really listening and being curious zone.

So in conversation, we do that. If you think about driving, how many times are we driving a car and we’re off lost in our thoughts and realized that we missed a turn, not being super mindful at that moment, but we also miss a lot of very, very small, but either neutral or enjoyable things that happen throughout the day, especially if we’re caught up in worry or anxiety, regret, uncomfortable emotion, and we’re kind of ruminating on those things. So anything from being present and focused on an interaction with a person, food, tasting the food that you’re eating, rather than just kind of shoveling it in while you’re thinking about what you need to do next. Even the mundane, like doing dishes, feeling the warmth of the water and the texture of the dish soap and things like that are not necessarily unpleasant. That’s maybe the thoughts that we get into about, like, why do I have to do the dishes? Or why can’t somebody else do the dishes? Why can’t the dishes clean themselves? Whatever that might be that pulls us out of the moment and into these places that maybe don’t serve us that well.
[DAWN]
Yes. So anywhere from like little things like cleaning dishes to, I heard you say in the beginning, like, yes, relationships, like just expectations and communication and listening, really attuned, listening to someone without your agenda running through your head. And I know even as I am interviewing guests on the podcast, I’ve made myself not take notes because I’m a note taker. Like I got to remember this and remember that, and I’ve made myself say, “Nope, just be present with the person and be curious.” Let’s talk about curiosity a minute. You’ve mentioned it twice and it’s actually one of my favorite concepts. What do you mean by curiosity versus judgment? Can you spell that out, give examples, something like that.
[DR. KIM]
Yes. So curiosity is coming to a moment or an experience or a stimulus whatever it is without a decision already made about it or without a concept kind of filtering it. So in mindfulness, the concept of beginner’s mind is used often. So the idea of I’m approaching whatever it is, it could be the next breath that I take. I’m approaching it with beginner’s mind, which is, I’ve never experienced this before. Let me really understand what this experience is. So maybe with something, gosh, how many times did we breathe a day? Like, I’d have to look that up, but it’s a really high number. And across a lifetime, we breathe a whole lot of times and we don’t pay much attention to it. But if I bring that beginner’s mind, which is basically curiosity to the next breath that I take, I might notice where I feel it in my body, I might notice the temperature of the air, the smell in the air, the quality of the breath. I might notice how my body moves with the breath where I feel it in my body.

