This Psychotherapist Started a Pandemic Mindfulness Practice and Recommends You Do Too

My mindfulness meditation practice begins

When the Covid-19 Pandemic really started ramping up in March 2020, downtown Seattle quickly became a ghost town.  From my office, perched above the Amazon spheres, I could hardly fathom the quiet and emptiness on a typically buzzing 6th Avenue.  I didn’t spend much time with the imagery though; I shifted into overdrive to pack up my office and transition my psychotherapy practice from in-person to online services.  I needed to keep seeing my clients from afar to support their mental health and to maintain my business.  I hoped it would be a short-term plan, but my expectations for a return to normal slowly faded along with everyone else’s. 

At the time, I was very interested in mindfulness meditation.  Prior to the pandemic, I had read some books about meditation, attended quite a few trainings about integrating mindfulness into psychotherapy, and tried meditating a few times with the help of a couple meditation apps.  I liked meditation and was impressed by so much research concluding seemingly endless benefits for mental health, but never committed myself to practice. 

The Covid-19 Pandemic provided me the incentives to begin my mindfulness journey in earnest: additional free time resulting from my newly commute-free home psychotherapy practice, increased anxiety associated with family safety concerns and family-life structural adjustments, and an invitation from Headspace offering healthcare workers a free trial subscription to their guided meditation app. (Thanks, Headspace!  I promise I’m not on their payroll.)  I focused on the habit-building advice that I routinely offer my clients: think of the new behavior as an experiment, commit to 14 days, monitor the impact, and then revisit the commitment and adjust as needed.  I completed my first daily meditation on April 4th, 2020. 

I never imagined that I would continue 15-minute daily mindfulness meditations for eight full months, only missing two days while camping (at the time, I did not know Headspace required a wifi connection to stream guided meditations and wasn’t prepared with a downloaded version)!  In December 2020 and January 2021, I missed three days in each month.  Since wrapping up ten months striving for daily mindfulness meditation in February 2021, I have relaxed into a 4-5 meditations/week practice schedule that endures to this day.

What is guided mindfulness meditation like?

There are a wide variety of guided meditations.  In Headspace, the meditations follow the same basic structure.  First, you settle into the meditation- ground yourself in a comfortable position, notice your surroundings, check in with your body and emotions, and establish an intention.

Next, you place your attention on something- your breath, the feelings in your body, a visualization of light, a question, an image, or a memory.  The goal of the practice is to maintain attention on the designated focus.  Thoughts and feelings arise and distract you, and you simply return your attention to the focus when you notice the distraction.  You try not to make a big deal of the distracting thought with another thought like “that’s so weird,” “why am I thinking of them?” “what’s wrong with me?”, or “I’m so bad at meditation.” After all, that additional layer of thinking is just more distraction to your mindfulness.  Instead, you simply return your attention to the focus.  Simple, but not easy! 

Finally, the end of the meditation provides a moment to stop being mindful and allow your mind to do what it wants to do (often it just rests- so cool!) and gentle guidance back to your surroundings.  Ahhh….

What’s the impact of a mindfulness meditation practice?

Mindfulness meditation practice has improved my life in several ways.  Meditation provides an amazing self-care ritual.  The 15-minute meditations (you can practice for less or more time) result in a different experience each time.  Some sessions are smoother than others, but regardless of the day’s practice, I almost always feel calmer, lighter, or more focused when I finish. 

In addition to feeling better immediately after meditating, the practice and principles of mindfulness have generalized into my day-to-day approach to life and providing psychotherapy to my clients.  I’m able to stay in the present moment much more often.  I don’t get so distracted by old negative habitual thoughts or worries about the future.  I am more focused and maintain my intention more consistently.  If I get distracted, the distraction usually doesn’t persist so long as it did before.  I ruminate much less frequently.  Since anxious and depressed thoughts don’t get ahold of me the way they used to, my mood is generally more content and calmer with fewer and briefer bouts of worry and sadness.

Why is starting a mindfulness meditation practice such a great first step in therapy?

Mindfulness provides a different approach to relating with your own thoughts.  You learn that a thought is just a thought, that your mind has a habit of conjuring thoughts up with reckless abandon, and that you sometimes get overly attached to unhelpful thoughts that impact you in a negative way.  Mindfulness increases your ability to observe and be objective about your thoughts.  Your thinking becomes more flexible.  You increase your ability to consider different perspectives.  This is a wonderful state of mind for engaging in counseling, healing, and growing!  If you decide to start therapy with this Pandemic-prompted mindfulness practitioner, expect an early invitation to try mindfulness meditation yourself!