Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: RSS

Research shows that practicing mindfulness helps reduce stress, anxiety, lowers blood pressure and improves sleep. If we make it a habit, aside from our mental and physical health, it can also improve every aspect of our lives.

Can mindfulness improve our relationships, too? The answer is yes and in this episode, Caroline Welch talks about its benefits, some tips in incorporating it into our daily lives and so much more.

Caroline Welch is the CEO and co-founder, with Dr. Dan Siegel, of the Mindsight Institute in Santa Monica, California. She began her mindfulness practice forty years ago while working in Japan as an English teacher. Welch’s book “The Gift of Presence: A Mindfulness Guide for Women” has been widely acclaimed. Caroline offers lectures and workshops on the power of mindfulness to enhance well-being in our personal and professional lives including its role in supporting racial and gender equity.

Stay tuned and learn how mindfulness can play a big role in bringing you and your partner closer!

In this Episode 

5:14 Caroline’s definition of mindfulness and how it started for her.

7:19 Some real-life examples of mindfulness.

12:54 Why is mindfulness important.

16:24 Features of mindfulness.

26:52 Understanding the 3 Ps: Purpose, Pivoting, Pacing.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Deal with problems as soon as you can and don’t let them exacerbate.
• Engage in deep conversations to know each other better in a relationship.
• Seek to understand and to be understood.
• Find your purpose because that’s what can get us through difficult times.
• Be in the present moment. That is very valuable in terms of determining when to pivot.
• Practice mindfulness. Repetition is key to forming a habit.

Mentioned

• Mindsight Institute website 
• The Gift of Presence: A Mindfulness Guide for Women book (*Amazon Link)
• Guided Mindfulness Meditation Practices with Jon Kabat Zinn website
• The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer book (*Amazon Link)
• What Kind of Woman: Poems by Kate Baer book (*Amazon Link)
• John O’Donohue's website
• Life on Purpose by Victor J. Strecher: How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything book (*Amazon Link)
• Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself by Dr. Kristin Neff book (*Amazon Link)
• The Guest House poem by Jalaluddin Rumi

Connect with Caroline Welch

Website: carolinewelch.com 

Facebook: facebook.com/carolinewelchauthor  

Instagram: instagram.com/carolinewelchauthor 

Twitter: twitter.com/CarolineWauthor

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About Today's Show

Caroline, thank you so much for joining us.

It's my pleasure to be here today. I feel very honored. I know that you've interviewed so many outstanding leaders in the field of relationships in general. I'm just really happy to be a part of this.

Yes. I am so thrilled to share you with the Empowered Relationship Podcast audience. I think what you're up to is so important for our well-being or health, and as we really talk about on this show, relationships. And I got to get a little bit more connected with you at a couples’ conference earlier this year and just really appreciate your book and your three Ps that we're going to be getting into today. But let's just start with mindfulness because that's something that has been much more spoken about in the mainstream world in the last 10, 15, 20 years. There can be many ways to perceive that word, especially if it has a Buddhist or whatever tradition that's coming from. So just give us a sense of where you're defining or where you're working with mindfulness, or what you see in that sense if we can start there.

Mindfulness for me started in a temple in Japan, over 35 years ago, when I was living in Japan, and I was an English teacher there. Some of the engineers, the students studying English, were engineers at Mazda. They told me that they were going nearby to a temple on weekends for retreats. One weekend, they invited me. So that was the kind of formal if you will, Introduction to mindfulness. As I look at my relationship with mindfulness now, I would actually pinpoint it back to my early childhood, when I was growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin. 

Wow. 

I like to think about mindfulness. I use it synonymously, in my book, The Gift Of Presence, with the word mindful awareness or presence. I use the definition of Jon Kabat Zinn, which is the paying of attention in the present moment, on purpose to what's going on without judgment. Then adding parenthetically: with kindness for self. That pretty much, in a nutshell, reflects the way that I define mindfulness and drives how I came to develop the three Ps to kind of help us bring mindfulness off the cushion and into our daily lives.

That's something I really appreciate about your messaging is just how we can access it. Access mindfulness, access presents, that sometimes it feels like such a formal concept that, oh, I don't meditate, or oh, or even the judgment that we might have involved with that. So, I love just the addendum of the kindness, and also how to prep, possibly, we're already in different ways, experiencing more presence or mindfulness that we might not even realize. 

