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7

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>> And people will say to us after eight weeks
in our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic

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at the University of Massachusetts
Medical Center that they felt

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like they got their life back in some way.

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And these are people with cancer of various
kinds, heart disease, chronic pain conditions,

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people who've in some sense
not gotten satisfaction

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from the mainstream health care system.

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And where the invitation in MBSR,
mindfulness based stress reduction is

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to actually do something for yourself that
no one else on the planet can do for you.

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And it really involves this quality

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of cultivating what I would call
affectionate attention or mindfulness,

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and they're specialized ways that you
can use to help facilitate that process.

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And so people who understand
about meditation or have heard

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of meditation often think, oh,
yeah, it's about breathing.

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Oh, yeah, it's about breathing for instance.

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And a lot of our patients when they're finished
with the MBSR, and you ask them, "Well,

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what did you get out of the program?"

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A lot of them will say the breathing.

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And I say, "Wait a minute.

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You were breathing before
you took the MBSR program.

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You're going to be breathing
for a long time after that.

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What are you talking about with the breathing?"

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So they're not really talking
about the breathing or breathing.

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What they're talking about
is my intimate relationship

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with my breath that I didn't have before.

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And that is called awareness,
pure and simple or mindfulness.

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But when you pay attention to the
breath, to the rising of the breath

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on the inhalation, and the
sensations in the body.

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We're not talking about the thinking about
the breath, but just the sensation of the wave

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of the breath coming in, and then peaks,

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and we can feel that peak not
breathing in, not breathing out.

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The wave of the breath leaving the body,
and then the trough, and then the next wave.

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And when we ride on those waves, like
surfing on the waves of the breath,

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first of all, it naturally calms us down.

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It naturally slows us down.

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It naturally centers the focus of our awareness
in the present moment, and in the body.

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So when people talk about the breathing,
what they mean is mindfulness of breathing.