 and welcome to physical therapy for a better life. I'm your host Christine Lenders, board-certified orthopedic physical therapy specialist. Today we are going to talk about how to get a handle on your stress, clear your mind, and improve your life. I'd like to give a very special welcome to Dr. Pauline Lucas, founder of Phoenix Yoga and Meditation, doctor of physical therapy, women's health and pelvic floor specialist, mindfulness and meditation instructor, and mindful living coach. Welcome to physical therapy for a better life, Pauline. I am so grateful to have you here. Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here with you. I wish it was in person and I could be right there with you in Hawaii, but here I am in sunny Phoenix instead. This is amazing and for the audience, I met Dr. Pauline Lucas. I didn't even officially meet her. I watched her in a presentation in California on mindfulness meditation at a special sections physical therapy conference and it forever just opened my eyes and changed me and how I approach physical therapy and offer what I can now offer my patients. So please tell us, Pauline, you're a physical therapist. What led you into the mindfulness realm? How did you get started? Well, it's a really long story that I'm going to keep fairly short, but I have to say that I remember you two actually from that conference, even though there were 300 people in the audience, right? But I remember you looking really, really happy when I was guiding you through a meditation. I remember that. I remember that because you were asking us to think about, I don't know, our favorite vacation spot or the time when we felt the most and we had our eyes closed and I felt everything kind of relaxed and I grinned and I remember you said, you grinned and like melted. What did you think about? And that impacted me. That was the first couple minutes of that two hour talk. Right. And I remember that you actually said you were on a beach somewhere. I know it. Look at me. Now I'm in Hawaii. I know that dreams do come true, huh? So yeah, so thank you for the question. So yeah, it's a long story and it started with the very first time I was exposed to meditation was when I was pregnant. And it was my second pregnancy and the first few months of pregnancy are not easy for me. I was just really feeling sick. And the only time I felt really okay was if I were to completely relax, which didn't happen too much, you know, because I had a child and a job. And then I remember one day I was at my job and one of my patients who was typically a little bit grumpy, let's say, I came to work and I see her sitting and she is glowing. And, you know, I was curious. So I, you know, I just asked her like, let's call her Patty. I said, hey, Patty, so what's new? And she said, I learned to meditate. And I said, well, tell me more. And so she told me about get learning to meditate with the lady in the neighborhood. And, you know, and I mean, she was a different person. And I thought I need that. So a week later, I was in meditation training. I learned to meditate. It really helped me throughout the pregnancy, throughout giving birth. And now I had two babies and a job and I stopped meditating. So, but then things got difficult because a year later, I found out that I had breast cancer. And so now I had a four-year-old child, I had a one-year-old child and a diagnosis of breast cancer. And I was in my mid 30s. And when somebody asked me what are you going to do, the very first thing that came to mind was I'm going back to that meditation teacher. I think I need to meditate. And so that's what I did. And, you know, I was also at that time starting to go through divorce. And so, you know, young mother, all my family lived abroad in Europe and I'm in the United States. And yeah, so there was a lot to decide, a lot that I was going through. And, you know, I needed, I needed peace of mind to make good decisions and to walk through this in a way that was helpful. And I tell you what meditation was key. And it helped me to navigate that really difficult time. And so I'm sure you're like that as well, that as a healthcare provider, whatever you learn you want to teach. Yeah. So I started teaching from that point on. And yeah, and I continue to teach. I continue to feel like that's like that meditation is a foundation for a good life. Wow. Wow, that gave me chills. Meditation is a foundation for a good life. No. That's, that's amazing. And I do agree because watching your talk, I've even done a couple shows inspired by your talk talking about the brain chemistry and things that can change when you're under chronic stress. And that really opened my eyes because I had just moved to New York City. And it was, it was a very different life than I'd had in California. And I felt very isolated. I was super stressed out about multiple different issues in my life. And I remembered what you said about, you know, the different brain organs and how under chronic stress, the MRI scan showed sizes of different brain organs had been altered. And then the studies on the meditation that were, I think every study is probably like 90 days. But, but if you do 30 minutes of meditation, let's say for 90 days, they did the rescans and showed the difference. And I used to use that as an example to my patients to try to encourage them to meditate. And I would also tell them that that's the study, but literally I did these five minute meditations when I was at my hit in my threshold, like I didn't think I could take another minute. And I was bringing my threshold down with five minutes every day. So I was trying to just encourage them that that's a an achievable, comfortable goal to