Transcript
Sophie Shephard: Hi everyone and welcome back to our next episode of Beyond Pain and Fatigue. I am Sophie Shepard and I'm joined here by my co-host Oliver Crossley and we're very, very privileged to have another wonderful guest speaker here with us today.
Sophie Shephard: like to say a big welcome to Mitch Hunter. Hi Mitch, how going?
Mitch: Awesome. Good. Thanks for having me.
Ollie: Mitch is a senior physiotherapist and lecturer at Griffith University, but he's also a fellow yogi. Mitch is a mystic and meditation teacher with a strong with a strong spiritual background, practicing in the lineage of Sri Ramana Maharishi.
Ollie: Mitch has been helping people through health sciences, mindfulness and somatic practices for over 15 years. Welcome to the show, Mitch. Thank you so much for your time, firstly.
Mitch: it's great to be here with you guys. um And i'm obviously I'm so keen on um talking about how we kind of integrate physiotherapy and and modern medical care that this is exciting to talk about.
Sophie Shephard: i um I can almost see Ollie kind of like quivering with excitement. I know how excited he is because I feel like you two are just so much on the same wavelength and so many like shared passions, particularly around, you know, the yoga side of things.
Mitch: that
Sophie Shephard: And and yeah, I'm just really excited to almost sit here and just soak in both of you enthusing for the next hour.
Ollie: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: So yeah, it'll be great.
Mitch: yeah it's funny hey like i met ollie you know um a few years ago now and you know i think we were both really refreshed to see people coming to physiotherapy um but then also integrating these kind of spiritual sciences that have been there for so long and and not having like a closed-minded point of view that we had to be one way or the other that these things were treating the human as a whole and that's what we were kind of interested in so i think yeah that's I see that in Olly and it resonates with me as well because I recognise it in myself.
Ollie: Yeah, I have both of you to credit for keeping me in physiotherapy, I think.
Sophie Shephard: Oh.
Ollie: um first Firstly, Mitch, because I had the pleasure of meeting you before Soph and yeah, seeing seeing how you could do both things and then and then obviously coming across Soph and now working with her and and I think just...
Mitch: ah
Ollie: really sharing what I hope we'll explore more of today of how these two things might seem really separate or not easily connected to the average person, maybe even the average health practitioner or or even yoga practitioner, but really they're more connected than we realize. And it's all kind of, um it can be integrated in a, in a unified view, perhaps.
Sophie Shephard: I'm really interested because you both have, you know, such a synergy in terms of, the position you come from things and the way that you view things.
Mitch: yeah i um
Ollie: Hmm.
Sophie Shephard: I'm interested, Mitch, to kind of set the scene a bit. Do you mind telling us a bit just generally about what first drew you to physiotherapy and must care in the first place?
Mitch: yeah i am I remember I finished high school and I thought to myself that I wanted to be a PE teacher because I had a really influential PE teacher and I had started doing a teaching degree, but I got one year in and then I just had a bit of a revelation that I was like, i want to do physiotherapy.
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: ah You know, it was just something that really kind of struck me. And I think it was, i had worked with physios in the past and the fact that they had been able to come into a room and just with their hands made me feel better, you know, just like working out what was wrong with my knee and then taking me through some stuff to resolve it.
Sophie Shephard: Thank you.
Mitch: And, um I thought that seemed really just kind of magical, you know? um So, yeah, I went off and did an undergrad down at Otago University and I just loved it. The thing that really connected for me initially was um just kind of like deductive reasoning processes, you know, being able to kind of come to a presentation and you have to piece by piece weigh up evidence and take apart the different aspects of the presentation to make sense of something and then come to a conclusion based on
Mitch: you know, almost like likelihoods and percentages and stuff. And then, you know, it was like that scientific methodology that I loved to try and get down to the root of something. And then when you actually found the answer, you were able to hand that to the patient and resolve the situation. It was just like, it felt like a little bit of magic.
Mitch: um So, you know, early in my career, I was really, really into the diagnostic aspect of things. i um I worked with um Dr. Mark Laslett for many years. and uh he was he his um kind of main influence was James Syriax and Syriax was massive about kind of like diagnostic injection procedures to try and diagnose and differentiate structures but Mark kind of took that idea and and then taught me about just really how to break things down into just hyper detail mechanically and that was um that was really great for me and like I you know you look back on working with your mentors and you don't actually realize how much you were taking from them at the time but
Ollie: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
Mitch: he really shaped a worldview with me that you can figure things out. You just have to sit there and carefully, you know, piece by piece work through the details. Um, and it was really funny because at the same time i was working with him, i was working with another guy, um, Graham Nuttridge who was big in the, um, in New Zealand.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Ollie: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: Uh, he owned like about seven or eight private practices and he was a black caps physiotherapist for many years. And he was all about, um, kind of like positive psychology within physiotherapy so he was massively about holistic health care um and he was a little bit of a trailblazer in that side of things in New Zealand um yeah and well with those two kind of contributing mentors I think it's it's not um it's not um unlikely that I've ended up going down the pathway I have with a bunch of other influences along the way but yeah i kind of
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: I really took a lot from that deductive reasoning, methodological approach to things, but then also seeing the patient as something bigger than just their little individual pieces, you know, um and that's that's that was kind of the starting point for me.
Ollie: what ah What a set of mentors. um that's ah That's an amazing start. yeah I'm interested ah ah around whether or not that second bit of seeing the whole person as you were going through the early parts of your career was, i guess, came up against any resistance in in your workplaces or your the where where did you work, I guess, firstly? And yeah and and did those did those conflicting perspectives as your um of your mentors um come up against any resistance in your practice?
Mitch: you I remember many meetings where they would be in the same room with each other talking about a patient case and they would really respect each other's opinions because I think they um i think they kind of recognized their own personal strengths.
Mitch: you know Mark was very hyper deductive and
Ollie: Thanks.
Mitch: He was not, he's a great guy. He's he's such a great guy. But he's, you know, he's very intimidating when people meet him first up.
Sophie Shephard: Okay.
Mitch: um And he's got a massive international reputation behind him. So he kind of uses that to really break things down to these little components and be so detailed. And Graham was just so warm and welcoming and open.
Mitch: um I think they've recognized that in each other, that they had these individual strengths and that they were both useful. um And then probably within that, they kind of recognize their own shortcomings in other areas.
Mitch: And I think as a clinician, that's kind of, you know, a real sign of maturity when you get to that point and you can say, this is what I really understand well and do really well. And this is what I have a little bit of difficulty with and maybe isn't my area of strength. And there are other people who could fill that need.
Mitch: So, yeah, I don't think there was like too much conflict within the organization.
Ollie: and
Mitch: I working a place called Physio South. um On the whole, though, you know, I mean, throughout the career, have seen obviously like thousands and thousands of examples of, um, patients being treated as mechanical pieces rather than the holistic element of them as a whole.
Mitch: And, you know, so often that is the, the crux of the difficulty where people, you know, can't find diagnoses and they get pigeonholed in the certain areas. And it's, you know, often because the person themselves as a whole hasn't really been considered, um,
Mitch: So, yeah, you know, I was lucky in how I was kind of um raised in my kind of physio career.
Sophie Shephard: um
Mitch: um But I have come across countless examples, as you guys have, I'm sure, right? You know, it's it's all it's rife, that sort of thing.
Sophie Shephard: Absolutely.
