Benefits of Teaching Mindfulness and Integrating Practice into Government Agencies

In this episode, Garth Smelser speaks with Kaitlyn Shaw of the Engaged Mindfulness Institute about customizing and implementing mindfulness techniques for federal office environments and community engagement.

• Adapting mindfulness practices for federal workplaces.
  

• Mindfulness in the workplace with a focus on bottom-up and top-down approaches.

• Community growth and participation as a key metric for success.

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Garth Katto Smelser is a mindfulness program manager and meditation teacher passionate about cultivating personal and organizational wellness and resilience. He co-founded Mindful NOAA and Mindful FED, the first-of-their-kind federal mindfulness communities of practice. Garth has a rich and diverse background, serving as a US Naval Officer and federal leader in the US Forest Service and the US Department of Commerce. Garth was trained as a certified meditation instructor at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute. He is a faculty chair at OPM’s Federal Executive Institute and Mindful FED program manager. https://cldcentral.usalearning.gov/mod/page/view.php?id=128316

Podcast Transcript

Kaitlyn Shaw 0:03  

Thank you so much for joining the Teaching Mindfulness Summit. The summit's mission is to advance the mindfulness teaching field while promoting awareness of the essential values such as ethics,  mindfulness, compassion, integrity, and inclusive accessibility required for effective teaching. So, I'm here with Garth Smelser, calling in from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Garth served 14 years in the US Forest Service and eight years as a US Naval officer before working at NOAA as a Northeast Fisheries Science Center division chief. While at NOAA, Garth co-founded Mindful NOAA and served as program manager during the program's first year of Direct Bill funding before becoming a faculty chair at  OPM's Federal Executive Institute and beginning Mindful FED. This is quite a career path. What was the moment that you knew you could be successful on your path, bringing mindfulness into the federal workforce?  

Garth Smelser 1:15  

 First, thank you, Kaitlyn, for inviting me into this space. I'm excited to share this career path because I finally figured out what I want to be growing up. And it took me to reach 50 to do that. And there's no single moment for sure: a multi-year journey of first understanding what Mindful NOAA might be as the pandemic unfolded and then quickly realizing that what was unfolding there was too good to keep to one agency. And so the seed of Mindful FED came into my mind.  

There's no single moment, but it was day by day, leading practice by practice, conversation by conversation, that we realized we had the opportunity to innovate into a workplace well-being space that hadn't been tapped before. The increasing number of people participating solidified that experience.  

I could trace the origin to one specific event. Just before the pandemic, I was on an interagency detail with my old agency, the Forest Service, and I went to a new employee orientation. They were also integrating mindfulness practices into new employee orientation. And I, at that point, had been practicing for, I don't know, about six years, and it suddenly hit me like, wait a minute, these two worlds can come together? My personal practice world and the workplace? And that's where it started. This conversation started happening when I got called back to NOAA because of the pandemic. We saw the need for mental health support, and thus, mindfulness in the federal government started to grow.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 3:11  

Wow. So, going back to your former agency was when you realized that this path could be a reality. That's incredible.  

Garth Smelser 3:24  

Yes. And we're still in partnership. My colleague, who came from the forest service, also helped me see that. Michelle Reugebrink is a colleague in the Mindful FED faculty.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 3:40  

Given that this is all relatively new territory for the federal workforce, how do you define success? There is no clear metric for this field.  

Garth Smelser 3:54  

At NOAA, that same conversation is broader, and with Mindful FED, you now have multiple agencies trying to think about this. So, the first metric is community growth. Are people showing up? Because it's easy to get into the bottom line metrics of what the FEDS survey says, what a federal employee viewpoint survey says, or what a pulse survey says, what is absenteeism? What are performance scores, and are those aspirations aligned with quantitative metrics? But first and foremost,  we have to start with whether the community is growing. Are they voting with their participation?  

