DIGITAL SAMPLER
View selected pages from Mindful’s October 2013 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
contents
Features 34 Stop, Look…See Photography isn’t just about capturing images. Andy Karr suggests three ways to explore the experience of looking itself, and even expand how you see the world
42 To Pause and Protect In a groundbreaking program, Oregon police officers are learning mindfulness techniques to better deal with stress, be more focused on the job, and connect more meaningfully with the people in the communities they serve. Maureen O’Hagan reports
Lieutenant Richard Goerling Hillsboro Police Department
52 A Journey to the Center of Yourself Depression is not a disease, says James Gordon, M.D. He talks to Tracy Picha about the importance of seeing depression not as an end point but as a fresh opportunity for growth and change Sidebar: James Gordon’s seven stages for the journey through depression p 56
60 The Best Medicine
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Even if we hurt—maybe especially if we hurt, says Elaine Smookler—it helps to laugh
PHOTOGRAPHS BY TERRY BELL (BOTTOM), MARK MAHANEY (TOP)
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“My vision is that we become the epicenter of positive cultural change in law enforcement. Mindfulness is where emotional intelligence and wellness come together.”
Departments 4 Your Thoughts
22 Mindful/Mindless
80 MindSpace
6 Our Thoughts
Our take on who’s paying attention and who’s not
Maira Kalman can’t stop talking about her upcoming silent retreat
8 Contributors
11 Now Designing buildings with humans in mind • The final frontier: NASA meditates • Overwhelmed by choice? How to navigate it better • Parents learn how to keep kids’ sports fun • A nine-year-old dreams of helping kids halfway around the world and gets down to work • Hospitals explore new ways to heal • Third-largest health insurance provider in the U.S. introduces meditation program • Research Roundup
20 Bookmark This The writings, recordings, and apps that are capturing our attention now
ILLUSTRATION BY YUKO SHIMIZU, PHOTOGRAPH BY BÉATRICE PELTRE
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24 One Taste In the Red Angela Mears celebrates the beet Recipes by Béatrice Peltre
28 Body/Mind Wave Theory Sam Buffa knows the best spot to gain perspective on life in the city: on his surfboard
30 Mind/Body Rewiring Your Emotions Think you’re destined to respond the same way emotionally to the same old triggers? Not necessarily so, says Sharon Begley. With a little mind training, you can chart new pathways
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65 In Practice 66 Techniques Looking for a respite from distraction? It’s as close as a cup of tea 67 At Work Upgrade Your Environment A fresh approach to increasing employee engagement, and how to stop searching for a mindful work environment and start creating one 68 Ask Ms. Mindful Breaking relationship patterns, navigating a life-changing event, and shifting out of the role of unofficial therapist
70 Insight
Cooling the Raging Fires Anger can be our undoing sometimes, says Jeffrey Brantley, M.D., but it doesn’t have to be that way
On our cover Lieutenant Richard Goerling of the Hillsboro Police Department in Oregon has introduced mindfulness practices to the police force—and his colleagues and police chief are thanking him for it page 42 Photograph by Mark Mahaney
October 2013 mindful 3
your thoughts
you asked Q: Do you have some advice for how to stay more present in conversation? I get so caught up in the energy of connecting with the other person that I can lose my own sense of presence. It feels uncomfortable when that happens. HELENE HUGHES Evergreen, Colo.
A: Conversation is one of the fine arts of everyday life. And meditation practice can enhance it. In the silence of mindfulness practice, we have a chance to notice with bare attention the simplest of rhythms— the rise and fall of our abdomen as we breathe, our heartbeat, the blinking of our eyes. We notice the punctuation marks that are a natural part of life. And that’s the key to remaining present in conversation: leave space for listening and absorbing before you take your turn to speak. Punctuating the to and fro of a lively conversation with little bits of space helps us to avoid being overtaken by the flood of words, words, words.
you answered What got you interested in mindfulness?
you wrote in
“Yoga. After years of practice, I have found teachers who focus on connecting mind and body and cultivating compassion throughout the practice, in ways that have shifted my life greatly.”
Really enjoyed the June issue of Mindful. I especially related to what Rhonda Magee had to say (“The Mindful Lawyer,” June 2013). I am a lawyer practicing mostly in collaborative law and mediation. Just imagine if more lawyers learned to “put themselves in the shoes of another, to listen more thoroughly, with as little judgment as they can manage.” Wow! That right there could change the world.
