Your Calm Is Your Child's Best Drug, with Hunter Clarke-Fields

0:00Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hi, it's Hunter Clarke-Fields, author of Raising Good Humans. If you've ever thought, I wish I could help other parents the way I've been helped, this is for you. The Mindful Parenting Teacher Certification Program is now open for enrollment. You'll deepen your mindfulness, learn to lead powerful parenting groups, and join a supportive, heart-centered community. Are you ready to make a difference? I only take a very limited number of people into this program, so apply now. Visit mindfulparentingcourse.com slash teach. I am a big proponent of a regular mindfulness meditation practice because we're reaching for a muscle in those moments that we haven't developed, right?

0:37Hunter Clarke-Fields:We're reaching for this muscle of non-reactivity, which is let me pause and feel what I'm feeling without responding and fixing or doing anything. And that is incredibly hard. And you just don't have the muscle if you haven't practiced it. When you're in a really heated, intense moment with your kid where a lot is at stake and that reactivity is steamrolling the moment. And if you haven't practiced for it, I can tell you what to do. But if you haven't practiced, you don't have the muscle to do it.

1:15Welcome to HopeStream, the podcast for parents of teens and young adults struggling with substance use and mental health. I'm Brenda Zane. I've walked this path with my own child's addiction and high-risk lifestyle. Each week, we help you gain clarity, learn new skills, and most importantly, find real hope in what might feel helpless. You're not helpless, and you're not alone anymore. Find more resources at hopestringcommunity.org.

1:46Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hi friend, thanks for coming and hanging out with me today. I want to be sure we breathe together before I jump into my incredible and very relevant guest who joined me to talk all things mindfulness. So because it seems obvious, but it's not, we need to breathe. So please gift yourself two or three big, giant, deep breaths. pull as much air into your lungs as you can hold it at the top for two or three seconds and then let it all out if you want you can shake your shoulders and arms a little bit to loosen up the tension that i know lives there but if nothing else just breathe we do this because it is accessible anytime, anywhere, it's fully in your control, and it's free.

2:50Oh, and of course, because it works to dial down your stress response and make you feel a little less frenetic and harried. If you are feeling frenetic and harried, guess what? This is your episode. I got to sit down recently with the woman you may know as the mindful mama mentor, but she actually does have a name, which is Hunter Clark Fields. Hunter is on a mission to change generational patterns, which kind of sounds familiar. But what kind of patterns? Oh, you know, the kind where we yell at our kids, we're aggressive or reactive with them, when we tune out from our kids with our devices, or when we are so rattled and overwhelmed that we really aren't functional for them in the way that they need.

3:43Those kinds of patterns. Hunter is the number one bestselling author of Raising Good Humans, which has sold over 750 ,000 copies in 19 languages, and the book Raising Good Humans Every Day. She is host of the wildly popular Mindful Mama podcast, a global speaker, mindfulness meditation teacher, and the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Certification Program. Hunter has over 20 years of experience in meditation and yoga practices and has taught mindfulness to thousands worldwide. Her work has appeared in CNBC, Parade, Motherhood Moment, The Hollywood Digest, NBC, ABC, Fox, and CBS, All the Letters, And most importantly, she is the mother of two daughters who challenge her every day to hone her craft.

4:41As you can imagine, we talked about all things mindfulness, and Hunter shared how just sitting down for 10 minutes a day and meditating helped curb the pit of despair and feeling like she just couldn't handle life, especially when her girls were small. She also realized that even though she didn't feel like she had done much just sitting there, she was better able to recover from and rebound back from difficulties that she was facing. You'll hear us talk about why we often think we are doing mindfulness wrong, why being is so much more important than doing, why it's so dang hard for us to be present with our kids, the important connection between embodiment and mindfulness, and how important co-regulation is when it comes to getting in sync with the people around us, especially our kiddos.

