How to Be More Present: Mindfulness, Psychology, and Spirituality with John-Paul Dombrowski

Shannon Jackson
2 days ago
36 min read

How Mindfulness and Presence Can Transform Your Life

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with John-Paul, a therapist and content creator who has built a large following on Instagram by sharing honest, relatable insights about mental health, mindfulness, and spirituality. What stood out most in our conversation was his approach to presence and mindfulness, not as a task or a quick fix, but as a practice and a way of being.

Letting Go of Identity to Truly Be Yourself

John-Paul’s philosophy centers on embracing the uncertainty of life rather than clinging to a fixed sense of identity. He draws on the work of psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, who suggested that our task as humans is not to feel secure, but to tolerate insecurity.

“We often bind ourselves to an identity,” John-Paul explained. “When we allow ourselves to emerge spontaneously, this is actually when we are truly ourselves. As soon as we say, ‘I am this,’ we put a box around something that is inherently boxless.”

This perspective applies not only to personal growth but also to therapy and mindfulness practice. By letting go of rigid self-definitions, we create space for authentic connection with ourselves and others.

Mindfulness as a Practice, Not a Quick Fix

One of the biggest misconceptions about mindfulness is that it’s a tool to eliminate thoughts, calm anxiety, or “fix” yourself. According to John-Paul, this approach often backfires because it turns mindfulness into another performance task.

“The thinker, the mind, is trying to be mindful, but your mind can’t actually be mindful. Mindfulness is an innate quality of your being. When we set the stage through intentional practice, mindfulness emerges on its own.”

He encourages approaching mindfulness without agenda or expectation. Sitting down to focus on your breath, for example, is not about forcing calm or controlling thoughts. It’s about creating the conditions in which awareness naturally arises.

Presence Is About What You’re Attending To

John-Paul reframes presence in a simple but powerful way: rather than asking, “How do I become more present?” ask, “What is there to be present with right now?”

Whether it’s washing the dishes, driving your car, or walking in nature, mindfulness involves tuning in to what’s happening in the moment and not trying to escape your thoughts or feelings. Even discomfort becomes part of the practice.

He gives the example of parenting: when his young daughter approaches a potentially dangerous situation, the mindful response isn’t to ignore the moment or focus solely on a spiritual or mental goal, it’s to be present with what’s happening, responding from awareness rather than autopilot.

Mindfulness and Spirituality Intersect

John-Paul also shared how his spiritual journey informs his therapeutic practice. Growing up Roman Catholic, he experienced both the gifts and the limitations of structured religion. Over time, he moved toward a more personal, relationship-based approach to spirituality, where the goal is connection and presence rather than rigid belief.

“Much of my prayer practice is about showing up, whether I feel like it or not. The act itself creates space, and presence emerges from that,” he said. This mirrors his approach to mindfulness: showing up, without expectation, creates the conditions for awareness and connection to unfold.

Takeaways

The key message from our conversation is that mindfulness and presence are not tasks to complete, rather they are ways of being to practice and cultivate over time. Real presence involves:

Letting go of rigid identities and expectations.
Embracing discomfort and the full spectrum of experience.
Focusing on what is actually here to attend to, rather than trying to control or eliminate thoughts.
Practicing consistently, even when it feels mundane.

By shifting the focus from achieving results to showing up fully, you open the door to authentic connection, both with yourself and the world around you.

Connect with John here

Episode 205 Transcript

00:02.30

Shannon Jackson

All right. Welcome back to a healthy push podcast today. i have a guest with me and I feel like I have not done a guest episode and quite a while. so I'm really excited. i came across John Paul on Instagram and I was like, Ooh, dang, his videos are just unique and honest and helpful. And so I think this is going to be a really helpful conversation and just a fun one for me to have. So selfishly, I was like, Hey, John Paul, can you come on my podcast?

00:34.11

Shannon Jackson

So John Paul, welcome to a healthy push podcast.

00:37.56

oh thank you i really appreciate that welcome and um yeah i just feel really touched to be here

00:38.95

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

00:41.78

Shannon Jackson

Yeah. Oh, good. So ah let's start with, tell us a little bit about you. Like who are you as a human?

00:50.32

yeah that is a great question and probably a question that i put a lot of

00:58.40

there's a period of time when I put a lot of energy into that question. and And to be honest, I think the latter years, probably last five years have been really about kind of letting go of that question of who am I?

01:09.50

Cause, um, I kind of think that this quest for identity is all a farce and it's, it's something that we do.

01:18.08

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

01:20.15

One of, I guess a good place to start is probably the biggest philosophy of mine that kind of guides, um,

01:28.86

Yeah, the way I interact with the world, the way I interact with conversations is from a guy named Eric Fromm, who was a psychoanalyst back in the day. And he says, our task is not to feel secure, but rather to tolerate insecurity.

01:44.72

And i think having some concrete sense of grasping onto an identity, i think it's something that a lot of us believe that everybody has,

02:00.56

And in fact, I think it's something that so often actually gets in the way of us being ourselves because at our core, we're all just a spontaneous becoming.

02:14.29

That there's there's an aspect of the human condition that you can actually never have a stable like identity because the very nature of the now is that everything's becoming new and emerging all on its own.

02:28.20

As I was actually talking to my wife about this recently because Um, she's kind of talking about, ah she's in this place of, of really kind of wanting to personally like rebrand herself, not like professionally or anything, but just kind of saying like, I'm trying to kind of let go of some of these patterns and some of these habits and, um, some of these stuck places that I find myself over and over again. And the way I respond to those stuck places, which is actually usually the stuck place.

02:53.46

and And one of the things I said to her is I think so many people in the wellness industry, in, um, coaching, whatever it is kind of propose this idea that like, okay, you need a new identity.