Sondra Bloxam Portland, Ore.
Marcy Jones Lynchburg, Va.
“I had a heart attack at the age of 50, nine years ago. As a result I was offered the chance to participate in a stress-reduction study using Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work—it was life changing! I have practiced being present in the moment many times since then, maybe not every day but definitely far more often. Being mindful and present in the moment is a true gift—for me, it’s the good that came from the bad.”
MindfulTV is a brilliant project you are embarking on! I don’t think there is a single person in our busy society who would not benefit greatly from practicing mindfulness. Maybe airing a “Mindful Minute” during commercial breaks would boost ratings?
Linda Fleischer Sparta, N.J.
“I practice mindfulness to ease anxiety and stress, live as fully as possible in the present moment, be a calm and compassionate parent, and be aware of the abundance in my life.”
Andrea Dasilva Vancouver, B.C.
To learn more about mindfulTV go to mindful.org/mindfultv
I had a nice visual this morning to share with you: my daughter and son-in-law are visiting with their two-month-old and I walked into the living room to see my granddaughter sitting on her mother’s lap while mom was reading the August issue of Mindful. Grant Couch Boulder, Colo.
Sarah Rudell Beach
connect To learn about future issues, sign up for our email newsletters at mindful.org. To share your feedback on this and other issues, email us with your full name, city, and state or province at mindful@mindful.org. You can also visit facebook.com/mindfulorg or tweet us @MindfulOnline. For subscription questions, email subscriptions@mindful.org. Letters chosen for publication may be edited for length and clarity. All submissions and manuscripts become the property of The Foundation for a Mindful Society.
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“In my work as a sport psychologist, I’m interested in helping athletes move beyond peak performance, into peak experience. Mindfulness provides a means of doing that!” Luke Patrick, Portland, Ore.
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4, Mindful (ISSN 2169-5733) is published bimonthly for $29.95/year US, $39.95 CDN Canada, and $49.95 USD International, by The Foundation for a Mindful Society, 1776 I St, NW, #90046, Washington, DC 20006 USA. Application to mail at Periodicals Prices is pending at Washington, DC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mindful, PO Box 469018, Escondido, CA 92046 USA. CANADIAN POSTMASTER: Send undeliverable copies to Mindful, 1660 Hollis St, Suite 701, Halifax, NS B3J 1V7 CANADA. Printed in USA. © 2013 The Foundation for a Mindful Society. All rights reserved.
Hilary Donnelly with daughter Vivienne.
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON LEE, PHOTOGRAPH BY GRANT COUCH
Plymouth, Minn.
our thoughts
In the Eye of the Beholder A piece of garbage changed my life. Okay, maybe its effect wasn’t quite that profound, but it did trigger a change in how I look at—and really see—what’s right in front of me. I was 15 and walking to school along my usual route, head down, not really paying attention to my surroundings. It was raining and I was grumpy, preoccupied with typical teenage thoughts: How hard will the test be? What’s it like to fall in love? Can I really pull off wearing horizontal stripes? Then I noticed a gum wrapper on the ground. It was bright pink and glossy from the rain. It had crumpled in such a way that it looked like a small, delicate piece of origami. The pink of the wrapper made the grass it was lying on look deliciously green. I was struck by how utterly beautiful it was. Other thoughts fell away, including my grumpiness and irritation at the rain. Some space and delight arose in their place. I realized that my thoughts get in the way of seeing what’s around me. I’d been playing a movie in my head—with me in the starring role—and completely missing moments of beauty, everywhere and in the most unexpected places. I started taking the time to stop and actually look at my
6 mindful October 2013
surroundings. I noticed dust bunnies under my bed. I saw for the first time that grass is translucent, how the golden light of the sun shines through each blade. A snowflake landed on my coat and I saw that snowflakes aren’t just clumps but spiky and symmetrical, like the cutouts we made in grade school. I started practicing meditation shortly after the gum-wrapper incident. To my delight, I discovered that mindfulness is a wonderful support in my quest to slow my thoughts down enough to really see the world. Oh, I do get distracted and irritated. But I also have mindfulness practices I can bring out whenever I notice myself becoming too speedy to appreciate the palette of whites, browns, and grays of winter, or the way a shadow moves across a wall, or to notice when my husband needs a hug or a colleague a helping hand. Mindfulness tools have helped me become more generous and appreciative of the beauty around us. I hope you, too, will find tools in the pages of Mindful—and moments of beauty—that open up the way you experience the world. —Jessica von Handorf Art Director jessica@mindful.org
Barry Boyce Editor-in-Chief
Tracy Picha Editor
Jessica von Handorf Art Director
Megumi Yoshida Associate Art Director
Carsten Knox Associate Editor
Line Goguen-Hughes Assistant Editor
Stephany Tlalka Assistant Editor, Digital
Jane Doucet Copy Editor
James Gimian Publisher
Beth Wallace Associate Publisher, Marketing & Partnerships
Alan Brush Associate Publisher, Circulation
Andrew Karr Finance Director
Melvin McLeod Editorial Director
Board of Advisors Susan Bauer-Wu, Ph.D., R.N., University of Virginia Jeffrey Brantley, M.D., Duke Integrative Medicine Mirabai Bush, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison Rich Fernandez, Ph.D., Tech Industry Consultant Soren Gordhamer, Wisdom 2.0 Patricia Jennings, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society Tim Ryan, United States Congress, Ohio, 13th District Diana Winston, Mindful Awareness Research Center, UCLA Organizations included for identification purposes only.
