Mindfulness is Social & Other Insights from Mark Leonard
The Mind is a social process, rather than an individual process.
Mark Leonard joins Brett Hill on the Mindful Coach Podcast to discuss the transformative power of mindfulness in the workplace, emphasizing that the social learning process may be more impactful than the meditation practice itself.
Leonard highlights his development of Mindfulness Based Organizational Education, a program designed to make mindfulness more accessible and relevant to diverse audiences, particularly in corporate settings.
He shares insights from his experience at the Oxford Mindfulness Center and explains how adapting mindfulness practices for the workplace involves not only shorter meditation sessions but also a focus on understanding the mind's workings in a social context.
The conversation explores the importance of psychological safety and fostering genuine connections among team members to create a supportive environment for growth and change.
Leonard's work is grounded in the belief that by cultivating an understanding of social interactions, organizations can address challenges more effectively and promote a healthier workplace culture.
Transcript
The Mindful Coach Podcast.
Brett Hill:Hello, and welcome to this edition of the Mindful Coach Podcast.
Brett Hill:I'm your host, Brett Hill, founder of the Mindful Coach Association.
Brett Hill:And one of the great joys in my life is being able to talk to some amazing people who are doing courageous and powerful work in the world.
Brett Hill:And one of them, one of my favorite people to talk to is Mark Leonard, who's with us today, who is the director of Mindfulness Connected.
Brett Hill: ass audiences since the early: Brett Hill: ss center, which he opened in: Brett Hill:The result is a series of innovations he calls mindfulness Based Organizational Education.
Brett Hill:You'll see that references MBOE in his literature and elsewhere.
Brett Hill:And it represents a new way of approaching and fostering social leadership and systemic change based on the principles of mindfulness.
Brett Hill:So welcome to the show, Mark.
Mark Leonard:Oh, hello, Brett.
Mark Leonard:Lovely to talk to you again.
Mark Leonard:And I'm sure it's not going to be the last time.
Brett Hill:I should hope not.
Brett Hill:Oh my God.
Mark Leonard:Or otherwise.
Mark Leonard:But, you know, it's always good, always, always great fun.
Brett Hill:Oh, my God.
Brett Hill:It's like I, every time I talk to Mark, for the listeners, it's like, I wish I was on a podcast because we have such fun, fabulous conversation.
Brett Hill:We were having a really great conversation just before the show on, you know, working with people who have congested about what do I do next and approaches that, that was worthy of recording in and of itself.
Brett Hill:Because to me, I'm just gonna be straight up, he's a brilliant man.
Brett Hill:He's just fascinating to talk to.
Brett Hill:And he just, recently his work was recognized.
Brett Hill:Can you tell us about this, this notification, this, this, this recognition that your work just received?
Mark Leonard:Okay, well, to put it in context, I think people within the mainstream mindfulness movement have been looking for ways to expand the reach of the sort of standard mindfulness programs for wider audiences.
Mark Leonard:But they look, they were looking for ways to be able to define mindfulness courses that outside of the clinical idea of courses that are fundamentally based on an intensive or semi intensive meditation course.
Mark Leonard:And because I'd adapted mindfulness based cognitive therapy to the workplace, you've got to do a number of things like make the meditations much shorter and you've got to do much more stuff about explaining how it works.
Mark Leonard: ,: Mark Leonard:For scrutiny to try and understand how to create a new definition for a new class of mindfulness courses.
Brett Hill:Just real quick, you said, you said they asked you who, who is they?
Mark Leonard:They, they were at that time the representatives from the Dutch Mindfulness Teachers association and the British Mindfulness Teachers Association.
Mark Leonard:And so they, they, they came together and they wanted to sort of have a look at a program as a pilot to see how they could come up with a new set of criteria for a, to validate a new set of a new type of approach that meant that there was a wider possibility for a wider application of mindfulness to different audiences without people that was clear that what it was, was clear rather than it just being about, oh, this is a long intensive program that isn't relevant, so we'll just chop it down.
Mark Leonard:So it's trying to understand what principles you've got to look at in order to make a reduced, a shorter mindfulness program, to make it work.
Mark Leonard:So that's what they wanted to look at with my program because it was one of the few workplace programs or short workplace programs that ever been actually subject to quite a well designed trial in the workplace.
Mark Leonard:And then the outcomes were actually published in an academic journal.
Mark Leonard:So they had a good reason to say, well, this has gone through quite rigorous examination.
Mark Leonard:So we can use that as an example to work out to try and come up with an idea of what it could be that how we could define a new type of program that wasn't the mainstream therapeutic long program.
Mark Leonard:And then that became this international panel for acknowledgement of mindfulness based programs that was under the European association of Mindfulness Based of Mindfulness Teachers Association.
Mark Leonard:So that was just sort of slightly different administrative thing.
Mark Leonard:But the pilot, the examination then becomes sort of international European wide recognition.
Mark Leonard:And then that recognition became indefinite their last meeting.
Mark Leonard:So that's the, you know, the technical administrative process that we've got to.
Mark Leonard:So it's, so it's got some, it's.
Brett Hill:Got a long history of being vetted and checked out.
Brett Hill:And finally they, they stamped it and said this is like forever Evergreen.
Brett Hill:Good at this point it's like, yeah, that's amazing.
Brett Hill:And so this is mindfulness based organizational education.
Brett Hill:So tell us about how you went about validating that these short mindfulness meditations are, are effective.
Brett Hill:And you can go to a business and say this is this.
Brett Hill:If you'll just do this, this will work.
Mark Leonard:Well, partly because I had come from working in an environment that was, you know, quite rigorous in its approach to scientific validation.
Mark Leonard:That is the Oxford Mindfulness center, not being a researcher, not being a clinical psychologist, but I have a scientific background and a meditation background and a sort of teaching background and training background.
Mark Leonard:So I wanted to respect the provenance of the scientific approach that established the importance of mindfulness based cognitive therapy.
Mark Leonard:And it's that scientific work in clinical trials that really triggered the international explosion of interest in mindfulness meditation, you know, 15, 20 years ago.
Mark Leonard:So I wanted to maintain consistency with that approach and main and continue to look at this from as far as possible to look at this, validate changes scientifically and adapt the approach being being as faithful to a scientific approach as possible.
Mark Leonard:So first of all I started to teach a short version based on mindfulness A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in the Frantic World, which is a sort of short version of MBCT for Stress.
Mark Leonard:That became a self, a very popular self help book and I think is probably the most significant self help book again of the last 20 years or so that has which.
Brett Hill:What was the book again?
Mark Leonard:Mindfulness A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in the Frantic World which was co authored by Professor Mark Williams and Dr.
Mark Leonard:Danny Penman as an adaptation of mindfulness based cognitive therapy.
Mark Leonard:Mark Williams is one of the three researchers that developed mindfulness based cognitive therapy and then took then, then then got got another award funded award to do further research and set up and, and in Oxford.
Mark Leonard:And then that's how we set up the Oxford Mindful center.
Mark Leonard:Working with, I was coming from the sort of Buddhist studies side of things, supporting that work.
Mark Leonard:And then out of that the Oxford Mindfulness center became a, an idea that was hatched that we, we, we we we put, we, we set up and so the work and that I played a role in setting.
Brett Hill:And so the work that you you're doing, you're focusing on how is it different than this traditional, you know, mindfulness based cognitive therapy or my, I mean what, what's the, you know, what's the one of the key insights that kind of moved you to create this?
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Mark Leonard: a half two hour classes with: Mark Leonard:Because people in the workplace are not going to do something because you tell them to do it.
Mark Leonard:They want to understand how it's.
Mark Leonard:So you have to create a familiar workplace environment, a training environment.
Mark Leonard:So it had to adapt from A therapeutic context to a workplace stress management context.
Mark Leonard:That was a training.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:So rather than going to like, you know, a Buddhist center, meditation center and doing their meditations, you're actually taking this into the workplace.
Brett Hill:So the environment's important.
Brett Hill:And then what you said.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, so.
Mark Leonard:But there's already the change to a clinical environment from a Buddhist environment with the therapy mindfulness based cognitive therapy.
Mark Leonard:I mean, mindfulness based cognitive therapy again was based on mindfulness based stress reduction.
Mark Leonard:That was a secularized Buddhist meditate, primarily Buddhist meditation system, but it was secularized and taught in a hospital environment.
Mark Leonard:But it didn't have the, the scientific foundations of.
Mark Leonard:From cognitive therapy.
Brett Hill:So, so this marries the cognitive therapy found technical credentials with the incoming Buddhist foundational practices or a secularized.
Brett Hill:Secularized.
Brett Hill:Right.
Mark Leonard:Then given a cognitive therapy explanation of how it works and then applied to treat to prevent depression as a cognitive therapy.
Brett Hill:Amazing.
Mark Leonard:It's just slowly shifting the language and the context to become more scientific.
Mark Leonard:Okay.
Brett Hill:And so now you've taken that and said, how can we adapt this for a business.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:For stress management in the workplace.
Brett Hill:And go ahead, please.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, so.
Mark Leonard:So that, that we did some studies on that and that seemed to be effective.
Mark Leonard:We didn't have good enough data to publish it.
Mark Leonard:And through that experience, I really came to the conclusion that the social learning process was more important than the meditation.
Brett Hill:Okay, so I'm going to put a punctuation mark on that.
Brett Hill:The social learning process was more important than the meditation because that is a huge pivot right there.
Brett Hill:Because what I hear you saying is that the way people learn this was made, was realized, empowered more by the interaction than the practice of the meditation.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:I'm not saying that the med practice of the meditation wasn't important.
Brett Hill:No, of course not.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:But I'm saying the emphasis in what I observed in the way it worked was that people learning together, learning about how their minds work and then doing a short mindfulness meditation together in a group seem to have positive effects, even though they might only do a 10 minute guided practice for one hour a week or, you know, not.
Mark Leonard:And then many of them I could see weren't following up during the week.
Mark Leonard:Doing meditation.
Brett Hill:A mindfulness instructor?
Brett Hill:Never heard of that before.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:But the point is we were getting good results.
Mark Leonard:And I could see it happening.
Mark Leonard:And it seemed to me that it was this people learning together about how their minds work from coming from a kind of, you know, a biological biologist's background that could, that had some, I mean, you know, not trained as an anthropologist.
Mark Leonard:I'm not, you know, but I have some biological evolutionary understanding about how human beings as social animals work.
Mark Leonard:I began.
Mark Leonard:I began to see that this seems to make sense, that this is a social process, that human beings are designed as social animals and they're learning from each other about how their minds work with each other.
Mark Leonard:And it came.
Mark Leonard:And so with that insight, I then thought that I wanted to make a program that was explicitly about people coming together, applying those principles of understanding how their mind works as a social mind to.
Mark Leonard:As an.
Mark Leonard:As culture change in an organization rather than about fixing people that for the stress that they had.
Mark Leonard:I.
Mark Leonard:E.
Mark Leonard:We're, we're all stressed as individuals.
Mark Leonard:That's the way it is.
Mark Leonard:But when we come together and we understand each other, we feel safe.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:And that is the.
Mark Leonard:That is how we feel well and whole is when we feel safe in a group.
Mark Leonard:And over the last 15 or 20, 15 years or so, ideas like psychological safety have become more and more recognized as the foundation of all sorts of positive aspects of organizational behavior.
Mark Leonard:Organizational psychology based on this idea of psychological safety.
Mark Leonard:And then you know, three years ago first study published finding that the social factors may well be more important than the actual meditations in standard meditation programs.
Mark Leonard:And begin people beginning to realize more and more that these social interactions and how we understand each other and how we communicate with each other at least you know, have become more and more important about what the kind of outcomes we're looking for when we use something like mindfulness medicine.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:And there's this whole movement in like executive leadership and also in business organizations where people are beginning to focus on how the leaders or.
Brett Hill:And how the people who decision makers show up and the way that they engage is more important determiner of their effectiveness than precisely what they do.
Mark Leonard:Exactly.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:Or what they say or the theories or the answers they give.
Mark Leonard:These are all less important in terms of the long term outcomes of performance of the organization of the team.
Mark Leonard:The way that, the way.
Mark Leonard:The way people in that team are encouraged to develop understandings with each other and exploit what I would describe as a.
Mark Leonard:A capacity for a group mind that comes out of the social learning process.
Mark Leonard:When people feel psychologically safe, they don't.
Mark Leonard:They're not afraid of, of expl.
Mark Leonard:Of describing problems or mistakes because they are the opportunity for learning.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:These are, these are fundamental aspects of psychological safety and how it works.
Mark Leonard:But it's a question of how you achieve that from a mainstream approach.
Mark Leonard:This is about a leader's responsibility to influence the behaviors of a team or people in the workplace.
Mark Leonard:Whereas from my point of view, we can teach people in the team to be empowered to create this frontline culture which is based on self awareness of how they create a sense of self and other in the conversations they have.
Mark Leonard:Teaching people basic skills to listen rather than give advice.
Mark Leonard:To build psychological safety and then explain to them why, to understand why this is important and why this has to come first before tackling the problems that need, you know, the, the business related challenges that need to be solved.
Brett Hill:I really like the emphasis you have in all of your work about explaining why.
Brett Hill:And there's some, there's a, it's like a, you know, Mark Leonard's principles of design, you know, and that's like one of them.
Brett Hill:How did you come to that?
Brett Hill:That's like a criterial part of your, your, your design and your, in your training to explain to people exactly what's going on and then have them practice in a social environment.
Brett Hill:I guess what I'm trying to get to is like in other places I've been to about mindfulness, more like just do it.
Brett Hill:The learning is in the experience rather than the explanation.
Mark Leonard:Well, I mean there's, there are, there are, there are my own human life experiences that have been frustrated by, by, by asking questions of persons, people in apparent authority and say why?
Mark Leonard:And normally what one gets is either.
Mark Leonard:I mean the reality is that most people haven't asked those questions and they do what they do because they've been told to do it and they, and they believe that, that and I've never questioned it.
Mark Leonard:And when you question them, they feel threatened and they don't want to, they don't want to admit the fact that they don't understand the mechanism.
Brett Hill:So it could be a generational question authority issue here and unfortunately, certain way perhaps.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:So there's part.
Mark Leonard:It just so happens that I, you know, had that nature for one reason or other to say I want to know why and until you can explain to me why I'm not going to feel comfortable doing it.
Mark Leonard:Now that just happens to be in my nature.
Brett Hill:Well, I, I think it's in a lot of people's nature actually, particularly in business context.
Brett Hill:It's like I need for this to make sense and so I appreciate that.
Brett Hill:There was a, another.
Brett Hill:See the question I was going to ask you, if I can just get back to the me that was curious a minute ago had to do with the, the social, you know, the social aspects of this and the, the how did you first.
Brett Hill:Was there an event where you just noticed this Was, or that the social aspects of it were.
Brett Hill:What was, what was empowering your work here or this work?
Brett Hill:Was there.
Brett Hill:Was it a moment of realization or just kind of come over a period of time?
Mark Leonard:It was a gradual thing with the experience of teaching in the workplace.
Mark Leonard:Yep.
Mark Leonard:You know, my, my initial motivation was to get involved with making, call it mindfulness more accessible to a wider, wider population.
Mark Leonard:Society was about trying to find a way to drive systemic change in society because I was, you know, coming from an environmental management background and I was very concerned about the future of life, human life on planet Earth.
Brett Hill:And I think we're still a little concerned about that.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:And I couldn't see a solution.
Mark Leonard:I mean, I still can't see a solution, to be honest.
