Understanding Catholic Mindfulness with Dr. Greg Bottaro (Part 1)
By Leah Eppen
Mindfulness is a topic that is accompanied by lots of chatter from various religions, spiritualities, and secular groups. In contemporary psychopathology, mindfulness has roots in different psychotherapies, such as Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and it is known to effectively treat a large spectrum of health concerns, from anxiety to chronic pain management.
But amongst all this chatter, Dr. Greg Bottaro, founder and executive director of the CatholicPsych Institute, advocates for mindfulness as a Catholic practice too! When we operate from a clear understanding of what mindfulness is and what it does for the human person, we can see that the reason it has popularity among various religions, secular groups and therapies is because it nourishes people in such an organic way that they begin living life wholeheartedly, fully and truly alive! What is more Catholic than that?
Mindfulness is a Catholic Practice
Perhaps the most common criticism of mindfulness is that it is a Buddhist or non-Christian practice and thus, not suitable for faithful Catholics. It’s helpful here to begin by understanding the Catholic Church’s stance on relating to other religions.
In 1965, Pope Paul VI wrote about this relationship in his Declaration on The Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra aetate):
Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing “ways,” comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.
It is fair and just to say that mindfulness falls under the category of a “good thing” since, although it has foundations in Buddhism, it is not an exclusive practice of Buddhism.
Dr. Greg challenges a common misconception concerning practicing mindfulness as a faithful Catholic by comparing it to breathing or tea-drinking.
“Mindfulness doesn’t lend itself to already needing to defend itself,” he explains, “People say we shouldn’t use that word, but actually the word mindfulness is not implicating an Eastern practice in itself anyway, any more than tea-drinking is... but if you're drinking tea as part of a Buddhist ceremony or a Hindu ceremony, then that’s something we would not want to do as Catholics. But we’re not going to say, ‘Well then, stop drinking tea.’”
When critically evaluating the usefulness of new schools of prayer or thought, Dr. Greg is adamant that understanding what exactly it is we are talking about is crucial for healthy dialogue and practice. He agrees with this definition of mindfulness from John Kabat-Zin, innovator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR): “[Mindfulness is] the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” Kabat-Zinn also encourages people to see that Buddhism doesn’t own mindfulness, just as Sir Isaac Newton doesn’t own gravity, simply because he identified it. Mindfulness as a concept and practice may have been identified elsewhere, but it has an integral place that fits in accordance with Catholic teaching, prayer, and the call to holiness. In fact, many saints have practiced mindfulness devoutly throughout their lives under different names.
There are other schools of thought about prayer and meditation that share similarities to mindfulness practice, such as Brother Lawrence’s’ The Practice of the Presence of God and Fr. Jean-Pierre de Cassade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence. And when asked whether mindfulness is different, Dr. Greg states, “It’s not necessarily that it’s different. It’s just that I find those approaches to be a bit incomplete, where it's just the spiritual focus–and that's really important. But I would also say that Kabat-Zinn would be incomplete in that it’s only the psychological focus. So, the thing that’s kind of missing is the combination and the integration of both and that's what I'm trying to provide with The Mindful Catholic and with the program that I have.”
He notes that when you’re reading spiritual books like Abandonment to Divine Providence and The Practice of the Presence of God, you can be utterly engaged in it and feel empowered to be holy and to be the most loving and the most trusting person; however, when you put the book down, you might snap at your kids or become impatient with your family.
“The point is that the spiritual ideas are not enough to actually change our human brains,” he says, “They are part of the process and we need to really use that part of the process but we also need more than that. A lot of times people eventually connect the dots internally and organically. Maybe it'll take me 74 times of reading Abandonment to Divine Providence on it’s own. But what I’ve tried to do is crack the code of what’s happening internally and organically on a psychological level and if I can flesh that out for people and sort of connect those dots explicitly, maybe that'll help somebody else not need 74 times of reading Abandonment to Divine Providence before it actually takes shape and changes the way that they approach their life.”
