On the Road to Health: Taking Charge

Mindfulness as a Means to Promote Health

Everyone one of us is going to come to the point where we have to face the issue of a serious health concern. We all differ, of course. Some people have a congenital health problem and others live many years before their first serious problem. When this happens, difficult questions arise naturally. Why did this happen? What is this medical condition? What is going to happen to me? How much recovery can I expect?

When we look at the big picture, it is useful to ask what it means to be healthy. The first step is to ignore the image of the advertisement for a health club. Those young people are impossibly good looking and healthy. Those are advertisements, not medical statements. What they are promoting is glamour, not necessarily health.

The words “health” and “heal” have a common root, and that is the old English word “hale.” We still use that sometimes when we say that we are hale and hearty. Its original meaning is whole. In other words, healing is a return to wholeness and health reflects how we are doing as a whole. Since every one of us already has at least some small medical issue and most of us have already faced at least one large medical issue, the topic is not perfection but how we deal with the reality of who we are, imperfections and medical issues included.

One basic concept of medicine is that we are designed to recover from injury or disease. Some of these things are simple and we recover spontaneously without any assistance. For example, we put up with the common cold, the flu, muscle pulls and strains and we know we get better no matter what. (Some remedies might increase our comfort along the way, such as chicken soup for colds, aspirin for that sore muscle.) For other things, we need assistance. For example, if you break your ankle, the orthopedic surgeon needs to reset your ankle, and then place it in a cast until the natural healing process will allow you to walk unassisted.

When you think about your health status, you are more than the malady. For example, you are not a fractured ankle any more than you are a heart attack, chronic back pain, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome or arthritis. You are complete person who has one or more medical problems in various states of disease control. The medical problem may exact a toll in addition to its own problem. While it is unlikely that you will have lasting psychological effects from a broken ankle, chronic disease is another matter. Daily pain, shortness of breath, weakness, anxiety or living with cancer can all lead to psychological or emotional consequences. The natural question is to ask what we can do to facilitate healing of the complete person. Just as we put that broken ankle in a cast, what can we do to immobilize the adverse circumstances that make it difficult for us to recover as a complete, integrated individual?

One source of insight comes from the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. There, Jon Kabat-Zinn recommends the method of mindfulness. Don’t be persuaded that this is related to anything like hypnosis or any other mind control concept. Instead, it is method of being present in the moment. That is, at least for a short period of time, not allowing yourself to be preoccupied with all of the things that have happened in the past or worried about all of the things that might happen in the future.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn recommends that we assist the practice of returning to health by practicing mindfulness in three circumstances:

o Sitting o Walking o Body scan

Sitting mindfulness is a good place to start. Just take a few minutes to sit quietly and observe your breathing. Watch how your stomach moves in and out as your diaphragm moves up and down, to assist your breathing process. Don’t think about anything else. Some people recommend that you also slow your breathing rate so you only take one breath every 10 seconds or so – 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out.

When you practice mindfulness while walking, do that by choosing a place where you will not have an audience of curious on lookers. You will want to start by walking very slowly and deliberately. Pay attention to picking up your foot, moving it forward, and placing it on the floor or the ground. Notice what it feels like as your foot touches, and then holds the weight of your body for the next step. Notice how your hips move. Notice how your shoulders and arms move and feel. Try this for several minutes at least a couple of times a day. When you get more experienced at it, you can also try it at a normal walking pace where you won’t look so obvious.

The body scan is a special technique used at the Stress Reduction Clinic and it seems to be especially helpful for people who have chronic disease or chronic pain. Lie flat on your back in a quiet room. Begin by concentrating all of your attention on the toes of your left foot. Notice how they feel. Don’t wiggle them. Then direct your attention to the foot itself. Pay attention to what your foot feels like when you try to direct attention there. Work your way up your leg, noticing your calf, your knee and your thigh. Then, go to the right leg and repeat the process. Next, center your thinking on your pelvis, then move to your low back, your chest, neck, arms, head and face. Dr. Kabat-Zinn recommends that his patients try this body scan every day for the first two weeks that they participate in the stress reduction clinic. Their goal is to get their session up to a total of 45 minutes.

As you practice any of these exercises, the first thing you will probably notice is how difficult it is just to do the task at hand. Our minds are so used to racing around from one idea to the next! We have so many sources of information overload and so many distractions. There is television,

Mindfulness as a Means to Promote Health – Felix J. Rogers, D.O., April 15, 2010 radio, traffic whirring about, which all represent external issues. You will probably notice that an even more important issue is how thoughts just bombard you constantly. Dr. Kabat-Zinn feels that this constant bombardment with thoughts, ideas, memories, regrets or worries for the future are the things that prevent us from developing a healing response. Just as the cast on our broken ankle keeps away the stress of gravity until our ankle is healed, the practice of mindfulness keeps away these distracting thoughts until our natural healing processes allow us to become a more integrated, complete, whole person.

The second thing you may notice after trying any of these three exercises is that you are likely to feel quite relaxed afterwards. Dr. Herbert Benson, of Harvard University describes this as the “Relaxation Response.” This is a body sensation with important health benefits. It has been shown to have use in the treatment of high blood pressure, anxiety, chronic pain, and many other common medical problems.

The interested reader can find several sources of additional information. These include Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book that describes the program of the Stress Reduction Clinic. It is entitled “Full Catastrophe Living.” A shorter book that touches on these same ideas, “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” was featured in the Bill Moyers special on healing and the mind on PBS. This office website also has a short description of the relaxation response.

There is a lot of scientific evidence to support the benefits of these approaches. One thing about research, though, is that it is usually about someone else. The real issue at hand is whether you can gain a sense of healing and whether you can be healthier. These applications of mindfulness are things that only you can do, and you will be the direct beneficiary, if they are helpful.

Mindfulness as a Means to Promote Health – Felix J. Rogers, D.O., April 15, 2010