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October 2013 mindful 7
now “To be able to pick up on the nuances of the environment is critical for an architect. We do that by quietly observing.” Ekaterini Vlahos, architecture professor at the University of Colorado — Denver
Contents News 12 Research Roundup 19 Bookmark This 20 Mindful–Mindless 22
Photograph by Sam Adams
October 2013 mindful 11
BE A THERMOMETER Notice hot, cold, cool, warm. Notice the movement of air. Does the temperature change? Back to regular life. Find more on Twitter @mindinterrupter
now
Buildings for Real Places If you head southwest from Denver on Highway 9, you’ll eventually find yourself in Garo, Colorado. It’s where the road and sky meet, with mountains off in the distance. Buffalo Peaks Ranch is nearby. Established in 1863, it’s one of the oldest ranches in the state. This is one of the places Ekaterini “Kat” Vlahos takes her students. She teaches architecture at the University of Colorado in Denver, and she believes that instilling in her students a sense of the land, as well as the traditions of the people who settled there, makes for better, more conscious design. First, she asks her students to choose a spot. They sit and sketch for five minutes. Then they walk the site. They’re off by themselves, not talking to each other. “They’re doing a kind of walking meditation; they’re engrossed in the place,” says Vlahos. “Then I have them come back to the same site an hour later, and I say, ‘I want you to sit and sketch and observe what’s changed.’”
Vlahos has her students do this several times during their site visits because even if all they’ve noticed is a change in the light, it’s valuable. “If you start at nine in the morning and finish at three in the afternoon, the position of the sun is vastly different,” she says. “To be able to pick up on those things, and the nuances of the environment, is critical. We do that by sitting quietly and observing.” Back in the classroom, the students discuss what they experienced. “Many of them want to go back multiple times,” Vlahos says. “They come up with ideas and they’ll say, ‘I need to go back and make sure I’m making the right decisions here. Am I being mindful of the impact I’m going to have on the people who will use what we’re planning to build?’” The result, says Vlahos, is “architecture that is sensitive and appropriate for that place.” Her students will become architects who know how to take people into account. They will also know how buildings interact with the landscape. Vlahos, 53, comes from a long line of Greek immigrants who worked the land. She was born and raised in Colorado but architecture took her to
Los Angeles and Baltimore, where she helped design large urban buildings. Wanting to be back in the landscape that nurtured her, she came home to Colorado.
“Students become much more mindful about their proposals and actions because they’re tied to an actual place.” Ekaterini Vlahos Since she returned in the mid-’90s, she’s seen how much rural land is being consumed by development, with more than three million acres slated to be developed in the next 10 years. “Development for me is not a negative if it’s done well,” she says, “if it takes into account the region, the weather, those very basic things.” Vlahos decided that teaching architecture was the best way to ensure that future construction would take these fundamental elements into account. She’s also the director of the school’s Center of Preservation Research, where they assemble documentation and analyze historic sites.
