The evidence is compelling: meditation can heal not only the spirit, but also our body. It allows you to fight relapses of depression, stress and its consequences for our health. It took decades for this news from the US to spread further around the world and gain supporters in Germany, Belgium, Great Britain, France …
Meditation has been successfully used in some European medical institutions, although many experts are still wary of it, and in some countries – for example, in Russia – very little is known about its medical possibilities. “Healing” meditation showed its effectiveness thirty years ago, when biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn developed a series of exercises that included special breathing and concentration techniques with the goal of “mindfulness-based stress reduction.”
Today, experts in the field of cognitive therapy add to these exercises the work of becoming aware of the depressive state (persistent gloomy thoughts, a drop in self-esteem), as well as the gradual training of control over these mental processes: relaxation, nonjudgmental acceptance of one’s emotions and thoughts and watching how they “swim, like clouds in the sky.” About the possibilities that this technique can open, we talked with its author.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is a biologist and professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts (USA). In 1979, he was at the forefront of “spiritual medicine”, the first to propose the use of meditation for medicinal purposes.
Psychologies: How did you get the idea to use Buddhist meditation techniques to deal with stress?
About it
- John Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, You’re Already There, Transpersonal Institute Press, 2000.
John Kabat-Zinn: Perhaps this idea arose as an unconscious attempt to reconcile my own parents. My father was a famous biologist, and my mother was an enthusiastic but unrecognized artist. Their views of the world were radically different, and this often prevented them from finding a common language. Even as a child, I realized that the worldview of each of us is incomplete in its own way. All this subsequently forced me to ask questions about the nature of our consciousness, about how exactly we are aware of everything that exists around. This is where my interest in science began. In my student years, I was engaged in Zen Buddhist practices, yoga, martial arts. And my desire to connect these practices with science became stronger and stronger. When I completed my PhD in molecular biology, I decided to devote my life to my project: to incorporate Buddhist meditation – without its religious aspect – into medical practice. My dream was to create a treatment program that would be scientifically controlled and philosophically acceptable to everyone.
And how did you do it?
When I started my project, I was a Ph.D. in biology, with a PhD from the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a successful career in medicine. That was enough to get the green light. When it turned out that my program was effective, I received wide support. Thus the XNUMX-week Meditation-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program was born. Each participant is offered a weekly group session and one hour a day of home audio recording practice. Gradually, we began to apply our program in the treatment of anxiety, phobias, addictions, depression …
What type of meditation do you use in your programs?
We use different meditation practices – both traditional exercises according to a certain methodology, and more free techniques. But they are all based on the development of awareness of reality. This kind of attention is at the heart of Buddhist meditation. Briefly, I can characterize this state as a complete transfer of attention to the present moment – without any assessment of oneself or reality. This position creates fertile ground for peace of mind, peace of mind, for compassion and love. We hope that by teaching people how to meditate, we keep the spirit of the Buddhist path, dharma, but at the same time we speak in a secular language that everyone can understand. We offer program participants different exercises. With a mental scan of the body (body scan), a person, lying down, focuses on the sensations in each part of it. In sitting meditation, attention is directed to different objects: breath, sounds, thoughts, mental images. We also have the practice of objectless relaxed attention, also called “open presence” or “mental stillness.” It was first proposed by the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. At our trainings, you can learn to move consciously – walk and do yoga – and consciously eat. Freer practices help us learn to include an open and nonjudgmental perception of reality at any moment of everyday life: when we communicate with children and family, do shopping, clean up the house, play sports. If we don’t let our inner monologue distract us, we remain fully mindful of everything we do and experience. Ultimately, life itself becomes the practice of meditation. The main thing is not to miss a single minute of your existence, to constantly feel the present, that very “here and now”.
What diseases can meditation help with?
The list of such diseases is growing all the time. But it is also important what exactly we mean by cure. Are we healed when we restore the same state of the body as it was before the illness or injury? Or when we learn to accept the situation as it is, and, despite the problems, live it with the greatest comfort? Healing in the first sense is not always feasible even with the latest means of modern medicine. But we can take the second path to healing at any time while we are alive. This is what patients learn from experience when they practice our program or other awareness-based medical and psychological techniques. We are engaged in the so-called active medicine, which encourages the patient to independently begin the path to well-being and health, relying on the body’s ability to self-regulate. Meditation training is a useful adjunct to modern medical treatment.
