Healing Technique: Meditation

This is a summary of the book Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Despite the name, the book is actually about meditation and how meditation can change people. The meditation program that Jon created, as mentioned on the cover page, is so successful that it's used in medical centers all over the world. The program is free and can be accessed here.

Meditation is a way of being that's goal is simply to be. To be present with oneself in comfort and discomfort and to breath through periods of discomfort. Integral to the experience of meditation is the ability to view your thoughts as a third-party impartial observer, noticing them and acknowledging them, but not judging them. It's this ability that, in my opinion, makes meditation a worthwhile endeavor. Nonjudgmental meditation can be a source of great insight into oneself when judgment is removed and unconditional acceptance of self is brought to the forefront. Dr. Roger Walsch, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, describes meditation as a consciousness discipline that's ultimate goal is the liberation of self, a goal described by Albert Einstein as the true value of a human being.

The impacts of meditation varying greatly, but common side effects are more internal peace and happiness, increased feelings of self-efficacy and an internal locus of control, increased knowledge of the self, perspective shifts, increased compassion towards the self and others, increased pain tolerance, and an increased ability to be in the moment.

One thing that stuck out to me in the book is the amount of studies included that show how stress destroys the body. Stress is a disease of adaption, or rather the inability to effectively adapt, a result of an inability to effectively adapt to change. "It is not the potential stressor itself but how you perceive it and then how you handle it that will determine whether or not it will lead to stress." Here are a couple findings that were specifically mentioned:

• Immunosuppression can be psychologically conditioned.

• Meditation increases healing speed.

• Telomeres are responsible for the ability of a cell to be able to replicate. "Telomere length is directly related to aging on the cellular level, and therefore, to how long we may live. The rate at which our telomeres degrade and shorten is very much affected by how much stress we are under and how well we cope with it."

• A person's beliefs impact their healing. This idea is also validated by various hypnotherapy books I've read that describe a person's beliefs about recovery dramatically impacting their rate of recovery. This also relates to the placebo effect, a documented effect that underscores the importance of belief and it's ability to create change independent of other factors.

• Various experiments have shown that emotions, and one's relationship to emotions, correlates to disease contraction and severity. More specifically, the more negative emotions are harbored within oneself, the more disease is prevalent and the more severe the symptoms. In a study on the effects of hostility they found that "those who showed high hostility on a psychological test they took twenty-five years in the past were dying at a rate six and half times the rate of those whose hostility was low at that time."

• In a study of rabbits, petting rabbits vs. not petting them has repeatedly showed a 60% difference in disease severity. This finding coincides with many psychological studies across history that show the impact of love/touch on functioning and health, some of which had dramatic effects. Even plant growth has been shown to be impacted by love which is pretty weird.

What is interesting about all of these studies to me is that it tells me the body's optimal state is one without stress, or in other words one at peace, which state at any given point in time is psychologically determined, not circumstantially determined. Allostasis is the ability to remain stable by being able to change, the opposite of homeostasis which means remaining stable by staying the same. Meditation is one way in which a person can come to terms with change and be at peace with it.

Meditation is typically the act of being present without judgment. There are an infinite amount of ways to meditate, but the most common, and the one the book recommends, is to concentrate on your breathing. As opposed to just thinking "breath" the goal is more to experience your breath as it happens. What does it feel like to take breath into yourself? How does it feel in your body? It is the act of being mindful of an experience people normally take for granted. As thoughts come up they are recognized, given space to be without judging them, and released when they are ready. Like watching a leaf flow down a stream until it disappears, so the goal is with thoughts.

A large part of the purpose of meditation is learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Pain is not an enemy, it is a friend. If our body didn't experience pain physically then we could severely injure ourselves and not be aware of it ultimately leading to death. Meditation can teach people to experience their pain differently and has been shown to be a very effective method of dealing with physical pain. Some studies have shown that within four 20 minute sessions participants experienced an average of a 57% decrease in pain ratings of unpleasantness and 40% in intensity. Another study on chronic pain showed the 72% of participants experienced a 33% reduction in pain and 61% experienced a 50% reduction. Emotional pain is similar. Emotional pain helps us understand what we are holding on to that is hurting us on an emotional level. Studies on meditation have showed up to an 87% improvement in mood. Coming to terms with that pain and releasing it allows for its ultimate dissolution so that we can enjoy a more peaceful existence. Running from pain, physically or emotionally, only results in sustaining it or making it worse.

One technique used to help people be nonjudgmental is to shift their language and how they speak about problems as the way a person speaks about something is a reflection of their belief system. Externalizing is a psychological term that can be used constructively or destructively, but it consists of viewing the problem as something other than oneself. This can be used productively by not labeling yourself as the problem and instead separating yourself from the problem at hand. The most common way of doing this is shifting language from shame based language to more neutral language. For example changing the statement "I am a failure" to "I failed." This can also be used in reference to the body as the book explains. For example, instead of saying "'I have a headache' or 'I have a cold' or 'I have a fever,' when it would be more accurate to say something like 'The body is headaching' or 'colding' or 'fevering.'"

In decades of studying the impact of meditation on emotional health, the program taught in this book has shown a 36% decrease in self-assessed negative symptoms within 8 weeks. That's a pretty huge deal! Studies on meditation have consistently shown impressive results.