Tag Archives: Jon Kabat-Zinn

Brought mindfulness to medical practice as aid to stress reduction, Buddhist meditator, author and speaker

Kabat-​​Zinn reminds us

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Los Ange­les Times Fully expe­ri­enc­ing the present: a prac­tice for every­one, reli­gious or not

Prac­tices such as med­i­ta­tion, yoga or East­ern mar­tial arts can aid the process, but mind­ful­ness is fun­da­men­tally an “accep­tance” or “com­ing to terms with things as they are,” not in the sense of pas­sive res­ig­na­tion but active aware­ness, says Kabat-​​Zinn.

Although this arti­cle from Octo­ber does not break new ground — the Mindfulness-​​Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) approach is well known — but Kabat-Zinn’s insis­tence on mind­ful­ness not being a spir­i­tual or reli­gious expe­ri­ence is ger­mane to the pub­lic dis­cus­sion about all these exotic prac­tices tak­ing over the Amer­i­can mind. He’s so clear in how he opens up the dis­cus­sion by sus­pend­ing the more tra­di­tional terms for defin­ing the expe­ri­ence. I’m going to have to re-​​read one of his books (well, maybe an arti­cle or a chapter).

The mindful way

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Per­haps just as impor­tant as the Beg­ley book is the recent pub­li­ca­tion of The Mind­ful Way through Depres­sion: Free­ing Your­self from Chronic Unhap­pi­ness (The Guil­ford Press, 2007) by J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teas­dale, Zin­del V. Segal, and Jon Kabat-​​Zinn. It gives a detailed process of how to imple­ment a med­i­ta­tion prac­tice — and find hap­pi­ness at the same time. Or in more Bud­dhist terms, relieve human suf­fer­ing. The book comes with an audio CD with guided med­i­ta­tions by Jon Kabat-​​Zinn. It’s a much more prac­ti­cal book, com­pared to Begley’s: “Mind­ful­ness is the aware­ness that emerges tho­rugh pay­ing atten­tion on pur­pose, in the present moment, and non-​​judgmentally to things as they are.” Although it may not seem like it, but that is a mouth­ful of mind­ful­ness. You don’t need a psy­cho­log­i­cal study — you just have to sit and focus.

What I learned about the Buddha

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I have been lug­ging Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, Com­ing to Our Senses: Heal­ing Our­selves and the World Through Mind­ful­ness, around for the past month, read­ing on the Metro, rather than stick­ing my nose in a newspaper.

Kabat-​​Zinn tells us that Bud­dha was not a Bud­dhist and that Bud­dhism is not really a reli­gion, but a highly sophis­ti­cated psy­cho­log­i­cal tech­nique for reliev­ing human suf­fer­ing. That 17th and 18th cen­tury West­ern­ers (“eth­nol­o­gists, philol­o­gists and reli­gious schol­ars”) put the reli­gion tag on the Buddha’s fol­low­ers because that’s the way West­ern­ers’ brains worked, they needed to clas­sify them with Chris­tians, Mus­lims and pagans.

“… so we could say that the his­tor­i­cal fig­ure of the Bud­dha, and those who have fol­lowed his lead, gave the world a well-​​defined algo­rithm, a path of inquiry, which he him­self pur­sued in search of what was almost fun­da­men­tal to the nature of human­ity: the pos­si­bil­ity of being fully con­scious, fully awake, and free from the fet­ters of our own con­di­tion­ing, includ­ing our unex­am­ined habits of thought and per­cep­tion and the afflic­tive emo­tions that so inti­mately and fre­quently accom­pany them unbid­den.” [page 129]

So “Bud­dhism” and Zen are not doc­trines of faith, but sys­tems of method­olo­gies to explore the human con­di­tion. Just as yoga is not a reli­gion — and you can prac­tice it while remain­ing a Chris­t­ian, Jew or athe­ist. This real­iza­tion intrigues me because I now have another tool set to add to my sur­vival kit and explains why I have felt drawn to under­stand­ing more about the Bud­dha and his teachings.

Cool, I feel more empow­ered already. Of course, I now have enough knowl­edge to be dan­ger­ous. Excuse my over-​​generalization.