I love that you brought up that point. Because in interviewing over one hundred women for my book, one of the questions I asked them was whether they had mindfulness practice. 80% of the time, they would say something like, I'm the least mindful person you know, or just put your pen away, I shouldn't even be interviewed. But once we got talking about their lives, their daily lives, their practice, as in what do you do each day, I heard many real-life examples of mindfulness in action, if you will, moments of presence. So, when one of the women whom I was interviewing, who's a single mom, would come home each day from work, she told me, I feel my hand on the front doorknob of my apartment. I take a couple of breaths just to make that transition before I cross the threshold to see how my daughter, my teenage daughter stayed. I said that's it. That's all we're going for. We are trying to have more and more moments in the present, and fewer moments dwelling on a past that we'd hoped had been different or perfect or fearing a future and imagining a future that will never unfold. So, the key is really in these very accessible everyday moments that we can fully inhabit.

That's wonderful. I love just the practical examples. Do you have any other examples that come to mind so that people might be able to relate a little bit more about where they might be experiencing mindfulness? I know for me, I'll say, anytime that I'm getting into my body or being in nature is when I typically feel more aware, more present to my inner state as well as what I'm experiencing in my environment. But I wonder if there's anything else you'd like to add?

There are countless examples. I'll provide a couple, also from one of the women whom I interviewed. She said that when she goes to visit her or her elderly mother every week, she feels her hands on the steering wheel of her car. That's very grounding for her. She believes that then she can fully be present. That's a state of mind that she can then more easily accessible when she's with her mother. As we know from science, these repeated states can become traits, which ultimately, can become baseline ways to be, so we can access them more easily.

Yes, so if I'm hearing you correctly, that a state is something that might fluctuate or be more fluid, and it's not constant. But if we're having a level of repetition, that we can start to have it as an aspect or a trait of what we experienced, that then becomes more a part of our lasting experience. Am I hearing that?

Exactly. That's right, and then it can become easier to go to state. The other example, I'll give since you mentioned nature, we recently, my husband, Dan Siegel, and I rescued a puppy. So that is a great unfolding and practice of mindfulness. Yesterday, I was up early with the puppy, as one of us is every morning, and the puppy was sitting on our back patio, kind of fixated on a crow, up on the telephone wires. At that moment, I could hear the birds chirping, I could feel a little bit of wind. It was just a beautiful moment of presence being in this moment, kind of inspired by the puppy and her amazing focus. But as you suggest, I think nature is a great facilitator for our being present.

Just, I have to comment that even as we're talking even about mindfulness, and about the experience of being in nature being more embodied, or more focused, I can feel inside myself, almost as if I'm feeling more present just even talking about it. Is that possible?

I think this is possible. I believe it's happening. Another point I'll make, because sometimes we think, oh nature, I have to do forest bathing, or I have to travel to one of our national parks. But I want to underline that it's natural to look out the window or go for a walk around your neighborhood or the area where you work. This is all immersing us in some kind of nature or some kind of climate, which is very grounding.

For sure. Can you speak a little? I know you could talk for hours probably about the benefits. Or how come? Mindfulness is important. Can you give us some sense of what we're looking at here in the way of how mindfulness is something that's useful and helpful?

There are really very few things in communication that are urgent, that we really have to respond to right away. So, one of the most effective and useful benefits of mindfulness is that we can hopefully be more easily reminded that, wait a minute, I'm in charge of this time right now. I can say, this isn't a great time to talk about this, or I need a moment or just take a couple of breaths. 

That's so keen. What I know from myself and working with people in a relationship, that reactivity if we're not slowing down, is really common. It's in some ways a protective mechanism, right? If we're habitually reacting, perhaps we're getting spun in what isn't necessarily true, or the deeper vulnerability, and then we're getting into a reaction which can be much more escalating. So, this foundation of mindfulness allows us to slow down and also to have a sense of evaluating if I'm hearing you, Caroline, what is true? Like so often I will say it's taken me a long time to get into that practice of really being clear about it. Am I? Yes, rather than just the yes flying out of my mouth. Because if I'm really wanting to do justice to the conversation, I'm so much more available when I am a full Yes, rather than feeling divided. Likely my partner, my husband is going to know, right? He can tell when I'm half there or distracted or preoccupied.

Right, exactly. So, to your point, having a full presence is so important. Also having you mentioned yes, and I know we, for many reasons like to say yes to all kinds of things, but conjuring up the power and being prepared to say no, is also very important. Something that we can more easily do once we have time to respond, not just react to a request or a trigger.

This might be a good time to talk about the features of mindfulness because they are really quite supportive of healthy relationships. In my book, I've laid out six features, which are coming out of the work of a group in Canada. I will get to that site before we get off.

So, resentments hopefully can be limited, and we can deal and move on. Another aspect is that the judging that we do, we all have categories, and we judge and we know that with the way that our brain likes to make categories, and we need categories, we can't necessarily figure out how to do everything every day, oh my God, how do I make my coffee. So, we operate in categories, but at the same time, we come to be limited by these and imprisoned by them sometimes. So, we can get more acceptance if we have more mindfulness. 

