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Mindfulness & Self-Compassion. Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D: from the archives · The Trauma Therapist

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Or today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests,
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enjoy or Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming
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Person. My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to
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be human, to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big
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believer in who we are is more important than what we know, and this
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requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can
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learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot
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com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, our
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guys. Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. Gaymic Person here and very
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excited to have on. Elijah Goldstein. Elijah welcome. Oh it's so great
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to be here guy. Thanks for having me all right. Elijah gold Scene
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is co founder of the Center from Mindful Living in West Los Angeles and creator
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of the six month mentorship program, A course and Mindful Living. He's a
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psychologist, speaker, and author who has published numerous articles, chapters, and
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blogs, including Uncovering Happiness, Overcoming Depression with Mindfulness, and Self Compassion,
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The Now Effect, How this moment can change the rest of your life and
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co author of a mindfulness based stress reduction workbook, Forward by John kevit Sin.
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He synthesizes the pearls of traditional psychotherapy with a progressive integration of mindfulness to
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achieve mental and emotional healing. Elijah also has a private practice in West Los
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Angeles, California. All Right, Elijah, obviously, just a little bit
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about you. Where are you from. Let's start out with that and also
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share with our listeners where you're calling from as well. It's a very metaphysical
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question. Currently physically in Los Angeles, and so this this has actually been
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my home. I moved here when I was three years old, and my
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dad's my dad. My dad's a rabbi, and so I kind of he
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have job out here, and so we moved out here, and I've been
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in different places, but ended up about ten years ago back in Los Angeles,
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and this is where I've kind of started to make sort of more roots
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again and have my family here and all that nice. Okay, So you
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know, before we started recording ice to you about a quote or mantra or
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something, you said you did have something. Why didn't you a share share
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with our listeners what that is. Okay, you know, so I'm kind
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of torn I have to say between a couple, and so this isn't I'm
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gonna say this quote. And it's not so much a mantra. I do
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have a mantra that I'll give to your listeners too. That's also a quote
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something shorter that they can that really can kind of inspire them in the present
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moment. But this is something that's really been up for me in the past
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year or so. UM, and it's something I'm incredibly passionate about. And
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so it's a it's a quote, okay, and it's been attributed to Albert
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Einstein, UM. And many of your listeners may have heard this quote,
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and it was published in the New York Post in nineteen seventy two. And
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I'll read it and so we can kind of settle into it for a moment.
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So I just kind of invite everyone as I'm reading this to just take
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a moment to soften their bodies, take a big deep breath, you know,
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release, become present, and just kind of allowed us to settle in
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and see what you notice as you're as you're listening to this says a human
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being is a part of a whole called by us universe apart, limited in
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time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated
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from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion
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is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and
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to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to
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free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion, to embrace all
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living creatures in the whole of nature and its beauty. I like that one,
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Okay, Yeah, you had another one too, and so the other
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one so yeah, okay, So the other one is um by fifteenth century
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Indian poet named Caber that said, wherever you are, that's the entry point.
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Nice, Okay, Well, let's focus on one. Which one?
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They're both head so let's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So let's
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let's focus on the on the first one, really okay, because that this
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one's this one's really important and not talked about as much, particularly in my
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field, in the field of let's say, mindfulness, in psychotherapy, um
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and even in psychotherapy around trauma and particularly there there's more of a focus on
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you know, healing the person. And it's more of an introspective type of
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thing. Um and uh and so intra personal. And what this is saying
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is, um, you know, we are far more interconnected than we know
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and or we re lies. Day to day, we see ourselves walking around
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and we're these separated physical forms and as a result of that, we think
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we're actually separate from the people around us and the things around us. But
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the reality is everyone's our brain is constantly monitoring our environments and the moment it
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sees a person or it comes into a physical space, it has a particular
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reaction about first, am I safe or am I not safe? Is this
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and what kind of thing is this person inspiring in me or this environment inspiring
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in me? And it impacts our brain's implicit decision making and how we're feeling
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in the particular moment. So we're completely interconnected with people and our environments.
