Joe Sanok 00:00:00  I'm so excited to introduce you to the best website designers out there. We have a brand new partnership with session sites. It is where good therapy meets brilliant design, and they get your website switched over or built in less than two weeks. They fine tune your messaging, use science backed user experience methodology, and work exclusively with mental health professionals. In fact, new clients right now are going to get three free therapy marketing strategy calls with their creative director of session sites. If you book today. You're not going to want to miss this. Head on over to session sites.com/joe again that session sites.com/joe get the website of your dreams today session sites.com/joe. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe Sana. Session number 1140. I'm Joe Cenac, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. I am so excited that you are hanging out with us today. We do this show to help you build a thriving private practice that you absolutely love. There were lots of times in my private practice before I sold it in 2019 that I loved it, and it wasn't thriving.

Joe Sanok 00:01:28  There were lots of times that it was thriving and I didn't love it. We try to bridge that gap of those things that we just don't usually learn in grad school, through conversations, through trainings, through our membership communities. If you haven't read about any of our membership communities, you got to check them out over at practice of the practice.com/membership. we have memberships for people at every phase of practice, whether you're just starting a practice, whether you have a solo practice, and you know, you don't want to level up into having a group practice, but you want some support and to be around other people with solo practices. Maybe you're starting a group practice, or maybe you already have a thriving group practice. We have a community for you that has a weekly training, has all sorts of courses, small groups and support for you to really have that thriving practice that you absolutely love. Well, today we're going to be talking mindfulness. And I'm really excited because we're thinking through some of the things that maybe we got wrong with mindfulness.

Joe Sanok 00:02:24  And we're talking with Diana Winston, who is the director of the UCLA mindful, the Mindfulness Education Center of UCLA health. She's the author of The Little Book of Being and the co-author of Fully Present the Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness, called by the L.A. times one of the nation's best known teachers of mindfulness, she has taught mindfulness since 1999, in a variety of settings, including hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, and schools in the US and Asia. A sought after speaker, XI developed the evidence based Mindful Awareness Practices curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide. She can be found on the UCLA mindful Waking Up and 10% Happier Apps. Diana. Welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast.

Diana Winston 00:03:17  Thanks so much. Great to be here.

Joe Sanok 00:03:19  Well, you've done a lot of stuff, but the Waking Up app, I mean that to me. Like I love that app. I probably listen to Sam Harris, you know, three times a week if I, you know, am good with my mind, with my meditation for his daily stuff.

Joe Sanok 00:03:32  And there's so many things within that app, so many amazing teachers all in one spot. So thank you so much for being on the show today.

Diana Winston 00:03:40  Happy to do it. Thanks.

Joe Sanok 00:03:41  Yeah. Well, I want to start with your personal story. How did you get into mindfulness?

Diana Winston 00:03:48  I started I started practicing meditation right after college. I was traveling Around in India. And I ended up in Dharamsala, which is where the Dalai Lama has government in exile, and it's a very Buddhist town. There's lots of things to learn, Buddhist meditation practices. And initially I was quite skeptical, but I think it might have been peer pressure. Possibly. I ended up doing some Buddhist meditation retreats, and then kind of got heavily involved from there, and then spent a number of years in my, sort of in my 20s going on long meditation retreats. So after actually, I found mindfulness practice in Thailand soon after, and then did these insight meditation and mindfulness retreats for the next decade or so. So that was the start of my practice, and I ended up actually living as a Buddhist nun in a monastery in Myanmar, Burma, when I was about 30 or so.

Diana Winston 00:04:46  So I had a lot of practice under my belt before I started teaching it. here in the US.

Joe Sanok 00:04:53  Wow. I feel like so many 20 something year olds just, like, bounce around from different things, and you just kind of dug in.

Diana Winston 00:05:01  I think I was kind of unusual. Yeah.

Joe Sanok 00:05:04  What was it about meditation that hooked you?

Diana Winston 00:05:08  It was incredibly interesting. I mean, that was one aspect of it. Like it was a really deep dive into my mind and it was helping me understand myself and have more wisdom and compassion for myself and I also, I also was had a lot of anxiety, so it helped me with that. It helped me with whatever suffering was going on in my life, but I was hooked. I mean, right from the very beginning I thought, wow, this is amazing stuff.

