The Science of Mindfulness

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  • Interview with Dr. Christopher Germer

    Interview with Dr. Christopher Germer

    Interview with
    Dr. Christopher Germer

    Christopher Germer, PhD

    Christopher Germer, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and lecturer on psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical School. He co-developed the Mindful Self-Compassion program with Dr. Kristin Neff
    in 2010 and they wrote two books,The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program. MSC has been taught to over 200,000 people worldwide. Dr. Germer is also the author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion; he co-edited two influential volumes on therapy, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, and Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy and he maintains a small psychotherapy practice in Massachusetts, USA.

    Parts of the interview have been edited for clarity and length. 

    How did you first become interested in contemplative science?

    I first became interested in contemplative practice by learning Transcendental Meditation (TM) back in 1976. I had a peak, mystical experience with TM and then I went to India for a year because I didn’t have anybody to talk with about this experience. I traveled the length and breadth of India to meet with saints, sages, yogis, shamans, and other indigenous healers. Between my experiences in India and in meditation, I became convinced that Western psychology was in its infancy compared to the profound philosophical and psychological insights that yogis and meditators were having.

    So, after that, in 1978, I went to graduate school for training in clinical psychology. I’ve spent my entire career committed to integrating Eastern contemplative practice with Western scientific psychology. That’s really what I’ve been up to most of my life.

    How has your personal engagement with self-compassion benefited you?

    Hugely. After I received a PhD in 1984, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where I met colleagues at the Cambridge Hospital who were also on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and were mindfulness meditators. That’s also when I became immersed in mindfulness and began exploring points of intersection between meditation and psychotherapy. In 2005, we wrote a book together, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, which was the first textbook that made the case for mindfulness in therapy.

    From then onward, I was invited to do more public speaking. Unfortunately, throughout my life, I’d always been afraid of public speaking. That was in spite of being considered an “expert” in anxiety disorders as a clinical psychologist. I knew all the tricks of the trade, but nothing seemed to work for me – exposure, systematic desensitization, beta blockers, mindfulness practices—you name it. This problem came to a head in 2006 as I anticipated speaking at a conference on meditation and psychotherapy that some colleagues and I had organized at Harvard Medical School.

    In desperation, I went on a silent meditation retreat 4 months before the conference and, following the advice of the teacher, I started practicing loving-kindness meditation, especially for myself. Although I had practiced mindfulness for decades before that, I avoided loving-kindness meditation because I preferred pure awareness practice. Now I started saying to myself “May I be safe,” “May I be peaceful…” and immediately noticed that I felt better and also became more mindful. Four months later, at the conference, the usual panic rose up when I got up to speak, but a new voice also rose up, saying, “May you be safe,” “May you be peaceful…,” and my fear vanished. The fear really hasn’t returned.

    That was a huge relief, but the greatest reward was learning about self-compassion. I started looking at psychotherapy through the lens of self-compassion, and eventually met Kristin Neff and we developed the Mindful Self-Compassion course together. After that, there was no turning back.


    science of mindfulness interview with Christopher Germer
    A practical introduction to self-compassion for a general audience

    Do you feel that clinicians and scientists studying self-compassion should deliberately practice self-compassion and mindfulness?

    Definitely. Self-compassion and mindfulness are embodied practices. We can’t actually understand mindfulness or self-compassion with a conceptual mind; we need to have direct experience. So, in order to bring mindfulness or self-compassion to our work, we also need to practice.

     What are the similarities or differences between mindfulness and self-compassion?

    On an absolute level, when mindfulness and self-compassion are in full bloom, they are nearly identical in a moment of suffering. The heart and the mind are open and aware. However, we don’t spend most of our lives either fully mindful or fully self-compassionate. Since we live most of our lives somewhat mindfully or compassionately, it helps to know how to bring these qualities into balance with one another.

    There is a key difference between mindfulness and self-compassion: Mindfulness is basically loving awareness of moment-to-moment experience, whereas self-compassion is loving awareness of the experiencer—the sense of self, or a sentient being. Compassion is always directed toward a sentient being. Sometimes that sentient being is oneself, which is self-compassion.

    There are some other interesting differences between mindfulness and self-compassion. Mindfulness asks the question, ‘What am I experiencing?’ whereas self-compassion asks the question, ‘What do I need?’ Also, mindfulness dismantles the “self” into moments of experience, whereas self-compassion melts the self with warmth and kindness. In both cases, mindfulness and self-compassion help make the “self” more flexible. Mindfulness and self-compassion also regulate emotion in different ways: mindfulness works by regulating attention—what we’re paying attention to and how we pay attention to it; self-compassion regulates emotions through care and connection.

    Mindfulness and self-compassion are really complementary. Perhaps a simple way to describe the complementarity is to consider mindfulness as “space” and compassion as “warmth.” Space creates warmth and warmth creates space. Together, mindfulness and self-compassion are a powerful combination for regulating difficult emotions, especially the kind we find in psychotherapy.

