Courtney Edwards – Championing Mindful Well-Being

Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast. Today we have with us. Courtney.

And Courtney is here to talk to us about behavioral health, life and relationship coaching that she does because she believes in the mindfulness well-being every day she is.

Also the host.

Of the pragmatic alchemist, no. The Pragmatic Alchemy podcast.

Sorry about that.

That's OK.

So welcome to the show, Courtney. Let's hear all about you.

Thank you, Joe.

Thank you. It's so nice to be here and this is exciting because as a podcast host, I'm usually on the other side of the conversation. So this is it's nice to be in the hot seat for.

Once, but yeah, I am a certified board certified coach or certified relationship coach, certified meditation teacher and a podcaster. So I do a whole bunch of different things, but the thread that I think unites all of those activities is this mission of promoting mindful well-being.

In everyday life.

And I really.

Shifted my training. My formal training is in Western psychotherapy. I'm mental health counselor by, by trade and.

Really started to shift it. Shift away from that modality due to some concerns about the way pathology is handled in our current mental health system. I think we pathologized a lot of really normal responses to the challenges in our world and so coaching is a much better fit for me because it.

Allows me to.

Remove that.

That stigma of that there's something wrong with you, and look at more. Let's how can we just bring more good in because if you're struggling, maybe that's really the answer not sort of looking at where you might be disordered or whatever.

And then that.

Was really amplified and confirmed during COVID because what I realized is the concerns folks were coming to me with, I couldn't coach.

That away I wouldn't have been able to psychotherapy it away because.

It was all.

Again, a really normal response to just really challenging circumstances. And so that just really kind of confirmed and cemented my well-being focus and trying to help people learn where they can bring more of that into their life on a daily basis. And instead of focusing so much on what might be wrong, so to speak.

And that brings up a.

Really good point that the difference between coaching and psychotherapy.

Yeah. Yeah. So my understanding of it and the way that I approach it is when I worked as a psychotherapist in the past, there was an emphasis on disease.

Disorder. A lot of you know, even psychotherapist who use more progressive and contemporary modalities, there is still some elements of a medical model, a diseased based model. And so I've always sort of viewed psychotherapy as trying to.

To fix something that's broken and a lot of that work is focused on the past things that happened to the individual, that sort of brought them to this place of distress and crisis in their life. And as a coach, I'm much more present and forward focused. I do believe that the things we experienced in our past.

Shape who we are and have some bearing on the ways that we might.

People. But I've also seen both in my personal history and in the work I've done as a psychotherapist, that you can spend a lot of time spinning your wheels trying to figure out how exactly what exactly was the thing which trauma was it that led to this thing that we're now calling bipolar disorder or depression or anxiety.

Or whatever.

There it is, and so as a coach, it allows me to really look more forward of just, well, this is where you are and I don't know why and I'm sure there are 1,000,000 reasons why big and small. Really, let's look at what tools and skills you have within you that we can draw out and put an emphasis on so that you can move forward.

With more ease and maybe without so much challenge, I also believe a lot of the crises that we face aren't because there's something inherently wrong.

With us but.

Best that our coping skills maybe are inadequate for the circumstances that we're facing and so coaching is a very skills based protocol and so.

It helps me sit with somebody and say what is something actionable that we could do right in this moment, things that you can change in your life today, whether it's the way that you're thinking, the way that you're talking to yourself, environmental factors, the way that you're caring for yourself, but actual concrete things that we can do to move forward with a little bit more ease.

And a little bit more gentleness, and again without.

That focus of.

There must be something wrong with you because you're having a hard time.

Right, right. And that's so important that just labeling something is not going to fix it and giving people the tools to actually make a change like right now. So they can see something tangible happening and changing in their life something as simple as just being aware of your thoughts can.

Dramatically change how your day goes and and recognizing that you you're not responsible for reacting to everything that passes through your brain.

So true if we could, yeah, if I.

Could teach that to everybody in the world.

I think we would have.

A much different experience as humans I one of the things that really drew me into this is my own meditation practice, and I often will describe mindfulness and.