just five minutes, you know what I mean? Even though I didn't do a study, but five minutes changed my life every day. And I was handling situations and I was caring better for my patients than my aggravation level was gone. Like that glow that you said that she had, I felt after I did my mindfulness meditation. Yeah. And then you're bringing up such a good point, you know, at five minutes. Because here's the thing, I always, when I teach, I always compare mindfulness and meditation with lifting weights to degree because to impart, because I work with physical therapists a lot and with patients, and they get that analogy, right? And so I say, you know, when you go to the gym, you don't feel like, okay, I'm going to now get strong in one time and I'm going to like do three hours of these exercises. I mean, you know, that would be a miserable experience. You start slow, or if you want to run a marathon, you start, you know, with walking or you go very gradual. And I believe the same holds true for meditation that a little bit consistently is way better than now and then sitting down and like, okay, I'm going to meditate for two, three hours because it's agony, you know, that it's not going to work for most people. So just doing a little bit and then gradually progressing. There is an ideal time, which typically is 20 minutes, but that's for some people that's not going to work just like, you know, jogging for 20 minutes isn't going to work for everybody. You know, sometimes we need to start with less. And like this morning, I had a busy morning and I said, five minutes it is. As soon as I, as the alarm went, I sat on the edge of my bed, put my feet on the floor and I meditated right there for five minutes and that was it. You know, that was the time I had. So you can be very flexible. But what I think is really important is to actually explain a little bit like what is meditation and what is mindfulness, right? Yeah. So I didn't know the term mindfulness at all when, when I started teaching meditation that came later, maybe like, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, I learned about mindfulness and I was like, well, what's the difference? Is that the same as meditation? Is it different? So what I learned since then is that mindfulness is really a way of going through life. You know, like we can be, you and I can be really mindful right now and those watching and listening can be mindful, just really being very present and observing what is going on and their experience and our experience and being really with whatever we're doing, we're very much aware of what we're doing and how we feel while we're doing it. You know, so it's like being present with what we're doing with a kind focus, like without criticism, without judgment, simply observing what is going on. And that sounds really easy, but it's not because often we have this running commentary in our head, like, I hate this, you know, this person is doing whatever, you know, or about ourselves, you know. So that is mindfulness. It can bring mindfulness to any activity. You know, I wash my hands a lot because I'm a healthcare provider. I wash my hands mindfully. I enjoy washing my hands. Thank goodness, during the pandemic we wash them even more. I can walk mindfully. I can eat mindfully. I can do anything mindfully, right? I commute a lot. I do that mindfully. So I'm present and I'm not daydreaming during all these activities. And you might wonder, like, okay, what's the point of that? Well, for one, it is to teach your brain how to focus instead of being scattered. And so chances are you're not going to mess up on what you're doing. But on the other hand, also, our life is happening right now. You know, if our mind is stuck in the past, you know, reminiscing or in the future, you know, worrying about the future, we're missing out on this moment. And guess what? This is the moment where our life is happening. And so if we're constantly in the past and in the future, we're missing our life. And a statistic I learned, a statistic I learned from a Harvard study was that 49% of the time we are not present. Wow. Yeah. And what I learned, too, is that when we're not present, we're most likely not happy. People that are more present are happier, you know, and that it's because our mind tends to gravitate towards negativity, you know, kind of reminiscing on things in the past that didn't go well, or already worrying about the future. It's funny as you speak about being present and a life is happening right now and people who are present are happy. My brain is like diverting into like, oh my gosh, I need to be present, right? Like constantly has this racket. But what you're saying is so true, like how to be more present in this moment instead of the 12 things you have to do later or something you said yesterday or someone said to you that is still in the back of your brain, that's wisdom right there. Now, how do you be more present or how do you shut off the, oh wait, I have these 12 things or I keep thinking of I should be better at that now you're not being kind to yourself. Yeah, there's a really good question because we now often, you know, people tend to beat themselves up and now you're going to beat yourself up for not being a perfect mindfulness person, you know. Yeah, so the way I invite my clients is I say come up with one activity, you know, and I typically suggest like taking a shower, you know, because a shower is actually a really wonderful moment and we can never take for granted that we have warm water coming out of the wall just by turning it mob, you know, it's pretty incredible and maybe we have like nice shampoo or nice, you know, whatever we put on our