An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March / April 2023 www.military.ie/magazine 12 | BY SGT (RETD) FERGUS BARRETT PHOTOS BY FERGUS BARRETT I made some ver y good decisions in my life; one was to join the Irish Defence Forces and another, was knowing when to leave. I had an amazing career, I got to do what ever y young soldier wants to do in the army. I experienced travelling on overseas deployments on seven occasions, I was extremely grateful to be par t of the sniping, SERE, and C TI communities. I received excellent training, was privileged to train many others, and learnt from plent y of mistakes along the way. But the greatest par t of my militar y life, was the lifelong friendships I made. Now saying all that, it wasn't without its physical and mental challenges. Yes, we were tested physically in the militar y, but when do we learn about our thoughts and what is going on in our heads? I have met a lot of physically strong people in my life, seriously f it and strong people, but at the same time some of them were silently suf fering because of what was going on in their heads. During the latter few years of my career, I star ted to look at my mental health and on how much time, energ y, and focus was being given to the negative stuf f or the stuf f that didn't nourish me, but depleted me. The more I studied this, the more I found out that if I wanted to change my life, I would have to star t taking more responsibilit y for my mental health. I star ted to read my f irst few books about mindfulness, these were from the world-renowned author and teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn ( JK Z). I was hooked straight away. I loved ever y thing the books were teaching me, so I star ted to practice shor t meditations daily. Unfor tunately, the meditations didn't go to plan. I thought I was supposed to get into some kind of altered state, or clear my head of all thoughts, even a bit of levitation would have been nice, but to no avail. I remained f irmly stuck to my seat, my head was still full of thoughts, and the only 'altered state' was me being extremely frustrated. It was from this experience that I realised I needed professional training. I enrolled into a mindfulness and positive psycholog y teacher training course with Carmel, from the Irish Mindfulness Academy. Over the next 15 months I learnt all about mindfulness, meditation, and positive psycholog y. I loved ever y minute of the training, it changed ever y thing. The plan was not to become a teacher, I did all the training because I wanted to learn the tools, skills, and coping mechanisms to live a happier, mindful, more balanced, and authentic life. I wanted to reduce the amount of time I was stuck in my head, replaying the same old thoughts over and over, and worried about the things that could happen in the future. It was from this training, I learnt that if I was to change my life, I would have to change my relationship with my thoughts. I'll be summarising ever y thing from here on in, I wouldn't be able to explain ever y thing fully, as I would take up the whole magazine. Also, when I say 'mindfulness', this means both mindfulness (informal practice) and meditation (formal practice). Since my initial training I went on to do a masters in Mindfulness Based Wellbeing in UCC, and numerous other international courses. When I did decide to become a mindfulness teacher af ter leaving the DF, it was in response to talking to other people about what I had learnt. Their reaction was that they would love to learn more about mindfulness. I then decided that this was the path I would follow. It 's also impor tant to say that when I lef t the army, I had a huge issue with my identit y. I would always have said to people, when asked what I do, that I was in the army. When I did leave, I found myself saying that I was ex-army, still holding onto that identit y. But that wasn't me anymore, I am more than an ex-soldier. Eventually I decided to say that I was a mindfulness teacher, and af ter some time, I let go of that attachment with the DF. The DF was just a par t of my life, a fantastic par t, but it can be unhealthy to believe that it was ever y thing. By letting go, I freed myself up so I could go to college to do foreign courses and go on retreats to learn and experience so much more in life. I only say this because it might resonate with some people when they leave or have retired already. Mindfulness & Meditation Fergus on patrol in CHAD Fergus instructing on a SERE course

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