And let me back up a little bit. I see meditation and mindfulness as not synonyms, and a lot of people do kind of approach those as synonyms. And I think that meditation is a practice and a tool that teaches us how to be more mindful.

And the goal of mindfulness in my life and the way I teach it, is to take that moment between the thing that happened and your reaction to it, and spread it out and make it a little bit broader and a little bit.

Deeper so that you can respond instead of reacting. Because I do think that we live in a very reactionary kind of society and I think that's a lot of what.

Causes us to stress.

And that's we take it even to our thoughts. Something passes through our head and we react.

To that I.

Was like ohh my gosh.

And then it sends all.

These chemicals rushing through our.

Body and it, and then suddenly we're just like.

In anxiety or depression, or cortisol is shooting through our body and we're we have no way to release it and we.

And you know, sometimes people just, they get so caught up in just this thought that they're actually physically shaking because their body is trying to get rid of the energy that you just created with a thought and reacting to it rather than just saying, yeah, that's a thought. Maybe I can think something else.

When I came across that.

Just that that little tiny practice, it changed my life so dramatically because.

It was like.

Ohh I don't have to.

Think about that thought.

It's just a thought.

And whatever reaction or.

A planned action I take about it is up to me and I could do nothing with it.

I could just let it go.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, listeners might be.

Familiar with the work of John Cabots in, but he is a Buddhist psychotherapist who is credited with establishing mindfulness based stress reduction. And I remember listening to an interview with him a while ago where he talked about your conscious awareness as the blue sky and your thoughts are just birds.

And cloud.

Just going across the sky and then you could just watch them enter that frame of reference and then leave it, you know, and that we know how to do that because we do it. If we look up at a bird crossing the sky, it's not there and then it's there and then it's gone again and to be able to just sort of approach our thoughts with that same kind of equanimity and and.

An attachment and I do. I agree with what you just said. It changed my life to be able to finally do that and not get so caught up in my own thought cycles.

Because I have a.

Pretty nasty inner critic that had plagued me for most of my life, and so even just understanding I didn't have to listen to that any.

More you know that that was a choice.

Yeah, it's like you can change the channel.

Yes, literally.

Kind of that.

Simple I started doing meditation with.

I can't remember the name of it. It's a it's a meditation app.

Headspace. I'm so glad I remember this.

And and it was.

Like a 3 minute meditation and believe me 3 minutes. It's really long when you're first starting to meditate and and and they talk about thoughts, just brushing them away with your feather. You have this feather in your head and and that just stuck with me for a long time and.

When I you.

Know everybody has those thoughts.

But when I realized that I could just.

You know, brush them.

Away and feather isn't it's not very substantial.

Therefore, the thought is not all that substance.

Right, right.

Does it and I have total control over it, so the meditation is an amazing tool. It just.

It is.

You know you're an instructor.

Well, and even.

More because I'm a practitioner, you know, definitely I became an instructor because I took so much personal benefit from it and found it to be so.

So just life altering that I wanted to be able to share.

That and one.

Of the things you know, this idea about how we respond to and react to the thoughts we have are the things that we experience. I think one of the things that meditation also really offered outside of the seeded practice is this concept of beginner's mind.

UM.

And I.

Think you know? In retrospect, I think I've always been a very curious person. I like learning for learning sake. You know, I teach as an adjunct because that's the way I figured out how to be a professional student and actually have them pay me for a while. So, you know, I do have a very inquisitive nature. But this idea, beginner's mind.

Is, you know what is it to just approach?

Which every new circumstance like you don't know that you just literally have no idea. Instead of going at it like I must figure this out, I must solve this problem. I must get it right. I must have the solution to just say, well, I wonder. I wonder what that might be about and this this concept of curiosity has really become super fundamental.

To me, as a person and something that I try to offer to clients, whether it's.

Working with them in relationship coaching and they think that their partner is acting out and I'm like.

What if you just?

