Reader's Digest - October 2002

Leonard Dilling is a plumber for the Mount Lebanon, Pa., schools. "I'm the only one for a district with ten buildings and I work hard, ten to 16 hours a day," he says. The job is grueling, the demands constant, yet Leonard walks placidly through his day, solving problems with a smile.

Leonard Dilling is a plumber who meditates.

He wasn't always calm. Virginia, Dilling's wife, says, "At 40, Leonard was a stroke waiting to happen." He had a family history of heart disease (including a cousin who died of a heart attack at age 40), high blood pressure and cholesterol levels that were through the roof. Dilling was 40, sick and miserable and had to do something. Then he discovered that his insurance company would pay for his participation in an unconventional heart treatment program-one that included meditation.

"I was pretty skeptical about meditation and thought I'd probably just fall asleep," Dilling says. "But I discovered that it's really easy. Now when I'm in a situation where I think I'll get upset, I tell myself that it's not necessary to get all stressed, and I just start breathing. This calms me down so I can focus on the task at hand."

As part of the heart program, Dilling also exercises, takes yoga, and eats a mostly vegetarian diet. "Of all the changes I've made," says Dilling, "meditation's what's kept me going. It's helped me become a much calmer person and more confident."

Plumbers sitting cross-legged and chanting Om? Ask around and you'll find that firefighters, mothers, autoworkers, nurses-they're all turning to this ancient practice to address the strains and stresses of hectic schedules. The number of people who practice transcendental meditation-just one of several techniques-is 1.5 million in this country, including 6000 physicians. And the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has given an $8 million grant to the College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine in Fairfield, Iowa, to study national healing modalities, including transcendental meditation.

Americans are embracing meditation for reasons that go far beyond its ability to relieve stress. Like Leonard Dilling, they stumble across it when trying to manage heart disease. Or when they're trying to control migraines, lower their blood pressure, find release from chronic pain, or cope with cancer treatment. And like Leonard, long after they've resolved the problems that got them started, they continue because meditation helps other areas of their lives.

Meditation first serious scientific attention in the United States in the late '60s and early '70s when Harvard Medical School cardiologist Herbert Benson began training heart patients in the technique. As their blood pressure and stress test scores plummeted, the doctor became so impressed that he chronicled his findings in the book The Relaxation Response, which became a bestseller. He also started the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Boston. "Sixty to eighty percent of visits to health care professionals are related to stress," says Benson. "These problems are poorly treated by medications and surgeries but respond extremely well to mind-body approaches such as meditation."

Benson characterized the relaxation response as tension leaving the muscles, a decrease in anxious thoughts, and, as he later discovered, the decline in the activity of stress hormones. He and other researchers began to test meditation's effect on other maladies, and over the years, scientific evidence has pointed to a host of benefits, such as:

Migraine ease. Headache sufferers experienced a 32 percent reduction in the frequency or severity of migraines after using meditation as a treatment, according to the U.S. Headache Consortium's analysis of ten published studies in this area.

Psoriasis relief. The lesions of patients who listened to a meditation tape while undergoing ultraviolet phototherapy treatment healed four times faster than those of patients who didn't, according to research published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

Chronic pain. In 1995 enough evidence had accumulated that the National Institutes of Health decreed relaxation techniques such as meditation were very effective in lessening the suffering of patients with chronic pain.

Cancer treatment. While meditation isn't a cure for cancer, in the same way it alleviates the suffering of chronic pain it allows people undergoing chemotherapy to better manage the pain and brutal side effects.

How can sitting quietly have this kind of power? Benson explains that meditation affects brain activity, specifically in the limbic nervous system, which controls metabolism, blood pressure, respiration and heart rate.

Harvard Medical School psychologist Alice Domar has witnessed such changes firsthand. As part of her doctoral dissertation, Domar spent a year in the operating room, teaching a simple, two-minute breathing meditation to skin cancer patients about to undergo surgery.

"The patients reported less anxiety and coped better with the surgery," she says. "Doctors liked it because the patients' blood pressure was lower, they bled less and the surgery took less time."

