Sea Control - Sea Control 279 - Mindfulness & Movement with Dr. Theresa Larson and Jon Macaskill

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

Links1. The Mindfulness and Movement Experience Journal, by Dr. Theresa Larson and Jon Macaskill, 2021.

Hey, folks, Jared here. John Frerichs is your host today, and he'll be speaking with authors Dr. Teresa Larson and John McCaskill about their book, The Mindfulness and Movement Experience Journal. This episode was edited and produced by William McQuiston. We just launched a call for submissions for the SimSec Forum for authors and readers

over at the main website. If there's a particular piece that you enjoyed this year, nominate it, and if it gets enough votes, you can hear the author present his or her work. We've also officially put out our call for articles for the end-of-year fiction contest. go over to simsec.org for full details. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network,

The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of iron brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International American Safety. I'll be falling for you in the alley, but I'm not a ship for now.

Guten Tag, shipmates, and welcome back. Today, we will dive a little outside of our traditional topics on Sea Control Podcast and discuss a recent book published and available on Amazon that lays out a framework for achieving better movement and mindfulness in your life. Joining us today are two of the authors, both of whom have unique naval backgrounds, Dr. Teresa Larson and John McCaskill. Can you guys both please give a brief personal introduction and explain to the listeners how you came to be interested in the topics? Thanks, John. I'll go first. Other John. My name is Teresa and I'm a former Marine officer.

I did engineering and my journey basically to mindfulness, to creating this mindfulness and movement journal experiences. Mindfulness was a big part of my healing journey as a Marine and my transition and then getting into what I'm doing now. I'm sure we'll go into this a little bit later, but it's been an important part of my practice. And I am a movement specialist by trade, but adding mindfulness to my movement practice for my clients has been a game changer. So, yeah, former Marine, mom of two, and live in San Diego, but moving to Durango, Colorado here pretty soon. And I'm John McCaskill, also living in Colorado. I live about six hours east of where Teresa is going to be moving to, but I'm a former or rather a retired Navy SEAL commander, and I got introduced to mindfulness and meditation about the last third or so of my naval career, and I truly attribute it to not only changing my life for the better, but quite literally saving my life. And now I feel it's my obligation to pay it forward and share these life-saving practices with as many people as will listen. And yeah, I've teamed up with Dr. Larson over there, and we're sharing mindfulness and meditation through MovementRx and adding the movement piece because there is an inextricable relationship there between the body and mind.

if you heal one, the other one will heal. So that's what we're doing together. Happy to be here. Thanks for having us, John. John and Teresa, thank you for those introductions. And the book we're going to discuss is titled The Mindfulness and Movement Experience Journal. It was recently made available electronically and in print through Amazon. Mental and physical health too often takes a backseat to other topics in maritime security. And the consequences are a force that is either physically or mentally unable to accomplish their mission under stress. Teresa and John have presented an easily digestible plan that one can follow to improve both mental and physical health and is not limited to those serving the maritime domain either. Before we begin, I'll remind all

the listeners that our opinions are expressed, are our own, and not reflective of any institutions with which we might otherwise be associated. So Teresa and John, there are a plethora of self-help books out there. Why did you decide to write your book and how is it different? I can start, John. So John and I were teaching a mindfulness and movement seminar for companies during the pandemic, and it was great, but it was a one time deal. and while Movement Rx we have this entire wellness platform for organizations and individuals we found that we needed to tie in the mindfulness and movement seminar to a whole experience for people and you know I was just thinking about it I think it was one of those late night times when you wake up and you're like okay we need to do something we need to be able to offer more

consistency for people, give them something else besides just the seminar. And I really think we need to incorporate mindfulness as part of our entire offering because it's so important and it's impacted my life a lot. I do with my clients and my patients and John is such a great educator and he can really, he's really good at meeting people where they're at, specifically veterans with his experience so I felt that we needed to create this whole experience which basically if you look at a habit formation the habit formation it takes 21 days to start initiate a habit and then 66 to 70 days based on research to actually make that habit automatic so we wanted to give some people this experience of like okay you you get this seminar and then what's next

