MBSR Conference in Worcester

Yesterday evening I sat in a hotel meeting room, in Worcester, MA, with more than 700 people who wanted to do some meditation with Jon Kabat-Zinn, and to ask him questions. He gave a wonderful talk (he always does), but/and the most wonderful thing for me was the amazing feel, or energy, in the room. About half of the audience were graduates of the MBSR program (some of them among the original participants in the program, taught by Jon 30 years ago!), and roughly the other half were researchers and clinicians who are here for the rest of the conference. Even though the room was hot, and we were packed in like sardines, there was no discomfort or frustration evident to me. I don't draw any particular meaning from that fact, other than that it is not the way that people usually behave when they are jammed into a hot room for 3 hours, without a break.

Today we are listening to research presentations, all day. There is some really amazing research being done on questions related to mindfulness practice: Does meditation really help people? In what way(s)? How does it help? Who does it help? How much meditation do you have to do, in order to see any benefits? What is going on in the brain that might explain the physiological, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral benefits that appear to be related to the practice of mindfulness meditation?

One of the most intriguing and compelling ideas I heard this morning is this: many of the diseases that we humans experience are related to, or caused by, the inflammatory response that our organisms generate in response to insults of various kinds. It appears that widely differing disorders such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and depression are actually produced by inflammatory processes. And the inflammatory response is at least exacerbated by (perhaps also caused by) stressful situations of various sorts (including social stressors). What I learned this morning is that research findings are beginning to indicate that meditation (compassion meditation, and mindfulness meditation) diminishes the inflammatory response to social stress. This could provide evidence for a common pathway along which meditation produces a variety of health-related benefits.

Why is this so? No doubt it is at least in part because meditation helps us to become less emotionally reactive to social stressors (and to our internal responses and appraisals to and about the distressing situations) that ratchet up the full extent of stress responses.

I will write more about all of this later; this conference is absolutely amazing. Brilliant people, doing cutting-edge research at major universities; it will take quite a while to absorb and reflect on everything I am learning here. Actually, I am a bit scattered by it all; I have lost my billfold twice... yesterday, I found it lying out on the sidewalk where I had dropped it, an hour earlier; and today, I guess it fell out of my backpack in the conference hotel, and someone was good enough to turn it in... Maybe I shouldn't be trusted with a billfold, for the rest of this conference...