03:07.26

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

03:07.55

When the fact is, is that identity is the trap. Because when we bind ourselves to an identity, we give ourselves permission to get stuck in those habits and in those patterns.

03:20.95

03:21.06

Shannon Jackson

yeah

03:21.46

But when we allow ourselves to emerge spontaneously, this is actually when we are truly ourselves. But as as soon as we say, I am this, or this is who I am, we put a box around something that's boxless.

03:41.81

03:42.59

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

03:43.58

And so it's one of those kind of esoteric weird things that's like, it doesn't always make sense in explanation. it's It's something that we have to kind of embody and practice. That's why, i like I said, I really like podcasting because I think it's something in making videos it's something that you can lean into as a practice um so that's kind of my life philosophy I'm 29 years old I live in a old steel town that was like they there was a the highest income per capita at a time it's outside of Pittsburgh um and then steel got outsourced and the whole town kind of collapsed so it's this weird kind of combination

04:26.80

um I grew up um in, I was raised Catholic, I'm Roman Catholic. um And in my youth, when I was in about fifth grade, I got diagnosed with depression, which um all I really knew is that I was hurting and nothing was really helpful.

04:43.86

Shannon Jackson

yeah

04:46.81

And so i think I had the experience that so many people who kind of come and gravitate towards the the healing field do, which is like, I was really hurting And when I was hurting, i didn't really get the help that I needed.

05:02.37

I remember sitting across from this guy, I'm sure was a really well-intentioned guy. and you know, I was probably in my teen years by then. And I just thought to myself, how can it be that I feel so terrible and this guy sucks so bad at his job?

05:21.26

And it wasn't about attacking him. It was just like this utter recognition that like, this isn't helping me.

05:28.06

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

05:29.25

so then in high school, I got introduced to psychology. I had a ah ah the community college offered college courses and in high school and took a psychology class. And so it just kind of lit my fire.

05:42.58

For one thing, because I was like learning all these things about myself, these defense mechanisms, projection, repression, identification, all these things. um But the other side of it was that I've always really loved people.

05:55.27

And I've always really liked ideas. And psychology was this place where these, these two things for me came together.

06:02.71

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

06:03.87

And so that, that kind of started my passion and my love. And I studied psychology and in my undergraduate and then studied counseling. And my hope was actually to get PhD in psychology up until a few years ago.

06:18.24

um That's kind of ah Not a super important... Well, it could be, but but I feel like it's not necessarily the place that I feel really interested in being right now in that conversation. But um what i what I realized too is You know, you don't really learn how to be a therapist in grad school.

06:39.37

They just convince everybody that you're equipped to do it.

06:42.16

Shannon Jackson

Yeah. Yeah.

06:43.24

And so this is where, again, you know, the practice is so important to me that life is a practice. um Because the one thing that I graduated realizing was that, like, I have no fucking clue what I'm doing.

06:57.32

Yeah.

06:59.98

and And so i was exposed to some modalities, CBT and and kind of some of the more common modalities early on.

07:00.13

Shannon Jackson

Yep.

07:07.96

And I just found myself kind of putting people in boxes. um

07:10.88

Shannon Jackson

yeah

07:11.51

And it wasn't that helpful, feeling like I'm putting, you know, kind of square peg in a round hole.

07:17.27

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

07:17.64

And then later I was introduce introduced to approach that was hugely formative, um and that was the interpersonal approach, the belief that as persons we are fundamentally relational.

07:30.88

We're created in relationship, we're hurt in relationship, but we can also find healing in relationship.

07:31.51

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

07:37.43

Shannon Jackson

here

07:37.64

um And one of the things that I loved, loved, loved about this approach was that it put such a heavy responsibility on the practitioner to say, like, you really have to handle your shit because if you don't.

07:51.67

Shannon Jackson

yeah

07:55.95

And if you ignore all your own demons and your own conflicts, what you're going to end up doing is just projecting them onto other people and then actually reenacting and recreating the very same themes that hurt people in therapy, um leaving them

08:15.38

stuck and still believing it's their fault. So that during that time too, I also got, um or in grad school, I got exposed to to mindfulness um and and really committed. That was the other thing that was just so consistent through the mindfulness literature and the research that I was reading was this isn't something you can just teach.

08:36.79

you You can't just read a manual and then teach people how to do it. Like you have to do the practice.

08:44.70

And so that's really the ah foundation for me. That's kind of where I started when I kind of started settling into my career was this this deep and abiding reverence for relationality, for connection, as we were kind of talking about.

09:03.79

um And this really important responsibility that like we actually do the work. And so that's a couple months ago. That's where I started my Instagram. I started it like four months ago. um Started 2025. And I have 60,000 followers which is kind crazy.

09:21.69

and i've sixty thousand followers now which is kind of wild to me.

09:26.69

Shannon Jackson

Wild. who

09:28.63

But it's it, my intention with starting that was like, I want to be real.

09:29.23

Shannon Jackson

09:35.95

i want to be me. And so um most of my videos are me walking to my car at the beginning of the day and just throwing something. I was like, Hey, this is what's on my mind today. um and And then with that success, it's kind of opened a lot more opportunity to kind of lean into this kind of stuff. So

09:55.42

that's ah that's a That's some wide sweeping arcs of of my story and how I got here.

10:01.80

Shannon Jackson

Yeah. I love that. Thank you for sharing all of that. i think I'm just thinking, of course, about my own therapy journey and the best experiences I've had in therapy are when I've had a really good connection and relationship with the therapist.

10:04.83

Yeah.

10:16.01

Yeah.

10:19.30

Yeah.