 And so I try to remind myself when we have lots of administrative conversations about program assessments and impact and being able to demonstrate to leadership that we're using taxpayer dollars wisely; I start with the metric of community growth and participation. How many people are there day in and day out, and is that growing? How many people are signing up for our subscriber list? And you know from that from those numbers, then the testimonials start coming in. And so that's another thing that when I'm starting to get impatient with the hard metrics, I go back to the testimonials where we can see firsthand in people's words about how we're impacting their life.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 5:22  

So, the metric of participation is key. It makes me think about what you said about mindful FEDS, and then I went back and explained what that acronym is. Can you briefly describe what mindful NOAA is and what Mindful FED is? What are the day-to-day activities that you offer? Or did you offer it through these programs?  

Garth Smelser 5:50  

It's been, to use the imagery of 'Building the bicycle as we rode it'. Mindful NOAA started as a place to convene with like-minded folks to hold regular meditations. That gained attention more globally across NOAA versus just in fisheries. And so we said, Okay, we should expand these daily sessions, and we need more teachers, we need more facilitators, we can bring movement into the session, and we can bring in special programs that focused on different themes. Over those few years, mindful NOAA determined what it wanted to be based on interest and that wonderful, collegial team that helped Mindful NOAA realize that vision.  

 I think it's important to characterize that vision because I have taken that model into the Mindful  FED strategic plan. And that's how I promoted it to OPM leadership, the Office of Personnel  Management Leadership. And I think these four pillars of Mindful NOAA's beginning were powerful. We were audacious enough to say we're here to change workplace culture. Now, we backed into that by starting with the individual, the individual's employee health and resilience. That's why we show up day in and day out to help the individual. But by helping them in their health, well-being, and resilience, we help them in their daily performance, which is the second pillar of developing employees,  and then this third, broader pillar of leadership development. Together, those all contribute slowly, session by session, to changing workplace culture.  

We've gotten wonderful feedback through the surveys and testimonials that those, indeed, are things that people are experiencing. So yeah, Mindful, NOAA figured out what it wanted to be as it grew through a lot of collaboration and support from leaders. We're experiencing that same thing with a bit more challenging bureaucracy because of the inner-agency aspect of Mindful FED, but still, the same interest in top-down leadership interest and bottom-up momentum of communities showing up because they see value in practice.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 8:20  

Thank you for providing some background on the programs. Mindful FED has evolved a bit. Can you talk a little bit more about the leadership side of that?  

Garth Smelser 8:34  

Absolutely. Mindful NOAA started with, first and foremost, the foundation of daily, regular practice. That's how we get people who are already practitioners in the door. That's how we get people whose curiosity is piqued to test it out. So, there are free and open access, almost daily sessions to convene the community, talk about the science and benefits of mindfulness practice together, and then explore what people are experiencing from that.  

But because we landed in the Office of Personnel Management, Federal Executive Institute, where we deliver training across government, we are also developing these open enrollment courses that individual teams in single agencies can reach out to us and schedule. And then the portfolio that we're unrolling here in the coming month is an array of classes, including mindfulness 101, which is an hour-long introduction to folks who are just trying to learn what this is all about and how it is a benefit to them in their personal and professional lives.  

We also have Mindfulness for Transformational Leadership, which I've been teaching for a couple of years now at the Federal Executive Institute. This is a deep dive with higher-graded leaders. They can spend time with their colleagues exploring the benefits of personal practices. But then, how does that translate into their teams and the leadership within the agencies?  

A final offering is a gold standard nationwide: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, an eight-week course, two and a half hours per week, of helping people build their practice over time. Then, a final facet of what we're offering is from agencies or change agents in those agencies who want to build what happened in Mindful NOAA, the Forest Service, or  Mindful FED more broadly. And so we're figuring out how to create a package of consultation and coaching to help them figure out how to innovate into this uncharted space; there's no blueprint for this. So that's a fourth and impactful offering that agencies will benefit from as they try to build their own internal Mindfulness Community of Practice.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 11:06  

Thanks so much for explaining the different programs, which are different from the sessions. It's nice to hear about the various programs offered. You must have encountered challenges throughout this journey. What challenges have you met when bringing mindfulness into the federal government? And how do you deal with resistance?  

Garth Smelser 11:35  

That's a wonderful question. It makes me smile because are the challenges and the resistance things within me, or are they things within the system? So that's an ongoing question: 'Is this a challenge? Or is it a challenge only in something I must practice with?'  

