In 1979, a report from the Surgeon General prompted Jon Kabat-Zinn to take action. The United States' Healthy People report documents the country's struggle with chronic disease and links poor health to harmful social conditions such as poverty and unhealthy habits.
“This was a very strong argument that no matter how many billions of dollars we spend on the health problems of the American people, no amount of money will make a difference,” said a researcher at the institute at the time. Kabat-Zinn said. He attended the University of Massachusetts Medical School and taught yoga and meditation on the side. “We need to ignite a passion in people to take care of themselves.”
So Kabat-Zinn founded a clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School that teaches something called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The eight-week course offered a structured, secular approach to meditation. This includes learning how to maintain body awareness in the present moment. The goal, Kabat-Zinn said, was to teach people “how to take better care of themselves, not as a replacement for drugs, but as a complement to what drugs can do.”
Over the next several decades, his scientific research, teachings, and writings grew into a movement that leverages meditation and mindfulness in mainstream medicine, now active in hundreds of hospitals and medical centers. A new field of research has also emerged showing that this practice can help with conditions such as pain, anxiety, and immune response.
In recent years, mindfulness has gained attention as a potential tool to address population-level issues such as trauma, loneliness, and addiction. Kabat-Zinn, now a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of several books, including the classic “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” says his intention in using this powerful tool has always been social change. states that there was.
In a wide-ranging interview, Kabat-Zinn shared his thoughts on how mindfulness can extend beyond individual self-improvement and influence social change. Here are his five insights.
These interview excerpts have been edited for length and clarity.
1. Today’s widespread adoption of mindfulness is “radical beyond imagination”
Medicine can't deal with many things. [societal] The problems we are currently facing are being solved very well. For example, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has said that loneliness is widespread and causes significant mental health problems, which have become even more acute in the aftermath of the pandemic. . And that's where mindfulness comes in.
[If you look at the] The number of articles published annually on the topic of mindfulness in the medical literature…the number is exploding and continues to move in that direction. Mindfulness centers are now being set up in universities and medical centers around the world.
So, in a sense, my goal of being a public health intervention is already working that way. But what about taking it to the next level and starting to hold the government accountable, which has much more power than any university or health center?
This is what Vivek Murthy is doing, and he's published his own guided mindfulness meditations on an app called Calm.
It was beyond my wildest imagination to imagine that the US Surgeon General would draw on his own experience with meditation to provide a wide range of short, beautiful, and accessible guided meditations to the American people in his own voice. could not.
It's so radical that it's hard to imagine from the perspective of 1979.
2. Mindfulness fights social isolation by helping you connect with yourself and others
There's a big difference between being lonely and being alone. [behind the] The loneliness epidemic – and learning how to be alone. If you don't know yourself, it's very difficult to truly relate to others.
Mindfulness is so powerful because it teaches us how to connect with ourselves, starting with our bodies. [It starts with] A willingness to stay in the present moment and just see what happens.
Everyone has a body. Each person is breathing. And have we ever paid attention to it? This is like turning the tables on your own story about how inadequate you are and saying, “Look, this is a bloody miracle.” Everything about being human is an absolute miracle.
We all come from anonymous generations over hundreds of millions of years, producing this kind of genetic chromosome combination called “me.” I live a relatively short period of time, probably pass on my genes, and then disappear. So why not try to recognize the miracle of this moment?
You are an amazing human being with an infinite capacity for love, wisdom, and connection who will help make the world a safer and better place. [for] Whatever you love most.
And the miracle of miracles is that there is consciousness and that it is embodied. And it has profound implications for healing, both at the physical level, at the body-political level, and ultimately at the level of public health. The more people take responsibility for themselves, the more they realize that there is no such thing as “me.” In quarantine.
3. In a technology-driven world, there is a huge risk of becoming “away from ourselves.”
We are so distracted. For thousands of years, we were highly distracted until the digital revolution arrived. And now we carry supercomputers in our pockets, bags, and backpacks. We are constantly looking for things to entertain us, to entertain us, to distract us, to take us, to distract us. It has become extremely addictive.
And what are we turning a blind eye to? Who are we really?After all, the biggest public health problem is [that] In the end, you become distant from yourself.
From a public health perspective, we may need to return to some first principles before abandoning our analog selves. Perhaps before we become too hybrid, we need to understand what it means to be analog, both internally and externally. Or digital colonization.
already [many are] The mental health effects of these digital relationships are creating a kind of sick environment that can lead to all sorts of real illnesses (dis and easy). (Let's put a hyphen in between.) is sounding the alarm.
we know from [decades of] Current research shows that not only can the mind actually cause disease in the body, but it can also be reversed and cured.
Meditate with Jon Kabat-Zinn
4. If you make your mind your “friend,” you may find that “there is more right than wrong for you.”
the work [of mindfulness] It is the inner work of cultivating moment-to-moment awareness and paying attention to your mind, your body, and your heart. It's the way our mind troubles us, drives us crazy, and increases our stress. And then you learn how to befriend everything and lay out the welcome mat, for example, the awareness of pain confirms that in this moment there is no pain.
If you're anxious and you know you're anxious, you already have ways to manage your anxiety. Because knowing is knowing.
Awareness is much bigger than you think. So what happens when we learn so much about accessing it that it becomes our place to live and hang out?
My default mode is to recognize, as a neuroscientist might say, rather than a confused mind scattered all over the place – I like this, I don't like that, how I'm not good enough, etc. I have an idea.
What mindfulness provides you from the beginning is first-hand experience and evidence that no matter what is wrong with you, there is more right than wrong for you. The proof is, “Are you breathing?” Is there a body? Does it exist?
5. Life itself is a meditation practice.
[It’s better] I don't need to make any time schedules for how long it will take for me to reach complete liberation or anything like that. However, make this your default mode and try to actually live your life. Because every moment is unique and precious.
Here's a line from a poem by Derek Walcott, an Afro-Caribbean Nobel Prize-winning poet. “Give wine. Give bread. Give your heart back / To yourself, to the stranger who loved you / To the person you ignored all your life / For others.” I know this in my heart: Take down the love letters from the bookshelf/The photographs, the desperate notes/Peel yourself from the mirror./Sit down and feast on your life.”
That's very wise advice. And he sitting there is no joke. In other words, “sit down.” There's no need to call it meditation. If you think that he is just sitting, you are wrong in a way because he is alive. If life itself were not a meditation practice, there would be no meditation practice.
I don't see why all Americans can't do that, like we all go outside and play tennis or pickleball or football or whatever. That means anyone can do it. There are countless doors to rooms of mindfulness and heartfulness. And it doesn't matter which door you go through. The important thing is to step into the space of your own potential as a human being.
It's all here, in this moment, in your consciousness. We have everything you need.
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