bodies, it can be a really incredible experience. And how often do we miss the experience because we're already thinking about something that's going to happen later, right? Yeah. And so I encourage my clients like start with maybe that, you know, maybe something else, but I this is one of the ideas. So let's stick with that idea. And then just see what happens. If you find your mind wandering, just realize you have a choice, you can just bring it back to the shower and actually notice like what's blue, you know, how pleasant that actually is, not beating yourself up, realizing it's normal if your mind is not used to it, to focusing, it's going to still try and, you know, plan a day. But what if you give yourself a gift of a few minutes truly being present and then plan your day or plan your day ahead of time and then go in the shower? I'm going to take a shower as soon as we're done. Well, I think, well, that's that's brilliant. That's brilliant, though. Take a shower. And I remember when I missed an opportunity to go to another mindfulness thing that was during my workday, I was a patient and it was at the company I was working in Connecticut, they had an opportunity to go somewhere and they came back and said, you mentioned washing your hands. They said something and what I made to mean of it and I started it that day and I did it all through the pandemic. And this is like five years ago when I learned this, this one little act is, what do they call it? Compassion fatigue, you're working in healthcare, you're giving of yourself always, always, always. And how do you, in between patients or in between clients, fill yourself up to redeliver that compassion and care. And one thing I started to do with the hand washing is I would, instead of like racing to wash my hands and trying to figure out like, oh, I'm hungry and who's next? And I just like was washing my hands and I was like, whoa, this soap is really slippery. And oh, that feels really smooth. And look at the bubbles, like the way the water like falls on my hands. And for the two minutes, I washed my hands. I transformed how I felt. And then I went to that next person. And I was joyful and loving and I was all theirs. I was all theirs. And the hand washing, I still do it today. Sometimes I hurry, but when I am in between my patients, I always am like, no, look at that. It's so smooth. So I hope everybody takes a more mindfulness shower, a more mindful shower and more mindful hand washing. Even if it's just 30 seconds, it really is amazing. That's good ideas. Yes. And I do the same thing actually, as you just described. And I also become aware of my feet on the ground. So it's kind of like, it's like I'm pulling my energy back with me. I'm back to me. I'm releasing whatever I just did. And then I'm ready like filled up again for the next person when I do patient to patient. And I think whether you're seeing patients or whether you're maybe you're a busy parent and you're, you know, driving one kid to this activity, another kid to the next activity, you're cooking dinner, you can do little mini rituals like that as well, you know, in between. You can, you can implement this in different ways, which makes me think, should we do an exercise right now? Yes, please. Let's do it. Let's, so this practice is called three mindful breaths. And I'm simply going to guide you through the activity. So depending where you're at, if you're driving, please keep your eyes open. But otherwise you might close your eyes if you like, or you can just gaze down. I'll actually keep my eyes open and look at you. So sit back in your chair if you can, and if you're standing, if you're walking, you can just adapt this particular activity to whatever position you're in. And start with feeling where your feet are. And if you're sitting, feel where your, your bottom, the backs of your thighs are on your chair, and where your back is resting against the chair. And then notice as you're breathing in, feel the air moving into your nostrils. You don't have to go in specifically deeper or anything. Feel where the in breath turns into an out breath. There's a little pause. And then feel where the out breath turns into an in breath again. So let's start right now with three of those. So in your own pace. So you're feeling the start of the in breath. You feel that little pause point where the in breath ends and the out breath begins. And then where the out breath ends. And the in breath begins, three of those. And there you go. So that actually used kind of one and a half mindfulness practice. So the first one is more like a body awareness, like feeling your body, feet on the floor. If you're sitting, feel, feel how you sit on your chair. And that can be like three seconds. It can be when you start a meeting. It can be before you eat. I mean, this you can do at any time and nobody needs to know. And then just doing some of those calm breaths and actually noticing the breath. And I literally can do this while I'm with a patient, you know, just noticing even one breath. And it really helps me to stay centered or get back to being centered. If maybe something is triggering me a little bit. So that was mindfulness. I could talk hours for them about that. But I would also like to tell you then what meditation is and how that's a little different. So with mindfulness, we can bring that type of mindset into our day to day activities. Now, meditation is a particular practice. So with meditation, if I say I'm going to meditate, I'm going to basically take time out of my day. And I'm typically going to sit and I like to sit on a chair. I don't like sitting cross-legged on the floor. It doesn't work for me. Might work for