10:19.36

Shannon Jackson

And I just think there's so much that comes out of that when you do have that connection. And I think that's exactly why you've grown on Instagram so quickly.

10:24.05

yeah

10:28.04

Shannon Jackson

It's like, you are allowing people in, right? And you're really connecting with people on so many different things and saying things that a lot of people don't hear, right?

10:32.01

Yeah.

10:39.51

Shannon Jackson

And thinking in different ways that people aren't always allowing themselves to go there. So I think that's, ah it's just been so interesting watching you grow so quickly.

10:51.19

Shannon Jackson

which I'm sure comes with its own challenges. But I'm really curious about something because this is something you also don't see very often in this space. So you say that you sort of dance the line between psychology and spirituality.

11:07.28

Yeah.

11:07.56

Shannon Jackson

So I would love for you to tell us like, what does that mean to you And what does that actually look like in your work with clients?

11:18.13

Yeah. What a great question because I love talking about this. um

11:26.40

11:29.54

I think what i've So I grew up in, in like i said, I'm Roman Catholic. I grew up in ah in a very conservative area, um ah very, very religious area. My dad taught at Franciscan University in Steubenville, which is like kind of like one of like the Catholic universities. It's very small. It has like 2,500 people.

11:49.14

um But it's kind of like one of the five universities that's not just Catholic in name. It's like really kind of practices, religious,

12:00.30

really hold like sticks to the values of that.

12:02.84

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

12:03.22

um And so i got exposed to a lot of really beautiful life-giving aspects of spirituality, um as well as some like things that just like pissed me off and didn't make sense.

12:19.03

um One of the things that drives me or kind of drives me nuts is is, for example, people say this thing like, oh, when something bad happens to someone, ah people say something like, oh, well, God has a plan. And I fucking hate that.

12:35.14

Thank you. Now, I believe it. I believe that statement. But I think it's a it's it's called a spiritual bypass, which the person is really saying, oh, your pain and your difficulty right now, it's it's too much for me.

12:49.06

So I'm going to give this like pietistic phrased answer rather than saying, and and even in the Gospels, right?

12:54.14

Shannon Jackson

Yep.

12:56.45

Jesus, um Lazarus dies, and Jesus is really good friends with Lazarus and and his sisters. And when he shows up, the first thing that he does with with with his sisters is he weeps, he cries,

13:13.58

and What's so strange about this, it's so remarkably human, is that after that, he raises him from the dead. So he brings him back to life. But the very first thing that he does is he connects.

13:29.33

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

13:29.61

And so what you see, if you really listen in scriptures, what you see over and over again is Christ emphasizing connection and relationship and

13:46.02

the only people he really points the fingers at are the people who point fingers and say, oh, I don't have any problems. Or the Sadducees and the Pharisees, he says, hey, who who of you has sinned? You throw the first stone.

13:56.83

um And he says, look look at what the teachers, follow what the teachers say, but don't do as they do because they preach one thing.

13:56.91

Shannon Jackson

you

14:03.01

They create heavy burdens, hard to bear, but then they don't even lift a finger. And so for me, in in my experience of teaching,

14:14.44

Catholic religion, ah kind of got to this point where I realized like, okay, because I had all this issue with the dogma and the rules and all this stuff, like some of the stuff just feel felt strange to me or it didn't quite make sense.

14:27.26

And so much of it was like, do you believe it or don't believe it? You have to believe it. And I kind of got to this point where I said like, okay, forget all the dogma. Like I'm not throwing it out. I'm not ignoring it. But like, that's not what this is about.

14:39.74

If I don't have a personal relationship with God, absolutely none of this matters. um And so

14:50.29

I really just committed to really seeking, like, who is God? Who am I?

15:00.04

And much of those, for years, my my prayer was really like I would sit down to pray and then I would just like wrestle with like, are you there? Are you not? And finally, I got so fucking fed up with that that I was like, you know what? I'm going to just, I know my eye as a person and better when I pray.

15:14.94

So I'm going to take a pragmatic approach here and say, I'm just going to commit to praying every day, whether I believe in God or not.

15:22.87

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

15:22.92

um And that actually created so much space for me. and And I think this is core in these practices, whether it's therapy, whether it's mindfulness, whether it's spirituality. And and its it's what Aristotle says. He says, there's different types of goods in the world.

15:37.50

And some things are good because of what they bring about, right? Like a car is good because it gets to be from point A to point B. And if it doesn't do that, it's not good. But there's other things that are good Because of the the nature of who they are, it's in their essence. Things like friendship.

15:53.93

Of course, friendship brings about stability and you know has people to have your back. But that's not what makes friendship good. Friendship is good because we're humans and friendship is connection.

16:05.04

And that's something that isn't good because of what it brings about. It's good in itself, even though it brings about all these good things.

16:12.41

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

16:12.91

And so that's kind of one of the other kind of philosophical foundations for me is to do things that are good, not because of what they will bring about.

16:23.80

And that that that opened this spaciousness for me in prayer where I didn't have to wrestle every time I was showing up. I was just showing up. Like the commitment was already there. It's so helpful in mindfulness too of I'm showing up to to practice mindfulness, not so that I calm down.

16:38.62

um But rather I'm showing up because paying attention to the present moment and whatever is here in the present moment is good. Period.

16:49.70

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

16:50.30

Full stop.

16:51.62

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

16:53.02

and And so like, um I guess I'm trying to tie it back to this question of dancing the line between spirituality and psychology. um

17:05.20

but But maybe I'll just i' ah' pause there for a moment because i we can certainly kind of get back into that as well.

17:10.59

Shannon Jackson

Yeah, no.

