In this episode, I interview Bridget Blythe Briere, the host of the Soulcially Responsible Podcast. Bridget says she spent a long time being an imposter in her own life, including clinging to a career in TV News for nearly 15 years because she thought she had to. In fact, Bridget believes many people hide behind what they THINK they’re supposed to do and who they THINK they’re supposed to be and that’s a big part of why she created the Soulcially Responsible podcast.


Purposefully pursuing a path of life beyond labels, titles, and roles – and recognizing that we’re not the thoughts we think (we’re separate from them) – Bridget is sharing her journey in order to provide guideposts for others to do the same.



In this interview we discuss:


What it means to live from “the inside out”
What is ego?
You are not the thoughts you think
How to fly your “brain plane” (we all have one)!
How to make daily activities more mindful (yes, even chores)!
How we create our own suffering. It’s often not the “thing” that creates the suffering it is the story behind it
How mindfulness can help us communicate more effectively
Why positive thinking isn’t always the answer
The power of noticing and accepting
Who are you behind your own labels, titles, and roles?

In this episode, I interview Kelly Winkler.  Kelly has extensive training working with children as an elementary school teacher and child life specialist for many years. In 2017, she began to feel a strong pull towards a consistent yoga practice. Her inspiration came from watching her preteen daughter fall in love with yoga and use it as a tool to deal with anxiety. Her goal is now to help as many people as she can find the benefit in the practice of yoga and mindfulness. Kelly got her children’s yoga certification through Kidding Around Yoga and now has gone on to also become a Kidding Around Yoga Trainer. She gives professional development for educators to incorporate mindfulness and yoga into their classroom. She is also the host of the Mindful Moments for Families and Schools Podcast.
In this episode, we discuss:

Kelly shares how she has found her purpose in teaching yoga and mindfulness to children
Her daughter’s journey with anxiety and using mindfulness and yoga practices
The importance of normalizing mental health struggles and becoming an advocate for your mental health needs
Benefits of yoga for children of all ages 
How yoga teaches us to recognize our body signals/sensations
How to introduce yoga to children who might be more resistant
How yoga helps to build confidence
Mindfulness practices  for parents and teachers to integrate into daily life

Kelly’s Bio:
 Kelly received a B.S. in Human Development and Family Studies from Penn State University. She has an extensive background working with children. She started her career as a child life specialist in the hospital setting. She then obtained her elementary teacher certification and has taught children ranging in age preschool through fifth grade. She is also a mother of four children. Kelly began her journey with yoga 16 years ago when she was pregnant with her first child. However, it wasn’t until 2017 that she began to find a strong pull toward a consistent yoga practice. Her inspiration came from watching her preteen daughter fall in love with yoga and use it as a tool to deal with anxiety. As a former educator and child life specialist Kelly became inspired to bring yoga to children. Over the years the environment in which she worked with children changed, however, one thing remained constant, her belief that the most important things she could bring a child were self-confidence, strength, and the power to create their own inner peace. This led her to become a certified yoga instructor. Her goal has become to help as many people as she can find the benefit in the practice of yoga and mindfulness. Kelly got her children’s yoga certification through Kidding Around Yoga and now has gone on to also become a Kidding Around Yoga Trainer. She gives professional development for educators to incorporate mindfulness and yoga into their classroom. Kelly believes the benefits of mindfulness are so powerful she has created a podcast for parents and teachers where she shares these tools. She strives to educate and engage children and their families in these practices. She is now offering a parent coaching to help families have a more calm and connected home.

In this episode, I interview Donna Costa, an occupational therapist with expertise in the areas of mental health and mindfulness interventions. Donna has received extensive certifications in leading various mindfulness curriculums. We discuss tools for finding the right mindfulness course for you. We also dive into the impacts of compassion fatigue and job burnout during these challenging times. In this episode we cover:

* Transcendental meditation
* Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

* The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) indicates that MBCT should be the first offering for people with depression, based on the styrong supporting evidence.


* Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
* Mindfulness-based Chronic Pain Management (MBCPM )
* Koru Mindfulness Approach (for college students)
* Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness (TSM)
* What is the difference between job burnout and compassion fatigue?
* How to recognize the signs/symptoms of each
* Ways to increase compassion satisfactionResources:
* Dr. Wilough Britton of Brown University produced a toolbox of materials to help teach and practice meditation safely. https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/britton/meditation-safety-toolbox 
* Professional Quality of Life Scale
* Provider Resilience App
* Wellbeing Index
* The Resilient Practitioner by Thomas M. Skovholt
* Clinician Well-being Collaborative of Medicine

Donna’s Bio
Donna Costa has been an occupational therapist for 47 years with expertise in the practice areas of mental health and academic education. She is a fellow of the American Occupational Therapy Association. Donna has authored three books on fieldwork education – The Essential Guide to Fieldwork Education (2004, 2015) and Clinical Supervision in Occupational Therapy (2007) and has served as an Associate Editor and chapter author for the 6 th Edition of The Occupational Therapy Manager. She has also written numerous articles for OT Practice. Donna came to UNLV in 2017 to develop the Occupational Therapy Program and is currently the Founding Program Director and Associate Professor in Residence. Mindfulness-based interventions are a strong interest of Dr. Costa, with formal training/certification in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain Management, and the Koru Mindfulness Program for college students.
 
 

A 16-minute simple body scan meditation to help recognize and release any signs of tension held in the body. Use this meditation to help you connect with your body, settle the mind, and relax the body. With every breath feel tension and stress melt away.

In this episode, I interview Lesha Nelson. Lesha and I met years ago at the children’s hospital we both worked at.  We immediately bonded over our shared love for mind-body practices and passion for holistic care. Lesha has numerous certifications and licensures from modalities including occupational therapy, psychosomatics, yoga, craniosacral therapy, integral facilitation, spiral clearing process, womb healing apprenticeship, and family constellations. In this episode I talk with Lesha about her unique background and process for working with people who have experienced trauma.
We discuss…

* How is trauma defined?
* What does a trauma response look like?
* Polyvagal theory
* Flight, fight, freeze, and fawn
* How does trauma shape the brain and impact the nervous system?
* What does it mean to be trauma informed?
* Is mindfulness appropriate for someone who has experienced trauma?
* A mix of Eastern and Western tools to help regulate your nervous system throughout the day
* and more…

Lesha’s Bio:
Having spent over a decade studying trauma, meditation, stress responses in the body, embodiment, psychosomatics, the womb, and birth work, Lesha Nelson is an established specialist in facilitating the release of trauma and conditioning in the mind and body, allowing the body to its natural state of thriving and pure potentiality.
She has built two businesses from the ground up: a busy craniosacral therapy practice addressing care for both moms and newborns as well as an online coaching business where she focuses on trauma, nervous system regulation, embodiment, and womb healing. Her work guides women to release trauma and patterning so they can become more embodied, connected to their inner wisdom, and capable of their own potentiality for creation.
She also teaches coaches and practitioners how to help their own clients’ process trauma and to help them to create lasting changes by addressing the nervous system. Coaches who work with her can confidently recognize and treat trauma with integrity and offer deep healing sessions.
Lesha has numerous certifications and licensures from modalities including occupational therapy, psychosomatics, yoga, craniosacral therapy, integral facilitation, spiral clearing process, womb healing apprenticeship, and family constellations.

This episode is hands down one of the most vulnerable and raw episodes I have posted to date. I am a huge self-love advocate and often talk about showing ourselves grace and compassion. Although I know and believe these things, truthfully, self-love is something I am constantly working on. I have a noisy inner critic in my head that is constantly telling me that I am unworthy and that I need to be doing more to be “enough.” This is one of the biggest reason’s that I fell in love with mindfulness and my meditation practice in the first place. It was the first time that I felt a glimpse of quiet inside my head. It was also one of the first times that I realized the power of observing my thoughts without attaching to them. 
Recently, as I sat in my meditation practice, the old familiar feelings of unworthiness started to creep back in. I found myself observing my thoughts, noticing their presence, and instead of allowing them to spiral me downward, I became curious about them. I turned on my microphone and began recording my experience. There was no script, no agenda, and no editing (except for some extended pauses I took as I was processing). Turns out my external mic wasn’t actually even on, therefore, the quality of sound is not the best.
And still, here I am raw, imperfect, and lovable fully as I am.
In this episode, I discuss…

* My quest for being enough, or what I refer to in the episode as, my search for “enoughness” (I think I made up my own word there)!
* How this belief has shown up in my life 
* My previous coping mechanisms of overworking, perfectionism, people-pleasing, beating myself up, shutting down, and isolating myself
* Shifting from finding self-love in others to finding it within myself
* My step by step process of how I am choosing to respond:




Notice the body sensations that are happening
Watch my thoughts without attaching to them 
Investigate where the thought could be coming from without judgment
Show myself love and compassion 
Get back into my body. This could be through physical exercise, breathing, or just pausing to notice my senses. This helps bring me out of my head (which often is not in the present moment) to my body (which is physically here in the present moment).
Come back to my “why.” What is my purpose/what is the outcome that I want out of this life?



