Making Space

Don't fill the Gaps:

"Gaps between activities allow our minds to reopen, expand and have original, often time-and-effort-saving big ideas. So don't walk with your head down, lost in thought. Don't just text and call folks when you're driving or waiting. Don't read the newspaper when you're in the bathroom. Allow a little space in your life. Doing nothing is the foundation for doing anything - and it's one thing we Americans are really, really bad at. So let go of one or two minutes of entertainment a day - and look out upon this life and world"

Waylon Lewis, Huffington Post

Help for Helpers

Training in mindfulness meditation can alleviate burnout experienced by many in the helping professions and improve their well-being, University of Rochester Medical Center researchers report.

The training also can expand a physician's capacity to relate to patients and enhance patient-centered care, according to the researchers, led by Michael S. Krasner, M.D., associate professor of Clinical Medicine."From the patient's perspective, we hear all too often of dissatisfaction in the quality of presence from their physician. From the practitioner's perspective, the opportunity for deeper connection is all too often missed in the stressful, complex, and chaotic reality of medical practice," Krasner said.

"Enhancing the capacity of the physician to experience fully the clinical encounter—not only its pleasant but also its most unpleasant aspects—without judgment but with a sense of curiosity and adventure seems to have had a profound effect on the experience of stress and burnout. It also seems to enhance the physician's ability to connect with the patient as a unique human being and to center care around that uniqueness"

Seventy physicians from the Rochester, N.Y., area were involved in the study and training. The training involved eight intensive weekly sessions that were 2 ½ hours long, an all-day session and a maintenance phase of 10 monthly 2 ½-hour sessions.

Edward A. Stehlik, M.D., of the New York branch of the American College of Physicians and an internist who practices near Buffalo, said the training was "the most useful thing I've done since my medical training to help me in my practice of medicine."

"If you asked my patients, I think they would say I listen more carefully since the training and that they feel they can explain things to me more forthrightly and more easily," Stehlik said. "Even the brief moments with patients are more productive. Are there doctors who desperately need this training? Yes, absolutely."

ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2009)

Stress

The pace of life today can cause people to push their minds and bodies to the limit, often at the expense of physical and mental well-being. According to the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard University, 60 - 90% of all medical visits in the US are for stress-related disorders.

Letting go

And to die, which is the letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan, when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.

-Rilke

Non-Doing

"I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room."

- May Sarton
Journal of a Solitude

New Beginnings

A new MBSR Course starts this evening, and as always I am looking forward to meeting new people and to working with them on developing the day-to-day practice of mindfulness. Starting a new Course always stimulates me, because it brings me back to starting again, with fresh eyes, a collective ongoing work. I am exploring again, in an intensive way, a familiar terrain. It is not just the work of those who are starting the Course, it is my work also.

It renews my day to day life, because daily practice is an ongoing laboratory for examining my mind and my life. And they are always changing. So meditation is a starting over, a new beginning, every time I sit down. The introductory words said tonight can be freshly applied every day: No matter how many times your mind wanders, simply go back to noticing your breath, without making any judgments. In other words, Don't be too interested in how well you are doing. Be interested in how well you start over.

It is the same in our lives outside of formal practice. We make intentions to change, to have a new beginning. And often we fail. However, we base our confidence to change on a gentle attitude toward ourselves. When we get lost we simply say, "I will start over again", without judgment, thus avoiding the negative energy of blame and returning to the present moment. In this way we cultivate faith and confidence and move toward the future.

Distractions

There is a lot of research going on these days into the effects and benefits of meditation. Psychologists at John Moores University, Liverpool, tested meditators and non-meditators to see how effectively they could tune out distractions and complete a detailed task, as well as to see how well they could override their automatic thoughts and behaviours. They found that experienced meditators performed significantly better than those who had never meditated. Thus it seems that meditation promotes the flexibility needed to accomplish more and stay calm in stressful situations.

Better than Drugs?

The 2008 Annual Meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists at Imperial College, London was told that the evidence-base for the therapeutic value of meditation for a wide range of health problems was significantly stronger than most pharmaceutical products. A new meta-analysis of 823 randomly controlled trials of meditation, conducted by the US National Institute of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, showed the clinical benefits of meditation across a wide range of physical and emotional disorders.

"Meditation is a way of life rather than quick fix achieved by using gimmicks such as incense, music and light," Dr Avdesh Sharma, past president of the Indian Psychiatric Association, said. "It doesn't work immediately. You need to practice it for several weeks before the effects begin to be felt." Dr Sharma added: "If meditation was a drug, we'd all want shares in it. It has a beneficial effect on most physical health problems and is very effective for mental health problems significantly reducing levels of depression, anxiety and insomnia by improving relaxation, oxygenation of the brain, and energy levels."

Working on Happiness

"Until recently, psychologists believed that the degree to which a person can naturally experience happiness, referred to as a "set point", was innate and unchangeable. We now know that, like weight, it's more of a predetermined range of potential rather than a single fixed number. Genetics influence about half of a person's total happiness level and circumstances another 10 percent. But the other 40 percent is affected by "intentional activity", meaning anything we do consistently and on purpose, whether a positive habit, such as regularly meditating, or a negative one, such as drinking excessively every night"

Terri Trespicio, "Thank-You Therapy", Body & Soul Magazine, Spetember 2008