    “Mindfulness asks the question, ‘What am I experiencing?’ whereas self-compassion asks the question, ‘What do I need?’”

    You developed the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program, along with Dr. Kristin Neff. What brought about its development and what need does it address?

    Back in 2008, Kristin and I attended a silent meditation retreat for scientists, hosted by the Mind & Life Institute. I drove her back to the airport and on the way I said to her, “All the research on self-compassion is great but it’s mostly correlational. You should create a training program for self-compassion to study if self-compassion can be learned and actually help people.” Kristin replied that she’s a researcher and doesn’t do that sort of thing, and that I’m a clinician and work with people all the time. So, in that moment, between us, the idea of MSC was born. The first course took place at the Esalen Institute in 2010 and, since then, over 200,000 people around the world have taken MSC. The research is burgeoning, and shows that self-compassion can be helpful in so many ways—for emotional wellbeing, reducing distress, improving relationships, and enhancing physical health. Self-compassion training is going mainstream, close at the heels of mindfulness, and is currently being adapted for education, medicine, psychology, business, athletics, parenting and other areas of life.

    “The first course took place at the Esalen Institute in 2010 and, since then, over 200,000 people around the world have taken MSC.’”

    Although Kristen and I initially developed this program, MSC is now a project of the international community of teachers. The curriculum is being constantly updated and improved by suggestions from MSC teachers around the world. It’s wonderful to be part of a global community that’s interested spreading compassion, starting with one’s own, inner work.

    MSC can be described as “mindfulness-based self-compassion training.” We’re primarily teaching self-compassion with a less explicit mindfulness component. Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) does the opposite; it’s primarily mindfulness training with a less explicit self-compassion component. MSC and MBSR are complementary, and together they provide nicely balanced training in mindfulness and self-compassion.


    A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness

    How is self-compassion a transdiagnostic mechanism of change?

    The term “transdiagnostic mechanism of change” means that learning to be more self-compassionate can benefit people in therapy who carry a wide variety of different psychological diagnosis, such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, personality disorders, and so forth. Generally speaking, research shows that as symptoms decrease during therapy, self-compassion tends to increase. In other words, when a person who is depressed is able to be kind to themselves when things go wrong; is able to recognize they’re not entirely alone when they feel bad; and is open and aware of how they’re feeling in the moment—that person is self-compassionate and probably doesn’t need therapy as much anymore.

    Self-compassion as a construct is often separated into two distinct categories of self-warmth and self-coldness. Do MSC or other compassion-based trainings target one versus the other?

    Kristin Neff’s scale, the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), is the most common scale for measuring self-compassion. It is built on a systemic model such that whenever the so-called ‘warmth’ qualities—kindness, common humanity and mindfulness—increase, the so-called ‘coldness’ qualities—self-criticism, isolation and overidentification—decrease. That is built in and assumed in the scale, but some clinicians try to separate the two sets of qualities. That’s understandable since the therapeutic agenda is to decrease symptoms rather than cultivate positive qualities, but trying to separate the two sets of qualities is not how the scale was designed and is not a valid use of the scale.

    “…when mindfulness and self-compassion are in full bloom, they are nearly identical in a moment of suffering.”

    Your work addresses shame, which is an important aspect of mental health and therapy. What is the relationship between self-compassion and shame?

    In many respects, self-compassion is the opposite of shame. If you look at Kristin’s definition of self-compassion, the negative qualities are key aspects of shame—loneliness, self-criticism, and self-absorption. So, theoretically, we can say self-compassion is the opposite of shame, and when we are behaving compassionately toward ourselves, we are automatically reducing shame.

    Shame is essentially an attack on our sense of “self.” When we’re being criticized or blamed, our self-worth takes a hit. Self-worth or self-esteem is usually determined by external approval and validation, but self-compassion provides an alternate source of self-worth, namely, inner kindness. Therefore, the self-worth that comes from self-compassion is more stable. We carry it wherever we go. And it dismantles shame.

    How can therapists and other providers benefit from integrating self-compassion into their practices?

    Let’s face it—caregiving can be difficult. As empathic human beings, we feel the pain of others as our own and, over time, it can be too much to bear. That’s compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue can be as mild as mind wandering during a session, but it can also lead to physical and mental exhaustion and illness. Luckily, research shows that self-compassion is an antidote to compassion fatigue and burnout. The idea is that when we have no more compassion to give to others, we need to do a U-turn and give compassion to ourselves.

    Self-compassion calms and soothes the nervous system and puts us in a caring frame of mind, which can then be extended to others. Self-compassion can also be practiced during therapy itself—we don’t have to go home to replenish ourselves. One elegant way of doing this during therapy is to track our breath going in and out of the body, and make the in-breath for ourselves and the out-breath for our clients.