Joe Sanok 00:05:33  Yeah. Now, are there more moments once you kind of got into it that you that it kind of waxed and waned in regards to how into it you were, or did it feel like it just kept getting deeper and deeper?

Diana Winston 00:05:46  again, I'm kind of unusual.

Diana Winston 00:05:48  It was it did just keep getting deeper and deeper. I mean, over it now it's been, what, like 35 years or something. So it's had different ebbs and flows. But but it there's always more to learn, right. There's always deeper dive into your mind and to your heart more, more ways of, you know, coming to more self understanding, more compassion. I mean, it's it just it's kind of endless. And so in that case, you know, meditation itself sometimes is boring. I don't know if that's kind of a misconception. Like it's supposed to be really interesting. No. In and of itself, it can be kind of boring sometimes. But but the payoff and the depth that can happen over time is very, very profound.

Joe Sanok 00:06:29  I think one thing that when I first started meditating, me and for probably the first year or so, it was like, am I doing this right? Like, I don't really know what it's supposed to feel like or like, how to know if this is meditation or me just sitting here waiting till I can go back to drinking my coffee.

Joe Sanok 00:06:47  like how how do you explain to people that are new to meditation, maybe like what it should feel like, or if you know, if you're doing it, quote. Right. Like let's maybe start there.

Diana Winston 00:06:59  Okay. So I want to even take one further step back, which is that meditation is like a big category, right? You can think of meditation like sports. There's hundreds and hundreds of types of sports. There's many, many types of meditation. Mindfulness meditation, which is my expertise, is, you know, awareness practices that cultivate our capacity to be in the present moment. And what you're what you were describing is pretty common with people like, am I doing this right? There's often a lot of doubt when we get started. And so so the main thing is that to know that that's part of it, like anytime you're learning a new skill, you're going to have some questions and there are going to be some skepticism and not to feel like that's a problem. Some of the signs of like success of doing it well or not, you know, I'm able to be present with every single breath.

Diana Winston 00:07:49  But it's more how it affects our lives. So I'm doing it. I'm not really sure the impact, but I realized that I'm calmer with my children, or I realized that I took a breath before I was about to get angry, or I was feeling anxious and I found my way back to myself. So these are the kind of signs that mindfulness meditation practice is having an effect. And then of course, you can gain skill within it. But that's sort of that's sort of more the measures to look for.

Joe Sanok 00:08:19  Now kind of one thing that we were talking about before we started rolling is how, you know, mindfulness, you know, I think in the therapy world has been around for a while. And anytime something goes from kind of being quieter to then being more pop culture, I mean I see mindfulness everywhere now, even outside of the therapy world, it can get watered down. It can get misconceptions. There can be bad actors. There's all sorts of things that kind of change the way we view a word like mindfulness.

Joe Sanok 00:08:48  What do you feel like? We we get wrong or have got wrong when it comes to mindfulness? Like even what you just said about meditation. There's lots of types of meditation. That's like saying sport. what if we got wrong about mindfulness?

Diana Winston 00:09:02  you know, there's there's there's a lot of different things. I mean, one is sort of bigger picture looking at mindfulness. Like, I think when it first came out, people got so excited about it, especially in the therapy world, like, oh, this is the new great thing. I don't think it's any longer the new great thing in therapy at all. But but for instance, when it was brought into the school systems and that there's been a lot of work done over the last, you know, 20 years with that, and it was seen as like a panacea, it's going to save our ailing school systems. And it just is not that's not the case. It's a wonderful tool that can be really helpful, but it needs to be brought into different settings and in very thought out ways.

Diana Winston 00:09:43  So for instance, when it was brought into schools, initially they didn't think about like the impact of people with trauma, and especially because it became like, oh, let's bring it into the underserved school communities. Well, that had to be rethought about. And there's just been there's been a lot of evolution. There's been more trauma informed awareness and thinking. As people teach mindfulness now, people need to be more trained in that, for instance. so that's sort of one of the bigger picture, bigger picture like misconceptions or ways we've seen the evolution of the field, on a more like kind of personal level for people. I think people assume that they're going to be really good at it, and their minds are just going to go blank. And then when their minds don't go blank, which, of course, is that's a total misconception. We're not doing mindfulness practice in order to have a blank mind, but people think that something is wrong. They think their practice is going wrong. And so they start, you know, giving up, which is a problem because it's really not about having a specific state of mind.