There’s a lot to pay attention to so we can bring curiosity to bring us back into the moment. And we can also use curiosity to get us out of that judgment, part of it, because I think when we’re going to that judgment, like we’re trying to move to the next thing is probably what our brain is trying to do. Like let me figure what this thing is so I know what it is and I know what response is required from me, where curiosity can give us in the moment to really think and use wisdom rather than more of a reflexive. You know, when this thing happens, here’s what I do, more, okay, here’s what I think is happening. You know, what’s all the information that I have about this and can I sit with it maybe for a moment before I move into action?
[DAWN]
Yes. It’s a lot of training yourself to respond instead of react and part of that. And for people who have not tried this, I would recommend just being aware that it does take time. It’s not like you’re going to try it once. I look at it more as training versus trying, when you try something and you’re like, well, see if it works. It is almost like the opposite of curiosity, but training is I’m going to start this practice and start a little bit each day until it becomes part of my practice with mindfulness. So I think, I like to tell people, start with a piece of chocolate or your favorite cup of tea or coffee, and just slow down that process, be aware, like, what does it smell like, notice the first taste, how does it feel on your tongue and just really slow it down and look at that. Do something like you said everyday, like breathing. And it just helps to start there, start simple. It’s not a hard concept. I think it’s more, it needs to be a practice mindfulness.
[DR. KIM]
Exactly. Exactly. So the formal meditation, mindfulness meditation that we might see portrayed in movies or read about, or people go off on retreats to do is great. But again, I think it’s important to remember you’re doing that training. Most of us anyway are doing that training so that we can come back and live our day to day life with more awareness. We’re not doing that to, maybe we are, I don’t know, but when I’m doing it, I’m not doing it to find enlightenment right in that moment. If I have moments of feeling connection or more of some spirituality, that’s great. But a lot of the intention that I bring to it is like, how can I enhance the skill so that when I’m living the rest of my life, I’m really present?
[DAWN]
Yes. So a skill it’s something you have to work into and train into. It’s like, you’re not going to say I’m going to run a marathon tomorrow and you’ve never done a jog. Like you have to have a plan. So yes, tell me a little bit more like if someone does want to intersect it with spirituality, how have you seen that go or what’s your tips on that?
[DR. KIM]
I definitely think there’s room for overlap, but also there’s room to keep it really secular for people who do not want to bring in more of a spiritual or religious focus to mindfulness meditation. But a lot of religious traditions bring some form of mindfulness into practice. Clearly mindfulness meditation stems more from Eastern religions like Buddhism. However in Christianity, a few part of centering prayer, my conceptualization of that is pretty much mindfulness. The way I’ve heard it described by people who see it through more of a religious lens is rather than asking of God or of a higher power, we’re listening for a response
[DAWN]
To connect to something bigger than ourselves.
[DR. KIM]
Exactly.
[DAWN]
Okay. How have you seen it in your life or maybe even a client’s life where it’s really impacted on a spiritual level?
[DR. KIM]
That’s an interesting question. So for myself, I think it’s been about connection and really connection with a larger world with a sense of order which kind of can combat that sense of like randomness and loneliness that can come when we feel disconnected or just like some random blip of that happened. But part of something that makes more sense. I’ve seen people really kind of blossom with using mindfulness to initially decrease anxiety or manage mood symptoms and I just feel like a sense of ease or again of connection. So I’ve seen people that are more kind of approaching from more of a spiritual direction, not a really incorporated it into their prayer practices. So I I think there’s room for all of that. We were chatting a little bit before we started, but a really good book to read for folks who are interested in more is Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh, which looks at both like a Buddhist perspective and a Christian perspective of mindful awareness and kind of indwelling of sacred. And I think that’s really powerful.
[DAWN]
I love that. I have not heard of that book, but it’s definitely on my list now that you mentioned it. It sounds great. I know for me, and I talked about this in previous episodes of my podcast, that a lot of people growing up in the traditional Christian or fundamental or more of a strict religion is like, “Oh no, you can’t do mindfulness like that. You can invite the devil in and not know it.” And I’m like, “What?” So I kind of grew up that way a little bit and then, even my grad school, I think anyone’s grad school before two thousands did not incorporate mindfulness. I feel like it’s more now, but, 20 years ago is when I got my degree and we didn’t have mindfulness then. I had to learn all of it after and I am just amazed at how much more powerful integrating mindfulness, not only into things like treating anxiety or trauma, but also for me in my spiritual life, it’s been extremely impactful on a whole nother level.

Like you said, Kim, like just feeling that connection, like you feel it deeper. For some people who are curious, I would like Kim mentioned, centering prayer that if you guys Google that or look that up, that’s one. Another one is Lectio Divina. It’s a way of reading the scriptures and you kind of engage in all the senses. And I actually, I offer a free email course and it actually, there’s a piece in there on Lectio Davina where you, I lead you through an exercise like that. So that’s another way to integrate mindfulness and meditation and spirituality. I think it’s deepened my faith journey more than like the to-do list, the shoulds and the should nots. I just feel like it’s more holistic way of experiencing yourself. And it just, that’s what I also like being in nature, like being on a trail, it’s super mindful if I put my phone away and stop taking pictures,
[DR. KIM]
That’s right. You have to bring yourself in to experience the moment rather than recording the moment.
[DAWN]
Yes. So Kim, you are kind of an expert on this. In fact, you’ve actually written a book on mindfulness. Would you mind sharing a little bit about that with us? I’m super excited about your book.
[DR. KIM]
Yes. Thank you. I am too. It’s called Mindful Mondays: Transforming the Everyday to Claim Calm and Reduce Stress and there’s kind of two pieces marrow that the, well, one that the title hits and one that I hit on in the book. So I called it mindful Mondays, because my idea was to give people easy, to learn relatively quick, to implement strategies with the idea of implementing a new one each week and then you have the week to try it, to practice it out, and then at the end of the week to do some reflection on how it worked for you. And of course everybody’s journey is different so some people might spend more than a week. Some people might find one strategy that just isn’t a good fit for them and skip onto the next week and that’s all fine too, but that’s where the Mondays part comes in.