Because of the pandemic, we had much less resistance and challenges, both individual, systemic, and financial, much less than we would have anticipated. Before the pandemic, right, it just suddenly became clear to agency leadership that something was needed, something different, and not the same performative type of, I'd call it performative and transactional type of workplace well-being initiatives, where someone comes and shares some knowledge and then you point at the individual employee to go take care of themselves.  

Mindful NOAA and Mindful FED have redefined and reimagined workplace well-being because we're there daily with each other. It's truly that by employees, for employees, Community of Practice.  And there's less and less resistance because leaders were seeing the numbers of people interested in it. And on top of that, when I say this, we're not blazing trails in federal government, right? They have private sector organizations, the Uniformed Services, and sports teams; they've been using mindfulness for decades. Between that and all the neuroscience and medical research, you can't open a health or professional magazine without seeing mindfulness promoted, right?  

 So, culture is changing, and they're seeing that even if I don't practice, I can't stand in the way of allowing my teams and my agencies to experience this. So the challenges are more about normal bureaucracy and administrative, systemic things such as budget and, you know, approvals and policies and less about embracing or welcoming mindfulness practice in the workplace.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 13:49  

I'm wondering if there must be adaptations that are considered to bring mindfulness to a federal space and make it accessible. So, what are some of those adaptations that you've encountered?  

Garth Smelser 14:07  

That might be the greatest challenge/opportunity, right? How do you adapt a 2500-year-old  contemplative practice to the modern Western workplace? Because it would be a disservice if we didn't acknowledge that these came from spiritual lineages. And so, how do you take something slowly being proven out in the research and bring it into a secular space? That is research-driven, and evidence-based, so a lot of my work is adapting those teachings from a spiritual space and adapting it into a space where everybody feels included, right?  

It doesn't matter your background or what spiritual home you have in your personal life; it has to be accessible. It has to be welcoming, and our language must be inclusive. And yet, you don't want to water down too much what the power of these practices is. So adaption; it has to adapt to make everybody feel a part of it. And so whether it's the words you use, the visuals you use, what you're asking people to, or inviting people into to do in practice.

Facilitators in government need to ensure that the way they present things might not be construed in a way that leans towards a specific religiosity. So there's nothing new under the sun. We're not creating this stuff. This has been around for 1000s of years. And yet, we want to adapt it into a modern workplace where people feel that impacts their performance. That's how it impacts conversations with teams and even their families. One of the most rewarding parts of my work is to take this very deep ancient wisdom and turn it into a digestible package in the modern workplace.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 16:34  

Finding adaptations for the practice can be challenging and rewarding in some ways because it's enabled us, as facilitators, to bring more people into the practice, which is pretty incredible. A bit more personal: I know we've discussed this. But can you discuss the juxtaposition of secular mindfulness in the federal government with your Zen practice? I  noticed when you switched over to OPM that you began using your name, Cato, and with Federal  Mindfulness, we often skate a fine line between secular practices and their Buddhist roots. Can you tell me more about your exploration of this?  

Garth Smelser 17:26  

I appreciate the question. I noticed a little heart welling up because such an important part of my identity is how I entered into my personal mindfulness practice years and years before I ever thought it would ever be in the workplace, let alone my career. And so yes, I started in the Zen lineage, that Soto  Zen lineage here when I moved to the cape, and, you know, I give full credit to that, which is why I am here.  

When I made the transition to OPM, I realized that it was an opportunity for me to live up to that endowed name; my teacher endowed it after some study with my sensei. Cato means twining vines, and it has to do with all the opportunities and challenges of student and teacher, duality, and subject and object experience. And so I thought it was important to live out that name.  

And it points to your point, the secular versus spiritual, the sacred versus the day-to-day. And I am enjoying that there seems to be more of an openness to bring even the word spirituality into the conversations about workplace well-being. So, you have the eight facets of the wellness wheel, and spirituality is one of them. And I think it would be mistaken if we just said, Well, no, we don't talk about spirituality. And so more and more mental health specialists are acknowledging that that is a part of people's lives. And we don't check that at the door when we work. And so we should be able to talk about it.  