Diana Winston 00:10:47  It's about cultivating attention and that ability to come back moment after moment to her experience and be present with what we are experiencing. So anyway, those are just a few to get started.

Joe Sanok 00:10:59  Yeah. How do you think therapists in particular perpetuate things about mindfulness that maybe we shouldn't? And then like, how would you switch it to make it an even healthier version of mindfulness? And in what we're doing in our in our sessions?

Diana Winston 00:11:13  Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. And I think I think it starts with who who the therapist is who's bringing mindfulness into the session. So there's there's I mean, this is in every field, but there's a sense like, okay, I've done a weekend workshop in mindfulness. So now I'm going to start implementing it with my with my clients. It's not impossible. It's not the worst thing to do. But my advice is that you really need to know it yourself before you start sharing it with your clients. You could share, for instance, audios, or of course you can breathe together for a few minutes or something.

Diana Winston 00:11:49  That's not a problem. But if you're really going to bring mindfulness in in a way that's useful, you've got to embody it. And that embodiment takes time. You got to have your own practice. And I think, I think, you know, for the therapists, I've worked with many, many therapists over the years who have seen the benefit of deepening their own practice and then sharing it with the clients themselves. So that's that's just one piece. the other the other thing I would say is, is, is it's not I think I think especially when people just have a kind of superficial understanding of it is seen primarily as a stress reduction technique or only to help with difficult emotions. Now, there's a great first of all, there's a lot of good research looking at how mindfulness can impact anxiety and depression, and it's excellent for that. And it's I think it's one of the best things that the mindfulness world has to offer in terms of the approach to working with emotions. but I guess the piece that I would say is that we there's so much more there, and I think I was alluding to it at the beginning, when I say I got when I talked about getting hooked because there was so much to learn, it's this beautiful deep dive into one's, you know, the depth of one's being in a sense, and that is usually not conveyed through the therapist unless they have their own practice and they've had that experience themselves.

Joe Sanok 00:13:16  now, I know there's tons of different forms of mindfulness, forms of meditation. are there things that maybe the average therapist were not taught that you think are essential, like 101 type things that if if every therapist that was practicing could hear, you'd be like, here are a couple of the things around mindfulness, or around meditation that you just feel like should be the basics of of being in practice if you're doing anything around mindfulness.

Diana Winston 00:13:47  I'm thinking about that. You know, it just having a basic knowledge of mindfulness practice and when to apply it is probably extremely useful and what it can and cannot do. So this kind of goes back to saying it's not a panacea. It's not going to like if a person if a person is having, for instance, severe anxiety. Mindfulness is not probably the solution at the moment, right? The anxiety needs to get down to a certain level before they can even begin to implement mindfulness tools. So that's one thing that I think would be important is kind of understanding when and how to when it was called for and when it was not called for.

Diana Winston 00:14:30  there. So there was something else I was going to say that now my mind just went well.

Joe Sanok 00:14:34  Well, no, that's okay, because I didn't want to interrupt. But I would love to hear. In your opinion, when should people be thinking, oh, this is a chance to incorporate some mindfulness into therapy?

Diana Winston 00:14:45  It's really useful when people are not, as I said, not in extreme states of distress, but sort of more moderate, lower level to help them see how they can work with a difficult thought or difficult emotions using a mindfulness based approach. So if it's more of like a low level or moderate kind of difficult emotion, difficult thinking. So one of the things is it's and this is this is, you know, seen in cognitive behavioral therapy and so forth. But like helping people to not be so identified or lost in the thought, knowing that the thoughts are coming and going and seeing them as as just something that's moving through them. These are all, you know, like an overlap.