There’s not something special necessarily about Monday. Although a lot of people, you know, if you’re starting your work week, it can feel like a fresh start. So why not try a new skill that you can bring in, do it for a contained amount of time? And then throughout the book, after each section with a skill on it, I have a reflection tool so people can reflect on what worked for them, what they’d like to continue using in the future, what served them well, what maybe they need to problem solve things like that. And then the other concept that I bring through the book is raindrop moments.
[DAWN]
I was hoping you will initiate that. I’m like, “Yes, talk about the rain drops.”
[DR. KIM]
The raindrops. So rain drops are obviously very small, but they’re also when it’s raining, they’re very plentiful. So the idea here is we are learning strategies and practicing strategies that might be small, very small time commitment, but they can also be used very plentiful. So we can engage in them multiple times throughout the day. And the analogy goes bigger than that to the idea that when we can take, well, what we talked about earlier, when we can go on that several days silent, yoga retreat. Maybe that’s like immersing into a lake or going on you hear about people that go on these journeys of self-discovery and they’re on a meditation retreat for a year or something like that. And maybe that’s like being submerged in the ocean for a year and just really focused on that awareness and presence the entire time.

Then we have these shorter journeys that might be, you know, I’m doing a yoga practice where I’m really connected with my mind and body throughout the entire thing for an hour, or maybe that’s like getting into the lake for a little bit. And something shorter I’m doing 10 minutes of seated meditation. Maybe that’s more like getting into a bathtub, something smaller. But then the rain drops are when we’re getting off of that yoga mat or that meditation cushion, and we are engaging in our life. And we have these moments, these brief, like getting hit by one drop of rain, these brief moments of awareness that we can connect with whenever we want to, whenever we need to and they’re plentiful around. And when you add up all the rain drops, we know like the water cycle, that’s what forms all of our waterways and our oceans and everything. So everything is connected back. But we can get just as much meaning in those very small moments of awareness.
[DAWN]
I love those concepts, all of it, because I think so many books out there are on, or you read stories or watch movies and there’s these huge things. But I think you do a really good job in your book. I read, she, let me read some of it, you guys and it, you do a really good job of making it super practical, super understandable, and easy and takeaways. And it’s very good little moments. I love the little moments. And then I also love that it connects into the bigger moments like the whole, to me, what I think spirituality is, it’s connecting us all. And we all can be in the same ocean and it allows us to kind of feel each other too. There’s something about community there too, and you’re more into mindfulness. I just love your book.

So I’m excited for it to come out and I will order one of the first copies and practice it. And I think because, I know we were talking over lunch, like as a mom and a professional working woman too, it’s like, yes, I need to run out and grab some raindrops. I’m parched. Like I didn’t become a mom till I was later in life and I was used to having my own time and now it’s different. And I can’t have days on end where I can just sit and meditate or do yoga retreats, or I can barely do yoga without my dog jumping on me. So it’s like, we got to have some practical things.
[DR. KIM]
I’m laughing because yes, now we’re recording this a year into the COVID pandemic and whenever I practice yoga or even exercise at home, I usually have like a dog looking at my face.
[DAWN]
How does that feel, on your face? What’s the sensation of the tongue on your face? Yes. So true. So do you have any tips for someone who’s brand new, we’ll do both sides, someone who’s brand new to mindfulness, where should they start? And then someone who maybe is more into it, what would you recommend for those two types of people?
[DR. KIM]
Sure. So for somebody who’s just getting started, the three focuses of awareness that I like to help people start with are breath, body, and sound because they’re with us all the time. You know we’re breathing, we have bodily sensations and there’s noises in the environment around us. And one of those might be a better fit for a particular person than another, which is why it’s great to try several of them. There’s a lot of great resources for guided meditations, and that’s probably where I would start because trying to do it and to think about how to do it at the same time is kind of divided attention tasks. So if you can listen to somebody guiding you through a formal meditation, I think that can be helpful. So I like to use the app Insight Timer, which has, I think there’s paid content on there, but there’s tons of free meditations.

