Reboot: Practicing Mindfulness with Dr. Tim Pedigo
In this episode, we talk to Dr. Tim Pedigo about mindfulness practices and their implementation in teacher education. Dr. Pedigo explains the difference between mindfulness and meditation and walks us through a mindfulness exercise. We also discuss tips for adding calm to our days when we do not think we have time. This episode was originally released under Teaching and Learning: Theory Vs Practice Season 1 Episode 24.
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
mindfulness, stress, teachers, feeling, students, compassion, important, sense, moment, teaching, focus, curriculum, meditation, talk, approach, happen, trauma, learning, experience
SPEAKERS
Tim Pedigo, Amy Vujaklija, Joi Patterson
Tim Pedigo:Mindfulness is an orientation for yourself in the world where you're trying to maintain, not just an awareness of what is actually arising in the present moment, but also as much as you can an open, non judgmental.
Amy Vujaklija:This episode was originally released under the podcast titled teaching and learning, theory versus practice. This rebooted episode has been migrated to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy. I am Dr. Amy Vujaklija, Director of educator preparation.
Joi Patterson:And I am Dr. Joy Patterson, Chief Diversity Officer. Our podcast addresses issues through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion, along with solutions for us to grow as educators.
Amy Vujaklija:So join us on our journey to become better teachers and leaders. So let's get into it. Good morning, Amy. Good morning joy.
Joi Patterson:So we're going to be talking to Dr. Tim Pedigo. And he is an expert in mindfulness, something I have learned to embrace. I've always done some meditation. But now I've been doing mindfulness. So there's a little bit different techniques. So we'll talk about using mindfulness to deal with stress. So I'm very excited to talk to this expert about how we can reduce our stress and strategies to deal with it and some mindfulness techniques. And
Amy Vujaklija:I think that's really important. Right now we have educators, we are educators, and we are not setting boundaries, and how are we coping? Do we even know we're stressed? And how do we identify those that stress in our lives? How do we process and those are some questions I hope to ask Tim Pedigo. Now Tim is a clinical psychologist with over 27 years in clinical experience. He serves as the coordinator of clinical training for the Masters in clinical psychology program, co coordinator of the mindfulness in the helping professions certificate program, Tim primarily teaches in the undergraduate program in psychology, and several courses in the mindfulness studies concentration. His main interest area is mindfulness and its effect on emotional, and social wellbeing. Tim is involved in several research projects, which explore how mindfulness develops emotional, and social learning, which leads to better adaptation and higher achievement in school. It has to be welcome to our show. Thank you very much.
Joi Patterson:Welcome, Dr. Pedigo. How are you today?
Tim Pedigo:I'm pretty good. You know, it's the end of the semester. So there's that usual flurry, but I seem to be charting my course pretty well.
Joi Patterson:But there's light at the end of the tunnel. And after this term, we can all take a sigh of relief. And I'm looking at your background, and it's making me feel better, already hopeless about some of that atmosphere that we need to bring into our
Tim Pedigo:lives. That's right, that I thought this was unique, and that this is in our back area of our meditation center. And the Buddha is like, he's having compassion, crying for people suffering.
Joi Patterson:Yeah, yes, I love it. And I know today we're going to talk about stress, we're going to talk about mindfulness. As I think about stress. I think sometimes we could use the word too lightly. And sometimes we don't even use the word appropriately. So if you could just start us off with what is stress? And how can we dissect what it is and what it means we
Tim Pedigo:just have this global term. It's like a beginning to say, You know what things are too much. But we then kind of go to action without a fuller analysis, if you will, of what the stress is. And more times than not what's involved, I think probably pretty strong or high level percentage of the stress is about ways in which whatever's going on in the external environment, triggers, feelings, and perceptions that cause us to really get into self critical mode, where we get we can get down on ourselves, and we just can get scared about, like whether we're going to meet our deadlines and then we start to ruminate, which doesn't help you know, in other words, it causes us to get more anxious. And it also then other things happen. Like we don't sleep as well. We start eating things we shouldn't. It's like working with our own triggers. And in our own minds is like such an important part of truly trying to address and deal with stress.
Amy Vujaklija:I want to ask about Processing stress. So what might be an appropriate way that we can process stress once we identify it?