We are undeniably body, mind, and soul; the mindfulness that Dr. Greg advocates for and brings to life in his book The Mindful Catholic and his program, seeks to unite every part of who we are. By the nature of its practice, Catholic mindfulness gives us the opportunity to be body, mind, and soul before God. Dr. Greg says that this approach to living our lives makes it more “complete”.
By operating from a clear definition, we can critically think about what we are permitting in our lives and have healthy dialogue about issues that may seem controversial, but in reality may not be.
Thus, we can see that mindfulness is a healthy human practice, foundational to building necessary skills and personal developments such as compassion, presence, critical thinking, solidarity, interpersonal skills, tolerance of stressors, adaptability and many more, including holiness!
Beginner’s Tips
Beginning to live mindfully may appear daunting because, as we see in the lives’ of the Saints, self-awareness, self-knowledge and intentional living can take a lifetime, but Dr. Greg has many resources and tips for beginners. Like any life-shift, big or small, mindfulness requires finding time in your day and your life for practice. Your mind is akin to a muscle and strengthening muscles requires commitment. Dr. Greg refers to this as finding “pockets” of time in your day.
“A good beginner's practice is to wake up in the morning with an alarm, a little earlier than you’re used to and sit on the floor next to your bed. Just sit on the floor––like, a totally different perspective than you normally have. And just sit and look and feel your feelings and feel the floor underneath you and breathe. Just take like three minutes before you even say your first prayer and come into your body. Then from your body offer your first prayer. It’s a five minute practice. And just start that way. Jolting the pattern of the autopilot is what we need to do… and then little by little you inject those three minutes or those five minutes with particular intentional practice of being in that present moment and you start to see the rest of your time differently,” he explains.
One of the many gifts of mindfulness is time. We are each given 1,440 minutes in 24 hours. The positive consequence of living life on purpose, in the present moment, is that pockets of time where you might have drifted on “autopilot” open up and present an opportunity to choose how to allocate the time given to you that day.
Dr. Greg illustrates this further by explaining, “You enter into more of your time with better success, with a better grasp, and better intentionality and all of a sudden you realize that where you thought you had no time, you actually have all the time in the world. Time is deeply affected by our conceptualization of it and our mindset.” Finding small pockets of time to practice awareness and intentional choosing of how to live our lives are the building blocks to becoming a mindful Catholic.
Further illustrating this point, Dr. Greg shares an example of a program he uses with his clients called Integrated Daily Dialogic Mentorship (IDDM). It allows him to communicate with his clients on a daily, rather than weekly, basis and the unique component to this program is that content is recorded.
“It’s this amazing thing that technology affords us–of creating a way of seeing ourselves outside of our inner subjectivity and it’s almost like getting an objective perspective of ourselves. It’s like looking in a mirror but not in that exact same moment–we’re looking back and it gives us a different origin of a point of perspective to look from and at ourselves,” he says. It’s surprising to most people how different they sound in a recording than in their minds.
Mindfulness allows us to fully participate in our lives in a way where our inner subjectivity and objective perspectives of ourselves start to bridge a gap. We learn to say what we truly mean to say instead of listening to a recording later of ourselves and being surprised by the way we sound, our tone, and our expressed feelings. Being in tune with yourself means not being surprised by your expression of yourself into the world.
“This is the spiritual dimension of who God made us to be––that we have this capacity for self-reflection. It's something that separates us from the animal world and it’s something that is part of our humanity. That’s really the goal here––to fill that capacity,” Dr. Greg shares.
If we look deeper into the lives of the Saints, we can see that their journeys to holiness testified to a ceaseless search to fulfill God’s will for their lives. And as God gave them new dreams, new goals, new paths, and even when He allowed them new challenges and suffering, he helped them increase their capacity to hold space for Him, themselves, and others in their hearts. Mindfulness serves us in growing in holiness because it allows us to increase the space in our bodies, minds, and hearts for God’s Mercy and Love to reside. And then we begin to say, like many of those God calls for his work, “Here I am, Lord.” Right now. On purpose. In the present moment.
Keep an eye out for the second segment of this two-part series on Catholic Mindfulness! It will continue this conversation with Dr. Greg and explore further the fruits of mindfulness and why radical acceptance is necessary for peace.