    Self-compassion is also a powerful resource for clients. There are three main levels that self-compassion can be integrated into therapy: (1) compassionate presence of the therapist, (2) compassionate, therapeutic relationship, and (3) compassionate interventions, or home practices. Therapists tend to focus on home practices that they can teach their clients, but home practices should ideally emerge from a compassionate dialogue with a compassionate therapist. When that happens, the client is more likely to practice and also discuss obstacles that may arise during practice.

    As the evidence base for self-compassion continues to expand, how do you envision compassion-based training shaping psychotherapy?

    It’s now over 20 years since Paul Gilbert in the UK first conceived of compassion-based therapy. Compassion is currently embedded in the “third wave” paradigm of empirically-based therapy, namely “mindfulness-, acceptance-, and compassion-based therapy.” Whereas mindfulness focuses mostly on attention, and acceptance focuses primarily on non-avoidance, compassion-based therapy focuses on goodwill, warmth, caring and connection to oneself and others.

    But compassion and self-compassion are not new. Compassion has always been implied in the term “empathy” in psychotherapy, and an empathic therapeutic alliance accounts for the largest portion of positive psychotherapy outcomes. Self-compassion has also been present in psychotherapy under the umbrella of “self-acceptance.” With the advent of mindfulness, however, the focus of “acceptance” shifted to moment-to-moment experience and away from the “self.” Now, acceptance of the “self” is back in vogue and clinicians are integrating both types of acceptance into therapy.

    Compassion research is confirming the importance of heart qualities such as loving-kindness and compassion in effective therapy. Freud recommended “evenly hovering attention” as the ideal attitude of the therapist, but he offered no particular way of cultivating it. Now therapists can practice meditation to increase their mindfulness and compassion in the therapy room. We also have a plethora of compassion-based interventions that clients can apply between sessions to cultivate the resources of compassion and self-compassion. Compassion is also being integrated into more traditional therapy techniques. For example, rather than simply exposing oneself to a feared stimulus, clients can learn self-compassion as a tool to tolerate and transform their fear, alongside exposure. Overall, due to burgeoning research, the future is bright for compassion and self-compassion in therapy.

     


    science of mindfulness interview with Christopher Germer
    This wise and eloquent book illuminates the power of self-compassion and offers creative, scientifically grounded strategies for putting it into action.

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  • Interview with Dr. Steven Hickman

    Interview with Dr. Steven Hickman

    Interview with
    Dr. Steven Hickman

    Steven Hickman, PsyD

    Dr. Steven Hickman is the Executive Director of the non-profit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion. He is a Clinical Psychologist and Retired Associate Clinical Professor in the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine, as well as the Founding Director of the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness. Steve co-developed the Mindful Self-Compassion Teacher Training program and has participated in the training of over 1800 MSC teachers around the world. Steve has co-taught the 8-week and intensive MSC program many times around the globe and is also a Certified teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and trains teachers of that program. He is married and has three young adult children, affording him ample opportunity to practice what he teaches!

    Parts of the interview have been edited for clarity and length. 

    How would you define self-compassion? Why is it important to practice it?

    I think the simplest way to describe self-compassion is the capacity to treat yourself the same way you would treat a dear friend when they struggle, suffer, fail, or fall short.  We’re often quite good at being kind to other people’s suffering. When your friend fails a test or has a hard time with a work situation, we tend to be warm, kind, and supportive, and provide whatever is needed. But when we have the same experiences, somehow our inner dialogue towards ourselves tends to be just the opposite and we tend to beat ourselves up. We feel that something is uniquely wrong, or we demand perfection of ourselves.

    In other words, self-compassion is cultivating and expressing the care and kindness that we normally have for others but directing it towards ourselves. This sounds logical but it’s actually quite challenging to do for most of us. There’s a growing body of research that suggests self-compassion is associated with resilience. Resilience and a number of other positive qualities seem to be related to this quality of self-compassion.

    Do you think that there’s a greater need for self-compassion during this pandemic?

    I think that the need for self-compassion hasn’t changed but the awareness of where it could be helpful has become a little more obvious. We feel more alone. We may perhaps find ourselves noticing how hard we are on ourselves, how demanding we are, and maybe a little more distracted by our inner dialogue. More and more folks are discovering this to be true for themselves because of the isolation. They’re starting to notice the tone and tenor of their inner critic. There is a whole range of explanations for why this is, but the more we become aware of our inner critic, the better understanding we will have of the ways our inner dialogue can cause suffering in our lives and limits us. The pandemic certainly magnified that.