Another key aspect I would say about mindfulness that is quite useful when we look at our relationships and how we can support them to be more healthy is that our emotions and our thoughts are fleeting. As you suggested before, and you mentioned the truth, our thoughts may not even be true. They may be true sometimes, but not always. But we sometimes think they're truths of some sort. When it comes to emotions, also, it's quite easy to think that however, we're feeling at a given time, especially a bit sad or not, not joyful, we feel it may last forever. There is just that sense about it. I often think of what Alyssa Apple and Elizabeth Blackburn put in their book The Tyla Mirror Effect. They talked about how the life of emotion and emotion is 90 seconds unless you engage with it. So, I think we've all had the experience of that emotion that years later, can still have some kind of hold on us. 

So back to trying to keep things current, and deal as soon as we can with things and not exacerbate or I think Sharon Salzburg calls it like a piling on. Like you have whatever happened. But the next thing you know, she uses the example, which I love about visiting for the first-time cherry blossoms in Washington DC. She was standing under the tree with her friend who had brought her there. Sharon was admiring them the first time she saw them. Her friend said “Oh, too bad. The peak was two days ago.” Then Sharon thought “Oh, you mean these aren't beautiful?” So, I just use that as an example of how we judge and we have ideas. I think another aspect of the example I just gave is that it's so important to us. What do other people think? Of course, Comparison is the thief of all joy. But this is another aspect that I think mindfulness is quite useful in helping us with.

Thank you. So, if I'm hearing you, it's really being in the moment and not necessarily being in the past or even anticipating the future. Because right, we all want to have a story and a narrative or even project what we think because especially if we look at long term relationships, and it's easy to think we know, and really, our partner or any human being is experiencing something new every day. 

So perhaps that gets lost on us if we're looking with this assumption. So that presence, and then the non-judgment that you're really here you're speaking about, and just how important that is. I know we really want to get to the three Ps, which are science because I feel like that's going to really help people be able to work with.

We will move to the three Ps, as soon as I have a chance to share a poem. 

Let's do that.

That fits pretty nicely with what you just mentioned. The poet is Kate Baer, who is a Newport, just published her first book called What Kind Of Woman, and one of her poems is called “One Thousand Wives”. Actually, when you were talking, the reason I thought of this poem is that John O'Donoghue, the poet and philosopher who passed unexpectedly about 10 years ago, he used to ask the question to those who are married, how much of you is married. I love that because I think it speaks to the fluidity of our nature or of our being.

So, without further ado, “One Thousand Wives” is the name of this poem.

“The secret is my husband has many wives, one for bluebird mornings, one for doubt, in the afternoon. One for the stretch of the evening, when the children perform their endless rituals. There is the business wife, the wanting wife, the wife who stands on the front porch and needs to talk to you. For a time, we have the good wife, the thin wife, eventually the dead wife, the ghost of every woman who tried to change for you.”

So that speaks to some of the different ways of being that all of us experience not only within ourselves but certainly when we're in a relationship.

Absolutely. One of the things that I have heard you speak about also is the pressure that we put on ourselves to be all things or even the notion of balance, and how elusive or even unrealistic and unsustainable it is when we really look at what balances and what we're asking of ourselves.

Exactly. I mean, there's a lot in that one sentence, and I think right away of the work of Astaire Parral. She says, so accurately, that we as a person in a relationship, we are expected to be so many things to the other. That historically, there would be a whole community or village that could share in this. I know she also says each couple is in it for the long haul. The long haul is getting longer all the time. 

So, I think this speaks to the need to keep learning, keep growing, all the things that I know that you do with your podcast, encouraging all of us to learn, love, and grow. 

Never will. 

We never will. Exactly. So, this might be a good time to share the second poem I wanted to share today. The second and last poem is from Kate bear. This is called “Vow Renewal”.

“I asked my husband to tell me he likes the thick size and he says yes, he does, though he stammers and stalls. My friend Rhoda asks her husband if she should go back to school to be a singer. He says ‘I've never even heard you sing'. My friend, Colleen calls her husband on a Friday and says ‘this is the last time she will make his dinner'. He says ‘Well, my friend Christie tells her husband, she is not his mother. He cries, because all this time, he didn't know.'” 

Wow. 

I think that as I read those, my mind went to the work of Helen and Harville Hendrix, whom I know you have interviewed. One of the things I love about their work, which I think is very relevant here, is the script. How can you say to your boat, then how they encourage us to really give the other person an opportunity to say everything about that aspect? 

