Mindfulness can help the dental community through the pandemic, and post-pandemic: Q & A with alumnus Dr. Sally Safa
Dr. Sally Safa is a periodontist and alumna of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry, where she maintains a teaching position as clinical instructor. She maintains private practice in North York, where she enjoys all aspects of periodontal and implant-related patient care.
She is also a passionate advocate of wellness for healthcare providers. Dr. Safa's Master’s research was in the field of Psychoneuroimmunology, understanding the effects of stress on the body. This background, combined with her education in the field of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, has allowed her to share the science behind both stress and mindfulness, and how it can help dentists reduce stress in their day to day lives at home and the office. With humour and enthusiasm, she shares this knowledge with audiences of all healthcare backgrounds.
Dr. Safa was an expert speaker for the Faculty of Dentistry’s Wellness Awareness Month on March 3, just days before the shutdown.
How did you get into “mindful dentistry”?
I got into mindfulness out of necessity. On the outside, it seemed that everything was “perfect”: I had set up my own practice, was busy working, had two kids, a husband who is also in the profession, and yet I was struggling with stress and anxiety. I also felt alone, as this isn’t something we speak about openly in our profession. I turned to mindfulness to learn to cope and deal with chronic stress and anxiety. The result was that it changed my life in so many positive ways.
Why do dentists need mindfulness?
Dentists often suffer from perfectionist tendencies. This may be the reason why we got into dentistry in the first place: striving for high marks, building resumes and constant achieving. Within dental school the perfectionist trait is often reinforced, as we do very precise work on a millimeter scale that requires a bit of “perfectionism.” This perfectionist tendency has dangerous consequences, as we constantly try to achieve a certain standard we have set for ourselves. It leads to burnout, mental health disorders, chronic stress and anxiety. Mindfulness can help us recognize this, and provides tools to manage our stressors.
Chronic stress will rewire our brains in a negative way
During the current pandemic, why is mindfulness more important than usual?
Our professional lives have come to a sudden stop. This, combined with the uncertainty of the future, has created a state of significant stress and anxiety in most of us. When we are in fear, we often leave our “window of tolerance” and either shoot up (like the COVID CURVE) into hyperarousal, or we shoot down into hypoarousal. Hyperarousal is characterized by the constant thinking, worrying, doing. Over time, this can create significant dysregulation. Practicing mindfulness calms the nervous system (triggering the Parasympathetic nervous system) to bring us back into our window of tolerance. From here, we can make decisions with more clarity and decrease the harmful effects of these very stressful times.
In your opinion, what is the most common misperception people have about mindfulness?
This is a great question. The biggest misconception is that practicing mindfulness requires us to meditate. This is not true. Meditation is one practice within mindfulness, but it is not all of it. You can practice mindfulness and never meditate. Mindfulness can be practiced at any moment, and the premise is that you are fully present to whatever you are doing. Most of us are so busy in our heads, living an alternative reality in our minds that never comes true. Our true life is right here in front of us. Mindfulness teaches us to live in our actual reality rather than in our minds.
How does mindfulness affect a person, physically, personally or in their dental practice? Alternatively, what does the evidence tell us about the benefits of mindfulness?
Many of us know the detrimental effects of chronic stress on the body (arrythmias, poor sleep, headaches, hypertension etc..). However, most of us don’t know that chronic stress will rewire our brains in a negative way. Just a few weeks of practicing mindfulness can help to rewire our brain so that we get hypotrophy (shrinking) of the amygdala and hypertrophy (enlargement) of the hippocampus. That means, next time we get stressed, instead of going into fight or flight, we can quickly regulate again and make more wise decisions with more clarity.
How can dentists begin to practice mindful dentistry?
Scientific evidence guides dentists in their day-to-day decision making. Therefore, in my opinion, for dentists to start practicing mindfulness, it’s best to start with the scientific evidence of how these practices lead to positive changes in our lives. The tools used in mindfulness are to train ourselves to respond to our life rather than react to it. This is a very important concept. To learn to respond to life requires us to practice being present in the moment, to see our life exactly how it is. To calm our nervous system enough to see options and stop catastrophizing. Only then can we bring in mindfulness.
What is the one (or two, or three) practice/exercise/tip you think every dentist can benefit from?
The first and most basic one would be breathing. Our breath is always here. The goal with the breath is multifold, but for now, let’s say that we are using it to calm down the SNS and to bring on more of our PNS. So: five to ten seconds of focusing on the breath as it enters the body and leaves our body is a quick way to bring on the PNS.
The second is a body scan. This is nothing more than focusing our attention to different parts of our body intentionally. Sit comfortably and send all your focus into our hands, feeling tingling, vibration, heat or cool. The body scan will take us out of our busy heads, even for a few minutes and it’s a quick and easy practice.
The third would be pay attention to the narrative and the constant stories that our brain tell us. Most dentists are very busy in the head. Constant thinking and planning creates a state of “busy ALL the time” feeling. So, naming “thinking” helps to tame it. Every time you see you are lost in thoughts (which for many of us is always) take a breath, notice that you are thinking, and this itself with no other effort will help you bring mindfulness into your life.
Want to see more of Dr. Sally Safa? Visit her website, here. Or, check out her Mindfulness video series, here.