Tim Pedigo:At this point at the university, I've been trained in cognitive based compassion training. And there's some modules there that actually address what you're talking about. Which, first of all, we try to locate what upset us, you know, when when we last upset? And yes, we can describe or recognize what it is that was going on the internal environment, but what are we thinking? What was their kind of negative and critical thought, if you can slow things down and really kind of investigate our own experience a little bit? What did we start to perceive from that moment that might be unrealistically negative? That's, that's an important term, you know, if you can kind of see, okay, I got overly negative there, right. And then the rumination and stress really started to build, then the good news on that is we can start to say, Okay, what would be more realistic, probably less negative, and probably a little more turns out fair to ourselves, you know, more more realistic in that way, but also maybe even compassionate. Like, I think, for example, with teachers now, the amount that they're being asked to do with COVID, all the online learning. Plus, you know, even without that, I think teaching is a tremendously demanding job. There's a tendency, like, I don't teach in K through 12. But at a university, the demands of the environment sometimes are unrealistic, and they can just go right into our minds thinking, we have to absolutely do everything, right. Plus, we add our own perfectionistic expectations to it all. So if we can catch that, now, and here's the important thing, it's not just about relieving stress, we actually will function better as teachers will do better.
Joi Patterson:So I'm interested in some of those physical cues. Because I don't always know if I'm feeling stressed. I think when I start drinking tea, wanting something to comfort me, especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed, those are my signs of stress. What are things that we can physically look at signs of being stressed? And I'm really interested in about signs for children? How do we know when children are stressed? What are those physical signs that we should look for? I
Tim Pedigo:think one of the telltale signs are there, how they can't sit still only mean that they just in that sense, they can't concentrate very long. That's one of the advantages. Kids Learning mindfulness and a lot of programs now that are just last night was learning about on classroom and that the Chicago public schools are utilizing among other programs, just to calm down, right. But they are very fidgety can't sit still. And then very reactionary, to ask him to do something. This is also adults, right? In terms of irritability. So that's kind of a behavioral. And then of course, sometimes there's, you can see other severe symptoms like aggression, there can be withdrawal, for sure, especially when it starts to tie in to trauma. And it does, when you have prom and you're under stress, there's a greater chance that that's going to be triggered as well. And so there's even a look that some kids can have, if they have trauma, it's kind of that dissociative stare. Were looking out many years ago that used to be misinterpreted as like, like something's wrong with them, they have a touch, even attention deficit, misconduct, misdiagnosis, really, it's the dissociated response to trauma. But then subjectively, what the person is feeling is while they feel their mind jumping off, there's tension in the body, stomach aches, headaches, you know, everybody has a different kind of place in the body. They experience these things. I my own personal story is lower back. And I usually when I'm teaching this, I say, Well, what's yours? And that's why it's really important if you're going to work with stress is you have to work with body awareness. Because a lot of people don't even know their stress. You're so right. I think that's what you're suggesting joy they don't. That's where we use in mindfulness, the body scan. Okay, let's start with the feet, our feet today. I'm trying to be gentle and aware. And it's like, Oh, back the shoulders. And part of it is meant to help calm those areas as well. But yeah, to get aware, it's just so easy to get in, especially for teachers into this really harsh agenda framework. I got to get all this done. And don't anybody get in my way.
Amy Vujaklija:You've mentioned the word compassion. And I love that, you know, when you're compassionate to yourself, you're to one another. But what does that mean? In education? What is a compassion oriented education system?
Tim Pedigo:What? Yeah, no, that's been a really important question or the other question that goes right with it or barbecue is What is the trauma informed the trauma responses, in terms of the students, you know, there's a full book called practicing presence by an educator teacher that she really talks about her whole journey with herself, getting beyond this kind of overwhelm, and finding compassion for herself. But what we think happens then, and this is when when we're involved in training, or pre service teachers, we really work on this quite a bit. Because when you can work with that you have a better chance of a natural kind of compassionate attitude towards the kids to, you still have all that you'd have to do. But you're able to let go of a little more and include the other hand, which is the relational attunement, the sense of like noticing what's going on in the kids, just like you've noticed with yourself, the sense of bringing a curiosity and wonder why they're feeling that stress today. And in that sense, it leads to some conversations and some ways to care about what they're feeling as well. And they feel it. There's evidence to believe that when that happens, you have like a classroom where the kids are feeling connected, that there it optimizes their learning.
Joi Patterson:And I guess that's why social emotional learning exercises in the classroom are so very important. But often as teachers, I think we don't do enough self care, even when we're trying to pay attention to our students, Amy and I, we were looking at a Padlet of teachers, hundreds of teachers were responding to this Padlet about their level of stress with remote teaching and learning. I can't tell you the number of times we read the word quit, or retire, or there. I mean, it's just really fed up. And just it was just overwhelming, you know, so I'm wondering, how do we have that self care and compassionate for ourselves when we're overwhelmed? And what do we do?