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The kind of idea that we're separate is an optical, optical delusion of consciousness,
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as he says, And why this is important is because most of us
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walk around. You know, we've heard kind of in a state of autopilot,
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but kind having a trance to some degree, um, without realizing you
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know, the impact of our how our environments or how our environments impact us,
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and how they can be a source of healing for us. Um.
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They can inspire us to be more motivated to do things and respect to our
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health and well being. Or they can bring us down, um and you
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know, make us more lethargic, or keep us stuck in states of anxiety
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and depression or at least add to that. And um, yeah, so
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that that that sense, it's important to understand. Yeah, as you were
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reading that, I was thinking to myself, Yes, yes, I feel
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like that a lot. You know that that disconnection then and oftentimes when uh,
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you know, people are impacted by trauma or or mental illness, that
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in turn is you know, perpetuates that kind of separateness, right, and
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that uh discontinuity. Let's let's jump off here, and how did you get
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into this field? How? How how were you pulled into this? Elijah?
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You know it was you know, I've sort of in some ways always
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been a seeker. And you know, I'll say that, you know,
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just my upbringing alone. My parents divorced when I was six. My mom
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eventually became a psychologist, my dad was a rabbi, and so I had
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that integration of kind of like psychotherapy and spirituality to some degree and UM,
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but at the same time I had my own pain and suffering and confusion.
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And it was fast forward into my early twenties, and UM, I was
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in San Francisco, and I was I was in the corporate world, and
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I was riding the dot com high and and quite literally, you know during
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most of the time, kind of playing way harder than I was working.
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UM. And so I was parting to an extent that was really abusive to
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my mind and body. And so there's something kind of tugging at me,
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saying that there's something else here I'm not getting it. And so I went
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I went away to a retreat UM down down near Los Angeles and Mary called
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Simi Valley, and there I met this guy who was kind of like a
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mindfulness teacher, and you know the background and like kind of cobbalistic thought,
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just kind of Jewish mysticism. And it was there that he introduced me to
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the idea of kind of eating an orange in a particular way mindfully. And
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so there I was, you know, completely saying a sort of resistance,
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saying you know, I don't know what you're trying to, you know,
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introduce to me here. But but he's like, well, just kind of,
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you know, give it a shot. And so he asked me to
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kind of settle into it and look at it and bring a bring an attitude
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really of curiosity and kind of let my judgments go for a second. And
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so I looked at it and I saw the different you know, the colors
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of it and the dimples in it, and I started to peel it and
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saw the zest of it, the membranes and the actual orange itself. And
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then kind of he guided me to kind of bring it into my mouth and
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taste it with a sense of presence, and it was like the jews just
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spread throughout my mouth like I'd never experienced before. And he asked me how
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I was feeling in that moment, and I said, well, I feel
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really relaxed, you know, more relaxed, and I felt in quite a
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while. And and so he asked me, what would the weeks and months
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ahead be like if I had more not just more oranges in my life,
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but more, you know, more of this type of presence. And you
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know, it's something kind of lit up in me in that moment. And
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it wasn't that that changed my life forever, actually, but it planted a
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seed that was deep for me. That and I had been reading about mindfulness
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and meditation and Eastern stuff. This was before I kind of blew up in
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our culture, really but the but but this kind of the experience of it
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like impacted me way more and so I inevitably relapsed in my old ways when
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I went back to San Francisco. But that seed was there and I and
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it planted the seed that what I really want to do in life is help
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myself and other people become more present and move towards healing and happiness. And
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I went back to a school that integrated meditation into it into its curriculum,
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and that's when I came in touch with the idea of what most mattered to
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me was helping myself and other people also like experienced the sacred aspect of life
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and or to do that, you have to be aware. So being a
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doctoral student, I had to get a research project somewhere going, and so
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I had people choose objects that were sacred or meaningful to them. And this
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could be just a memory, or it could be physical objects will guide them
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through a mindfulness practice of being present and relating to this object to inspire a
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sense of what's meaningful and sacred within. And that was then published in the
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journal Clinical Psychology. And from there I met a really great friend of mine
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now and mentor, this guy Bob Stall, and he and I inevitably went
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on to write Guy Got Trained in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, a wonderful week
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program started by John Cabotzen, and that has a ton of research behind it,
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and he and I eventually co authored the book, The Workbook, and
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from there I kind of inevitably sort of found my own voice and you know,
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published a number of books around that and psychotherapy around depression and overcoming depression
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with mindful of self compassion and integrating the neuroscience, you know, into this.