    The other piece of this is the interaction and synergy between mindfulness and self-compassion. The qualities of mindfulness and self-compassion are really interrelated. The capacity to be present to our own experience and the willingness to be kind to ourselves in difficult moments requires us to be truly present with our difficult experiences. In other words, mindfulness and self-compassion actually equip us take on the difficulties that we face, whether it’s difficult emotions, relationships, thoughts, moods, and all sorts of things.

    The synergistic effects between mindfulness and self-compassion allows us to confront and manage our difficulties more effectively. Our natural tendency is to push away difficulties or try to avoid pain, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but often becomes the very thing that causes us to wall ourselves off from our experiences. Our ability to navigate difficult experiences is compromised when we’re not accustomed to fully encountering them. Our habitual reaction patterns tend to be to avoid them or try to control them. Mindfulness and self-compassion practices can empower us to be present to our full experience, make better choices, take better care of ourselves, and move in more valued directions. We can become skilled at tolerating our own inner experience- good, bad, or indifferent.

    “Self-compassion actually allows us to sustain our compassion for others because we’re being compassionate to ourselves as well.” 

    What is the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion and what is its mission?

    Its best to begin with the founders of the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion (CMSC), Drs. Chris Germer and Kristin Neff. Dr. Chris Germer is an expert clinician who has seen the value and of mindfulness and self-compassion for many years. Dr. Kristin Neff is a world-renowned researcher and pioneer of self-compassion. She’s a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin and has studied self-compassion her whole career. Through her single-handed hard work and line of research, she has made self-compassion a prominent area of study in psychology.

    The two of them came together and created a program called Mindful Self-Compassion. They basically looked at each other and said, “Wow we’ve really seen the value of self-compassion, we should not just study what self-compassion is, but actually teach people to be more self-compassionate.” And the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) course was born.

    Dr. Neff and Dr. Germer taught the program in various forms and gained popularity so fast that they realized they needed to have a way to get this program out into the world and train other people to teach self-compassion. They then formed the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion ten years ago. The mission of this nonprofit was to disseminate the practice of self-compassion to create a more self-compassionate world, partially through disseminating the Mindful Self-Compassion program which meant training people to teach it, and to educate people about self-compassion. Somewhere along the way, they brought me into the mix to help them run this nonprofit center.

    There are close to 3000 teachers of the Mindful Self-Compassion program around the globe and it’s being taught in roughly 40 different languages. We have a staff of around 20 people, and because we’re a virtual center we don’t have a physical centralized location. We have grown substantially over time, all while maintaining service to this vision of a more self-compassionate world.

    Can self-compassion be learned independently, or do you need formal training?

    It’s an interesting thing because it’s a capacity, much like mindfulness, that we all have to a degree. It’s not like teaching someone how to paint with watercolors, where there is no natural capacity. Self-compassion is a quality we have as humans because we all inherently want to be happy and free from suffering. We also have the capacity to be aware and to be present, and also to tend to ourselves when we struggle and have difficulty, just like when we tend to others. When others are having difficulty, compassion is hardwired into us. It’s really about developing a capacity we already have and it can be done in a variety of ways.

    We already know from experience that just reading about self-compassion can actually help some people become more self-compassionate. In the first randomized-controlled trial of the Mindful Self-Compassion program that Drs. Germer and Neff taught, results indicated that people in the self-compassion group showed greater increases in self-compassion, quality of life, resilience, and overall compared with the control group. Interestingly, although the results between the two groups clearly showed that the self-compassion course was effective, they noticed that even people in the control group who never participated in the course somehow showed significant improvements in their levels of self-compassion. When they looked further into this, they discovered that people knew that the study was about self-compassion, and when they were assigned to be in the control group which was a waitlist-control they started reading up on self-compassion. So quite a number of participants did a bit of study on their own about self-compassion and apparently became more self-compassionate as a result. We like to joke that just reading the books is clinically proven to improve self-compassion! People can read the wonderful books written by Dr. Neff, such as The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook. It’s very much a self-help, self-guided course on self-compassion. My own book Self-Compassion for Dummies is also self-guided and designed to help people develop self-compassion.

    Conversely, there are a lot of us that really need the structure and format of a course, something that has sort of regular expectations. A little social support, guidance, and personalized attention allows people to really tap into their capacity to be more self-compassionate. This is where a course like Mindful Self-Compassion could be really beneficial for people and up to this point, the research backs it up.

    “We often say we give ourselves compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad.”

    As the founding director of UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness, how do you see academic medicine embracing self-compassion?

    As I was establishing the center, I saw how mindfulness was starting to become accepted by academic medicine, which in the early years it was kind of viewed as a weird thing. Once colleagues learned I was running the Center for Mindfulness, they would come up to me after faculty meetings and say things like, “You’re that guy that does mindfulness, right? Well, don’t tell anyone but I meditate too.” It was like this dirty little secret that people were practicing mindfulness and they didn’t want their colleagues to know they were doing anything too far out.