And yet, it's still that dance. It's still that tightrope walk that we use that language carefully. And so, sometimes, it comes up in a conversation about facilitating/coaching a conversation towards more of an inclusive space while acknowledging a person's spiritual experience. And it's unfolding in this space, right? We're still exploring what that looks like. Some people would bring that up as resistance that this is inappropriate because of their cultural conditions that it has to do with a specific religion. And increasingly, year by year, it's so much more adopted into the secular space, where it's let go of much of that. Some people don't like that. They don't like the fact that it's losing that spiritual route.  And so I've learned as a teacher to navigate that space and embrace it all.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 20:25  

Thank you so much for sharing that personal aspect of your journey. It brings up something that I think about a lot: holding space in this environment. So, our spaces are primarily virtual. Holding space has been so important as part of our training with the Engaged Mindfulness Institute and the spiritual aspect that comes up in those spaces, as we're creating the communities of practice and listening to the community members. Can you speak a little bit about holding space in the federal environment?  

Garth Smelser 21:15  

Yeah. I love that question. Because a prior me, a decade ago, would have heard that holding space term and cringed and like, that's woo-woo, and new age, and now I'm living it day to day. I aspire to hold a safe, supportive space.  

However, it's organizations like Engaged Mindfulness Institute or Calmer Choice where I learned to teach grade school kids mindfulness. Whether in the classroom or the executive boardroom, that's exactly what we do. We're not necessarily teachers who are endowing people with our mindfulness experiences. Quite the contrary. We commune and create a safe, psychosocial space with all the various backgrounds, expertise, education, and demographics; do people feel a sense that they can show up however they want because sometimes people want to be and want to listen in practice, others want to share fully? Some people like to share very personal things and traumas. And so I'm very grateful to EMI, Calmer Choice, and my other teachers for honorably holding that space.  

It is an honor to be gifted the opportunity to hold that space and then hold that knowledge with someone. And I repeatedly day in and day out with Mindful FED say, just your presence, you, Mindful  FED community member, your presence is a sharing of space, let alone anything you share in a chat or verbally, or the glimpses you're getting in practice, like, we're sharing this knowledge and then kind of growing cultivating this collective wisdom.  

And it is a noble calling, as a facilitator, to hold a safe space. I pick the terms I use, depending on the audience I'm talking to, because I won't necessarily put that in a budget line item. But that is what happens. And even when you frame it in more of a class environment, we're training mindfulness in the practices and facilitating the holding of safe space. So I appreciate that question.  Because it's daily on my radar, every time I click on the zoom button, and people come into that community, they expect a safe space.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 23:41  

Thanks so much for exploring that. It's something that we've discussed in the past. And it's a challenge and an opportunity in this space and the Federal workforce to both identify the individual and what the individual is sharing matters and also bring it out and pan out to the group, to the almost 40 or over 100 people who might be listening in on that one-on-one but communal experience. So I appreciate your insight on that.  

Garth Smelser 24:19  

It's always a dance with the traditional teaching modalities where there's a little hierarchy.  There's a teacher out in the front, the virtual front, giving knowledge. And we're trying to reimagine that.  We're all teachers at that moment. And that's different from how federal training is delivered. And so that's another thing that people are looking to Mindful FED and Mindful NOAA as flagships and sort of this innovative way of ideas; we are cultivating collective wisdom rather than imparting wisdom.  

That also intersects with workplace well-being; for example, we frame mindfulness as providing benefits for well-being and resilience. But again, we have to change the notion that it is on the individual to figure it out after we've given them some knowledge. And that's what we've done differently. It's not a one-and-done. It's not a quarterly webinar. It's a regular practice. We are always there. The lights are always on at Mindful NOAA and Mindful FED for people to come practice.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 25:31  

Do you have thoughts on whether the participants in these sessions develop their committed sitting practice? And if not, maybe developing a sustained, informal mindfulness practice throughout their work and personal lives?

Garth Smelser 25:50  

That's a compelling question—and one that needs to intersect more with your question about metrics and measures, right? Are we helping people create their practice? The short answer is yes.  