Before I can say anything. I think that is so powerful. I think the more that we engage in deep conversations like that, or do the work as Byron Katie defines it, we can, hopefully, more often, know the other better. The other is always morphing, hopefully, and growing and learning.

The way it's landing for me right now is just what a gift it is to be able to seek to understand to such a depth that it allows someone to go through the layers, and the deepening and getting to some understanding that maybe they wouldn't have gotten to had they not have that space of deep listening. Thank you for referencing that. Caroline, I just know our time is limited with you. I would love to pivot and will love to turn towards you when you're talking about your three Ps. Can we do that?

Yes, absolutely. Let's go there. Right away, the three Ps emerged out of the “100 Interviews”. The first is purpose. I came to hear from the women whom I interviewed, that they were living and had in mind a purpose larger than themselves. That gave them meaning in their lives, to get to the purpose. We don't usually sit down and think, what is my purpose? But as Victor Strecker, a professor at the University of Michigan says, in his book Life On Purpose, if you were to write down on a piece of paper what your purpose is, that would be the most important piece of paper you could have. He suggests just that, that we write it down and we carry it with us. I think we each also have a different purpose for the different roles we play. What your purpose might be, in terms of your relationship, would be different than as a daughter or a mother. But nonetheless, what can get us through the most difficult times is keeping the purpose on our radar. 

So, to take the example of maybe a day that wasn't great between two people, it might be easy to say, wow, I knew I should have broken up with this person. It's never working, whatever those narratives are, we say, but if we can step back and say, wait, my purpose here is to be a resilient, collaborative partner in a dynamic relationship. If whatever that purpose is, is still true, then we're less likely to let the setbacks of which of course, there are so many in any endeavor we're in that's worth being. So that is the beauty of purpose. Of course, there's plenty of research that confirms that having a purpose leads to more happiness, because meaning and happiness, all of these things and happiness, which is a choice, all go together.

Thank you for referencing Victor's work. I remember reading that and just being struck by how people actually live longer when they have a purpose. Dan Tacton also talks about just when we have a relationship without vision, it can be easy to regress into instincts or that are aggressive or unkind, or even when we really have those governing agreements or purposes like you're describing it can really help us orient and when you're talking about mindfulness, this touchdown or this piece of paper that reminds us of something that has value and significance and meaning beyond the current difficulty, they can call us into something greater.

Exactly. That's right. I often think about what Harville and Helen once said in one of their conferences, something to the effect that, we all have challenges with our partners. But if you were to leave your partner and find another one, you would find someone with those same challenges, since we're all kind of complimenting each other, when we're not likely going to seek out ourselves. 

So, I often think about that comment that they made, I think, it's somewhat illuminating. So, this brings us to the second P, which is pivoting, when I did the interviews, and also when I look at our lives, there's one constant, and there's one continuous given in our lives, and that is change. Change requires pivoting. My book came out right at the time of the pandemic, March 17. A day after New York City announced it was closing its restaurants. So, the kind of change that is hoisted upon us is one thing, where we do what's called crisis pivoting. 

But there's another kind of pivoting that mindfulness is especially useful for and that is the proactive pivot. It's that pivoting that we know we should make a change in our career or in a relationship, but we kind of hum along. We humans don't like change.

For example, one of the women, because of expectations, we've touched upon expectations in her family, she was very good at accounting. She was originally from Pakistan. So, her family was delighted that she was an accountant. But after 10 years, she decided she wanted to go to law school. So, this was kind of a long-range plan, because, by this point in her life, she had a young family, but she just set out to finally merge her real interest with her career. So, this was a proactive pivot on her part. Often if we change careers, we've lost a job or our company has moved or something's happened, although I guess our companies don't have to move anymore since we can work from anywhere. But I think that, again, we hesitate to make changes. So, mindfulness can be very helpful in helping us with proactive changes. 

On pivoting, it's almost the sense of staying awake, that as we're staying connected to an imagined these things, these three Ps work in concert with one another, but if we're in service of our purpose, and the pivoting, if we're not in alignment, that we're constantly having to adapt, right and adjust. So, this is a rule of being conscious to or awake to, is that what I'm hearing? Does that fit?

Yes, that fits beautifully. It is being in touch, as you suggest, with what is going on. Also, what you mentioned about how these three Ps work in concert. Absolutely. That's a nice segue into the third P which is pacing. So, to go back to one of the pivoting examples, maybe the career that I have, for example, isn't the greatest but I have all kinds of other things going on right now. 