OK, what's next is this journey that we're going to take you on. And we literally guide people over the course of 21 days and then they can continue on if they want, of course, on their own or either with us. But we wanted to actually create a different behavior with them, change their behavior, because that's actually what health like if people can create better behaviors with their health, they're doing well because health does come come kind of it. you know, behavior is really important part about being healthy. A lot of people want to be healthy, but their intentions don't match their, their behavior doesn't match their intention. So we created the mindfulness and movement experience. And then we wanted to give people a physical, like tactile thing to be able to write in. So that's where the journal came about. And we created that people can do it on their own, right? It can, they don't have to be part of our guided journey, they can literally take that journal and it can give them daily cues on what they should be doing over the course of 70 days to create that habit. So John, I'll let you take

it from there. Yeah. And as far as what differentiates us from other offerings that are out there, there's mindfulness offerings, there's movement offerings, and there's very few that tie the two together. And that we feel is very important. And the other side is both with Teresa's and my background, we come from high-performing teams. We've been high-performing leaders. We feel that we can bring what we teach and what we've learned to other high-performing teams and other high-performing leaders. And that's what we think differentiates us from the other offerings that are out there. But definitely everything Teresa said, and then i'll just add on that last piece yeah and i'll i will add something to you to so what also makes

this unique is yes so being able to add mindfulness and movement together is important so we actually you know john and i both have relationships in with the deepak chopra foundation and people in the mindfulness space and also in the movement space right i work i've been a consultant through CrossFit for a period of time with Kelly Starrett. And then I've also worked with individuals who are able to kind of tie the mindfulness and movement together to some degree. But there's always one, there's always like more of a focus on one than the other. So with John and I coming together, the mindfulness has been a really big part of our stories, to be honest. And that's also what I think makes this experience stand alone and stand out is that we're both veterans.

We both have very different experiences in the service, but we also both have found this mindfulness practice to be super healing, extremely healing. And John's, you know, taking on learning and being an instructor in it. And for me, it's just a part of my daily practice and helping movement like create movement, like movement has become my profession. But it's our stories and why we got to this place that makes us super relatable to people, specifically those in service and veterans. And we we express our vulnerability and our our struggles and our successes. And that's a human. It's very it's a very human experience. and it's really nice what we found is that the people that find us and work with us are expressing the fact that they can now feel like they're more they can be more human and more

vulnerable with their families and be more present and veterans are getting past their stories of who am I now after the service and it's just been really I think I wanted to share that because we can go into a little bit more of our stories here in a little bit if you like but it's is the veteran experience and then tying these two practices together that we do. We're not just talking about it like we actually do it. And that's kind of the way I was in the Marines. Like, I don't want to tell my Marines to do something I can't do. Right. I'm not going to tell people something that I don't do. It's definitely an important aspect, I think, of how we view leadership across the Naval Service and both the Navy and the Marine Corps within the U.S.

So that that helps provide some context. Teresa, you started to explain the kind of the concept or theory behind the mindfulness and movement experience. But I would ask either you or John to provide some more context in terms of what does a day look like in the journaling experience of tracking a mindfulness and movement in a given day? I'll start, Teresa. You can follow up and fill in any gaps that I may miss. But basically, we feel that the journaling is an important aspect of the actual mindfulness as you journal and you're actually actually doing that tactile writing. You start to develop new neural pathways and tying that journaling to the actual meditations that we have that just further drives home those new neural pathways, new new ways of looking at things. So looking at things with a grateful mind, rewiring these negative thoughts that so many of us have in our minds, looking at others with compassion, understanding your own pains that you may be suffering or own challenges that you're overcoming. So journaling just adds another level to it all. And it also helps you to stay accountable.

As far as what a day-to-day thing in this journal, we've got the 21 days that's guided through the experience with, again, similar meditations to what I just mentioned there. Gratitude, compassion, loving kindness, letting go of your stories, letting go of negative thoughts, those types of things. And then over and above that in the challenge, there's the movement side that Teresa and the rest of the coaches run through. There's nutrition. So it's really more of a holistic plan than just the mindfulness. And that that's run with on demand videos and recordings and then live videos that are later transferred into recordings. If you're not able to make them, Teresa, I'm sure I missed a lot there. Over to you. Uh, that was great, John. Uh, so the, so the daily prescription is basically around creating these micro steps, helping people realize that they do have the time to do mindfulness and

movement. People think of starting a new health plan. It's like, oh my gosh, like I got to start on a Monday and I've got to set my time aside. And, you know, oftentimes again, when it comes to behavior there's some research i work with actually an amazing research from the male clinic she sends me all the papers on like health behaviors but you know there's a group of people who are doers right they they will just like a new program they're already on a health track it's like sign me up i can do it on my own i'll do all the pre-recorded you know they like on-demand stuff maybe some lives there's another group of people who again whose intentions their behavior doesn't match their intentions like they want to be healthy they want to drink less they