Tim Pedigo:It would help a little bit if you feel a little more support? Oh, yes, all of those things
Joi Patterson:were mentioned. Yeah, those external
Tim Pedigo:things, I just want to at least a name that right. Not just with teachers, but with the many people I work with, including because I trained clinical psych students, and we serve as teachers and so on. There's always this sense, I don't have time for self care, I've got so much to do. And I always think of when I'm working with someone to get them over them. And sure, they can have a good experience with self compassion or even compassion for others. But do they believe really, that it's going to help them with the overwhelm? Because if not, you know what really happens practically speaking, the meditation, the time to self care time is gone. It's just gone. And they have done, the agenda takes over. But I have found them becoming more successful and helping people learn about this to have a kind of radical limit, I am going to take this time whether I have things done or not that like I say what they find they stay with that approach long enough, they actually end up being more efficient and more effective. And they don't realize it's so much of the time. And that's used up. It's just this jumping around unable to focus this anxiety, this rumination and realize how much energy and time goes into that until after they've really devoted themselves in a radical way to still maintain that way of self care. And it's important to use self care approaches that are regenerative that is bring back your energy. We can all just go binge watch for a while I'm not against binge watching, per se. I do like a little TV here and there.
Joi Patterson:Yeah, kind of escape.
Tim Pedigo:Escape. Yeah. But what actually helps us to address what's going on in our minds and how these triggers are occurring, not just a mindfulness practice, of course, I think that's a good idea. You can do journaling, you can even converse with someone and what might be happening in a conversation could really help you get aware, anyway, of like, try trying to disengage from what you've gotten entangled with there. So when you approach it again, you're fresh, you're feeling like you have a new perspective. Partly is it again, it's not a gotta get all this done or die. That's kind of the burnout framework, shall we call it that, if there can be I'm going to do a quality, I'm going to do what I can in my best way and then see where we are, right. And I've been practicing that way for a while. And amazingly, I get things done to try to micro analyze that. And then here's the important thing. I tend to enjoy it more like the reasons for what I why I came into what I'm doing. Come back to me, so that that sense of satisfaction, right with what you're doing is so important. So that's why this topic is so I think important, because we can't all these teachers already we had such a high level of teachers leaving the field after five years, right. I can't imagine what it's going to be after COVID Right. I mean from what We're hearing. And I know that that's probably administrators are concerned about why they shouldn't be right.
Amy Vujaklija:It's interesting that you are talking about rejuvenation and not just doing something that might be binge watching TV or just a replacement for your concentration on a class, I remember that one of the most rejuvenating experiences I had was during a summer institute, when we focused on our writing and community and peer experiences in publishing something that was a narrative, not a research paper. So that was really rejuvenating, you reminded me of that. And that's something I hope I can return to, you know, teachers are pressured to focus on curriculum and the needs of the student impact the delivery of that curriculum. So how might these mindfulness practices affect how we perceive the child as
Tim Pedigo:so yes, the, we have our curriculum, right. And we have our good goals around getting a certain thing done getting to a certain point that the students and then we have the disruption. And we have the ways in which other students or something else. So now what can often happen from that if you're primarily have a curriculum, focus, that's, that's all you have, instead of what I would call a relational mindfulness approach. And what that means is that approach, you say something is going to come up, and there's always going to be disruption. And it could be a student's, it's going to be something but then you're going to see that it's also see that what I think about a mindfulness social emotional approach versus just a generic one, is you're wait waiting for those moments where then you have an opportunity to apply that as a real life application of social emotional process everywhere from being able to talk about what's going on in the classroom, what the feelings might be, even the teachers feelings in that moment, and be able to do it not with like, this frustration, This shouldn't have happened, and which often leads to blame, including self blame, what's wrong with me, but a sense of, okay, here we go. Here's one of those moments. I'm like, I didn't know what it was going to be. But it's okay, how do I just kind of open to it and see the opportunity here for learning? For all of us for the kids involved? Yes, you have structured SEL curriculum sessions, even the mindfulness is done that way. But then there's also the sense of presence, I'm talking about, it's like, you value how you are with your kids. And nobody's perfect, right? We don't have our reactive days. To the point, though, that you're valuing those moments, too, not just the planned curriculum.
Amy Vujaklija:Well, let me follow up with that. How do we deal with difficult behaviors?
