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Join host and trauma therapist, Lindsay Faas as we walk through specific mindfulness strategies to build your mindful muscles and grow your wellness arsenal, in an effort to give you a tactical advantage over stress and burnout. Learn how to break the concept of mindfulness down into totally doable, practical pieces that you can implement virtually anywhere, anytime.
Created for First Responders and Front Line Workers to tackle the challenges of working on the front lines. Dig into topics on burnout, workplace dynamics, managing mental health, balancing family life...and so much more. Created and hosted by Lindsay Faas, clinical counsellor and trauma therapist. View the show notes, and access bonus resources at https://my.thrive-life.ca/behind-the-line.
Hey there and welcome back to Behind the Line.
I’m your host, Lindsay Faas. For those new to the show, I am a clinical counsellor specializing in trauma therapy. After years of working alongside First Responders and front line workers as a trauma therapist, as well as being a friend to more nurses than I can count (seriously, they’re everywhere!!), I became passionate about supporting wellness as an advocate and educator for First Responders and Front Line Workers. My mission to support those on the front lines really emerged from seeing over and over again the amazing hearts that enter the work – people who want to make a difference, help their communities, effect change…only to be chewed up and spit back out by systems that fail to support the helpers and heroes. I got tired of sitting back and watching it happen over and over again – clients coming to me after they had been through the ringer for years, sometimes decades. I wanted to see better tools for prevention and early intervention, and this was the best platform I could think of to meet you and connect with you. Behind the Line is a place for us to talk about the real life behind the scenes challenges facing you on the front lines. I created this podcast with the hope of bringing easy access to skills for wellness – allowing you to find greater sustainability, both on the job and off.
Now, let me start off today’s episode by saying that if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode yet, you might want to start there because today’s episode piggy-backs off of last time where we talked about mindfulness from a scientific lens. I made the case for why mindfulness is a valuable thing to incorporate into your routine as it supports strengthening the parts of your brain that act as a counterbalance to your over-worked stress centre. For those of you who are potentially newer to the work and not yet into the bordering-on or deep -into burnout space yet, this is the best possible time to flex your mindful muscles as these tools can be significant allies in preventing or reducing risks for burnout later on. For those already a little ways down the rabbit hole, don’t worry, all is not lost. These skills are where most therapists and support professionals would encourage you to start because with time and consistency they can help you to gradually dig back out. It might take more patience and some effort, as you will be working against an established system of brain connections – but it is vitally important that you start working these muscles in an effort to help them catch up to your heavy-lifting stress centre.
Last week’s episode focused on why we should care about mindfulness and worked to dispel some of the myths or misperceptions that I often come across in my work when I bring up mindfulness. I’m hoping that by now you’re convinced and on board to start incorporating some mindfulness skills into a regular daily and weekly routine. My goal for you is that you would find a collection of tools that would feel like they fit for you – both in terms of feeling comfortable as well as in terms of practically fitting into your schedule. As I have mentioned, these skills are most meaningful when used consistently, so making sure they fit into your life is going to be imperative to actually making use of the benefits mindfulness offers.
Before we jump into some of my favourite mindfulness skills and a breakdown of how to actually do them, I want to also give a quick reminder that mindfulness refers to a group of skills or practices that support our brain and body in being connected to the present moment, in space and time. So as we talk about specific skills and strategies, keep this underlying goal in mind.
Alright, are we ready to build our mindfulness arsenal?
My clients usually hate when I suggest starting with breathing – but it is honestly the foundation so we’re going to start there whether you like it or not. I think the resistance to breathing is believing this is something we naturally do and that focusing on it is a waste of time…or that it seems too quintessentially therapist-y or something. Meanwhile, most of us are breathing wrong even though we’ve been doing it for oh-so-very-long. What I mean by wrong is that we tend to develop breathing that is shallow and paced more quickly – which actually gives feedback to your brain that you should be on edge and ready to fight, flee, freeze or fawn (words we’ll touch on more another time but are connected to your stress response and survival system). Think about your brain and body as a loop – when your brain perceives stress, it changes your breathing to help you fight or run or whatever the right response may be – but likewise, when your breathing seems shallow your brain perceives that as information and thinks, “oh man, something must be going down” and revs up in preparation for some unknown assailant or offense. This feedback loop contributes to why it’s so hard to settle – we’re always in go-mode, until we’re so tired that we numb. Focusing on our breath is an easy starting place to try to break up that feedback loop. When we calm our breathing we allow our brain to get different information, information that says, “cool, things are chill and sufficiently safe, maybe I can take a beat here.”