So, it's not if I pace out my life, if I look at what chapter I'm in, maybe this is the time for me to focus on whatever that thing is caregiving for elderly parents or a certain aspect in my career, something I'm working toward, just to recognize where we're at on our life's path, and to feel confident that we will have time, life can unfold in so many ways we can have five careers. There was a time, certainly the way that I was surrounded with having finished law school in the early 80s. That we as women, for example, can have it all. Yes, but in stages, we can't clone ourselves in the way that we might have thought before we got deep into what that would mean.

Always, as you mentioned, just being awake and being open to referring back to that North Star or that purpose.

I wonder with the pacing, Caroline, if it also fits with what you've really underscored around the kindness and the non-judgment, because it can be very tempting to want it to all happen at once, or the pressure of the expectation that it should happen at any particular time frame and is that part of the quality of the pacing is gentleness or kindness in the unfolding, as you mentioned?

Yes, absolutely. I think being our own best friend is always a good way to go. We are so much more likely to tune into a friend and give them what they need than we are to ourselves. I interviewed women who, if I asked them, what kind of self-care they have? They might say, in many cases, I'm not even on my own list. I'm not on my own to-do list. So, we look last in many cases to ourselves, but this kindness you refer to is key to being patient with ourselves. There's a beautiful new book that just came out by Kristin Neff called Fear Self Compassion. She does such a beautiful job in her workshops, as well as in her book of reminding us about how key it is to be kind to ourselves.

I know that you have so much to offer, and we don't have an enormous amount of time. Is there any exercise or something you would like to offer in one of these three Ps that might help somebody take a step in the direction of one of these Ps?

Absolutely. I think we've already talked about that piece of paper that would have our purpose on it. So, I think I would like to leave your listeners with an invitation to jot down what that purpose would be. To carry that with them and adjust as need be, but to have that at the ready.

Is there anything for someone who hasn't spent or paused to contemplate or reflect on or anything that you would invite to help connect with purpose? Or even if they don't know their purpose, aspects of real meaning that might help them get closer to what their purpose is?

Yes, absolutely. I appreciate your pointing out that someone might be caught off guard or kind of stumped for what their purpose might be. But if we just think about what gets me up in the morning, what am I excited about? Or we make a list of our values, whether it's family, work, whatever those things are, that are important to us, that can guide our purpose. From that our purpose will emerge. I think we haven't stopped to think about it, then that it may be somewhat elusive. But once we give ourselves the luxury and gift of that time, it will emerge.

Yes. I wonder, too, as you're talking that there's this unfolding and refining that if we have a relationship with our purpose, and we stay in contact with it, as you mentioned, we can refer to it, update it and refine it.

Absolutely. I think that's key. As we've already talked, we kind of morph and we don't know what's coming next in our lives. So, it's important to be updating it as we go. This might be a good time to read a poem by Rumi, “The Guest House”, which speaks to how every day is really something new.

Let's do it.

The Guest House.

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

These are the words of Rumi. I read them every day.

Thank you for that gift and your reading and these poems that you're sharing with us today. Caroline, how can people get connected with what you're teaching and your book?

Yes, I would certainly invite everyone to stop by my website, carolinewelch.com. I also have a presence on Instagram, Facebook, as well as Twitter. In addition, the courses we offer here at the Mindsight Institute, they may go there and I'm happy to announce that we're rolling out two brand new courses in the next few weeks with Dr. Dan Siegel. Both of them, one is named Aware, the other is Attachment And Interpersonal Neurobiology In Couples Therapy. 

Both have Question and Answer opportunities to ask your questions to Dan, which we've found the students really enjoy because they can cover the material and then have a chance to ask anything that's on their minds. In the case of these two new courses, there were three chances to do that during the three weeks that the course was running. Of course, there are other offerings that have a foundational course, 36 hours, also taught by Dr. Siegel. 

If I am offering workshops, that's the home of where we let everyone know about that. So that would be a great resource for anyone interested in the work of the Mindsight Institute. 

Lovely. Your book can be purchased on the website and I'm sure on Amazon, is that right? 

Yes, absolutely. Wherever the independent bookstores or wherever anyone usually purchases their books. The book should be there. 

Wonderful. Is there anything else you want to say before we close out?

The six features of mindfulness that I reference when it comes to relationships or even to how we conduct ourselves. Thanks to an eight-week program that was developed in Canada by John Teasdale, Mark Williams, and Zindel Segal, and they have worked on how we can free ourselves from depression as well as emotional distress. 

I will make sure to have all of these links on today's show notes. Caroline, thank you for what you're doing. Thank you for what the Mindsight Institute is doing and for sharing your valuable time with us today.

Thank you so much, Jessica. It's been a real pleasure. 

Signing Off

If you have a topic you would like me to discuss, please contact me by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.