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Moving
Counterclockwise
with Ellen
Langer, Ph.D.
By Richard
Mahler
In Ellen Langer's new book, Counterclockwise:
Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility, the
Harvard University social psychology professor takes her
pioneering mindfulness research in a provocative new
direction. Published in May by Ballantine, her book
addresses the hopeful question: "If we could turn back
the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back
physically?" The answer, Langer believes, is an
unequivocal "yes."
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Reserve these
dates.....
September 8-11,
2009
National
Institutes of Health
1st Annual
Mind-Body Week
September 8-11,
2009
Susan Kaiser Greenland and Ruth Wolever are
among the teachers providing quality content
classes. Other speakers include Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., Tara Brach, Ph.D., Dan Siegel,
M.D. and James Gordon, M.D. Plus many
more! Please contact Rachel Permuth-Levine,
Ph.D., levinerac@mail.nih.gov with
questions.
Click
here for more information
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Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain
Management:
An
interview with Dr. Jackie Gardner-Nix
By Richard Mahler
When it comes to management of chronic pain, the
inclusion of mindfulness may have no more committed
advocate than Jackie Gardner-Nix, an Ontario physician
and assistant professor in the University of Toronto's
Department of Anaesthesia. Click
here to read the full article
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Recently
added new classes!
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complementary medicine and personal growth. All classes
are offered in eMindful's virtual classroom where you
can see, hear, and interact with a live, expert teacher
as well as other class participants.
- Calm the
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continually busy worrying about the future or
obsessing about the past? In this course taught
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- Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral
Approaches - MBCT provides an introductory course
in mindfulness meditation which has been shown to be
effective in mitigating relapses in depressive
episodes in people who have experienced two or more
such events.
Click
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details
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live, (free) 45 minute guided mindfulness meditation
practice session. We welcome you, or your
students', participation. I've always enjoyed
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Mindfulness-Based
Chronic Pain Management:
An interview
with Dr. Jackie
Gardner-Nix
By Richard
Mahler
When it comes to management of chronic
pain, the inclusion of mindfulness may have no more committed
advocate than Jackie Gardner-Nix, an Ontario physician and
assistant professor in the University of Toronto's Department
of Anęsthesia.
"I've found that a
person's relationship to pain will change if they do
mindfulness practice on a regular basis," says Gardner-Nix,
who, with contributing author and with therapist Lucie
Costin-Hall, wrote The Mindfulness
Solution to Pain, recently published by New Harbinger.
"By learning mindfulness, chronic pain patients have often
responded better to their medication, found new ways of caring
for themselves, and found different ways of feeling fulfilled
in their lives. Such changes often decrease their suffering
from pain and renew their hopefulness."
Gardner-Nix has taught a customized version of the
standard eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course,
tailored to meet the need of her patients, since 2002;,
shortly after completing the one-week professional MBSR
training course offered by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli.
Her modification modified course, offered at minimal cost
through the province's health-care system, is presented in
hospital settings to patients whose pain is considered chronic
- lasting more than six months or beyond normal healing time -
and who have been referred by their
physicians.
"Pain medications rarely
reduce pain to zero," Gardner-Nix points out. "They can also
cause side-effects that may add to suffering, and dosages that
may need to be increased over time in order to achieve the
same results."
During the early 1980s,
when she became a doctor and began seeing patients in her
native England, Gardner-Nix accepted pharmaceuticals as
commonplace tools for treatment of chronic pain. But over time
she noticed that even strong drugs did not always help a
person return to work or improve quality of life. Gardner-Nix
also began to realize that diverse factors influenced any
given patient's experience of pain, including childhood
trauma, the impact of early parenting, physical sensitivity
correlated with genetics, and emotional makeup - as well as
the nature of an injury or illness.
"Pain and disease," she believes, "are messages to the
brain that your body is out of balance, that your organs can't
perform the way they were designed. The body breaks down for a
reason. I now ask patients about the challenges in their lives
that may have contributed to their bodies breaking
down?.'"
Gardner-Nix may be told that a
patient's parent died at an early age, that he or she was
sexually or physically abused, that a tragic accident
occurred, or that one or both parents suffered mental illness
or were involved in recreational drugs. "I feel," she says,
"as though I am crawling around in a patient's brain with a
flashlight, looking for clues. Most people suffering chronic
pain and seeking help in pain clinics have terrible histories,
sometimes with multiple drastic events happening in their
pasts." But even people who do not experience such pain, she
contends, could benefit from regaining the skill of
mindfulness, often left behind in childhood, as they overuse
their bodies, ignore nutrition, and dismiss the consequences
of traumatic experiences. The result is a life spent without
awareness of the present moment; a kind of perpetual living in
the past or future. Waking up to the present moment in a new,
more attentive fashion, this theory suggests, can cause
profound changes to occur.