17:10.92

ah Much of this is really about my own spiritual journey. and I mean, that's one of the other caveats is um one of the things that Mother Teresa says is is something along the lines of, um you know, my job isn't to convert convert you to Catholicism.

17:26.15

My job is to follow Christ in such a way that it makes you a better human, that you want to be a better Hindu, that you want to be a better Muslim, that you want to be a better Jew.

17:39.07

To live in such a way that it doesn't tell you to be like me, it actually draws you more deeply into yourself.

17:47.54

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

17:48.65

so So in all this that I share about my spirituality, it's it's not about like, oh, so you need to believe this. It's really, um this is the tradition that I've been given that has so many gifts in it and and has also, um in the name of religion, hurt so many people.

18:11.94

I'm not kind of blind to that fact, but it's,

18:18.35

what I found is that when i when I dive deep into it, I become better. And i think I also live in a way that welcomes other people, not in a pressured way, but ah the kind of attitude of like, be the change ah you want to see in the world. So I think that's an important thing to say because um unfortunate as it as you know, as soon as I say it, I'm Catholic, a lot of times people just shut it off or ignore it.

18:44.86

um And that's okay too, but yeah.

18:48.42

Shannon Jackson

Yeah, no, I am so interested with where you're going and talking about presence, because I think that's such a struggle for so many of us.

19:01.41

Shannon Jackson

But kind of before we go there, I just want to say, you know, I think that no matter what your connection to spirituality is, you know, I grew up very religious in a very religious home.

19:14.89

Yeah.

19:16.61

Shannon Jackson

And it wasn't until I was in college that I started to explore what can this look like for me? And maybe it doesn't have to look the way that I was taught.

19:22.39

Yeah.

19:25.31

Shannon Jackson

It has to look.

19:26.66

yeah

19:27.00

Shannon Jackson

And oh my gosh, there are so many different beliefs and ideas and maybe I can adopt a bunch of these things and it doesn't have to be one thing.

19:35.91

Yeah.

19:37.42

Shannon Jackson

And so I think all of that spirituality work really just helps you to connect to yourself more. and then in turn allows you to really have those relationships that you want and desire.

19:50.62

Shannon Jackson

And it doesn't feel so i have to be this person or I have to step into this identity or this is what people are expecting of me.

19:55.91

Yeah.

19:59.42

Shannon Jackson

Like there's so much freeness in that.

20:02.43

Yeah.

20:03.48

Shannon Jackson

So, I mean, that's, there are so many conversations. in what we're talking about. But I want to talk a little bit about presence because I know so many of my listeners are like, I don't think I'm ever present in a day. i don't think I'm ever really connected. i struggle really badly with being present.

20:27.54

Shannon Jackson

So can you just tell us from your perspective, because I think we hear this live in the moment, like just live in the moment.

20:35.46

Yeah.

20:37.22

Shannon Jackson

And like, what does that really mean from your perspective? Like mindfulness presence, living in the moment.

20:42.12

Yeah.

20:44.35

Shannon Jackson

What is that?

20:46.25

Yeah. Yeah. It's certainly something that I'm trying to figure out too.

20:55.56

And this is one of my my favorite things about mindfulness practice is that it's a mindfulness practice.

20:56.16

Shannon Jackson

Same.

21:04.35

It's always a practice. And and the practice is for life. And what's

21:13.89

Far more important than having this kind of locked in quality of being able to focus on what's happening right now is the ability to realize when I have wandered off, the practice of being able to come back here without beating myself up, without attacking,

21:35.65

without because when I beat myself up when I judge myself that's just more lostness like when when when um when I'm on my phone and I really should be with my kids I can take that time to be oh what the hell's wrong with me or I can just say like oh I'm lost I'm sucked in so my choice right now is to put the phone down and to turn towards my kids it's

21:56.27

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

22:07.08

a lot simpler and a lot less glamorous than anybody wants it to be. Because pretty rarely are there these watershed moments when like all of a sudden i have this moment of enlightening and they do happen, but they're relatively rare.

22:12.65

Shannon Jackson

okay

22:26.69

it's

22:30.21

It's a practice that you won't see the fruits of for years. And

22:38.36

People don't want that. People don't like that. And understandably so, because people are hurting and we we want a quick fix. And that's so much what our cultural consciousness is screaming out for in a really unhelpful way. But to me, the intention of being present is not enough.

22:58.34

And...

23:01.37

the encouragement, even as you said, the encouragement of just be more present, just be more present, just be, it's not enough. And it's, um if you are around people who are just kind of like telling you like, well, be more present, try to be more present, try to be, like, I would encourage you to put up a certain um boundary and a certain space between you and those voices

23:07.40

Shannon Jackson

yeah

23:27.19

Because it may just be another version of like, well, God ah god has a plan. um It has to be a presence. And so the question is not like, how do I become more present?

23:38.93

It's

23:42.34

more of what is there to be present to right now? um

23:47.24

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

23:48.56

and And so again, the practice is so, so, so important. And that's that's really the goal. The goal of mindfulness practice is to eliminate the false boundary between sitting down and doing a ah formal, sorry.

24:07.15

Shannon Jackson

We're fine.

24:07.44

the The goal of mindfulness meditation is to eliminate the false boundary between sitting down and doing a formal mindfulness meditation of paying attention to the breath, for example, and the rest of our life.

24:20.57

One of the things that I guide people to after after I guide them in a mindfulness meditation, oftentimes I'll say, now I want you to open your eyes and I don't want you to transition. I don't want you to end this practice.

24:32.67

I want you to open your eyes and carry this sense of awareness with you right now into the day. But it's, we're training

24:45.91

the habit of what we give priority to.

