The scientific aspects of mind/body interventions and their clinical applications, such as the relaxation response (Herbert Benson) and various other meditation practices have now been researched for at least 30 years. Mind/body interactions can be measured scientifically. Through the investigation of stress, the relaxation response, other mind/body interactions, and belief systems, research attempts to understand these linkages at various levels and dimensions of human experience. A wealth of scientific findings helps us understand in ever more intricate details how body and mind interact, and how to put our knowledge of this interaction to beneficial use in everyday living.

It is now scientific fact beyond a doubt that mind/body interventions such as psychotherapy and meditation have a profoundly healing effect on human beings. This results in a whole spectrum of positive effects on health, such as cures, symptom improvements, slowed down disease progressions, accelerated healing rates, decreased need for surgical and other invasive interventions, decreased use of clinical investigations and medication, decreased rates of disease relapses, greater tolerance for chronic pain and debilitating conditions, lessened anxiety in the face of impending mortality and simply a greater sense of ease and well-being.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), the clinical application of mindfulness meditation as developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, has become a respected field of research within the larger context of mind/body medicine. Since 1993, many papers have been published on MBSR by the research team of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts and other researchers at other institutions. Some of these papers are included in a separate section in the bibliography.

Major Research Findings in Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as described on the website of the Center For Mindfulness in Medicine, Healthcare and Society – Top of Page

Over the past twenty years research in MBSR at the Center For Mindfulness in Medicine, Healthcare and Society at the University of Massachusetts (CFM) has shown consistent, reliable, and reproducible demonstrations of major and clinically relevant reductions in medical and psychological symptoms across a wide range of medical diagnoses. These include many different chronic pain conditions [Kabat-Zinn, 1982; Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth and Burney, 1985; Kabat-Zinn et al, 1986], other medical diagnoses [Kabat-Zinn and Chapman-Waldrop, 1988]; and medical patients with a secondary diagnosis of anxiety and/or panic [Kabat-Zinn et al, 1992; Miller et al, 1995]. The research was based on the eight-week MBSR intervention, and showed maintenance of these changes in some cases for up to four years of follow-up.

Consistent, reliable, and reproducible demonstrations of significant and clinically relevant increases in trait measures which are usually stable in adulthood, and maintenance of these gains for up to three years of follow-up, were also shown. This is indicative of enhanced psychological hardiness (Kobasa) and a greater sense of coherence (Antonovsky) over the course of the eight-week intervention. These measures indicate a heightened sense of self and self-in-relationship, and a greater ability to find coherence and act effectively under high degrees of stress. These changes enhance the experience of self-efficacy in patients and their view of the value of engaging in their own on-going health and wellbeing through meditation, yoga, and above all, the systematic cultivation of awareness [Kabat-Zinn, Skillings, and Salmon].

A randomized clinical trial [Kabat-Zinn, Wheeler, et al 1998] showed that patients with moderate to severe psoriasis undergoing phototherapy or photochemotherapy, who listened to guided meditation tapes while receiving the ultraviolet light treatments, healed at approximately four times the rate of subjects receiving just the light treatments. Since the delivery of the mind/body element of the intervention was simultaneous and co-extensive with the conventional UV treatments, it is a classic example of both integrative and participatory medicine. The observation of an increased rate of skin clearing among the meditation cohort was seen in two separate studies. This work suggests that the integration of the mind/body element into the more conventional medical treatment resulted in reduced treatment cost (decreased number of treatments to achieve skin clearing) and in a decreased risk of basal cell carcinoma from the UV exposure. It also suggests indirectly that the mind can effect a healing process all the way down to the level of gene expression and control of the cell replication cycle, which may have implications for carcinogenic processes. Since the intervention was delivered via an audiotape recording and in the relative isolation of a light booth, social support variables in this study were minimized, allowing the researchers to look at mind/body effects in the absence of this common potential confounder in group interventions (such as MBSR). For such reasons, this experimental system provides a fruitful avenue for the further study of mind/body effects and their psychophysiological pathways and mechanisms.

Another randomized clinical trial (Davidson et al) took the form of a laboratory study of MBSR conducted in collaboration with Dr. Richard Davidson of the Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin and the MacArthur Foundation's Mind/Body Network and others. The team looked at the effects of MBSR training in a workplace setting on brain activity and on immune response to viral challenge, among other variables.

A multi-year relationship between the Center For Mindfulness and the team of Drs. John Teasdale of the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, in Cambridge, UK, Mark Williams of the University of Wales, and Zindel Segal of the University of Toronto and the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, has led to the development of a new approach to cognitive therapy, termed mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and to major conceptual advances in the modeling of affective change in depressed patients [Teasdale, Segal and Williams, 1995; Teasdale, 1999].

The Center For Mindfulness is also engaged in a number of other research projects including the introduction of MBSR practices into the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, an integrated MBSR/mindful dietary intervention for men with prostate cancer, and a cost-effectiveness study of MBSR in conjunction with a large HMO.

Since 1992, in conjunction with two neighborhood health centers, the CFM has conducted an inner city MBSR program for the multicultural, multi-ethnic population of Worcester's economically impoverished inner city. This program is free of charge, with on-site mindful childcare, and free travel vouchers to minimize common barriers to attendance. Over 2,000 people have been referred to this program and over 500 have completed it. It is offered entirely in Spanish as well as in English. The outcomes from this MBSR clinic are currently being written up for publication. This and the prison project described below are both examples of integrating mind/body approaches into settings and institutions within society that might further individual and community health and well-being and serve as mitigators to poverty, crime, and violence. At least one other inner city bi-lingual MBSR clinic has developed based on the UMass model, and has reported positive results [Roth and Creaser, 1997)].

Between 1992 and 1996, the CFM delivered MBSR programs to over 1,500 inmates and 100 staff (including the Commissioner of Public Safety and several prison superintendents) of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, in collaboration with and under the support of the Massachusetts Committee on Criminal Justice. Exciting positive outcomes were observed in this project, and are currently being written up for publication in the criminal justice literature.

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