Mindfulness Matters

Back by popular demand, here is another video by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, best-selling author and authority onMindfulness and Integrative Medicine, at UCLA Royce Hall, October 6, 2010 tokick off National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Los Angeles, CA – September, 2010 – Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn,PhD, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on Mindfulness andIntegrative Medicine and one of the first to conduct actual clinical trials onthe use of meditation techniques to cure pain, anxiety, stress and illnessis coming to Los Angeles to do a benefit for the LA County Affiliate ofSusan Komen Race for the Cure.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn, Professor of Medicine emeritus at theUniversity of Massachusetts Medical School, studied with Zen Masters andwas a founding member of the Cambridge Zen Center, before the Buddhistteachings led him to medicine and the creation of a technique he calledMindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). 

MBSR, which, as Dr. Kabat-Zinn told the LA Times, brought”the heart of Buddhist meditation without the Buddhism into the mainstreamof Western medicine,” contributed to a growing movement of mindfulness ininstitutions such as hospitals, schools, corporations, prisons andprofessional sports organizations. At UMass Medical School, 

Dr. Kabat-Zinn founded the Center for Mindfulness inMedicine, Health Care and Society, and the world-renowned Stress ReductionClinic. 

Over 200 medical centers and clinics nationwide and abroadnow use the MBSR model. 

The New York Times best-selling author of Full CatastropheLiving and Wherever You Go, There You Are, Dr. Kabat-Zinn was featured in BillMoyers’ PBS Special and book, Healing and the Mind. He serves on theBoard of the Mind and Life Institute, which organizes dialogues betweenthe Dalai Lama and western scientists and scholars to promote ways ofunderstanding the mind, emotion, and reality.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s appearance at Royce Hall is part of TheLynn Lectures and kicks off National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. MariaShriver is the event’s honorary chairperson.

Event Information: 

Date & Time: Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.with a reception for VIP ticket holders at 5:30 p.m. 

Location: UCLA’s Royce Hall, 340 Royce Drive, Los Angeles,CA 90095 

Pricing: Event ticket prices range from $10-$100 with aVIP Package* for $300. 

VIP Package includes admission to an intimate receptionwith Dr. Kabat-Zinn prior to the lecture, admission to 

the lecture and event parking. 

Ticket Purchase: To read more information and to purchasetickets visit www.komenlacounty.org. 

All proceeds from this event will benefit the Los AngelesCounty Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, with 75 percent goingdirectly back to local community efforts in the form of research grants, breastcancer support programs, screening, diagnostic tests and treatments forbreast cancer. The remaining 25% of the funds raised goes directly to Susan G.Komen national research. 

For questions and more information about the event, pleasecontact: lynnlectures@komenlacounty.org

Trying to explain the potential value of mindfulness to a new patient, someone in prolonged and severe chronic pain, I started by talking about resistance. We have a tendency to develop a relationship based on resistance to chronic pain. But it is not just when pain is present. How much of of our entire exisitance is based on resistance — obvious and subtle to what is actually so? If complaints were dimes, we’d all be millionaires! More of this, less of this, the presence of a, b, & c; the absence of x, y. & z.

After exploring compassion from religious perspectives, today we’ll hear about the science of compassion. Robert Wright provides a natural history of compassion and Golden Rule. Feelings, love, and sympathy are not unique to humanity, but all are built into us by evolution. Concepts like kin selection and reciprocal altruism are discussed. 

David Balfour, the main character in Robert Louis Stevenon’s Kidnapped gives us a metaphor for the delicacy and power of attention and how self-pity can maroon us, cutting us off from the very things that can save us; the very things that are right in front of us.

At one juncture in the story, David is left on an island, marooned he is to think. He bemoans his fate,
“It seemed impossible that I should be left to die on the shores of my own
country, and within view of a church-tower and the smoke of men’s houses.”

What
he thought was an impassable body of water was actually a tidal islet. Twice a day the tides
permitted passage off the island. However he was too preoccupied by his fate,
too lost in the story to notice the reality around him, or at least the
implications of that tidal reality. 

He realizes how this preoccupation has
colluded to impair his ability to see and solve the problem he is confronted
with. Finally, though, “Even I, who had the tide going out and in before me in
the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, the better to get my shellfish–even I
(I say) if I had sat down to think, instead of raging against my fate, must
have soon guessed the secret, and got free.”

The poet and author David Whyte in his remarkable book, The Three Marriages: Reimagining 

Work, Self, and Relationship, amplifies
this insight, “Only those who put more energy into self-pity than into paying
attention are truly marooned.”

Balfour gets caught in a state of emotionally-driven mindlessness. His perceptions become rigid, inflexible, and incomplete. 

How often does this happen to us? We are preoccupied with an emotion like self-pity, caught up in its sticky tangled web of story. Our ability to see is truncated, hasty, and impulsive. The story clouds our ability to see the solution that lies write below our noses.

The challenge is to recognize we are mired in self-pity and to pause and recognize this. Then, moving attention into our bodies we can feel the fallout from such preoccupation. After checking in with the body, we can then turn our attention out to the world again with fresh eyes and we’ll have the opportunity to see something we might have missed before. We may find the “solution” to the problem that beset us, or find out that it really wasn’t a problem at all (only our perceptions colored by self-pity made it a problem).

Mindfulness can free us from this trap and help us to navigate through the world more effectively. Mindfulness can help us to “rescue” ourselves from being marooned by self-pity.