Meditation is becoming Mainstream

Introduction

I am now in my second year of running Mindfulness meditation courses for patients in the NHS and I am still surprised and delighted how something that used to be regarded as rather ‘weird’ or ‘fringey’ even five or six years ago by the mental health establishment, can now have become something that is even recommended as ‘treatment’ in the NICE guidelines. This exciting development has the potential of changing the way we view mental health and therapy and life in general – but more about that later.

Having been a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in the UK for about three decades, two of those in the NHS, I have always been attracted by new, wider and more holistic approaches to therapy. And it has been a pleasure and a challenge to keep up with and contribute in writing, teaching and clinical practice to the many cutting-edge developments that have taken place over the past 30 years. I was there when in the 1970’s behaviour therapy began to offer psychological interventions in areas that had up to then be the domain of medical treatments. Then cognitive therapy came. I remember how it was initially regarded with much suspicion by the behaviourist establishment. But now it has grown into CBT, which is regarded as the treatment of choice for many mental health problems. Currently we seem to be witnessing another major shift in the psychological therapies. Psychology professor Robert Emmons boldly states that the psychological sciences are on the verge of a spiritual revolution. He could be right. When I ran meditation courses for staff in the NHS eight years ago, I was pretty much seen as a ‘maverick’ by many of my colleagues. When I suggested to my publisher to write a Handbook on meditation  about six years ago, my proposal was gently rejected (far too ‘outlandish’ for us!). Well, now the Handbook (Mindfulness and Mindbalacing Handbook) has been published, and look at what’s happening even in the NHS. 

The new meditation therapies

Psychological meditation treatment programmes have emerged, which, to varying degrees, all employ meditation practices, frequently repackaged under the umbrella name Mindfulness, and often combined with methods from the CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) field. The most widely used approaches are MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy), DBT (Dialectic Behaviour Therapy) and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). MBSR and MBCT have by now accumulated an impressive amount of research evidence showing that they are an effective treatment for a range of physical and psychological problems, like chronic pain, anxiety, stress, depression. Some evidence is beginning to emerge that it can also help with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and psychosis. Consequently Mindfulness has found its way into the NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) guidelines in the U.K. and it is suggested that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy should be offered for people who are currently well but have experienced three or more previous episodes of depression (see NICE Clinical Guideline 90).

How meditation came to the West

The introduction of Eastern methods of meditation to the West is not a new project: many will remember the Beatles popularising Transcendental Meditation in the 1960’s, which was followed by Ram Dass and other western affiliates. Before that, during the early 20th Century, Indian masters like Vivekananda and Yogananda came to the West and founded worldwide organisations, e.g. the Vedanta movement, Self-Realization Fellowship and the Ananda community. Most of these movements were based in the Hindu Vedantic/ Yogic tradition with the aim of helping people on their spiritual path, with meditation as the core practice. The Hippie and New Age movements from the 1960’s onwards made many parts of the Eastern teachings widely available in self-development programmes, often using different forms of meditation and imagery techniques.

Even long before that Meister Eckhart, the 13th Century German theologian and mystic, preached ‘the highest virtue of disinterest’ to find God within us, which is very similar to the Buddhist and Hindu concept of ‘detachment’. There is also a long tradition of ‘contemplation’ in Christianity, dating back to the Middle Ages. In contemplation, a term originally defined by Plato, a content-free mind is directed towards the awareness of God as a living reality, which has many similarities to Eastern meditation.

Meditation and psychotherapy

In psychotherapy, both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung dealt in one way or another with the Eastern meditation traditions. The most comprehensive psychotherapy to date that has emerged from this East-West process is Psychosynthesis, a psycho-spiritual psychology developed by Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli. In 1910, while embracing the radical new currents of psychoanalysis, he simultaneously laid the groundwork for a critique of that same psychoanalysis. He saw that it was only partial, that it neglected the exploration of what Maslow, some sixty years later, would call "the farther reaches of human nature." Assagioli's purpose was to create a scientific approach which encompassed the whole man - creativity and will, joy and wisdom, as well as impulses and drives. Moreover, he wanted this integrative approach to be practical - not merely an understanding of how we live, but an aid in helping us live better, more fully, according to the best that is within each of us. Psychosynthesis has now become a recognised psychotherapy, as well as a distinct methodological source.