Approach that with curiosity. Why might my partner be acting this way? Why might they be struggling with this feeling? Or you know, if we're struggling at work or in our own identity or in our community to just say, like, I wonder. I wonder what might actually be going on there instead of making these hard and fast judgments and evaluations like we.

Us. No, and it must be like.

This and I it to me it's sort of like if we use the phrase I wonder it can often lead to a sense of wonder which is related to awe and mystery and all of.

That feels so.

Life affirming to me and to just be curious, and then be surprised by what you.

Learn. I think that's such a sweet little elixir to encounter so many of the things that we struggle with.

I think in the world as it has been up.

To a few years ago.

And I think COVID actually had a big impact on this. People were starting to be very polarized and and they had to have, they had to be right.

Instead of justice being curious.

And you know, just being right, really.

Is it more important to be right than?

To lose a relationship.

Is it more important to be right than to be curious to wonder? Maybe there is a different answer, maybe it maybe.

Both sides are right.

Maybe both sides are wrong. I don't know, and it's OK not to know. It's OK to sit in the.

Right.

The what ifs. It could be anything.

And I think that people got so.

The polarization was so intense that a lot of people just snap back to.

The middle and thought.

I'm not going to.

Be anywhere I don't have to be anywhere and I think it's open to people's minds to the possibility of just being curious and allowing others to have their own opinion about things and it's like it's OK. It doesn't make a difference in the realm of.

You think?

Right, right. And I think even beyond it being OK to not know, I think there could be an element of excitement in not knowing right, because now it means there's something to uncover and that might actually be really exciting and something never before thought of, you know, for that particular individual.

So you know, just really being so open hearted and open minded to that process of curiosity I think can really change folks worldview. And I think it can soften the edges on some of the things that we struggle with. It's not going to eliminate the challenges that we face, but it might open us up to a different.

Pathway towards.

Reconciliation with some of those struggles.

And and towards exploring what?

Your purpose is.

Because when you're so.

Caught up and I have to be right. I have to be right.

I can't make a mistake. It closes the door on opportunities to try things that may have, you know, fit, not fit in your other paradigm because you're trying to conform to this.

This shape, whatever it is to satisfy your inner critic that says this is how the world has to be and and anything that rocks that.

Makes a difference to who I am fundamentally, and that that's just a recipe for anxiety and depression because you're never.

Going to match.

Up to even your own expectations.

Right.

Whereas just being open allows you.

To explore the opportunities and explore.

That what makes sense to you and how you want to move through the world and how you.

Want reality to?

Look for you, and ultimately that's all.

That matters is.

How it looks for you?

Right. It's so true. And that shape that you mentioned a moment ago, just so often, it's not the shape that you conjured. It's the one that somebody else told you should be your family of origin, your educational system, your community society writ large.

They still often folks are trying to contort themselves into a shape. It's not even the shape that they want. They've just never approached it with curiosity to say, well, I wonder, I wonder who I really am or who I want to be or what I want this life to look like. And so even taking that moment to do that, I think is really powerful.

And the other thing I thought about when you were just talking is how meditation practice. See, I said a few minutes ago that I.

See them as sort of you.

Two parts to a process, the seated meditation practice I think is really powerful tool in letting go of expectation because it's.

The way I think about it, and I often describe it, is it's not something you're going to master. There's so many other endeavors.

You want to ride a bike? You want to learn how to play a sport. You want to learn how to play guitar. You can learn a guitar piece and perfect it and play it perfectly 99 times out of 100, and you can sit down to meditate and maybe.

It's going to be what feels like.

A good sit.

50% of the time and the rest of the time, something's going to itch or there's going to be a nose a.

Noise in the.

Background or you're going to be unable to quiet the monkeys in your mind or, you know, just a million different things are going to happen and and it's still going to be a successful sit.

And I think being able to sort of hold those two things is true, that it could on.

Paper for this idea of what we think meditation should look like. It could go completely off kilter, and yet you still did it. And that makes it successful. And to be able to say ohh these can both be true at the same time. I think that is what really helps us then be more mindful in our lives because.

We learn to just accept things as they are.

