How to Practice Mindfulness Safely, with David Trevelean

(soft hissing) (mouse clicking) (gentle music builds) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) (gentle music) Hi everyone, welcome to Radio Headspace. Its Dora here. In honor of Mental Health Awareness month and the launch of our new in-app collection, Navigating Trauma, we're sharing an extra episode with you this week featuring mindfulness teacher and world renowned trauma expert David Treleaven. In this conversation, we explore what it really means to practice mindfulness safely. Meditation is often seen as a universal tool for wellbeing, but it isn't always a one size fits all approach, especially for those who have experienced trauma. In today's episode, we talk about what trauma is, how it can show up in our meditation practice, and why simply being with it isn't always the answer. We also explore the importance of choice, understanding your own capacity, and how to navigate moments when mindfulness starts to feel overwhelming, so you can build a practice that truly supports your healing. I hope you enjoy. Hi, David. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. It's so great. I kind of knew the backstory, but I didn't know the Canadian piece. And now I have so many questions about you being a psych nurse, and- Yeah. So yeah, I'm thrilled to dive in here. That's great. Thanks for all your work. Yes, I'm like, "Okay, I don't have to explain some of the words that I say as a Canadian. People are like, "Could you say that again?" And I'm like, "Eh, eh." All these different things that I thought were normal that were not. But so excited. And I know you through your work, but for people that are unfamiliar, can you share who you are, what you do, and why did you get started in this field? What brought you to trauma sensitive mindfulness? Well, it was actually in Vancouver. I was going to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and it was in 2003, and I did a master's thesis on mindfulness. And that was just sort of at the beginning when it was taking off in at least academic popularity. And I was sitting up there, there was a kind of a posthumous circuit that was coming through Vancouver, and all these teachers were rolling through, like Tara Brock and others were coming to a center. And so I would volunteer on the weekends. Got really into meditation, fell in love with it. And then at some point I moved down to the US and started to do more trauma work. I was a therapist trained in Canada. And the trauma work was so helpful for me personally. And there were a couple moments in the work that I was doing with a therapist where I thought if I had of had this when I was meditating, it would've really supported my meditation practice. So that was in 2010, and it opened up a whole long inquiry for me about what's the relationship between meditation and trauma....