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I'll say one thing before we kind of move on, which is what
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happened to me in that retreat was I came to understand something really important to
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myself. And what I came to understand, which is important for all the
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listeners here, was I never wanted to do anything unless I understood that it
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had some meaning and it made practical sense in my life. I didn't just
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do it because someone told me to do it. And so I really started
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to question things and wrestle with things, and and and I think that's what
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allowed me to begin to convey things in a very practical and meaningful way,
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because I first need to integrate that for myself. How do you define mindfulness?
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Mindfulness just the you know, I think, and just the noun of
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it, of course, just means awareness. That's it. It's just simple
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like that. And the practice of it. I you know, the classic
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definition that you know, the secular definition anyway that you know, really stems
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from John cabot Zim, which says the intentional practice of paying attention on purpose
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in a particular way, non judgmentally. And so I switched that because you
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know, my experience is that term non judgmentally is very confusing for a lot
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of people, and so and kind of archaic to some degree. It's old
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language, and so um to me, mindfulness is this is intentionally paying attention
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to something in the moment with an engaged curiosity. And you know that when
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when you're curious about something, you naturally split through the judgment of it at
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being inherently good or bad, or right or wrong. Or fair or unfair.
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Instead, you're actually seeing all the elements that are that are there,
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um, and you're breaking uh, you're going to break open old patterning um
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that and see things maybe that are more skillful or helpful to you, or
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maybe more fresh or maybe you're doing things you don't like or or unhealthy for
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you. Um, and you're able to kind of see that more clearly and
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you just don't do that anymore, um, you know, or things like
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that. So that curiosity element is really essential and critical to mindfulness. Yeah,
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yeah, yeah, what within the context of trauma, talk a little
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bit about you know the role of mindfulness. Maybe some uh pitfalls to entry
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if you will, and uh, secondarily talk I want you to share maybe
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you know, uh mistake quote unquote you made or an error you made when
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you were starting out maybe working with individuals or yeah, that's going to going
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sure. So um, you know, in respect to trauma, immediately,
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our nervous system you know, creates defenses uh to keep us safe. Um,
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and it becomes really intense intense reactivity and patterning. Um. You know
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that's that's there. And so with mindfulness, you know, what we're doing
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is we're kind of getting curious about, uh, you know what, what
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kind of reactivity we're noticing. We're not judging it as a good or bad
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thing. In fact, in fact, it might be a healthy thing for
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right now. In fact, some people, you know, need to hold
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on to their trauma patterning for a little while in order for them to function
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in the world, and then eventually can kind of move move towards kind of
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releasing it, you know a little bit more when they're not needing it anymore,
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such as trauma experience from childhood and UM, and then later later on
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being able to kind of be able to kind of release that um, not
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needing that type of those types of coping mechanisms anymore. UM. And so
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mindfulness allows us to kind of move towards acceptance UM and not judge ourselves so
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harshly for our own type of reactivity UM, and be able to kind of
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maybe see new ways of of of responding UM. You know, you know
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the classic quote from Victor Frankel, you know, kind of applies here,
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which is in him for those of you who are listening who don't know him,
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psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor who said between stimuluts or who's been who's any way
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been um said to say by a guy named George Potacos, who said,
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between stimulus and response, there's a space. In that space lies our power
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to choose our response, and our response lies our growth and our freedom.
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When trauma happens, that space completely disappears. There's no space for that space.
