Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Gains Momentum
It's been 35 years since Jon Kabat-Zinn recruited chronically ill patients who weren't responding well to traditional medical treatments to participate in his experimental stress-reduction program. The February 2014 issue of Mindful Magazine celebrates Kabat-Zinn’s contribution and explains how Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has entered the mainstream of health care, scientific study, and public policy.Asked why he thinks MBSR practice is now prevalent in so many areas, including depression, childbirth, education, and addiction to name just a few, Kabat-Zinn explains,
“It’s really a matter of planting seeds. You never really know what will sprout from these seeds and how they will spread. That’s the beauty of it. It’s based on not-knowing—approaching the world inquisitively, with a fresh mind … If we had come in with a plan, with an ideology, with all the answers, I think it would have remained small. Instead, those of us involved in this work have paid close attention to just a few essential elements. One is that mindfulness is not a special state you achieve through a trick or a technique. It is a way of being. I have a lot of faith that if people just learn how to be in the present through simple mindfulness meditation, then the practice does the work of transformation and healing.”[1]
Kabat-Zinn’s model for an 8-week course in MBSR is a framework, which he explains is as effective as the person who teaches it. The instructor must live the concept and embody it to the students, or it won’t work, because it must be authentic. It’s not without challenges:
“As a teacher, you are trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed in words. Mindfulness is also heartfulness—you need poetry as much as prose. What truly makes mindfulness training work is love. If the teacher holding the class is profoundly in love with what they are doing and with the people in the class in a fundamental way, it will work.” [2]
The practice of mindfulness can seem paradoxical to some. For example, the name “MBSR” implies a goal of reducing stress, which seems oriented toward gaining a benefit. Yet the practice stresses not trying to attain benefit and being present to oneself and one’s circumstances without judgment--accepting what already is. Kabat-Zinn notes that the paradox is unavoidable:
“There are tremendous benefits that arise from mindfulness practice, but it works precisely because we don’t try to attain benefit. Instead, we befriend ourselves as we are. We learn how to drop in on ourselves, visit, and hang out in awareness.”[3]
MSBR seems destined to continue its global spread. Young scientists are entering this field, building careers in what’s now called “contemplative neuroscience.” Kabat-Zinn notes that as few as ten years ago, that choice of subject might have ended their careers.Having built strong roots in healthcare, MSBR is now spreading to the field of education at all levels:[4]
- “Mindful Schools” and “Inner Kids” are two programs in the United States helping teachers and students to share a mindful classroom.
- There are several federally-funded test sites where teachers and students are learning mindfulness practice.
- A school district in Vermont has developed a mindfulness teacher’s manual for classroom use.
- A pilot program in Wisconsin has adapted a form of MBSR to decrease teacher burnout and increase self-compassion.
Kabat-Zinn reports that business leaders are bringing mindfulness into their work, as well as politicians, economists, and policy makers. Congressman Tim Ryan is an advocate for mindfulness in health care, schools, and the military. Across the ocean, England’s Parliament spent a day with him learning about mindfulness practice.[5]
“I also gave the keynote at a day-long conference in London called Mindfulness in Schools. What I saw there brought me to tears. Here were seven-year-olds addressing 900 people, and they were completely self-possessed talking about their mindfulness practice and what it was doing for them. You could tell it was unrehearsed. They just spontaneously said what mindfulness meant to them.”[6]
I have always been inspired by Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work and agree with him that mindfulness practice is also about heartfulness. I, too, am profoundly in love with living and teaching the practice. If you’d like to learn more about it, please contact me. Peace, Dr. Pamm