24:50.63

Shannon Jackson

yeah

24:51.15

and And mindfulness... encourage us to say the most important thing we can give our attention to is what's happening right now.

25:03.72

And thought is not the most important thing that we can give our attention to. And the reason we say it's non-judgment and non-reactive, it's not some like soft, fluffy, like just be nice to yourself, stop doing those unhelpful things.

25:22.07

It's because every judgment is just another thought.

25:25.50

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

25:25.97

Every reaction, it's just another thought. So mindfulness isn't so much about don't be judgmental and don't be critical. It's much more about don't be tied to thought.

25:37.64

And judgment and criticism, those are just more clouds in the sky. They're they're just more thoughts. So what does mindfulness look like? it It looks like washing the dishes and and feeling the water.

25:52.62

It looks like turning the radio off in your car, turning the music off and just driving.

25:58.32

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

25:58.60

A lot of times it means don't be so addicted to consuming a podcast nonstop. It looks like sitting down and reading a book for an hour. It means...

26:10.71

great when When I'm in the morning and I'm trying to pray and I really want to connect with God, this part of me wants to connect with God. And my daughter, who's you know eight months old, is walking over towards an electrical outlet to you know try to pretty much eat electricity. It's her MO, I'm pretty sure.

26:32.22

It means rather than saying, gosh, this oh this is my prayer time. It means saying, oh, okay, what am I called to in this moment? I'm called to go take care of my daughter.

26:43.53

That is what it means to be present. And so, but that it doesn't, intention isn't enough. We have to formalize it in a practice so that we're getting the reps in.

26:59.30

And the reason we sit down and do a formal meditation practice of paying attention the breath is it's about the most basic thing we can possibly pay attention to.

26:59.52

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

27:06.98

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

27:07.30

It's something that's always happening. The breath is also something that's shifting and dynamic enough that there's this steadiness to it, but it's also got kind of enough friction that it's it's like a little bit easier to pay attention to than, you know, don't do nothing because the mind can't do nothing. But um we need to find specific and intentional ways to actually practice that presence so that in daily life,

27:35.88

we know how to be present to the dishes, to the kids, to work, to our anxiety, to our overwhelm.

27:43.86

Shannon Jackson

Yeah. I love how you did that reframe of like, what is there to be present with right now? Because that's such a simple but really powerful shift.

27:56.07

Yeah.

27:56.21

Shannon Jackson

And that's something very practical, right? If people are like, well, what can I do? Because I think so many of us have been sold this idea that it's a task to be present, that like it's something that we can just

28:07.45

Yes.

28:09.60

Shannon Jackson

do like check a box. Like it's it's a list, right?

28:11.99

Yeah.

28:12.96

Shannon Jackson

And that force that I got to do this is so takes you away from the essence of what mindfulness even is.

28:13.54

No.

28:18.98

Great.

28:23.00

Yeah. Yeah.

28:25.06

Shannon Jackson

So I love that. i am curious because a lot of the people that I work with are very in their heads, as am I.

28:34.88

Mm-hmm.

28:35.38

Shannon Jackson

love we love Our brains love thinking and we love paying attention to the thinking. And it's such a habit to pay attention to your thinking.

28:42.54

Yes.

28:46.93

Shannon Jackson

And I think so many people are using mindfulness in that way of like, okay, if I just practice paying attention to my breath or a practice using my senses to like pull myself into the present moment, then I'm going to have less thoughts and I'm going to have less anxiety.

29:06.31

Shannon Jackson

And yeah, you see where I'm going with this, but it's such a struggle. And I think that this is such a common experience that people share is, you know, I go to therapy and I feel like I'm being told, you know, do mindfulness, like do some breathing, do grounding.

29:18.41

Yeah.

29:23.07

Shannon Jackson

And like, and they of course, there's this frustration of like, I'm doing it and I don't think it's doing anything. It's absolutely making things worse.

29:33.40

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

29:34.04

Yeah.

29:34.44

Shannon Jackson

So how do you you help clients to move out of their heads or is that something that we can really do?

29:44.56

That's not something I can do.

29:46.91

Shannon Jackson

Love it.

29:47.20

It's not something I can do. And I mean, I think this is one of the other things too, um that I'm trying to be really intentional about in my messaging and my products. I can't change you.

29:56.23

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

29:56.59

I can't. I can't change you. I can't promise you a transformation.

30:00.31

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

30:01.89

What I can do is teach you some approaches to yourself that I think could be helpful.

30:10.67

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

30:11.29

But um this is the absolute danger of mindfulness just being plugged into the mental health paradigm that we currently use. As I said earlier, there are certain things that we do because they're good, period.

30:30.33

There are certain things that are good because of what they bring about. Mindfulness is something that's good, period. but we're trying to use it as something for what it brings about.

30:42.33

And so the thinker, the mind, is trying to be mindful.

30:42.70

Shannon Jackson

Thank you.

30:48.88

Your mind can't be mindful. the The feeling that I'm sitting down and meditating, this is it's so paradoxical. And that's why the commitment is so important.

30:59.83

The commitment to say, I'm going to practice mindfulness because I believe that paying attention is good. Because if you are anxious, you will sit down.

31:13.43

And what are you going to focus on? You're actually going to focus on the anxiety because mindfulness is not, again, this is just um spiritual bypass. Oh, I'm i'm just going to get away from my emotions by um stepping back.

31:27.39

No, if you're practicing mindfulness, you're going to get into your emotions and you're going to feel through them.

31:30.88

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

31:34.51

And so

31:40.80

I think that I think that this happens too when when mindfulness becomes, things become popularized by people who get them and share the the the real depth of them.

31:56.32

And then they get adopted by people who want the results of the depth but don't have the practice.

