Awakened Anesthetist

a little update + CAA mindfulness practice

• Season 3 • Episode 52

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Hello from my summer break! I am in the midst of a mindfulness teacher training through Dharma Moon and Tibet House and was challenged by my 1:1 teacher to lead a group practice on the pod. Unfortunately, I realized (after edits) that I forgot to tell you what to do with your eyes! For this practice you want to keep your eyes open, and softly gazing down. If you have never tried a mindfulness practice with eyes open (like me up until 4 weeks ago), I want to validate that it can be uncomfortable but also worth the effort. The goal is to narrow the gap between your meditating life and your regular life with eyes open. 

I hope you enjoy this episode and find it helpful to learn about mindfulness from a fellow practicing CAA. Mindfulness has saved me in so many ways and has brought so many good things into my life. I can't wait to share more!

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Interested in practicing mindfulness with this CAA community?

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist podcast, the first podcast to highlight the CAA experience. I'm your host, mary Jean, and I've been a certified anesthesiologist assistant for close to two decades. Throughout my journey and struggles, I've searched for guidance that includes my unique perspective as a CAA. At one of my lowest points, I decided to turn my passion for storytelling and my belief that the CAA profession is uniquely able to create a life by design into a podcast. If you are a practicing CAA, current AA student or someone who hopes to be one, I encourage you to stick around and experience the power of being in a community filled with voices who sound like yours, sharing experiences you never believed possible. I know you will find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast. Welcome in. Hello Awakened Anesthetist community. This is your host, mary Jean, and fellow certified anesthesiologist assistant.

Speaker 1:

I am coming in from my summer break. I am still on a break from the podcast over the summer where I had a whole bunch of plans to sort of figure myself out and figure out what my next steps were. I have a big professional change coming. At the end of August I am quitting my part-time job, my two-day-a-week beautiful dream job, and I'm doing so in pursuit of a new dream, which is to basically work locums. I'm actually not locums, I'm PRN which is another story, but a good story and I'm going to be working about four to six times a month, 10-hour shifts, and the rest of the time I am going to be doing something else and I'm sort of figuring out what that something else is. I have a lot of interests, I have a lot of things that I could do, have a lot of interests, I have a lot of things that I could do and, of course, there's lots of logistics. I also have a husband and three school-aged children and I have the ability to make a choice right now, which is such a gift. I have enough flexibility that I get to choose the direction of the next bit of my life and I just want to really take some quiet time, some discernment time, to see what exactly I want to fill my days and time with. So it is a wonderful, beautiful spot that I'm in right now in this discernment phase.

Speaker 1:

I'm calling it and I wanted to give a little update because I am currently in a meditation teacher training. Specifically, I am learning to teach mindfulness, which is a form of meditation. In the middle of that program. They sort of charged us with leading groups of people in a mock meditation, a mindfulness meditation practice. When I met with my one-on-one teacher just a couple of days ago, she found out that I had a podcast and she also knows that I'm interested in bringing mindfulness to my profession and she's like cool. So what I want you to do is practice this mindfulness meditation intro class that they're just teaching us to almost generically have in our back pockets so that we can always have something that will work and that, if we want to build on it, we can, but we always have at least the basics to give our students in terms of building a solid mindfulness practice. Anyway, she was saying I want you to practice doing that on the podcast. And so here I am.

Speaker 1:

I kind of shared a little bit of this process on Instagram this morning and I've actually sat down several times and recorded and then deleted what I record and taken a break and come back. Life happened there in the afternoon and now I'm back later on in the afternoon trying again, because I just deleted everything I had initially, which is kind of interesting, because usually I let the first take be the take and I just kind of go with it. So there's definitely a part in me that wants to get this right and I'm fighting that perfectionistic thing that tends to come up for me and possibly for you, as a fellow sort of perfectionist, anxious minded CAA or SAA. And yeah, I'm trying to share a little bit of my messy middle and of course, that's a little uncomfortable. So I welcome you here. Hopefully you find the little update interesting.

Speaker 1:

I'm still around. I'm absolutely still going to come back for season four of Awakened Anestis podcast in the fall of 2024. So I'm kind of gearing up for that re-entry here in the next couple months. I have on my calendar my first couple of interviews that I will be doing and then creating podcast episodes and releasing this fall for season four. So it's definitely drawing nearer. I also have a lot more clarity on what I want to be doing. You know, at the end of this year bleeding into 2025. So, like my next steps, getting some clarity around that. So you'll probably start hearing me talk a little bit more about that as I start to lay out some more details. But yeah, it's been a very fruitful, wonderful time, wonderful summer as well, as you know, crazy and busy and all of the other things as well, just certainly an and both situation.

