Transcription:
Mindfulness and Benefits of UAMS Mindfulness Program

Joey Wahler: Well, many of us have trouble focusing throughout the day, often preoccupied with the future or the past, or maybe both. But now, help staying in the moment is available through something called mindfulness.

This is UAMS Health Talk, the podcast from University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. I'm Joey Wahler. Thanks for listening. And joining us to discuss mindfulness is Dr. Puru Thapa of UAMS. He's a psychiatrist, also Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the UAMS Mindfulness Program. Dr. Thapa, welcome and thanks for being with us.

Puru Thapa, MD: Thank you, Joey.

Joey Wahler: Well, for the purposes of this discussion, first off, what does mindfulness mean in a nutshell?

Puru Thapa, MD: Mindfulness is the awareness where we intentionally pay attention to the present moment without judgment. In other words, truly experiencing our life as it is unfolding with kindness and without judgment.

Joey Wahler: And so we're trying to do that by narrowing our focus and also being really without judgment. What do you mean by without judgment?

Puru Thapa, MD: So normally, in life, we are always faced with different kinds of stressors and that can be painful enough. But then, what happens is our mind takes over and we tend to react to it. If it's unpleasant, we want it to go away. We push it away. And when we do that, what happens is it makes our stress go even higher, and that's when we get into distress or suffering. So by being able to be in the present moment and be with whatever we are experiencing, pleasant or unpleasant, and if we are not reacting to it, then we develop the capacity to be able to deal with these stressors.

Joey Wahler: So it seems you're really talking about reaching a mindset of neutrality, if you will, through a form of meditation. And so mindfulness uses, from a practical standpoint, breathing techniques to enhance that focus. So how does that work exactly for the newcomer?

Puru Thapa, MD: There are many different forms of mindfulness practice. But a common one is the awareness of our breath. So basically, in this practice, we invite the participants to bring their awareness to the sensations of their breath as they breathe in and as they breathe out. What they will quickly notice is that our mind is busy, it wanders off, gets distracted, there are the thoughts or emotions. The practice of mindfulness is not trying to suppress or get rid of those thoughts. Basically, what we're encouraging in the practice is to simply observe those thoughts without judgment or reaction. And then simply coming back to the breath. The mind may wander off and just come back to the breath. Each time you notice that your mind has wandered off, you notice that means you're being mindful. So it's not a sign of failure because that's what our mind does. So the practice is coming back to the breath. And over time, if we are able to simply observe our thoughts and keep coming back to our breath, which grounds us to the present moment, it helps us feel calmer and more at peace.

Joey Wahler: So you make an interesting distinction there, the goal isn't to clear your mind, but to use the breathing as an anchor, to have what to focus on as opposed to these other distractions that get in the way. Now, the Mindfulness Program, from what I understand, is fairly new at UAMS. So give us an idea of what triggered it being launched?

Puru Thapa, MD: Well, I'm a psychiatrist and, you know, about a decade ago, I got involved and started a practice in mindfulness, which has been off and on. But after I took over the student wellness program here at UAMS, where I help students on our campus, I realized the importance of mindfulness as a simple, you know, easily available tool for our students to promote their wellness. And so, in 2018 of October, I applied for a UAMS Chancellor's Circle of Excellence Grant to establish a mindfulness program at UAMS. And with that small grant, I was able to train about 10 mindfulness teachers. And with these trained teachers, we have then been able to offer mindfulness courses.

The course that we've focused on is called Koru Mindfulness, K-O-R-U Mindfulness Program. This is a program developed by psychiatrists at Duke University, the Student Counseling Center. And it is a very good introductory course lasting four weeks, each one session a week, 75 minutes. And the program comes with a free app. And most importantly, the students can connect with the teachers by filling out daily logs of their practice and with comments, which the teacher can review on the website and give them feedback. And since we started our program, we have offered over 50 such Koru Mindfulness course to our student, residents and some to faculty and staff with over 500 individuals who have completed the course.

Joey Wahler: Wow. Sounds like a big number for something so relatively new. So to be clear, before we move on to a few other things, you're talking about courses that are taught online, that people can do in the convenience of their home or workplace, or really wherever as part of this fairly recent wave of seeing more and more of these types of things that you can do right on your computer or your phone, I guess, too, right?

Puru Thapa, MD: This is alive course, so it's not something that they can just plug into at their leisure. The course is live because we feel that it's important to be able to do it in a group and be able to have interactive sessions between participants and the instructors, so that, you know, there are many misconceptions of mindfulness that can be cleared. There will be shared experiences. Once they've completed the course, they get a pretty good idea of different mindfulness practices and skills, and they can then utilize in their own personal lives the practices that resonate the most with them.

We talked about the simple breath awareness meditation earlier. There are other mindfulness practices such as the body scan, bringing our awareness to the sensations of our body parts systematically, just being aware of that. There's another practice where we have walking meditation. So these are all different practices that students learn during the course and, based on what resonates the most with them, they can then focus on utilizing that practice for them.

Joey Wahler: So I'm glad you pointed out that it is taught live and there is some interaction involved, but to go back to my point and clarify that, it is online and so it can be done remotely. It's just that it is both and via remote, right?

Puru Thapa, MD: Absolutely. We've been doing that live. Now, before the pandemic, we used to do these courses in person. However, because of the pandemic, doing it online via a Zoom platform has been really helpful because we can maintain the social distancing and plus it's very convenient. And at this time for the foreseeable future, this is probably what we will continue to do.

Joey Wahler: How long does it typically take for someone doing this for the first time starting one of these courses before they realize it's really making something of a difference?

Puru Thapa, MD: So in the Koru Mindfulness, the developers recommend setting aside at least 10 minutes of formal meditation practice a day. And studies have shown that if you can do that for about four weeks, 10 minutes daily for about four weeks, then people can notice benefits from this practice.

Joey Wahler: And in closing here, you touched on it earlier, but when you say benefits now, you mean both an improved demeanor and also a better ability for decision-making presumably because your mind is clear, right?

Puru Thapa, MD: Absolutely. What it does is it gives the individuals a better sense of well-being. They're also better able to pay attention to what is arising. So for example, if a coworker or a peer says something which may be unpleasant, before, they would simply react, but with the mindfulness practice, they're able to have that awareness of what they're feeling or experiencing. So it gives them a pause, a space before they can then respond. And studies have shown that individuals who practice mindfulness over time are able to have lowered heart rate, lower blood pressure, if that's had been a problem for them. And other markers of stress like cortisol levels, you know, get decreased. So apart from the subjective sense of wellbeing, studies have shown that for individuals who are actively practicing mindfulness, we have objective markers that reflects on reduced stress.

Joey Wahler: It sounds indeed like those benefits are both mental and physical as well. Well, if mind wandering keeps you from staying in the moment, mindfulness certainly sounds like something to be very mindful of. Dr. Thapa, thanks again.

Puru Thapa, MD: Thank you very much.

Joey Wahler: Dr. Puru Thapa, psychiatrist at UAMS. And for more information about what we've been discussing, you can visit mindfulness.uams.edu. If you found this podcast helpful, we certainly hope you'll share it on your social media. And thanks again for listening to UAMS Health Talk. I'm Joey Wahler.