5:40You might even hear a story about why zebras don't get ulcers. I loved this conversation because it centers around things that we are 100 % in control of, things that are inside our quote unquote hula hoop, which with our kiddos can feel like it's pretty empty a lot of the time. I shared my core belief with Hunter that I truly believe that without self-awareness and a healthy amount of mindfulness, this journey with our kids who are really struggling is going to be far longer and harder than if we are willing to slow down, look at ourselves and our actions and reactions, and be more intentional about how we show up.

6:28If you feel like a rubber band about ready to snap, this, my friend, is going to be so helpful. Listen in now to my very mindful and enlightening conversation with the mindful mama mentor, Hunter Clark Fields. Enjoy.

6:48hey hunter welcome to hope stream i am thrilled to have you here today talking about all things mindfulness parenting mamas all my favorite things so thanks for joining me thanks brenda happy to be here i've listened to your podcast i actually just this morning i was listening to your you did like a really cool like the top five of 2025 episode yeah which was amazing i used to do those and i ran out of energy this year so i didn't do one but i was like oh that's really smart i like that how did you choose well did you choose the most downloaded or how did you choose

7:28Hunter Clarke-Fields:yeah yeah i just choose the most downloaded it's it's it's a little unfair it waits it because time passes towards those in the beginning of the year. But whatever, it's just one way to do it. And then every year, it's kind of interesting to find out who gets in there. Yes, exactly. Well, you... So, oh my gosh, there's so many things I want to talk about. But first of all, you have a podcast, you have a ton of information on your website, you have an incredible books. And I would love to know how you got into that. How did you tumble into this entire world of writing, of podcasting, of mindfulness?

8:14I would love to hear that story.

8:16Hunter Clarke-Fields:It is a little weird because I was working as an artist, as a painter. I have a graduate degree in art education. I was working as a painter. I was working as a high school art teacher until it was kind of like second killing my soul kind of how I felt about it because I was actually a highly I mean I still am highly sensitive person and really prone to intense ups and downs and people would see me and they'd say oh you're so enthusiastic but then it would be these corresponding pits that I would fall into in life and as an art teacher man it was just I was in a tough school and it was like the only RD.

8:55Hunter Clarke-Fields:It was just, it was a lot. I would have panic attacks in high school. It was pre-mindfulness practice. So it wasn't for me. I got to this point in my life where I was kind of teaching art privately. I was really into yoga and mindfulness and I'd been reading about mindfulness for a long time. I started reading about mindfulness maybe when I was 17. And then finally, when I was sort of 27, I started to actually sit down and practice. so i guess it was around the time i was still teaching i was kind of desperate for something and i could see that for me well of course reading about mindfulness is wonderful it's soothing you realize everybody suffers you realize you're not alone in the craziness of your brain it's really lovely to read all those words but lo and behold it is actually way way way more effective to actually do the practices is to just read about them.

9:52Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I started, I had done a yoga teacher training in 2005 and they made us do some sitting meditation. I was like, oh, I can do this. So then I came home and I started practicing. And I remember I sat down for a sitting meditation. I set a timer for 10 minutes and I did this for a couple of months and I just remember feeling so frustrated because I'm just like I sit here thinking the whole time I can't do this what's wrong you know and but then I looked back and it had been a little over two months and I realized that I hadn't fallen into any of these pits of despair of not being able to handle life at I I hadn't fallen into any in that time at all.

10:39Hunter Clarke-Fields:And that was unheard of for me. Like that was just a huge, huge game changer for me. Because before then it would be every couple of times a week or every other week or whatever. It just would happen pretty regularly. And so I realized I was able to recover from, you know, difficulties. So even though I felt like I'm just sitting here thinking the whole time and this isn't doing anything, There really was something that was happening and it wasn't actually making a profound change in my life. That is kind of similar to the experience that I had. I felt like I am doing this wrong when I first started.

11:21I started using the Insight Timer app because I was like, I need some guidance. And I remember the same thing. I was like, I was so critical of myself. I'm doing this wrong and I have this thing playing, but I'm over here thinking about 10 other things. And then at one point, one of the teachers said, like, come back because you're probably thinking about something else. And I was like, oh, shoot, I got caught, right?

