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It is much easier for me to swallow the notion that I make mistakes but I am not a giant mistake. Or, as the humanist psychologist Carl Rogers puts it, mindfulness meditation views people as “ultimately healthy with the capacity to heal themselves.” first meditation, I felt less controlled by these thoughts and, as a result, considerably less anxious. MBSR is not just for garden-variety neurotics. According to its Web site, (www.umassmed.edu/cfm/vision), the Center for Mindfulness has trained “more than 3,000 health care professionals. MBSR is now being utilized by health care professionals in more then 200 hospitals, clinics, and academic medical centers in the United States and other parts of the world.” “The practice is taught to people dealing with all kinds of physical and mental pain, be it breast cancer or post-traumatic stress disorder,” says Greta Schnee, clinical director of the Institute for the Arts in Psychotherapy in New York City. Dialectical behavioral therapy, created by popular psychologist Marsha Linehan, incorporates mindfulness meditation for patients suffering from borderline personality disorder or suicidal tendencies. Overwhelming evidence gleaned from qualitative studies in Canada, England, and the United States confirms that mindfulness meditation is also beneficial in treating depression. A 1995 report to the National Institutes of Health confirmed that “more than 30 years of research…suggests that meditation…can lead to better health, higher quality of life, and lowered health care costs.” The cost-effectiveness of MBSR has converted many psychologists. Some of the larger insurance companies, such as Oxford Health Plans, now partially cover for alternative treatments (which is more than they offer for long-term outpatient mental-health care). Many major corporations provide inhouse relaxation exercises to increase the productivity of their employees. Schnee says that the “practice is taught in so many capacities that it is difficult to definitively ascertain how many people opt for mindfulness meditation over traditional therapies.” It seems clear that what has prompted the surge of meditation classes offered at hospitals, clinics, yoga studios, and psychotherapy offices is based on demand. Another selling point: meditation is an exercise that is similar to many cognitive therapy exercises. While the Freudian approach of free association encourages the mind to wander, cognitive therapies ask 88 | P L E N T Y
patients to focus more on the specifics and symptoms of the problem. Schnee says that, “mindfulness meditation is about using the mind to heal the mind, heart, and body. This is essentially a cognitive approach to psychology, where clients are taught how to loosen their attachment to and identification with self-defeating thoughts.” Psychoanalytic practice encourages patients to identify themselves by their thoughts and concentrates more on their choice of words, such as the classic Freudian slip, a near miss of words that supposedly reveals unconscious thoughts. Cognitive approaches and MBSR tend to be less scrupulous about semantics, although, like psychoanalytic approaches, these also seek to understand the root cause of the problem as well as the symptoms. In mindfulness meditation, human beings are viewed as moral and decent and our failings as passing and immaterial, while in psychoanalytic theory, we are generally seen in a more conflicted, darker light. “Buddhist psychology acknowledges our disturbing emotions but sees them as covering our essential goodness,” writes Tara Bennett-Goldman in Emotional Alchemy (Harmony, 2001). It is much easier for me to swallow the notion that I make mistakes but am not a giant mistake. Or as the humanist psychologist Carl Rogers wrote, mindfulness meditation views people as “ultimately healthy with the capacity to heal themselves.” Another appealing aspect of meditation is that it taps into our often untenable desire to care about the world—not just ourselves. Meditative exercises are like prayer offering. There are mantras, such as the loving-kindness practice, that encourage the meditator to have compassion, even for her enemies. Bennett-Goleman explains, “You can direct loving-kindness [to] include… people you have difficulty with, and all beings in all directions throughout the universe.” Since, for me, psychotherapy often felt solipsistic, I appreciated being encouraged to meditate and think of others. One can practice mindfulness meditation in lieu of traditional psychotherapy or in combination with it. After all, the two are not that different. According to Andrew Olendzki, Executive Director of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, insight-orient-
ed meditation leads to self-awareness, a goal of any psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral, or psychodynamic approach. Schnee cautions that “it is not negating psychoanalysis and it’s compatible. It is another way of getting at psychic material that is blocking the individual.” The late Phil Aranow, a psychologist who practiced Buddhism, notes that, as in couch therapy, “very few of us get to full-scale enlightenment; most of us continue to live our neurotic lives.” Like psychotherapy, meditation requires consistent and regular practice. In fact, its repetitive and monotonous aspects are not exactly unfamiliar to those who spent the last two decades addicted to the gym. Some experts, however, caution that meditation can be harmful. One can meditate in positive or self-destructive ways, according to Jack Engler, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and a teacher at the Insight Meditation Society. In his paper “Unconscious Motivations for Meditation,” Engler warned about fears of intimacy emerging, referring to that sense of vulnerability that stems from close connections with others. I felt anxious several times during meditation and could not refocus my attention on my breathing. When I told Leibowitz this, she decided to meditate with me and asked me to articulate out loud whatever popped into my head. Having her there helped me feel less alone, and I was then able to return to meditating on my own, recognizing that those intense feelings would subside. That said, each individual is different and should consult a guru or a teacher if she experiences discomfort or has concerns. As with psychotherapy, success rests with the individual who must ascertain if mindfulness meditation is constructive. For me it provides a time to collect myself, which can be helpful in preventing me from feeling overwhelmed by anxiety. I still get anxious, but I am less critical of myself and better able to sit with dark feelings and thoughts, knowing they are part but not all of me. Last week Leibowitz upped my dosage to twenty from five—not milligrams but minutes of mindfulness meditation. ■ Catie Lazarus is a stand-up comic in New York City. March 2005 www.plentymag.com