North Star Conversations Transcript: Mindfulness and the Nervous System—True Mind + Body
Melissa Novack, LCSW, reflects on the central role of mindfulness in the work at True Mind + Body, especially for young clients. She explains how nervous system regulation is essential for therapeutic progress—and how the goal is to help the mind and body “become friends” again through mindful awareness.
Brandon Gimbel (00:00)
With mindfulness, what we're talking about, and the body-based mindfulness, yoga-based mindfulness, but mindfulness itself, is something that these kids and adolescents can take beyond the therapy room, a tool set, an awareness, a curiosity, an interest in themselves. How much of the work that you guys do is centered around that?
Melissa Novack (00:18)
We have nervous systems. For a long time in therapy, I think we kind of forgot about the nervous system. And so now we're kind of coming back to it at Art of Wellbeing and figuring out, okay, wait, if we feel safe and settled within the body. Then we can start to come back into the mind. And really this mind-body connection is let's just be friends. Like let's have the mind and body be friends. So when you ask about mindfulness, how much does it have to do with our work? So much.