11:47Hunter Clarke-Fields:And so by the recording, I got caught by the recording. And then he said, the fact that you came back and you're aware that you came back means you are being mindful. Yeah. And it totally changed everything. Because I thought, oh, okay. Did you ever have that feeling like I am doing something wrong? Or just sort of like, what is this all about? Oh, yeah, completely. Even up until I remember I did my mindfulness meditation teacher certification a number of years later. And I remember being in this giant room full of all these people meditating. And one, I used a tool that for me had gotten me through a lot of meditation, which is I studied a lot in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.

12:35Hunter Clarke-Fields:And he has these little sayings. and this saying really just has helped me so much it's as you breathe in you think calm and as you breathe out you think peace and as you're breathing and you think smile and as you breathe out you think release and it's lovely because it rhymes and it really is helps it's like sets you right up to the intention of what you want to feel calm you want to feel peace that you want to release things all of those things and i remember thinking using that in this like great big hall of people and thinking oh this isn't the instruction they gave me and I must be this imposter.

13:12Hunter Clarke-Fields:Well you do think you're rich because I'm using some other technique that works for me but yeah of course we all think that and we all think I can't do this. It's pretty common. I think meditation is the kind of thing that you can't do wrong in some ways where if you have the intention to sit and i think maybe the way to do it wrong is to like listen to something that gives you no space for silence and just is maybe talking all the way through or something like that but if you're practicing and you're practicing to give yourself a little space for silence and you're floundering and you're failing like that is actually doing it right like that's the thing about it is it's so simple yet it's so hard and it's so kind of it's this kind of i kind of think of meditation as this weird brain hack that they discovered you know 2600 years ago and that it's very very counterintuitive for what humans evolve for if you think about it right like we evolved to survive so we evolved to scan for threats and we evolved to get things done and kind know, like the checking off the to do list, that's like very natural and evolutionary for humans to just be moving forward all the time.

14:30Hunter Clarke-Fields:So to stop and to, you know, tune into maybe just a couple of your senses is really strange for people to do, but it, and it's very hard, but it really does have some amazing benefits for us. Yeah. Well, and I would love to have you to share what your sort of description or definition of mindfulness is because I think it can feel for somebody new, it can feel a little vague. It can feel a little overwhelming. It can feel a little like, I don't really know what that is. I think it's becoming more obviously in the mainstream, but what, how would you describe if somebody said, Hunter, what, how do I be mindful?

15:14What does it mean? What does it mean if I'm being mindful? What does that mean to you?

15:18Hunter Clarke-Fields:Well, to be mindful is to practice to just keep bringing your attention back to the present moment, something in the present moment. So it's always usually something with our senses, sights, sounds, sensations. And we do this bringing our attention to the present moment. this is very crucial part of the definition of mindfulness with the attitudes of kindness and curiosity or you could say non-judgment and compassion you know the idea we practice not to judge ourselves and our practice we practice to be kind to ourselves and this is all to sort of counter sort of the natural very normal reflexive judgment and criticism that our brains like to do but that don't make us very peaceful or very grounded or very happy.

16:11Hunter Clarke-Fields:So yeah, being mindful is always being mindful of something, right? So we are, there's always an object to our mindfulness. We're mindful, you know, often when we do a meditation practice, which meditation is kind of like the gold standard for practicing mindfulness, we might be mindful of our breath. So we might be feeling our breath come in and out, or we might be mindful of sounds like birds outside, or even your heater, your air conditioner, or the sensation of sitting, something like that. And as a parent, we can be mindful. We can use our kids as an object of meditation. And that's really actually a beautiful thing.

16:51Hunter Clarke-Fields:When they're little, we can practice to be really present, and we can practice really mindful listening. And in mindful listening, we're just like when we're practicing mindfulness breathing, we're noticing when our minds wander away, which they do and then we're coming back and we're coming back with kindness and curiosity so we're interrupting reflexive judgment and we're practicing to be open and curious about what is actually here right now so it's this process of kind of beginning anew again and again and again and again and yet if it is a little vague and weird i guess because you are working with your mind but i kind of think of it as it's like i think at some point we're going to think of it the way we think of exercise now you know like back in the day people used to think about people who went to the gym and exercise as like those guys in like one shoulder leopard print onesies with like big barbecues i thought it was a little weird and extreme and then eventually started to catch on because it's great for your body to take care of your body.