Ollie: Amen.
Sophie Shephard: It's so fascinating to hear you talk about that because I would agree. I think that that sentiment of people often feeling like they've been basically broken into pieces and they're, you know, being viewed as parts,
Sophie Shephard: it's such a strong metaphor, but it comes up so often in what people share with you. And I think it's really, i don't know, this is a whole area that I'm sure we'll get into, but, that feeling and that experience that people are having, when we consider that alongside these sort of emerging ideas of, you you know, embodiment
Sophie Shephard: how much of a potential role that actually plays in perception and in pain and in people's wellbeing overall, you know, it's just such an interesting area, I think, that we have not started to really delve into, but we see it all the time.
Sophie Shephard: So it's, yeah, really interesting to hear you say that.
Mitch: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: And I guess it sounds like you had this really well-rounded experience
Ollie: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: kind of experience in your early years in that you you had that really, um I guess, focused sort of deductive diagnostic backing and you were sort of getting benefiting from that approach and sort of being very informed from um an assessment perspective, but also starting to bring in these more holistic ideas and and I guess viewing the person as a person in their context and and starting to make sure we're getting that real person-centered view of them.
Sophie Shephard: Were there ever any moments you can think of in those earlier days or or even now where I guess maybe the traditional physical models that you might have trained under or biomedical model feels really insufficient?
Mitch: yeah oh yeah i mean countless examples um if i think about it in the early years i remember this one patient in particular where they were working with myself it was um they had like an this chronic elbow issue um it was you know kind of like a lateral epicondylalgia but slightly different and had a range of kind of carryovers into different areas um and they went to see me and i took them through a standardized sort of physiotherapy approach and I reviewed it with Mark and and Mark Lesley and then that was, you know, he came down to some more specific sort of details around that.
Mitch: had Graham review it and he came to a slightly different conclusion. We went to a sports doctor and I sat in with the sports doctor and they, you know, found another little detail that was maybe contributing and all the rest. And, um,
Mitch: no one got down to the answer at all. You know, like this person was no better whatsoever. And um they ended up feeling really kind of dejected by the whole process because they ended up, you know, going to see all of these specialists and the specialists would, yeah, literally kind of have a different opinion and they would find a very specific little detail again. And then they'd put all the emphasis on this is the detail that needs to be sorted and nothing would change.
Mitch: um and like And what I kind of recognized in that moment that I was watching is was like, the patient was getting worse each time they saw one of these people.
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: um And unluckily for this patient, and you know I was early in my career, so I wasn't really able to help them long term, but it really set off you know like a thought in my mind that all of these experts often were so confident in their individualized area that um that they missed the bigger picture. And the bigger picture for this patient was that her mental health was deteriorating significantly as this was going along.
Mitch: And she didn't have that addressed at all. And that was, you know, directly affecting her presentation.
Sophie Shephard: Hmm.
Mitch: um And, you know, this is where later on I started to, you know, like there's ideas of like Cartesian dualism from like Rene Descartes in the 16th century where he started to s separate out different components of the body. here You guys are super familiar with this stuff, right?
Mitch: And the bit that um was kind of ignored in that is that like the the neurological system, the nervous system is a link between all of these different things because that's what we experience things through.
Mitch: And so it's like the patient experience isn't just, oh, how are you going? It's like, no, it's actually affecting ah biological system that has flow and effects to all these other elements within the body.
Mitch: And that's where it's like the patient experience isn't really drawn into the situation. You know, the the experience of the patient is one of
Sophie Shephard: okay
Mitch: well, you just have to get to this appointment and do this and do that and do that. And, you know, it's very kind of like assembly line. But that patient experience is the thing that can sometimes be driving these situations.
Sophie Shephard: ah
Ollie: Yes. yeah
Mitch: You go, Ollie.
Ollie: No, that's so well said, Mitch. that and And that perspective, I think now is a lot more considered. It's certainly one that Soph and I have had endless conversations about. And I'm really pleased to see it being talked about a lot more, even just in physio.
Ollie: But how did that understanding emerge in your intellectual case conceptualisation your career progressed and perhaps maybe, I'm not sure when, you moved to Australia?
Ollie: and started working in the university as well. But how how did that sort of experiential perspective then shift into into you know intellectually mapping it and being more explicit with that knowledge and what it meant in physio practice after?
Mitch: yeah i think it took a lot of reps i think it took a lot of reps of seeing these patients who just wouldn't get better through the traditional models and then me eventually having the foresight to be like wonder what else is happening here
Ollie: yeah
Mitch: I think, you know, the wheels were in motion with me once I had worked with Mark, especially because I had a drive, even, I mean, from undergrad as well, I had a drive that I would always continue to improve my um but clinical reasoning framework.
Ollie: Thank
Sophie Shephard: Thank
Mitch: And I'd always try to improve every single thing that i was doing with every patient over, you know, 20 odd years. um So by trial and error, I started to realize that um this whole element of the patient experience was way bigger than anyone was given credit for.
Mitch: And then for myself, once I started to you know, deepen my own meditation and yoga practice um and had some like notable changes within myself, my ability to be able to see what was happening with these patients was hugely amplified because I, you know, I kind of was able to quieten down my own internal perspective so that I could see my patients more clearly.
Sophie Shephard: Mm.
Mitch: And then I would just see that there were these common themes. There were these common themes of, If someone emotionally started to struggle, their symptoms were of getting worse. And, um you know, when people have bounced around multiple practitioners, it's often because they've missed the experiential element within that presentation. Yeah.
Sophie Shephard: on a couple of really key points there. I think the first thing that I comment on is just hearing you know, when Ollie asked what when did that transition happen happen and hearing you use the words, I wonder what's going on here.
Sophie Shephard: I think that capturing that, that like, I wonder is the root of like where we need to be as clinicians. And
Sophie Shephard: because it's the curiosity that's needed i think and and to be able to look at situations whether we're talking individual patient or you know broader level patterns in our practice to be able to look at things and actually have that curiosity and you know i wonder if we did this or i wonder if this is what could be going on or i wonder what could be contributing here i think
Mitch: say
Sophie Shephard: there's not enough of that curiosity and I think that that I just that just really stood out to me when I was hearing you talk then
Mitch: well Albert Einstein said i have no special talents I am only passionately curious
Sophie Shephard: yeah yeah yeah totally and that's it yeah
Mitch: that's the key hey yeah
Sophie Shephard: sure. And I think the other bit that was jumping out to me there, Mitch, as well, when you were talking is, you know, the the importance in the role of of people's emotional wellbeing. And I guess the, I mean, you didn't use the word trauma, but quite often people will experience, you know, sort of medical trauma when they've had really um longstanding sort of recovery journeys that have not gone as well as, you know, we would hope.
Sophie Shephard: that that's often a sentiment we see in clinic is that people have been really quite harmed a lot of the times by their interactions with often very well-meaning health professionals who are bringing all of their their passion and their knowledge in the interest of trying to help the person. But it it just it doesn't always quite get to where it needs to be. And I guess the challenge that I come sometimes come up against with that is...
Sophie Shephard: how do we validate that and how do we recognise that people are having these really challenging experiences and that their pain has such a profound impact on their mental health and on their day-to-day life and, you know, appropriately recognise and work with that while also being really careful that we don't fall into the trap of accidentally coming across like we're psychologising people's pain because I think that's sometimes something we see too is that
Mitch: right.
