Ten years ago, if you said I’d be one of the top mindfulness facilitators in the corporate and wellness space I’d say you are smoking your socks. I have witnessed a dream not only come true but expand exponentially in so many dynamic ways. For so many of us life feels meaningless with the same unfulfilled cycle. As much as I enjoyed my life in advertising and film there was a calling to do something more, to be of great benefit to humanity.
In 2018 I was approached by a key person at RMB bank to export my mindfulness teacher training program from teaching in yoga studios to mainstream corporate. The thought of it at the time was daunting but I never shy away from a challenge. October that year I began training my first corporate intake – 10 brave minds who volunteered to become mindful ambassadors within the bank. We were given a boardroom in the heart of Merchant Place in Sandton. The training was groundbreaking… so much so that the Organisation and Development manager at the time won an innovation award. The training grew and more volunteers signed up to become mindfulness facilitators, soon we had a little mindful army ready to take on burnout and stress in the best of ways.
Shortly after the success of our live training we were hit by the pandemic, as we all were. Everything went online and the mindfulness facilitator program adapted and became flexible. To this day people stop me in public and thank me for what they call a ‘life saving’ offering during a very difficult and scary time. Not only did it provide many with mental health relief but also instilled in them a practice, pro-active mental fitness techniques that could be practiced daily.
Turning our pain into our purpose can lead to miracles and I have certainly lived a charmed life. My pain started as a young man, plagued by anxiety from an early age and suffered panic attacks before exams and sports events. I had no idea how to calm myself; my parents had no idea how to help me. In the 1980’s yoga was practiced by a small fringe few and the teachings of pranayama (breath work) and meditation had not yet surfaced. I suffered in silence, scared that others would know of my condition… sadly hiding a mental illness or affliction just makes it worse.
In 1991 I returned home from a year of military service to find my father unwell, he had been retrenched due to burnout and was at home unemployed and depressed. I had started my studies in advertising and worked casually in a video store while still living at home. This put me in the position to observe my father’s mental decline into full blown depression and acute psychosis. It astounded me as to how a normal, decent and intelligent person could completely lose their mind. After his first suicide attempt he managed to succeed a few months later and died from suicide.
My mental health now infused with grief and loss became an out-of-control monster, consuming me into its dark depths. In 1995 I started my first real job working for the largest advertising agency servicing the largest retail account. This may sound incredible, but I suffered from between 10 -15 panic attacks a day.
This intense period lasted 8 months until my body and mind were ravaged, my job was on the line and I became desperate for help. My mother suggested I visit the GP for a prescription although I felt extremely anti any chemicals
as my father was on every type of psych drug you can imagine at the time, I said to my mother ‘what is the use? It didn’t help him!’.
What seemed to be a ‘random’ occurrence became a lifeline… my mother booked a therapist, unbeknown to us Jillian was using alternative methods, namely breath work and meditation – this was the entry point into a whole new world for me. In the first session she introduced Nadi Shodana, alternate nostril breathing, of which I had to do for 15 minutes in session. My initial feeling was that this is a waste of money… surely, I should be talking about my problems as they do in the movies!
This became my home practice, at least 10minutes a day, to be employed at the first signs of panic. To my amazement it worked, 2 weeks of breath work and mindful awareness eased my anxiety and lifted my condition. My passion for these practices became my life and when my young and wide-eyed girlfriend said she wanted to travel to India something in me woke up. Knowing that mindfulness and breath work originated in the east made me curious about other techniques and of course the theory behind it all.
We backpacked across India for 6 months and then another 6 months into Nepal, along the way we practiced in Ashrams and temples, learning as much as we could and having our minds blown by the ancient wisdom and science.
In Nepal we lived in a monastic environment and committed to a rigorous Tibetan meditation practice known as ‘Ngondro’. On returning to South Africa a year later my partner and I struggled to integrate back into society, so instead of looking for jobs we found refuge in a Buddhist temple in Auckland Park – Lam Rim.
My service and residence at this temple lasted 3 years, during this time my 6-year relationship ended, feeling heartbroken and isolated I decided to try and integrate more into worldly life. A few years later I met my wife and married, we had a beautiful boy child and my life moved away from the bubble of a dream that was India and the Himalayas to being a father, husband and provider.
Supporting my family became my priority but my passion for helping others grew and I continued teaching in the evenings and weekends. My meditations albeit colourful and spiritual were balanced by the secular knowledge of the benefits of mindfulness and how the latest findings in neuroscience supported these practices.
Even the Dalai Lama was reaching out to science to prove the benefits of meditation with partnerships with the likes of Dr Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman. Soon profound and outstanding findings were coming out of the neuroscience labs at Harvard and Max Plank Institute in Germany. I now finally had tangible, empirical evidence of the benefits of mindfulness. No longer was it seen as new age woo woo but now more mainstream and as essential as brushing one’s teeth. Obviously, this helped to approach the corporate and medical world as my work needed to be verified and confirmed in order to be adopted. I mean, can you imagine the toothbrush and toothpaste going under such scrutiny?
