Hi, welcome back. Today, we're going to continue with the more conversational section of the course and I'm here with Brooke, who is a more seasoned meditator than our previous guests and she's going to talk to us a little bit about how her practice has unfolded over time. Brooke, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be interested in the practice of mindfulness? Yeah. The little bit part, I might struggle with. I'll try to keep it brief but I am someone who came to mindfulness and meditation through an exploration of a variety of spiritual practices. I was seeking more calm, I was seeking a way to come back to myself. I was quite lost when I discovered this practice. By lost I mean I really wanted to find the peace and calm that I had in my childhood. I had a really happy childhood and I wanted to return to that and I just woke up as a person trying to find balance in work and having kids and it felt like I was going to snap at anytime, I was so stressed out. I think our kids awaken this desire for me to break that cycle of becoming lost in the stress and anxiety is something our culture really exemplifies as being successful with this type A personality and I knew that wasn't who I was, that's not my true nature. I didn't want to instill that pressure on our children. I think that's what helped me find this practice. It was for myself and to be a better role model for our kids on how to be themselves regardless of what society is telling them they need to do to perform. How did you find it? Where you introduced? Did you read an article or take a course? What was your first experience? It's going to sound really strange, I think but well maybe not, now that I'm backing up. Maybe it's not so strange. I had a friend who recommended the art of happiness with the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. Because of where I was in my life with corporate work and being a mom and trying to do at all and have it all and about to snap, I read that book five times in a row and it's not a small book. Clearly, I was seeking something different than I was doing and then that led me to start going to a Sunday class with Dr. Bill Curly, who's a United Methodist minister who teaches maybe more Buddhist practice than Christian practices. I won't go into how I found him but the book led me to his class and then his class led me honestly, to untangling the stories I'd been told in the Christian religion that I grew up in. The theories in Buddhism that he exposed us to, allowed me to let go of a lot of unnecessary suffering that came with those messages. I feel like I want to ask a lot of questions about that but I'll hold off. Tell me a little bit about how you've seen your practice evolve over time. Now that I think about the fact that I read that book five times, it was a real intellectual practice at first and I can see now looking back that I got attached to maybe the word 'right' in the right speech and 'right', all of those things and I wanted to stay with it in my head. It took maybe two or three years before I was really embodying the practice in a different way, in my life but thankfully, I stayed in that long enough to make me do the right way of practicing it and just getting into being disciplined and doing it on a regular basis. Can you say a little bit more about that? Because Seth referred to that somewhat in his interview and so I think it's interesting that you're bringing it up here again. You talked a little bit about engaging with it intellectually and having our perception of a right way to practice and then you discovered a truer right way to practice. Tell me what those differences are and what that looked like for you. In the beginning, I was really focused on more what I was getting to, probably the intentions and getting frustrated by the thoughts that popped up in like, "Come on girl. Let's get down the road." I connected a lot with the intellectual concepts of how the practice can transform your life but I wasn't seeing it happen in my life and so I got a little stuck, I think, in that the more you want change to happen, the more you're adding more negative thoughts to the shoulds and the ought to and judgments that you're trying hard not to get attached to. It's an interesting little spiral that was happening. But because I stayed committed to the practice, it helped me begin to show up differently with people and that's what really turned to, "Oh, this is what the right way is, this is what the right way of being, off of the pillow." That started to unfold rather quickly once I had that realization. I think having like my standpoint and perspective has a lot to do with being a mom because that's what pulled me into this practice and having young children allows for a lot of practice. Many many opportunities. Many opportunities to practice and so that's what shifted things. My relationship with our children started shifting so much that I realized that's where the pay off really is and it allowed me to do exactly what my intentions were, to get more in touch with my child like true nature that I was longing for. But it wasn't till it actually started happening that I realized this is the practice. When you use the word right especially as you sort of felt like you settled into a different