IHR Podcast #25: Skin cancer, present state awareness training, collective health decisions, technologies of isolation, and the meaning of anxiety

In this episode of the Integral Health Resources Podcast, I talk about my very recent experience with skin cancer surgery, then I ramble on about a variety of health-related topics that may or may not hang together in a coherent fashion.

Media, resources, and photos referenced:

Earlier this summer…
After Mohs surgery to remove two basal cell carcinomas

IHR Podcast #6: Mindfulness in Schools

In this episode of the Integral Health Resources Podcast, I describe and explore the potential benefits, issues, and challenges involved in implementing mindfulness-based interventions with students in K-12 schools. Topics include:

  • Clinical applications of mindfulness
  • The use of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) with both adults and children
  • A review of the research on MBIs, with a focus on the use of MBIs with K-12 students

ia resources that may be helpful/relevant to this discussion:

mindfulschools

The Science of Mindfulness – TEDx talk by Diana Winston

A nice introduction to mindfulness by Diana Winston, the director of Mindfulness Education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center:

Former Buddhist monk Diana Winston is the director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA Mindful Awareness Center, and the author of several books on mindfulness and meditation. With more than 20 years in the study and practice of mindfulness, Diana explains how routinely taking the time to be in the moment can have a profound impact on our everyday lives and relationships.

Dr. Charles T. Tart on defining “Meditation”

Dr. Charles T. Tart is one of the founders of Transpersonal Psychology, and was also one of my professors at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I love the way Dr. Tart writes (and talks) – always careful to avoid jargon and to define his terms plainly and clearly. In this recent blog post Dr. Tart invites us to consider what we mean by the term “meditation”, a term that can mean quite different things in different spiritual traditions. Like Dr. Tart, I have gone on many a “semantic crusade” over the years, especially when it comes to the realm of “spirituality”. You see, I can’t even use that word without putting quotes around it! I strongly prefer the term “transpersonal” (as I’ve mentioned before) when talking about the depths of human consciousness, but unfortunately I usually find myself falling back into the vagueness of “spirituality” in order to find common ground for dialogue. Dr. Tart concedes that perfectly clear definitions of subtle inner experiences may be ultimately elusive, but he also points out that the clearest possible terms can be quite helpful as we experiment with how to direct our inner resources:

The old Zen saying, “The finger pointing at the moon is not the Moon,” is so true! But the finger pointing at the moon may be helpful. If the moon is in the west and we’re looking toward the east, the finger pointing toward the west may get us to turn around, and that certainly increases our chances of seeing the moon. Or we may stare at the finger……

Dr. Tart often uses the term “controlled attention practices” to describe various meditative techniques. If we ever hope to articulate our first-person, phenomenological, inner realities in ways that transcend our cultural and individual idiosyncrasies, we will need to get clear on our terms, and Dr. Tart has done as much as anyone in this regard. Check out the links below for more of Dr. Tart’s perspective on these matters:

That Word “Meditation:” What Does it Mean?
“Mindfulness 101” with Charles Tart

The Spiritual Atheist: Sam Harris’s “Experiments in Consciousness”

There are so many terms in the English language that fall flat from the weight of excessive baggage and unfortunate associations, but we’re especially hampered when discussing what theologian Paul Tillich called our “ultimate concern”—namely religion/spirituality. You see I’ve already blown it, putting the words together like that with a slash. Of the two, I prefer the word “religion”, because of its etymological elegance [re (again) + ligare (bind, connect) = “to reconnect”]. “Spirituality” evokes images of ghosts and New Age bookstores, and to me sounds a bit wishy-washy and disembodied. But then again, in terms of common usage (and practice), “religion” hardly seems connected at all to the cultivation of rarefied states of being.

For my money, the best adjective we have available when talking about experiences of the farthest reaches of human consciousness is not religious, spiritual, or mystical, but rather transpersonal—a term probably first used by William James, but nonetheless later associated with the likes of Abraham Maslow and Carl Jung. Unfortunately, Maslow’s bold vision of establishing a fully rational yet visionary branch of psychology to explore what he called peak experiences has, in my opinion, failed to live up to its promise. As in the human potential movement in general, once the originators and visionaries of humanistic and transpersonal psychology (Maslow, Rogers, Jung, et al) passed away, those who took the baton lost their grip and fumbled it. Perhaps they’ve gone too far in their commitment to define themselves as “outside the mainstream”, but whatever the case, the field has come to embrace too many fuzzy-minded New Age theories and practices, making it hard for a hyper-rational guy like me to stand behind it. But that’s another blog post.