"It's
important to realize this is not a quick fix," Gardner-Nix
cautions. "There is often resistance and fear. Not everyone is
ready."
Having earned a doctorate in
biochemistry before medical school, Gardner-Nix comes to her
current work with a foundation in hard science. "Until I took
the MBSR training," she notes, "I didn't think the mind and
body were particularly connected. I understand things so
differently now."
The mindfulness-based
chronic pain management classes taught by Gardner-Nix provide
basic information about the physiology of pain, but also
include discussions of its non-physical aspects. Mental
exercises are geared toward relieving pain as well as general
stress. In addition, meditation and walking periods are
shorter than that in the classic MBSR course sequence. Yoga
sequences are modified. Thirteen classes are presented rather
than eight. Classes contain a 15-minute break and there is no
all-day silent retreat. Gardner-Nix is also one of the most
prolific users of Ontario's Telemedicine (OTN) system, which
allows two long-distance classes, sited at other hospitals, to
participate simultaneously via interactive television with the
"live" class facilitated by Gardner-Nix at either St.
Michael's Hospital or Sunnybrook Health Services Centre in
Toronto.
"We have about 30 individuals,
total, at the three sites," she says. "They see and hear us,
and we see and hear them. The cameras can be moved around; so
it actually works very well." Camaraderie and increased social
interaction are positive byproducts of the classes inasmuch as
many chronic pain sufferers live in relative isolation and
feel alone with their pain. The class break and small-group
discussions aid this process.
"This is
part of the therapy," the instructor explains. "Social muscles
can become deconditioned through lack of use, just like
physical muscles."
Gardner-Nix also
oversees weekly "maintenance" classes for graduates as well as
specialized courses and workshops for health care
professionals. She lectures widely and often about mindfulness
and pain. Her chapter on the subject appears in The Clinical
Handbook of Mindfulness, published by Springer-Verlag
last November.
In an interview,
Gardner-Nix spoke with undisguised awe and contagious
enthusiasm about the power of mind-body interactions to change
patients' lives. Some participants in her courses are able to
reduce the frequency or strength of their pain medication and
sometimes give it up entirely. Patients may gain muscle
strength, flexibility, and a greater sense of wellbeing. But
beyond course impacts, Gardner-Nix now notices how seemingly
small things, such as a calm and even tone of voice, can
change someone's perception of pain. Those who say they've
recently fallen in love, she says, invariably report less
pain.
"Mindfulness has helped me
understand my patients so much better," says Gardner-Nix. It
has also changed her own life, at home as well as in the
workplace. At the time she began exploring MBSR, Gardner-Nix
recalls, she occasionally found herself in conflict with her
colleagues, where there could be resistance to some of her
ideas about treatment. Meanwhile, on the domestic front, she
was going through a difficult divorce at a time when her three
children, aged eight to 14, were particularly impressionable.
"Mindfulness helped me enormously," Gardner-Nix remembers,
"and I brought to bear all I had learned. I'm sure it helped
my daughters pull through."
From those
origins, one doctor's impassioned relationship with
mindfulness has grown to encompass not only a series of
successful pain management courses, but a constellation of
related endeavors that include speaking engagements, a
sophisticated website, outcome research, book authorship, a
set of specialized CDs, and working toward a documentary
television production, as well as her role as a chronic pain
consultant.
"Mindfulness changed
my whole outlook on life," Gardner-Nix concludes. "I left
Canadian soil [to attend MBSR training] as a physician; I came
back a person."
Learn more about Dr. Jackie Gardner-Nix
and her work at http://www.painspeaking.com
Click
here to return to the start of the
article
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Moving
Counterclockwise
with Ellen Langer,
Ph.D.
By Richard Mahler
In
Ellen Langer's new book, Counterclockwise:
Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility, the
Harvard University social psychology professor takes her
pioneering mindfulness research in a provocative new
direction. Published in May by Ballantine, her book addresses
the hopeful question: "If we could turn back the clock
psychologically, could we also turn it back physically?" The
answer, Langer believes, is an unequivocal
"yes."
This conclusion is backed up by
her 33 years of accumulated research in the mind-body field,
guided by an inquisitive nature and fascination with
self-limiting attitudes. "I
always start,"Langer points out, "with a belief in 'Why
not?"
In a recent interview, the
author described a new dimension of her ongoing work wherein
an inclusive way of perceiving and interpreting "reality" is
found to have a profound, measurable impact on both mind and
body. "Well-being and
longevity are," Langer says, "more than we realize, determined
by our assumptions and attitudes." Reconsider the
latter, she argues, and years of growth and purpose might
replace years of decline.
"We need to
free ourselves from constricting mindsets and the limits they
place on our health," says Langer. Crucial to this is
recognizing the difference between what is uncontrollable and
what is indeterminate. She notes that many diseases once
considered uncontrollable are now easily treated through
medical intervention. A change in attitude - acknowledgement
that not all possibilities had been determined - was the key.