“I reconnect to everyday, ordinary places for inspiration,” she says. “For example, I found in these old ranches the buildings would be sided beautifully to maximize solar gain. They really understood the environment.” Her students help repurpose older structures for clients. Recently, a couple wanted to find a new home for their 30,000-volume library of historic books. That home will be the renovated Buffalo Peaks Ranch. Vlahos will guide her students through the design and preservation processes, how the ranch buildings will change in order to house books rather than livestock. “I use historic sites as a teaching tool,” she says. “We try to understand what is there, to really observe. What I find is that the students become much more mindful about their proposals and actions because they’re tied to an actual place. We’re solving real problems for real people in real places.” ●
Ekaterini Vlahos and former student Mike Nulty, who is now a colleague at the Center of Preservation Research.
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“I’ve been meditating for two years now. I had been leery of the new-age sensibility around it, but friends talked about it in a very scientific way. It’s made a tremendous difference in my life.” ABC News journalist George Stephanopoulos at the Third Metric Conference
PHOTOGRAPH BY JESSE KUROIWA
OVERHEARD
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s October 2013 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org
24 mindful October 2013
Recipes and photographs by BĂŠatrice Peltre. Find more of her work at latartinegourmande.com
one taste
In the Red From leaf to root, beets deliver. For best results, remember to be as bold as they are. By Angela Mears Beets are not a dainty vegetable. I’m thinking of a friend who still recalls a very colorful meatless burger she ordered in San Francisco. Its patty was tinged through and through with the staining purplish-red of beet juice. Bleeding, she said. She told me this while carving into a juicy slab of prime rib the size of a hubcap. There was a lot to unpack in that moment—about the futility of meat substitutes and the distance we knowingly place between us and our food—but what stuck with me was the simple fact that my hungry friend felt squeamish about a vegetable. Beets stain. They seep into things and stay there. From my childhood I remember the pickled-beet eggs my father used to make to honor his Amish-country
Beet Chips Makes 3 cups 1
bunch red (or yellow) beets ⅓ cup white (or brown) rice flour 2 ½ cups canola oil salt, to serve
upbringing. I remember the vinegary red of the pickling juice and the Easter-egg pink of his hands, stained to the wrist from plunging them into a cooling pot of boiled beets. He peeled them all by hand, so the little valleys under and around his fingernails stayed red for days. For many of us, beets are synonymous with this vivid redness. But it wasn’t always that way. For much of human history, we harvested beets for their edible leaves, not their staining roots. The heart-shaped leaves, veined with thick stalks, come in a range of colors. They are closely related to chard and are among the most nourishing foods we can eat. So a thrifty cook should never toss beet greens into the compost heap. They taste more bitter than chard but are every bit as nourishing, if eaten immediately. I wash them well, sauté with lemon juice and crushed garlic, and look forward to the sweeter main event. Here’s something else to know: the lighter the color, the sweeter the beet. Sugar beets (used for refined-sugar production) are alabaster-white and
not nearly so nutritiously rich as their red cousin. The sweet ones are nice enough—but who ever got swept away by niceness? I say beets are best enjoyed at their plainest, roughest, and reddest. Not in meticulously composed salads dotted with veined cheeses and candied nuts but boiled and drained and slathered with butter turned pink. My steak-eating friend who was overtaken by the bloodiness of her beet sandwich knows: beets are evocative. While other vegetables keep to themselves, a good beet gives of itself entirely. It bleeds. It blushes. And when we speak of them outside of the kitchen, it’s almost always in relation to strong feelings. If we were to ascribe personalities to our vegetables, wouldn’t beets be lovers and fighters? And when it comes to food, as in relationships, who doesn’t enjoy a little edge, an occasional bitterness, a lusty payoff? ● Angela Mears writes about food at thespinningplate.com
Peel the beets and slice them finely with a mandoline. Pat the slices dry with a towel. In a large mixing bowl, add the rice flour. Toss in the beet slices and coat them well on all sides. Remove the excess flour. Pour the canola oil into a medium-size pot. Heat to 365°F (use a deep-fry thermometer to check). Add a batch of beet slices, making sure you’re not overcrowding. Fry the beets for 2 to 3 minutes, checking regularly to ensure they don’t overcook; they should curl up on the edges and look crispy. Transfer to paper towels to absorb the excess oil, then repeat with another batch of beet slices (check the temperature of the oil regularly to make sure it stays at 365°F). Once cooked, let the beet chips cool completely. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle with salt.
Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s October 2013 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org October 2013 mindful 25
body/mind
Wave Theory Sam Buffa knows the best spot to gain perspective on life in the city: on his surfboard. As told to Carsten Knox Photograph by Joshua Simpson
Name: Sam Buffa Age: 35 Activity: Surfing Location: Brooklyn, New York
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mind/body
Rewiring Your Emotions Think you’re destined to respond the same way emotionally to the same old triggers? Not necessarily, say scientists who study neuroplasticity. With a little mind training, you can chart new pathways. By Sharon Begley
Sharon Begley is the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters, author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, and coauthor with Richard Davidson of The Emotional Life of Your Brain.
Google changes the brain. Playing computer games changes the brain. Conversing in a compassionate way changes the brain. If you half expect this ever-lengthening list to eventually include, oh, making matzoh-ball soup changes the brain, you are not alone. It is true that lots of solid scientific studies show that the adult brain can change in response to what we do and the lives we lead. But they are in danger of being crowded out, at least in the public’s understanding, by far less rigorous claims. (The jury is still out on Google, games, and conversation, but we’re pretty sure soup-making won’t make the short list.) It’s a shame to see something as scientifically significant as neuroplasticity— the ability of the adult brain to change its structure or function in an enduring way—overpopularized to the point that it could start losing its real meaning.
The promise of tapping neuroplasticity to relieve suffering is genuine. From physical therapy that changes part of the brain so it can do the job of another part of the brain that has been devastated by a stroke, to mindfulness-based therapy that quiets the circuit responsible for obsessive-compulsive disorder, techniques using the principle of neuroplasticity are already in use by physicians and therapists. But how far can neuroplasticity go? Perhaps as far as an emotional reset— harnessing neuroplasticity to change how you respond emotionally to the ups and downs of life. Neurobiologist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, an expert on the emotional brain, calls it “neurally inspired behavioral therapy.” He is talking about a kind of therapy that identifies the brain activity underlying an emotional trait you wish to change, such as a tendency to dwell in
Read the rest of these articles in Mindful’s October 2013 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org 30 mindful October 2013
Illustration by Malin Rosenqvist
Stop Look …See
play
Looking at the world through the lens on your iPhone? Here are three ways to take better pictures, but more importantly, take a moment to really see what’s in front of you. By Andy Karr Photographs by Terry Bell
You are walking through the wide open spaces of a leafy park on a bright summer day. As you continue, dark clouds gather in the distant sky, moving toward you. You might notice how the light suddenly changes; how the foliage looks darker and the greens look richer; how the many shades of gray in the clouds give them more texture and shape. Or else you might start worrying about oncoming rain, a spoiled outing, and the likelihood of getting drenched. There are always two ways we can experience the world: directly or covered over by thoughts. Photography can offer us a way to get in touch with fresh, direct experience. More often, though, it’s just another blip in the flow of our inner chatter: “I like this.” “I don’t like that.” “Interesting.” “Boring.” “Not worth shooting at all.” “These things will make a great photograph.” Snap. But there’s another approach to photography that many people have been discovering over the past few years. Contemplative photography is a meditative practice that invites you into the richness of direct perception. It’s not a technique for making images that look “contemplative” but a method for seeing the world in fresh ways and communicating what you see. You learn to recognize when eye, mind, and heart naturally come into alignment and use the camera to replicate this experience. To begin, try to notice when there are gaps in the flow of your thinking. In these little breaks, which occur naturally, fresh perceptions of sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch come through. Learning to recognize and appreciate simple, vivid
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flashes of perception is the foundation for this practice. In this approach, the power of the final photograph comes from bringing together clear seeing with simple, straightforward expression. To communicate what you see well, you need to stay with the perceptions for more than an instant. After you experience a flash of perception, rest with it long enough to understand what you’re seeing—what part of the scene is included in the perception and what is not. Although this stage is called visual discernment, it’s not conceptual or analytical. You’re not figuring anything out or evaluating the scene emotionally, nor are you reaching for your camera to capture anything.
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The last stage is described by a term coined by one of the great American photographers, Alfred Steiglitz. He talked about taking a photograph as forming the equivalent of the perception. The photograph and the perception are obviously different things, but you aim to produce an image that is equivalent to what you see. At this stage, you don’t try to do anything to make the photograph more interesting, dramatic, or compelling. You just make an image of what you perceive.