Sophie Shephard: people might have had, again, a very well-intentioned practitioner. It might not be what they necessarily mean, but they've come away from an interaction where there's been a conversation about their mental health or their wellbeing. And they've sort of come away thinking, oh, well, you know, they think it's in my head. They think it's, is my pain psychological?
Sophie Shephard: And I've found that sometimes clinically quite a hard thing to navigate because that's not at all what we're saying, but, you know, it's understandable when how easy it could be for people to take that away from what is being said. And I will grant too that sometimes there are actually health professionals who might quite intentionally have that negative meaning behind what they say too. So it's not, you know, always a misunderstanding. But I guess is that something that you've observed in your own practice or even Ollie, have you got, you know, insights from that? What have your experiences been?
Ollie: I find it very difficult and I think this is a perfect segue because this is where my worlds of contemplative practice and yoga and my, I guess, sitting practice meditation and I presume Mitch's as well, this is where I can start to draw in his story with this, but that it's actually the sensitivity the that those practices and their place in my life enhanced for me that allowed for the ability to better communicate that and navigate that terrain and those interactions and sort of, I guess,
Ollie: um reps and sets as well but but just to to see and and and be quite genuine in the in the interaction and and and acknowledge that those experiences are there um and better detect them.
Ollie: I guess sort of yeah see the pothole before you drive over it unintentionally Mitch but yeah you've got a far richer clinical background as well.
Mitch: Yeah.
Ollie: What do you think?
Mitch: No, ah yeah, I agree. Yeah, the word that comes up for me for sure is communication. um
Ollie: Yeah.
Mitch: I think that's where, you know, as a clinician, you have to recognize that your communication is therapeutic um if you use it in the right way. And then alongside any sort of um clinical intervention that you're giving, you need to also weigh up um all of the impacts that it might be having, not only the mechanical aspects or you know whatever particular thing you're looking to get out of it, but alongside that, what is this intervention telling the patient? um what is
Mitch: How is this changing their patient experience? you you know And by that I mean, you know like if they have had four knee surgeries in a row and you're talking to them about their fifth, what is that doing to their psychology?
Sophie Shephard: Mm.
Mitch: you know, and it doesn't mean you have to be a psychologist, but you've got to at least take the time to notice what effect your intervention is having on their perspective and their experience and not dismiss it as just, ah, well, you know, they can kind of suck it up.
Sophie Shephard: Mm.
Mitch: It's like, oh, that might actually be contributing to their symptoms. Yeah, so I think communication again, yeah.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Ollie: Big time. um Mitch, earlier on, I mean, i I know from your story that this sensitivity to the world and insight has been with you almost from the beginning, you know, you can maybe argue.
Ollie: But I wonder if we can rewind back again and and understand where the practices, yoga, contemplative practices, spiritual side of your life,
Ollie: um emerged and and started to to integrate alongside your healthcare and and and your life journey.
Mitch: Yeah, well, this is yeah this is where the story gets very interesting and very um steps a little bit away from the medical side of things, for sure. um Yeah, I mean, for me, it started when I was really young. you know When I was about seven years old, I started to have these, um but I can only describe them as mystical experiences.
Mitch: um And they would be a range of different things that were within my experience. um And as ah as a young kid, they were really... um really profound, but also pretty overwhelming.
Mitch: And so when I was kind of from seven years onward, I started to meditate. um And I did that for about kind of 10 to 12 years. And I got to a point where I was able to kind of shut off that element of my perspective. And i i shut that off and kind of kept it off because it was a bit too overwhelming for me.
Mitch: um But once I got into my late 20s, I kind of opened it back up again. And I was really interested in you know, contemplative, introspective, meditative um kind of, and you know, practices.
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: And I really went for it, you know, I went for it for about 10 to 12 years again. um And I was really, really lucky that in 2019, I had a dramatic internal change.
Mitch: um And it's kind of, um it's documented within yogic literature and within a, you know, a lot of different contemplative, traditions, um but I was lucky enough that ah kind of like a I describe it as a stable silence, um became present within my awareness and it became kind of solidified.
Mitch: So meant that um there was this calm, still, deep peace within me um that would be stable for no particular reason. And it's been about five years now.
Mitch: And it's still there, which is really nice.
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: And ah the the bit about that that makes it really um helpful is that because that's kind of of the place where you operate from, everything else is much easier to deal with and much easier to see. So that's where that kind of sensitivity can develop.
Mitch: um And if you become very, very sensitive um to your own experience and you're able to kind of start to work with and see through your own experience,
Mitch: your ability to see other people is hugely enhanced because then instead of just you sitting there and them sitting there and you're sitting there within your own difficulties internally, um you're a bit more clear within yourself. And so you can see where, what needs to be negotiated for them.
Mitch: So, you know, once that happened in my, in my personal life, um my clinical career completely changed course.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Ollie: thinking wrong.
Mitch: You know, I, um i I never talked about these things that openly, when particularly when I was working at the university. um But my patients would just be like, hey, what's going on here?
Mitch: Because, you know, I'd be working with them on their chronic knee pain. And then, you know, within a couple of interventions, maybe their anxiety had resolved. Or um I'd be working with them on their, um you know, a guy who had a chronic headache,
Mitch: and halfway through, you know, he says that he feels wind pouring in through the top of his head, and he feels peace, and then his chronic headache is gone. And there's lots of ways of explaining this stuff, right? You can explain it very much from a ah biological, um physiological point of view.
Mitch: um But there's also a spiritual element to these sorts of things. um You know, the I like to explain spiritual the spiritual kind of experience, particularly to people who are kind of starting off in that sort of pathway, is that it's a way of um deepening your experience of your life.
Mitch: So, you know, most of the time we we're really focused on doing things within our life and and those things are going to be done and that's really important. But often there's not much importance put on the experience while we're doing those things, the moment-to-moment experience.
Mitch: And through different practices, if you're able to sit more deeply within that experience, um you will discover that the experience becomes deeper and richer and more wide reaching than you previously may have thought.
Mitch: And, you know, within that, people can describe it in a range of different ways, you know, they'll say all the sorts of words that might trigger people about God and angels and chakras and all these sorts of things. But it's because you're starting to connect with a deeper element of life that's always kind of been there. And it's so surprising and so deeply meaningful that you might use a whole bunch of really strong language around it.
Mitch: um And so, yeah, you know, I would be working with students and then, you know, after a lecture, they'd come up to me and say, hey, I'm not sure what's going on there, but I want to get whatever you've got going on.
Ollie: Mmm.
Mitch: um and a whole bunch of different things. So yeah, it's it's been interesting.
Sophie Shephard: definitely compared to both you and Ollie, I'm very much not anywhere near as immersed in this space, very tangentially familiar.
Sophie Shephard: But I think it's a really interesting point to unpack because something I've observed in conversations that I've had and working with patients, for example, is that even the word spiritual or spirituality is sometimes it can sometimes carry, I guess, certain maybe connotations or certain responses in patients.
Ollie: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: And I guess to generalise, you know, at one um sort of response that people might have, particularly if they may be coming from more of a biomedical view or they haven't necessarily been exposed to some of these practices in the past is that that many people maybe associate spirituality with, like you said, chakras and crystals and, you know, almost the very like woo-woo sort of perception of it.