    We have since come a long way. When I left UC San Diego, mindfulness was integrated into the medical school curriculum for all of the medical students coming through. There was quite an embrace of mindfulness and compassion across the university- as well as many other universities. There are a lot of great programs out there with physicians that incorporate mindfulness into the training. They’ve been supportive of the wonderful work being done.

    Self-compassion is newer in the healthcare realm, but I was recently reading about burnout in the health care profession and learned that approximately one in three physicians are experiencing burnout at any given time. This was a study published in 2020, I imagine given the pandemic that the number is probably higher now as a result. Mindfulness can help to some degree in terms of reducing burnout, but I think self-compassion, the capacity to meet ourselves when we’re struggling and having difficulty, and recognizing that we’re having a hard time, is quite powerful. It allows us to transcend those kinds of difficulties and ultimately develop that resilience and the ability to bounce back from difficult circumstances

    Over time self-compassion will become more woven into medical training and good medical care, largely because I think people in the medical profession are generally in their field because they’re compassionate people. The individuals who go into healthcare appreciate the value of compassion. What they may not realize is that they need to include themselves in the circle of compassion. Sometimes you hear these statements that you can’t be compassionate to other people unless you’re compassionate to yourself. That sort of sounds good on the surface at first, but if you if you poke at it a little bit, you realize it’s essentially not always true. There are a lot of people who are amazing at being compassionate to other people but treat themselves terribly. In other words, we can be kind to other people while simultaneously beating ourselves up for a while.

    The difference is that self-compassion allows you to continue to care for other people because you’ve included yourself in that circle. Self-compassion actually allows us to sustain our compassion for others because we’re being compassionate to ourselves as well. We’re putting gas in our own tank so that we can help put the gas in other people’s tank.

    Dr. Hickman leading a Mindful Self-Compassion course

    Do you think self-compassion could ever be a frontline treatment for mental health conditions?

    I don’t tend to think of either mindfulness or self-compassion as a treatment, per se. It’s sort of like physical fitness; you can’t treat something with physical fitness. The more self-compassionate, mindful, and resilient we become, the more we’re able to ameliorate difficulties that become depression, anxiety, PTSD, and related disorders.

    It’s an active ingredient more than it is a treatment. You can’t practice self-compassion to get depressed. You can practice self-compassion to ultimately help you move through depression and come out of it, but it’s not intended to be a treatment. It’s more like a prevention or a wellbeing approach that strengthens your capacity to navigate challenges as opposed to fixing a problem. When you start to practice mindfulness or self-compassion to get an outcome, you’re stuck right from the beginning. It’s about cultivating a different relationship with difficult experiences rather than changing them.

    We often say we give ourselves compassion not to feel better, but because we feel bad. If your kid has the flu, you might bring them a cold cloth, give them a hug, or say sweet things to them to comfort them in some way, but not because you’re actually treating the flu. You’re not an antiviral treatment. You are doing this because the child is suffering. Compassion and mindfulness are really the same in that they allow us to navigate that territory with greater ease, effectiveness, and resilience in the midst suffering.

    What is your ultimate vision for the field of self-compassion?

    I have to go back to this physical fitness analogy. If you talk to a random person on the street, they will know that there is a connection between being physically fit and good health or longevity. Everybody understands that at some level, yet we don’t have that level of understanding yet for mindfulness and compassion, but we’re getting there. My vision is that self-compassion becomes second nature, that it’s embedded in the way we raise our kids, the way we build our society, the things we ask of people in their professions- everything! So, it’s a lofty goal and is probably not going to happen in the next year or two, but we’ll be working on it.


    Buy it on Amazon

    New Book

    by Dr. Steven Hickman

    Being kind to yourself might sound simple, but self-compassion can change your life dramatically (and most of us are WAY kinder to others than to ourselves)  Self-Compassion For Dummies will help you discover self-critical thoughts and self-defeating behaviors that are holding you back from fulfilling your potential and explore how you can learn to work around these things to find your way to more joy and satisfaction. We often think being hard on ourselves will help motivate us to be better people, but Dr. Steven Hickman’s review of the research finds that just the opposite is true. When you learn to love and appreciate yourself completely (as an imperfect human with messy feelings and uncomfortable thoughts), you free yourself up to achieve great things. This book will show you how!

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  • Interview with Dr. Erin Bantum

    Interview with Dr. Erin Bantum

    Interview with
    Dr. Erin Bantum

    Erin Bantum, PhD

    Dr. Erin Bantum is a clinical psychologist working as an Associate Professor at the University of Hawai’i Cancer Center. She designs and tests online interventions to promote well-being for folks who have been diagnosed with cancer. Some of these interventions have been in health promotion, such as physical activity, and other interventions have been more psychosocial in nature, such as emotional expression and mindfulness meditation. Erin is originally from Reno, Nevada, where she likes to go home and visit as much as she can.