18:01Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I think kind of mindfulness is going through that evolution too, where it can be seen as a little weird. You really don't have to put your hands in any kind of weird or funny position at all. You can sit in a regular chair, you can sit in a lazy boy, but it is a way of training our minds so that we can be present. and this ability to be present for what is is this ability to a like really tolerate and move through difficulties and realize that we will survive we will be okay we'll move through something and it will pass and then also b it gives us the ability to be present through wonderful things and joys and really be aware of those things so sometimes when When we don't practice being present, when we don't have any kind of mindfulness or slowing down practice, we're inadvertently practicing like, go, go, do, do, next thing, next thing, next thing, next thing, right?

19:01Hunter Clarke-Fields:That's kind of the other, that's the default. And so when we're practicing that, we tend to think like, oh, later on, when I get to the end of this to-do list, then I'm going to be present, right? Or, you know, when I get everything done, when I get to that vacation, then I'm going to be present with my family, with my kid. And then you get to a place where you're like, okay, I've designated this time. It's okay for me to stop doing and to start being, and then you can't. And that is heartbreaking, right? That is heartbreaking because, I don't know, it's like you've just trained your mind not to be present for so long.

19:39Hunter Clarke-Fields:And there's this quote that really kind of drives me in this work that I do with this and it's from the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and he said when you love someone the best thing you can offer is your presence how can you love if you are not there and it's like like that yeah just gives me the chills even thinking that yeah yeah and it's so hard to be present today with obviously devices and we as parents are okay So when you have a parenting question at 2 a.m., where do you go? Reddit is the only place to get real answers from parents who have actually been there at any time. If you're new to Reddit, think of it as thousands of topic-based communities.

20:30Hunter Clarke-Fields:There are so many good ones for parenting where you can ask, you know, is this regression behavior normal? And you can get answers from parents who have been there like a second ago. So I have been using Reddit to research for my newest book that I'm working on and working on some toddler stuff. And I was reading all about toddler tantrums. And I love the subreddit science-based parenting. And there's so many good answers there and so many different subtle experiences that go into their answers. So it's interesting because it was like reading the questions that have been asked me over the years and reading all these answers and people who validation works and it doesn't.

21:11Hunter Clarke-Fields:It's really, really interesting. And why? So parenting, I know it can feel so overwhelming, but Reddit is a place where real parents are swapping advice, venting, and getting the kinds of answers that you can't find elsewhere. Whether you're looking for practical guidance, recommendations, or just reassurance that you're not alone. I know parenting doesn't come with a manual. You can find real advice from real parents on the Reddit app. Download the Reddit app and check out the subreddit science-based parenting. I think you'll find a lot there to like. Go ahead and download the Reddit app today.

21:47On our phones or iPads or whatever, and so are the kids. And I see, like, I have to work so much harder at trying to be present. And like you said, to really listen with our kids and not be, yes, I'm hearing you, but I'm thinking about what I have to do. And I'm thinking about tomorrow's call. And I'm thinking about, and to be really present with them is an act of mindfulness. I think because sometimes we just think of like listening or problem solving, but just the act of being present is being mindful because you're making that choice, right of I am going to be here with you 100 % and I just came back from a two-day event where I was there with like 75 women and a lot of them were therapists which was amazing and what I noticed is so many of them were so present when I was talking to them and it was noticeably different than when I talk with other people and I could tell that they were really making an effort just with eye contact, standing close to me, you know, just like with body language.

23:04And it felt so, like, I feel like I'm being seen and heard right now. And I just have to believe that they probably have a strong mindfulness practice of their own to be able to give that to people. Do you find that that's true?

