Mindfulness and meditation: an expert explains the background of this ancient practice

(CNN Spanish) – The return of the children of Thailand to the outside world has brought many lessons, including the importance of serenity and meditation in times of extreme stress. But what do the scientists who study the meditation practice known as mindfulness. Here we tell you.

We speak with Dr. Charles L. Raison, a professor at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a leader in the scientific study of Mindfulness at the Center for Healthy Minds at the same university. Dr. Raison is also a consultant on mental health issues for CNN.

Why are you passionate about studying Mindfulness?

Well, I’m a psychiatrist, so my career is treating mental illness. Over the past 20 years I have worked to discover new ways to treat depression that are different from the medications that are currently available to us.

One of my personal commitments is to try to bring Tibetan knowledge to the modern world, because the culture of Tibet is fading. This knowledge base on human psychology and the world is spectacular and I want to integrate it into our world so that we can benefit from it. That is why I have worked closely with the Tibetans for more than 20 years.

We always think of medicine in terms of its advancements and the creation of new drugs. But you are looking for answers in the past, why?

In a way, I came to the past from the future. In the early 2000s we were doing very innovative things about how the immune system and the brain communicate with each other and we had the opportunity to improve that conversation. For this we select meditation as an intervention. We thought it was really well designed to help people rethink how they see the world, in a way that they can protect their health.

This as a circular path, a symbol always present in ancient cultures.

Yes! One of the interesting things about these ancient practices, including meditation, is that modern science is beginning to clearly show that meditation undoubtedly has effects on the brain and the body that are relevant to health.

Who opened the doors to the world of Buddhism?

That is an interesting story. I entered the world of Buddhist work when I was younger and at the University of California, Los Angeles. While there I was asked to organize a fundraising dinner for the Dalai Lama’s sister. She was in charge of a school system for exiled children from Tibet, a community called Tibetan Children’s Villages. The Dalai Lama’s sister asked me to do some research on the emotional state of all these displaced children. The study showed that children who had to cross mountains and were separated from their parents had higher levels of anxiety and depression.

This is interesting, particularly since there is a stereotype that the people of Tibet do not suffer from these “Western ills” such as anxiety and depression.

Depression is very old. One of the things that researchers have done is visit the last tribes on earth that are practically hunter-gatherers, like some tribes in Bolivia. What has been found is that these tribes are depressed like us, and that they get depressed for the same reasons. Depression is probably an ancient human phenomenon, it’s a human vulnerability, and what’s interesting about it is that even though people express it differently, if you let them talk about it in different cultures, if you really sit down and listen. to people, the symptoms are remarkably similar throughout the world. This suggests that depression has evolved as a biological response to adversity. All over the world, people have this stereotype about monks (Tibetans), but Tibetans are not exempt from depression either.

But there are still some clear cultural differences, right? The interpretation of meditation in Western cultures is different from that of the East, am I right?

There’s this totally new idea, the idea that regular meditation is something that people in general should do, and I think it’s a very Western idea. You don’t find that idea in cultures where meditation is really rooted.

Do you think there is a risk of trivializing the role of mindfulness And meditation because to us it sounds more like a “new age” thing?

Yes, yes, I think it is a risk. The big risk that I have seen repeatedly in the last 20 years, especially in the United States, is that we are very factual, we like facts, and we hope that what is new will solve all problems. We hope for a miracle cure and meditation has much more background. That is my main concern, because in my experience, meditation is extremely valuable to some people, it has some value to others, and there are many people for whom it doesn’t work. It’s like everything in medicine, almost nothing works spectacularly for everyone and we shouldn’t expect meditation to be a cure for everyone. It is an important tool, it has helped more people than others, so we must take this into account, so as not to feel disappointed if it does not work as expected.

Maybe that’s the best thing about our world, not waiting for meditation to solve all problems. Sometimes you need medicine, sometimes you need surgery. The truth is that each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. If you have appendicitis, meditation is not the way to go. On the other hand, if you are unhappy and don’t find much meaning in your life, the Prozac it also doesn’t solve the problem. So if we want to be wise about it, we must integrate these approaches. Which is part of the major interests in our research group.