Mind, Core and Solitude

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Anne Mor­row Lind­bergh was a wise women. I’ve been read­ing Kabat-Zinn’s lat­est book, and the fol­low­ing pas­sage res­onated with it, even though it was writ­ten decades ago. Maybe she was Buddhist:

It is not phys­i­cal soli­tude that actu­ally sep­a­rates one from oth­ers; not phys­i­cal iso­la­tion, but spir­i­tual iso­la­tion. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilder­ness that cuts you from the peo­ple you love. It is the wilder­ness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wan­ders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to one­self then one is estranged from oth­ers too. If one is out of touch with one­self, then one can­not touch oth­ers. How often in a large city, shak­ing hands with my friends, I have felt the wilder­ness stretch­ing between us. Both of us were wan­der­ing in arid wastes, hav­ing lost the springs that nour­ished us – or hav­ing found them dry. Only when one is con­nected to one’s own core is one con­nected to oth­ers, I am begin­ning to dis­cover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

This excerpt comes from Gift from the Sea, writ­ten in 1955. I came across it in the Daily Dig sent out by Bruder­hof Communities.

Mindfulness and burdens

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I am read­ing Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Com­ing to Our Senses: Heal­ing Our­selves and the World Through Mind­ful­ness. It’s a really ambi­tious book that addresses the per­sonal and the global. It’s a heavy assign­ment because it’s 600 pages and weighs like a ton. It’s a kind of daily act of pen­i­tence to remind me about pay­ing atten­tion and cul­ti­vat­ing mind­ful­ness. That’s what I’m sweat­ing about on the mat, to purge and purify the bull­shit and get down to the essentials.

Worthy reading

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Jon Kabat-Zinn’s new book Com­ing to Our Senses: Heal­ing Our­selves and the World Through Mind­ful­ness
has now appeared. All 656 pages of it. Kabat-​​Zinn prob­a­bly has a lot to say, and I will def­i­nitely read it. I have sworn that I will fin­ish at least two of the books I have already begun read­ing before I order it.

I should men­tion that Kabat-​​Zinn has done some of the most respected sci­en­tif­i­cally based research on the effects of med­i­ta­tion, mind­ful­ness and yoga in the past 20 years. The book brings together his inves­ti­ga­tion and think­ing since his pre­vi­ous book, pub­lished in 1995.

I have already pur­chased a new set of Kabat-​​Zinn audio CDs/​tapes, includ­ing a bodyscape, a sound­scape, a mind­scape, a nows­cape, and a bunch more fun things to do while you’re mind­ful. Almost four full hours of pro­gram­ming — of course, most of it is silence. I’ve used his pre­vi­ous set for more than two years and enjoyed them. They are cur­rently on loan to my son in grad­u­ate school.

An encounter with pain

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I went to a den­tal appoint­ment in the morn­ing; it was a follow-​​up to treat­ment that had been done last week. By the time the anes­thetic started wear­ing off, my jaw was throb­bing. The nerve end­ings must have been hyper­sen­si­tive the sec­ond time around. The pain was dis­tract­ing and made me feel like a zom­bie. Coin­ci­den­tally, I’ve been read­ing Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Cat­a­stro­phe Liv­ing, which is about using med­i­ta­tion and yoga to face pain. Of course, Kabat-​​Zinn is talk­ing about chronic pain from seri­ous ill­ness, not just pain result­ing from a den­tal visit. But pain is still pain, in the last count.

I decided to see if my yoga prac­tice could help me. At lunch, I went to an avail­able meet­ing room at work and shut the door. I did 15 min­utes of pranayama and 30 min­utes of med­i­ta­tion. It really did help me. The pain was still there but it seemed to shrink. It was no longer throb­bing and radi­at­ing down my neck.

After work, I went to my evening yoga class. Dur­ing warm up, I scanned my body and noticed that the pain had stiff­ened up the mus­cles in my neck and shoul­ders, even though the pain in my jaw was less severe that ear­lier in the day. By the end of the class, the ten­sion had been released and I was drenched in sweat and energy.

And to top it off, I shared the class with my 27-​​year-​​old daugh­ter. We had a light sup­per after­ward, talk­ing about yoga, foot­ball play­offs and life plans. Talk about feel good.

I orig­i­nally wrote this account as part of my par­tic­i­pa­tion in the online course with Kelly McGo­ni­gal. It’s been quite enlight­en­ing and empow­er­ing. We’ll see how it plays out over the next 50 weeks.

Reading and reference

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I bought two books:

600 and 400 pages, respec­tively. Looks like I have my bed­time read­ing booked for the rest of the year.

