journal
Why Meditation is Coming into the Mainstream
October 16, 2008
Meditation and other contemplative practices have begun to move into the mainstream and out of the realm of only those spiritually seeking. Most notably, in the late 80s and early 90s, Jon Kabat-Zinn, M.D. singlehandedly brought mindfulness meditation into mainstream medicine with the founding of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His emphasis is on how patients can control pain, stress, and illness with meditation. And while we see more research being done on the effects of meditation on physical and psychological health, there is a rising movement to apply the use these tools on everything from politics to education. Meditation and contemplative practices can have a direct application on some of the most thorny challenges encountered outside the walls of churches, mosques, temples, and monasteries, including and especially violence.
For instance, the Garrison Institute, founded in 2003 and located in beautiful upstate New York on the banks of the Hudson River, “explores the intersection of contemplation and engaged action in the world….[their] mission is to apply the transformative power of contemplation to today’s pressing social and environment concerns, helping build a more compassion, resilient future.” The Garrison Institute has focused the Women’s Wellness Program (part of the Transforming Trauma Initiative) on serving and supporting women working in the domestic and sexual violence fields to help them understand, prevent, and recover from Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS). Well-known and widely published Buddhist Vipassana teacher, Sharon Salzberg, led a loving kindness meditation at the Democratic National Convention just this past August.
In a report put out by The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, an organization located in Northhamptom, Massachusetts and committed to bringing meditation into higher education and the workplace, writer Maia Duer notes:
“The use of contemplative practices in professional settings is on the rise….In healthcare, the number of hospitals and medical clinics that provide Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction training for patients grew from 80 in 1993 to 250 in 2003…In higher education, 100 professors have received Contemplative Fellowships to assist them in integrating these practices into their university and college class curriculum, and 32 educational institutions were identified as integrating these practices at the program and department level…In the business and nonprofit sectors, at least 135 companies, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies have offered their employees classes on some form of meditation and/or yoga” (“A Powerful Silence: The Role of Meditation and Other Contemplative Practices in American Life and Work”).
I myself have practiced meditation of one kind or another since the age of 15 when my maverick mother took the whole family to learn Transcendental Meditation (TM). While I did not stick with the practice for very long, its roots had taken hold and eventually in a time of crisis in my life at the age of 30, I became a committed practitioner of Vipassana meditation from Buddhism and a variety of practices distilled from indigenous traditions by Native teachers from North and South America.
Until recently, most meditation was considered to be within the purview of a variety of religious traditions, perhaps most famously Buddhism and Hinduism. Less widely known is that meditation of one kind or another is part of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and many indigenous religions, among others. Self-reflection, or contemplative practices, on the other hand, tend to be associated in our society with psychotherapy. Yet all religions and spiritual paths encourage practitioners and members to use various tools to reflect on the inner life, from reading the Bible to sitting in meditation and watching the stream of thoughts. Such practices can have a profound affect on our perception of ourselves, others and the world around us. They can transform difficult states of mind and defuse inner and outer conflict.
Because of my own experience with meditation and other contemplative practices, while I was a professor at the University of Virginia teaching courses dealing with interracial conflict and gender violence, I began to experiment with using meditation in my classes. In our course called “Story and Healing”, my colleague and co-teacher, John Alexander and I published an article in Multicultural Education in 2003 about our methods. “We bring a discussion of white privilege out of a strictly sociological or political perspective to one that can be described as transcendental. We look at how various disciplines—folklore, anthropology, history, religion, neuropsychology, etc.—can bring us to a core dialogue about the nature of human suffering and how that suffering often manifests in subtle and overt acts of violence against self and other. We wish to specifically cultivate the ability to listen to and parse stories—our own and others’—as a nonjudgmental, open-0heared witness.”
Violence and race are very charged topics requiring great care and sensitivity to students’ needs in the classroom setting. Emotions can run high. Conflict is inevitable. I was always aware that the nature of the topics could trigger students’ own sometimes buried trauma responses. Students needed to develop both analytical skills and emotional intelligence to be able to speak clearly and openly about racism and sexism. In order to listen with caring to other students whose experiences and viewpoints were different, they had to be able to listen deeply and compassionately. They also needed to develop a strong inner container for their own emotional responses. As John and I wrote in our article: “Developing the skills described above are essential in overcoming the natural processes of resistance, anger, and guilt which arise in racial identity awareness and are based upon a philosophy that we need to support all voices at all stages of the processes in order for social transformation to occur.” I knew meditation could facilitate the development of all these qualities and skills.
Our methods were wildly successful, leading to long waiting lists for our otherwise controversial course. Students consistently reported positive results in their evaluation and journal entries, as these comments show:
“Meditation gave me a peace in my day that I have never experienced before.”
“It allowed more openness to explore myself & the material.”
“It showed me how wound up I am.”
“Meditation was a good escape and allowed everyone to formulate ideas about the materials.”