Today I’m going to teach you my two favourite breath-focused mindfulness tools. Both are going to require that you get familiar with your diaphragm. Now, your diaphragm is a muscle group that sits below your lungs and supports your breathing. When we are tense or stressed our diaphragm permits quicker, shallower breaths which is often referred to as “chest breathing” which means that you’ll largely notice your chest rise and lower when breathing. Meanwhile, we want to aim for relaxed, slow and long breaths, called “diaphragmatic breathing” where you’ll actually be able to notice your stomach expand and contract, indicating a fuller breath. An exercise you can do to help you get the hang of this is to lay on your back with one hand on your chest and one on your stomach. Try changing how you breathe and notice which hand rises and falls. We’re aiming for breaths that move the hand on your stomach more. I often prompt my clients to engage their diaphragmatic breathing by reminding them “long and slow, long and slow”.
Ok, so the first exercise I’m going to teach you is called Square Breathing. Imagine a square as you do this. Each line of the square counts for 4 seconds or beats. You are going to inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4 and hold again for a count of 4. You can do this a few cycles, then resume comfortable normal-paced breathing for a moment, and then try to do a few cycles again. The intention is not that you breathe like this all the time – the intention is to be focused on a present moment activity – your breathing – that is connected to giving your body more oxygen and relaxing muscle tension in an effort to offer feedback to your brain and strengthen the parts of your brain that help to support and counterbalance your stress centre. This exercise is simple, and can be done within a minute or two. You can literally do it anywhere – so no excuses!
My next favourite breath exercise I learned from a professor. I call it a breath mantra. A mantra is a word or phrase you repeat to yourself, like a focal point. They are often used in meditation, and I find them helpful in other moments of my daily life. A breath mantra goes along with your diaphragmatic breathing, and might be something like “breathe in relaxation” and “breathe out tension” or “inhale calm” and “exhale stress”. I personally like breathe in relaxation and breathe out tension – I find my mind will imagine that my in-breath is moving through all my tense muscle areas and smoothing them out, and that my out-breath expels all of that toxic tension out of my system. Again, this is something you are doing in your mind, making it fairly accessible in most spaces and times, and it only takes a minute or two.
Alright, that gives you a couple of breath-focused exercises to try out. Let’s move on now to meditation. As I mentioned in last week’s episode, some people seem to have discomfort around the idea of meditation, and if that’s you I would encourage you to listen back to last week’s episode where I talk that through a bit. There are tons of places you can find really great guided meditation and meditation training programs, so I am not going to spend a lot of time giving lengthy instructions. I am going to give you just a couple of short meditation ideas to prompt you to start, and I am going to encourage you to take it and run with it from there. For those wanting to expand and grow in this area, there are also some really great app’s that I will link to in the show notes that I have heard really great reviews about from clients who have used them and others I know. This includes the Calm app, and the Balance app.
For now, I am going to give you two short meditations that you can start with and that I find I come back to in my own mindfulness practice time and time again. I like things that are simple, straightforward, quick and get the job done – so these are right up my alley.
The first one is a mantra meditation. As I mentioned a minute ago, I use mantra’s in all kinds of areas of my life. There was a period of time when I was rehabbing a back injury and had to go to the gym daily, but to get to the gym from work I had to drive directly past my house. It was this choice-point moment every single day – go home and take a nap, or go to the gym….go home and take a nap, or go to the gym… I’d like to say I always made the right choice, but that would not be truthful. But I did get more successful with getting to the gym when I came up with this mantra: when I want to do it the least is when I need to do it the most. This phrase would get me through the choice point, because it reminded me that when the internal fight to go home was the strongest, it was a reflection of my avoidance and an affirmation of knowing what I really needed for myself even though I didn’t “feel” like it. The great thing about mantra’s is you choose them, and you can change them. I like to sit in a quiet space, or sometimes lay down, and I choose a word or phrase to focus on. It might be something like “still” or “calm” or something like “I choose to accept things as they are”. I find it easiest to meditate when I use a timer – it let’s me sink into focusing on my mantra instead of checking my watch.
