Discovering the Present Moment

Mindfulness with Trish Johnson

By Parker Forsell

from Issue #5 of Ocooch Mountain Echo

In highschool I loved to run. We had a serious track and cross-country team, and we trained year round. The coach was a Canadian Olympian and he ran us through the gamut when it came to work outs. But it was the relaxation and visualization techniques that really ended up sticking with me. Imagine 40-50 runners laying on their backs in a grassy field with the coach first directing your attention toward breathing and relaxing, to be followed by visualizing your entire run or race. I credit these techniques to part of my success as a runner and they definitely helped me develop a devastating kick in the 800 meters, mainly due to repeated envisioning of a burst of energy on the backstretch during the second lap.

Trish Johnson remembers her introduction to mindfulness techniques connected to sports as well. She was a competitive volleyball player in highschool, north of the Twin Cities in Forest Lake. She can still recall a guest of her coach coming to practice and having the players lay on their backs while they were walked through a series of prompts related to drawing attention to different parts of the body. It was a kind of invitation to a way of thinking and a presence that felt completely new to her. It was not an immediate leap toward meditation, but for Johnson it was the crack that opened the door.


The origins of meditation go deep into antiquity and have been connected to many different religions, within which it has been practiced. Hinduism, and its sacred texts, namely the Upanishads, are credited with the first written mentions of meditation. These texts were written anonymously and most credit them to around the 6th or 7th century BCE. A translated line from the early Upanishads (there are early, middle, and late) refers to "having become calm and concentrated, one perceives the self (ātman) within oneself." 


Buddhism can be traced back to Siddartha Guatama (5th century BCE), who became known as Buddha, and was born into a Hindu family in India (in an area now known as the country Nepal). Although many referred to Siddartha as Buddha, in practice ‘Buddha’ is used for a person who has attained the highest level of consciousness and within Buddhism lives the idea that any human on the planet has the ability to become a Buddha. Buddhism is not a religion, but a practice, and the principle teachings of Buddha are called Dharma.


Johnson and her husband Paul Stern started Manitou Center/Dharma River in Winona in 2010. They offer Kung Fu, Mindfulness, Zen practice, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, intuitive movement, reiki, and Yoga, workshops and classes. Their work is all part of their nurturing of mind, body and spirit focus on community development. Johnson is also a zen priest and mental health therapist.


Although her experience during high school volleyball practice was the spark, Johnson admits it took awhile to integrate this profound experience. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, while at college at Winona State University, that she was re-introduced to the mind-body connection through a Tai Chi class. There was no turning back at this point and she continued Tai Chi work, which also included her initial introduction to meditation.


Particularly in the Western world, many people’s introduction to meditation might have come through yoga or Tai Chi. While yoga has become synonymous with mainly one aspect - asanas - the comprehensive posture exercises, it is actually a much more complex form of study. Also known to have derived in India, yoga includes physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines. While most uninitiated may think of yoga as a workout class, in its deeper practices it includes breathing exercises, meditation, postures, and educational studies. It would be simplifying things, but the asanas of yoga relate more to holding postures and poses, while the movement exercises of Tai Chi consist more of flowing dance-like, martial arts movements.


It was post-college that Johnson began to explore meditation, mostly through books and her own practice. She was traveling throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, being introduced to new cultures and the challenges of being confronted with both wonderful and painful experiences. She had a lot of time with herself, time to develop a deeper sense of self through meditation and inner work. She says, “once I began to realize that I could be available to myself during the ups AND downs of life, I began to understand how I could be more deeply and fully available for anyone I met along the way.”


“Once I began to realize that I could be available to myself during the ups AND downs of life, I began to understand how I could be more deeply and fully available for anyone I met along the way.”


During the late 90s, Johnson lived and worked in Taiwan, and she studied Tai Chi with an inspiring and seasoned Tai Chi teacher in her mid 70s.  During this time she signed up for her first silent meditation retreat (in Thailand), and eventually ended up in India and Nepal where over the course of a year, she studied and practiced meditation with different teachers. In 2001, she returned to India to volunteer at a women’s weaving project and orphanage.  It was there she began the practice in Iyengar yoga. Developed by B. K. S. Iyengar, and described in his 1966 book Light on Yoga, it is a form of yoga as exercise that has an emphasis on detail, precision and alignment in the performance of yoga postures (asanas).


Upon her return to the United States she found herself in Minneapolis and part of a yoga and meditation community. Over several years of practice she began to understand more and more how to integrate her life experiences with her evolving practice, to the point where she realized, “there is no “practice” and “life”.  It’s ALL life!”


“There is no “practice” and “life”.  It’s ALL life!”


