Some kind of meditative practice is found in all the world’s wisdom traditions, and has been around for thousands of years, says Shauna Shapiro of Santa Clara University, co-author with Linda Carlson of the book The Art and Science of Mindfulness. Most include focusing attention and letting thoughts and emotions go by without judgment or becoming involved.
However, it is striking to note how in recent years meditation is progressively going mainstream, and is now the subject of research in scientific journals. A U.S. government survey in 2007 found that about 1 out of 11 Americans, more than 20 million, has meditated in the previous year. And a growing number of medical centers are teaching meditation to patients for stress and pain relief, as conventional medicine increasingly embraces healing methods once dismissed as “alternative medicine” and combining them with standard treatment. Jon Kabat-Zinn credits the “colossal shift in acceptance” of meditation to accelerating research on the benefits of meditation.
His enthusiasm is shared by practictioners on the ground, like Dr. Barrie R. Casselith, from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Integrative Medicine Service in New York: ”It’s not invasive, it has no side effects, it has tremendous benefits that are very well documented and it’s something patients can do on their own so it doesn’t cost anything. It’s not a cancer treatment….but… ‘it deals with quality of life and helps with symptoms. It can relieve pain, lower blood pressure and heart rate. It can make people feel calmer, it enhances mood. It does lots of good things.”
www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-06-07-meditate_N.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/23/health/a-therapy-gains-ground-in-hospitals-meditation.html
Our thoughts are always happening. Much like leaves floating down a stream…If you are standing by a river and a leaf floats by, you have your choice of following the leaf with your eye or keeping your attention fixed in front of you. The leaf floats out of your line of vision. Another leaf enters…and floats by. But as we stand on the bank of the river and the leaves float by, there is no confusion as to whether or not we are the leaves. Similarly, it turns out that there is a place in our minds from which we can watch our own mental images go by. We aren’t our thoughts any more than we are the leaves.
Mindfulbalance 