The power of mindfulness as a positive energy with John Fletcher

We're here today with John Fletcher, mindfulness expert with over 20 years’ experience. John has presented on mindfulness to a vast array of organizations across both New Zealand and the UK, and with firsthand experience on the immediate benefits of mindfulness to help with pain relief, he's here to share his knowledge on this amazing and very timely topic. As an experience clinical supervisor and coach, he's helped children, families, and those suffering from chronic pain to understand and use bespoke mindfulness training for the better good. In a spare time, John loves to go tramping in the wilderness, the wilder and more remote, the better, and reading science fiction and practicing a form of Tai Chi, which is a moving meditation. He's also an instructor in this area. So welcome John to the Good Change Conversations podcast. It's great to have you here with us today and keen to hear a little bit more about your experience with mindfulness.

 

John Fletcher:

Thanks very much. Nice to be here.

 

Good Change:

I just wanted to learn a little bit about your personal journey of mindfulness and when and how it all began. You mentioned the chronic pain that you went through. But just in your words, tell us a little bit about your journey.

 

John Fletcher:

 I came to mindfulness at a point with, I'd had a long term back injury and a chronic pain problem and like many people, you try lots of different things and you go and see lots of different people. I'd got to the point where nothing had really helped to shift, and I was looking at living with pain and disability really. I came across a thing that was, instead of trying to fix you, instead of trying to make you better, this is going to help you manage. It's a different approach to the whole thing. And I went a long way towards fixing it and a lot of the pain conditions that I'd been experienced. Been experiencing just went away with this application of this skill of mindfulness and some of the techniques that I learned to go along with that.

 

Good Change:

 Amazing. It's just so inspiring to know there's unconventional ways of working through that kind of pain.

 

John Fletcher:

In the west we focused on trying to fix it. You've got a pain, you go to the doctor, you get a treatment, it doesn't work. You try another doctor, you try someone else, you try some alternative, and I was right there through the orthopedic surgeons. Acupuncturists through to crystals and faith healers and everything. I've tried it all and ticked all the boxes and all those things gave something, but none of them really started to address the issue of living with and managing what it was. There was a degree of acceptance of what had happened to me and how life was. That was implicit in that mindfulness training.

During that, I realized that so much of my pain was to do with my worrying about my pain. The things I wouldn't be able to do in life, the places I couldn't go, the people I wouldn't be able to go and spend time with because I had this pain condition.

 

Good Change:

So, when I looked up the definition of what mindfulness actually is, it said mindfulness means maintaining a moment by moment, awareness of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment through a gentle nurturing lens. What exactly is mindfulness to you?

 

John Fletcher:

There's as many definitions of mindfulness as there are people. But the one you've used there is good. It can contain the elements I would talk about when I was trying to give a definition.

The first being you talked about present moment. It's useful for us. It's very easy to say, oh yes, we've got to be in the present. But once we start paying attention and practicing that skill of paying attention to what's going on for us mentally, emotionally, and in our bodies, like you said. We come to realize that our minds and most of our experience is mental, that our minds are usually in the past or in the future. In the past, usually with regret and in the future, usually with some aspect of worry or anxiety. When we get to recognize what our mind's doing, we come to the realization that we are not in the present. We are very rarely in the present, really focused on what's going on, which is kind of crazy because of course the present is, the only thing that we've got, the present is the only moment we'll ever have to make any difference to anything we ever do. So, the fact that we're spending most of our, certainly our mental lives away from that, means that we're we are divorced from reality. Basically. We're not where the action is, we're somewhere else. So, mindfulness gives us this skill to. Try and broaden that experience of that moment and being able to be in it with more equanimity. You talked about a gentle nurturing lens, and so I really like the need to approach our experience without judgment and with kindness really because when we become aware of what's going on for us mentally, physically, emotionally, some of it's not pleasant. It's easy to get judgmental about, well, I don't want that. I'm going to cut that off, make that go away or conversely, with nice things, it's like, oh, I want more of that. So, we get into these patterns of pushing away our experience or grasping after something else. So, trying to re relax away from those habits, it's training the mind, basically that's what it's doing.

 

Good Change:

Do you need a certain amount of focus? Cause I'm one of those people, I'm jumping all over the face. I've always got somethings on my mind and different topics, different things going on, I'm thinking here there, I'm here, and everywhere. Does it take a real practice to get to that point? To able gain that present moment.

 

John Fletcher:

 I don't think we ever really gained that present moment. We talk about mindfulness and meditation as being a practice, so it's not something we get the tick, or we get the medal for it. It's just something we keep practicing. But over time we know that with regular practice, our capacity to focus is improved.

It's not that we stop them wondering, it's that we get better at noticing when they've wandered and bringing them back to the point of focus. So, in meditation and in practice, you might be focusing on your breath, and you'll start to think about the shopping. And so, you realize that, Oh I'm thinking about the shopping that I need to do on the way home.