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And and so we kind of develop the faculty of kind of tapping into
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it, dipping our toes into it. And with trauma we always can be
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added in, you know, on a scale of one to ten. If
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this is kind of hitting you on a seven, eight, nine, ten,
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let's not really go there, um. But if we can kind of
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dip our toes into it little by little, then we can be and to
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get more comfortable and be able to see and widen that space between stimulus and
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response. So we have a little bit more perspective about what's help, what's
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a healthy reaction towards other people or towards myself in this moment of One of
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the mistakes that I would say I made is having a large group of people
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and leading them through a classic body scan practice and not really having the awareness
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that early on of the And this is kind of the issue with a lot
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of the meditation being kind of just the rowing out there all over the place
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right now to some degree is what happened to me was someone had to kind
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of rise up real fast after they were doing a body scan and we got
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to the area around their hips, and they ran out of the room and
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I went to connect with them, and they had been raped and had sexual
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trauma, you know, in the not too distant past, and that just
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completely retriggered it for them. So yeah, yeah, uh you know it
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along those lines. What are some And I say this because I just recently
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had on David Trelevin, who wrote the book Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, And one
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of the questions I guess I want to ask you is what are some of
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the concerns that uh, you know, as as a clinician or a practitioner,
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you might see clients may have around uh moving into mindfulness. Um,
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the concerns that clients may have moving into mindfulness? Yeah, well, I
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would say, here's my concerns. Uh, yeah, here's my concerns.
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A lot of people just you know, recommend meditations or maybe they've taken a
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course and so they guide they lead these meditations themselves, and you know,
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with just different people. And the reality is certain meditations can be quite dangerous
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for people, like I think in my example and retriggering and so like with
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so there are better meditations to do with someone who's really emotionally unstable or vulnerable
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or vulnerable and doesn't have a lot of kind of ego strength that during that
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time maybe and those are more kind of outward type of meditations, So you
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can still train someone's ability to become present and hear, but more externally like
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listening and hearing sounds, or maybe you're doing a grounding type of practice where
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you're asking someone to visualize being as stable as a mountain, you know,
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classic mountain meditation, it's called. These are particular types of stability meditations,
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and outward focused meditations are better for someone who's feeling really emotionally unstable or vulnerable.
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And then and then as we kind of get closer and we can move
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back into more internal meditations, being with your emotions, being with your feelings,
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you know, being with certain areas of the body, you know,
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kind of tapping into those areas. But you know, we have to kind
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of know the person and their background and what they're coming in with and that
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that's actually quite important and it's not going to be destabilizing for everybody necessarily.
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Everybody's different. But there is a danger to just throwing meditations everywhere and just
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like just allowing anyone to just kind of pick and choose, you know,
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whatever it is, because there could be in this particular arena that you're coming
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from, and the arena trauma in particular is what I'm talking about. What
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do you allows you? What do you think it is about you about yourself
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that allows you to do this work? You know, you upfront you were
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talking about being in the corporate world, dot com error and partying a lot.
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And here it's I don't want to say the antithesis, but it's it's
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it's it's obviously different. And but what do you think it is that allows
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you to do this work so well, so effectively? Um, I did
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a little thing with myself and my early around that time where I I kind
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of projected myself into the future and you know, many many years from that
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point and look back and said, what would how would how would I have
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wanted to live? What would I have wanted to do? What am I
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look back and say at that at that time and say, um, yeah,
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I did exactly. I did it the way I wanted to do it
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and in a meaningful way. And I think that set the course for this
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for me and that um that you know, there was nothing that replaced for
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me, for me personally, and this is different for everybody. UM.
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Helping myself be present in life to the people I work with, it,
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to my family, UM, to the people I come in contact with,
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to myself. UM. I you know, I you know one thing I
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don't I don't talk about a whole lot, but you know one of the
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things that are like kind of little hallmarks throughout my you know, experience,
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I would say, traumas with a small tea versus a big tea. UM.