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Making fine images does not require travel to exotic places, sophisticated technical skills, or expensive equipment. It does require clear seeing and a modest amount of photographic craft. Most of the images displayed here were made with an iPhone. The following pages present exercises involving color, texture, and people and will help you learn the basic technique described above. →
Andy Karr is the coauthor, along with Michael Wood, of The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes. He is also curator of the contemplative photography website seeingfresh.com. As executive creative director at Vickers and Benson, one of Canada’s largest advertising agencies, Terry Bell won top honors from the Art Directors Club of New York, among many other awards. For the past 10 years he has been pursuing his lifelong passion for the photographic image.
more of Terry Bell’s Read the rest of thisTo see article in Mindful’s iPhone photography go to October 2013 issue. Subscribe at mindful.org mindful.org/iphonephotos
October 2013 mindful 35
community
to pause and protect
42 mindful October 2013
In a groundbreaking program, Oregon police officers are learning mindfulness techniques to deal with stress, be more focused on the job, and connect more meaningfully with the people they serve. By Maureen O’Hagan Photographs by Mark Mahaney
“We are so impacted by the toxicity of our profession,” says Lieutenant Richard Goerling of the Hillsboro Police Department in Oregon, “so consumed by our jobs, we don’t know what to do.”
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community
Like others in the department who volunteered to take the mindfulness class, Officer Eric Russell arrived feeling skeptical. But he’s keeping an open mind, especially considering what he has to juggle every time he gets in his police car—from an earpiece he wears that’s connected to the dispatcher to the police radio that is often tuned to a different channel to a computer screen flashing information to the driving itself, sometimes with lights and sirens. “It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen.”
On a Tuesday afternoon this spring, nearly two dozen cops from the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, ambled into foreign territory: a yoga studio. They were here for a unique course in mindfulness, one that proponents say could help transform policing. As they settled in, they joked and jabbed with the ease of colleagues who have worked together for years. They piled up mats and pillows with the excessiveness of those who haven’t spent much time in savasana, some building nests that looked like La-Z-Boys. On one side of the room sat an officer who recently had to confront a man hacking down a door with a Japanese sword—he was fighting off imaginary attackers. On the other side of the room was a former Marine sniper who had served in Iraq, with a haloed grim reaper tattooed on his arm. Now, in this peaceful room, with the daylight dimmed by mauve curtains, these members of the Hillsboro Police Department were being asked to contemplate a raisin. “Press on the raisin,” the instructor said in a soothing monotone. “Is it soft, rough, or smooth? Is there a stickiness?” Everyone was engaging mindfully with their raisin—or so it seemed. “We all knew what was crossing each other’s
minds,” Officer Denise Lemen says later. “We all wanted to start shouting out one-liners.” If they’d so much as glanced at each other, they would have burst out laughing. Or worse. “Being able to go there, and focus, is hard,” Lemen continues. “In my mind, I’m like, it’s a frickin’ raisin.” (Except she didn’t use the word “frickin’.”) You may know the raisin exercise. You may recognize it as challenging. What you may not realize is just how difficult it is to run this exercise for cops—and how much it took to get them here. These officers have responded to homicides and suicides; they’ve removed children from abusive parents and slapped cuffs on drunk drivers; they’ve chased down robbers and been taunted by hostile gangbangers. They think of themselves as warriors. And now a shriveled old grape was making them feel like they were losing control. “It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve done in a long time,” says Officer Lisa Erickson. Yet, as uncomfortable as this class would get, the two dozen officers signed up because they knew something had to change. Their profession is tough. In Hillsboro, things were even worse. In fact, you might say that Hillsboro’s finest came to mindfulness the same way a drug addict comes to treatment: they hit rock bottom. Lieutenant Michael Rouches likes to say that when he joined the Hillsboro police force some 20 years ago, “we were 24 miles away from Portland but light years away from its progressiveness.” In those days, Hillsboro was all about agriculture—the kind of town where kids were sometimes let out of school to help with the berry harvest. Back then, one of the larger employers was Carnation, the powdered-milk company. In Rouches’ time here, the population has doubled, to 93,000 residents. There’s still agriculture—including vineyards of pinot noir and chardonnay grapes— and a sizeable Latino population supporting it. But now it’s mainly known as the center of Oregon’s “silicon forest,” where the drivers are biotech and high tech. Genentech, a company that makes blockbuster hormone therapy and cancer drugs, has a packaging-and-distribution facility here. Intel, the chipmaker, has 18,000 employees in Hillsboro, its largest site in the country. Those industries have attracted well-educated workers from around the globe. For the city’s 120 sworn officers, policing here is challenging, as it is everywhere. As cops like to say, it’s 80% boredom and 20% sheer terror. “This job,” says Officer Stephen Slade, “will break you down and crush your soul.” Think about it. Cops take people to jail. They’re not happy. Cops give people tickets. They’re not happy. They arrest the husband who is beating his wife—only to have the wife jump on them because she doesn’t want him locked up.