    Parts of the interview have been edited for clarity and length. 

    How did you get into mindfulness personally and professionally?

     

    Dr. Thanh Huynh, a retired radiation oncologist and the creator of Freemindfulnesscourse.org, first introduced me to the practice of mindfulness meditation. He had conducted a small study with Dr. Carolyn Gotay, a former faculty and Program Director here at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center. We started talking about doing another study, also with groups of cancer survivors, and I began practicing mindfulness. Much of my work was in emotional expression with cancer survivors, and it was as if mindfulness meditation became this intervention that was beneficial to me in many ways. I realized how specialized I became in graduate school, and while that has its benefits, I loved how the benefits of mindfulness meditation could be very broad, and the way it helped regulate, integrate, and tune me into more depth of being was extremely impactful.

     

    What is the Mindfulness Coaching App and what inspired its development?

     

    Mindfulness Coach was developed to help Veterans, Service members, and others learn how to practice mindfulness. The app provides a gradual, self-guided training program designed to help you understand and adopt a simple mindfulness practice. This app was created by a group at the National Center for PTSD in Palo Alto. 

     

    I was grateful to join the team, which was led by my colleague, Jason Owen. There was an original version of Mindfulness Coach in existence, although the goal was to make it much more  versatile. The app is freely available and was created for people who have PTSD, although the information is delivered in a way that is accessible to all populations. We are currently testing the impact of Mindfulness Coach on anxiety and cancer related neuropathy for people who have been diagnosed with cancer.

     

    “I do think mobile interventions offer a far reach and so understanding how to increase their impact is a worthwhile challenge..”

    Mindfulness Coach app


    Learn More

    To your knowledge, have other research groups used your mobile app in their research? If so, are there any interesting findings?

    Mindfulness Coach has a previous version that has been tested, although the current version has been up and running in a few different trials more recently. I am not yet aware of outcomes of these trials with the new version of the app, although it is being used outside of the two current studies we are conducting here at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center.

    What promise do you think mobile interventions have for clinical medicine?

     

    I believe, in their current form, mobile interventions have terrific potential in terms of wide dissemination. They provide access to interventions that might not be offered in all locations and are also really beneficial here in Hawai’i, given our island community is primarily rural. 

     

    I also think that there are some challenges with mobile interventions. Mobile apps are ever present in our lives and can be easily disregarded. In trying to learn something new, such as mindfulness meditation, I think it is important to engage in ways that will be helpful for our practice, though, so examining whether mobile mindfulness is the best way to engage a given person seems important. It is also important to incorporate a supportive practicing community, like a sangha (a traditional Buddhist community). Finding ways to bring all the pieces together can take some effort, but I believe it is worth it. I do think mobile interventions offer a far reach and so understanding how to increase their impact is a worthwhile challenge.

    “My work, over the past fifteen years has had a core theme of social support running through it…”

    Where do you see your research going? Does your vision include a technological component? 

    I am interested in both face-to-face and online/mobile interventions. My work, over the past fifteen years has had a core theme of social support running through it, and I’d like to create an online mindfulness meditation intervention that includes a group component, such that people who have experienced cancer can meet and practice mindfulness meditation together. I would love to study the biobehavioral impact of these types of interventions within our community. I balance my existing ideas with an open mindedness to how those ideas can shift and develop if they need to, as well. I would also like to begin clinical work that I can bring mindfulness into. 

     

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  • Interview with Dr. Amy Brown

    Interview with Dr. Amy Brown

    Interview with Dr. Amy Brown

    Amy Brown, PhD, RDN

    Amy Brown, PhD, RDN, is a Professor in the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Her clinical and laboratory research is the area of Integrative Medicine and Medical Nutrition Therapy as it relates to diet, foods, and plant extracts that may hold therapeutic potential for disease. Dr. Brown has published in the field of diet and disease with regard to inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, dietary supplements, probiotics, autism, and the in vitro anti-proliferation of cancer cells by Pacific Basin plant substances from poi, ginger, and guava. She has authored over 44 scientific publications, along with “Understanding Food (6th Ed),” the number one college textbook in its field. Dr. Brown has also recognized the need for mindfulness in education and now teaches a mindfulness course for college students at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

    Parts of the interview have been edited for clarity and length. 

    What inspired you to develop a mindfulness course for the University of Hawai’i?

    It was a confluence of events that melded into one path that gently guided me into teaching mindfulness to college students. About 15 years ago, I joined a small group meditating weekly in the beautiful hills of Honolulu, Hawai’i in a Buddhist temple led by a community volunteer with a deep, calming voice. Working at a university is not easy, and I had to deal with some pretty petty politics, and a part of me just gave up and gave it all to God-completely. At this point, I was alone in the Diamond Head theater waiting for the Christian service to begin, and to my amazement everything just melded together into this beautiful symphony of moving color. The energy was all encompassing infusing me with the feeling of pure God universally intertwined with Love. My perspective shifted where I could look down and saw myself with my silly problems and I just began to laugh. Nothing could bother me now.

