Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

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Mindfulness expert Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn discusses Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
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>> And people will say to us after eight weeks
in our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic

at the University of Massachusetts
Medical Center that they felt

like they got their life back in some way.

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

people who've in some sense
not gotten satisfaction

from the mainstream health care system.

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

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

And it really involves this quality

of cultivating what I would call
affectionate attention or mindfulness,

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

And so people who understand
about meditation or have heard

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

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

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

what did you get out of the program?"

A lot of them will say the breathing.

And I say, "Wait a minute.

You were breathing before
you took the MBSR program.

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

What are you talking about with the breathing?"

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

What they're talking about
is my intimate relationship

with my breath that I didn't have before.

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

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

on the inhalation, and the
sensations in the body.

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

of the breath coming in, and then peaks,

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

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

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

first of all, it naturally calms us down.

It naturally slows us down.

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

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