Ironically, one of the people who I think is doing the best job of articulating a rational approach to transpersonal experience is the “New Atheist” Sam Harris. Harris has appeared so often in the media since his book The End of Faith came out in 2005, it’s easy to form an opinion about him without having actually read this signature work of his. But those who have read it will have noticed his strong affirmation of transpersonal experience in the book’s final chapter (Experiments in Consciousness). What I appreciate most about Harris’s approach is the way he demystifies spiritual experience by talking about in terms of attention and well-being:

“At the core of every religion lies an undeniable claim about the human condition; it is possible to have one’s experience of the world radically transformed. Although we generally live within the limits imposed by our ordinary uses of attention—we wake, we work, we eat, we watch television, we converse with others, we sleep, we dream—most of us know, however dimly, that extraordinary experiences are possible.”

So the distinction between our everyday personal experiences and the more extraordinary, deep, trans-personal experiences (experiences most of us have at least glimpsed and that give us the feeling of being connected to something greater than or beyond or transcendent to the confines of our personal egos) is simply a matter of how we use our attention. As Jon Kabat-Zinn has done in his work with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), Harris articulates the essence of spiritual practice (namely Buddhist-style meditation, which Harris has studied and practiced for many years) in universal, common-sense terms, stripped of religious and traditional associations:

“[Meditation] merely requires that a person pay extraordinarily close attention to his moment-by-moment experience of the world. There is nothing irrational about doing this. In fact, it constitutes the only rational basis for making detailed claims about the nature of our subjectivity. Through meditation, a person can come to observe the flow of his experience with remarkable clarity, and this sometimes results in a variety of insights that people tend to find both intellectually credible and personally transformative.”

While Harris makes it clear that experimenting with different methods of modifying our habitual uses of attention is very much a worthwhile endeavor, he takes pains to stress that such a project does not, in principle, need to have anything to do with either religious or New Age belief systems:

“The history of human spirituality is the history of our attempts to explore and modify the deliverances of consciousness through methods like fasting, chanting, sensory deprivation, prayer, meditation, and the use of psychotropic plants. There is no question that experiments of this sort can be conducted in a rational manner. Indeed, they are some of our only means of determining to what extent the human condition can be deliberately transformed. Such an enterprise becomes irrational only when people begin making claims about the world that cannot be supported by empirical evidence.”

So there you have it. One of the “Four Horsemen” (along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett) of the so-called New Atheist movement spent the final chapter of his religion-trashing opus validating spiritual—er I mean transpersonal—experience! In fact, the book’s concluding paragraph, from which the title was extracted, could have been written by Maslow himself. Well, except for maybe the final sentence:

“While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it. Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith.”

I’m looking forward to reading Harris’s latest work, The Moral Landscape, as it promises to flesh out his vision of an appropriately 21st century pursuit of global well-being. Now that’s a project I have no trouble standing behind.

Charles Tart & Shinzen Young: Progress in Meditation?

Dr. Charles T. TartShinzen YoungEarlier this week one of my former professors, Charles Tart (affectionately known as Charley), shared a fascinating exchange on his blog between himself and meditation teacher Shinzen Young. Charley presented Shinzen with an issue that’s coming up in his meditation practice:

“The problem. A feeling of having reached a plateau, where my meditation and mindfulness practice is OK, I’m glad I can be more mindful and will continue to practice it intermittently, but it’s not a Big Deal, it doesn’t directly motivate me to want to put in a lot of time…”

I can totally relate to this, having spent the past fifteen years or so practicing meditation intermittently, whenever the spirit moves me, so to speak (which could mean every day, or a couple of times a week, or a few times a month). While I know there might be benefits to doing some sort of formal sitting practice everyday, when it comes down to it I’m just not motivated to take more time away from the many other things that bring me joy and satisfaction. As Charley puts it:

“At the end of a session I’m usually glad I did it, it’s mildly satisfying – but so is a good cup of coffee, a nice walk, writing a paper, etc. That is, I’m not getting direct feelings that there’s some special satisfaction from meditating, so I’m not motivated to meditate much more.”