Mark Leonard:But I thought at least there was a way that there was a possibility that creating a way where we started socially to really look at ourselves and what drives our behaviors might start to create changes in the way society and the economy worked.
Mark Leonard:And that could lead to systemic change that would enable us to manage the way we use the environment, use our, you know, natural resources in the environment in a way that could mean that we could survive as a species.
Mark Leonard:Now, I, you know, the jury's still out.
Mark Leonard:I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.
Mark Leonard:I, I, you know, I'm not going to speculate about what the, what, what our chances are or not, but whatever is the case.
Mark Leonard:So you were, it's not going to happen unless we do this.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:And so you were moved to, like, try to find a way to have a big impact.
Brett Hill:And if I understanding you were saying that the way to do that is to make these skills, this practice, more, reach more people.
Brett Hill:And, and a good way to do that is in the business world where the people are.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, well, that's, that naturally, that's how things went after, you know, then it was like, oh, setting up the Oxford Mindfulness Center.
Mark Leonard:This is going to make something happen.
Mark Leonard:You know, this is a good way of establishing a powerful influence on society, creating an institution that researches into meditation.
Mark Leonard:Mindfulness meditation.
Mark Leonard:Now Oxford, you know, big deal.
Mark Leonard:Just, just that, that sounds good.
Mark Leonard:That's going to have a ma.
Mark Leonard:That's all going to create credibility.
Mark Leonard:So that was my first message.
Mark Leonard:But again, the point that I'm making is this was still about an idea of teaching individuals these practices.
Mark Leonard:And I was coming from an angle that was not strictly speaking about mindfulness.
Mark Leonard:It was a type of meditation that was more to do with ethical practice.
Mark Leonard:Meditation combined with Ethical practice and philosophical insight.
Mark Leonard:Mindfulness is, is from a Buddhist point of view.
Mark Leonard:Mindfulness kind of fits one part of a whole series of practices within the.
Mark Leonard:A part of a holistic approach to developing the individual.
Mark Leonard:And I was still coming from that idea of the individual.
Mark Leonard:But what I began to realize was through my teaching experience in the workplace, that the social learning process, I began to see the social learning process as being more important and that the sense of self.
Mark Leonard:There was a point at which clicked in my mind that the idea of the individual was at the foundation of the problem that we face in society, this separate psychological itself.
Mark Leonard:And that we could begin to see how this separate psychological self changed when we did exercises with others in using mindfulness practice to see how our internal narrative changed in different contexts.
Mark Leonard:So that then enabled us to see that this thing that we cling to as me is an imaginary, is a phantom, and therefore we shouldn't necessarily do what it's telling us to do.
Mark Leonard:Okay.
Mark Leonard:And that if it feels better for me to disappear because I'm get, I'm have it building an interesting psychologically safe friendship, that's better than being in the corner saying, well I'm this, that and the other and I need to do this and you're, I'm better than you and I'm going to tell you how to do this.
Mark Leonard:So it's teaching people the experience of feeling less self defined by being more that experience feels and it's a feeling of being more connected.
Mark Leonard:It's a feeling of being safe and secure.
Mark Leonard:And the self doesn't come into this because the self is there about defending the self when it feels threatened.
Brett Hill:Right.
Brett Hill:I hear what you're saying.
Mark Leonard:And then you give people that experience.
Mark Leonard:You go, look, you know, what's the big deal about this thing called me?
Mark Leonard:This is, you know, let's not get too stuck on it.
Mark Leonard:So you're giving people an insight into that as well.
Mark Leonard:Understanding the problems that you know, actually this, when the story of me comes up, that's a red flag.
Mark Leonard:It's not something we should be really trying to cling to.
Mark Leonard:It's something we should then investigate as a sign of a problem.
Brett Hill:You, you would, you might be very interested.
Brett Hill:I spent a lot of years actually in many hours in these group process called matrix leadership training by Amina Nolan.
Brett Hill:And so powerful and it has many of the elements that you're talking about.
Brett Hill:We would sit in these circles for, you know, days.
Brett Hill:And what we discovered is I, I discovered is that give me lots of opportunities to explore how I'M going to use it kind of unusual language how I do myself in groups.
Brett Hill:Like how does Brett show up in groups?
Brett Hill:Like, because I found out there's a way I do that and it didn't actually, you know, it wasn't my normal way of being with people.
Brett Hill:And so I began to realize I have a group Brett that's different than my non group Brett.
Brett Hill:And I really got a chance to really explore that duality, if you will, with myself.
Brett Hill:And wasn't I was, I wasn't really aware of until I immersed myself in that.
Mark Leonard:But one of them.
Mark Leonard:There's only one group Brett.
Mark Leonard:Is there?
Brett Hill:What's that again?
Mark Leonard:There's only one of those group Brett.
Brett Hill:Right, exactly.
Brett Hill:Depending on the group.
Brett Hill:Right.
Brett Hill:So I'm kind of.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, so.
Brett Hill:But, but what I was going to land on here is that one of the key components of her work was this trust and the way she, she literally would weave a fabric of communication by facilitating person to person interaction within that the eyes and ears of the whole and was super powerful.
Brett Hill:And so after he's sitting around and everybody talks to each other.
Brett Hill:And so the point, because you normally when you're in a group, you talk to the group.
Brett Hill:So it's like one to many.
Brett Hill:And she would facilitate one to one communications in the context of the group.