other people. And then I'm going to decide what I'm going to focus on. And it could be my breath. It could be what's called a mantra, like a particular word. It could be a candle flame. I mean, there's different things, but those are some of the most common ones. And then I might sit with my eyes closed or I might gaze down at the floor, something that's not distracting. And then I'm having the intention of keeping my awareness with that particular focus point. So let's say the breath in a way that was a little meditation we just did. And my intention is to keep my awareness with my breath. And then anytime my mind wanders, which it will, all the time, I bring it back to my breath and I continue focusing on the breath. I mean, that's really, really, really simple, right? But it's not easy because our mind is not liking that. Our mind wants to solve the world's problems, do the to-do list, et cetera, et cetera. But basically what we do is help our mind to become less reactive. To basically say like you're training a puppy, stay, stay, you know, and try and keep the mind gently focused on whatever that focus point is, like the breath. And we do that on a regular basis. And our mind becomes a little more used to being focused and not multitasking and not, you know, being all over the place. So gradually the mind gets calmer. But it's really important that we don't beat ourselves up if we find our mind going all over the place. We just applaud ourselves, basically, for noticing that and bringing it back. That's the correct thing. That's amazing that you said that because it's one of the toughest things about meditation that people, when I've tried to share probably meditation, not really realizing the distinction between the two, is that your mind is going to wander because all of ours do. And then you just bring it back to the flame, the word, the breath, the gaze. Oh, no, okay, wait, no, just focus right now on the breath, focus on the one. And what did you say? You said you're helping your brain to, was it focused? To be less reactive, to focus, but also to be less reactive. Less reactive. Because the mind is going to play tricks. It's like, oh, remember that email, what if you're not going, what if you don't do it right now, you're going to forget it. And then you tell your mind, it sounds goofy, but you tell your mind, no, thank you for letting me know, but I'll get to it. If you must write it down, but typically we remember, but in a way the mind comes up with tricks to be done with it. And so it's really, you set a timer, or you decide how long you want to do this, and then you actually discipline yourself in a way to stay with it. But I could tell you that I would be a really, really wealthy woman if every person that I talk with, talk with about meditation, if they would give me a dollar, the ones that would tell me I can't meditate because my mind is too busy. Oh, and that's when I tell them everyone's mind is busy, honestly, and that's normal. That's just the way our life is. And, you know, for training it. And that's why we train it because our minds are so busy. So it's not about, oh, I can't meditate because I don't feel zen right away. You know, we're going to have thoughts. And the trick is to bring it back, bring it back to bring it back. I think that's great. I think that one thing that I feel about it and listening to you speak about it and explaining to all of us how to do this and different ways we can do this because we have, you know, different people can sit on the floor, cross-legged, other people can sit in a chair. I feel like the meditation and the mindfulness and everything that you said is like a gift to yourself. If you gift yourself five minutes or three breaths, grounding, if you gift yourself that, I feel like you're gifting your number one person the greatest gift of kind of health and vitality and wellness. And then also everyone then that you come in contact with your day gets to receive the gift of that glow that you mentioned. Your patient was like maybe a little grumpy. I'm not sure which word you used, but then she was just glowing and she started doing meditation. And I want everyone to hear that as it's an achievable and attainable goal to gift yourself these three breaths a day or five minutes a day or 20 minutes a day of I'm going to give myself a great gift and I'm going to take 20 minutes and I'm going to help my brain be less reactive and I'm going to focus on the flame or focus on the word. That's really a gift to ourselves that, yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like, yes, it starts with a gift to yourself and you're right. And then it's because I've been meditating there for over 20 years, maybe 24 years. And because I show up more peaceful, people around me automatically reap the benefits of that. So I feel like we all want world peace in some way and we know we're not quite there. And I feel like even by meditating and creating more peace within me, that peace does ripple out to those right around me. But who knows how far that reaches, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the question that I often get then from people is, well, how do I learn to meditate? And I think really honestly, you can watch YouTube, there's so many free apps, paid apps, whatever, that's how you can really learn to meditate. But I have found it helpful to actually also work within the instructor to help me be consistent and personalize it. But a lot of people can just learn to meditate as they consist of just through whatever is available on the internet. No, that's great. So I never actually considered working with a mindfulness instructor. I've done a lot of the apps and