FF 14: ‘Mindfulness for families’ with Charlotte Thaarup

Children’s chiropractor, Dr. Dorte Bladt, discusses the practice of mindfulness with Charlotte Thaarup of The Mindfulness Clinic. Intro: Flourishing Families with Dorte Bladt, the (opens in a new tab)">Switched-On Kids chiropractor and her passionate friends sharing the secret of inspiring wellness to help your families thrive. Dorte Bladt: I’ve got Charlotte Thaarup here today. I’m very excited. She’s from (opens in a new tab)">The Mindfulness Clinic. Charlotte, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Charlotte Thaarup: Well, I’m in a very privileged position because I work with what I’m most passionate about and I know it works. I see it on a daily basis. So, I work with mindfulness, and I have for the last 10 to 15 years. Of course, it’s extremely researched. They have 150,000 research documents and articles on it. Many of them are nonsense ones but nonetheless, it points to their effectiveness. Of course, what it does is that it mirrors and matches the ancient practice of mindfulness which sits within Buddhism and it matches that beautifully, so that’s exciting.   Dorte Bladt: Just to make sure that we know that we’re all on the same page – what is mindfulness? Charlotte Thaarup: That’s a good question because I think there’s so many different definitions. Some define the practice, some the outcome – that’s confusing in itself. So, if you are doing mindfulness, it’s a “doing” thing. It’s not something you can read in a book. Reading about mindfulness is not going to make you mindful because it requires awareness, so it is a practice where we start to get to know our minds. Of course, our mind is a result of our past, so we start to observe how the mind works so that we can direct it more in wholesome ways and away from unwholesome. That’s really what we’re doing. Dorte Bladt: Can you give me an example because that sounds very beautiful, but I’m not quite sure if I can see it in my head. Charlotte Thaarup: So you’ll notice thoughts – thoughts pop up all the time. You’ll also notice sensations – feelings in your body arise all the time, so when you observe something that comes up that’s not very pleasant, let’s say you observe jealousy, and you’ll notice that as a sensation that sort of sits in the chest and in the gut. You can go, “whoa, I better just breathe a little bit now so that doesn’t become a really big cloud.” That’s one example when you catch it in the body and you just sit with it and you know it is a visitor. It’s not a truth. You can just be with it. You might notice a thought that goes, “oh, I don’t know why he’s saying that. What a stupid thing to say,” and you go, “whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me not continue further on that one.” Just take a few breaths and calm down and then see other options of thinking, because every time you think of a thought that’s kind of charged in that way, you’re strengthening what we call the angry, greedy, arrogant, reactive wolf within,