Diana Winston 00:15:27  So much. I know this had overlapped so much with therapeutic approaches, but mindfulness really teaches you that because as when you're meditating. So the meditation is, is kind of like a guide. What's the word. It's the meditation helps you to translate it out into life. So you learn through meditation that you're noticing for instance you're breathing, your attention wanders, it gets caught in something. You notice you're lost in the thought. You drop the thought, you let it go and come back to your main focus. This is the skill that's going to help us when we have difficult thinking, when we're going into the past or going into the future, which is what we're often doing. We're a lot of anxiety, a lot of grief, remorse, catastrophizing, thinking, all of that lies. So the mindfulness practice teaches us to let go and come back into the moment. Then there's practices for working with our emotions. For instance, there's a kind of famous one that's taught a lot called rain, and it's called it stands for recognize, allow, investigate and not identify with and nurture.

Diana Winston 00:16:37  So it's just recognizing what's happening right now. Okay. I'm I'm there sadness here. There's fear. There's there's anger and then allowing it to be here. So mindfulness that's a big component of mindfulness is letting things be as they are investigating feeling what's happening in your body right now. My heart is racing. My stomach is clenched, my jaw is tight, my thoughts are repetitive. And then the end. Nurturing, bringing some kindness to yourself and offering some non identification. Well, not offering but coming to the place of more non identification like oh, it's just a thought or an emotion moving through me rather than something that I need to be caught in. So those are just some of the ways we use these tools. That can be tremendously helpful. And I know countless, countless therapists who have incorporated. But the big caveat and it's just saying it is try it yourself. Do it yourself. Know how it works before you use it with clients.

Joe Sanok 00:17:45  I am so excited about alma. When I had my private practice, I struggled building my caseload, attracting the right clients, managing the business side.

Joe Sanok 00:17:55  And honestly, one of the reasons I didn't take insurance was it was so difficult to navigate. So many of my consulting clients deal with these problems as well, and almost supports clinicians in building rewarding private practices with simplified insurance credentialing in under 45 days, enhanced reimbursement rates, and guaranteed two week payback, plus a free profile in their searchable filter directory, making it easy for clients who are the right fit for your practice to find you. Learn more about how alma could support your private practice at. Hello, alma. Com forward slash. Jo. That's. Hello, al McCombs. To learn more. Now I know for myself. it really like my meditation practice. February of 2021. I was on the road with my my two daughters and my wife at the time, and she told me that she was no longer attracted to me. And that was the beginning of the end. you know, she ended up staying in California, and I have near full custody of the kids. That's the jump over, like a 2 or 3 years story.

Joe Sanok 00:19:11  but in the midst of that pain, we're in this, like, camper in Southern California. And I know I can't leave because she's planning to stay in California. we're getting in an apartment, and I'm just like, I can't believe this is my life. And every morning I wake up, the sun comes through the camper. I'm sleeping in a bed next to this person that I know I'm divorcing. And, the only thing that could get me through the day was like, I would start every morning with journaling, just like dumping out my thoughts. I would do the Sam Harris meditation every morning. I would read the Dow. I would, you know, go for a couple mile walk, I would plank I had this whole like, morning routine that lasted like 2.5 hours, because it was just, like, so painful. and I wonder, like, do you see that sometimes that pain of, like, like, to me, the swing of how I felt when I woke up just like a tornado, of emotions to a this absolutely sucks.

Joe Sanok 00:20:14  But I can get through this. To me, that's such a swing to feel from something, to feel in meditation. Where is my daily life? You know, before that, sure. I was going through the pandemic and other things. I didn't feel those that level of results. and I know you do a lot of research and work with researchers to do you? Do you find that sometimes when meditation is, you know, initially like a life jacket, that that helps people be more committed or like, I don't know, I don't know what I'm really actually asking here, but but I feel like do we do we see that when it helps pull people out of something? Do we see more buy in? Maybe.

Diana Winston 00:20:50  Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I get letters from people all around the world saying, you know, I was dealing with the wildfires near my home, and this is the one thing that got me through it, you know? And then, of course, that makes them want to go in more deeply, want to learn more, want to figure out how to have more of a practice, how to make it be part of our lives.