Another one that I like is Meditation Oasis. So I’ve used both of those a lot and recommend them to folks all the time. But if you even just search for like breath, awareness, meditation, or mind you mindfulness breath awareness you’ll find lots of them. And you can start with a very short amount of time a traditional from some of the stuff that I’ve read and been to like a traditional meditation period is seven minutes or intervals of seven. I’m not sure why particularly, but you can start with like three minutes a three minute breath awareness practice where you’re just noticing the cycle of your breath on the way in and on the way out, bringing attention to your five senses what do I feel in my body as I breathe? Do I hear the flow of air when I’m breathing?
[DR. KIM]
Um, how do I feel my body potentially relaxing or potentially a saying that as I go through that exercise and notice the other experiences. So it’s not, there’s nothing magical when we decide we’re going to direct our attention to our breath. We’re kind of using that experience. Almost like an anchor for attention, so we can keep coming back to that anchor. But our mind is going to wander, which is nature of mind. It’s totally normal. But the, the analogy I love that I got from a a training with Ron Siegel is thinking of the mind as a puppy. So your puppy is going to, if you’re trying to leash train a puppy, it’s going to wander, and it’s a puppy, that’s what it’s going to do. It wants to smell different things like the world’s a big, exciting place for this puppy and your mind is kind of the same way.
[DR. KIM]
Um, and hopefully if we’re a nice pet owner we’re not screaming at the puppy for wandering or gently bringing the puppy back to heal, and then we’re rewarding it when it does what we want it to do. So the same thing with our mind when we recognize, oh, I’m supposed to be paying attention to my breath, which is a judgment right there. And what I just, I want to be paying attention to my breath. And I just noticed that I’m thinking about lunch as an example, that I’m thinking about lunch, and I’m aware that I’m thinking about lunch, that’s mindfulness of our thoughts. And even though we’re focusing on the breath, like that’s still mindfulness. So like give yourself a pat on the back and then gently bring the puppy back to focusing on the breath.
[DAWN]
I love that analogy. Yes. That’s a great analogy.
[DR. KIM]
A good place for beginners to start would be breath. Body, you can go through body takes a little bit longer unless you’re focusing on just one body part, but you can go through every part of the body from your head down to your toes and just notice what you’re feeling when you bring your attention to rest, for instance, in your shoulders, are you feeling tension? Are you feeling relaxation, tightness, tingling did the muscles feel warm? Do they feel cold? Can you feel depending on what you’re wearing, can you feel the texture of whatever you’re wearing or the air against your skin? There’s so much that we can bring awareness to in the body and then sound just closing our eyes and really noticing sound gives us a lot of anchors for attention. You can notice, sounds that are close to you sounds that are far away from you.
[DR. KIM]
Um, you can notice the quality of the sound and where the judging mind likes to jump in as to like label it. Like if I stop and listen for a moment I can hear traffic I have my windows up and it’s nice out. I can hear traffic in the, in the far background. And I could just label that traffic and not really pay attention to the noise anymore. Cause the that conceptualizing part of my brain is content with like, I know what that is, but if I really pay attention to it, it’s more like the sound is more like a flow like an ebb and flow of, of kind of neutral noise which is, it sounds, might sound kind of strange, but it’s really different than like, oh, that’s traffic. It’s like, oh, well that’s a sound that I can just kind of follow and stay with for a little while.
[DAWN]
Hmm. Yes. That’s interesting. Yes. Yes. So what would you say for someone who is used to some mindfulness, some meditation, any thoughts for them?
[DR. KIM]
Yes. I think that’s whereas we start to really hone those skills in more formal practices than it does us a service to really try to bring that mindset into everyday living. So can I be curious might even be like setting ourselves up for I’m having, I’m going to have this conversation? You know, maybe I have a difficult conversation I need to have, and I’m really going to work just to hear what this person is saying to me and be curious before responding often I’m imagining like conversation like that, there’d probably be an urge to respond or to appease somebody else if we tend to be a people pleaser or to defend ourselves if that’s more kind of how we roll. But to really bring our awareness to like what’s being said to me right now and if I’m having a feeling, what feeling am I having you?
[DR. KIM]
Why is that feeling showing up for me right now? And this is where I think we get good at this. We can start to really connect with our value system. So if somebody saying just as an example of somebody telling me that they don’t like something that I did I’m probably going to feel a little prickly for a better word, I’m going to like one, I’m going to feel a little uncomfortable. There’s probably going to be some part of me that has an urge to make it right. There’s going to be some part of me that probably has an urge to defend myself. You know, there’s going to be a lot of that going on, but I can, again, I can notice those urges when their urge is not one they’ve already become actions and then my mouth is already moving and I’m doing something with it.