Awareness Meditation in Russia
“The John Kabat-Zinn method is based on fundamental scientific research in the field of neurophysiology,” confirms Dmitry Shamenkov, PhD, head of the research project “Conscious Health Management”.
“In fact, these studies are based on the works of such outstanding Russian physiologists as Pavlov or Sechenov. They proved how important a person’s ability to influence the functioning of his nervous system can be in order to achieve health. The basic tool for this, according to Kabat-Zinn, is the so-called awareness – of our feelings, thoughts, actions – which allows a person to feel better and his body, helps the mechanisms of his self-regulation. If you master the skills of such work on managing your health, including through conscious stress reduction, recovery will go much faster. In those foreign clinics where they understand the importance of this approach, it is possible to achieve phenomenal results in the treatment of even complex diseases (neurological and cardiovascular, immunological disorders and metabolic diseases such as diabetes mellitus). Unfortunately, this approach is practically unfamiliar to Russian medicine: today I know of only one project to create such a stress reduction center in Moscow.”
Commentary by Andrei Konchalovsky
Contemplation in my mind is the most important thing, because it is part of the path to a high spiritual level of a person. For meditation, the key concept is “concentration”, when you slowly turn off the outside world from yourself, enter this special state. But it is impossible to enter into it simply by sitting with closed eyes. So you can sit for an hour or two – and still think continuously: “What will I do later, tomorrow or in a year?” Krishnamurti spoke of a chatty mind. Our brain is chatting – it is so arranged, it creates some thoughts all the time. To exclude a thought, a colossal conscious effort of the will is needed. This is the pinnacle of self-control. And I envy those who can do it. Because I didn’t master it myself – I’m jumping off into the stupid chatter of the brain!
In fact, you propose a new approach to the disease and the patient?
Yes, in treatment we prioritize the concepts of attention and care, which is fully consistent with the principles of Hippocrates. It was these rules of medical ethics that laid the foundation for modern medicine. But recently, they are often forgotten, because doctors are forced to see as many patients as possible during their working day.
Have you personally experienced the benefits of meditation?
Only those who do it themselves can teach others meditation and awareness. Meditation has changed my life. If I hadn’t started meditating at 22, I don’t know if I would be alive today. Meditation helped me come to harmony between different aspects of my life and personality, gave me the answer to the question: “What can I bring to the world?” I don’t know of anything better than meditation to help us be fully aware of ourselves in the present moment in our lives and relationships – no matter how difficult it can be sometimes. Awareness itself is simple, but it is difficult to achieve. It’s hard work, but what else are we meant for? Not to take up this task means to miss the deepest and most joyful in our life. It’s so easy to get lost in the constructions of your mind, get lost in the desire to be better or be in another place – and stop realizing the importance of the present moment.
It turns out that meditation is a way of life and more of a prevention than a cure…
No, I did not accidentally say that the healing properties of meditation have been fully proven – it simply cannot be perceived as a treatment in the classical sense of the word. Of course, meditation has a preventive effect: by accustoming yourself to listen to your feelings, it is easier to feel that something is not right in the body. In addition, meditation strengthens the immune system and gives us the ability to fully experience every moment of our lives. The stronger our physical and mental health, the better we endure stress and resist disease processes and the faster we recover. When I talk about meditation, I mean improving health throughout life, and a person’s goals change at every stage of life…
Are there contraindications for meditation?
Personally, I would say no, but my colleagues advise against meditation in case of acute depression. They believe that it can reinforce one of the mechanisms of depression – “chewing” gloomy thoughts. In my opinion, the main problem is motivation. If it is weak, then mindfulness meditation is difficult to practice. After all, it requires a serious change in lifestyle: one must not only set aside time for meditation exercises, but also train awareness in everyday life.
If meditation really helps, why is it not used in clinical and hospital practice?
Meditation is used, and very widely! More than 250 hospitals and clinics around the world offer stress reduction programs through meditation, and the number is growing every year. Meditation-based methods are being used more and more in most of Europe. They have been used in medicine for many years, and recently psychologists have also become interested in them. Today, the method is taught in the medical departments of prestigious universities such as Stanford and Harvard. And I’m sure this is just the beginning.
* Research started (since 1979) and continues today by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Stress Reduction Clinic in the USA (today the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society): www.umassmed.edu