“Meditation helped me relax in times of stress. I began meditating when faced with big problems and a lot of stress.”
“I loved [meditation]. It’s helped me outside of class.”
“I appreciated the silent meditation–I also thought it was powerful to do with everyone in the room.”
“It helped me to center on my body and to therefore understand it better.”
“It definitely helped me to look within myself and establish a sense of peace.”
I used other contemplative practices in my classes, such as art and journaling. All of these methods together led to major breakthroughs in the students:
“This course taught me a lot about being able to express feelings that otherwise would not be shared. It also taught me not only to be open minded but also comfortable w/ saying what I feel.”
“That open dialogue is really important in the healing process.”
“I felt very comfortable expressing opinions that differed from those of my classmates or instructors because our discussion environment was set up so we could discuss heated and controversial issues w/out getting personal.”
“I feel that now, my ideas of what is right or wrong in terms of a lot of personal stereotypes was broken down. I definitely stepped outside of my ‘Western perspective’ for a while in this class.”
I also asked students to formulate open-ended questions, much like a mantra or a Zen koan, to help them deepen their reflection. These comments show how meditation and self-reflection led to very provocative inquiries:
“How can concentration and deep thought change perceptions on alienated groups?”
“How important is it to look deeper into the characteristics that may seem obvious?”
The use of meditation and other self-reflective practices not only builds a sense of community and inner safety, it also serves to bring internal and external contradictions to the surface and allows them to clash or merge, as needed, through process. Sometimes this happens quickly, as in the course of a single class discussion. Sometimes it happens slowly over time. And there is always the fact that we as teachers will never truly see the full impact of what we have taught. Students carry the knowledge and experience into the world where it may later make a radical difference.
More and more scientific research on the efficacy of contemplative practices in dealing with stress, illness, and trauma come out each year. In a ProQuest Research database search, there were 294 “hits” for the word “meditation” appearing in medical journals. For instance, Amy B. Wacholtz, et al. write in an article entitled, “Migraines and Meditation: Does Spirituality Matter?” published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine report that ” those who practiced spiritual meditation had greater decreases in the frequency of migraine headaches, anxiety, and negative affect, as well as greater increases in pain tolerance, headache-related self-efficacy, daily spiritual experiences, and existential well being” (Abstract, New York: Aug 2008. Vol. 31, Iss. 4; pg. 351). Norma G. Cuellar in an article appearing in the AAOHN Journal entitled “Mindfulness Meditation for Veterans-Implications for Occupational Health Providers”states, “For veterans, after mastery, this technique shows promise in improving health outcomes and quality of life” (Abstract, Aug 2008. Vol. 56, Iss. 8; pg. 357). This research deals with the effects of meditation on physical and psychological health. The next step in our cultural evoluation is to bring meditation into dealing with cultural health.
As the Spring, 2008 Executive Summary of the Garrison Institute Program Initiatives states: “contemplative practices are not just passive or theoretical, but active and practical, and when skillfully applied, can be pivotal agents of social transformation. The more intractable or anxiety-producing the problem, the greater the need for contemplative perspectives on it to help find new, effective, and ultimately transformative solutions. “Why is there a move towards using contemplative practices in non-religious, secular settings? I can only speak from personal experience: meditation and its close partner, self-reflection lead to greater self-awareness and self-mastery and help us cope with the inevitable stresses of life. Particularly if we work in a field where we are confronted all day with the suffering of others, it serves us to have time to quiet down and focus inward.
In 2007, I left my tenured position at UVA to extend what I had learned about the use of meditation and other contemplative practices into working with professionals in fields where they are confronted with violence and other forms of human suffering on a daily basis. In workshops and on-site trainings, there is always a palpable sense of relief when we do meditation. I am particularly fond of using the Buddhist practice of loving kindness, or metta. Metta helps us cultivate care and kindness towards ourselves and others, an important skill when we are working in settings where there is much suffering. As Sharon Salzberg, puts it: “Through lovingkindness, everyone and everything can flower again from within. When we recover knowledge of our own loveliness and that of others, self-blessing happens naturally and beautifully” (Lovingkindness: The Revolutionnary Art of Happiness, Shambala, 2002, 18). In these times when there is so much violence, so much stress from failing economic markets, difficult political battles, and the inevitable suffering that life will bring us–sickness, old age, and death, as the Buddha put it–it is so important to find that keynote of caring, the ability to go inward and to resource ourselves.
Meditation and other self-reflective practices are a prism into deeper and more enduring wisdom. If we become more aware of the pain and joy we all carry within, if we know ourselves well and thus lead others by example, then we can radically change the world. For my part, the feedback provided by hundreds of my students have convinced me that it is critically important to bring meditation and other contemplative practices to bear in mainstream settings: “[I have a] renewed faith in communication and storytelling and its role in understanding and PEACE. It has heightened my awareness, enabling me to continue replacing fear with light in my life.”