Mindfulness Academy Podcast | Scott Sweet
The latest episode of The Mindfulness Academy Podcast drops today! This month, you’ll hear from Scott Sweet, a licensed clinical social worker and addiction counselor and owner of Insight Counseling Center in Fishers, Indiana.
Scott has quite a fascinating background and his path owning a counseling practice is a winding one. As a new graduate from IU – Bloomington, Scott ventured into travel journalism and ended up in Thailand at a 10-day meditation retreat where he learned about the framework of mindfulness and how our patterns and beliefs have influence over our lives.
After returning to the United States, his career went in a much different direction as he joined the fast paced news industry at C-SPAN. Later on in life, his journey led him back to school as he gained his graduate degree in social work, leading to his merging of his passion for meditation and mindfulness with counseling.
During our conversation, we talked about our experiences with silence (I attended Scott’s MBSR course a few years ago) and how to claim the thoughts and emotions that come up as well as the importance of allowing yourself to grieve. We also explored the idea of stillness and how mindfulness allows our thoughts to “time travel”. When this happens, we need to learn when it’s beneficial to us and when it’s not (which isn’t always the easiest thing to distinguish!).
Within stillness, there is also the possibility to listen to our bodies and understand our bodies’ signals – whether that’s what’s hurting us (or what’s healed) or how stress and emotional pain are physically impacting our health. Scott explained how he “scans his body” regularly to learn more about his physical health and how to perform his four-part check-in.
Scott and I also chatted about addiction and the different forms it can take. I shared about my addiction to being busy and the toll it took on my mental and physical health. I’ve been working on changing my mindset to allow for moments of quiet and time to check in with myself. Scott spoke to our societal addiction to always wanting stimulation and how mindfulness can be utilized to break that addiction so we can be present for ourselves and others.
We finished our conversation with two mindfulness practices. Scott led us through a body scan meditation (one I had never done before!) and we reflected on our individual body’s “tells” when dealing with stress. I led Scott through GLOWY, a daily reflection practice I created for my book The Chaos Antidote: A Fable About Mindfulness.
Our conversation was engaging; listen to discover many more insights and information that Scott shared during his time on The Mindfulness Academy Podcast. If you haven’t already, take a moment to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.