Tim Pedigo:Yeah, and especially since I've been involved in talking about, you know, what actually is a trauma informed trauma responsive approach, needless to say, and my guess is most teachers have this practice, you want to get to know your students right from the beginning. And you might have some suspicion of those that are going to be very difficult. And sometimes even you know that from other teachers, this is where I think we have to spend a time if we can ahead of time sort of getting underneath the difficult behavior, meaning what goes on for this child, you know, what is it because there's always something that some fear, they're reacting to some kind of maybe even sometimes feeling that they're going to be a failure, or maybe foolish, there's a lot of shame that's connected with trauma, they're going to feel humiliated. Even if in a situation, sometimes you can't do their behavior kind of leads you to have to set limits, or maybe they have to leave the classroom, right? Or you have to be able to be firm with your limits still. Right, right. But when it's we're not taken away from that reality. But what we're saying though, whether you've got to know them before this or not, take some time to see if you can get underneath it, and see if you can understand a little more about what might be going on there.
Joi Patterson:Right. So So GSU has really embraced mindfulness. I think it's wonderful. In fact, the early childhood and I believe their elementary education programs, they take a couple of courses in mindfulness. Why do you think that integration of mindfulness in the curriculum was so important? Do you know what has been some of the outcomes of implementing that in the curriculum? What has been the outcome for the teacher candidates and for the students that they serve? So
Tim Pedigo:that's one of the articles that I have what it's, I don't know, we've been doing this for six years now or so we've gotten better and better of them because they had the experience that he did bringing it into the classroom and once they graduate, right, and I mean, they experience it for themselves, then you know where the rubber meets the road. what is what? How does it integrate with their teaching? What we need to do like some longitudinal research in that sense, right? More and more when they see that the schools are valuing this too. And they then make attempts, and oh, I have a whole background in this. And they actually have a sense of how to integrate it in with teaching. So that's a very thing. I'm talking about how because you know, teachers were not trained in any of this stuff. But they, these newer teachers have had that opportunity. So they think about exactly the model I just articulated. With one hand you have your curriculum and the other, you know, you have a sense of what's going to come up not just mindfulness, but relational mindfulness, and how you're going to try to use this as an SEL moment, they very much have internalized that.
Joi Patterson:A couple of things I want to ask you is the difference between mindfulness and meditation because we've heard about meditation for so many years. And I know Amy has some questions for you. But before we go, I want you to think about this, I do want you to take us through a quick exercise mindfulness at the end. But quickly, can you explain the difference between mindfulness and meditation? Yes,
Tim Pedigo:thank you for that question, actually. Good point. So mindfulness is an orientation towards yourself in the world, you're trying to maintain, not just an awareness of what is actually arising in the present moment, but also as much as you can an open non judgmental approach, not that you're not going to make discernments, about what you need to do. You are hopefully better, because you have this broader sense of what's happening within you and around you, which includes both behavior, perceptions, feelings, and it's usually that what differs with a mindfulness approach is yes, you, you know, you have your ideas and your thoughts, but it has a little more of a relational, intuitive approach to responding. That's why I emphasize how it fits with relating to students, technically, we could say it's non judgmental awareness of the present moments, of course, is always changing. So you, when something happened back there, and you're trying to not obsess, you're trying to stay here in this moment. So but that has developed, that doesn't happen, just because you decided you want to do it, I mean, to some degree, intention is really important. The muscle building process, if you want to use an analogy here, basically, when you're meditating, you're trying to keep your mind on the present. And you're using the breath. One, there's many different types of meditation, but one most common is the city and breath meditation. We're trying to keep your mind on the breath, which keeps you in the moment, by the way, connects you to your your body, no back to that awareness of stress business. Generally, if you can stay with that long enough, it's not easy, especially at first, when you're trying to, after a certain amount of time, defers most people, at first it takes 10 to 20 minutes, then what kicks in is what's called the relaxation response. There's a kind of, okay, almost like an acceptance. And it's not just a mental, it's probably more importantly, even a physical sense. Okay, this is where I met, this is what's and what that does is it makes you suddenly more present or available, or able to work with what's going on in the present moment. That's where relationships are occurring. But that you can try other meditations, like walking meditation, I Give students choices about what to do. Eating meditation, you can just spend a little bit of time eating a tangerine are just very slowly focusing only on the texture. I've had one student who said I, you know, I can't do this city meditation, can I do swimming, meditation, so I said, Sure. So he would just pay attention to the water and the movement is I was arms as he was swimming. And I think he felt it was useful. So you can be creative with it. And find ways that it helps you. Focus, stay in the moments, returned to your body, relax a little more. That's the point. And then you get those circuits going in your your brain. The idea then is that it keeps going when you're doing other things in your day. Well,
Amy Vujaklija:I want to encourage our listeners to be reading what you've written and have out there about mindfulness. What are you reading who inspires you?
Tim Pedigo:I've really I can say I've really enjoyed teaching this course and what's called cognitive based compassion training. Not just because I enjoy the the teaching of it, it's mindful was to but then it also does some skills around developing compassion for self and others, which it's a program that's out at Emory University. I used to start off by just doing basic breath meditation with people and you know, these other forms of it. But what's done here, it's a guided meditation. Because, you know, I think people might need more guidance, just to have like a soft voice, sort of like saying, Okay, now let's go to this next step teaching knows, I find that students, they stay with it more that and they get into it, and they get over that hump and more. The whole field of mindfulness has kind of moved in some mindfulness, dash compassion, I
Joi Patterson:was going to talk about your voice, which is very calming. And Amy, and I have never been this calm in an interview. We are repeating, you're being behavior, and we're behaving very calm. I think that that's important. You have demonstrated mindfulness to my students a couple of times, and I kind of in short, explain it as sometimes we meditate, we ignore things. Mindfulness is really paying attention and embracing things. And our couple of minutes that we have remaining. Dr. Tim Pedigo, I was hoping that you could take us through a quick mindfulness exercise, of
Tim Pedigo:course, yes. I'll even use my bell here.
Joi Patterson:How wonderful. Our listeners are gonna get a kick out of this. Yeah, so
Tim Pedigo:here it is. Let's just start though with posture. This is where you want to get a good kind of healthy posture, where your feet are on the ground, your hands on your legs, and then upright stance, not rigid, shoulders back a little bit, your head is even chin is a little down, relax. And just notice, you know, is there anything that feels tense that you can maybe just like a little tension to begin with. And take just a couple deep breaths, just intentional Breathe, breathe in, hold it a second release. And just inviting whatever kind of surface stress that can be just like, almost say to yourself this, okay, I'm gonna spend just a few minutes, this is good, almost like getting yourself ready, warm. So as I ring the bell, what I want you to do is just start by focusing on the sound of it until you can't hear it anymore. So hearing it just by paying attention to a single sensation like that, you're already starting a concentration. Now we're going to shift Let your breath be natural. And the focus on that is what does it feel like in your body worn to a feeling sense instead of a hearing. And you feel it in your abdomen. Just like those thoughts come and go and get rid of them. We're going to try to keep the system the moment I want you to see the exhalation as an opportunity to let go assuming like and say there's some stress, like go a little more just this is a time for you to not happen. This is a time for you to let down.
Joi Patterson:It felt like a mini vacation. I can't say that I ever spend that much time with myself in a day. So that was a great exercise. Amy, I know that you can attest to that, too. Just taking those few minutes of just spending time with yourself. I want to put a disclaimer out there. Hopefully none of our listeners are doing this while they're driving.
Amy Vujaklija:Although he said you could do lots of creative things while you are mindful of your activity, maybe that focus letting go of the stress. Maybe that would help people be better drivers and get rid of that road rage. Yeah, getting
Joi Patterson:you through traffic.
Tim Pedigo:We've paid attention to your driving right, in a relaxed way that's improve your driving, as opposed to doing a breath meditation. Like are you closing your eyes or something? Right. That's what you're doing.
Amy Vujaklija:Right, exactly. So are there any final tips that you would like to share with our listeners before we leave today?
Tim Pedigo:Yeah, like let's say right now you're feeling like you can't quite work it in. You still can try to work towards that. But you can also take what I would call a sacred pauses Just times where you're between one thing or another and you just stop and you just ask yourself, am I feeling like caught up in something I don't like
Joi Patterson:that a Sacred Pause.
Amy Vujaklija:Yes, thank you for being with us today. That is what we will do in between our podcast episodes. And our next meeting is a sacred pause. And I encourage our listeners to do the same. But I appreciate hearing about your work and these tips and guiding us through that exercise. I feel so much more relaxed. Thank you.
Joi Patterson:Thank you, Dr. Pedigo. Welcome.
Amy Vujaklija:Thank you for listening to teaching and leading with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy. Visit our website at govst.edu/teaching and leading podcast to see the show notes from this episode.
Joi Patterson:We appreciate Governor state universities work behind the scenes to make publishing possible. Stay tuned for more episodes with Dr. Amy and Dr. Joy