     The researcher bug in me sent me searching for everything I could find on mindfulness.  I found and joined a local mindfulness group called Mindful Hawai’i. The leader asked me why there wasn’t a mindfulness class at the university. There was one, but limited to about 20 student a semester. The initial barrier of not having a “degree” in mindfulness was swept out into the ocean. After all, what did people do before degrees existed? They learned!

     I meekly submitted the paperwork for a new class called CAAM 401 Mindfulness Meditation and Stress Reduction. It grew from 20 students in 2017 to over 100 students by 2021. The feedback is incredible and it’s the best and the most fulfilling class I’ve ever taught.

    “I wanted to help people learn the life-coping skills I did not have at their young age.”

    I wanted to help people learn the life-coping skills I did not have at their young age. Ultimately, it will change the world, because when you change each person’s heart, a “positron” is born. A mindful person or “positron” does not hurt others or the world.  My vision is that when you change a person’s heart-centeredness, it will benefit the world to make people less unaware, harmful, and ego-driven and instead more aware, peaceful, and working toward the greater good.

    How have you structured the class to optimize engagement for a larger course? Do you have homework, quizzes, or take attendance?

    I wanted to reduce stress, so there are no quizzes, tests, papers, presentations or even a final. The only requirement is attendance. You just have to “be present.” Zoom takes attendance through Excel and even logs if they are late or leave early. No slouching is another requirement because a relaxed, yet somewhat straight spine is important for staying at “attention” and experiencing the deeper benefits of meditation. Despite these simple requirements, there’s always someone at the end of the semester with an “F” grade, asking me, “How could you do this?” Even the attendance could tell that these students weren’t present…

    Dr. Brown leading a mindfulness class virtually
    “The feedback is incredible and it’s the best and the most fulfilling class I’ve ever taught.”

    What are some of the challenges of teaching mindfulness as a university course on Zoom?

    I was one of the first professors to create and teach an online course 15 years ago, but it’s a burden when it’s all your classes due to COVID. You can’t feel the pulse of the class. They stare at you like zombies. You crack jokes and no one cracks a smile. The students are tired and exhausted. I feel for them, but there’s only so much saline you can pump into the lifeless. Yet, they end the class with a symphony of thank you “Aunties,” and it pumps me up, makes me smile, and continue trekking on.

    Do you feel that the COVID pandemic has increased the need for mindfulness skills training in university settings?

    Yes. I grew up with not much life skill teachings. I had plenty of academic education, but real life lessons were left to chance and circumstance. I literally could have been killed, but made it through. Anyway, I think it’s terribly insufficient not to teach life skills; it’s literally akin to throwing someone overboard and telling them to swim. Well, I swam like hell, but wanted to make it easier for these emerging adults to have some rope to haul themselves onto shore. I didn’t want them to needlessly struggle and suffer as much as I did, and mindfulness is one of those tools that definitely helps us all during this time. I’m helping them in the way that I wish I would have been helped.

    Do you have any quotes from your class that students particularly resonate with?

    “It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living. “

     F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  • Interview with Dr. Thao Le

    Interview with Dr. Thao Le

    Interview with Dr. Thao Le

    Thao Le, PhD, MPH

    Dr. Thao Le is currently serving as professor in Human Development & Family Studies at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa. She was previously at Colorado State University where she gave up promotion & tenure to come to Hawai’i because of her connection to the island/sea, and with Native Hawaiian collaborators. Prior to academia, she worked in a non-profit in Oakland, California for 14 years focusing on preventing youth delinquency, with particular attention to Asian and immigrant population. Her current research work at UHM is focusing on farmer stress, restoration of native ecology (with her NH collaborators), and mindfulness for Keiki/educators in Hawai’i.

    Parts of the interview have been edited for clarity and length. 

    When did you first bring mindfulness to the University of Hawai’i and what inspired you? 

    I came to the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa in 2011 and I started a mindfulness course in 2013. It started off as an experimental class. I taught it for two years so that I could collect data and confirm that students were interested in a mindfulness curriculum. It started off with small groups of six students and then just kept building. It was in 2016 when I received a designated course number designation. So it’s been a 3-credit course for UHM students for the past eight years. 

    I arrived to UHM by way of Colorado State University where I was already working with youth development in terms of suicide prevention with the Native American tribes in Montana. It was a pilot study to incorporate mindfulness within their tribal school. That inspired me. When I arrived to Hawai’i, I asked whether I could try to get mindfulness on campus, because I didn’t see anyone doing it at that time. It was very different from what it is now- everybody knows about mindfulness these days. That was absolutely not the case eight years ago. 