version, could you replace that with the word authentic? Is that a fair paraphrase? I have to think about that for a second. Yes. Yeah. I think that's why I keep going back to the word true and true nature, it's the authenticity part of it. Well, I know you've been practicing for over a decade. What's something that you still struggle with? I still struggle with the discipline, believe it or not. I mean that's probably the highest thing on the list of things that I struggle with. Because I'm really comfortable with suffering now. I'm really comfortable with not stuffing it anymore. But it's the discipline, it's the really putting my intentions to be the best version of myself I can be on this planet first by carving out the time to do it. It's really hard. Has that shifted at all? Has it ever been easy for you? Yes, it has. I will say it had to do with being part of a community who helped me be accountable. If you're meeting with the same group of people every week and the point is to talk about your practice that just hold you to it a little better, at least it did for me. Because I'm not going to be inauthentic and lie that I didn't do my practice. Finding a group or community to be accountable to was really helpful? Yeah. Do you go back to that from time to time? Do you re-join a group if your practice wanes or your discipline around your practice wanes? I've settled into. Start a group as maybe? Yes, that's where I was headed, yeah. Because the group I was with before was a more Christian centered group, once I started shifting out of untangling the messages, I felt like I'd healed that enough and it wasn't painful anymore to hear things from a Christian lens but it wasn't serving me in my path either. So I pulled out of that group and when I couldn't find one or maybe I've thought about this, why I haven't had gone to a Buddhist temple to find a group? But instead I guess I looked around me and I had other people like me who were ready to let go of a faith tradition that they had been part of that didn't serve them any longer and I realized already have a community, I just need to get it on the calendar. Yeah. Would you describe mindfulness as a spiritual practice for you? It absolutely is for me because I feel like the way that I understand spiritual practice is about wholeness, it's about not compartmentalizing, it's about mind, body and spirit all together and so a practice that seeks to serve one's wholeness includes the body, includes the sensations, includes the the whole experience, and so to me mindfulness is one practice I don't have to put in one lane or another. It can go through all of these and I could be fully myself in my practice. My goal is really to become more true to who I'm and my purpose in the world. That's a very spiritual vocation standpoint for me and mindfulness is the best way for me to stay true. Say more about that. I mean, tell me what you think it provides for you that helps you find that meaning and purpose that you're seeking. It's a letting go of all the shoulds and ought tos. In my personal journey, I can't be a 100 percent who I am or want to be on this planet unless I let go of the judgments, the competition, the comparisons, the notion of not being good enough, all of those things and mindfulness practices allow me to let go of all that faster than anything else, if that answers your question. So heightens your self-awareness so you know that those limiting beliefs are present and you're able to hold it with some compassion. And some lighthearted. Lightheartedness. Lightheartedness. A few years back, when I was leading a spirituality center, I've never been in a position of leadership to that degree before and of course my ego would pull me into things that are like trying to prove myself or something and I'd make a mistake and rather than beat myself up, I decided to just say, "Oh, look at that, that's funny." Oh, ego. Yeah. So we got this tagline we put on T-shirts and everything which was being human is hilarious. That's my answer to that one. Let's be playful about it and just not take it all so seriously. It's human nature. Yeah. I love that too. One of the things that we talk about in this class is the ways that we tend to personalize everything that happens to us in life and that mindfulness as a practice helps us detach from a concrete sense of self. I like that you're pointing to bringing in some levity and just having a lighthearted spirit to the different ups and downs of life. Yeah. I think that it also helped everyone on my team to see me react that way. It opened the door for them to be lighthearted about anything that went wrong for them or not the way they expected. It's that, there's always going to be suffering, there's always going to be struggling, how quickly can we get to that was funny and take what we need to take from it but not sit in it too long and not pretend like it's not happening? Because I mean, I think as a team we were able to go pretty far, pretty fast because we all have that orientation around what to do. Well, it sounds like a growth mindset of sorts. Well, you talked a little bit about coming to mindfulness in a large part to shift your parenting. It sounds like it was pretty transformative for you in that way. What other transformative experiences