When we think of mindfulness or meditation, the words conjure images of a quiet, private time of tranquility and peace. When we think of hospitals and doctors’ offices, we think of the anxiety, pain, and chaos we might experience there, and presume that mindfulness doesn’t have a place in health care. Some leading health care professionals want to change that.
Because they’ve seen the evidence that mindfulness is profoundly healing, they’re taking it right into the middle of the American health care system, from prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, through cure, palliative care, and even health administration and medical training. With the help of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists and sponsor of the Lynn Lectures on integrative medicine, we brought together three of the world’s leading specialists on the healing power of mindfulness and the benefits of integrative medicine for a discussion of the present and future of mind–body medicine.
How Awareness Heals
Barry Boyce: What are some of the benefits of mindfulness—both the practice and the state of mind—for our health and healing?
Jon Kabat-Zinn: To be in relationship to what you are going through, to hold it, and, in some sense, to befriend it—that is where the healing or transformative power of the practice of mindfulness lies. When we can actually be where we are, not trying to find another state of mind, we discover deep internal resources we can make use of. Coming to terms with things as they are is my definition of healing.
When we can actually be where we are, not trying to find another state of mind, we discover deep internal resources we can make use of. Coming to terms with things as they are is my definition of healing.
Appreciating this kind of awareness can have virtually immediate effects on health and well-being. As crazy as it sounds, it’s possible to befriend your pain or your fear—rather than feeling that you can’t get anywhere until this thing that bothers you is cut out or walled off or shut down. That’s a really profound realization for someone to come to. It’s very healing to realize, if only for a moment here and a moment there, that you can be in a wiser relationship with your interior experience than just being driven by liking it or hating it.
We say to our patients who come to Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction that there’s more right with them than wrong with them, no matter what their diagnosis is. We’re going to pour energy into what’s right with them, and see what happens. It’s a great adventure and it’s very satisfying to be able to see people light up as they experience the knowledge that it’s okay to be where they are as they are.
Daniel Siegel: To help people be with their pain, or with knowledge of their metastasis, or of their mortality, it’s so valuable for them to discover a spaciousness of mind where they realize they’re part of a universal flow of things—people get ill, people do die, and they’re part of that big picture. Within that spaciousness, there is a great clarity that isn’t the same as relaxation. It’s not just hanging loose. You get beyond your internal dialogue of “I want to be better now.” You can be in the midst of great difficulties and yet find immense composure and clarity.
Susan Bauer-Wu: It’s so very important for people who have cancer or any other serious illness to be in tune with what they’re experiencing, rather than shut off from it, which can so often be the case. One of the most important benefits of mindfulness is attentiveness to what is happening in your body, your mind, and your environment—being present for what’s happening to you, with you, and around you at a particular moment in time. Mindfulness becomes a foundation to help patients make good decisions and navigate all they have to go through.
Another benefit of mindfulness is having less emotional reactivity and more stability of mind. Not overreacting emotionally brings greater mental clarity, which is healthy in and of itself. Having stability of mind makes you better able to cope with the experience of illness and all it involves. That is a very significant and positive outcome.
Mindfulness as a Way of Being, Not a State of Perfection
Jon Kabat-Zinn: Actually, we don’t yet have a language for describing what mindfulness is. That’s one of the exciting parts of all the mindfulness research that’s happening. With so many different perspectives coming to bear on it, including neuroscience and clinical medicine, we will be able to describe it more richly. I’m fine with calling it a practice, but we have to distinguish it from many other kinds of practice. It’s not exactly like practicing the piano, for example. It does involve discipline in that way, but you’re not trying to become a virtuoso.
I prefer to call mindfulness a way of being. That gives people much more latitude in what they’re actually experiencing, because it’s not about trying to be in a special state, and if you’re not in that state, then you’re doing something wrong. It’s rather that you can bring awareness to any state you happen to be in. There’s nothing wrong with being caught up in difficult, stressful, agitated, or confusing moments.
That’s why characterizing mindfulness as a mind state can be problematic. If we’re talking about transforming health care or transforming any individual’s relationship to their own body—especially if they’re in pain or suffering with cancer or another life-threatening illness—the idea that mindfulness is a particular mind state can be misleading. When we’re experiencing these conditions, the mind might be very agitated and disturbed. There will be emotional reactions, as Susan mentioned. Therefore, the idea that there is a sought-after mind state, and that if you were really good enough you would find it and everything would be great for the rest of your life, would be a misapprehension of what mindfulness really is.
Daniel Siegel: In neuroscience, we do talk about a momentary set of brain firing patterns that we would call a brain state. If you want to jump from brain to mind, some people would call it a state of mind. You could make the argument that there is something we could call “awareness,” and within that general term there are many different ways of being aware.
For example, if I’m really angry, and I have a gun in my hand, I’m aware that the gun is in my hand. If I shoot someone, you could say I’m perfectly aware