Bio
Carl Eisen
Mindful Aviator (MA) was established by Carl Eisen as an “awareness practice” or Mindfulness Meditation based wellness resource for pilots.
Using Mindfulness and Meditation, MA provides tools, exercises and support to help crewmembers reduce stress and cultivate relaxed confidence while improving situational awareness, on task performance and resilience.
Carl has more than 30 years airline experience, flying both passengers and cargo with over 15,000 hours total time in a wide variety of aircraft domestically and internationally. He’s currently an Airbus A300 Captain.
In addition to his flying experience, he’s been practicing Mindfulness Meditation since 2008. In 2016 he became a Trained Mindfulness Facilitator “TMF” completing a program at the UCLA Seminal Institute (Mindful Awareness Research Center). He maintains professional status as a Certified Mindfulness Teacher “CMT” with the International Mindfulness Teachers Association “IMTA”, received training in Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention “MBRP” from the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, hosts a local Mindfulness Meditation Group in his hometown of Punta Gorda Florida and offers a variety of in person and remote learning courses for pilots.
Carl is also a trained Critical Incident Response Program “CIRP” peer support volunteer and a team member at LiftAffect, an independent organization that provides Airline Pilots with a variety of confidential counseling, health and wellness services. Check out what LiftAffect has to offer at www.liftaffect.com.
In addition to helping individual crew members, Carl offers consultation and group speaking events promoting the value of Mindfulness practice in airline safety and daily life.
My Story
Comedian Stephen Wright has an amusing quote: “You know that feeling you get when you lean back in a chair and you suddenly realize you’ve gone too far? I feel like that all the time! For a time, this was more accurate than I’d like to admit. Leading up to 2007, I found myself increasingly distracted with symptoms of anxiety and depression. I kept telling myself feeling stressed was just a temporary thing and that I could handle it. I definitely didn’t think I needed help, and there was no way I was going to tell anyone what I was experiencing!
In the fall of that year, I had purchased my wife a horse trailer and I was driving it to a shop to have the electric brakes hooked up. As I was driving, I thought “If I slam on the brakes, this sucker is going to jackknife on me” and guess what? Right on cue, some idiot pulled out of a side street in front of me while I was going 45 mph. I slammed on the brakes and narrowly avoided hitting him. Miraculously, the trailer stayed behind me. In most people, this would have resulted in a combination of surprise and fear. That sudden rush of adrenaline followed by fear, anger, relief and so on. I realized something was wrong when the near miss left me feeling no different than I did for most of my waking hours. The level of anxiety I was living with was on the same scale as being in a near car crash. This was my wake-up call, I had to do something. But what?
My airline doesn’t have a Wingman program or any form of confidential peer support group. I didn’t want to “self-disclose” anything that could ground me, and I really didn’t have a clue about what anxiety or depression was or how to treat it. I wasn’t suicidal or anything so who do I talk to? Who can I trust that won’t end up grounding me on the spot? For many of us, the thought of talking to someone can actually make the anxiety worse. So, we try not to think about it and put off taking action.
My sister is a practicing Psychiatrist and Analyst so I decided to give her a call and open up about my experience with the trailer. Her professional opinion was that I should be on antidepressants and in therapy. Great, and to the guy with a hammer everything looks like a nail. I’d like another opinion please.
Next, I went to my family doctor to see if there was anything physically wrong with me. Perhaps I could be lucky enough to have a heart condition or brain tumor. Anything but antidepressants and therapy! He said there was nothing wrong with me (physically) and he recommended antidepressants and therapy. Crap, I hate when my sister’s right.
So, I flew my last trip in December of 2007. I spoke to my union and our aeromedical folks and went out on medical for a year with the goal of being back in the cockpit by January of 2009. I needed to be off the antidepressants for three months before being eligible for a medical, so that meant I needed to be done with the “meds” by the end of September 2008.
And so began the drill. Cognitive therapy (talking with a psychologist) twice a week, and a monthly report to a psychiatrist to renew my prescription. It all went very well and my “Shrink” called me her poster child for effort and rapid improvement. Gold star on the forehead. Yes, pilots can even be competitive about psychotherapy!
By September I was off the meds and pronounced “Cured” by the powers that be. I was no longer depressed or suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder. But there was a problem. I was still experiencing some mild (although not debilitating) issues with anxiety. Some anxiety is a normal part of being human. It’s part of our built in “caution and warning system”. My psychologist explained that I was just “an anxious person”, there was nothing more that modern medicine could do for me, and I would just have to live with it. My first thought was Bulls**t! I didn’t work this hard and come this far just to be told I was simply an anxious person.
There was also the issue of the application for medical I would be required to fill out in December. On it, there is a yes or no question regarding your “Mental Disorders Of Any Sort; Depression, Anxiety, Etc.”. Although I had actually been suffering with varying degrees of anxiety and depression for many years, I hadn’t understood it and never answered yes on the medical questionnaire because I honestly didn’t consider it a “Mental Disorder”. After all, everyone gets sad or anxious from time to time. But now that I understood the reality of my struggle, this left me with a choice. I needed to resolve my lingering anxiety, or *lie on the application. I’d never intentionally lied on the application, but I was not going to stay out on medical leave!
Since modern medicine had only taken me part of the way, I began a frantic research effort on alternative treatments for anxiety. I read books and searched online. One book was titled Undoing Perpetual Stress. In it, the author (who suffers from anxiety as well) said he had been having some personal success with meditation. What the heck, I figured I would give it a try. But what kind of meditation? Research into this subject revealed so many different kinds of meditation, I didn’t know where to begin. Further research into the types of meditation that had been backed up with scientific research narrowed this down to Mindfulness Based meditation. I put aside my aversion to what I considered “hippy guru touchy feely nonsense” and gave it a try.
So, for 20 minutes a day I sat in a chair and tried to focus on the sensation of breathing. My mind had other ideas, but I was determined (stubborn). My window of opportunity was closing fast as it was now November.
My early meditation practice went something like this:
Focusing on the breath, I’m not doing this right.
Focusing on the breath, this is stupid and will never work.
Focusing on the breath, thank god no other crewmembers can see me doing this.
Focusing on the breath, it’s been twenty minutes and that stupid timer hasn’t gone off yet.
Focusing on the breath, pizza.
Focusing on the breath, my arm itches, I’ve been in the sun too long, maybe it’s cancer!
You get the idea. After a month of doing this (and slight improvements with technique and focus) my anxiety was gone. Seriously, no more anxiety. I was hooked and have had a regular meditation practice ever since.
Today I am happier and getting more so the longer I practice. I have a better relationship with my family, a better relationship with my own mind, I’m more relaxed, I’m a more effective Captain, I find it easier to pay attention, I’m much more resilient when faced with difficulty and so forth. I credit mindfulness meditation for these positive changes in my life and I simply can’t imagine where I’d be without it.
*The “Administrator” (FAA) has made it very clear that they will prosecute any individual who “knowingly and willingly falsifies” an application for medical certificate.
Meditation Groups
Carl hosts a local Mindfulness Meditation sitting group in Punta Gorda, Florida. Regularly scheduled meetings are open to the public and are not limited to pilots (although some members are pilots and crewmembers). He also supports online Mindfulness groups for Airline Pilots. For those individuals interested in joining a group, please Contact him directly for times and location.