We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica Place a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, appreciate you joining us today. Is there a heartwarming story from your career that you look back on?

North Georgia Mindfulness Project is a small business my friend Patrick and I established in June of 2017 to teach people struggling with anxiety, stress, and depression Mindfulness techniques as well as how to meditate. We have worked with many groups and individuals with various life challenges who have found Mindfulness and meditation to greatly benefit their lives. One example of this is when Patrick and I worked with recovering addicts within a rehabilitation clinic who were court-ordered to receive group counseling. The 8-week course we taught, Mindful Recovery, gave these individuals tools to help maintain sobriety by discovering the needs they had which were not being met and of which the substance was an ephemeral substitute. A number of participants came up to us after the last session and told us that, if it weren’t for our support, they would not have stayed sober. Through Mindfulness and meditation, these individuals were able to “surf” the urge to use by staying in the present moment with their breath. Walking out of the clinic, we were both on cloud nine!

Jessica, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was a public school educator for 20 years, teaching high school English. As a person who has always had issues with anxiety, depression, and low self-confidence, teaching was a stressful endeavor for me and it really never got easier through the years. Although I loved my students, I experienced burn out because of the ever-increasing expectations and responsibilities of teachers as well as having to be “on” all the time. As a result, I resigned from teaching in 2020 and became a full-time meditation and yoga instructor. Now, I love what I do because I feel like I am really helping people become happier and healthier individuals. It feels like I have found my calling.

North Georgia Mindfulness Project offers 8 week courses for individuals or groups who are experiencing similar life/work challenges and want to establish a personal meditation practice. We have helped teachers, recovering addicts, parents of young kids, and many others who are experiencing issues with rumination, anger, obsessions, self-criticism, addiction, as well as generalized stress, anxiety, and depression. We meet once a week for 8 weeks because research has shown, through MRI images, the brain changes after 8 weeks of consistent meditation practice. We also focus on the 7 pillars of Mindfulness: trust, non-striving, beginner’s mind, acceptance, patience, non-judging, and letting go. By teaching people how to practice staying in the present moment, we help them to not get caught up in the stories in their heads, which causes unnecessary suffering.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Patrick and I began teaching together in 2008. I was the content teacher and he was the special education co-teacher. We worked really well together and had a lot of fun with our students over the years, becoming close friends. When he was working on his dissertation on the relationship between reading to young children and their brain development, he came across some articles on the benefits of Mindfulness and meditation. He was attracted to the science and research which supported the practice, thus he began to meditate. Because we were so close and he knew how much I liked to read, he began pushing books about Mindfulness in my direction and I got hooked. We both completed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course by Jon Kabat-Zinn and decided we could really help our students with their anxiety and stress by teaching them some of the strategies we learned. Then, in 2017, we decided to open a small business where we could teach others about Mindfulness and meditation, because it had been such a game-changer in our lives. The rest is history.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As a meditation and yoga instructor, I have learned to not take some people’s disinterest or skepticism personally. In all honesty, it is their journey to take and I do not have control over their decisions and beliefs. Trusting that people will come to what they need when it is the right time for them is something I have come to understand.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.themindfultoolbox.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NorthGAMindfulness
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-place-phd-16b2893a