Document text
Sections Home Page Local News AP News Blogs Archives Business Classifieds Event Calendar Forums Life Opinion Obituaries Photo Gallery Readers Photo Gallery Sports Tempo Weather Road Cams Special Coverage 2006 Britt Festivals --> Shop Our Valley AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Search Our Valley Special Sections Distinctly Northwest Readers' Choice Homelife Magazine Joy Magazine Oregon Golf Info Oregon Wine Info Other Publications Local Links Ashland News eSouthernOregon Newspapers In Education Personals Moving Here Movie Listings TV Listings Volunteer Customer Service Advertise With Us Media Kit Place Classified Ad Contact Us FAQ's Home Delivery Site Map --> Email Story to a Friend May 16, 2006 Kim Shelton, left, and Bill McMillan lead Ashland High School students through exercises as part of their instruction in mindfulness-based stress reduction. The technique teaches meditation with a twist: Practitioners focus on what's on their minds instead of trying to �empty� it. (Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell) Being mindful Ashland High students learn the stress-reducing power of focusing on the moment By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune The students in Bill McMillan's Ashland High School class sit quietly in meditation. But they aren't "emptying" their minds as is traditional in meditative practice; they're doing the opposite and focusing on awareness of their thoughts and feelings. The approach is called "mindfulness-based stress reduction," and it's becoming more common in the Rogue Valley. Taught at Ashland High School, at Asante's new Triune Integrative Medicine Clinic in Medford and at several social service agencies, the technique aims to boost health and immunity by reducing stress. Its practitioners say it helps with recovery from cancer, asthma, heart disease, migraine, weight problems, autoimmune disorders and depression. "I always wanted to learn meditation," says Ashland High student Clay Davidson, 16, noting that it's helping with homework, social life and just being positive. "Homework is not so hard now. I just accept it as part of life. It doesn't take as much energy now." Advertisement "Mindfulness is the moment-to-moment process of keeping awareness on your thoughts, emotions and body sensations, and these kids need it as much as anyone," says McMillan, an Ashland counselor who is offering the program to the school for no charge. "They've already got unhealthy reactions to their stresses — how to fit in, what to do after graduation, what kind of world they're moving into and issues about drugs, alcohol and divorce of parents." The technique has been used since 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School's Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society and today is incorporated in techniques used in more than 250 medical centers in the United States. The key to mindful meditation is to be aware in the present, to notice your thoughts, feelings and body sensations without judgment and to always return to being aware of your breath, says Kim Shelton, a counselor who teaches the AHS class with McMillan. "It's training the mind to be aware of what is actually going on, rather than reacting automatically to what we think and feel is going on. It's very Buddhist, but without the Buddhism," says Shelton. For Parkinson's Disease patient Lily Beryl Bowes, 62, of Ashland, the technique helps relieve stress. "What I've learned from mindfulness is, at every opportunity, to stop and be aware of my surroundings, so if I'm making tea, instead of grabbing it and rushing onto the next thing, I pause and listen to the sound of the kettle — and experience the taste of the tea." In sickness, our health suffers more, notes McMillan, because "instead of experiencing our pain or symptoms, we put our awareness on emotions, like what if this never goes away, I will never be able to do this or that activity, so the fear freaks us out and we get a rush of adrenaline and go into fight-or-flight mode." The result of that habitual cycle is we create stress that makes healing harder, he adds. In addition to donating their services to the school, McMillan and Shelton are volunteering the technique to OnTrack's DADS program for alcohol-drug offending fathers, with planning under way to teach it to youth in the county's juvenile offender program. It also is taught as an eight-week, paying class at Hidden Springs Wellness Center in Ashland. "It fits in totally with 12-step recovery programs, because you're becoming aware of emotional triggers, relapse and you're learning to accept what you have right now — what your body, mind and emotions are doing," says McMillan. "These men in DADS, some of them were on meth the day before," he says. "They're way in the future, stressing with "how am I going to make it, how are my kids going to be" or in the past with regret. In truth, we're all like that, to varying degrees. But the present is all we have." How can mindfulness help against cancer and other diseases? "If you've just gotten a diagnosis, most people hand it over to the doctors. They don't do as well," says McMillan. "You do better if you stay conscious of all that's happening. You feel in control and that you have influence over it." As for pain, being mindful and aware of breathing is a calming practice that teaches you to be more accepting and compassionate with yourself, Sheldon says. Mindfulness-based stress reduction has been taught to prison inmates, wardens, the Chicago Bulls and L.A. Lakers in championship seasons, and has been made part of curricula in many law, business and medical schools, according to writings of its creator, University of Massachusetts Medical School's Jon Kabat-Zinn. Research published from prisons and ghettos shows it "furthers individual and community health and well-being and serves as mitigators to poverty, crime and violence," wrote Kabat-Zinn, author of "Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness." Clinical trials on the technique in the 1980s and 1990s by Kabat-Zinn and others show a 41 percent drop in mortality for patients in cardiac rehabilitation, increase in survival rates of melanoma and metastatic breast cancer patients, significantly lowered glucose levels in type one diabetes, improved functioning and fewer attacks in asthma patients, a four-fold improvement in skin clearing with psoriasis and improvement in symptoms of multiple sclerosis patients, according to University of Massachusetts publications. "What on earth is going on?" writes Kabat-Zinn. "You might say that we are in the early stages of waking up as a culture to the potential of interiority, to the power of cultivating awareness and an intimacy with stillness and silence. We are beginning to realize the power of the present moment to bring us greater clarity and insight, greater emotional stability and wisdom. Meditation is no longer something foreign and exotic to our culture. It is now as American as anything else. It has arrived and none to soon, given the state of the world and the huge forces impinging on our lives." John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected]. Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback online casinos news Home Security Systems Online Casino Reviews Online poker at AbsolutePoker.com Fundraisers UK Homeowner Loans Casinos Canada Cord Blood Banking Entertainment Guide Texas Electric Choice Compare Electric rates in Texas Windermere Van Vleet Trunks, Footlocker Men's Clothing Debt Help Advertisement s Advertisement