For those of you who are not familiar with the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn,
he is the creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR, that he began at UMASS Medical School in 1979, and his book Full Catastrophe Living (first published in 1990 and updated in 2013) is the manual for this program.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn opens his book with these words:
This book is an invitation to the reader to embark upon a journey of self-development, self-discovery, learning, and healing.
So true.
For the past 4+ years I have been actively engaged in the rigorous and transformative training to become an MBSR teacher myself.
And in 2 weeks, that dream will be a reality.
But as it was recommended in the last formal section of the MBSR teacher training, the Practice Teaching Intensive, that my personal practice of mindfulness meditation be at least 50% of my MBSR teaching, as part of my preparation for this first class, I have been:
- steeping myself in the guided audio practices,
- reflecting on my own journey of mindfulness practice, and
- re-reading the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Interestingly, my entry into MBSR did not come through MBSR- which I did not participate in until 2014.
No, for me, MBSR started over a decade earlier in 2003 in the form of my first ever copy of Jon Kabat-Zinn's book Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life- a book that was truly life-changing for me.
This book was first introduced to me by one of my earliest Clinical Social Work supervisors, Mark, and it begins with these words:
Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that's what you've wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that's what's on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened.
The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, 'Now what?'
Like it or not, this moment is all we really have to work with.
Phew! As a 25 year-old who had spent much of her time avoiding the difficulty of life (both inside and outside myself), reading those words for the first time blew me out of the water, and I was hooked!
I thought: What is this mindfulness stuff, and how can it help???
Fast forward two years later to 2005, I had now graduated from Social Work School and was married, and while wandering around Barnes and Noble I met my next book encounter with Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness.
By now quite familiar with both Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness, and yoga (though not yet meditation), I felt a growing sense of "comfort," or dare I say "home," when I saw this book on the shelf.
So I bought it right on the spot (very unlike me), and began to slowly take bite-size dives (this book is over 600 pages) into more writing by Dr. Kabat-Zinn.
And this book began with a poem by American poet Wendell Berry:
It may be when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.
[Side Note: One thing I did not know then, 14 years ago, that I do know now, is that the Western Mindfulness Meditation Community loves poetry!
Seriously, pick up nearly any Western Meditation teacher's book, and you are very likely to encounter some gorgeous poetry as a backdrop to the guidance and direction for setting up a meditation practice.
It is truly lovely.]
I find it very moving to reflect back on this "Jon-Kabat-Zinn-Journey" that I've taken--to contemplate the path that unfolded and led me to this place that I am now about to teach an MBSR course myself--because I know the path itself will always remain mysterious and unfinished too.
I know this because even as I re-read chapters in Full Catastrophe Living, Wherever You Go There You Are, Coming to Our Senses, and even some of the articles like "Some Reflections on the Origins of MBSR, Skillful Means, and the Trouble With Maps," that Dr. Kabat-Zinn has published in the last decade about the role (or lack of role) of "the dharma" in MBSR, it is always like I am reading it for the first time.
Because I am reading it for the first time with this set of eyes. With this set of ideas. With this set of life experiences. With this set of knowledge.
You've heard of life, imitating art, imitating life? Well, this might be mindfulness, imitating mindfulness, imitating mindfulness.
In reflecting, I felt this in a most profound way when I re-read Chapter 13 in Full Catastrophe Living, called "On Healing," in which the chapter begins with this thought:
When we use the word healing to describe the experiences of people engaging in mindfulness training through MBSR, what we mean above all is that they are undergoing a profound transformation of view, what I sometimes refer to as a 'rotation of consciousness.' This transformation is brought about by the encounter with one's own wholeness, catalyzed by the meditation practice itself.
When we glimpse our own completeness in the stillness of any moment...a new and profound encountering and coming to terms with our problems and our suffering begins to take place. We begin to see both ourselves and our problems differently, namely from the perspective of wholeness...It is a perceptual shift away from fragmentation and isolation toward wholeness and interconnectedness.
Away from fragmentation and isolation toward wholeness and interconnectedness.
On a deeply personal note, at 41 years-old, I recently began psychotherapy again for myself, and when my new therapist asked me what type of help I thought I might need to move in the direction of healing some of these new and old wounds, I told him:
"I need someone to help me hold the whole story because it just feels too big to hold by myself."
May it be so.
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