Because people show up regularly, we have regular customers there daily. They share stories about how their practices develop. The model we currently have in Mindful FED is like this 30-minute model where people come together and share stories, and then we practice and share more stories. It isn't the most accelerated way for people to have a progressively deeper practice where you sit for longer periods, periods of silence; those are our aspirations. And we're trying to figure that out. That’s a very different model of what a meditation community would deliver a sangha.  

 I don't think we're there yet in the federal government to say, 'Hey, give me an hour, and we're gonna sit  in silence.' They want engagement, and they want to give and take. So this is a long-winded way of saying it's pointing in that direction. But I think as a cohort of mindfulness facilitators and the federal government. We have to figure out how, if Mindful FED and Mindful NOAA disappeared tomorrow, people would sit and still go practice. And I think we're still trying to figure that out.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 27:31  

It's such an important question that I still need to consider. What would happen if the volunteers and those in these roles could not provide the service? What resources might folks rely on to deepen their practice?  

Garth Smelser 27:55  

I think our role as facilitators can point gently, invitationally, that this is just one facet of your practice. You have formal practice; maybe you only formally practice with Mindful FED or Mindful NOAA, but how is that rippling into your day and informal practice? And so, quite a few of the reflections and contemplations I share in my blog constantly point out that they are their best guide. We're just merely giving pointers along their path based on our journey. So we can do it subtly but, over time, create a community of practice that offers that for them. And I am still determining what that looks like. So you and I will have to figure that out as we go.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 28:46  

More work is probably to be done in this realm. What has been your greatest reward and your choices to start and continue on this path?  

Garth Smelser 29:01  

It started at the beginning of the pandemic, and there have been these ups and downs of the fast pace of this movement happening, and then suddenly slowing depending on my role, but ultimately, the roles end up just still being a job, so to speak. It is somewhat of a unicorn job, and I still pinch myself every once in a while. But there are still days when there's frustration, and it's still work. And so the reward time and time again is, even if I'm not feeling it leading up to a guided meditation, it's when I  get into that space, right? And I may not be in it at the beginning of the guidance, but by the end of it, when people are sharing, and the gratitude is pouring in, it's like, oh, once again, reminding myself, this is why we're doing this. When I practice, packing ideas and teachings and guiding someone through an experience around those ideas is somewhat intoxicating for me as a teacher. And so yeah, I  like the leaps and bounds we make administratively and organizationally towards sustainably realizing this. But I have to return to the practice's one-on-one sharing constantly.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 30:31  

Yeah, I completely agree. Once you lead people into the initial grounding, we're embodying the practice and leading the practice from our practice. Regardless of how you feel entering that space,  you feel your feet on the ground, and you are with this community, and they're with you. So it's important to embody the practice as you're teaching and the teaching from your practice.  

Garth Smelser 31:14  

Hopefully, over time, we can expand the cohort of interested and credentialed people because that's another facet of leading into this space where we have credible, accredited teachers. And we are getting a lot of interest in that. And that's another thing I want to share: not only do I want to give back to this practice, more broadly, to the federal government, but I also want to give the experience of teaching to others. And I'm also trying to figure out what that looks like. The 'Train the Trainer' approach,  building capacity from within so that when you and I come and go, there's that next generation of people building upon what we've what we've started.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 32:03  

It hits home for me because you believed in me and supported me in becoming part of the team. That meant so much to me, and I want to thank you for doing that. Because ultimately, when you look back at all of the teachers in your life, you've looked back on what was it that they did that brought you to where you are, and I think, ultimately, it's belief, it's a belief that you could do that job, or you could rise to the occasion of whatever it is that that person believes that you could do. So I appreciate that. More than you know for having welcomed me into that team. So I appreciate it.  

Garth Smelser 33:05  

You're going to make me tear up, Kaitlyn. I appreciate that. And I was also paying for it. Someone believed in me, right? From my father to Fleet at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute and my sensei.  Right. So, yeah, and I love that observation. Because that's beautiful, that's what we do in our daily practice. We believe in each other. Being present means embodying wellness,  resilience, well-being, and compassion for yourself and others. And so I love that idea of belief and not in a dogmatic spiritual way. But I believe that we're all in this together. Right. Caitlin's skills are managing mindful NOAA and being a facilitator, and someone else's skills might be in something else in this well-being space. I would love to think more about how we incorporate this hopefulness and belief in these practices.  

 It's a challenging time, right? For all of us in various ways, including in the workplace and these respites, these spaces of sharing something so special. You have to believe; otherwise, despair, right? I appreciate that feedback because you clarify that that's what we do daily, regardless of where people are on their practice journey.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 34:45  

Yeah, that's so true. What advice is given to those working in government agencies or local municipalities who want to bring mindfulness into their space? What advice, maybe three takeaways, would you want to leave those looking to get mindfulness into government agencies?  

Garth Smelser 35:22  

It goes back to what people ask: how did you do this? And what are your best practices? I don't know. We just fumbled; we tripped our way into this reality. And I'll start with that, connecting with your vision, believing in something, and starting with that, manifesting it.  

So I'm going to start tactically, I think it has to be a yes and approach for top-down and bottom up. You must create this momentum from the ranks right on the ground, the people dealing with day-in and day-out workplace challenges. That goes back to building that by employees for the employees' community. And at the same time, you have to find those leadership change agents to meet in the middle. It can't be either, or it can't be a top-down; thou shalt do mindfulness because that'll fail miserably, more than if it was all bottom up. 

But it can't only be bottom-up, right? You have to find advocates who endorse this through their words or their presence, whatever that looks like, and then resource it. Ultimately, it needs to be resourced, and resources take different forms: time, energy, and dollars.  

 The secret sauce that we brewed in Mindful NOAA and that I'm trying to replicate in Mindful FED is what I mentioned before: the relational space, not a transactional feel. And I know that's simplistically put, but in my 30 years in the federal government, it always felt transactional and performative. And it was well intended, and with good intentions, like, here's some knowledge, take care of yourself. That's not working anymore. It has to be relational for the transformation to happen with individuals, teams, and agencies.  

Allowing is a word that comes to mind—allowing what is. Early on, I noticed a lot of resistance in myself about seeing how this should unfold, and it wasn't happening. And then, when I just allowed things to happen, suddenly, things happened. So, who knows? Was it coincidental? I don't know; it felt like as soon as I let go, it all started to flourish.  

And so, for facilitators and administrators who are in this space, you have to live and embody that practice. And things will happen. So that's a little bit more vague or personally oriented. Still, I think you can bring up that type of conversation with teams and facilitators about not having preconceived notions about what a Mindfulness Community of Practice looks like because that creates an opportunity for expectations not to be met. Just as we practice allowing and letting go of things in our personal lives, so do we need to do that when we have these grand visions of workplace well-being.  Was that helpful?  

Kaitlyn Shaw 39:10  

Yeah, so it sounds like endorsements not only from the bottom up but from the top down. The concept of tone, at the top, comes to mind. I heard a bit about letting go and allowing the beginner's mind—just being open to the possibility and not grasping for an outcome, not pushing away what is arising, but just allowing what is to be.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 40:02  

Well, thank you so much, Garth, for this interview. Is there anything else that you'd like to leave listeners with?  

Garth Smelser 40:11  

 It's such an honor to be here. The journey you and I have shared, beginning with Engaged Mindfulness  Institute and Mindful NOAA, is amazing. I would suggest that it starts with one conversation about reimagining things. We are thrust into these wonderful public service jobs, and you mentioned federal, state, or municipal; I hope the conversation expands beyond the federal government and that these communities can be built at the state and local levels. But because the systems are so entrenched, it does take just reimagining what is possible. So it’s this dance of pushing for that vision while allowing whatever to be.  

 So this sounds a little esoteric or out there. But I think you have to keep that personal practice fresh. If you're going to realize some vision of mindfulness communities of practice, you are going to butt up against many hurdles, systemic, financial, administrative, and political. And so I think keeping the faith and leaning into that belief is vital. So, you have to seek out your inspiration. That starts with individual practice and also leaning into the community.  

Kaitlyn Shaw 42:00  

Well, that's wonderful. Again, thank you so much for chatting with me. I appreciate it, Garth.  

Garth Smelser 42:07  

My pleasure.