Brett Hill:So, and so when you do that for a while, basically a very amazing thing happens.
Brett Hill:Enough trust gets established, enough groundwork that whenever the fabric of that gets strong enough, the differences can then enter.
Brett Hill:And, and because it wasn't and it wouldn't tear the fabric of the group because there was enough strength in the relationships that people could talk about the fact, well, you know, I'm the only black person in the room, or I'm the only person that's, you know, over 60 in the room, or I'm the only person that's got, you know, and those things could begin to enter into the group and it was not fatal in a way to the, to the trust that was established.
Brett Hill:Amazing stuff.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, well, this is very, I mean, I, I, you know, the principles are exactly the same.
Mark Leonard:It just so happens that it's building on a series of arguments that come from how mindfulness based cognitive therapy is taught and then adapt, you know, it's just a different evolutionary history to a very similar approach with, for a specifically slight, you know, slightly different context.
Mark Leonard:It's not trying to say that all of a sudden we're going to create a team full of enlightened individuals.
Mark Leonard:What it means is that we're giving, we're giving people in the workplace a principle of understanding how to.
Mark Leonard:To be.
Mark Leonard:To be self aware in relationship with others and that how they go about interacting and the language that they use has an impact on the cascades from one incident or moment of their experience to the next and the experience of the person that they're interacting with.
Mark Leonard:So that they are empowered.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:To influence the way the culture emerges in a group or an organization.
Mark Leonard:And they also have a responsibility, not just the power.
Brett Hill:Yeah, I agree completely.
Brett Hill:I think that you don't really become an adult until you take that responsibility.
Brett Hill:And so I hear what you're saying.
Brett Hill:Exactly.
Brett Hill:And as you're saying that, I think I just, I've never thought of it this way before, but it's like thinking of a.
Brett Hill:Of an organization as almost like a brain brain.
Brett Hill:And each individual is a neuron and whatever it's.
Brett Hill:Whatever.
Brett Hill:And so whatever it fires, it connects to other neurons.
Brett Hill:And if you're firing fear and loathing and hatred and you know that that inspires a whole network of that.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:This is, it's what, what I'm calling the group mind.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:I.
Mark Leonard:E.
Mark Leonard:The mind is a social process.
Brett Hill:Yes.
Mark Leonard:Not an individual.
Mark Leonard:It's not.
Mark Leonard:An individual is a social process.
Brett Hill:See, that's, that's a book right there.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Brett Hill:Mind is a Social Process.
Brett Hill:That's going to be the name of this podcast that's really powerful.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:And it's so true because, you know, our minds are formed in relationship because no baby can live alone.
Brett Hill:You know, it's formed in.
Brett Hill:It survives by its relationship, by its ability to have an effective nurturing relationship because if it doesn't, it won't survive.
Brett Hill:And so it goes to the core of us.
Brett Hill:It really does.
Brett Hill:So tell us about the, you know, this, the mindfulness based organizational work that you're doing.
Brett Hill:Have you seen.
Brett Hill:Can you.
Brett Hill:Are there like some stories or case studies about the effectiveness of this that you.
Brett Hill:That where it's been tried?
Mark Leonard: rograms for hospital staff in: Mark Leonard:And since then I've done a number in the community, one or two organizations, short programs, but I've not really had the opportunity to really teach this broadly in the workplace.
Mark Leonard:You know, it's a struggle getting clients.
Brett Hill:Yeah, I hear you.
Mark Leonard:And there are a number of obstacles that really to this.
Mark Leonard:I mean, it's the partly.
Mark Leonard:It's the general perception of mindfulness as a stress management tool.
Mark Leonard:And it's, and, and it's a lack of understanding of this nature of the social mind.
Mark Leonard:It's counter, it's counterintuitive or it's, you know, it's, it challenges the whole structure of hierarchical organizations.
Mark Leonard:Right.
Brett Hill:That's a little bit so daunting.
Mark Leonard:You are ask, you are, you are saying, you know, you're, you're under, potentially you're, you're asked, you, you're, you're, you're trying to explain something that is outside of the, the, the reality that most people are able to function in, to try and sell something with.
Mark Leonard:So you're trying to explain something that doesn't really register.
Mark Leonard:There's not a market for it.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:Because people aren't aware.
Mark Leonard:Aware of it.
Mark Leonard:This is a class what has happened.
Brett Hill:This is a classical marketing problem, particularly in mindfulness world where, where people what you, you know, they need, they don't know they need.
Brett Hill:And so.
Brett Hill:Yeah, so you can't convince people of a need they have when they don't realize that's what you might be looking at them going, if you're a doctor, you know, you really need to take this vitamin D.
Brett Hill:And they're going, no, no, no, I'm eating enough lettuce.
Brett Hill:And they don't know that that's.
Brett Hill:Yeah, that's what they need.
Mark Leonard:And, and, and, and so really the, the, the work in this field that I've done in the last, you know, nearly 10 years or so has been more about being an agent of change within the field than it has been about being able to provide.
Brett Hill:So you're, you're mindfulness.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:And I think, you know, it's about changing the language to create a market.
Mark Leonard:To create.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:So that's exploring that.
Mark Leonard:And that's if you like, the, the way the program has ended up being recognized is a recognition of that work.
Brett Hill:I see.