32:02.91

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

32:03.32

And so in in my actual therapeutic practice, Mindfulness, to me, serves much more of the function of how I approach my clients than it does something that I teach my clients to do.

32:11.86

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

32:18.15

If my clients want to learn how to meditate, I'm so fucking over the moon and I'm like all in there and I'm like, let's do it. Like, okay, we can. But I believe that if therapy takes on this purely teaching role,

32:35.23

it's going to bring out that part of you that's a student.

32:37.80

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

32:38.89

And it's going to bring that part of me that's a teacher. And that puts the the capacity for relationality in a certain bracket.

32:52.81

Shannon Jackson

who

32:53.24

And

32:56.43

and it backfires a lot for me. I haven't figured out how to teach mindfulness to people who don't want to learn it. Um,

33:05.18

in a way that helps them. It usually just feels like, as you said, one more thing they have to do. One more thing i as somebody who has it figured out, am trying to jam down their throats, which is usually the exact relational experience that's hurting them in the first place.

33:22.63

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

33:22.81

So it's mindfulness is the practice of learning to not do and And a great way that I've heard it say is that you can't actually be mindful. Mindfulness, this presence, it's actually an innate quality of your being.

33:46.31

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

33:47.40

So what we do when we we sit for mindfulness practice is rather than trying to intentionally cultivate some experience, because that would just be more agenda, we are actually just trying to set the stage.

33:57.88

Shannon Jackson

you

34:02.27

And when we set the stage... the mindfulness emerges all on its own. And so this is where, you know, I really, usually with my clients in psychotherapy, if people approach me about learning to meditate, I approach that much differently.

34:22.26

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

34:22.55

But I'll usually make a soft offer of mindfulness for all my clients. And if they bite on it, then we go deeper.

34:33.19

But a lot of times, it just, they're they're not quite ready for it maybe. I'm not sure if it's that, but it just feels like one more thing.

34:47.09

Shannon Jackson

Yeah. And I think that intention matters so much because I look at a lot of struggles, right, personally that I've been through.

34:51.73

Yeah.

34:56.60

Shannon Jackson

And when I've had that intention of like, i can't be in this place. I got to fix this.

35:02.55

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

35:03.22

Shannon Jackson

I got to get better. I don't want anyone to see this. That's when I'm just in that cycle that feels so hard to get out of. Like, I can't be present if my life depended on it.

35:15.90

Shannon Jackson

And it's like, Well, no wonder, right?

35:19.38

Exactly. and And that's where I would say what mindfulness means in that moment for me as a practitioner is saying, Shannon, what's happening here?

35:30.65

You're so scared. It's actually me being the space and not trying to convince the part of you that's scared shitless to be present.

35:34.06

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

35:40.80

Shannon Jackson

yeah

35:41.93

It's actually to meet the part of you that's scared shitless from a place of agenda-free agenda free agenda.

35:48.25

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

35:48.89

and saying like, hey, you can be scared shitless right here with me. You're overwhelmed. I can feel your overwhelm.

36:01.54

I'm not scared of the overwhelm that you're feeling because this this overwhelm isn't really about what's happening right now. It's about a stack of overwhelming experiences that

36:17.53

you've been unmet in and you haven't experienced somebody with an encounter with that overwhelm in a way that both affirms it and validates it and doesn't add fuel to the fire and isn't trying to get you to change it because, oh my gosh, I'm a therapist and and my my ah my identity means that I have to be ah a helper.

36:31.63

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

36:43.87

So if I can't help you calm down, so I'm going throw the whole book at you.

36:44.17

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

36:47.69

Right.

36:47.74

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

36:49.21

I help being people be present by being present to their fear of presence.

36:49.40

Shannon Jackson

yeah

36:56.96

Shannon Jackson

I love that. and I love that. I know. I feel like this is such a theme that pops up for me in therapy is like her ah holding that space for me, right?

37:02.41

Yeah. Yeah.

37:06.52

Yeah.

37:06.69

Shannon Jackson

To just have the thoughts, to have the feelings. um I'm just thinking, you know, this morning I've been being so intentional with mindfulness of on my walks.

37:18.42

Shannon Jackson

Like i and such a podcast listener.

37:19.00

Yes.

37:22.58

Shannon Jackson

I'm such a –

37:25.32

Shannon Jackson

let me jam pack as much as I can. so like, I'm going to call a friend, I'm going to catch up. And I've been so intentional about not taking my phone, which is a discomfort in and of itself, but just to have it with me.

37:38.07

Yeah.

37:40.51

Shannon Jackson

and if I hear the ding or whatever it is, you know, it breaking away from that has been such a challenge because it does bring this discomfort. And I think that's what we were just speaking to, you right? Is this real discomfort.

37:56.66

Shannon Jackson

And I think when you have that dynamic, not just with a therapist, but with loved ones, with your partner, and like they have the best intentions, but everyone's just like, well, just do this or do that.

38:06.41

yeah yeah

38:09.26

Shannon Jackson

And it's that you need less doing and being super intentional with that. And I know going on my walks the past few days, I just noticed this morning too, I'm like, I wouldn't have seen that bird.

38:22.95

Shannon Jackson

like There's no way I would have seen that bird.

38:23.95

yeah

38:25.38

Shannon Jackson

Like just really being reflective of how helpful it's been and how much better I felt too coming back from my walks being like, I i don't even want those moments of like ideas and creativity.

38:31.39

yeah

38:42.01

Shannon Jackson

Because like often, you know, you get that stuff when you're more in silence.

38:42.06

Yeah.

38:44.78

Yeah.

38:46.24

Shannon Jackson

I just want nothingness sometimes. Yeah.

38:48.97

Yeah.