Solutions were there all along, they simply had not been
found. "The fact that something hasn't happened doesn't mean
it cannot happen," Langer observes.
The
social psychologist - whose 11 books have included Mindfulness
and The
Power of Mindful Learning - bases her convictions in
part on a series of investigations dubbed "the
counterclockwise study." In one remarkable experiment, Langer
took a group of elderly men on a week-long retreat and had
them live as if they were experiencing 1959 again. Music of
the period was played, for example, and participants were
under strict orders not to talk about occurrences beyond the
Eisenhower era. All discussions were held in the present
tense, as if the men really were decades younger. They were
also required to perform tasks, like moving their own luggage,
with which others ordinarily assisted them.
"They watched Sgt. Bilko and Ed Sullivan on a
black-and-white television," Langer recalls, "and shared their
thoughts about 'recent' books such as Ian Fleming's
Goldfinger." Reminiscing about the past was
verboten.
Physical and psychological
measurements were taken of participants before and after the
retreat as well as of members of a control group. Those who
had "gone back in time" showed positive changes in strength,
flexibility, dexterity, attitude, cognition, and sensory
thresholds. Outsiders who were shown the men's photographs
judged them to be significantly younger than those in the
control group.
"They started out looking
like men on their last legs," remembers Langer. "By the end of
the retreat some of them were playing touch football with
me."
In an earlier experiment, selected
nursing home residents were given indoor plants to nurture.
Used to having staff members look after such greenery,
participants welcomed the change. Eighteen months later,
members of the group were demonstrably more cheerful, alert,
and active. "When they were able to exert more control over
their lives," Langer recalls, "they lived significantly longer
[than residents who had no houseplants to care for
directly]."
Such outcomes, coupled with
other research findings, have led Langer to conclude that
"mindfulness is crucial to our health." By her definition,
mindfulness is available to anyone: "It comes from the simple
act of noticing new things." By placing us firmly in the
present moment, such attentiveness opens us "to the power of
possibility" and positions us to take better advantage of new
opportunities and to more fully engage with the world. "We can
become sensitive to things that change," she says, "and
realize that stability is variable."
By
gaining "a healthier respect for uncertainty," Langer
believes, we become less beholden to the paradigms of
certainty put forward by the scientific and medical
establishments: "If I ask you how much one plus one is, you
will automatically say the answer is two. But that is true
only if we are using a base ten number system. There are other
ways of counting."
Langer's underlying
theory can be applied to human relationships as well. "When
you think you know someone, you stop noticing them," she
points out. "Everything begins to feel stale." We get trapped,
Langer suggests, by our "mindless expectations," unchallenged
absolutes, and rote responses. All seem to thrive on a human
tendency to create categories, seek patterns, and make snap
judgments.
These studies and insights
are the subject of a major motion picture, based loosely on
Counterclockwise,
to be released next year by a Hollywood studio. "Jennifer
Aniston has been signed to play me," Langer notes. Concepts
integral to the book also have helped spur a cascade of
research on mindfulness across the field of
psychology.
Members of the Baby Boomer
generation, which includes the researcher herself, may be
predisposed to respond more quickly to the "counterclockwise"
message than their forebears given the cultural questioning of
the Sixties. "Yet it's hard for many of us to step away from
what we believe is impossible," Langer cautions. Many beliefs
are set in childhood and rarely challenged when we become
adults. "That's why I always respond with the question, 'Why
is it not possible?'"
One way to
begin noticing anew - becoming mindful, as it were - is
through immersion in a new activity or acquisition of an
unfamiliar skill. In Langer's case it was painting, a pastime
so engrossing that her creations are now shown in art
galleries. "If you throw yourself into [something new] you
will feel that feeling of full engagement," she says. "That's
the way you should feel all the time."
In Counterclockwise,
Langer concludes that we are all victims of our own mindless
attitudes about aging and health. We tend to readily accept
what our conditioning, culture, and media dictate about
growing old and becoming infirm. These cues not only mold our
thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, she argues, but are
internalized by own bodies. By freeing ourselves from such
mindsets, says Langer, we have the potential to not only be
healthier and
happier, but to lead longer and more
satisfying lives.
 Richard Mahler is a free-lance
writer and editor based in Silver City, New Mexico. In 2000 he
received professional training as a facilitator of
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and since then he has
taught MBSR in California and New Mexico. The author of "Stillness:
Daily Gifts of Solitude" and 10 other books, Richard's
by-line has appeared in Yoga Journal, Body + Soul, Alternative
Medicine, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other
publications. Learn more at http://www.RichardMahler.com
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Mindful Musings
Copyright ©
2009
eMindful
Editor: Kelley
McCabe Writer: Richard
Mahler
Design: Alan L.
Kosow
Editorial
Advisor: Paul
Sugar
Support: David Lesak
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