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Hillsboro police officers try mindfulness meditation. From left, Roberto DiGiulio, Mark Vertner, Kelly Hickman, Kevin Harrison, Kurt Van Meter, and Jeff Branson.
“Everyone hates you,” Slade continues. A hulking 6-foot-5, he’s on the SWAT team and is called out in some of the most volatile situations. Twice in 10 months he was shot at. As he talked, he jostled his leg up and down, nonstop, for almost an hour. Everyone knows this job gets to you, says Sergeant Deborah Case. But you can’t act like it. “Our culture is such that we’re supposed to suck it up and not be impacted,” she says. And most police institutions still don’t do a heck of a lot to address these issues. At the police academy, Case says, they talk about stress-reduction strategies for maybe 15 minutes. “You’re told to de-stress by working out,” says Lemen. A lean and fit K-9 officer, she does CrossFit and triathlons. “It’s weird,” she muses. “I’m still kind of stressed out….” “We deny ourselves the experience of being human,” says Case. “It’s going to leach out somewhere.” That “somewhere” might be among their colleagues or while talking to law-abiding citizens. It might be on the street, where some officers are so amped that things escalate more than they should. Or it might be at home, where officers say they have trouble decompressing completely.
That’s what happened in late January in Hillsboro. Police were called to the home of Officer Timothy Cannon. The 13-year-veteran had been drinking heavily and was out of control, according to news reports. He was holed up in the house with his wife, his daughter, and a cache of weapons. Over the next hour or so, 10 officers, including SWAT team member Slade, tried to coax him out. He told them he wouldn’t surrender, then threatened to shoot them, according to a transcript of the dispatch call. A fierce gun battle ensued, with as many as 100 shots fired. Cannon ultimately surrendered and was charged with 11 counts of attempted murder. No one was seriously injured—at least physically. But to the department, it was devastating. “We are so impacted by the toxicity of our profession,” says Lieutenant Richard Goerling, “so consumed by our jobs, we don’t know what to do.” Figuring out what to do has been Goerling’s longtime crusade—and it’s what has led this suburban police department to some cutting-edge work.
Ask Brant Rogers—the soothing-voiced instructor Read the rest of this article in Mindful’s with the raisins—how he got involved with the Hillpolice Subscribe department and he’ll → October 2013sboro issue. atlaugh. mindful.org October 2013 mindful 45
in practice
insight
Cooling the Raging Fires Anger can be our undoing, but it doesn’t have to be that way, says Jeffrey Brantley, M.D.
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Brantley is the director of the MindfulnessBased Stress Reduction program at Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. His forthcoming book is called Calming Your Angry Mind.
Recently I found myself in an intensive care unit at the bedside of a loved one. Of course, I was filled with strong feelings of shock, fear, and worry. But I also noticed how easily those feelings, and the thoughts accompanying them, shifted into anger. It projected itself onto anything in my field of awareness, from the staff, to the machines, to myself. I was even angry at the person in front of me who was in need of critical care. Fortunately my loved one survived the health crisis, and in the days that followed, my experience in the ICU caused me to reflect once again on the nature of anger—to become more keenly aware of anger in myself and in others. Anger causes so much suffering in our personal relationships and in our society. Its effects range from spats with our spouse to wars between nations. Our own anger causes suffering to others, often those we love most, and their anger causes us suffering. Anger and the wounds it causes reverberate throughout life. In my life and in my work, I have found that there is no panacea, no instant fix, for anger. But I have learned that mindfulness can help calm the anger we feel and protect us from being hijacked into words and actions we later regret. When I was in the ICU, I felt fortunate that mindfulness training helped me recognize my anger. It allowed me to stay present with compassion for all the suffering happening there, instead of lashing out at some perceived slight or injustice. Mindfulness illuminated the thoughts of grief and vulnerability that the →
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Illustrations by Yuko Shimizu
October 2013 mindful 71
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