Mark Leonard:If you like as much as anything else, and it's also say, it's saying to mindfulness teachers within the field, look, we're legitimizing something else that might not necessarily fit your expectations as to what, what you have learned is a mindfulness program in your training.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, it's still, you know, I still believe that somebody needs to be able to have a fairly well developed mindfulness meditation or meditation practice to be able to understand why.
Mark Leonard:To experientially understand why the internal narrative is not the most useful thing to identify.
Brett Hill:Well, exactly.
Brett Hill:So I feel like in my work work, it's like I, I, you know, I trained a lot with some Pretty powerful folk.
Brett Hill:And we talked a little bit about, you know, my work with Ron Kirch and my study with Ron Kirch before the show and who was the founder of Hakomi.
Brett Hill:And I've had the good fortune to have learned some, some really incredible people.
Brett Hill:And at one point I'm stepping back, kind of looking at the lay of the land of oh, here's all these meditation practices I've learned.
Brett Hill:They're really powerful.
Brett Hill:And here's these martial art process I've learned.
Brett Hill:Really all of these things really add something to my sense of like what's possible with people.
Brett Hill:Because I was really, really went after what can a human being do?
Brett Hill:I mean, really went after it, not in a casual inquiry way.
Brett Hill:And, and I came up with some things and kind of stepped back and I thought, you know, it seems to me, and it's just like you said, it seems to me like nothing happens with human, the human mind until you realize that you are not your thoughts.
Brett Hill:And, and when you really truly get that, that you, that you are not your thoughts, that there's something deeper going on here, then that opens a door to a much bigger experience that cannot otherwise be known.
Brett Hill:And so that my whole, all of my work pivoted around.
Brett Hill:I just want to help people have that first realization.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah, and, and, and, and yeah, your, your, your.
Mark Leonard:There are all sorts of obstacles involved in that in itself.
Mark Leonard:And then I think one needs to find a very well designed container for that process.
Mark Leonard:A well designed container for a well designed process that reveals this experience.
Mark Leonard:And that's one way of describing this work.
Brett Hill:Yeah, I like that notion of the.
Mark Leonard:Container because it's probably something and, and that, that's got to be sort of, that's got to feel natural, it's got to feel right in context.
Mark Leonard:It's got to reflect some deeply human patterns of behavior that are implicitly understood.
Mark Leonard:And I think, you know, human beings have been doing this since the beginning of time.
Mark Leonard:And an anthropologist might call this ritual.
Mark Leonard:But we don't go into a workplace and talk about ritual, we talk about training.
Mark Leonard:But we are following very similar sets of social activities and processes to lead person to experience this loss of separate self within a group, to be able to work together.
Mark Leonard:And then we are.
Mark Leonard:So we're designing that process and we're making it, we're making it accessible, comprehensible and reasonable and then inviting a taste of that experience as being the touchstone of where we need to work together to be able to, excuse me as, as an experience to reproduce and Then giving basic neck techniques to do that, which do include, you know, simple mindfulness meditation practices and conversational practices that give people pointers to understand why they sh.
Mark Leonard:It's not helpful.
Mark Leonard:What they need to do is learn to ask questions and listen rather than give opinions.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:As a basic pattern.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:That's like, you know, and practicing and practicing that.
Brett Hill:Right.
Mark Leonard:And we, and there's a point at which I think a conversation leads to a statement of.
Mark Leonard:A statement of whether it's fact or truth.
Mark Leonard:It's like, well, these, this is where we are.
Mark Leonard:You know, what do you reckon?
Mark Leonard:Is that it?
Mark Leonard:Now we can start to talk about what we do about it.
Mark Leonard:And I think you've got to build the trust to get to the place where we pe.
Mark Leonard:Where we feel safe to be able to let go of denial or move on from denial to face the reality of the situation that we confront.
Brett Hill:When you're talking about situation being kind of oppressive perhaps, or kind of like not even really, not really wanting to acknowledge the facts of it, the truth of it and.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, well, it could be, it could be the fact.
Mark Leonard:It could be to do with climate change.
Mark Leonard:You know, this isn't very comfortable.
Mark Leonard:You know, I'm also thinking about it on a one to one basis.
Mark Leonard:I was, you know, talking, we were talking earlier about sort of the, the daily work that I do, you know, visiting people in the community with mental health problems.
Mark Leonard:And I have a lot of freedom in this role because I'm not, I'm not working as a counselor or a therapist.
Mark Leonard:I'm working as a support worker.
Mark Leonard:So I'm a human being.
Mark Leonard:I'm going to these environments.
Mark Leonard:And, and we were talking about what I think is the fundamental principle that isn't well understood in any field really.
Mark Leonard:You know, it might be described quite well in person centered approaches, which is, you know, unconditional, positive, regardless, you know, empathy and, and often, you know, what authenticity.
Mark Leonard:But, but what does that really mean?
Mark Leonard:What it really means in my view is being able to, is being able to say, yeah, I, I can, I, you know, I'm.
Mark Leonard:Listen, I'm interested in what, in understanding what's going on for you.
Mark Leonard:And I'm not, I'm not judging you, but it's easy to say I'm not judging you.
Mark Leonard:I have to be aware of the fact that there's a point at which I go, oh, I think this person should do X, Y and Z and just not saying it.
Mark Leonard:And so, and, and ruling that out because it's obvious to that person.