Corporate America is beginning to capitalize on the benefits of meditation. Marsha Manning's job at GM world headquarters in Detroit requires complex multitasking, which led to anxiety and made it difficult for her to think straight. So the 42-year-old data analyst studied meditation at GM in a free, six-week class for employees.

Today Manning meditates at her desk and finds she's able to give each task her full attention, letting go of worries about what's coming. As a result, the quality and quantity of her work have improved. "Learning meditation has helped me be more productive," says Manning.

This is no surprise to Saki Santorelli, executive director of the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. "Mindfulness meditation relies on paying attention to what is happening in the present moment," he says. "We spend much of our time on autopilot, worried about the future or agonizing over the past."

Practicing meditation in a group setting also seems to help people become closer as well as more productive. California fire fighter Bob Hagg attests to this. The 46-year-old captain of a Los Altos Hills, Calif., crew says, "We've become calmer and more in-tune with each other." The firefighters practicing yoga and meditation because they wanted the flexibility, Hagg says. "We found that the meditation had a calming effect on all of us so that even during a major alarm we stay together and don't get rattled."

Whether you're sick or just stressed, meditation-twenty minutes or two-can help. Domar Group or individual, sick or just stressed, meditation can answer. Alice Domar's practice of it centers on a daily "mindful" walk. "I look, listen, breathe, feel, smell and try not to think," notes Domar credits the technique with helping stop the premature labor she experienced during her first pregnancy. Confined to bed, she repeated this meditation several times a day: "We will make it," on her inhalation, "to January" on her exhalation. Her daughter Sarah was born three weeks from full-term.

Meditation's true power comes not just from the time spent in formal practice, Domar says, but from taking the lessons of meditation-to be relaxed and aware-out into the rest of your day. "All you need is the capacity to breathe," she says, "and you can meditate anytime, anywhere, and see a real benefit in your life."

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Sidebar: Meditate, Here and Now

Meditation is not an exotic, difficult practice that requires chanting, navel gazing or sitting in lotus position. In fact, if you've repeatedly said a prayer or gazed for a while at something-such as a campfire or the ocean-you're already well on your way to knowing how to meditate.

If you'd like to practice more formally, the basics are simple:

1. Sit in a comfortable position. The classic posture is cross-legged on the floor, with your bottom supported by a small round cushion. If this is uncomfortable, there are many other options, including lying down on your back, sitting back on your legs or sitting on a straight-backed chair.
2. Straighten your spine. Imagine yourself supported by a string hanging from the ceiling, connecting to the top of your head.
3. Breathe deeply through your nose, so that the air completely fills your lungs-expanding your abdomen and entire chest cavity. Then exhale slowly through your nose or mouth, contracting your abdominal muscles at the end of the exhale to expel all the air from your lungs.
4. Pick something to focus on, for example: a candle flame, a flower or a picture. Or focus on your breath by counting each inhalation and exhalation. Breathe in slowly for a count of five, then out slowly to the same count of five. If your mind begins to wander, gently bring it back to focus on your breath-or on whatever other object you've chosen for meditation.

If you like, you can also focus on a meaningful word or phrase-known as a mantra-and mentally recite it in synchrony with your breathing. For example, on inhalation think "calm" and on exhalation think "smile." Or try a religious phrase or part of a prayer.

Start with ten minutes or up to an hour of meditation a day, though experts say even a few minutes has benefit.

RESOURCES

• Mindfulness and Meditation: Stress Reduction, hosted by Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachussetts Medical Center. This is a 52-minute instructional videotape about developing a focused, relaxed mindset. $20.
• Boundless Healing: Meditation Exercises to Enlighten the Mind and Heal the Body, by Tulku Thondup, Shambhala Publications, $23.
• Meditation for Dummies, by Stephan Bodian, John Wiley & Sons, $20.
• Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, by Thich Nhat Hahn, Bantam, $14.
• The Healing Path of Yoga, by Nischala Joy Devi, Three Rivers Press, $17.