A different version of meditation is meditating on an image. Find somewhere comfortable to sit or lay down, close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so or allow your eyes to find a spot that feels neutral to look at. Let your mind create a picture – imagine the details and work to immerse yourself in the place you’re creating. This task draws on the parts of your brain that we want to work at strengthening and pulls us out of past and future by being fully engaged in an act of creating right now in the present moment. I like to imagine myself near a stream, hearing the sound of the trickling bubbling water. Seeing the water move over and around rocks. Imagining the warmth of sunlight on my skin, the tickle of grass on my bare feet, the soft breeze in my hair…Isn’t that a place you want to run away to right now?! I do! When people first start meditating they often struggle to block out other thoughts that intrude into the practice and pull you to past or future. Thoughts like, “I have to remember to pick up milk,” or “I can’t believe that so-and-so is in the hospital.” My encouragement to you is this is normal and your job is not to block these out. Having these thoughts is not a measure of your success or failure at meditating. In my stream example, when a thought creeps in that moves me out of connection to that scene, I try to notice that it’s happening, and then I imagine the thought as a leaf falling onto the stream and being carried gently away from me. I don’t have to cling to the thought or repel it, just let it come and let it go. And I may need to do this repeatedly – which can feel frustrating sometimes but it also a really great workout for the part of your brain that is working to build connections between your stress centre (the thoughts pouring in) and your executive functioning centre (the part able to calm and regulate) – so in the grand scheme of things just consider this some extra reps in your brain workout.
Now I’m going to pause here for a moment to talk about something really important to consider in the midst of this type of activity, but to some extent, all of the activities we’re talking about today. For those who have significant trauma histories, including childhood developmental trauma in particular, your nervous system and stress centre will likely struggle differently with these kinds of activities than the average “this feels uncomfortable” kind of feeling. For those who have felt deeply unsafe, often and consistently throughout their lives, finding stillness or creating safe imaginal spaces for calm will likely feel the opposite. In these cases, your practice will need to build in additional safety features to help contain and protect you as you work to strengthen the executive functioning part of your brain. Working with the guided imagery example of the stream I was just sharing, you might need to include a protective sphere that keeps anything perceived as unsafe out; or you may need to focus on some senses but not others if they feel triggering for you. If you have a history of trauma, I would encourage you to try these activities a bit like dipping your toe in the water to test the temperature – don’t dive right in, allow yourself to experiment and notice what feels ok and what doesn’t, and refine from there. You will notice things that are not ok by either experiencing some emotional intensity or a need to numb or dissociate. We want to stretch ourselves and work our skills to strengthen the executive functioning parts of our brains, but we need to do this conscientiously – if we engage this is ways that activate our trauma or self-protective responses we are actually doing the opposite of what we’re aiming for and further encouraging our stress centre to show up, which is counter-productive. So just move into this with some awareness of how your history might influence things and considerate of working with your brain rather than fighting with it. You can also google “trauma informed meditation” and search for some more detailed scripts or prompts designed to support more complex trauma.
Ok, on to mindful movement activities. As I mentioned in last week’s episode, activities like yoga and tai chi can be great to incorporate into your routine as the foundations of these practices are grounded in mindfulness and good programs that walk you through these movement practices will prompt and encourage you to connect with your body in the moment, noticing how poses and movements feel, where to notice tension or release, and when and how to use your breath. I mentioned last time that I have a history of being resistant to yoga but have found an app in the last year that I use regularly and has made me fall in love with yoga. I will post a link to it in the show notes, so check that out if you’re looking for something to coach you through it – I love this specific program because it is really customizable in terms of fitness level, durations ranging from 5 minutes to 90 minutes, and a lot of other customizations you can play around with, and every time you use it the practice is a little bit different which helps people like me from getting bored. I also love that it is fairly reasonably priced.