want to exercise more meditate be kinder but they just they do it for a week and then they fall off and then there's the group we call them non-intenders that just kind of need a kick in the butt you know they they won't do anything until they lose their health and we all probably know if you're listening, know people like that in our life. And so we're really the sweet spot for us is we're not going to, um, there's a lot of people out there to help. So we want to work with the people that want to match their behavior with their intentions and also work with the doers. And if the non-intenders finally come around, great, but we want to create these micro steps, right? It's, we call it the domino theory. So John and I talk a lot about this is

like each day there's little tasks to do and there's simple things that can fit into your day like his meditations are five ten minutes long my daily movement rx that one of my coaches teaches it's 10 minutes long like a movement routine for the neck movement routine for the hip so everyone has 10 minutes right you can list you can listen to the recording do it you can do it at the same time everyone's got that kind of time and if they don't they're just kidding themselves but what we do is I mean it's it's a compassionate journey like some people will just do the meditations initially and some people do the movements and people will do both but there's something for everyone on there and the key is to show people give them these successes and a nice

journal it gives you that like visual sensory input of like okay writing it down I like put I put stickers in my journal just because I don't want to write so I'll put like a sticker next to each task i've done and there aren't a ton of tasks right it's just things that mindfulness and movement two things right have i done them yes put a sticker next to them i feel accomplished all right moving on so it's a nice reward right that you're getting um and yeah it's just there's always time like i think that's a really big piece of our education that we tell people is Because oftentimes people are like, I just don't have the time right now. I'm I'm busy. I'm too busy for this. Well, you're you're not too busy to give five or 10 minutes of your time, especially if you want to be healthier.

Teresa, I agree with that. One more thing there, you know, with the with the time aspect that Teresa mentions, that is that is something that people tell us all the time. You know, we've all got busy lives. We've got chaos. I mean, the three of us have small children and we know what chaos looks like on the on the family front. And then we've also got our own chaos on our professional fronts. But my my argument back is that if you just take five or 10 minutes regularly, you're going to be more focused at work. You're going to be more focused with your family. You're going to end up getting through what normally took you eight hours. You'll get through that in maybe seven and a half hours, maybe seven hours. You'll get something back.

So by putting in some time, you're actually going to get time back. There is a return on investment with that time. Yeah, and I think that the return on investment is definitely an important concept that I agree with and I see value in. Teresa, I don't know what it says about me, but I self-identify, I think, as all four of those individuals that you identified as you were going through. So I'll have to go back and reflect on that myself. But with that, John, I wanted to get after something you identified with regards to reflections. And I assume you have not, but I took a course with a Dr. Gordon Rudd who his big point that he tried to get across was writing and journaling as you reflect. And to your point, that's the way we retain and build upon some of those experiences. And I want to discuss that with regards to how it feeds into self-assessments. It seems like self-assessments was an important concept throughout your writing.

Can you guys talk about the process of self-assessment and why it is important? Yeah, again, I'll touch on that and then let Teresa delve a little bit further in because most of the assessment is actually her side of the work. but it is it is important as Teresa said before it's kind of like land navigation which all three of us can relate to right you need if you want to know where you want to go then you need to know where you are you need to know where you're starting position right and you can you can't move forward if you don't know where you're at in this time in this space so we do an assessment that includes both the physical and mental sides of things and then at the end we do the same assessments so that you get an objective result to see how you've improved so that it's not just

some psychosomatic feeling, hey, you know what, I think I feel better. You have some objective data to show you this and then just further drive home the point of how important these practices are, both the mindfulness and the movement sides. Yeah, thanks, John. And I will just say, I think uh speaking of land nab so we do like to relate the assessments to that like not land nab but a map so if you we all want to be healthier i would say the majority of people i talk to you want to be other i really haven't met someone who's like yeah i just want to be really sick but you know so we all we all want to be healthier but we have to know where we are and oftentimes it's kind of like throwing spaghetti at a wall when people go after their health it's like well i'm just going

to work out for an hour a day and I'm not going to eat sugar and I'm not going to eat flour and I'm going to go gluten free. And it's just, you know, ovaries are balls to the wall for like a week. And then they just can't sustain that. Right. I said those exact things this morning. I just want you to know that. You said ovaries and balls to the wall. Now I'm talking more of the gluten free. Okay. Okay. Yeah. No. And I joke about that because i actually had a a captain in the marine corps john and john say because i i was creating this like obstacle plan in front of my marines and he's like you have some big brass ovaries to be saying that and i was like i thought that was pretty funny so now i do say both you know i like to be