Mark Leonard:But there's A point at which I can say to that person when they've gone round and round in circles, I say, so you're saying you can't do this because of this and you can't do that because of this.
Mark Leonard:And I say, well, what are you going to do about it?
Mark Leonard:I can't do anything.
Mark Leonard:The only thing that at some point you've got to work out, you want to do something about that and then we can do something that's.
Mark Leonard:That is the fact.
Mark Leonard:If you like, you admitted it.
Mark Leonard:But they've got to be.
Mark Leonard:Get to a place where they can take it from you because they know that you aren't judging them as wrong or failures of some description.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:You're just reflecting back to them, their scenario, their situation.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, but you, but there's something in you that has to be able to not be frustrated at this person's lack of ability to move forward.
Mark Leonard:And you have to do that because the only way you can do that is when you realize how difficult is for you yourself to move forward, even when you do recognize your own failures.
Brett Hill:Yeah, yeah.
Brett Hill:And so you can't be in a state.
Brett Hill:And we're talking, you know, here where I think, you know, just to reframe this a little bit, we're talking now about the, the seat that you're in when you're working with people and you know, how you show up as a, as, as.
Brett Hill:Let's just call it a helping professional, someone who's in the business of trying to help someone.
Brett Hill:And in this particular case is.
Brett Hill:I, I was actually talking about this earlier with a colleague.
Brett Hill:Ron Kirk called this, what was it?
Brett Hill:The square sitting squarely in the seat of non.
Brett Hill:Accomplishment.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:It's a beautiful way of putting it.
Mark Leonard:Absolutely.
Brett Hill:And so you can sit in this place where you, you know, you're reflecting back to the client, this challenge that they're facing, but you're doing it in a way where you're not invested in the fact they have an outcome.
Brett Hill:You're just holding them in the space of this is their conundrum and, you.
Mark Leonard:Know, blessings be well, you're still a human being.
Mark Leonard:You're a human being.
Mark Leonard:You, you know, it's, it's hard coming, Facing reality of how we, you know, chase our tails and, you know, we have to kind of.
Mark Leonard:It's hard coming to terms with the fact that this sense of self that we have, that refuses, that stops us from moving forward.
Mark Leonard:It's painful.
Mark Leonard:It is true.
Mark Leonard:And I'm not going to judge you for that.
Mark Leonard:You know, but sooner or later you'll realize that you're a rat cornered in the.
Mark Leonard:You're a rat in a corner and you've only got one option, and that's to move on.
Mark Leonard:But I can't make you move on until you decide to do that.
Brett Hill:And we'll just hang out until you do.
Brett Hill:And if you ever do, let me.
Mark Leonard:Know when you do, you know?
Mark Leonard:Yeah, exactly.
Mark Leonard:And, and that's on the, this is on the individual micro scale.
Mark Leonard:But it's the same principles when we're talking about the big unsolvable social problems of economy.
Brett Hill:Right.
Mark Leonard:Social inequality, you know, cons, the way we consume resources, that it's like we can't.
Brett Hill:We.
Mark Leonard:There's nothing.
Mark Leonard:It's these, these, these are, these are wicked problems.
Mark Leonard:If I.
Mark Leonard:In the same way that trying to intervene in a way that is going to enable, you know, make.
Mark Leonard:Make somebody else move on just pushes them backwards.
Mark Leonard:There's something about not doing here that is powerful.
Brett Hill:Exactly.
Brett Hill:So just holding the space for the purse.
Brett Hill:So the person.
Brett Hill:This.
Brett Hill:And I keep going back to, you know, Ron Kurtz and Comey because those, those principles really apply to me in this context.
Brett Hill:It's like within each of us there is, there's a principle in, in the foundations of a company called organicity.
Brett Hill:And it's basically that and also holism that within us is the knowledge about how to, how to move out of the corner.
Brett Hill:You know, it's like there's an urge that.
Brett Hill:This doesn't feel good and I want to feel better.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah.
Brett Hill:And so if you just hold space for that, that eventually the system will reach out towards what it needs and then you facilitate that emergence, that spontaneous emergence.
Brett Hill:But until they get that urge, you cannot make it happen.
Mark Leonard:Exactly.
Mark Leonard:That is the, this is the.
Mark Leonard:How should I put it?
Mark Leonard:This is the, the.
Mark Leonard:This is the million dollar question is how do you cultivate that recognition that there is a place of suffering that that person wishes to leave behind towards a place where they can imagine that suffering being reduced and the will to do it.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:And I think if I could, that the answer in your world to that is how to do that is relationally.
Mark Leonard:Absolutely.
Mark Leonard:And it's essentially by saying you're a human being, I'm a human being.
Mark Leonard:I'm not rejecting you.
Mark Leonard:I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do anything you are intrinsically with this relationship is, is unconditional.
Mark Leonard:I'm paid to come here and spend an hour with you a week.
Mark Leonard:And that's the only outcome that is required That I spend an hour with you every week.
Mark Leonard:And, and out of that, I, you know, we'll have a chat, we'll do things and, you know, slowly something, you know, when you feel like there's something you feel confident to do, we can do it.
Mark Leonard:I can help you.
Brett Hill:Well, the way you say that sounds a little dispassionate.
Brett Hill:Like all I have to do is clock my card and I'm good.
Brett Hill:But it's, but there's, it's more than just spending an hour.