Meanwhile, aside from yoga, tai chi and related types of structured movement practices, you can incorporate mindfulness with movement in so many ways and I encourage you to make this really personal and experiment to find what fits best for you. Some of my favourite ways to incorporate mindfulness with movement includes mantra walks or stretches – choosing a word or phrase to focus on and repeating it every few steps or with each stretch. I also like to try pairing my breathing with my steps – in for three, hold for one, out for three, hold for one. It can also be things like bringing your awareness to what you are seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling around you while you walk, hike, bike, run, row, dance… When your thoughts start to drift to other places, notice it, smile at those sneaky thoughts creeping back in, and gently reorient your awareness to the trees swaying in the breeze, or the feeling of your muscles flexing as you climb the hill, or the ease or strain of your breath as you move, or the sound of the wind or birds, the smell of flowers or the freshness of the air – the point is to encourage your brain to notice and make note of what is happening right here and now, and to coax it back to this whenever it starts to go astray.
The last group of activities I want to talk about are around attunement and awareness. In any moment, not just the dedicated meditative ones or the conscientiously movement-focused ones, but in the any-old-moment kinds of times, we can do some brain workouts to help strengthen our executive functioning that helps counterbalance our stress centre. Brushing your teeth, cooking dinner, driving your car, washing your hands, sitting on your couch – they are all moments that invite mindfulness if you choose to make use of them. And as I’ve said, every time you choose it, you strengthen something just a little bit more, and it counts more than you might think.
These activities involve noticing where your mind is thinking and guiding it to notice present moment instead. My preferred way of doing this is to use my 5 senses – what I see, hear, smell, touch, taste in the moment I’m in can help me anchor to the present moment and strengthens the part of my brain that we’ve been talking so much about. Again, this can be done in just a couple of minutes, and quietly in my own mind, making it totally accessible at pretty well any time. The key to these moments is noticing that your mind is going to past or present in order to choose to do something different than allow it to continue strolling down whatever rabbit-hole it seems to be pursuing.
To some extent, the awareness that we’re not present is the hardest part of getting into a mindfulness practice – we don’t know how not-present we are most of the time, and it will take some practice to get in the habit of noticing and, without judgement, working at moving your brain to a more present stance. Consistency is key in most learning – the more we do it, the quicker our brain learns and wires new connections that help it continue down this new path. Be patient, and keep trying. If mindfulness is a brand new concept to you, it might take some prompting to help you build it in to your routine – make use of timers and reminders on your phone. Smartwatches can be helpful for this too – many of them have settings that allow you to get alerted when your breathing becomes too fast or irregular, or your heart rate is over a certain level (which is an indicator of tension and stress) – setting these to cue you toward whatever practices you decide to implement can be really helpful until they become more second nature.
My hope is that you’ll give it a chance – like an actual solid effort. Trying this a couple of times and deciding to blow it off as “not making a difference” is a mistake. Much like most things in life, you have to put something in if you want to get something out – this is not a quick fix or a magic pill, it is part of a bigger picture and a facet of a comprehensive strategic action plan for wellness. My hope is also that you will implement these pieces with sustainability in mind. Human nature tends to want to jump into things and then gets quickly overwhelmed and drops it all like a hot potato…that’s pretty much the story for new years resolutions, isn’t it? Don’t try to do all the things right off the hop, it’s not sustainable. Choose one or two things from today’s episode to implement a couple times during your week. Get good at that – make it a stable part of your routine, and then build on that success. We do way better over time when we focus on small steps in a direction rather than leaps and bounds.
I am going to wrap up by saying I would LOVE to hear from you – I would love for you to share how these activities go for you, successes, stumblings, learnings – what you love, what you hate…all of it. You can always connect with me by email or on social media – the links to contact me are always in the show notes. I also hope that you will tell others about this resource and that you will join me on my mission to bring accessible wellness resources to front line workers everywhere. Thank you for spending your time with me, and until next time, stay safe.