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But uh, you know I I struggle with bouts of anxiety, you
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know, growing up and also depressed mood and so um and and so I've
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had a lot of experience with the power of this around let's say, insomnia,
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around panic attacks, um around um uh like heavily embedded depressive or negative
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thinking, I would say, and the pat and the power of being able
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to shift like physiologically, um mentally, but also just in my body,
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my relationship to what's there and what a powerful impact that's had. I'm about
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my ability to dip into more of an appreciative awareness for life, and what
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a powerful impact that's had on even my memories. And so I just see
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it's like the most meaningful thing I could do with my life personally, but
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also to share with and support people professionally in the road to healing and happiness.
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I mean, for me, I don't see anything more important than that
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we're meaningful, and so I think that's what it is. And so,
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you know, allowing myself to kind of just you know, in your and
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your your question right now, kind of just reprompts that for me. So
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thank you for that. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I mean,
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I think a lot of little listeners, including myself, were raising your hands
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when you were talking about anxiety or depression or thought negative thinking and so forth,
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and um, you know, just kind of pruising your bio and your
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website and so forth. And obviously there's a lot going on. I mean,
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you have a lot of awesome books. And again, all this is
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going to be looked up here at the show douts page. At the Trauma
23:00
there was podcast dot com. I'll have Elijah's books linked up here. One
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of the things I wanted to talk about was the Center for for Mindful Living
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and ask if you can kind of touch base on on that and how that
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came about and what that is. You know. That was my wife,
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My wife and I a number of years ago. Um. It was actually
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kind of funny. We were renting a space and doing individual therapy with people,
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and we always had the dream of opening a center together. And to
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me, it goes we wanted to open a center that integrated mindfulness and psychotherapy,
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um, and just kind of be that. And I guess in Los
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Angeles, you know, it's a physical it's a physical center, and we
23:37
wanted to put classes in there and workshops and various things like that, and
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so inevitably, just serendipitously, we got sort of out. We got kind
23:45
of I wouldn't say really kicked out, but it was a woman who was,
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um, you know, running her own kind of center and really needed
23:52
this space for her interns more than for our rental obligation that we had with
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her, and so she asked if we can kind of find another place,
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and so that like just allowed you know that that that's one of those examples
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of something that might seem bad but turns into a really good thing. Um.
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You know, so it's always good to just be aware that. I
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just still have a million examples like that. But the um but but and
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so we said, okay, this is our opportunity. And so we decided
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to find a whole space that has like a large room for groups and classes
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and various rooms for therapists and our own space and um, you know kind
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of allowed that dream to to come alive. And so at the center right
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now, the physical center, you know, we have our individual work,
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We have the therapists there. We have workshops and classes, um that we
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put on more like evidence based ones typically around like mindfulness based cognitive there be
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mindful self compassion. We have mindful family classes my wife and I because we
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have a young family ourselves three boys, wow, three like very intense boys.
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Um. We you know, we do things like, um, you
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know, put on mindful family retreats uh and uh in like Costa Rica,
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and so you know, so we kind of integrate the center family classes,
25:07
retreats, um, you know, with the biggest the biggest thing as the
25:12
physical center. But the biggest thing is really kind of sending this out globally
25:15
and allowing relationships to form with people and helping people find other inspiring people and
25:22
relationships who want to live this way in accordance with let's say mindfulness, right,
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what I call mindful living and for more sustainable well being and UM.
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And so we also provide programs that people go through and they connect with each
25:37
other all the route and the hope. And what we've seen is that people
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actually create relationships with each other and with ongoing mentors, and so they can
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make this stuff come alive in a real way in their life. So before
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we were recording, you talked about six months program. Is this what you're
25:53
talking about? That is? That is the six month program. The reason
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I created a six month program was because all the other programs that are available
26:00
out there, which is really wonderful, a lot of like eight week type
26:03
programs typically always forever. Everyone always has said at the end of those programs,
26:08
Okay, well that was a good taste. What now, And so
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then the community goes away, and then so people people's practice typically goes away.