Speaker 1:

So if you are tuning in and you, you just wanted to hear the little update part, that's kind of over. We are going to transition into a bit of mindfulness, so a mindfulness practice that really is from one CAA to another and it's just so important to be represented, and so I really want to speak directly to the CAA community in this, and so, if that feels like we're first going to just talk a little bit about what mindfulness actually is in terms of mindfulness versus meditation, because this was certainly a finer point that I didn't quite understand until this teacher training that I am going through right now so there's this beautiful metaphor that if meditation is exercise meaning I'm going to go out and exercise I'm going to go out and meditate You're not really saying specifically what type of exercise you're going to do or what type of meditation you're going to do, but mindfulness meditation is a very specific type of meditation, just like saying I'm going to go for a run or I'm going to go weightlift is a specific type of exercise. A lot of what the West interprets as mindfulness is a Buddhist, eastern philosophy, culture way of being mindful, but really mindfulness at its core is a secular meaning. You're not worshiping or subscribing to any one religion or culture or philosophy. It is just a human thing, a secular thing that can be done by anyone, and that is really what I am interested in practicing for myself, as well as practicing and sharing with others. I am not a Buddhist. I don't have any specific religious affiliation that I'm a part of that. I'm trying to like push with the mindfulness. It's really a beautiful intersection of science and secular training and a way to experience yourself really deeply and something that has been really meaningful and helpful in my life in a lot of different ways that I feel called to share.

Speaker 1:

And so mindfulness, the practice of mindfulness meditation, is the act of drawing your attention, so your mind's attention, to the present moment and then when you are in that present moment, whatever is there good or bad, comfort, discomfort, likes, dislike you just meet whatever's in the present moment with kindness, likes dislike you just meet whatever's in the present moment with kindness. So it's this very specific way to encounter the present moment, which is with kindness and compassion, and it's sort of over time, changing the way that your brain goes about its day, meaning your brain over time and with mindfulness, practice becomes more attuned to the present moment. That's when you start to see a lot of the benefits and the ripple effects that you hear people talking about, like, oh, I can sleep better and my stress is lowered, I have more clarity, I'm more resilient. All of those things happen with practice of your mind coming repeatedly back to the present moment. And when you are in that present moment, you have an overall feeling of kindness for whatever is there. We're not trying to get to this like clear, euphoric, no thoughts. It all feels good state.

Speaker 1:

Mindfulness is just the act of meeting whatever is right there, which I think is one of its most valuable things, because it teaches us to just live life right as it is, as opposed to always wishing or hoping or wanting or ruminating or worrying. So I digress slightly, but mindfulness is a form of meditation and it is based in bringing your attention to the present moment with kindness and so, okay, well, how do we do that? Well, that's the practice of mindfulness and that's where a little bit of the precision comes in and the teaching comes in. So your teacher helps you to find the present moment, they lead you into finding the present moment and then, because we are human beings and the brain wants to have all these thoughts and wants to be distracted and is constantly trying to protect us and think new thoughts and all of the things. We know that that's going to happen, and so we prepare ourselves with kindness to be distracted, to notice that we're distracted and to bring our mind's attention back to the present moment, and so the practice I'm going to lead you in today has three steps to do exactly that To find the present moment, to notice when our mind wanders, to label that mind wandering with a word which is thinking, and then to come back to the present moment. So if you want to do a little bit of a mindfulness practice with me now, we'll probably do it for about two or three minutes once we get into the practice, and I'll probably play some music here in the background on this podcast while we're meditating, while we're doing the practice, so you know what we're doing, and then you'll hear my voice again at the end, and then we'll sign off until we meet again.

Speaker 1:

So if you're in a chair right now, if you are listening to me in the car, if you are listening to me on a walk, what you can do is just sort of pause where you are right now. If you have the opportunity to sit, that is a wonderful thing to do because it sort of tells your body okay, I'm about to do something different. So sitting can mean sitting cross-legged on the floor. You can also be kneeling on the floor with a pillow under your butt so that your hips are kind of elevated off your knees, that your knees are touching the ground, and you can also sit in a chair, very much like we sit in an anesthesia chair all day in the operating room. You just want to not be sort of slouched on the back. You kind of want to be sitting up, tall and proud.