The third pillar of my practice — meditation

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I never thought of med­i­ta­tion as being piv­otal to my tak­ing up yoga and pranayama. I wanted the ben­e­fits that yogic breath­ing gave. Med­i­ta­tion seemed like a non-​​essential frill. None of my yoga or AOL instruc­tors seemed too keen on push­ing me in that direc­tion. I was pretty clue­less even though I was closer than I had ever thought.

Actu­ally, I had been labor­ing at med­i­ta­tion with­out even real­iz­ing it. I had Jon Kabat-Zinn’s CDs about mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, but it seemed like such hard work to do the exer­cises. In Decem­ber I started doing the gen­tle yoga exer­cises. I could not focus my mind on the med­i­ta­tions. I’d go through the motions, and scratch my head about what I was doing wrong.

But after I started get­ting more seri­ous about my yoga prac­tice and started see­ing the ben­e­fits of my AOL kriya, I sud­denly got the knack. The key lay in my breath  — once my breath was let free, unfet­tered, expan­sive, it was a much big­ger tar­get for my mind to focus on. I could focus either on my belly mov­ing up and down or the air going through my nos­trils or the sound of my breath. They all worked.

Once I tasted the release of med­i­ta­tion, I was a con­vert. Just one ses­sion turned into a daily prac­tice. Now I prac­tice med­i­ta­tion for about 10-​​30 min­utes every night. I never really had a prob­lem with time — I started out at 30 min­utes and only drop down the time when I’m really tired. Med­i­ta­tion slows down my brain and stills my body. I usu­ally find myself going to bed ear­lier because I take my med­i­ta­tion time and then go straight to bed. I usu­ally hit my pil­low and am out like a light — I used to toss and turn in bed for hours.

I also find myself grab­bing short ses­sions dur­ing the day — rid­ing the Metro, after lunch in a quiet room at the OAS, wait­ing to pick up my daughter.

I am look­ing for a chance to approach med­i­ta­tion more sys­tem­at­i­cally. I will take some classes at the Insight Med­i­ta­tion Cen­ter or the Shamb­hala Cen­ter, both of Wash­ing­ton. Of course, with the Web, there is lots of help online to get you pointed in the right direc­tion. Have a look at my resource gate­way.

The Brain, Science and Meditation — clashing value systems?

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MIT Tech­nol­ogy Review Med­i­ta­tion and the Brain: “Of course, the monk lifestyle isn’t for every­one. So a recently pub­lished study on the effects of short med­i­ta­tion ses­sions with novice prac­ti­tion­ers is per­haps of greater rel­e­vance to the rest of us. As reported in the jour­nal Psy­cho­so­matic Med­i­cine, David­son and Jon Kabat-​​Zinn, a med­ical pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts, Amherst, con­ducted a small con­trolled study of “mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion” train­ing for employ­ees of a small biotech firm. Four months after an eight-​​week med­i­ta­tion course, the researchers found that emo­tional and immune sys­tem ben­e­fits per­sisted — with just 15-​​minute med­i­ta­tion ses­sions only two or three times a week.”

I came back to this arti­cle after read­ing it two month ago. It caught my atten­tion because it cap­tured my pen­chant for ratio­nal­iz­ing my intel­lec­tual queries and my emo­tional sat­is­fac­tion with my yoga and med­i­ta­tion prac­tice. When­ever I ease into med­i­ta­tion mode, it’s like slip­ping into a hot bath. You think to your­self — “This is so right.”

But I sud­denly real­ized that there is another level in which this feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion can bor­der on self-​​righteousness. There can be all kinds of claims about the value of yoga and med­i­ta­tion that can­not be con­firmed objec­tively. You can see it a lot in the “life style” choices that sur­round these tra­di­tions. Do I have to become a veg­i­t­ar­ian to fol­low through on my new yoga-​​based options. How can you prove some of the claims made about yoga and med­i­ta­tion — cur­ing back pain, man­ag­ing mood swings or increased holiness.

The inter­est­ing angle is the col­lab­o­ra­tion between West­ern sci­ence and East­ern wisdom.

You can find out more about this trend by going to Inves­ti­gat­ing the Mind for the Sep­tem­ber 2003 con­fer­ence that brought the Dalai Lama to Cam­bridge, Mass or the Mind and Life Insti­tute, the orga­ni­za­tion that has been explor­ing the trend for the past decade or so.