Sophie Shephard: But I actually really like how you described that, you know, that that idea of tapping into this deeper meaning and that may or may not necessarily for certain people have, ah you know, connections with religion or, you know, particular belief systems necessarily, but it's it's sort of that that core understanding.
Sophie Shephard: um And ah for me, that flags because I think what you're talking about, I think has so much value and resonates with a lot of what we do in maybe more traditional practice. You know, if you talk about pain management, fatigue management, particularly more recently, there is a big push towards, you know, setting meaningful goals with the person and we need to tap into what people's values are and the whole
Mitch: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: point of rehab is to try and get people back to the things that really matter so that they can find meaning in their day to day and to you know expand on that meaning so there's potentially such a clear link and and benefit in that but the term itself is something I think that sometimes might put people off and I guess do you have any thoughts on that and
Ollie: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: maybe some of the ways in which you've explained spirituality or maybe if working with patients who might be coming from a background that maybe would be less receptive or open to some of these ideas, how would you sort of frame it with patients or to even clinicians who might be a bit averse to maybe more sort of alternative ways of looking at things?
Mitch: Yeah, yeah. And this is the thing that we come up against, right? This is where I've bumped up against it within my career, you know, in the last few years, for sure. um So I think you touched on a really good starting point there, Sophie, you know, it's that idea of meaning.
Mitch: So if we said before that um the nervous system is based on, you know, it runs our experience. And our experience is kind of like a feed forward and feed backwards sort of mechanism. It's like it's gathering information from the environment.
Mitch: but it's also looking at all our preconceived ideas and what's going on within our own perspective to shape it. um And so what that means then is that the experience that you shape affects your physiology and your physiology expects affects the the experience that you're shaping.
Mitch: So then you can you can look at it from the point of view of meaning. When you do something that's deeply meaningful to you, you know you pick up your child or you do your passion or you connect with your loved one,
Mitch: Like, how does that actually feel? Well, it's like, you can actually feel something happening within your body. You know, oh I light up, I feel this energy all of a sudden, I feel, oh, you know, I get so emotional that it makes me choked up.
Mitch: You know, it's like there are physiological mechanisms happening there. And so then what that's saying is that the meaning the meaning is really important to our physiology. How far does that go?
Mitch: You know, what's what's the What's the thing that we're all looking for here? It's like we're most of the time we're here looking for connection. You know, there's Maslow's hierarchy of needs and we get to a point where for us to be functioning at our best, we have to have deep meaning in what we're doing.
Mitch: What happens then if you connect with something that is so deeply meaningful um that it makes you feel so good and you're able to continue to connect with that feeling of meaning? what's that going to do for your nervous system? And what's that going to do for your physiology?
Mitch: How is that going to help you to be treating your chronic pain? You know, like I had many patients where they would have, you know, chronic pain conditions and they their life was having a bit of a hard time. And I would say to them, right, your home exercise program for this week is I want you to find one fun one fun activity every single day.
Mitch: And I want you to do it.
Sophie Shephard: Love that.
Mitch: And I want you to really, really enjoy it.
Ollie: Perfect.
Mitch: you know what i mean because then it's like they feel a little bit happier there's a bit more meaning to what they're doing and their nervous system follows suit you know and then if you that's that's the starting point as you go to the nth degree with spirituality you will feel deep meaning and deep connection for no particular reason wow what's that going to do for my nervous system what's that going to do for my physiology
Sophie Shephard: and I love it. Yep.
Ollie: Yeah.
Ollie: and
Sophie Shephard: Hmm.
Sophie Shephard: Hmm.
Ollie: And this is a perfect segue, Mitch, because we can all, I think, agree across cultures and belief systems that meaning and the felt experience of that is pretty universal.
Ollie: But what's not so universal is, guess, some of the experiential depths of what different cultures and people find, and and and especially people like yourself with your own lived experience.
Ollie: As we, I guess, maybe for want of a better way of phrasing it, dig to the depths of our conscious experience and start to feel and make sense of things, maybe not even make sense, start to feel things that our culture doesn't help us make sense of.
Ollie: experiences that go outside the sense of self that maybe feel a bit more interconnected or unified it's difficult to start to find words how did you as you started to the spiritual side of your your life started to accelerate again through your 30s and up towards now how did you start to make sense of that and then maybe what language do you use to make sense of it now
Mitch: you Yeah, well, and early on, um I made a lot of mistakes. You know, i remember um talking with students about the spiritual experience, and um some people would love it, and they would be right up their alley, and this is, you know, a conversation after class, and for other people, they would really just kind of dismiss the whole thing.
Mitch: And so i remember working with a good friend of mine who's ah um he's a professor of medicine, but he's also a Buddhist lay lecturer. He lectures about death and dying internationally. He's a great guy.
Mitch: um But me and him would talk about the idea of Trojan horses a lot. And so, you know, the idea of a Trojan horse was that you would present an idea to a patient or a student in a way that's digestible for them.
Ollie: and
Mitch: And then once they've assimilated that idea, it slowly starts to unpack and the deeper meaning is revealed. um yeah, and it kind of permeates through them. So i think, you know, within Zen, they talk about skilled means a lot.
Mitch: um You know, it's it's an ability to be able to negotiate the environment you ah you're in um to create a beneficial outcome for everybody. So for many years, I was in the university system and I'd be talking about self-reflective clinicians was a nice word that I would use.
Mitch: um I would talk about empathy a lot. I would talk a lot about um communication techniques and all of these things because all those sorts of ideas would mean that the clinician had to become introspective and self-reflective if they wanted to do well within that kind of clinical sphere.
Ollie: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: And with patients, um particularly with communication, it was a lot to do with how can you understand the patient's perspective more deeply, more deeply and more deeply. And to be able to do that, you have to start to step outside of your own perspective.
Mitch: um So there's a lot of real clinical value in being able to integrate these ideas, but um it almost has to be presented to the clinician or the patient in a way that they can digest.
Ollie: Totally.
Mitch: That's the simplest version of it, I think, yeah.
Ollie: Mm-hmm.
Sophie Shephard: that's that's an interesting point to consider because both of you obviously come from, I guess, a very rich personal experience or personal of your own spiritual journeys and that is something that you live and breathe.
Sophie Shephard: If we then can consider, a you know, I guess the average clinician, if there is such a thing,
Sophie Shephard: if you were sort of trying to communicate to clinicians what some of these key things would be for them to take away and maybe start to play with in their own practice in terms of, you know, skills, approaches they could use with patients that are maybe accessible for people who don't have their own personal spiritual experiences and journeys.
Sophie Shephard: other things you can think of that you would maybe suggest as a starting point for people looking to integrate some of these ideas within their own practice?
Mitch: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot. um the The first one that I would say would be the most important would be giving yourself an opportunity to really focus on what you're doing while you're doing it.
Mitch: So if you're in there with a patient and you find yourself drifting off thinking about what you're going to have for lunch, train yourself to bring your attention back to that patient and see if you can hold your attention on what's going on with that patient.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: That would be the starting point. Because That does a lot of things. you know i mean, first of all, it will mean that you actually pay attention to the case, and that's really helpful because you're going to diagnostically work out all these details.
Mitch: But more than that, the patient will start to feel that you're paying full attention to them. And as they start to feel that, um that on its own can be very therapeutic. you know I remember a particular patient that I had.
Mitch: um She'd had chronic pain after a hysterectomy that had caused a bilateral injury. like neuropathy basically really really bad situation for her and she came into my office and she sat down and she started just going for it just these people did me wrong this was terrible they mucked up the surgery and all this stuff and she was so passionate about it and I just decided that I was just going to let her go for it and I let her go for it for about 20 minutes or 25 minutes of a 30 minute consultation and then I said at the end of it um
Mitch: I've actually, I haven't done this with any patients since, but I said to her, i was like, I need you to stand up for a second.
Sophie Shephard: Hmm. Hmm.
Mitch: And she stood up and I gave her a big hug and she burst out crying. and and And I said to her, I go, Hey, you've done really well just to make it to here. You know, you're a really brave person. Well done. And she said, in retrospect, we ended up actually helping her quite a lot, but she said that that was really, really therapeutic for her because I was the first person who sat there and listened to her whole story, you know?
Mitch: And so this is where it's like honoring her experience. enabled her to be able to really get that out and to be able to let her nervous system reset a little bit. So I didn't have to do anything um therapeutically or clinically or diagnostically there.
Mitch: I just had to pay attention to the patient. And that on its own was very transformative.
Sophie Shephard: I totally agree. I mean, what a, what a beautiful story to be able to reflect back on too. And I mean, I would, I certainly have had similar experiences from quite a few patients because the, I guess the nature of the way we set up our initial assessments is deliberately done so that we've got the time to really listen to people's story. And, um,
Sophie Shephard: It's remarkably common how often those sort of experiences come up because we we kind of forget that our medical system often doesn't afford people or clinicians the opportunity to have that connection. You know, quite often it's in and out within five or ten minutes with, with you know, medical specialists, for example, or GPs, patients.
Sophie Shephard: You know, even a lot of physio clinics, some of them might be running 20 minute appointments. And by the time you get through all of the typical physio stuff you got to do there's not really ah great deal of chance to connect and to really feel like they're being heard. And and i would agree. I think it's such a a powerful thing. and And I've had many patients told me what a powerful thing it was for them to just be able to sit and feel like someone has heard them and they're being seen.
Sophie Shephard: as a human, you know, they're they're actually having that human connection. And I guess it's probably relevant too, because the other thing it makes me reflect on is, is for me working predominantly in the pain space for a long time, I used to work in quite a large um sort of musculoskeletal sports clinic, and and I was interested in pain at that time.
Sophie Shephard: And I just think back to you know, the amount of conversations I had with other physiotherapists who might come out of an appointment, you know, back into the physio office and be quite, um I guess distressed might be too strong a word, but, you know, they've been really affected by consultation.
Ollie: right.
Sophie Shephard: They've just come out and they sort of just feel quite quite flat and and almost frustrated. And they're like, i ah just don't know what to do with this person. They just seem so, you know, like they're so frustrated.
Sophie Shephard: There's so much anger or, you know, they're just not listening to what we're doing. And I feel like we're not getting anywhere. And, you know, there you know they're the people who might be described as having a more typical a more difficult personality for example you know it's those sort of patients and what was interesting to me is in my own practice often being referred for second opinion a lot of these patients that probably would have been marked as oh you've you this is a difficult patient it's amazing how much of that often comes back to the fact that they are frustrated and often perseverating to use you know the I guess the more formal term for it but
Mitch: Mm-hmm.
Sophie Shephard: You know, it sounds like they're repeating themselves over and over and they're stuck because they are. And the reason that's happening is because they're feeling they have to repeat themselves because they haven't been heard and nobody's actually listening to them. And when you give the space to do that and you can actually sit with somebody and they know that you've listened and that you care and you're actually genuinely hearing them, they're able to let that go. And suddenly there's space and there's that relationship where you can start to move forward and explore things. And yeah, it's just, it's such a ah powerful thing that I think we underestimate a lot and we don't give ourselves enough room to do that a lot of the time.
Sophie Shephard: It's hard when we're constrained a lot of the time by you know, the systems and the clinics we might work in, you know, we're not always afforded the benefit of all the time we would like. um I'm interested, Ollie, how does it that resonate as well with your own experiences?
Mitch: Thank you.
Ollie: Yeah, completely. um the The listening and the safety that that provides seems to be, it just hit me then, the thought that is coming together more recently is to that's what sitting practice has been for me. That's what connection between humans is. And that's what we hope healthcare care to provide.
Ollie: And it's what Mitch has been really instrumental in, I guess, showing that to be important for not just me, but I've heard so many stories from other, other physios, like he, he will play it down, but there are,
Ollie: hundreds of physios across this country, especially across Queensland, thanks to Griffith Uni, that have had that really emphasised from his work. But just this depth of interpersonal kindness and skill that that has come from their experience learning from him in the in the clinic at at Griffith that I, yeah, like I mean, I wish I had the experience of being there, but just just being a friend and and um and ah like and know a student, let's say,
Ollie: ah brings me to a question around how we make sense of this stuff clinically, with the
Ollie: the these practices, what's what's going on? the first step is just being a good human and and talking to another just giving them some interpersonal safety. But
Ollie: what's maybe the next layer or what are these sitting practices start to to to show us that maybe people aren aren't even aware of?
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: um There's a great bit of evidence that talks about this idea of neural coupling. So they highlight that two people in conversation, um not only is there you know back and forth that they can measure on an EEG, they also see that um brain patterning starts to link up.
Mitch: And so that's the first thing that's really interesting there. So what this is telling you is that as if you're a clinician and you're there with your patient, not only is what you're saying really important and um what you're doing with them,
Mitch: your personal experience as the clinician is really important because that will start to create a flow-on effect within them.
Ollie: Mmm.
Mitch: And this leads down to your own personal meditative practice because within meditation, you know, the starting point is to be able to train your concentration. And that idea is to be able to not be dragged off by all the things that your mind will give you. So you train yourself to be able to hold your attention steady.
Mitch: And then once you've been able to do that, you'll use that steady point of view to observe all of the different things that your mind gives you. Because, you know, in every moment, our mind is telling us a whole bunch of different things and I don't like this, this person's that, blah, blah, blah, all these different things that it's saying.
Mitch: um And so you'll start to be able to sit there and observe those things going on without reacting to them. And what will start to happen is that
Mitch: You'll see that they'll come, they'll be there for a moment, then they'll disappear again. And bit by bit, you'll do that with more and more of your different thoughts until you've done it with all of the things that are going on and even the real difficult thoughts as well.
Mitch: Then what that means is you start to identify and more with that perspective of keeping nice and steady and calm within yourself rather than all these haphazard, chaotic thoughts that go on.
Mitch: And so then when you're in there with a patient, you're sitting there in that state. And so they'll start to pick up on that as well. And, you know, and this is, you know, an entry point to that is the flow state. You know, there's so much research around the flow state and how it creates increased performance and and, you know, makes people happier and reduces mental pathology and all these other things.
Mitch: So as you're becoming more peaceful, steady and happier within yourself, your patients and, you know, the students that you're working with will be feeling that as well. And it literally is like osmosis.
Ollie: Yep.
Sophie Shephard: So it's so interesting. And so um for my benefit and probably for the benefit even of some of the people who might be listening to this episode as well, flow state is definitely something, it's a term I've come across and I feel like I maybe have a kind of general understanding of the term. But Mitch, would you mind like giving a, ah you know, a lay summary of what flow state actually is and what it sort of might look like, or maybe an experience that people could relate to that would sort of illustrate it?