have you had because of this practice? I have two really powerful experiences. One of them was with our daughter, our third child and the other one was with someone else's child. I'll talk about the second one. I teach creative writing at MD Anderson with writers in the Schools and it takes an incredible amount of practice to sit bedside one-on-one with young patients who are going through a variety of treatments and unknown outcomes. There've been a lot of transformative experiences that happen when I show up with curiosity, with compassion and have my self as, I can truly be the observer and hold things that other people don't want to look at and don't want to hold. This particular patient there showed me the real power of authentic practice as you're facing death. It just doesn't get any better than that when it comes to seeing the power of acceptance, of not hanging on to things that just aren't real or true, but being with what is. That's the hardest being with what is that I can imagine, is facing your own death. I got to be with him in a space that allowed him to express his miraculous ability to look at it and be okay with it and then write something that let his parents know that he wasn't afraid, which help them not be afraid. Now, I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it because I can't believe that I got to witness and be part of both of us doing a practice in some way together. Yeah. I was going to say it sounds like it was probably very powerful for you both. Yeah. Well, what are some tips that you might give to beginning meditators or what is something that you wish you had known early on in your practice that you could share? I don't know if your students need to hear this or not but the very first time I meditated I had no idea what was hiding under the surface, it was really overwhelming. I look back on it now and I think, I induced my first panic attack by trying to do a silent meditation. I wasn't prepared for what I'd been stuffing for decades, and hopefully other people don't have the background and story that enticed me into putting on a happy face and always being up and sun shiny and all of the muck they just gets buried when you're not comfortable with suffering at all and you don't want anybody else to know you're doing that. I think that's what created that perfect storm for me was just being in a long line of women who like get out the ice tea and the happy face and don't make anyone else suffer because you can't be on top of the world right now. All of the stuff down there was just like. I wanted to be a good girl and sit on the pillow and do it for 45 minutes or something. Those were too high of an expectation for a beginner. Now, as I lead other people in meditation, I think the mindfulness with the senses and guided meditations are so much better for beginners than dropping into silent meditation. I rant people up a little more slowly so that it's not just a barrage. That makes a lot of sense. Is there anything else that you'd like to share about the value of this practice and what it's brought to your life or any other tips that you think the students in this class would benefit from them? Yeah. I want to bring up the ability this practice has for showing up when things around you are falling apart, including people who maybe have unhealed grief or trauma. We're living in a volatile environment, I think, as far as the polarization of things. It seems like you can accidentally walk into a heated argument with strong opinions. Anywhere you go, it feels like there's a possibility for that to happen. I think the value of this practice is being able to be that observer and that witness that can have a more grounded, curious, not acceptance necessarily of what's going on but can more quickly see that that something going on that's unfolding on someone else's path, that's not mine to get tangled up in. I mean, this is a wild story but I literally had a yoga teacher go off in my face because of something that happened at that spirituality center that I knew my place and I felt comfortable with how we got there but she literally was yelling at me and spit in my face. I had this resolve of like, "Wow, how much pain must she be in for her in her practice to be this off the rails emotionally?" And I made it not at all about me and I didn't hold it later either. It was an in the moment witnessing of something I could have compassion for even when I'm getting spit at in the face. That's practice. Yeah. That's an incredible amount of equanimity and wisdom in the moment to be able to recognize what was coming up for her didn't have to be internalized by you and then to also able to include compassionate and I think really speaks to all the time you must spend on the cushion. That was a time in my life where my discipline was really on point because I was leading a spirituality centers. If I wasn't doing my practice, that was going to be a really hard time for me to just say I'm being authentic. Well, thank you so much for coming down and talking with us today. I think you've given us some really great things to think about and I wish you luck as you continue to move forward and lead people in this practice and share all the beautiful things that you know about mindfulness. Great. Thanks.
