The Path to the Heart: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
by Erin Schulman

A student who was in the MBSR class I teach at Vassar College wrote me a few weeks ago. I saved the letter because when I first met Merle she was chronically worried and anxious, but in the note she captured the delicious change I had witnessed as it happened: "Thank you so much for your kind words before graduation. They were with me as I was celebrating the day with my family, my fellow graduates, and the goddesses of Vassar, who once again pushed back the rain with a smile and let us graduate under a cool beautiful sky.... I felt free and alive on Sunday, and wonderfully confident about the adventures that are beginning for me. I've been keeping up with my yoga and sitting, and believe that this practice will grow and sustain me for a long time. Many blessings."

Many blessings indeed. I, too, have been a searcher my whole life. I've sought peace of mind, tranquility, a sense of well-being, and, yes, let's say it, happiness.

Years of psychotherapy certainly gave me insight and helped me along the road. But my pain needed a broader container than that created by simply working on my anger and sadness. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) showed me a way to put the inevitable stresses of life into a deep perspective.

Although I have taught Yoga for more than thirty years, have meditated consistently for all of that time, and have a pile of self-help books that reaches to the ceiling, I didn't find the path to ease of being until I encountered MBSR.

I was watching television, Bill Moyer's Healing and the Mind. Jon Kabat-Zinn grabbed my attention. Not only was he handsome and dynamic, but he had something to say that spoke to me deeply. He discussed a technique he had developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical School for helping patients with untreatable pain. Strangely, in that medical setting, he used a combination of yoga, meditation and body scan to help people with incurable illness find peace of mind.

When the interview was over, I literally hugged the TV set. I knew in my bones that I had to study with Jon Kabat-Zinn. As soon as I could, I signed up for Jon's weeklong course at Omega.

In our first MBSR class, Jon gave each of us three raisins. I happen to love raisins, but the instruction was not to eat it, but to bring our sense of sight to the raisin, to look at it as though we had never seen it before! We continued to engage other sense organs with the raisin—first touch, and then smell, in the same attentive way. What fun! When it was time to actually eat the raisin, the experience was a full sensory delight: slowly, mindfully we ate this little raisin. It was like eating raisin pie!

And so begins the MBSR program, through which we learn to bring our full attention to whatever we're doing. In so doing, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. It's like waking up out of a deep sleep. The process invites non-judgmental awareness and self-compassion. Difficult for most of us.

MBSR is training in moment-to-moment awareness; paying attention to things we ordinarily never give thought to. As Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, "It is a systematic approach to developing new kinds of control and wisdom in our lives, based on our inner capacities for -relaxation, paying attention, awareness and insight."

These are capacities everyone has, but most of us seldom cultivate. People who would never seek out a yoga teacher, a psychotherapist, or a meditation class seem to be able to relate to MBSR with joy and a sense of discovery. MBSR opened my eyes to a wonderful integration of these wellness techniques.The groups are fun, often exhilarating, and the sharing and sense of self-discovery are very deep. For me, MBSR pulls together heart, mind and body in a unique way.

I'm reminded of Pema Chodron's words: "Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are"

As we investigate mindfulness meditation, yoga and body scan, the inner fractures and turbulence of our lives present themselves. Instead of running from the human condition, we experience it. In the intimacy of the group, we begin our archaeological dig. With insight and perspective, comes relief, a more compassionate way of looking at the world and ourselves.

The hard thing to learn is that in the end "the way" is a path without rules. The path involves practice and self-trust. It opens the heart.

When my former student Merle wrote: "I felt free and alive on Sunday, and wonderfully confident about the adventures that are beginning for me," I resonated. My adventures teaching MBSR continue. As the poet Wu Men wrote: "If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,/This is the best season of your life."

Erin Schulman has advanced degrees in religion, philosophy and information management from Fordham and Rutgers Universities. She is a member of the Yoga Teachers Alliance and trained extensively at the University of Massachusetts Medical school in Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. She teaches MBSR at Vassar College and at the Rhinebeck Center for Progressive Psychotherapy.