23:23Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think about that act of, you know, taking an hour and putting your attention completely on somebody else with kindness and curiosity, right? That is an act of mindful listening. Like each day, each day, they're practicing that if they're a good therapist, they're practicing really mindful listening. They're hopefully not like, you know, allowing their minds to wander like enormously, right? The mind does wander and it will a bit, but yeah. And it's so healing to be really heard that way. You know, I really, really think that, you know, it's interesting. I talk about this a lot in the context of parenting.

24:02Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I was thinking about that. My oldest daughter's 18 now. And she, a few years ago, she must have been about 16. And she has a chronic pain issue. And she was really mad at me and my husband for something. And it was kind of hard to take. And I was like listening, and it was hard to take. And I, I first, it was so uncomfortable. She was mad. And I was, it was so uncomfortable that I'm very near the entry of my house and I grabbed a broom and I started sweeping oh what am I doing okay and I realized what I was doing and I put the broom down I sat down kind of there at this ottoman and I practiced to just feel my body feel the sensations in my body because you know we call it mindfulness but it's really about being embodied there's a it's about feeling sensations you feel i felt the sensation i breathe i grounded myself and it was interesting it didn't take very long but i she just sat down right next to me and kind of slumped her body against mine and it was so interesting it was like this just instinctive act of co-regulation and it helped her to just really calm down and i didn't say a word you know I just practice to be present.

25:21Hunter Clarke-Fields:And it can really be a palpable shift and a change for people who are really listened to that way. That's a beautiful story. And I would love to have you talk a little bit more about mindfulness in parenting. And our listeners have kids in very difficult situations with substance use and dealing with some mental health issues. And they can get very dysregulated, right? And so, and I love what you said about co-regulation, but when we're in those moments, maybe there's a heated conversation or arguing or, you know, we're trying to prove our point, but I'm right, you're wrong or you're lying. How do we interrupt that pattern of, you know, the moment to do what you did?

26:15Like, I'm fascinated by that.

26:16Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, the habitual reactivity, right? Like we're not really in control of what we're saying or how we're reacting very well in moments like that. We're just in this, we're just responding. We're in fight, flight, or freeze, and they're in fight, flight, or freeze, and our dysregulation is meeting. Their dysregulation is really hard because we feel each other's feelings. That's just how humans work. yet interrupting those patterns is really hard is that like master's level mindfulness or can any no no i think it can be i mean that's one of the reasons why i was you know why i wrote raising good humans and was that i found myself really reactive like when my daughter was two and she's intense and just i had this big temper and i was like re i was perpetuating a pattern in my family for my father of yelling and, you know, aggressively yelling and just scaring her and just this reactivity that I didn't want, but it was coming out.

27:19Hunter Clarke-Fields:And it's very familiar, right? This idea of like, how do we stop this once this train is in motion going, going 90 miles an hour. Yeah. It's incredibly hard. I think it takes, you know, it takes some time and it takes much more than, And oh, just pause in that moment. Because I remember being in those moments and being like, yeah, well, how do you pause in this moment? You're just like, you're losing it. So that's actually one of the reasons why I am a big proponent of a regular mindfulness practice, right? Because, and mindfulness meditation practice, because we're reaching for a muscle in those moments that we don't have, that we haven't developed, right?

27:59Hunter Clarke-Fields:We're reaching for this muscle of non-reactivity, which is let me pause and feel what I'm feeling without responding and fixing or doing anything. And that is incredibly hard. And you just don't have the muscle if you haven't practiced it. It's kind of like we wouldn't send our kid to like, I don't know, the Little League World Series without them practicing regularly with a coach, learning the swing, getting the muscle memory, all that stuff. When you're in a really heated, intense moment with your kid where a lot is at stake and that reactivity is kind of steamrolling the moment, that's the equivalent of your Little League World Series.

28:41Hunter Clarke-Fields:And if you haven't practiced for it, it's really I can tell you what to do. but if you haven't practiced you don't have the muscle to do it does that make sense hey i want to pause for just a sec to talk about something that has been life-changing for so many women who started right where you might be by listening to the show if you're feeling the isolation the exhaustion like nobody gets what you're going through there is a place designed specifically for you the stream is our private community for moms and female caregivers for parenting teens and young adults through substance use and mental health struggles.