I'll come back to my breath. How that works in the rest of life is you might be sitting doing a piece of work, and you start thinking about the shopping or the thing that you need to do after the shopping. And with the practice of the mindfulness, you've gone, oh, I'm distracted and come back to the piece of work you're doing. Cause we're not turning our minds off because we need our minds to operate us and live complex lives. So, we want to get the best out of them if we can and mindfulness gives us a tool to be able to start to do that.

 

Good Change:

I'm just, I'm probably jumping, I'm sure it's on my list of things I wanted to talk to you about, but obviously watching my 13-year-old and all these kids, their main form of communication these days is Snapchat. I was anti her getting into this, but she was the only one in her class didn't have it, and she realized that that was how everybody was talking and communicating. But it's such a bombardment of so many different quick communication things from so many different people at, mindfulness has got to be the way forward for, for this incredible technological. Thing that's done. The world at it really is so distracting and I just find it irritating, the whole thing. But to learn, to be present and get off your technology and focus.

 

John Fletcher:

There are different ways that you could look at that. I think we're not going to turn the technology off. We're not going to pretend that we're not going to use it, or we can do without it, you know? That's how we live our lives. I think it's perhaps more useful to think of mindfulness as being, as providing a balance. To the busyness of the stuff that we do around technology. So, the more that we are going to be busy and bombarded with all that sort of stuff from technology, the more that we need to be able to stop and practice being still so that we can be better at being busy. We're not practicing mindfulness so that we will be great at sitting still with a silent mind. That's not what our lives are. Our lives are busy and full of relationships and people and work and creativity, all those amazing things. If we are really in our present moment, moment by moment, we are fully alive to ourselves. We're not in this sort of weird regret and funniness about the past or this vague anxiety and disquiet about what's coming. We're right here, and that's how we get more out of life.

 

Good Change:

I think I mentioned to you last time we caught up. Stine taught me this little tool to help when you experience good feelings.

Just out on the lawn or wherever and taking that feeling and then press hard into your little pinky. That is probably a tool you use every day, but I just, I love that. So, press into your little pinky and really focus on that feeling and then when you want to feel that feeling again, in another couple of weeks, press your pinky and that comes back.

 

John Fletcher:

That practice of looking out for things that are positive make us happy is a great thing to practice. Our minds are very good at focusing on the negative, on the threatening, on the difficult, because we have a negativity bias, it's part of our evolution.

Well, I like to think of it as the difficult, nasty stuff is more like Velcro. It's kind of sticky, and our minds tend to stick to that and go to that. Whereas the nicest stuff, the happiest stuff, it's more like Teflon and our minds slide off more easily.

It's really good for our brain chemistry to spend time in the moment when we're feeling happiness. When you mentioned pressing your pinky, that's about slowing down, stopping, and consciously immersing yourself in that experience. It could be a lovely interaction with a child, the sun shining on leaves or water. These moments can pass before we even realize they were pleasant. Our mindfulness skill helps us notice and appreciate such moments. As you start noticing things that make you happy more often, you realize happiness is there all the time.

 

Good Change:

Thanks for sharing. A more colorful world awaits when we appreciate the beauty around us, even on a gloomy day, by noticing the colors of the trees and clouds.

 

John Fletcher:

In that moment, there's an amazing amount of sensation, visual input, smells, and sounds. We're not trying to grab onto or push away anything, but just allowing what's there to be there.

 

Good Change:

Some people might have a glass-half-empty attitude, or maybe they were born to look at the negative. Is it much harder for those people to change their mentality and focus on the positive?

 

John Fletcher:

Studies on neuroplasticity show that if our natural response is to see the glass as half-empty or react negatively to difficult situations, we build brains adept at those responses. However, due to neuroplasticity, the opposite is also true. If we practice responding calmly and mindfully to tricky situations, we build minds better at doing that. That's where gratitude practice comes in. The more we do it, the more we notice the good things, and gradually, our experience of life changes for the better.

 

Good Change:

 Super fascinating. I was reading this: Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives, which is kind of what we've just been talking about. You don't wait 10 years to experience this happiness. It's present in every moment of your daily life and those of us who are alive that don't know it. How great is this? Would you agree with the statement? So, we're alive, we just don't know that.

 

John Fletcher:

This is what we just talked about really. There's much more in this moment than we are aware of and by practicing being more aware of what's there. We connect more with our life.

 

Good Change:

So, would you have been sort of a little bit skeptical before you actually saw the benefits of what happened to you through your chronic pain or back pain injury? Would you be skeptical about mindfulness before you had actually experienced the benefits.?