While living in the temple I became obsessed with calming my mind by trying to keep it locked onto an object without it moving. The monks in the Himalayas displayed one-pointed focus, whereas my mind next to theirs was a broken radio, switching from channel to channel. The more I tried to calm my mind the noisier it became, it seemed the more I pushed and pushed the worse it got.
Gradually I let go of trying to meditate like a monk, I forgave myself every time my mind got distracted and I realised how harmful the idea of ‘emptying the mind’ can be. I also began to realise why so many people would tell me ‘I can’t meditate’, they were also trying too hard and realised it just wasn’t possible. Self-compassion started to grow in me and every time my mind would wander (and then recognise the wandering) I would congratulate myself for being able to bring my mind back to the object. After a month of practicing this ‘new’ technique I started to feel more at ease with myself and found
myself spontaneously celebrating my wins.
Finding more relief in mainstream, secular approached to meditation, I began to study deeply the words of Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn who pioneered the introduction of mindfulness into the medical world with his 8 weeks ‘Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction’ program launched at the University of Massachusetts in the early 80’s. Jon’s model became hugely popular due to the amazing results in stress and pain management without medical intervention. In a short time, mindfulness and meditation became medically recognised.
My mindfulness teacher training course is based on his well-known definition -‘Mindfulness can be cultivated by paying attention, in a particular way, on purpose and in the present moment, with 3 attitudes of non-reactivity, non-judgment and open heartedness.’ I encouraged all my students to learn this definition by heart so that they have a firm understanding of exactly what mindfulness is and apply it to their mediations and daily chores. ‘Is meditation part of mindfulness?’ People ask me and the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’, it is the intensive practice of mindfulness… like going to the gym for fitness.
Riding on the back of Jon’s program my course has also been medically recognised by the HPCSA (Health Professions Council SA) and medical professionals are rewarded with 14 CPD points for completing the training. I took a chance to submit my program, and it paid off, a clear sign that the world has changed.
Many traditional psychologists approach me for coaching on how to integrate more practical exercises for patients to actually work on their mental health. I like to once again use the analogy of a dentists and brushing teeth, a good dentist will always encourage you to brush your teeth as should a good therapist encourage mindfulness exercises.
Some days I can speak to over a thousand people in a day via multiple live and online platforms. It gives me great joy when people stop me in public places and say, ‘you don’t know me, but I have been following you for years and you have changed my life’. I feel humbled at these times to reflect on the kindness of my teachers and how their light flows through me. In 2023 I went through a painful divorce and found myself in a similar position to where my father was at the same age. I was able to navigate my pain mindfully and with purpose. I was faced with breaking the pain legacy and not give up on life. I grew my teacher training to the point where I was teaching almost every day, with most of my students paying a reduced fee. The reason being is that if I was left alone, I would have self-sabotaged but instead I showed up and healed through service to others. In my sadness and grief, I would often feel that my divorce made my life a ‘mess’, but then due to my mindful training I could catch these dark thoughts and remind myself ‘I am having the thought that my life is a mess.’ This approach is deeply profound as I could view myself from an objective point of view, to see the essential ‘self’ beyond the subjective. With mental fitness one is also able to direct oneself from dark, painful thoughts to more hopeful ones, an untrained mind is sadly unable to and is stuck in the washing machine of rumination. A downward spiral often results in more severe mental illness than just dark thoughts and depression.
Holocaust survivor and renowned psychologist Viktor Frankl quotes ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies my freedom to choose my response, and in that is my growth and happiness’. Mindfulness is how we make the ‘space’, it’s that part of us that catches the reactive, knee jerk reaction, takes a deep breath and remains cool, calm and collected. This does however require training and doesn’t just happen. From here as Frankl states is our happiness and our freedom. As we practice bringing our mind back to an object or observing our thoughts and emotions, we grow a particular area of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex. Our fear centre, the amygdala, shrinks as we practice… this means that we worry less, fear less.
I have a prophesy that in the near future we will own MRI scanning devices in the shape of a hat. This will revolutionise dating as once we have ‘swiped right’ on a potential partner we then meet them at the restaurant but before we order that bottle of wine, we respectfully ask to scan their brain by wearing the hat. Our smartphone may begin to emit red lights with a ‘warning’ sound – ‘Warning, Warning! this person’s amygdala is way too pronounced which means they are highly reactive with explosive rage, Warning their pre- frontal cortex is underdeveloped meaning he/she is easily distracted and may never gaze lovingly into your eyes or even listen to you for very long. ‘Warning, Warning, their parietal region and temporal to insular pole are also underdeveloped meaning he/she struggles with empathy and loving kindness’. At this stage you may decide to quickly run for the door.
This may sound like science fiction or an episode straight out of ‘black mirror’, but this technology is available to neuroscientists, and I would think it’s just a matter of time until it’s in the palm of our hands. The most important thing you can do is invest in your wellbeing and fitness, especially if you are acknowledge worked and rely on your brain more than you do your muscles. We all know everything in life takes work, however this is a joyful effort in the right direction to being kinder to your mind.
