Brandon Everett, RN makes you want to know his secret. He’s calm, but has undeniable charisma; in conversation, he’s focused and engaged. He’s exactly the kind of person you’d want guiding you through mindfulness practice—which, Everett says, is “deciding to bring your attention to the present moment for a few minutes longer than it would naturally be there.”
It's no surprise, then, that the Mobile Mindfulness sessions he led across TUH-Main Campus during this year’s Nurses & Hospital Week were such a success. Everett went floor by floor, inviting nurses, unit clerks, and CNAs to join him in 10-minute classes on the units, and about 200 staff members took him up on his offer.
“The buy-in was overwhelming,” Everett says. “I explained that, if practicing mindfulness is the first thing you do when you wake up, you’ll be able to sustain clear attention and make higher-quality decisions during the day. That’s so important for healthcare professionals, because you want the person who’s at the bedside or guiding you through your care to be as refreshed and resilient as possible. Mindfulness is also a great way to unwind after your shift and to let go of any stress you might be carrying.”
A Life-Changing Six Words
Everett speaks from experience: he discovered mindfulness after going straight from nursing school to a high-intensity cardiac ICU left him burned out. “I’d learned to take care of other people, but I had no idea how to take care of myself in a mature way, and work through the emotions and challenges that would come up,” he explains.
“One night, an ICU colleague of mine looked over and saw I wasn’t doing well,” he continues. “They asked, ‘Have you ever heard of mindfulness? Mindfulness practice helps you relate to your stress and anxiety differently, so you don’t feel so overwhelmed and controlled by it.’”
“They didn’t know it at the time,” Everett remembers, “but with those six words—‘Have you ever heard of mindfulness?—they changed the direction of my life.”
He soon enrolled in an eight-week university introduction to mindfulness course. “At the end of those eight weeks, I finally felt like I could sit and rest and not panic about what I was going to do or say next,” he says. “I thought, ‘Whatever I need to do to teach mindfulness in an authentic way to other people, I’m going to do it.’”
The next step was to sign up for a two-year, 900-hour meditation teacher training, which he completed in 2017. Since then, he’s been leading classes, doing one-on-one coaching, and hosting sessions on Instagram, with the goal of “making mindfulness as accessible as possible.”
“This is All I’ve Ever Wanted”
While Everett loves sharing his knowledge with all mindfulness practitioners, he found that, “As a nurse, bringing mindfulness to my colleagues was deeply rewarding.”
“At the end of the session, I had people turn in anonymous notes about how they felt,” he continues. “So many people wrote, ‘I feel calm.’ ‘I feel relaxed.’ ‘I feel at ease.’ Someone put down, ‘I feel like I just had a cup of chamomile tea.’ That they could feel that way, and sense that shift, after just 10 minutes of mindfulness was amazing.”
Even if you don’t have a full 10 minutes to spare, Everett emphasizes taking just a few minutes at a time to practice mindfulness can have significant benefits. “You don’t need to hunker down and do a 15-minute session to get results,” he explains. “Do two minutes right before lunch. Then do two minutes when you pull in the driveway after work. You can fit it in throughout your day and get the same result.”
And while Nurses & Hospital Week may be over, Everett isn’t finished bringing his Mobile Mindfulness sessions to caregivers across Temple Health. He’s already hosted classes at Fox Chase Cancer Center, and is looking for opportunities to expand his practice to other campuses.
“When I was going unit to unit, I thought, ‘This is all I’ve ever wanted: to be able to help nurses this way,’” he recalls. “This is my dream in life: that I can be in a position where I can share mindfulness, meaningfully, with people who are on the front lines.”