Reflection

Sit upright and still in a comfortable chair and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and breathe out slowly. Breathe very consciously and with full concentration about 10 times.

Now think of the word MEDITATION. What images, thoughts, memories, feelings come up in you in response to the word? For a couple of minutes just allow your mind to throw up whatever it wants about the word MEDITATION.

You have now identified your starting point for exploring meditation further. Do not judge any of the thoughts and feelings that have come up. Accept it as what is there right now, and that it can change in future.

Mindfulness

The widest and best known Western application of meditation techniques is what has become known as Mindfulness and I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to the beauty, elegance and effectiveness of the Mindfulness adaptations in the MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) and MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) programmes as therapeutic interventions for a wide range of difficulties. Thanks to pioneers like Jon Kabat-Zinn in the U.S. and Mark Williams and John Teasdale in this country it has now become an accepted evidence-based treatment method in the NHS and beyond. But how come that a meditation practice rooted in ancient Buddhist meditation techniques, known as Vipassana, is able at this point in time to have such a beneficial effect on diverse problems like anxiety, depression, pain and stress? I think the reason for this may be that Mindfulness practices address an underlying malaise in our culture, a dysfunction that is at the root of much of what we encounter as individual psychological problems.

Changing your mind

What happens in the MBSR and MBCT courses is that participants are skilfully taught to develop a new, more detached way of relating to their thinking and feeling because the assumption is that the old, habitual way of getting carried away with the mind’s over-dramatisation of the past and catastrophisation of the future is what can turn many of life’s normal problems into profound suffering. It has, for example, been found that for people who have developed a depressive thinking pattern, normal sad events can easily become triggers for a full-blown depression. This is caused by the activation of reactive depressive thinking and feeling patterns. By learning to relate differently to thinking and feeling in general, the automatic reactivity is replaced with an open moment-to-moment awareness from where each situation can be approached anew.

This automatic and habitual way of the mind reacting to events applies not only to people with ‘problems’ but to all of us. It is just how the thinking mind operates. In a way it seems that in the people with diagnosable problems like depression, we can more easily see how these mental patterns again and again lead to the same depressive outcomes.  But in many ways we all have deeply ingrained patterns of thinking, feeling and acting, where, by desperately trying to avoid or get rid of pain, suffering or sadness we can actually make it much worse.

Problem Solving

The reason for this is that the mechanism that the thinking mind employs for problem-solving is usually that it evaluates a current situation by drawing on similar past experiences and predicting future outcomes on that basis. For this it often uses routines and shortcuts like interpretations, predictions, projections to accelerate the process, because the problem is seen as a threat which requires a fast response. This process often lacks an awareness of what is actually happening in the present moment which could open up wiser and more intuitive approaches to the problem. In addition the mind uses the process of splitting, not only to deal with smaller bits of a complexity, but also to differentiate between ‘me and he’ or ‘me and that’ or ‘this and that’ or ‘good and bad’ or ‘present state and desired state’. All this is quite good for a lot of problem-solving, and it is the capacity that has made us the dominant species on the planet, but it is increasingly showing its limitations, especially in relation to solving emotional problems, but also on a more global scale. These limitations can be summarised as missing the fullness of the present moment by being too busy with past and future, and by splitting the wholeness of being into chunks that separate us from each other, from the world around us, even from different parts of ourselves and thereby failing to experience the complex wholeness of a situation.

The wider implications

On a global scale our rational and scientific culture has glorified the problem-solving capabilities of the intellectual mind and elevated it into a role that actually is beyond its ability, especially when it comes to emotional issues, but also when a more holistic and less self-centred (or selfish) view is required. We have come to believe that problem-solving through rational thinking, science and technology will lead to continuing progress and ultimately absence of suffering and eternal happiness. The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm paints a picture of our world in which hedonism has become the accepted norm:

The Great Promise of Unlimited Progress - the promise of domination of nature, of material abundance, of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and of unimpeded personal freedom - has sustained the hopes and faith of the generations since the beginning of the industrial age. … We were on our way to becoming gods, supreme beings who could create a second world, using the natural world only as building blocks for our new creation. 

(Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be, Continuum, New York, 1997, p.1).

This belief in the omnipotence of our progress-orientation can be seen as the global expression of the intellectual mind’s belief that pain and suffering can be and must be avoided at all cost. But as with individuals, this belief is creating massive suffering on our planet. Politicians are busy developing problem solving strategies while at the same time often ignoring the ‘bigger picture’ and lacking a sense of wholeness, one-ness and compassion; scientists and economists are trying to find ever more efficient ways of exploiting resources and people because that is what seems to be needed; and psychologists and psychiatrists are trying to find increasingly effective rational ways of ‘curing’ suffering because suffering is seen as an illness that needs to be cured. To date some of the paradoxical results of our rational problem solving strategies based in our faith in ‘progress’ are climate change (global warming), pollution, poverty, wars and a widespread lack of community-orientation in our culture. Add to this the growing incidence of depression, drug addiction, suicides and we cannot help feeling that we are living in a very confused and sick world where the usual problem-solving strategies at both individual and global levels do not seem to work very well.

Despite the amazing capacities of our global intellectual mind, our knowledge, science and technologies, something essential seems to be missing or got lost on the way. This missing piece is addressed by the meditation traditions of the East as the ability to be in the present moment, and to experience a sense of one-ness, connected-ness, wholeness and compassion. This missing piece can also be called spirituality and is directly opposed to the qualities that govern our Western psyche, which are ‘not being present’, splitting, fragmentation, selfishness and greed. Jungian psychologist James Hillman summarises:

Avarice, gluttony, vanity, lascivity, envy, wrath and sloth – to these classical seven deadly sins, according to Aldous Huxley, we moderns, despite our inventive genius and after so many centuries, have been able to add only one new sin. The sin? Haste, hurry, rush, speed, momentum, acceleration ( Resurgence, July/August 2002, p.6).

The Gift of meditation

The Eastern meditation traditions offer us a way of approaching life from a different perspective. Even when we use meditation only to help with our depression, anxiety or stress, as in the MBSR and MBCT programmes, this putting the mind into its place also leads us to connecting with a deeper (or higher) part of our humanity and with the fullness of life. We will feel less split off from ourselves and other beings and we will cultivate greater compassion towards ourselves and other beings. We will experience glimpses of the one-ness of all life where hurting or destroying other beings will be the same as hurting or destroying ourselves.

There have been many attempts in the West to secularise meditation, i.e. to present meditation without its mystical and spiritual content. Examples of this are Autogenic Training, Transcendental Meditation and even Jacobson's Progressive Muscle Relaxation. The Mindfulness programmes of MBSR and MBCT are the latest and probably most convincing examples of what great benefits can be achieved even with ‘reduced’ versions of Eastern spiritual approaches. It also seems that even these secularised and de-mystified meditation approaches can have effects that go well beyond the intended symptom and life-style improvements.

Ecologist Thom Hartmann says that meditation “ … is actually among the most important works we can do to save the world ….”. So maybe in addition to recycling and being a good citizen, you might like to consider meditation as a way of getting the big picture. I should like to end this article with a brief reflection.

Reflection

Sit upright and still in a comfortable chair and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths and breathe out slowly. Breathe very consciously and with full concentration about 10 times.

Now remember times when you have felt fully yourself. It may happen every day, have happened recently, or it may be a while ago. See if you can get a sense of what it feels like. And while you are with that feeling, concentrate fully on breathing into the middle of the chest and out from there. Imagine that sense of fully being yourself in your chest and with your breath you are connecting with it.

If you would like to find out more about Mindfulness and other meditation practices, please consult my Mindfulness and Mindbalancing Handbook, which has just been published by Speechmark. Or you might like to join me for one of my meditation retreats in Spain click here. For UK courses and retreats Mindfulness Intensive