38:50.24

Shannon Jackson

But to just have those experiences of like, look at that bird, like i can hear so much that's going on around me, that simplicity, oh so helpful.

38:54.53

Yes.

38:57.14

Yeah.

39:02.96

And this is why I love sound because especially in meditation,

39:12.14

Sound has this really unique quality where you can't sustain it in your mind. Right? So even if you try to think about what birds sound like right now, you know what you're thinking about.

39:28.12

But there's not a sound here. Now, maybe people have different capacities. I could believe that. But I think for the average person. And one of the common things you can... show it. One of the things that you can learn in mindfulness is to pay attention to thoughts in the same way you pay attention to sounds that this sound right now, it comes up out of nowhere and then all on its own, it drifts away.

39:51.37

And so that going on a walk and just listening to the sounds,

39:51.39

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

39:58.73

when you are present and

40:04.74

especially in nature, when you can attend to how much is changing right now,

40:14.38

you can immerse yourself in it and you can kind of have those moments of freedom for it. Now, the danger is that then that part of our mind, I mean, the danger here is the part of our mind that is burdened by the thinking is the one that's trying to think in new ways to get rid of the burden.

40:33.71

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

40:35.05

and And so this is why, like, we need to learn actually how to step back from that. Getting into nature is one of the great ways to do this. Because you walk around and you say, like, oh, my gosh, no one's ever going to see this bird.

40:50.14

Oh, my gosh, everything here in the woods, it's just happening. The trees are just growing at their own pace. The flowers show up, they're so beautiful, and then they die Like, everything is just happening. And so this is intentionally showing up to those things is the way that we can train our mind to savor, which can bring about those open experiences.

41:22.80

It makes it a little bit easier to connect with the natural capacity of the mind to simply be present.

41:29.39

Shannon Jackson

who

41:29.66

And then the the sustained intentional practice is what helps us to learn how to kind of feel what that feels like a little bit more and say like, oh, that's it. And then deepen that practice to cultivate that more often.

41:43.35

Shannon Jackson

Yeah, I love that. Okay. This is, I'm going to go off a little bit here in a different, I mean, along the lines of what we've been talking about, but I have curiosity on this.

41:50.51

Yeah, please.

41:55.77

Shannon Jackson

So How do you think spirituality helps deepen our understanding of like these struggles, the struggles of overthinking, not feeling like we can be present?

42:06.53

Yeah.

42:11.35

Shannon Jackson

Like, how does that, i don't know, what's your, what are your thoughts? I guess I'm just looking for, let's hear it.

42:18.24

Yeah. So this kind of goes back to that original question and and what i what I probably should have started with I i The more I learn, the more experience in therapy, in mindfulness, in my own experiences of spirituality, in my exposure to the various spiritual traditions around the world, the more and more I'm convinced that the idea of psychology and spirituality being these two separate things is a complete farce.

42:48.31

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

42:48.45

Like, I think that spirituality and psychology are just two different sides of the same coin, which is the human person. And I think what a what religion is fundamentally is a psychological framework.

43:05.57

but we We didn't have psychology. There was only religion and spirituality until, um and and I've got a buddy, my buddy, he's a PhD in literature and he he studies the self.

43:19.30

And so, you know, I'll butcher this, but essentially there was this shift where we started seeing the self more, actually I'm not even going to go in that direction, but, because I won't be able to do it justice, but the way that we've The way that we look at the human person had a pretty fundamental shift couple hundred years ago.

43:42.77

And psychology was proposed as this new way to look at the person.

43:54.97

I'm not even going to try to explain that. These are half-baked thoughts. I don't think psychology and spirituality are really much different. I think they are different ways to and interpret, different frameworks to interpret and approach the person with different philosophical

44:12.59

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

44:16.53

kind of axioms, foundational beliefs. And so this is why I say, you know, I'd like to dance the line between psychology and spirituality. um Because I really think that they're just two different viewpoints of the same thing.

44:35.58

And we look at one side of the mountain and we say like, no, mountains look like this. This is how mountains are. And we look at the other side of the mountain and we're like, no, this is how mountains look.

44:45.26

Shannon Jackson

44:46.23

Or it's like, well, let's integrate both ways of looking at the mountain rather than just seeing like, hey guys, it's the same mountain. And you've just lived on two different sides of it at two different times.

44:53.83

Shannon Jackson

here

44:57.89

um So that's kind of like,

45:04.87

my general

45:08.70

approach. And this is where, I mean, I think spirituality fundamentally is about presence and connection.

45:18.81

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

45:19.89

And so

45:23.83

I hate like using terms like true spirituality or authentic spirituality because I don't think it creates this kind of false cutoff from other things. But I'm very suspicious of any spiritual approach that promulgates or encourages um like disconnection um and a lack of presence.

45:47.92

Like, so I think that they're just different way. I think that, Both connection and presence will always lead us to this dimension of the human person that you can't see, you can't touch, you can't point to.

46:05.87

but that draws us more deep in this connection um to each other, to all things. and And I think that's where all the highest points of spirituality that i've seen always bring us back to that is that it's actually about being connected to humans in a way that appreciates that I'm both a separate person and that puts responsibilities on me.

46:29.20

And I'm also part of a community and that puts a responsibility on me. So,

46:36.93

that's my kind of hobby horse is like, I don't actually think these things are really different. um

46:46.93

And so I, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

46:52.67

Shannon Jackson

Yeah, I agree, but I think it took me a very long time to get there or it felt like it did because I think when you are raised in a very religious home, especially a religion that has very oh ah strict beliefs and ideas, it doesn't really allow for you to have that expansiveness or that i can maybe go off in this other direction

47:09.63

Yeah.

