Stuff You Should Know… about Mindfulness

I decided that the best way to become more mindful is to learn a bit about the history of the mindfulness practice. I chose to do this through the podcast Stuff You Should Know. I listened to the episode, How Mindfulness Works.

 

First, I want to talk about how much I love podcasts. They are honestly so amazing. I love everything about them. In my previous blog post, Technology: Yay or Nay, I linked some of my favourite podcasts to listen to! How Mindfulness Works was the first episode I heard from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. 

 

To say the least, I was not disappointed. The podcast’s hosts are entertaining while still sharing good information. I like that the episode was a combination of history/research and their personal experiences with mindfulness. I find it more relatable when hosts can tie in research-based evidence and their personal experiences.

 

 

 

 

So, what did I learn? 

1. Being mindful is not just being in the moment and experiencing it without letting your thoughts wander. No matter what you are experiencing, you are experiencing it with equanimity, which means you are not passing judgment on it as good or bad or anything else; it just is.
2.  There was a point in the episode when the host said, “you have a thought and your thought leads to a feeling and that feeling leads to a behaviour.” This comment seems relatively straightforward, but I have never actually thought about it like that before. They then talked about how when you are mindful, you can recognize and acknowledge that thought before it can become anything more than simply a thought. This relates to the learning point above when thinking about equanimity. 
3. The next one is a suggestion that was made. The host said that his wife has a lot of stress in her life, and this stress sometimes causes her to feel anxious. He and his wife started implementing the “bear hug” technique. I actually do not know if that is the name for it or if it even has a name. But trust me, it will make sense once I explain it. So, basically, the bear hug technique is when you hug someone and take a few big deep breaths together. I tried it out with my partner, and it was honestly so grounding. I am not the best at focusing on deep breaths, so I found doing it with another person helpful. Not only does it help guide my breaths, but I also found that my body naturally relaxed from being hugged. I think this technique could be helpful for lower elementary teachers when trying to regulate a child. I would just suggest, if doing it with a child, to go on your knees so that you are at the same level for the technique.

 

As I mentioned, I quite enjoyed this podcast and could see myself listening to more of its episodes. The only downfall is that I wish they included transcripts because it is much easier to find a specific comment they made during the episode when looking through transcripts than to remember precisely the time the comment was made. Overall, lots of great takeaways from this episode!