As vulnerable as this episode feels to share I think it needs to be heard. For anyone who has not felt good enough, I wan’t you to know that you are not alone. We are all on this journey of “enoughness” together. I hope that these tools will be helpful for you. I am worthy of love and compassion and so are you. I hope we can create a space where we feel more open talking about our mental health and we can continue to support and uplift one another. 

This 10-minute meditation practice explores the awareness of the breath and body sensations as a means to anchor you into the present moment. It can be used any time of day, whenever you need a moment of stillness to reset and connect back to your body with this breath in this moment.

Listen to Finding a Still Quiet Place with Dr. Amy Saltzman

In this episode, I interview Dr. Amy Saltzman. Dr. Amy is recognized as a visionary and pioneer in the domains of mindfulness for athletes, coaches, and other high performers, as well as for kids, teens, parents, teachers. Dr. Amy offers mindfulness coaching and holistic medical care to children, adolescents, their parents, and professionals. Before moving to Santa Barbara, she worked with employees and exces from Apple, Google, Stanford, Square, Genetech.
When I was looking for ways to teach mindfulness to children A Still Quiet Place: A Mindfulness Program for Teaching Children and Adolescents to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions, by Dr. Amy Saltzman was one of the first books I read. Her book provided me with evidence on the benefits of mindfulness and step-by-step tools for how to teach it in a way easily understood by children. After falling in love with her curriculum and the results I was seeing with my clients, I went on to complete her 10-week online practicum. I still use her curriculum in the mindfulness groups that I lead today.
Here are some of the topics we cover in this episode:

* Amy guides us in brief breath practice to help us connect with our still quiet place
* How mindfulness is defined in easy to understand terms for children
* Gaining an understanding of Emotion Theory
* Tools for helping us recognize our emotional patterns and children to recognize their emotional patterns
* Behavior management vs. Behavior Investigation
* The three breaths practice (also known as the late to school breath practice)
* Benefits of mindfulness during these unpredictable times
* Compassion and gratitude

I highly recommend checking out some of her other work:
A Still Quiet Place for Athletes: Mindfulness Skills for Achieving Peak Performance and Finding Flow in Sports and in Life
A Still Quiet Place for Teens: A Mindfulness Workbook to Ease Stress and Difficult Emotions
Still Quiet Place: Mindfulness for Young Children
Still Quiet Place: Mindfulness for Teens.

Listen to Building Rock Star Resilience with Em Capito LCSW, MBA, RYT

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, my perspective continues to evolve. There are times that I have felt tremendous gratitude, connection, presence, and other times of sadness, fear, and loneliness. I’ve started to contemplate the things in my life that I really do have control over. It might have taken an earthquake (and more than enough aftershocks) in the midst of a pandemic to realize how little control I do have. One foundation that I keep coming back to that has given me stability is my mindfulness practice. I can’t change what will happen but I can choose how I respond. I’m also reminded of the resilience that each of us has within us. No matter what our age, we can overcome obstacles and find joy despite our trials.
When it comes to the power of resilience, I knew exactly who I wanted to interview! Em Capito LCSW, MBA, RYT might argue that we find meaning in life in spite of our trials. Em is an unconventional psychotherapist specializing in holistic mind-body resilience, in particular through intentional discomfort, highlighted in her recent TEDx talk on Resiliency Field Trips. Em is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, a certified LifePower yoga teacher, and a Dharana Method meditation teacher with a private practice in South Jordan.
I invite you to listen to my interview with Em: Building Rock Star Resilience. Em will guide us on how we can navigate this time with a “hero’s journey” mindset. My hope is that you will also realize how far you have come, how resilient you truly are, and the innate wisdom you already embody.
Here are a few of the topics we cover in the interview:

* The power of Resilience
* The Hero’s Journey Framework
* COVID-19: what is in our control
* The importance of creating healthy routines
* You are an “expert” on you
* Hierarchy of Resilience
* and much more…

Listen to How to Find Presence as a Parent During Challenging Times with Cathryn Lokey, MS/Ed.S

It is March 2020 and we are in the middle of a pandemic. These are particularly challenging times, for all of us, there is no question.
How do we find peace and presence ourselves and with our children during these unpredictable times?
I cannot think of anyone more appropriate than Cathryn Lokey, MS/Ed.S, to dive into this complex topic with me. Cathryn worked as a school counselor for 12 years where she designed and implemented an innovative school-wide guidance and counseling program with a foundation in mindfulness. Cathryn recently gave a talk for the TEDxFSU conference, in which she spoke about her passion for children, the importance of compassion, and the vital need for courageous approaches to solving current social problems. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in Learning and Cognition at Florida State University and conducting research on children’s perceptions of mindfulness and their experiences of its practices.
Discussion points

