Mindfulness Interventions for Law Enforcement
MILE classes are…
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Personalized
While the issues Law Enforcement faces are universal to anyone in the field, symptoms can be unique person to person. Anonymous intake surveys help us understand the specific needs for a group.
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Targeted
We personalize the content to the small group to maintain relevance for each person. We'll work closely with participants to identify and overcome stressors and triggers.
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Standardized
The method we've built over the past six years has a strong and positive track record. We stay with the framework that works while individualizing it to your team.
Why Does MILE Matter?
Occupational stressors and trauma in policing are rampant, and the data on the damage caused are unsettling. Officers face significantly higher risks of stress-related illness than other professions, as well as alarmingly high rates of mental distress and suicidality. They experience twice the prevalence of PTSD and depression and lower quality of life.
While some people find their way to a therapist’s chair, there are cultural and logistical barriers to traditional therapy. Plus, by the time one finds their way to therapy, a lot of loss and damage has already occurred in the body, brain, and in relationships. Because this isn’t one-on-one spilling your life story to a stranger, the entry point is easier. We get to the root quickly, and provide tools that can be used that day to initiate recovery in the nervous system. Our program is for anyone, anytime, although the earlier in the career the better.
Mindfulness still seems like an emerging field, however it has been heavily practiced and researched in the United States for the last 60 years. Mindfulness has been in policing and military for over 15 years.
Our classes give law enforcement officers and support staff new tools of resilience, strength, centering, and methods of self-regulation and recovery.
What to expect
What is the set up like?
Whether you choose a half day block training or an eight-week series, all classes mix lecture with experiential mindfulness and stress reduction practices to help participants stay engaged. While the lesson plan is the same each time to ensure consistent delivery, details are refined to be relevant to each group.
Choose from:
Two-hour workshop
Four-hour workshop
Eight-week series : Full Mindfulness for Stress Curriculum
We meet in a classroom-style set up with everyone in chairs at a table or desk. This is not yoga so no yoga mats are needed.
What is included in the workshop fees?
In-person or virtual live training.
One (optional) private session per participant with instructor.
One year unlimited access for each participant to The Daily Well app providing extensive mindfulness and movement classes. ($200 value per person). Because stress and trauma are physical and body-based, yoga or any kind of movement is extremely important for recovery and highly encouraged throughout the program.
Complete custom workbook for each participant, branded with your agency name.
A recorded version of each class for participants who have to miss (for 8 week series classes).
A final report summarizing pre and post participant data.
When can you come teach?
The course can begin anytime, and may be offered Monday - Saturday (Sundays on a case-by-case basis).
We recommend two to three simultaneous cohorts on different days and times to accommodate shift times.
Do we have access to our instructor during the series?
Yes. All participants have email access to the instructor for the duration of the series, or before and after the workshop if a one-time session.
How is the training customized for each group?
During an intake meeting with leadership, we learn about your people, your culture, and unique struggles.
Then, on day one of training we ask all participants to fill out an anonymous survey where they share details of work and home stressors. The instructor threads those real life examples through the training.
What can we expect in the workshop?
Each training is front-loaded with the “why:” the neuroscience of stress and trauma and a concept called “widening the window of tolerance.” Knowing how the body and brain relate to stress helps participants anchor into why this work matters, and helps to normalize their personal experience.
Learning key definitions is followed by broader conversations of how stress and mindfulness relate to work, relationships, and physical and mental wellness.
What will we learn?
Participants leave with ten trauma-informed stress reduction techniques.
Overall, participants will learn how to:
Reduce stress
Increase resilience and well-being
Lower anxiety and depression
Improve sleep
Lower inflammation
Work with challenging thought patterns and emotions
Increase their sense of purpose at work and at home
Each participant leaves with training materials as their toolbox of research-backed techniques to help them take back control of their health.
The goal is to provide simple yet powerful techniques to be easily used on a daily basis to mitigate the effects of job-related stress. Of course, the techniques also apply to all areas of life.
Who is this for?
MILE is for anyone who works in law enforcement:
Patrol Officers
Detectives
Sergeants, Lieutenants, and Chiefs
Office and Support Staff
Dispatch
Why should I do this for my team?
Police are struggling. Mental health of law enforcement is no longer something we have the luxury of ignoring. We cannot unsee and unknown the data, and the data tells us that officers face significantly higher risks of stress-related illness than other professions, as well as alarmingly high rates of mental distress and suicidality.
Working with The Mindful Project provides an increase in health and quality of life by educating each person extensively, and also by targeting the ways in which chronic stress is managed in the body and mind. Ultimately, each participant learns ways to better cope with traumatic and stressful events as an ongoing life skill, so these events no longer take such a toll on overall health and wellness.
Stress is not inherently bad. It’s part of the job and it’s part of life. In fact, healthy levels of stress are required for high performance. However, the American Medical Association now says 75-90% of human disease is due to untreated chronic stress. Combined with work related traumas that first responders face, intervention is required to continue to care for each individual and their quality of life. In addition to the personal health and wellness component, neuroscience shows that the healing of each person contributes to a more effective team environment and a healthier community.
What MILE is…
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When you strengthen your body, you are protected from future injury. The same concept applies here. As you strengthen your attention, your focus, your brain, and your nervous system, you are protected from future stress and potential trauma.
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New recruits are told that the job takes a toll, but they’re hardly ever told or shown how to minimize that toll. There’s no preventative game plan offered. There is a growing amount of help, yes, and traditionally it’s been focused on resolving issues once they develop and not preventing them. Of course, culturally the highest priority is officer safety, yet line of duty deaths for most decades are trending downward, while police suicides are trending upward. From a prevention perspective typically police agencies and unions don’t make the emotional well-being of the officers a high priority. We fill in the gaps.
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You give your whole life to this job. You deserve a body that is healthy and whole, that feels good, and that can operate at its best. This course is the launching point for the rest of your life in the ways in which you’ll change how to take care of yourself moving forward.
What MILE is NOT…
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This is teaching the flexibility for intensity and focus when needed, and then the choice to move into restoration and recovery when appropriate. Many people get stuck in the intensity and focus = inflammation in the body = disease in body and mind.
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While therapy is one option, it’s not always the most popular solution in policing culture and most people will never go. Also, by the time someone gets to therapy a lot has already happened whether it’s divorce, health issues, anxiety, chronic anger, addiction, or depression.
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Our program is based in the neuroscience of stress and trauma and provides relief through addressing the body/mind system. While not religious at all, many people report back that it strengthens their own personal relationship to their faith by removing internal barriers and helping them feel a greater and wider perspective than they could when stuck in the stress response.
What they’re saying…
“This is extremely educational and needed, especially with the generational divide and career stress. Lauren was very well versed and overall I was very impressed.”
To anyone who works in law enforcement in any capacity:
“First, you need to take better care of yourself, both individually and collectively. You DESERVE to take better care of yourself. You deserve a body that is healthy and whole, that feels good, and that can operate at its best.
Your job is often stressful, difficult, and sometimes dangerous...yet you've likely been given little training and support in helping you handle that pressure. After each workday, you are expected to go home, get a good night's sleep, and report for work the next day feeling refreshed, relaxed, and alert.
This does not happen automatically and requires strong and consistent self-care.
Many law-enforcement professionals live day after day with the chemicals of chronic stress in their bloodstreams. This is bad for your body, sometimes traumatic, and occasionally tragic. It is also why you need to learn to manage and care for your body.
No one else can do this for you.
Caring for your body may just save your life.”
- Resmaa Menakem
