Contemplative Learning and Inquiry across Disciplines

10 Integrating Mindfulness Theory and Practice at Lesley University

10 Integrating Mindfulness Theory and Practice at Lesley University Nancy W. Waring The idea to develop an academic course in mindfulness began to solidify in the fall of 2003. That fall, I had the good fortune be among 1,200 attendees at the Mind and Life Institute meeting at MIT—an unprecedented public discourse on meditation and the human mind, featuring the Dalai Lama, Buddhist scholars and monastic practitioners, and Western neuroscientists. At that time, the reach, track record, and promise of mindfulness meditation were already phenomenal. Thousands of medical patients with chronic pain and other debilitating conditions had completed Jon Kabat-Zinn’s­ Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM) at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Medical Center, experiencing for themselves the truth of Kabat Zinn’s counsel—that they had the inner resources to respond to their situations adaptively, in ways that support healing and well-being (Waring, 2000, p. 19). Additional thousands had learned mindfulness at like-minded programs around the country and the world, many of them directed by graduates of the CFM’s professional training program in MBSR. Twenty-five years of research on MBSR had shown remarkable results— reduced stress, anxiety and panic, and symptom reduction across many conditions . One study even startled Kabat-Zinn: psoriasis patients who received meditation instructions piped into the light booths where they were receiving ultraviolet treatment experienced a skin clearing rate four times faster than that of control group undergoing the same treatment, but without meditation instructions (Kabat-Zinn et al., 1998, p. 625). Mindfulness had begun taking root in settings other than health care. A forward-thinking law professor, Leonard Riskin, began teaching mindful165 166 Nancy W. Waring ness to students in his dispute resolution classes. As a meditator, Riskin had experienced for himself the benefits of awareness of his own body and mental processes while he was engaged in delicate and stressful negotiations between opposing parties. Mindfulness reduced both his reactivity to the clients’ behaviors and his self-questioning about his mediating skills, enabling him to focus sharply on the matter at hand. MBSR was being called for in corporate settings . Trained MBSR instructors were even allowed into several prisons to teach mindfulness to incarcerated men and women. A handful of psychotherapists were beginning to integrate mindfulness into their practices. Some K-12 teachers were introducing mindfulness exercises in their classrooms. The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, with support from the American Council for a Learned Society, began offering fellowships for college professors across disciplines to develop courses that included contemplative elements. Prior to the Mind and Life Symposium, I had considered the idea of developing a course in which mindfulness itself was the subject. Surely the principles and practices of MBSR could be integrated into an academic course that combined regular mindfulness meditation practice with rigorous academic inquiry into key findings from 25 years of research on meditation. As a professor at Lesley University in the graduate Division of Interdisciplinary Inquiry, I was well positioned to introduce such a course. The course was in keeping with Lesley’s commitment to experiential education, in conjunction with critical thinking and analysis; my division is known for being hospitable to novel pedagogies. The Mind and Life Symposium fed my enthusiasm. I was rapt as I listened to Dr. Richard Davidson describe an experiment that showed meditationrelated changes in the brains of advanced practitioners. While Buddhist monks practiced compassion meditation in his Wisconsin laboratory, Davidson and his colleagues witnessed the highest frequency ever recorded in a brain rhythm called gamma oscillation, as measured by EEG. The high gamma oscillation remained even when the monks were not formally practicing. The monks, through extensive meditation practice (10,000 hours or more), had actually changed their brains. Notably, even the novice meditators in the control group showed a slight increase in gamma activity, suggesting that even short practice may effect changes in brain activity and lead to increased compassion. What a compelling demonstration of neuroplasticity to share with students . Surely such a finding, and subsequent discoveries from the fledgling field of contemplative neuroscience, could continuously vitalize a course on the theory and practice of mindfulness meditation. The following account sets forth the pedagogical ideas underlying this now well-established course, seeks to represent students’ experiences, and provides a window into the classroom. 167 Integrating Mindfulness Theory and Practice...