Richard Goerling

on Bringing Mindfulness
to Police and First Responders

Listen:

Show Notes:

In this episode, Richard Goerling joins Kate and Alex to share his experience teaching the skills of mindfulness and compassion to police, military personnel, and other first responders. He discusses healthy and harmful aspects of police culture and the impact of occupational trauma on men and women in law enforcement. Listen in for Richard’s insights on resilience, the ideal of warrior humanitarianism, and how mindfulness teachers might learn to be more culturally competent in serving these individuals.

Richard Goerling is a certified mindfulness trainer, a retired police lieutenant, and U.S. Coast Guard veteran who believes in your innate resilience, humanity, and capacity to show up and thrive amidst challenging circumstances. Richard specializes in training health, resilience, and human performance skills to first responders and other high-reliability professionals. He works with a team of trainers through an organization he founded, Mindful Badge. Also, Richard is an affiliate professor at Pacific University’s Graduate School of Psychology and a Mindful Health and Resilience Lab member. He’s the lead trainer in an NIH funded study in New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin. One of Richard’s current projects is being trained by a Therapy K9 named Buddha to work as a team to bring joy and mindfulness skills to responders and veterans.

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Key Takeaways:

  • What inspired Richard to build the Mindful Badge organization
  • How police culture may use ‘othering’ to cope with occupational trauma
  • How Richard leverages the warrior-humanitarian ethos to introduce mindfulness to first responders
  • Examples of warrior-humanitarians in pockets of the Special Forces as well as First Nations and Asian cultures
  • Richard’s take on the fair and unfair criticisms of policing in America
  • The benefits of Richard’s mindfulness-based resilience training
  • Why people can be averse to mindfulness early on and what we can do to inspire them to keep at it
  • How mindfulness trains leaders in the constructive use of power
  • How mindfulness skills training can serve as a foundation for change in policing and support officers in becoming trauma competent
  • The three dominant forces that create suffering in policing
  • The opportunity for the mindfulness teaching community to engage with first responders
  • Why public safety needs to be a community collaborative effort



Recent Past Episodes:

Hosts:

Katherine King, PsyD


Katherine King, PsyD is a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychology at William James College. She was trained in evidence-based treatments within the Veterans’ Administration and has a private practice specializing in geropsychology. She is also a member of the Boston Shambhala Center Board of Directors, a vajrayana student of Buddhism, and has practiced meditation for over 20 years. Learn more about Kate at www.drkateking.com.

Alex Gokce, MSW


Alex Gokce, MSW has a master’s degree in social work from Salem State University and an undergraduate degree in Comparative Government from Harvard University. He has led psychotherapy groups on topics including mindfulness, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and mind-body approaches to pain management. He has co-led programs at the Boston Shambhala Center on the topics of trauma and self-compassion. His personal and professional interests center around the individual, societal and intergenerational impacts of trauma, as well as the sociocultural roots of interpersonal harm.


Disclaimer: Please note that the information shared in this podcast is strictly for educational purposes only, and is not intended as psychological treatment or consultation of any kind.

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The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy is a non-profit organization dedicated to the education and training of mental health professionals in the integration of mindfulness meditation and psychotherapy.

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