While Manitou Center/Dharma River has become a destination and community for many individuals in the Winona area, an inspiring outgrowth of Johnson and Stern's work is how many children know Trish. Johnson has had a wholly profound impact on the youth in Winona through her mindfulness work in schools. She is a trained Mindfulness instructor, through a 300-hour course by Mindful Schools in California. Johnson has worked with seven different schools in Winona. At one time, at my daughter’s school, Riverway Learning Community, she was working with all 12 grades of students and their teachers. My daughter was a kindergartener, introduced first to some of the mind-body techniques that Trish and I had learned through sports in high school, but also meditation. I cherish the memory of my daughter on a dock on the Mississippi River showing me how she meditated when she was five years old.


The school was not able to maintain the on-going work with Trish, but the influence is still there at times and it certainly has continued with my daughter because of my own interest in QiGong (chi gong) and meditation. My daughter and I regularly do Qigong and follow it up with a short meditation – the five minute goal that Johnson aimed for with her students.


At one point in our conversation, Johnson goes back to her first experiences in Asia and meeting people at times that were looking for the Golden Ticket, the secret pathway to enlightenment, the ultimate teacher. She came to realize that many things were more subtle and more ingrained into the culture regarding diet, practice, and balancing one’s day-to-day activities. She humbly admits her own desires for understanding the mysteries, finding herself journeying to Dharmsala in hopes of meeting the Dalai Lama, etc. But ultimately, for her, it has come down to “how can I learn as much as I can about myself, so that I can take care of myself and offer what I can to other people that might be interested.”


Her own search continues to go back to those initial inklings during volleyball practice, the epiphany that “there is something to this.” She openly admits she has not found the ultimate answer, but she continues to be confident in the arc that there is something to these practices, for her and also for people that she has encountered and worked with professionally. Her sense of gratitude has grown, and her willingness to help others to create a sense of gratitude and appreciation for life.


An overarching guide for Johnson is the role of presence in the cultivation of mindfulness and meditation. Those memories of the mind-body attention becoming a kind of gateway toward being present - a way to slough off the distractions, even for a few moments. Part of being human is to notice the flowing river of thoughts that is our thinking on a daily basis. At any one moment we are likely thinking about something in the past or something we need to do or wish for in the future. When I ask Johnson if the point of meditation or mindfulness is to stop the flowing backwards or forwards of thought, she says, “not exactly, I don’t think we can stop thought, but we can notice it, and learn to not give it our full attention.”


She elaborates on the art of practice, by saying that becoming able to identify our distractedness is a big part of the equation and then to shift that awareness to some type of grounding. “One of the reasons that the breath can be used in meditation is it gives us a place to put our attention.” By grounding ourselves in simply focusing on our breathing, in and out, becomes a practical way to take a detour from fleeting thoughts, it gives our brain somewhere to go.

Coming back to her work with kids, mindfulness practices offer an approach that is neither philosophical nor religious. During an 8-week mindfulness series, Johnson strives to introduce and provide practice opportunities for children to gain insight and self awareness in a curious, open minded and non-judgemental way.  Her work with mindfulness focuses both on increasing skills to pay attention to present moment experiences as well as to build self care and compassion.


Johnson points out that although it can be difficult for children, when they are young, to pause and rest their bodies and minds, it is both possible and beneficial to do so.  Working with the breath can help a child connect to an ever-available bodily experience that is always occuring in the present moment and can help settle the nervous system.  During the multi-week mindfulness series, children become more aware of what it's like to  sit in their "mindful body" and learn breathing strategies that can help calm, soothe and relax their bodies and minds. In each class Johnson works with the children to increase the amount of time they can sit and explore the present moment through sensory awareness and breath.  A goal, after 16 sessions, is for Johnson and the children to sit together in silence for 5 minutes. Over the years, in every class, Johnson and the students have been able to celebrate their successes in attaining their goal.


These experiences are something that continue to inspire Johnson; to see the happiness and pride the children have in knowing they could reach a common goal of quietly being with themselves, in a meditative way, as they develop skills to care for themselves and others.  An awareness is established — “that you can, if you need to, take care of and settle your body and mind- before going to school, the doctor, or before taking a big test.” Helping them realize they have a say in the matter and the tools to work with thoughts and feelings in their body.


On a personal level, these journeys with the children, and older students, and adults too, are really a way for Johnson to introduce others to the experience she had some many years ago - lying on the mezzanine floor in her high school gymnasium. There was something to that experience that has continued to guide her, and the little moments of introducing the mind-body connections and practicing presence has become a point of transfer, a way to act purposefully in this life, be moved by life’s experiences, and be there for other people.


In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble. - Yun-Men


Find out more about workshops and classes at Manitou Center/Dharma River at www.dharmariver.org/ and more about zen training at www. zengarland.org/

Photograph of Manitou Center/Dharma River by Mary Farrell

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