um give equal opportunity here but yeah i think you also probably my land nav um you were helping me with land nav john i believe in the basic school because i struggled with it thankfully you know i got better at it but we do like to you know relate self-assessment to that whole experience of a map and so the there's four categories that we look at with someone and three of the categories we find out we we have a questionnaire and then one of them is like an actual physical assessment that someone takes themselves through so the first one is on work health because we know that you know someone's like hating their job it's definitely going to impact the tension in their body and emotional state and physical state so we look at their

work health you know can they get into flow easy you know what's it like working with their peers the second the second category is just energy and time how someone does with the basic tasks of each day and how they manage their energy and time so we we it asks about like emails and relationships and sleep stuff like that and then the third the other category is on pain well pain is super it's subjective right we know that it's it's very subjective you know we all could have the same injury but we will experience pain differently because of our experience because of who we are and how we grew up and just how we got that injury and then the fourth category is this 11 point physical assessment that we look at from like head to toe so neck shoulders thoracic

spine hips and we have people we literally created a video created videos for each of the 11 points and it takes you through this movement journey and the the cool thing about it is that well if i as a pt were to take you both through it i would you know i would give you the score and you you'd listen to me and do the the movements but the fact that you do it on your own you're learning about your own self like what good neck range of motion should be you're paying more attention essentially right because you have to do it and so it's bringing awareness to the physical body and they get everyone gets a score you get an email the score it's logged in our system and then so once they complete that then they can start whatever experience they want it whether

it's the mindfulness experience or one of the other programs on the platform and the mindfulness and movement one is the one that we recommend everyone starts with and then at the end of it they do it again because they want to see before and after and for their own good too right like we get the we get to see the data the macro data they get to see the micro data of like what is what actual change did i make and a lot of times right we when we throw the spaghetti at the wall we're like we don't know what's worked and obviously if you're throwing a lot of spaghetti of the law, nothing probably will work or stick. So it's like now we can actually show people over those four categories how far they've come. That's really helpful, Teresa. And again,

I think the assessment piece of it really struck me. Over the last year, I've been spending a lot of time utilizing the Panda Planner, and it forces you to do some of the self-assessment day after day and week after week. And I've noticed some of the rewards that I can take out of it. I want to circle back to one comment that you made, Teresa, and you talked about using the stickers. Is there an accountability or rewards aspect to the program? And why do you think this makes the program better? I can start with that, John. So yes, so the accountability part is our favorite part, actually. So we have, when you sign up, But we have live classes, of course, that you can attend.

And John and I do live check-ins once a week with the experienced people. So that's been really powerful, people coming on, sharing their experience. It's a safe space. And people realize one of the biggest pieces of feedback we get is like, oh, wow, I'm not alone. Like there are other people, you know, with the same struggles of like, got to get started, like work on my posture, the stories I'm telling myself as a veteran, like there's lots of commonality in the human experience. And our live check ins really show that. But so while we've got this, you know, whether you want to be on social media or not, right, we have this ability for everyone to come together once a week. I also do a one hour PT sessions with people we call Dr. T Time another way to get

people to do PT and like self-care right we're obviously a very proactive platform but no matter what right we all have stuff that we're like chronic pain that we're probably dealing with like low back flare-ups or plantar fasciitis that won't go away or

gosh my neck is really stiff so I get people on the platform coming together and working on their stuff and A lot of times people have this similar stuff going on. But if people do want to do social media, right, we we know that it takes seven to 13 ways of reaching people to get information across. That's just kind of marketing, digital marketing. So we have this social we have a private Facebook group that people can join. And it's only for those invested in the experience and platform. And so, you know, it's not just we're not just trying to collect a lot of numbers. It's just people who are invested. And there we do once a week we do raffles and like people share experiences. People are sharing some songs that have helped help them stay motivated. but it's just nice like to see the people's progression even through the facebook group

and actually there's to be honest there's a lot of people out there who would you join this kind of experience who are like they don't do social media and i and i can understand why right because it's a there's so much stimulus on facebook when you log in on instagram even on linkedin and it's like, it's okay. We don't, we don't make people do that. We don't make people post socially. We don't make people join the Facebook group. It's there if they want it. And it's really the only Facebook group I engage with the most. And I love it. And so that's where, you know, we, we are able to create the accountability. We've got the ability to like, you know, some people text messages about what's coming up, but the, but the live interaction that John and I

do once a week the Dr. T time that I get to do with all the PT staff and the Facebook group is really in this blended environment is how we can really reach people and then of course what's been cool is that people in the group like make friends and then they you know help hold each other accountable so there's a couple ladies in the group who they like call each other each night just to make sure that they've done their work and I think that's outstanding I was just going to add the the the sms and email portion there just as an accountability action you know just to keep people on track but yes i also love the tribe right that's what we call it is basically we have a tribe that we're a part of we theresa myself the rest of the team there at movement rx

we interact with the people that are going through the program whether it's through facebook or whether it's through the live check-ins weekly, we know everyone that's going through the program. We know their challenges. They can contact us individually via either email or through the Facebook Messenger. But it's a great piece to keep people accountable. And that's also that little dopamine hit. Every day you kind of get somebody says they'll post something about what they experienced, and then you get other people in the tribe commenting on that.