Speaker 1:

My teachers tend to say upright but not uptight. So we don't want to be stiff and uncomfortable, but we want to give ourselves the sensation that we're supporting ourselves. And if you need help to support your body, like I do when I'm seated on the floor, all the blankets, all the pillows, all the cushions, whatever you need to get comfortable, is exactly what you are allowed and supposed to do. But taking a seat that's purposeful can sort of tell your body okay, we're doing something different here, where this is not just like a normal experience. I'm going to be, you know, entering into something that I'm going to be practicing. It's sort of like putting on your workout clothes for a workout. Your body starts to realize, okay, we're doing something different here. So that's step one.

Speaker 1:

To take your seat I'm seated in a chair right now, so I am just going to be sure that I am not leaning against the back. You can sort of sit forward in your chair, make sure your feet are planted on the ground, just to give yourself some more stability. And then, okay, what do we do with our hands? So I like to just intuitively put my hands somewhere. It is very grounding to have your hands palm side down, so facing down with your hands on your thighs or your knees, and I just kind of like to lift my hands up and then gently drop them and sort of plop them, and wherever they land on my legs or knees is sort of you know where I feel like I want them to be. I just want to be really relaxed but purposeful with my hands, and having them palm side down really tells my body like, okay, I'm right here, we're doing something, we're getting ready. And also I don't want to fidget with my hands the whole time, which can be distracting. So go ahead and take your seat. If you've done this before and you have a position you like, go for it. If not, maybe you're seated and if you're somewhere where you can't sit down, it is perfectly fine to just stand there, sort of quietly in your body. So maybe not like fidgeting and moving around a lot and just tell yourself okay, I'm about to start a mindfulness practice, I'm about to do something a little different from my norm. So that's step one taking your seat.

Speaker 1:

Step two is to draw your mind to the present moment by noticing your breath. So the breath is a very common anchor to the present moment. That anchor word is something you may hear a lot in other people's teachings. It's just something that anchors the mind into the present moment and because the breath is never in the past and never in the future, the breath is only ever in the present moment and all humans are breathing if they are alive. It's sort of the first and universal anchor that people teach. But there are many other anchors that you could use and if you have a different anchor besides the breath, or the breath is uncomfortable for any way, go ahead and use that anchor as well. Some common ones are the feeling of your seat in your chair, like your butt in the chair, the feeling of your palms on your legs, the feeling of your feet on the ground. That's all anchors that have been used. So finding your breath is step two. Your breath is an anchor into the present moment. So take a moment here to see if you can feel your breath in your chest, in your belly. Maybe you feel the air exchange on your upper lip or coming in and out of your nose. Take a moment while you're in your seat to find your breath.

Speaker 1:

Once you've found your breath, you're just going to want to continually come back to the sensation of the breath, which is the present moment. And what will happen during your practice is your mind's going to wander. You're going to start thinking about things who knows what, things that are about to happen, things that already happened. I plan a lot. My brain goes to planning a whole bunch, or ruminating or worrying, and so whenever you notice that your brain has done that, that your brain is focused on something other than the breath, that means you've lost the present moment. You're going to notice that and bring your attention back to your breath or to your anchor, whatever you're using, and you're also going to do this with a sense of kindness, so you're not berating and belittling yourself for forgetting that you're paying attention to your breath. You're not telling yourself how awful and dumb you are because you can't do this simple thing. You're just saying oh, there I am, I'm thinking and I'm going to come back to the breath. It is very helpful also to label the noticing thinking. So I'm sitting here, I'm watching my breath one breath, two breath. Oh, now I'm thinking about pressing the stop button when I stop recording this and making sure I do it right. Oh, okay, I've lost the present moment. I notice it, I label it thinking, and then I find my breath again. And I'm going to do this over and over and over during this two or three minute practice, because that's normal and that's what our brains do, and every time you notice that your mind has wandered, you are strengthening your brain's capacity to be in the present moment. So it's actually an opportunity. It's a really good thing.

Speaker 1:

No-transcript, and hopefully I did the teacher training justice and I hope you also enjoyed learning a little bit more about what mindfulness is, maybe feeling more connected to how the practice actually works and what someone means when they say they're doing a mindfulness practice. There's oh so much more to talk about benefits and triggers and things that help mindfulness practices and things that can hurt it and ways to expand the practice. So many beautiful things that I can't wait to explore with this community. But for now, we're just starting with this very basic practice, and so you don't need anything else more than that to do a mindfulness practice to get all the benefits. You just need time and practice. So, again, thank you so much for being here. I will be back in the fall with the beginning of season four. I can't wait to bring you all new episodes and to begin telling you what I've been figuring out and the direction I hope to go for 2025. All right, thanks, all Bye.

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Mary Jeanne Roberts, CAA

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