    What is the focus of the upper division mindfulness course you teach at the University of Hawai’i? 

    The focus is to introduce the concept of mindfulness, encourage practice, and foster reflective writing. Students have homework practice and writing assignments. It’s also an ethics focused course and students are required to do a considerable amount of reflection. Since I’m in the Human Development Family Studies program, I see mindfulness as part of human development. Mindfulness helps with social emotional regulation and understanding the workings of the mind. Our students acquire different types of training and development courses like infant and youth development, financial and family planning, and conflict management. This is a nice fit because it’s about fostering understanding of who we are, why we developed a certain way, with certain habits and dispositions, and how to live skillfully. 

    You cannot provide the resources and serve others if you don’t understand the inner-workings of the mind. I try to challenge students to reflect and explore ethics through the course materials. Mindfulness is just a tool in practice, but without ethics, mindfulness can be appropriated in different ways than it was intended.

    “I see mindfulness as part of human development.”

    What is the Pause Space and how do you see the campus community engaging in it? 

    My mindfulness course has evolved and continues to evolve depending on the students. But the Pause Space was developed because I wanted a physical place to cultivate the practice so that students taking the course weren’t limited to doing the exercises only in class. The Pause Space was another venue in which students as well as the community could also join the practice. Ultimately, my intention is for it to be a service space to help students, faculty, staff, or anyone from the community to connect with themselves. Don’t we all need to pause? 

    There’s a small community of us who have continued to gather throughout this whole pandemic. Every Friday we gather and some students casually drop in. Sometimes though my schedule doesn’t allow it, but somehow it always works out, and it’s helpful to have fellowship in the practice. 

    What lessons do you wish you knew when you first started the Pause Space?

     I wish that there was more administrative support. When we start initiatives as educators, it’s based on our own resources. I would like to have a more aesthetically pleasing and welcoming space because the physical environment is important. 

    I also could have been more politically involved. The university’s counseling center offers important mental health services but many students come to my course saying they were told by their university mental health and academic counselors to take my course. My class was never supposed to be a counseling course and it is not. Maybe I should have reached out to the counseling center and offered to do a collaboration. I don’t want to encroach upon anyone’s territory, for me I see it more as a service, a prevention service, and a skill that could be helpful to students in their learning journey. 

    What advice would you give to educators hoping to bring mindfulness into their campus communities? 

    Do it. You learn by trial and error and you learn a lot when you try it yourself, rather than take the learnings from others. If I were to tell you how to cook a dish and there’s a recipe, unless you do your own cooking, you’re not going to know which ingredients work and what the dish tastes like- everybody’s got their own flavor and style. 

    When I first asked some of my colleagues about starting a mindfulness course, they dissuaded me saying that you can’t mix religion and science, or religion with education. This has nothing to do with religion. I’m not professing to make everybody mindful or promoting any religion, but I didn’t get any slack. I went ahead and did it anyway. So that’s why I say let’s do it! 

    You also recently wrote two children’s books on mindfulness: Mindfulness with Aloha Breath and Akahai. How do these books fit into your overall vision for mindfulness in education? 

    This was my attempt to address a fundamental concern about the cultural adaptation of mindfulness curricula. Hawaii educators acquire most of the resources on mindfulness from mainstream mindfulness curriculum being promoted on the mainland, and it’s not always culturally relevant with little buy-in among line staff like teachers. These two children’s books are based in the local culture. It’s important to fuse the values that are locally meaningful. So that’s why I felt compelled to create Mindfulness with Aloha Breath and Akahai, which means kindness in Hawaiian. Plus, Uncle Bruce Keaulani, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, said I must do it because he tells me I’m Hawaiian, I guess at heart! 


    Buy on Amazon

    Buy on Amazon

    I’ve offered these books for free and it has been sponsored generously by the Office of Youth Services. I’m able to provide mindfulness training using these books to different educators and social service providers on O’ahu and Big Island. I have provided over 5,000 copies to date. I love being a local resource for K-12 educators here in the Hawaiian educational and social service communities. 

    These books teach mindfulness through a Hawaiian framework. Why is that important? 

    It is important because we are meaning-making creatures; when it’s presented in a way that resonates with the way that we understand the world, then it’s much more likely to have buy-in, to resonate in people’s heart and mind. 

    My books were developed with the intent of using the values and understanding taught here in Hawai’i. I wish there was a research study that would explore whether making mindfulness culturally appropriate is effective. I think a study that compares a standard mindfulness curriculum to one with cultural adaptation would be very interesting. I’m waiting to see that research for the various cultural contexts that exist in Hawai’i, America, and the world, or happy to collaborate with anyone on this study!

    ” Ultimately, my intention is for it to be a service space to help students, faculty, staff, or anyone from the community to connect with themselves. Don’t we all need to pause?.”

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