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So something that's longer was important for people to really create more sustainability with
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their informal and formal practice and then also to me again this comes back to
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the Albert Einstein quote that we you know, initially started with to help them
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create these relationships, because these relationships are going to be inevitably what is going
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to play on their brains implicit decision making, It's going to be where naturally
26:44
inspiring to them, these inspiring social cues that they have more that are more
26:49
alive in their environment and even virtually by the way, it doesn't have to
26:53
be you know, in person, but even more contact with people who are
26:56
inspiring to them will remind them and give them the fuel and motivation to bring
27:02
this into their life, which all the corelates around mindful living. Mindful living
27:06
all has correlates with um happiness and so that's why I say sustainable happiness.
27:12
Nice Okay, So um that's the center for Mindful Living and I'll have that
27:18
linked up here at the Show that US page. Now, if someone wanted
27:22
to uh kind of jump in and read a book of yours, which which
27:29
one would you recommend, that would be a good kind of jumping off or
27:30
starting point for them. Well, it depends what they're depends what they're looking
27:33
for. But you know, my, my, what I what I consider
27:37
to be you know, my most kind of in depth you know work is
27:40
Uncovering Happiness UM and the reason being and even though the tagline is overcoming depression
27:45
with mindfulness and self compassion UM, it's it's more of a book around kind
27:49
of resiliency and living well. It's more of a book around sustainable happiness really
27:55
UM and and I you know, the thing that's discussed in there that's discuss
28:00
more so than in other books is the science and practice around play and why
28:06
play is so important for our own resiliency and also our own integration around our
28:11
learning and memory UM, you know, in life. And so we talk
28:15
about these various aspects of UM around how chronic stress over time and depression impacts
28:23
the brain, and what we know about how we can shift the brain in
28:26
particular important ways that can UM that can mediate those effects. And so that's
28:34
what I'm covering happiness is really about. So it's a very practical guide you
28:37
know, that integrates neuroscience, mindfulness, self compassion, play and all of
28:44
this and a really really rich soup to read. So if in kind of
28:52
putting myself in the position of our listeners, here a lot of whom are
28:56
you know, trauma workers of various kinds, or even people just starting out
29:00
on their trauma informed journey. Would that be a good book to kind of
29:04
get if they wanted to begin to develop a mindfulness practice. I think it'd
29:10
be. You'd be a beautiful book I get and may come alive in your
29:12
life. Yeah. All right, So as we closed close out here,
29:17
how about a book recommendation for our listeners, whether you know trauma related or
29:21
mindfulness related or not. What would you what would you share? Yeah?
29:26
There's so many wonderful UM books out there, but I'm going to share the
29:30
um Car Book by John O'Donohue. UM. And you know, this is
29:34
a book that's around the UM the importance of relationships UM. UM. But
29:45
it's about understanding. It's like ancient teachings and stories from a Celtic tradition,
29:51
UM, around kind of connecting with soul friends. It's around UM connecting with
29:57
uh you know, something greater than yourself, finding silence in life and um
30:03
and it's really a book about your heart uh and and you know, more
30:07
than anything, I think it's a book that you kind of read a little
30:11
bit at a time and or you can read the whole thing kind of quickly,
30:14
but you you bring it in and it's um and it's inspiring and connecting.
30:19
And what's it called aamcam car is in a Celtic uh a language means
30:26
soul friend. And it's just kind of a book of just like it says,
30:32
it's a you know, the the subtitle of the book is a book
30:33
of Celtic wisdom. It's a book of wisdom, um. And it's beautiful.
30:40
He's a poet too, so he writes very poetically. UM. So
30:42
that's what's kind of nice about it as well. All Right, folks,
30:47
UM, I've been talking with Elijah Goldstein. Elijah, what's the best way
30:49
for people to get in contact with you? You can just find me at
30:55
Elishah Goldstein dot com. Um. And if you that's the that's the that's
31:00
the most kind of direct way to find me. Um. And if you're
31:03
locally in La you can go to Mindful Living La dot org. That's where
31:08
you'll find our center, the center from Mindful Living um. Um. So
31:12
those are two two great places to connect. Awesome, all right, Elijah,
31:17
thanks so much for taking the time to do this. Man, we'll
31:18
talk to you later wonderful guy. Thanks so much,