 

John Fletcher:

My first introduction to meditation was someone who taught me by saying, Okay, sit there, be as still as you can, and that's it. And so, I sat there, and my mind filled up with all the things I had to do, and the fact that I wasn't very comfortable sitting there and that I didn't think I was. Doing it right. So, I thought, well, I can't do this meditation thing. It's not for me. That didn't go near it for a while. I wouldn't say I was skeptical. I was open to it, but my introduction to it was that I can't do this because as soon as I try and be still, my mind goes crazy. So, it's okay to have all those thoughts. Yeah, of course. That's just your mind, just flicking doing what it's doing.

 

Good Change:

So, tell a little bit about your experience with schools and mindfulness with children.

 

John Fletcher:

Well, I think back to my own childhood and know, it would've been a really great thing for me to be able to do. I was quite anxious and worried a lot of the time. Quite a fearful child and, had no skills, no techniques, or ways to work with that at all I got involved with, with Grant Rex, through the Mental Health Foundation when they put together PO's Breed Smile initially as a pilot, and I worked with Grant and the team on that pilot. Since then, have been working mostly in primary schools, but in some intermediate to try and give kids this skill of paying attention. I like to say to teachers, we're very good at telling kids to pay attention, but we're not so good at teaching them how to pay attention. That's what this program's about. It's about how can we learn to pay attention and to recognize when we're not feeling so good, when things are difficult, and to practice some simple techniques that we can use anywhere, anytime, when we get those feelings and that will help us to feel better.

 

Good Change:

What's an example if you're going into a school and you sitting a of kids? Are you in a classroom of 30 kids, for example? What's an example of what you would do for your first session?

 

 

John Fletcher:

We start with to physically get in touch with the physical feelings that they have. So, we'll do a little body scan sort of thing. We'll get people to do some moving, but just paying attention to their body in a way that they haven't previously we're talking about it, but you can be doing this now. The sensation of the clothes against your skin. There's the air in the room that you are in. There are all these different inputs that are there in this moment as well ticking over of your brain and all that sort of stuff and your thoughts. We'll get kids to put their hands on their abdomen and people can do this just as they're listening and there's this gentle rising and falling of which is your experience of the breath coming and going from the body. We bring ourselves to the present. That's the start of the process. It's the start of what's here right now. You're basically teaching them that when, they're feeling things are not okay, when they're feeling worried, anxious. Something bad happening as long as they're safe. It's okay. Feel your feet against the floor. Put your hand on your belly and take three slow mindful breaths and follow the breath all the way in and all the way out and then smile, so that's just a simple thing.

 

Good Change:

Have you seen a quite a positive outtake from principals and teachers around mindfulness?

 

John Fletcher:

It's accelerating over time. Mindfulness becomes more mainstream and accepted, this is accelerated over covid, is that the schools have been seeing a pattern of more. Worry and anxiety. What makes it effective is it's embedded in the sort of everyday life of the class and the school. If the teachers are practicing mindfulness, and kids can see that happening. So, it's not just a teacher standing at the front of the class going, now you all practice while I do some marketing if everyone's practicing together. It's, the teacher can report that how they feel better because of this practice that they do. Then of course, kids are not dumb. It's good to train teachers aides in some schools I've worked with caretakers at the school and the whole school community invite parents in so that they can be aware of it as well. Give them the sort of felt experience of doing it. Do a mindfulness session with them, get them to physically feel what it's like.

 

Good Change:

So, if you were going to give three takeaways to others that they could take away from today. Just three little things that they can do to be more mindful or to sort of embrace mindfulness. What would they be?

 

John Fletcher:

The first one is the one that you suggested about. Why not use your thing of pinching that pinky finger when something you're noticing something nice and special. So that's a great practice to be in around just being grateful and happy around something that's there. What would you do? You notice that's the first skill is noticing that it's there and not letting it vanish and stopping taking a couple of breaths. Squeeze the pinky. This is your trip, not mine. I hadn't heard that one before. Well, that's good. Squeeze the pinky and just just settle back into that moment of feeling that nice feeling and then just go on with your day. That can be 10, 15 seconds. So that, that's one.

Two is it's less a technique than a, something to remember is that over 90% of what our minds do in terms of thoughts is just nonsense. It's just random jabber of your mind doing its electrochemical thing. It's what minds do. This idea that we are not our thoughts. We don't have to believe or pay attention to every single thought and follow it all because most of it's just random nonsense to be honest. So, people have found it helpful to come to that thought that 90% of what my brain does is. It's not helpful and can safely and usefully be ignored. Sorry, that's number two. Your mind is not always is not always on your side.

Three yet there's something around that practice of stopping the practice of stopping and allowing yourself to connect physically, mentally, emotionally, with the felt sense of your body and the permission to do that. We're so driven by the need to be productive, the need to be busy. How when people ask you, how are you? our standard response is, oh, I've been busy and it's okay to stop. And in fact, if you want to be busy, you got to get better at stopping more. So, a real sense of offering people that put the full permission for your own benefit to practice stopping.