Mitch: yeah Definitely. So there's like some climate, some research criteria around it. They talk about there's an intense and focused concentration. um
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: There's a loss of self-reflective consciousness.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: um There's a distortion of the temporal experience. Typically that time has passed faster than normal. um They call it, they say that it's intrinsically rewarding. It feels really good to be in the state. um And it has a, you know, a number of different benefits associated with, I forget there's maybe two other criteria.
Mitch: So Everyone would have experienced this, right? um But we just often don't label it. So if you think about your passions, for instance, this is the easiest gateway to find it.
Mitch: And you think about what you're passionate about. You think about how it feels when you're engaging in your passion. And this might be talking to your friends. It might even be drinking coffee or surfing or running or whatever the thing is you do, reading a book.
Mitch: You'll notice that time will pass really quickly. It feels really good. And while you're doing that particular activity, like if you're a sports person and you're really in the zone is what they kind of call it, your performance will be that much better.
Mitch: And it's because you're very, very deeply paying attention to the moment that you're in. And if you're very, very deeply engaged with the moment that you're in, you're not engaged with all of the things that your mind is telling you and distracting you from.
Sophie Shephard: um
Mitch: You're just fully in that moment. And the nice thing about a flow state is the flow state is is contagious as well. And so that will draw other people into it through that neural coupling sort of mechanism. And then everyone will be sitting there in this intense present focus concentration, feeling better bit by bit for no particular reason that they can put a put a little marker on.
Ollie: And this is where i i love, I think ah this is a perfect example for the for the clinicians listening of what the inactive perspective on pain offers is exactly what Mitch embodies and is talking about, that that we're more interconnected with each other than we realize. And when something happens in one person or organism, it starts to affect the surrounding other organisms in the environment.
Ollie: and And these flow states are ah really lovely and I think quite nice, but I've chatted to Mitch about this before. They're often quite rare for so for some of us. and And one tricky thing I often find difficult to distinguish, and I'd love to hear your opinion, Mitch, is that meditation practice or mindfulness or meditation or anything that we use to to sort of cultivate that awareness doesn't always lead us to these blissful states of flow. We can be lucky. and And we hear this dual purpose of, well, it brings us into this blissful flow state, and if it's not doing that, then but to hell with meditation. And then the other side saying, well, it's actually training equanimity and this non-reactivity that you've alluded to already.
Ollie: How do we... how do we connect or make sense of these two different goals that often feeling combat with each other. Maybe I'm not sure.
Mitch: That's interesting. Yeah. I would say that the flow state is a natural result of your practice. So if I'm here and I'm in a scary situation, it's only a scary situation if I feel fear.
Ollie: a
Mitch: If I'm in a happy situation, it's only happy if I'm feeling happiness. If it's a sad situation or a hard situation, it's only if I'm feeling sadness. So what you'll be doing with the meditation is you'll be sitting there and you'll be experiencing all those different things with equanimity.
Mitch: And so because of that, you won't be touched by any of those different states eventually. You'll be sitting deeper in this flow state. All of those things will still be happening, but that flow state will be there as a result of the equanimity, if that makes sense.
Mitch: And I mean, i don't want to I don't want to take things too far within this podcast, but this is where it starts to lead towards, you know, they talk about
Mitch: non-objective awareness or undifferentiated consciousness because it it starts to sit deeper than those levels of differentiation. But that's a whole different story.
Sophie Shephard: it's It's interesting, but hearing you speak, i mean, again, we kind of touched on earlier that sometimes, I guess maybe some of the language we have around spirituality and flow state, the I guess at surface level, sometimes these terms might sound you know a bit left of field for a lot of people who are you know newer to this, but actually hearing you talk about that and and hearing some of the similarities, a lot of what you've just described around that idea of being able to kind of I guess, be present in the moment and observe and, and you know, be aware of what's happening around you, but also being able to kind of create some distance from some of these more, sometimes more challenging experiences and to, i guess, hold some of these things a bit more loosely.
Sophie Shephard: i mean, to me, I'm hearing that and going, well, like, this is like the same thing we're trying to do with like acceptance and commitment therapy, for example, which is like way more accepted a lot of the time in the pain space.
Mitch: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: there's there's so much overlap with a lot of the other clinical skills and tools that we're already using. It's just, it almost seems like there's this different language and framing of a lot of it. And, you know, i wonder if sometimes it's actually just that we need to really kind of work together to work out, how do we kind of connect these threads back to the stuff that is maybe a little bit already accepted and bring everyone together and go, actually, we're kind of working on the same stuff. It's just giving us different ways of of looking and explaining and exploring these things.
Mitch: Yeah, I love that so much. Yeah, I mean, it makes me think of, you know, within pain, there's some real key mechanisms here that are very straightforward. You know, if I have chronic pain, and that chronic pain makes me feel significantly anxious, that anxiety is going to drive that chronic pain, and that chronic pain is going to drive that anxiety, and it's a bit of a loop.
Sophie Shephard: Hmm.
Mitch: That anxiety is reactive to that pain. So if I'm able to sit within a meditative awareness, and Allow that anxiety and that pain to be there, but without being reactive to that anxiety, the anxiety starts to drop away and then the pain drops away alongside it.
Mitch: And this is where, you know, the acceptance and commitment therapy and things like that, that's another way of working through that reactivity to the pain.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Sophie Shephard: Yeah, absolutely. And coming back to what you were saying before about the biology of this, you know, what you're saying with, you know, stress affecting pain and anxiety affecting pain and vice versa. You know, again, we we know there's those biological links when we look at the the neurobiology of the pain research we have. We know that the sympathetic nervous system and autonomic nervous system.
Sophie Shephard: these these responses are so coupled and it's and it's not it's not necessarily the psychological thought process that's entirely driving that. It's actually when we experience stress, when we experience anxiety, our body has a physiological response to deal with that threat and And that has a real impact in terms of heightening sensitivity and affecting the function of our body system.
Sophie Shephard: So yeah, again, all of this stuff, it's just speaking the same language. I can see Ollie just like sitting there vibrating, like so keen to jump into this.
Mitch: All right.
Sophie Shephard: Go for it, Ollie. Yeah.
Ollie: Yeah, this is the talk about pet special interest, pet topic. I ah totally agree. And I think where I and and many ah others hopefully listening are sitting maybe going, yes, but is it's ah it's an easy thing to talk about, I think, to to meet these experiences with equanimity and steadiness. but But in practice, it's often quite challenging to get I guess, enough stability in the awareness to to
Ollie: interested in how how you really get people there when when it's really tricky. Maybe it's a slippery slippery slope to get a footing on to actually be with the sensation that's often very, very intense, very threatening sensations, I should say.
Mitch: Yeah, yeah. And that's where, you know, if you jump straight into the sensation and just say, hey, be a quantumist right now, you know, all that's going to happen is that same reactivity is just going to be ramped up even tighter.
Mitch: um So I think you're you've hit the nail on the head there, Ollie. Like you have to progressively work at stabilizing the patient perspective. um And that's where there's a lot of different techniques on how to stabilize someone's perspective.
Mitch: you know, you can um you can, this comes back to that idea of doing something happy in your day or fun in your day, you're going to be a little bit less reactive once you've done something that's a bit fun. You can do some breathing practices that can help to stabilize your autonomic nervous system. There's some really good research around that.