Again, we don't want to make social media a requirement in the program, but it is a nice addition to it so people can get that support as they go through it and they run into their own roadblocks or own challenges with the program. And then, John, I'm a huge fan of the Panda Planner. I also have the smaller one and the larger one, and I swear by that thing. It's great. Yeah, it definitely runs my life right now. So genuinely appreciate the accountability and rewards aspect of the program. And I think, again, you guys provide I really appreciate the variety of, I think, accountability and rewards that you guys have identified for you both. If one of the listeners is interested in getting involved in the program, what is the best or the quickest way to kind of dive in and get get involved?

well my suggestion would be to get the journal on amazon and you know see what it's about like do some reading up on us and see if it's if if that kind of experience would you know of course it's going to fit into their daily life like right time isn't an excuse but i would first get the journal and then the second thing is go to movement-rx.com and the mindfulness and movement experiences there front and center click on it and kind of read through like what it involves there and sign up if you're looking to match you know get healthier fitter eat better be kinder to yourself and others move past stories you know we're not mental health professionals here but there's a lot of like proactive things that you can do for your mental health if you're looking

to be healthier in the mind body space emotional and physical health space then get the journal look at the experience page and sign up and join us our next one actually starts so this is kind of how it works we don't do rolling signups like you can't just sign up you can sign up now for the next one but it doesn't start until september 15th usually there's about we run one every six weeks because I'm moving. I've elongated the start time of just a little bit, but we want everyone to start together and finish together. So it's a whole experience and a team. So the next one starts September 15th. So if you want to be on board, go for it. There is a way if you're listening and you're like, ah, maybe this isn't for me, but I know someone else, there's a way

to pay it forward on our signup page. So when you click to register, you can see the pay it forward adoption. John, you want to add anything to that? Just that if you have any questions, you can always reach out to us. Both Rita and I are on LinkedIn. That's where we make most of our connections. That's where we share most of our content about the program. And we'll be happy to answer any questions directly if you have any. Thank you both for taking the time to discuss today. And before we wrap, where is it best for listeners to connect with you on social media? if it's linked in that's fine and then what are you guys working on next oh man there's so much so linkedin is the best way i also we have a movement rx facebook page and instagram um you're

definitely if you like podcasts because clearly you're listening this you're going to want to check out i'm just going to say this john men talking mindfulness it's a wonderful podcast us that also we've teamed up with and are sharing that share about this experience, but also give a great like weekly inputs and stories and guests about this whole mindfulness and movement experience. But yeah, LinkedIn is the best way. Our email is getbetteratmovement-rx.com. So if you have any questions about this, please reach out. And then in terms of what we're working on next john you want to crush that one yeah we've got a few ideas uh yeah before before i jump into that you can contact me like like theresa said i'm on linkedin john mccaskill j-o-n mccaskill

m-a-c-a-s-k-i-l-l that's where i'm most prolific and theresa thank you for the plug for the men talking mindfulness podcast as you mentioned it is something where we're pretty passionate about sharing these practices so we want to get the word out and then as far as what movement rx and the movement the mindfulness and movement plan is we've got we're hoping to do some retreats here in the future and at some point in conjunction with the journal and the experience uh write another book theresa and i together that really shares more of our experience through mindfulness and and then the the mindfulness and movement experience and the tribe and what that's done for not just the tribe, but also for us. So it's pretty powerful to be a part of this on the

teaching side as well. So, yeah. Thanks, John. Thanks for the opportunity to share this. Yeah, absolutely. And for the listeners, we'll put links in the show notes regarding all the different emails and opportunities to be able to connect with them. John and Teresa, my sincere appreciation for coming on the podcast today to discuss your book as well as your professional work. To the listeners, highly recommend you check out their book. It provides a holistic framework to address both mental and physical health that I think is valuable for any naval professional. Thank you for listening, and until next time, guten tag. Guten tag. © transcript Emily Beynon

I think he's pulling out his shit more now.