Mindfulness Meditation Essay

Some impressive research has also shown the usefulness of mindfulness meditation (a form of vipassanaa meditation) training in the management of chronic pain (Kabat-Zinn, 1982; Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth & Burney, 1985). It is remarkable that the early Buddhist texts contain explicit references to the value of this form of meditation for the control of pain (e.g. Samyutta Nikaaya, Vol. 5). Similarly, the Buddha also recommended meditation as a means of achieving trouble-free sleep (Vinaya Pi.taka, Vol. 1). It is perhaps worth dwelling briefly, at this point, on the use of mindfulness meditation for pain control. Kabat-Zinn et al. (1985) reported that ninety chronic patients who were trained in mindfulness meditation in a ten-week stress-reduction

In an earlier paper, Kabat-Zinn (1982) had given an ever fuller account of the rationale for using mindfulness meditation for the control and alleviation of pain. He describes how training in mindfulness meditation can enable one to focus on sensations as they occur, rather than try to escape from them. It helps one to recognize the bare physical sensation, unembellished by psychological elaboration. These psychological elaborations are separate events -- that is, separate from the physical sensations -- and one learns to observe them as such. This uncoupling is crucial. It has the effect of changing one's overall pain experience. To quote Kabat-Zinn (1982): “The nociceptive signals (sensory) may be undiminished, but the emotional and cognitive components of the pain experience, the hurt, the suffering, are reduced" . It is this detached observation of sensations

Kabat-Zinn, Wheeler, Light, Skillings, Scharf, Cropley, Hosmer & Bernhard, 1998). It has also been used, in a well-controlled clinical trial, for anxiety (Kabat-Zinn, Massion, Kristeller, Peterson, Fletcher, Pbert, Linderkin & Santorelli, 1992). Even more important is a very recent development, involving well-established clinical psychologists in three centres -- Cambridge in England, Bangor in Wales, and Toronto in Canada. The researchers, Teasdale, Williams and Segal, have been conducting a trial of mindfulness meditation to see whether this intervention will reduce the chances of relapse in patients who have recovered from depression. Those who recover from depression with treatment have a high probability of suffering further episodes of clinical depression, so reducing relapse rates is a challenge to the clinician. These researchers have compared a group of recovered depressives engaging in mindfulness practice, with a second group with no such intervention but receiving the usual psychiatric and medical follow-up. Up to now, data from 145 subjects have shown that mindfulness meditation does indeed lead to a reduction in relapse. This is a major finding in the content of present day psychiatry and psychology. A theoretical discussion of the rationale behind this work is provided