[DR. KIM]
Um, and if I connect back to that piece that wants to appease is probably that some value within me of having others like me that piece that wants to defend is probably some value of competency or expertise that I wanted to share and show why I made the choices that I made. So if we really like sit with that and be aware of that, then we can connect with those values and maybe use that to choose actions that are in align rather than jumping in immediately saying how do I, how do I fix this for you or what you really need to understand my point of view, we might come to something more moderate of my relationship with you is really important. So I’m really glad we’re talking about this and we can work it through. Would you like to hear why I made the choice that I made and that’s a really different response than yes, exactly. And it takes like being uncomfortable with, like, I don’t have to have an immediate response I don’t have to have it like programmed and ready to like, press play and, and we’re, we’re good to go, but I can really hear and be present and still honor, whatever’s coming up for me while also understanding somebody else’s experience.
[DAWN]
Yes. So it sounds like not only does mindfulness impact your relationship with others, it actually increases your self awareness and helps you connect to your values and allows you to live more value centered life based on what you want versus just reacting all the time. And I think it, it takes, it helps you gain some maturity, some self-awareness and yes, it’s so much more highly recommend that. Would you say your book kind of talks to both types of people? Um, it has different levels.
[DR. KIM]
Yes, it does. So I intentionally started it with more beginner practices so that there’s not an assumption that anybody picking it up has really worked through mindfulness. And frankly, some people who have may find in some of the beginner approaches, they might find a different way of describing something that resonates in a different way with them. Or even sometimes I think when we’ve already practiced something and we come back to the beginning, you, we have a different experience of it because we’re different. At that point. So the way we conceptualize it might change over time. So I start with more more of those beginner practices, awareness of sensory stimuli in the environment, things like that. Then I’d move into awareness of thoughts and emotions, which are kind of a little bit more they’re more our internal environment rather than our external environment. And then I move it into looking at values and then some applied practices for being out in the world. And what do we do with it when we’re out living our life?
[DAWN]
I love that. So for people who want that, it’s called mindful Mondays by Dr. Kim Dwyer and the subtitle is transforming the everyday to claim calm and reduce stress. I just love that. So mindful Mondays by Dr. Kim Dwyer and that is coming out, it’s going to be released soon.
[DR. KIM]
Yes. It should be out early summer, 2021.
[DAWN]
Love it. So Kim, if people want to get ahold of you, after listening, they really like hearing, you said you had like a free giveaway, but what’s your, tell us about that.
[DR. KIM]
A couple of places people can find me. My clinical practice website is drkimdwyer.com. So Dr. K I M D W Y E R.com. And my book, when it comes out, we’ll probably have a place to live on that website. So we’ll probably be something on the homepage that people can click to. And I will have some additional resources that people can access. So that that’ll be kind of like the hub to find it, get to the page for the book. And I’ll have some recorded meditations that people can listen to there. The other place people can find me, so people who are mental health providers in private practice, I do practice coaching and consultation for people that are looking to launch, grow or kind of redefine their practice. And the webpage for that is called intentionalprivatepractice.com. So that’s more geared again towards the provider side. So there’s a lot about marketing, about growing your practice, about the mindset behind all those pieces of being a clinician.
[DAWN]
Yes. And you have a Facebook group for that too, right?
[DR. KIM]
I do. It’s called Intentional Private Practice Community. And I have a workbook called Intentional Private Practice Workbook that you can get on Amazon.
[DAWN]
I love it. Well, Kim, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation to just kind of talk about mindfulness and just how it intersects with spirituality and just how it affects everyday life. So I really appreciate your time and talking with me.
[DR. KIM]
Thank you so much, Dawn. It’s been a pleasure.
[DAWN]
Yes. Talk to you soon.
[DR. KIM]
Okay. Bye.
[DAWN]
Bye.

Thank you for listening today at Faith Fringes Podcast. If you want to explore more of your own faith journey, I offer my free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections, where you take a deeper dive into your own story included as a journaling workbook that has guided exercises. So if you want to explore more of what you were brought up to believe, or even look at where you may have been disillusioned or hurt, but yet still deep down you desire to authentically connect with God, then this course is for you. Just go to faithfringes.com to sign up.

Also, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email and tell me what’s on your mind. You can reach me at dawn@faithfringes.com.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.

Podcast Transcription