Saturday, April 26, 2008

Integrating Mindfulness-Based Interventions into Medicine, Health Care, and the Larger Society 6 th Annual Conference for Clinicians, Researchers,

I presented a paper at the annual mindfulness conference in Worcester, Massachusetts. This conference has grown to more than 475 participants from 15 countries. I conducted a presentation-dialog entitled: "Challenges and Triumphs of Teaching Mindfulness in the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum." I presented the format of semester-long mindfulness meditation course that I teach at the University of Vermont. This year, I met a researcher from Australia and mindfulness and yoga instructor from New Brunswick Canada and many others. I attended sessions on treating chronic pain, teaching mindfulness in the workplace and in the medical school, and the relationship between meditation and spirituality (the topic of a course that I teach: The Psychology of Transcendence). See the conference brochure here. Next year I will propose to do two presentations. First will be a 3-hour workshop on mindfulness for sports, in particular golf; the other will be another presentation dialog on my book, which should be just about to come out at that time. Mindfulness is a hot topic with a burgeoning of research, books, and programs. One interesting encounter was Dr. Kathleen Hall, founder of the Stress Institute and mindfulness-based TV network. She has taken mindfulness mainstream: Oprah, Cosmo, and more. Her approach is provocative. Does it dilute the message of mindfulness to take it mainstream and to deconstruct it into sound bites that have mass market appeal? Is the traditional approach too inaccessible to the average person, and by extension arrogant and presumptuous? What is lost and gained in this approach. I'm sure the debate will continue.

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Mud Season

Mud season in Northern Vermont makes impermanence comprehensible. It shows us impermanence in action. Today the sun is shining and the mercury has climbed over 50. The trails through the woods and up the hill are alternatively snow, ice, frozen ground, mud, dry, and deep puddles. The earth changes with every step. Water is in all of its forms: frozen, water, and spring vapor that fills my running lungs. Everything is in flux. The earth reveals itself bashfully like a reluctant stripper; showing the brown decay and the perennial green of moss and lichen. And then covering herself over again with deep corn snow and submerging in cool puddles filled with the past like the streams starting to roar. These changes remind me of the changes within myself. From moment-to-moment the body changes. It is hungry, thirsty, and moving in and out of comfort and pain. This, too, is impermanence in action. The sense of the permanence is sustained by the repetition of stories of identity. Such stories are a favorite activity of the Storytelling Mind. I've reflected recently on the nature of identity and the multiplicity of stories that I am engaged with. At any given time, I can identify with being an author (currently writing 5 books), clinical health psychologist and psychotherapist, professor, academic (currently writing 6 articles), athlete (runner, golfer), yogi, consultant and motivational speaker (not to mention homeowner, friend and family member). Not enough time to do them all and choices have to be made. How many different identities do you have? How we relate to these identities is crucial. If they are seen as fixed we can become stuck. If they are seen as fluid and flexible we can engage in a dialog that knows possibilities. Can we allow self-identity to be like mud season? A collection of contradictions and different states of being. Can we make room for everything that is happening without judgment; allowing it all to be there? If so, then we can taste impermanence in action.