Mitch: um You know, you can do some very gentle relaxation exercises to create that same sort of reflexive, you know, relaxation. You can do gentle meditations on something that doesn't have anything to do with your particular pain, just to calm down your perspective.
Mitch: All the way through to you eventually can do very specific um meditative interventions to be able to experience pain and your reactivity and drop your attachment to that reactivity and see the pain change there and then.
Mitch: And, you know, I have taken many patients through that process when they're ready for it, though.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: So this is where it has to be ah progressive approach, you know.
Ollie: Definitely.
Sophie Shephard: I'm interested, it's a term that's come up a few times, equanimity. i know it's something that I've kind of come across like in previous discussions with Ollie as well, but I don't know that I've ever actually had like, I guess, a ah proper definition. I've kind of always worked on that sort of contextual understanding of it.
Sophie Shephard: Would either of you mind jumping in and maybe just giving a ah ah brief sort of summary of what the concept means to somebody if they were making sense of it?
Mitch: Yeah, I think Ollie probably knows the technical definition better than I would. um But I basically put it down to it's that feeling that everything's fine as it is. It's like, oh, this is okay.
Sophie Shephard: Mm.
Mitch: That's okay too. It's basically being a quantumist, being equal, being balanced to how things actually are without wanting them to be different.
Ollie: a And
Mitch: That's how I would explain it, yeah.
Ollie: and And this is, ah i I think that equanimity is difficult to talk about in our culture because ground zero is that the sense of self is irreducible, that that I am me and and that is unbreakable, like that there's it's indivisible.
Mitch: Mm-hmm.
Ollie: And think this is something I really wanted to to get to because I know this is where we start to traverse into perhaps where we hope we go as a culture or maybe where you're taking your work now, Mitch. equanimity is really dependent and more easily accessible on on sort of these non-self-referential states to sound like a nerdy neuroscientist or or on perspectives that transcend the self how i guess yeah thoughts maybe
Mitch: Yeah, well, what it comes down to is your relationship to the things that cause you suffering. So there's a really easy way of looking at it in terms of meditation.
Ollie: um
Mitch: So if I have a negative thought in my mind that says something bad about myself, that will make me really feel bad because I will take it really, really personally.
Mitch: if in meditation I'm able to observe that thought, see it come in, see it be expressed then see it go again, there'll be a moment where i'll recognize that if I'm viewing that thought, that thought can't be me.
Mitch: that That thought isn't me, that's a thought rather than my thought. And then what that does is that through experience, not through being told about it, but through your own experience, it changes your relationship to your thoughts because then you'll see them as being a lot more transient, less concrete, and not necessarily even related to you. They're just thoughts that are occurring.
Mitch: um So that's where it's all about being able to explore your relationship to your symptoms or to your pain or to your illness and being able to work with that.
Sophie Shephard: It's again, I'm just getting, um you know, act act vibes from this, you know, that that really is just sitting alongside the idea from acceptance and commitment therapy and a lot of other CBT practices around that idea of just noticing and naming, you know, or, you know, creating that bit of distance, which is just, you know, it's so lovely to see these sort of um threads sort of crossing a lot of the stuff that we kind of already do and how it could work within potentially a more expanded paradigm.
Mitch: Thank you.
Ollie: right.
Sophie Shephard: um I guess I'm sitting here listening to that and and a few things really jump out at me that I think are important to just, I guess, maybe highlight a little bit in that because ah think a lot of people have had experiences, particularly when it comes to, i mean, maybe not just even pain-related distress, but even mental health in general.
Sophie Shephard: I think sometimes there's almost this really, there can be this harmful, you know, sometimes you'll see people refer to it almost like this toxic positivity where it's like, well, If you're feeling depressed or you're feeling sad or you're having a bad time, just think more positively, right?
Sophie Shephard: Like just change that. You can think differently. And sometimes people come away from people who are maybe very well-intentioned who might sort of say things along those lines, just going, this is shit.
Ollie: you
Sophie Shephard: It's very like, I feel like I'm i'm at fault for how I'm feeling and, and you know, that's just ridiculous.
Mitch: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: And I've often seen that people will often have a lot of this secondary distress because they they can internalize that and then when these thoughts or challenging experiences crop up and they have the emotional response they then try to almost talk themselves out of it or to stop the thought or to change the thought and like you would know better than everyone that that's you can't really do that because again you are You are not your thoughts. Your thoughts can kind of do their own thing and are a bit weird and wonderful sometimes.
Sophie Shephard: And so I think a really key point of what you're saying is that it's not actually about just thinking differently. It's not just about changing the thoughts and never having these negative thoughts or emotions. It's actually very...
Sophie Shephard: real and human to have these thoughts, these negative um emotional responses, particularly where people are in these really challenging circumstances, because let's face it, often people that we're seeing have had really awful experiences and are significantly impacted by their symptoms.
Sophie Shephard: And it's not about saying you need to not have that response and it's your fault that you're having these negative responses. Instead, it's about this is a completely valid response and thoughts to be having, but also how can we help you create some space and some breathing room from these things so that they're not so consuming and not, you know, having as much of an impact and compounding the distress that you're feeling.
Sophie Shephard: I really like Russ Harris's um um piece of paper example, like, you know, the the idea that when you're you you really stuck in these sort of thoughts and and things are feeling really overwhelming.
Sophie Shephard: It's like, you know, holding a piece of paper up against your face and, you know, they're right there and you can't really engage or see with the world beyond that.
Mitch: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: And so, you know, the idea behind some of these things is we're not changing the paper. We're not scribbling it out or scrunching it up. We just need to be able to figure out how we can place it down. And so we've got a little bit more room to breathe around it. And yeah, that just, it, there's so much of what you're saying. That's just really jumping out there.
Sophie Shephard: um i guess in your practice and when you're having some of these conversations, I'm interested particularly when people may be coming from these really challenging situations and there may be a lot of contextual factors and, um you know, sometimes really unjust and and um really quite challenging social backgrounds, for example, people might people might be experiencing significant financial distress um or experienced, you know, trauma or have a lot of other contextual factors that are kind of out of their control.
Sophie Shephard: I'm interested in how you maybe navigate this and kind of... draw in these things that we know can still be really valuable while also acknowledging that there are these elements that are sometimes really powerful and really challenging and maybe out of people's control and guess how do you juggle those two things?
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: yeah Yeah, that's such a good point, Sophie Hay, because I think that can be a misunderstanding that people might have about like a meditative approach. um You know, the the key starting point is that we're not looking to um cover anything up or hide anything. We're looking to uncover the truth of what's really going on.
Mitch: And that's what meditation is about. the deepest layer of meditation is about seeing reality as closely as you can to what it actually is. So that means that it's not about dismissing any emotion, hiding anything, changing anything. The first part of the puzzle is to acknowledge exactly where that person is right there and right then as the starting point.
Mitch: And then alongside that, recognizing that the whole thing can be seen with an element of compassion because, you know, the The circumstances that create our life are so many more than we think they are.
Mitch: And so many of them are completely outside of our own control. um You know, these challenging circumstances just kind of accumulate. And so if we see them as being blameful and all our fault, that's just creating another barrier for us.