47:24.69

Shannon Jackson

that is very much going to connect me to myself. I think when I healed a lot of that, I found that i healed a lot of those parts of me that were hurting and anxious and really overwhelmed.

47:37.04

Yeah.

47:39.68

Yes.

47:40.29

Shannon Jackson

And it's just a really beautiful thing, I think, when you can connect whatever it looks like for you. I am, you know,

47:46.74

Yeah.

47:47.50

Shannon Jackson

i am you know not I don't identify with a particular religion, but I am very spiritual. And I think to say that now, like with the way I was raised and all the experiences, it's absolutely wild because never would I think.

47:58.10

Yeah.

48:03.31

Shannon Jackson

But really it's about that connection. And I think that's what we keep coming back to.

48:07.23

Yeah.

48:08.32

Shannon Jackson

And it's such a beautiful thing. And when you really do heal those parts of yourself, it really does help you to be more present and to be more gentle with yourself.

48:21.13

Shannon Jackson

And it doesn't make things feel so like forced and just ick.

48:25.04

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

48:29.49

Shannon Jackson

John Paul, if people want to, yeah, yeah.

48:30.78

Can I just say this really quick, just like 30 seconds? it's It's also... I think if you look very broadly at humanity, think you can see that humanity is developing just like each individual person develops, where in in human development you see that the person goes back and forth between um abstract reasoning and concrete reasoning.

48:56.57

Right. So there's a period at which children learn you follow the rule. And and a lot of parents say, well, you got to do it for the right reason, which is absolute bullshit because they don't have the capacity to know the reason.

49:05.73

Shannon Jackson

Yeah.

49:09.23

At that point, it's just learning what's the letter of the law, like what's the rule?

49:12.99

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

49:13.24

Then they can learn, OK, the why. And so.

49:19.07

ah Humans go back and forth when we're developing through childhood childhood, we're developing between the what and the why and the what and the why. And so I think one of the things that, you know, for the for a while, the our cultures were bound by this, you do this, this is the thing that you do, this is the letter of the law. That's that concrete operation. Like this is why this is what you do, period.

49:46.89

And then, right, with the kind of in or an introduction explosion of like kind of a focus on subjectivity and letting go, saying like, oh, that's tyranny. I'm being told what to do. um You don't have control over me.

49:59.47

Now we've we kind of swung back in the opposite direction, which is like any anything can be done absolutely anyway. And so there's this like back and forth between the spirit and the letter.

50:10.95

Like what's the rule? And okay, why do I practice that rule? we have to learn to play by the rules so we know how and when it's necessary to break them and what the purpose of those rules is in terms of supporting the system.

50:25.07

So I think this is fundamental to our human development in terms of just ah developing into the fullness of you know adulthood um is learning how do I balance these things without sacrificing one for the other.

50:41.82

um So I think just to what you're saying is like,

50:42.45

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

50:46.38

There can be really helpful things about having some more pretty black and white, like, hey, this is what you do. But there's also a lot of, there can that can be used in a really problematic way. There's really beautiful things about like, hey, you need to figure out and you need to choose and explore your own subjectivity experience.

50:56.56

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

51:03.23

There's also difficulties and challenges of that as well. And when we polarize to one side or the other, that's when the problems occur. um And so I think that this is what but maturation is, is realizing um it's more than the rules.

51:19.11

It's also more than my opinion. And this is the the language of a guy named Father Richard Rohr, who I love. And he says, our task is to transcend and include.

51:30.77

right We realize that, okay, I'm actually transcending that rule. I'm stepping out of it. It doesn't have to absolutely bind me, but I'm also going to include the wisdom that's in it. And so we're always kind of like, not just, um,

51:46.85

Yes or no, but it's yes and no and in kind of learning how they integrate. So that's something again, probably ah a bit more of a half-baked thought that I really like having these conversations because it kind of forces me to to say out loud then explore it.

51:51.39

Shannon Jackson

Okay.

51:55.87

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

52:01.93

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

52:02.72

Shannon Jackson

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm so glad that you shared that. Okay, so if people want to find and connect with you and get the wisdom that you share and just have that connection, where can they find you?

52:09.67

Yeah.

52:14.37

Yeah. Yeah. So they can find me at, um, really the biggest place right now is Instagram. Um, so my handle is John Paul Dombrowski on Instagram. Um, and then I, my website, which is actually kind of right under construction right now. So at this very moment, so hopefully that'll be up by, you know, this afternoon, but, um, that's JP Dombrowski.com.

52:36.37

Um, I also have a, ah a YouTube channel where I have like a lot of my meditations and stuff, um, um But then through my website too, I offer um offer personal coaching, which is really the the way that I do coaching is really short term.

52:44.12

Shannon Jackson

Mm-hmm.

52:50.93

So it's either one, three or five sessions, because I think a lot of times just drawing this stuff out, it can be helpful, but also coaching. I don't think that's for everybody at each time. So I like to kind of do these encounter sessions that's kind of a little bit more about packing a punch.

53:07.11

Shannon Jackson

you

53:07.57

um And then I also will be doing some group offerings, which which I absolutely love doing. So I'm putting up a group right now, which is called Practicing Presence. um

53:17.45

Shannon Jackson

Oh,

53:17.65

And it's really about stepping into the here and now in the ways that we're talking about and helping other people to to do that in the moment. So that's, yeah.

53:25.65

Shannon Jackson

that's so cool. I love that. Well, I'm sure many people will go and find you and thank you so much for coming on.

53:30.45

Thank you.

53:31.62

Shannon Jackson

It's been such a helpful, fun conversation.

53:34.42

Yeah, this has been a joy. Thank you so much, Shannon.