And not trying to continue to contort into some shape that somebody?

Else told us.

The shape was supposed to be.

And looking for the good. It's just it just, you know, you can have a meditation where you are like, yeah, there's lots of thoughts going through my head. And I can't just. I can't just sit here quietly and.

I can't get.

To that place that I like to go. And for me, I have this place and this.

This experience I like to have when I meditate, and I can't always get there, you know, the nose itches, there's noise, the.

Puppy wants to go outside. You know, whatever. There's just like something that's keeping you from experiencing, that that great, that great spot. But each.

Each time you sit down and do it.

You experience something?

And you need to take away from.

It that I?

I a I did it, I practiced and it's all about practicing. It's not about.

Killing it's.

OK.

Like you were saying that with the guitar piece.

That the just.

The sitting down and doing it and then thinking about, you know what, what did you accomplish with it? What? What thought did you have that was really positive that you can just kind of?

Savor throughout the day.

Yeah, it's so I.

I remember sitting with somebody that I was doing meditation instruction with and I said, how did it go? And they said I sat for 10 minutes and and probably at least eight times, I noticed that my thoughts were wandering away and I had to bring them back to the breath. I was like, that's amazing. That was 8 times that you did the thing like you got it.

You got it right. And I use air quotes because, you know, I don't think there's a right or a wrong way to meditate. But it is the whole purpose of the practice is that noticing.

Just to be able to notice that this is what my thoughts do when I let them run away on their own and that's how you reinforce this idea of it's just a thought. Then it's just a thought. It doesn't have to mean everything. It doesn't have to be so impactful in.

How we move through the world, how happy we find ourselves to be.

You know, it's just it's just a it's just a thought.

Yeah, they don't.

They don't require reactions.

No, and.

In fact, it's probably a good idea to not.

You have.

Yeah, you do have a.

Group that you offer meditation in the pragmatic spirit. How does that?

Work and look and.

Yeah. So it's an on again off again endeavor, I am ramping up for on again which I'm excited about. We meditated together in person prior to COVID and then.

Probably after COVID last fall I ran an 8 week session that was sort of my attempt at.

Bridge format and that went mostly well, but part of the issue was I'm in the Hudson Valley area of New York, very, very expensive here. And so my coaching office was not big enough to host a group in person. So then I was paying rent and renting space to run the group.

All that to say, I just moved into a new space in June that is big enough to start hosting a group in person, and so that is my intention into the fall and winters to start running a group together and bringing people together to be able to share in that practice.

And then in addition to that, I have a section on my website where folks can utilize some of the resources that I put together during the lockdown portion of COVID. You had mentioned the three minute time frame for meditating and throughout most of the pandemic I was releasing.

Two-minute meditations.

You might be able to already tell I'm chatty, so many of them went over 2 minutes once I really got into my groove, but many of those are still available on my website and on my YouTube page for folks that would like to be connected, even if it's virtually so. They're there. We're currently in a little bit of a lull in terms of organized.

Activities. But those meditation resources are also there. I also on my website curated list of books and different podcasts and other resources that I have.

Found really helpful.

In my own practice, to be able to and to be able to share those is really helpful as well.

That's awesome. And we'll make sure that we put all the links for people to get in contact with you in the.

Show notes is there.

Yeah, that would be great.

Is there anything you'd like to leave the?

Audience with today.

I would just encourage everybody to take one moment, preferably outside. If you live in a place where it's conducive to being outdoors and just be curious, you know, just look around. I saw a meme one time on Instagram where I really do think that's where I get most of my best.

Content from other people's memes. But it says something along the lines of moving through the world like you're a benevolent alien.

And what would it be like to walk outside where you live right now and just try to imagine what it would look like if you had just gotten plopped down onto Earth and it was all brand new? And my guess is that it would be pretty miraculous and not something you would take for granted as much as many of us tend to take.

Our day-to-day lives for granted, so if there's one thing that you could start doing in your life today, it could be inviting in some more curiosity.

I so appreciate your time today. Thank you for joining me.

Thank you. I had a great time.