Mitch: But if we see them in reality, the interdependence of the world and all the different things that affect us,
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: we're going to see them with an element of compassion to be like, Oh, it's understandable why this has happened. Oh man. Yeah. I have compassion for that outcome for sure. Um, and, and that's where, you know, within meditation, if you talk to people who are really deep meditators, they're not harsh people and they're not judgmental and they're not blaming anyone because they recognize they've seen all these things that happen and they've seen the suffering that happens to people in the world.
Mitch: Um, And they've recognized how hard this is because, man, it's hard. but But that's what motivated me to do the stuff I'm doing now.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: i remember working with a student at the university and it was a chronic pain patient and it hadn't been going well and the patient was going to basically, I could just tell they weren't going to come back. And I said to the student, I said, you know, they've they've kind of not going to find an answer from here, it seems.
Mitch: and the patient And the student was like, oh my gosh, that's so horrible to see. And I was like, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I was like, there are millions of people who are having these difficulties, millions and millions all around the world. There's so much challenging suffering and trauma and all sorts going on.
Mitch: um And so as soon as you recognize the degree of that and the the degree of your own suffering and the degree of everyone's suffering, all you see it with is ah is a view of compassion.
Mitch: You know, we all just are looking for that thing that's going to make us feel okay, you know. um and the beautiful thing with meditation is you end up finding that for yourself, within yourself.
Mitch: and And this is where, for me, meditation is a way of helping people to create a self-healing process for them to heal themselves, to empower them that they have the tools to be able to resolve their own issues.
Ollie: it's uh it's it's such a wonderful message and and and the power of i think compassion now that we're researching it to show just how much that has an effect itself brings us to to where i've been most interested to ask you about uh mitch amongst many things is what you're doing now and how how it differs from the ah structured perhaps physio practice of the past. um you've You've let go of the identity ah maybe a little bit. What's work look like now, if we call it that? What's what's helping people look like now for you?
Mitch: yeah Yeah, well, um I've actually stepped out away from the university now. um i have my own business. It's called Hunter Healing. um And I'm working with people on how to use meditation,
Mitch: um to help chronic pain and chronic illness, um to help them to resolve it and to help them manage it um And then um' alongside that, I'm working with a subgroup of people who are looking for um deep spiritual connection and to work towards these, you know, internal liberation is another way of saying that.
Mitch: And it's... um Yeah, i I work with people all around the country now um just through conversation, through meditation and through specific practices to try and – I like the idea that I walk with them through a meditative intervention um down the kind of pathway of themselves.
Ollie: Thank you.
Mitch: And as we come across kind of challenging bits that might be interacting with their condition – we use meditation to help to change their relationship with it, to see their relationship more clearly um so that some of the illusions of their own um personal suffering is able to be released.
Mitch: And as that kind of happens, um they get often get relief within their symptoms to ah a little degree or to ah to a great degree, but um it's very, very helpful from a range of different angles. And for me in my career,
Mitch: i um I just, I was trying to fit this into a university system for so long um that it was it was good because it was benefiting a lot of people.
Mitch: But I um ah could see that for me, I needed to be really honest about my background and my approach. And that's where having my own business and how I do it now is um really open it and really, really deeply meaningful for me and and the people I work with.
Mitch: um Yeah, and I'm just like, I'm really excited that this is my new career. um I'm still a physiotherapist. I'm still seeing people um in physiotherapy interventions because um stress inoculation techniques, mindfulness interventions, all these things fit within our scope of practice.
Sophie Shephard: Thank you.
Mitch: um And I'll still be giving them bits and pieces around traditional physiotherapy as it's needed. But this other intervention now through meditation just feels so meaningful and I can see how helpful it is for the right patient.
Mitch: um And it's not going to be for everyone, um but for the patients and the people that I work with who really, it's for them, it's really, really beneficial. So yeah, that's what I'm doing now. And it's it's been an adventure, man. It's been a bit of a risk to step away from ah well-paying salary and a nice university role.
Mitch: um But the meaning and the um the help that I'll be able to do, being able to give to people has has made it all worth it so far.
Sophie Shephard: It's so exciting to hear how things have evolved for you. And I'm very excited to see how things continue to evolve for you. Cause it sounds like this is a space that is just going to continue growing in terms of the clinicians who are entering this space and sort of starting to explore some of these techniques. and And I think even just our emerging models of health and pain are a lot more congruent, I think, with some of these understandings now. So I think even seeing those shifts happen, i i mean, ah as as a very non-expert in this space, like I could see how there could sort of end up being ah much more of a convergence in future than than what there has been.
Sophie Shephard: I guess to summarize, I guess some of the key things that I'm taking away from our discussion today, it seems like there's a couple of things that jump out. The first is, I guess, when we're talking about spirituality and maybe how we can start to bring some of this to practice,
Sophie Shephard: I guess some of my takeaways that i've I've gleaned from the two of you today is is maybe as a first step, as clinicians, we need to take a moment and to really learn how we can be more mindful and present um in the current moment and maybe be mindful of our own state as a starting point.
Ollie: Thank you.
Sophie Shephard: That seems to be something that's jumping out, I think is a really good point. um But I guess the other thing that seems to really um stick out to me is that What it really comes down to is to being able to work with the person as a person and to see and appreciate their experience from a place of compassion and start to explore the ways in which we can help them.
Sophie Shephard: be supported to explore things that are meaningful and to engage more in things that do have value and meaning in their day to day.
Sophie Shephard: And that could be really small in terms of finding, you know, you talked before about, you know, going out and finding fun things to do um and, you know, um other activities that they enjoy through the day, even if they're small or or different.
Ollie: right.
Sophie Shephard: um but then also potentially linking that in with more sort of targeted, um you know, mindfulness meditation sort of techniques that might deliberately target that. I guess I'm interested in terms of maybe a couple of the key points you would like people to take away, whether that's clinicians or maybe even patients who are listening.
Sophie Shephard: What would be, couple of things you'd like them to take away?
Mitch: I would say the overarching idea would be that I would love people to be brave enough to be introspective, um to be brave enough and to be compassionate enough to be introspective.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Mitch: And I think that's as a clinician and as a patient, you know, i think um as a clinician, it needs to be valued. I think this is something that should be mandatory as any health clinician to be introspective about all aspects of your plaque of your practice.
Mitch: um And if you can do that about your practice and about yourself, You're going to greater clinician. um
Ollie: you
Mitch: And with patients, it's about them having the the courage and the strength that they can do it and that they can look inward and they can meet what they find there with their own personal um stability and sovereignty.
Mitch: um And I would love for for for patients to take that from what we're saying.
Sophie Shephard: Mm-hmm.
Ollie: What a wonderful message to to finish with. There's so much more i want to ask you about, Mitch, but I'm mindful and and grateful for your time. Thank you so much for joining us. If anyone is interested in working with you or learning more about what you do, where can they find you?
Mitch: Yeah, great. So we have a website. It's, um, hunterhealing.com. Um, I'm also on Instagram. I put little bits and pieces up on there. It's at underscore hunter healing.
Mitch: Um, they can contact me directly on hunterhealing gmail.com. Um, and even, you know, even just to have a conversation, I work with a lot of different people around the country and I also work with some clinicians to be able to train them and how to take this sort of approach or even just mentorship as well. So,
Mitch: um It's always nice to hear from people if they just enjoy what we're talking about and just want have a conversation. I'm always open to all of that. So, yeah. And thank
Ollie: Definitely,
Mitch: Thanks, Ollie. Thanks, Sophie. Thank you guys so much.
