All the Little Things

Bill Moyers' special on Jon Kabat-Zinn and his program (mid 1980s) (link).  The story follows one 8-week class of mindfulness stress reduction with Zinn.   All patients are referred to Zinn from other doctors in the hospital because of pain they have.  The class includes both yoga and meditation.  It expects 40 minutes of meditation per day as homework.  The practice starts with eating a raisin mindfully. I think the idea is that the everyday can be experienced differently than it currently is.  But we need to pay attention and slow down.

The next practice moves on to noticing the breath and watching the brain.  Many patients note how hard it is to follow the breath, maddening.  Kabat-Zinn asks them if that's a realization for them, they say yes.  So, one of the first lessons is how our brains are filled with these thoughts and how challenging it is to even temporarily get relief from them.  He tells Moyers that it's these thoughts that "condition" us constantly.  Those seems like two more big ideas of meditation.

Many patients relate stories about how the practice improves their lives... each is different, none of them are specifically about a reduction of pain.  It's about appreciating kids in the midst of being annoyed by them, it's about seeing a shadow of the self and feeling compassion, it's about realizing "that I always say no."  (Jennie noted that the sessions of yoga that leave patients in pain, Kabat-Zinn's techniques ("ride the pain" "breath with the pain") remind her of lamaze classes.)

One general benefit was a change in overall demeanor.  You can actually see the changed people -- more smiles, more ease of movement -- as the segment moves through the 8 classes.

Another general benefit was the appreciation and gratefulness of little things in life.  One line stuck out especially to me.  Kabat-Zinn says, "One thing that I'd like you to take from this is that little things are not little.  They are life."  The realization that we are missing life when we are so much "in our head" (mindless).   

Being mindless is a double whammy... it keeps us from appreciating the present moment AND unknowingly conditions us.