Diana Winston 00:21:12  Now there is. I'm not sure about the research around this, but my experience is sometimes people get really into it when they're going through a hard time. And then when life is easier, it's easier to kind of forget about it because we don't need it so much. So there is that effect that can happen. but yeah, it can be a lifesaver for many, many people, just like the story you're describing. And, and I think that's why so many people get in it have been interested in I mean, I've watched the field. I've been in the field for 35 years. I have watched it grow in this extraordinary way. And when I sometimes I'll give like, you know, lectures and conferences and stuff and I'll say, I'll say, look at how it's grown, and I'll explore the field in all these different directions and education and medical and mental health and all this. And I'll say, all right, everybody, why, why is it is it grown in this exponential way? And then what everyone kind of tends to say and they say, oh, the research behind it, of course that's part of it, but it's because it's good, it works.

Diana Winston 00:22:18  It's really helpful for people. And the thing I do want to say, and this is important for, your listeners, is it's not for everybody. You know, it's not like I said, it's not a panacea. It is not for everybody. There's plenty of people who just don't like to meditate, don't or don't find it useful. And just like there's no medication that works for everybody, no meditation works for everybody. but one thing to know is for the people who don't like to sit still, there are other ways to to practice mindfulness. You can do mindfulness in a walking meditation. You can do mindful eating. You can do mindful movement. You can incorporate mindfulness into your day. So if you're working with a client or a patient and you think, okay, they could really benefit from it, but they don't want to sit still, there are these other options that are available.

Joe Sanok 00:23:08  I'm glad you bring that up. You know, lately, I mean, being a single dad, that there's always laundry, there's always dishes, there's always like, there's seriously like, you know, tonight it's like I have to actually end the next podcast early and, like, try to fit it all in to jump in the car, go to volleyball practice.

Joe Sanok 00:23:26  Go to the last volleyball game. It's just there's always something.

Diana Winston 00:23:29  I relate.

Joe Sanok 00:23:31  To. Well, good. And I'm sorry. You know, it's just that busyness of life that doing mindful, laundry, folding and doing mindful, dish like dishes and unloading the dishwasher. there's a great channel, on Spotify called music for plants. And I'll put that on my headphones. So it's like in my ears and just kind of focus on like, these are the clothes that are going to be on my kids. Like, these are it's literally like hugging them all day long. And these are plates that my kids and I are going to eat off of, or guests are going to eat off of, and they're going to be clean for those people. It's helping people that I may not even be in the house when they get that clean glass. And like, just really allowing myself to feel just the impact of these little things like laundry and dishes. and I wonder if part of the magic of mindfulness or part of why people are drawn to it is that that's in contrast to kind of this capitalistic advertising culture of like, you're not enough.

Joe Sanok 00:24:31  We're going to amplify this pain in this problem so that we can sell you a solution, and we're going to make you feel like junk. So you buy more, versus in therapy and, you know, mindfulness and meditation and psychedelics, all these different things that people are often drawn to. The message is, yeah, stuff comes into your brain. You notice it, you say, okay, goodbye. and then you're okay. You are okay as a foundation. I wonder if because mindfulness is pointing towards kind of the antithesis of often this, you are a terrible person by this, if that might be part of it.

Diana Winston 00:25:08  I think that's definitely an element. You know you are enough. You don't need anything outside of yourself to be happy. That happiness is an inside job, right? Like all of these come from different therapeutic approaches and certainly come from mindfulness. And so it's it is a radical teaching in the midst of, of, this consumer capitalist culture that we live in. And I will say that, believe me, it's been co-opted.

Diana Winston 00:25:36  You know, you can buy your $100 meditation cushion and your, you know, $2,000 trip to somewhere to do some meditation and yoga, but but, but I think the deeper message is something that is so far beyond what we're getting from the mainstream messages and culture. So yeah, absolutely. And when you're doing the dishes mindfully and you're really carefully, washing that dish or folding the laundry and you're just fully in the present moment and you don't need anything else to be happy. You're just you're just there. You're there with it. And you may have reflections like those beautiful gratitude reflections that you were talking about, which is from the mindfulness perspective. There is an outcome of being mindful as you start to be more connected to your experience, what you're doing the laundry with purpose and intention, and you're not trying to. You're not like trying to get out of your experience. You're getting into your experience. This is mental wellness, right? This is this is where people have health and wellbeing because they're fully showing up for life.