same thing, YouTube. And I use an app every day. And sometimes I do too, because I do feel like it really brings my mind, body, spirit, mostly my mind and how I feel down. So if I don't feel like I've done enough with the time that I had, I will do another. And that helps me. But do you do sessions with people for mindfulness coaching? And I would know, I think we have like four or five minutes left or something. But can you do them remotely too? If people wanted to do that with you, I kind of want to. Okay, you know, I did start doing it. I was teaching just, you know, in person. And I work at the healthcare center. And, you know, I was teaching there and I was teaching with my patients. And then, you know, with the pandemic and everybody on Zoom, I did start teaching remotely, which was really great. Like I've had clients that I've never met in person. And for some people, it was one session, you know, they just wanted to talk with me about some of their challenges or the specifics or just knowing they did it right. Or they had a particular physical issue. And they were wondering if there were specific ways of meditation. And then I've also done like, like true mindfulness coaching, mindful living coaching, where I support people for like three months, and really help them integrate mindfulness into their lives. You know, there are so many options, so many possibilities. Yeah. And it's honestly, I think it's the thing I like the most of all my activities. Because I feel like it really helps transform people's life. Like it did mine and like it did yours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful thing. So I know how to get in touch with you. But if, if anybody watching today wanted to get in touch with you about doing a mindfulness coaching session or mindful living, where do they go? Yeah. So they can reach me via email. And my email address is Pauline. So my first name, P-A-U-L-I-N-E, Dr. D-R Pauline Lucas.com. That's the easiest way. Yeah. Okay. Great. That's great. I know that they'll pop that up for everyone to see when the show gets played back. This is amazing. So we've done a mindfulness meditation. We've learned a little bit how to achieve mindful moments in our day. And we learned the difference between mindfulness and meditation. What else can you give us any pearls about like? Well, and we learned that this actually changes your brain and your nervous system, right? Like just like you go to the gym, you start lifting weights, you see it changing your muscles. Well, that same thing is happening when you're training your mind to focus. And when you train your mind to become less reactive, and it's, you know, you can't see it on the outside, you can feel it and other people can notice. But if you were to be in an MRI scan before and after, you can literally see the center in the brain that is more, you know, prone to like stress and everything shrink. And that's a good thing. That means that, you know, you're less reactive to stress. And like, for example, the area that is that is responsible for your memory, actually improving, actually being, you know, getting bigger, which is a good thing. So I mean, even if you're like, okay, I'm just sitting here meditating, like, well, you know, I don't know what I'm doing it right, you're doing it right. And you really want to have the same attitude as brushing your teeth, you know, you don't get out the little dentist mirror every time to make sure you brushed it right. But every six months, you get your checkup and you know whether, you know, whether things work out. And that's how you want to go on meditation. It's a part of your day. And whether it felt like a fantastic meditation or like, yeah, man, you just do it, you just do it. And the results will come. The research is unequivocal about that. It's so true. When you said the, the memory center, I was in New York City stressed out, I mentioned earlier, and I started doing the mindfulness. And I kept saying, I, I was afraid that I was having something wrong with my memory. And it was one of the biggest changes, like after I went to your seminar and I, and then went through that period of time, the biggest change that I noticed was less reactiveness to like bumping my elbow and just being like, or, and then the memory, the memory I was forgetting things that were simple, simple things. And then that did improve. And so it's proven in the research. I think that's incredible. And I think that that's a lot of things that, you know, during our family and our relationships and our everyday occurrences, when we're reactive, it's, it's tough on any relationship, whether it's a work relationship, a family relationship, a friend relationship, when we're more reactive and when we are more centered and less reactive, it, it's, you know, life is just so much better. There's more peace, right? More peace amongst us all. More peace and more life, right? Yeah, and more happiness. Savoring more, stressing less is my motto. Savoring more, stressing less, that's amazing. So we're going to have to wrap it up. Dr. Pauline Lucas, thank you so much for being so generous and giving us your time and your wisdom. I am, I'm so grateful for, for knowing you, for meeting you years ago and for the impact it's had on my life and, and all my friends and family too and patients. So thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me. This is really a pleasure. Oh, this was great. So thanks everyone for watching this amazing show. Aloha for watching. Thank you to Think Tech Hawaii for allowing us to be here today. And as always, life is better when you listen to your physical therapist. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.