Brett Hill:Spending an hour with you.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, Yeah.
Mark Leonard:I mean, I have to pay attention to you.
Mark Leonard:I have to, I have to be interested in what's going on for you.
Mark Leonard:And I'm also going to go, all right.
Mark Leonard:Okay.
Mark Leonard:You are full of, aren't you, really?
Mark Leonard:Sometimes, you know, but I get to the point, the point where I can get away with saying, yeah, well, only.
Brett Hill:Whenever you have the connection.
Brett Hill:Authentic connection.
Brett Hill:And.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Brett Hill:And they, they know that you're, you're not.
Brett Hill:You're doing it in rapport with them in a way where they trust you.
Brett Hill:They, they can hear you.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:Well, because.
Mark Leonard:Because they've, they've, they've been able to see it themselves.
Mark Leonard:And you're just saying to them, well, look, you've, you know, you're saying one thing, but you're continually.
Mark Leonard:You have to, in the end, you have to point out, I do think I've from my experience, limited as it is, but that you have to get to a point where you point out, look, you're saying you want to do this, but you're also saying you can't do it because of the.
Mark Leonard:This.
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:And you're saying you can't do it.
Mark Leonard:You can't.
Mark Leonard:These two things are, Are preventing you.
Mark Leonard:One is preventing you from doing the other, and the other is preventing you from doing this.
Mark Leonard:You know, how are you going to break that cycle?
Brett Hill:Yeah.
Brett Hill:Or in, in the, in the world that I do.
Brett Hill:It's kind of like you could ask the how, but you can also just hang out with them in this discomfort and see what emerges, you know?
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:I mean, it's.
Mark Leonard:Exactly.
Mark Leonard:But it's not, it's not saying.
Mark Leonard:I'm not, I'm not waiting.
Mark Leonard:I'm not waiting for you to do it.
Mark Leonard:I'm just pointing.
Brett Hill:Yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:And.
Mark Leonard:And you're not going to move on.
Mark Leonard:You're not going to get out of this corner that you find yourself in until you decide to do something about it.
Brett Hill:So you help.
Brett Hill:In my world, you know, you help.
Brett Hill:Help them explore that as much as they can.
Mark Leonard:So I mean, for sure.
Mark Leonard:Yeah.
Mark Leonard:So it's just.
Brett Hill:It's always so great to talk to you.
Brett Hill:We have to wrap up here because we're we before we sail into another ocean and start talking about what's there.
Brett Hill:Um, which I would love to do, of course, because it's always so fun to talk with you and I really appreciate that.
Brett Hill:Where can people find more about your organ, your work and connect with, you know, your.
Brett Hill:You have a curriculum that you've developed and all kinds of other stuff.
Brett Hill:The people who are out there, because, you know, you heard Mark say, like, he's got this course, he's got this whole methodology that's vetted, it's proven, it's in practice, it's ready.
Brett Hill:And also that there are businesses that can benefit from this.
Brett Hill:How can people connect with you who are interested in learning more?
Mark Leonard:Well, I'm, I'm.
Mark Leonard:I'm actually delivering practitioner training through online.
Mark Leonard:Through Global Mindfulness Academy, which is, you know, the.
Mark Leonard:It's based.
Mark Leonard:It's.
Mark Leonard:It's a spin out of the Singapore Mindfulness Center.
Brett Hill:Okay.
Mark Leonard:So if you Google Moe.
Mark Leonard:Global Mindfulness Academy or I think it's.
Mark Leonard:I'm not the website.
Mark Leonard:I could quickly.
Brett Hill:That's okay.
Brett Hill:We'll put, we'll put the link for it in the show notes.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, yeah.
Mark Leonard:So.
Mark Leonard:So that's where I'm at the.
Mark Leonard:Currently delivering practitioner training through Global Mindfulness Academy.
Mark Leonard:Okay.
Mark Leonard:For practitioners.
Brett Hill:So, so we'll look that up.
Brett Hill:We'll put that in the show notes and people can find out about you.
Brett Hill:I wanted to kind of close with and just so.
Brett Hill:And, and just thank you so much and fabulous, brilliant conversation with.
Brett Hill:Because our conversation about listening, you know, and the way that connects us so deeply reminded me of a quote that I love, love so much from Carl Rogers and I'm going to read this.
Brett Hill:It's.
Brett Hill:There is a peculiar satisfaction in hearing someone.
Brett Hill:It is like listening to the music of the spheres because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal, the hidden in all the personal communications which I really hear them in order to be orderly psychological laws and aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole.
Brett Hill:So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling oneself in touch with what is universally true.
Brett Hill:And that's a powerful invocation to listen deeply, connect authentically, speak truly here, you know, truly here deeply as well.
Brett Hill:So thank you so much, Mark.
Brett Hill:It's always amazing and fun to talk with you.
Brett Hill:And I hope you.
Brett Hill:You'll join us again and we'll do this.
Brett Hill:We'll do this another time.
Mark Leonard:Well, it's always.
Mark Leonard:We can always.
Mark Leonard:It's always fun having a chat, Brett, or, you know, it's a.
Mark Leonard:Yeah, a pleasure.
Brett Hill:Thank you so much.
Brett Hill:Bye now.
Brett Hill:The Mindful Coach Podcast is a service of the Mindful Coach Association.
