February 7, 2022
Smiling Inwardly and Finding Pleasure in the Practice: A Q&A with eMindful Teacher Mark Pirtle
When eMindful teacher Dr. Mark Pirtle and I first attempted to sit down and discuss his mindfulness journey, it was right after the December holidays and we were both certain that life would slow down a little bit in January. Little did we know that the first weeks of 2022 would have us constantly rescheduling and looking for pockets of downtime.
It was after close of business on a Friday that our worlds – and schedules – finally aligned, and the warmth and gratitude we both expressed in those first few moments paved the way for a conversation that was weeks in the making.
Q: How do you start your day?
“A cup of coffee and a little piece of dark chocolate,” Mark says. “Then I do my sitting meditation and get into my day.”
As Mark is answering this question, I hear a very vocal cat in the background and ask Mark about it.
“I have two cats who have a lot of opinions and they help me get up in the morning, too. I put them in a separate place so I can do my dharma,” he says, laughing.
Q: Where are you based out of and why do you love it?
“I’m in Tucson, Arizona. I love the fact that I can drive and in 20 minutes, be in the desert, in nature, in silence. It’s so easy to get to a place where there are waterfalls and deep pools and nobody’s there; these little Shangri las, and there are so many of them,” he says. “It’s sunny, breezy, and 66 degrees right now in winter. If you’re standing in the sun, it’s warm, and there’s a blue sky. It’s a lovely day.”
Q: How long have you been practicing mindfulness and how did that journey begin?
“I started meditating in 2000, so I’ve been practicing for 22 years. I was struggling with my business partners and marriage, and existential issues were coming up and I was reading a lot about meditation. I just sent away for a ‘study Buddhism at home’ CD set, and I listened to the guidance. The next thing you know, I was in a Buddhist monastery in Australia for two months and got deep into my practice there, and I have been practicing diligently ever since,” he says.
Mark says he started teaching mindfulness around 2005 at Miraval Resort in Tucson. “It used to be on the list of Oprah’s top ten favorite places,” he says.
In 2007, Mark began working at a rehab center across the street from the resort and began to blend his mindfulness teaching with his experience as a physical therapy clinician.
“I became the director of their pain program in 2007, and I used my understanding of meditation and mindfulness and how the mind amplifies pain, and that helped me understand how to teach pain patients to monitor and modify the activity of their own nervous systems,” he says. “They have to be at the controls if they’re going to get better; they can’t be with a provider all the time. I’ve been teaching my brand of self-care ever since and have brought that to eMindful. To manage pain, you have to step out of that flow, and instead of the pain having you, you are the one who has influence over it.”
Q: What’s your favorite mindfulness practice right now?
“When my heart is hurting, I do loving kindness. I had a tough year last year, and loving kindness helped to repair the hurt and it is such a powerful meditation technique,” he says.
Mark says he also still brings meditation into his daily practice and draws on the lessons he learned from one of his former teachers, John Yates.
“Now I am doing my Shamatha Vipassana practice and once I get concentrated, I make sure I am smiling inwardly and finding pleasure in the practice…just being cognizant of how good it feels and acknowledging the presence of it,” he says.
Q: What eM Life programs are you teaching right now and do you have a favorite?
“I’m teaching Mindfully Overcoming Addictive Behaviors and I love teaching that program. It’s a 10-session program designed to help participants take control of their addictive behaviors by learning to identify triggers, manage impulses and shift their mindset while building mindfulness skills and resources. Becoming addicted is very common; we just need to learn a pattern of coping that’s healthy,” he says.
Mark also teaches a variety of Mindful Daily topics.
Q: What’s your favorite fact about yourself?
“I’m a dot connector. I see connections between different areas of knowledge, like how I saw the relationship between meditation, mindfulness, and chronic pain and put those together,” he says.
Q: What’s your advice for people who are new to mindfulness or who are curious about it?
“There’s going to be a voice in your head that tells you not to do something, but don’t listen to it when it tells you not to meditate and be mindful. If there is a certain way to change and heal, it’s through more self-awareness, so give yourself that gift and learn the tools to gain self-awareness. Once you do, you’re going to learn more about yourself and the pain you have, and you are going to be able to influence and manage that pain in a better way. Don’t listen to the voice that tells you not to do it,” he says.
Practice mindfulness with Dr. Mark Pirtle:
Written by Becky Greiner