Diana Winston 00:26:40  And that's part of the kind of the beauty of these practices.

Joe Sanok 00:26:45  We haven't dug deep. We've referenced the research, but what research are you most excited about that you've seen recently?

Diana Winston 00:26:51  You know, the research is interesting. There's there's been research for the last 30 years or so in the mindfulness field. It was very, you know, early on there were just a few studies. And now there's probably under 10,000 studies, which sounds like a lot, but it's actually there's so much more to do. It's still it's still very young field. And the research is helpful. Like like it's I mean, I'll tell you what I'm excited about, but I'll just say in general there's mindfulness research showing it impacts stress related conditions. So physical health, mental health. the research as I mentioned, is quite robust around anxiety and depression and robust around chronic pain. It, looks at attention. There's neuroscience studies that they've been doing all along that are interesting. the ones that kind of have been more interesting to me lately, just because they're more unusual are the ones that connect mindfulness to altruism.

Diana Winston 00:27:47  So we did a study a couple of years ago at UCLA where we were looking at it was like a video game that you give away virtual tokens. So it's a generosity game, and you're tracked on how frequently you donate these tokens. And we had some people meditating along. First I got the meditation, and then they were tested to see how generous they would be. And the people who meditated gave away their coins that two and a half times the rate of the people who didn't. Oh, wow. So it's not conclusive or anything, of course, but it's just interesting that the impact on kindness because the questions how like I don't see mindfulness as like this navel gazing thing, it does improve us and it does help us be better humans. But that's always nested within the context of all of our relationships and the communities and the institutions that we are a part of. So these studies that look at whether they're it's more people become more altruistic. This is where I think it gets really interesting, you know.

Joe Sanok 00:28:49  Yeah. Well, the last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

Diana Winston 00:29:00  that's that's a good question. And I'm going to I'm going to just see what comes to mind. regarding mindfulness, I think I'd go back to the, the thing I said earlier, which is embodiment, that you can't share it unless you know it and know it deeply, and that it's if you are drawn to that path, like that's going to make you the best person for integrating mindfulness into your therapeutic practice. I will say that as one thing. and then this is just random, but I would say have fun. Like there's so much joy in watching people transform, and you have this incredible sacred gift to help people become better human beings. And just to have fun with that and know, like, know the sacred and trust of it, but at the same time, relax and just be yourself and give what you have to give.

Joe Sanok 00:29:52  so amazing day.

Joe Sanok 00:29:54  And if people want to connect with you, if they want to follow your work, where should we send them?

Diana Winston 00:29:58  Okay. So you can find me at, UCLA mindful if you just Google UCLA mindful it'll show up or my website Diana winston.com. My books are available wherever books are sold. And you can find me on the UCLA mindful app, which is a free app, has meditations in 19 different languages and is a great resource because of its it is free and and also waking up. You mentioned 10% happier.

Joe Sanok 00:30:28  Oh, it's so awesome. Thank you so much for being on the practice of the practice podcast.

Diana Winston 00:30:32  My pleasure. Great to be here.

Joe Sanok 00:30:42  I would love to know what you're doing to make yourself 10% happier, to wake up, to find some mindfulness in your life. you know, there's lots of ways to make money, and we chose to be therapists, to be counselors, to join people in their self-development. but we also have our own development to do, to. So, reach out in some way, whether that's email, through the website, through social media.

Joe Sanok 00:31:08  I'd love to hear about your journey of how you're growing. and, you know, a couple of ways you can grow is especially as we're closing out the year, you might not be thrilled with how things are going in the practice. And maybe you want to simplify some insurance credentialing, get enhanced reimbursement rates, or have a guaranteed two week payback. Almost supports clinicians in building a rewarding private practice in all those areas. Plus, you get a free profile in their directory. You can learn more about alma over at hello alma.com/joe again that's hello alma com slash Joe, thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter cover. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information.

Joe Sanok 00:32:08  If you want a professional, you should find one.