* How do we talk to children about the current pandemic
* How do children respond during times of stress

* Different approaches for times of mild and extreme stress
* How stress impacts our ability to learn
* Children sharing their feelings is a privilege


* Permission to let go of parent guilt

* Should academic progress be the biggest focus right now?
* The most important thing we can learn from this experience is to love unconditionally


* Recognizing our judgments about our own emotions

* All emotions have value
* Asking yourself, is this an appropriate emotional response to what is happening?
* Our brains are wired for negativity


* What are the impacts of stress on the body

* TEDtalk How to Make Stress Your Friend


* Our individual state is powerful.

* The science of Heart Math
* ‘We don’t always have to be “doing something” to make a big difference. When we release resistance and calm ourselves, doing our best, without judgement, it has an impact on ourselves and others and, some scientists say, the world.’ -Cathryn Lokey

Listen to Responding vs. Reacting

To learn about our Mindfulness classes click HERE</

Listen to Awareness of Feelings

* Each of us, children and adults alike, tend to respond to our feelings in a rather habitual way.
* We typically reside somewhere along the continuum of ignoring (suppressing) feelings or being controlled (overwhelmed) by them.
* Mindfulness helps give us insight into the patterns we have with reacting to our feelings. With practice, we can “have our feelings without our feeling having us;” meaning, we are aware of our feelings without them controlling our behavior.
* The way we respond to our feelings can directly impact our own suffering. Consider the equation below:

Pain x Resistance= Suffering
Unpleasantness x Wanting Things to be Different= Upset
(child friendly version)
 
 

Listen to Noticing Pleasant Events

* “The mind is like Velcro for negative experiences,” psychologist Rick Hanson is fond of saying, “and Teflon for positive ones.”
* How can noticing pleasant events rewire your brain to be more positive, connected, and empathetic?
* Strategies for how to notice and connect more to positive events throughout the day.

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Listen to Thought Watching

* Mindfulness gives us the ability to notice our thoughts in a non-judgmental and curious way.
* All of us have an inner critic. Dr. Amy Saltzman refers to this inner critic as, “unkind mind.”
* Once we start bringing awareness to when, why, and where “unkind mind” shows up, we can be more in control of how we choose to respond.
* Keep in mind that some thoughts are simply that: just a thought. We don’t need to try to judge, fix or change them. With the analogy of our own “thought bubbles”, can we notice our thoughts come and go? If you wait long enough, the bubble will eventually “pop”, the thought will go away, and a new thought will emerge.
* Thoughts are not facts. Perceptions of ourselves and others are not always accurate.

Listen to an Introduction to Mindful Eating

* How to introduce mindful eating to your child.
* How does mindful eating relate to daily life?

Listen to How to Make Yoga a YES for Everyone with Denise Druce.

In this episode, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to interview Denise Druce. Denise Druce holds a special place in my heart. It is because of her yoga teacher training, Yoga Assets, that I am a yoga instructor. I can’t wait to share with you how yoga teacher training (aka transformation) changed my life. We also dive into Denise’s TEDx talk, How Yoga Training Re-Creates Prison Environments for Inmates.
Here are some of the topics we cover:

* Why yoga teacher training?
* What sets Yoga Assets apart from other trainings?
* Taking yoga where it isn’t: into the Utah prison systems
* Denise’s mission and non profit: Yoga Forward
* What can yoga teach us during quarantine?

For nearly four decades, Denise Druce has been inspiring people to live healthier, happier lives. She calls herself an Elevator…when you’re around her, you’re going up! Denise has taught a wide variety of fitness classes over the years, from step to indoor cycling to her current and lasting love, yoga. She teaches her students to stand at the “Soft Edge of the Hard Place” in fitness and in life. Her non-profit Yoga Forward is “taking yoga where it isn’t”…prisons, shelters, schools, and shopping malls. She has a Masters Degree in Public Health, is a Yoga Alliance E-RYT500, and is a breast cancer Thriver. She spends most weekends on the road, making the world a better place by getting more people trained to teach yoga everywhere. Denise and her husband, Michael live in Salt Lake City with their three boys.

Listen to an Introduction to Mindfulness

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”- Jon Kabat-Zinn
“Mindfulness is paying attention in the here and now with kindness and curiosity so that we can choose our behavior.” – Dr. Amy Saltzman
Discussion Points:

* Brief Introduction from Michelle
What Is Mindfulness?
What is the latest research?
How can I teach mindfulness to my child?