Shinzen’s response was really interesting, and is worth quoting in full:

“I think part of the problem is from Buddhism itself. Most Buddhist literature gives one the impression that the path is supposed to involve some big spiritual orgasm that happens suddenly and changes one forever. The reason that Buddhist teachers (including myself ) talk about the path in this way is that occasionally something like that does actually happen. When it does, it’s quite dramatic. However, it’s been my experience that for most people who practice meditation, it doesn’t happen that way. Rather the changes are gradual, so gradual that people acclimatize to them and don’t really realize how much they’ve changed.
The other problem is that the changes are not necessarily best measured by insights that occur, but rather in most cases best measured by the amount of suffering that a person would have gone through but didn’t go through because of the path. But since that measure is both hypothetical and a measure of absence, it’s difficult for most people to realize how HUGE it really is.
So I would say don’t worry if you’re not getting epiphanies. Your practice as you describe it is just fine.”

The idea that progress can often be both hypothetical and a measure of absence is something that’s occurred to me lately in the context of my physical exercise routine. I was just telling my wife how I’m somewhat disappointed in how little I’ve seemed to gain from this past month or so of really disciplined exercising. Based on how my body responded to exercise when I was younger, I figured that by now I’d be seeing some difference in the way I look with my shirt off, at the very least. But that middle-aged-looking flab that’s crept into my midsection is still hanging on, and perhaps even making gains. My wife reminded me that, had I not been exercising so much lately, perhaps I’d be even more flabby! For some reason this “hypothetical, measure of absence” type of progress is not very inspiring! At least it’s not as motivating as the kind of good ol’ positive results you can see in the mirror.

As Charley brings up, meditation is a little tricker, because there’s this “promise” that if you keep up a disciplined practice for long enough, you just might get rewarded with the ultimate prize of spiritual enlightenment. Of course, you also might not get enlightened no matter how much you practice, or you might be meditating in a less-than-ideal way for years before catching yourself, or you might get suddenly enlightened without having to practice much at all. It’s almost as if too many secrets have been let out of the bag when it comes to spiritual practices. For instance, how can one earnestly pursue a Zen koan when one already knows, from reading Alan Watts or whatever, that one only really “gets” the answer after giving up trying? Knowing the punch line in advance robs you of the genuine belly laugh. It’s like knowing for certain that you’ve just taken a placebo. It’s probably not going to work its magic.

Then again, maybe it’s good to drop all expectations when it comes to meditation. After all, it’s really about dropping into the present moment and learning to hang out there with attentiveness and curiosity. In that state of mind, one can allow whatever happens to happen, without resisting or grasping, and that’s its own reward.

Mindfulness & Psychotherapy ~ Shinzen Young

Shinzen Young talks about the historical cross-fertilization between early Buddhism and other cultures, and goes on to share how now in the west, neuroscience, physics, contemplative traditions and psychotherapy are being cross-fertilized with mindfulness practice. He goes on to share the similarities and differences between psychotherapy and mindfulness. Filmed in Nov. 2009 at Mt. Carmel Spiritual Centre in Niagara Falls.

Jon Kabat Zinn’s Science of Mindfulness

jon-kabat-zinnI recently listened to this great discussion between Speaking of Faith host Krista Tippett and secular meditation teacher and clinical researcher Jon Kabat-Zinn.

I’m a HUGE fan of Jon Kabat-Zinn. He has a way of cutting through the fog and getting right to the essence of what mindfulness is all about. He doesn’t rely on jargon or woo-woo spiritual concepts. He expresses an embodied understanding of what it means to be present to one’s life, to pay attention to the here and now of direct experience. He also has a firm grasp of the growing body of scientific evidence on the many health benefits of meditation.

One day I will attend one of the retreats/workshops he gives through the UMASS Center for Mindfulness.

Enjoy the discussion!

[Also, check out this October 11, 2007 Google Talk—one of the best introductions to mindfulness I have ever seen]: