The man behind mindfulness meditation is coming to Ireland later this month. He tells SYLVIA THOMPSONwhy he believes his methods can help people whose lives have been turned upside down by the recession
FOR MANY PEOPLE, American doctor, Jon Kabat-Zinn is the modern day founder of meditation. Through his books and meditation tapes and CDs, he has encouraged thousands of people around the world to incorporate meditation into their daily lives.
And, the widespread teaching of his eight-week course in mindfulness meditation has played a big part in demystifying these ancient Buddhist practises for Westerners.
Later this month, Kabat-Zinn will visit Ireland for the first time. Speaking to The Irish Timesin advance of this visit, he says that meditation has come of age, due in no small way to influences of people such as the Dalia Lama, Vietnamese monk, Thick Nhat Hanh and Tibetan monk, Sogyal Rinpoche.
“There is something to be said for the emergence of certain kinds of insights and views of things when its time has come. Before that it seems nobody is interested. Mindfulness meditation has reached the point of interest that it seems to be coming up through the floor boards,” says Kabat-Zinn who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
By embracing a scientific approach into the study of meditation practices, Kabat-Zinn has been to the forefront of the mainstreaming of meditation in healthcare settings around the world. His first studies at the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre in Boston spawned numerous other studies which show how people cope better with stress, anxiety, pain and illness by practising mindfulness meditation.
“We have taken 18,000 medical patients through our clinic in the past 30 years and there are hundreds of other clinics around the world doing the same thing which in itself shows that the approach is accessible to anyone,” says Kabat-Zinn.
Interestingly, patients with all kinds of different medical conditions come together for these courses.
“Mindfulness awareness finds a common pathway that makes us human by paying attention to the breath, the body, the mind and the emotions. We pour energy into what’s right with people to bring an unbalanced situation back into balance,” he explains.
Training healthcare practitioners in mindfulness meditation has also become a significant part of Kabat-Zinn’s work. “It’s important to bring the care back into healthcare,” he says. “It is easy for the individual to get lost in a healthcare system and to become a number or a diagnosis. It’s easy to forget that every person is a multi-dimensional human being with fears, aspirations and families – loving or non-loving,” he says.
“The core foundation of medicine is the Hippocratic Oath which is first to do no harm. By not being sensitive enough to what each person is carrying about is a particular kind of harm which goes against this absolute core foundation of modern medicine,” he says.
“I spent most of my time training healthcare professionals who are suffering as much as their patients in a system that can become impersonal. They also need a way to make meaning in life so as they are not on a treadmill,” he explains.
When in Ireland, Kabat-Zinn will speak at an international spiritual care conference in Killarney, Co Kerry whose principal aim is to give caregivers the tools and techniques to integrate spiritual care into self-care and patient care.
But as more and more people practice meditation in the Western world, many others wonder what motivates them to do so?
“It’s a willingness as a human being to believe in their own potential for learning, growing, healing and transformation across their lifespan that brings people to meditation,” says Kabat-Zinn.
And, according to him, the ideal candidate for a mindfulness meditation course is someone who is willing to suspend their judgment. "In the stress clinic, we find that those people who come with a sceptical but open attitude do the best," he writes in Full Catastrophe Living(Piatkus) which together with Coming To Our Senses(Piatkus) have become the Kabat-Zinn 'bibles' of mindfulness meditation.
“It’s the practices themselves – yoga, meditation, etc – that cultivate it. Without the practices, all you are doing is intellectualising,” he says. “And, it’s not like you won’t make mistakes but you’ll make more creative ones by charting a course in the direction of greater wellbeing, sanity, wisdom and kindness.”
Conscious that many people are looking for supports in this current period of economic recession, Kabat-Zinn says, “Mindfulness can be so powerful in times of great stress and economic turmoil because it helps people realise that life is just as worth living with no money as with millions. There is no such thing as easy money for ever. The economic boom was driven by greed and people lose their psychological acumen when they get greedy. Now, people will have to depend on their own beings and relationships which give much more meaning to life.”
He adds, “by cultivating attention, people can restore their sense of resilience and their capacity to deal with stressful and painful experiences in life – including emotional upheavals. Mindfulness meditation is a first person direct experience that is transformative and healing.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn is one of the keynote speakers at the International Spiritual Care Conference on April 27th and 28th in the Hotel Europe, Killarney, Co Kerry. See spiritualcareconference.com, tel: 027-73403 or e-mail conference09@rigpa.ie
He will give a public talk, entitled This Analog Life: Bringing Mindfulness to What is Most Important in an Always Uncertain Worldin the D4 Hotel (formerly Jurys Hotel), Ballsbridge, Dublin on Wednesday, April 29th at 7.30pm. See seminars.ie or telephone 01-2875524 for more details