Mindful meditation mitigates misery

by Carson Robinson

7 - Meditation by connerdowney

This past fall, I took a free, six-session meditation course offered at my college. The particular program was based on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), which integrates Buddhist and scientific approaches to stress.  Each session was 90 minutes long, and involved both discussions and exercises, including supine, seated and walking meditation, guided by occasional instructions.

MBSR fosters several general attitudes, derived from Buddhism. For example, “beginner’s mind” perceives everything as if for the first time, “non-judgment” is neutral observation of one’s own actions and experiences, and “non-striving” is letting go of objectives, especially in the practice of meditation itself. Mindfulness itself is the maintenance of attention in the context of these attitudes. During seated meditation, the program’s central activity, one concentrates in turn on the breath, the body, sound, and, finally, thoughts.

Meditation takes discipline; a consistent practice must continue for weeks, even months, before it starts to change you. It is frustrating, especially for the restless and distracted (the very people that the program was designed for!). The classic seated posture hurts the knees, and I often experienced an inexplicable dysphoria build during meditation, as well as the recurring concern: “is this really worth doing?”

MBSR was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor at University of Massachussetts Medical School, who began teaching the course in 1979. The complete course is much more intense than the one I took, and MBSR is intended not only to relieve the stress of college life, but the suffering of serious medical conditions. MBSR is eight weeks long, with weekly two-hour sessions, several additional classes and meditation as homework (Kabat-Zinn et al., 1992).

In 1992, Kabat-Zinn and other researchers conducted a pilot study with 22 subjects diagnosed with either general anxiety or panic disorder. The subjects, along with other patients, participated in the MBSR program, while rigorous psychological assessments were taken routinely. Depression, anxiety, agoraphobia and frequency of panic attacks all decreased significantly during the program, and remained low for the next three months. Towards the end of the course, subjects would often meditate for 45 minutes at a time, a feat that is especially difficult for patients of anxiety disorders (Kabat-Zinn et al., 1992).

Late in the program, when participants observe their thoughts in meditation, thoughts become identified with the other objects of attention, like sound and breath; thoughts are not equal to the observer. Subjects found this idea empowering; as entities separate from their anxious thoughts, they could remain calm in the presence of anxiety. Also, in stark contrast to standard anxiety therapies, subjects did not label their thoughts as good or bad, following the teachings of Buddha (Kabat-Zinn et al., 1992).  Three years later, a follow-up study found that almost all of the subjects had maintained the benefits from MBSR, still practiced MBSR techniques to various degrees, and considered MBSR a very important part of their lives (Miller, Fletcher & Kabat-Zinn, 1995).

While anxiety attacks involve an overactive short term stress response, long-term elevated stress levels are an even more pervasive threat to health.  Stress is the response to a challenging stimulus, in which stress hormones flow, activating the sympathetic nervous system, which prepares the body to deal with the challenge by energizing useful functions: increasing blood pressure, pulse, and blood sugar. At the same time, energy is diverted from less immediately useful functions such as the liver and the digestive and immune systems. As you can imagine, remaining in this bodily state for too long can lead to health problems. The suppressed liver cleanses less cholesterol and fat from the blood, while energized arteries narrow; both of these set the stage for a heart attack or stroke (Myers, 2007).  In addition, the stress hormone cortisol specifically inhibits white blood cells, the front lines of the immune system(Myers, 2007).

The suppressed immune system is less effective at combating bacteria and cancer cells (Myers, 2007).  This makes MBSR, said to reduce anxiety, a good candidate for supplementary treatment in immunological conditions (Witek-Janusek et al., 2007).  In 2007, researchers studied 44 breast cancer patients enrolling in the MBSR program shortly after surgery. Tested against 31 patients in a non-MBSR control group, MBSR improved coping and quality of life (as one might expect) as well as immune function, which is especially useful in epithelial cancers, such as breast cancer. The MBSR group saw a much faster recovery of immune functions after surgery (Witek-Janusek et al., 2007).

Last year, researchers studied a diverse, randomized group of 48 HIV-1 patients, enrolled in either MBSR or a single-day stress reduction course. The study tracked the decline of CD4+ T lymphocytes (white blood cells).  In the normal course of HIV, these white blood cells decline over time, leading to the immune system deficiency that is the defining characteristic of  AIDS.  This study found that while the numbers declined as expected for the control group, MBSR participants showed no significant decline (Creswell, Meyers, Cole & Irwin, 2008).

Even though it can be  frustratingto practice, meditation has very real benefits for mental and physical health. It is completely free, safe and doable. Studies using MBSR and other techniques are helping meditation shed its status as an alternative therapy. These studies even support ancient wisdom, as in the anxiety study, in which participants attributed their improvement directly to the ideas from Buddhist philosophy. I hope that this research inspires others, as it has inspired me, to start meditating regularly.

References:

Creswell, D. J., Meyers, H. F., Cole, S. W., & Irwin, M. R. (2008). Mindfulness meditation training effects on CD4+ T lymphocytes in HIV-1 infected adults: A small randomized controlled trial. Brain, Behavior and Immunity, 23, 184-188.

Jon Kabat-Zinn: Biographical Information. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from Center for Mindfulness Web site: http://www.umassmed.edu/Content.aspx?id=43102

Kabat-Zinn, J., Massion, A. O., Kristeller, J., Peterson, L. G., Fletcher, K. E., Pbert, L., Lenderking, W. R., Santorelli, S. F. (1992). Effectiveness of a Meditation-Based Stress Reduction Program in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 149 (7), 936-943.

Miller, J. J., Fletcher, K., Kabat-Zinn, J. (1995). Three-Year Follow-up and Clinical Implications of a Mindfulness Meditation-Based Stress Reduction Intervention in the Treatment of Anxiety Disorders. General Hospital Psychiatry, 17, 192-200.

Myers, D. G. (2007). Psychology (8th ed. in modules). New York: Worth Publishers.

Witek-Janusek, L., Albuquerque, K., Chroniak, K., R., Chroniak, C., Durazo-Arvizu, R., Mathews, & H., L. (2007). Effect of mindfulness based stress reduction on immune function, quality of life and coping in women newly diagnosed with early stage breast cancer. Brain, Behavior and Immunity, 22, 969-981.