Finding Calm In The Chaos

How to meditate when you don't have time





A Skeptic In the Land of Zen







The Journey Begins

Then I met Diane Reibel, PhD, who teaches Kabat-Zinn's 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course, or MBSR, at the JeffersonMyrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where she is director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program.

I liked the fact that she was a scientist whose studies on meditation are often cited in other research. And Reibel was up for an experiment. She was willing to let me bring to class students with specific problems—heart disease, hypertension, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and lots and lots of stress—to see how meditation worked for them. To chart our progress, we agreed to take assessment tests before the first class and at the end of our last session that were designed to show whether we were depressed, anxious, or in pain and how our emotions were affecting us physically.

Insomnia was one reason Ann Michael joined our group. A poet, essayist, and college professor, Ann, then 47, said that worries made her both exhausted andunable to sleep. "Some days I feel as though I could sleep for 18 hours, and yet I often wake up in the middle of the night," she said.

Ginny Palmer, also a college professor, was 45 when she found out 5 years ago that her "chronic heartburn" was an almost complete blockage of the left anterior descending coronary artery, known as "the widowmaker." She had a stent—a wire mesh tube—inserted to keep the artery propped open. She started carrying nitroglycerin and low-dose aspirin with her everywhere. "I live with the fear that every time I have an ache or a pain, my arteries could be closing again," she said.

My five other classmates ran the gamut: They were young and old, financially well off and struggling. They hoped meditation would help with headaches, backaches, even post-traumatic stress following a heart attack (three of the women had heart disease). Jenna Franceski, a then-32-year-old law student, said she's "always had 'food issues.'" Over the past few years, her weight has cycled up and down, she says. "I've always thought meditation was the way to go, but I can't seem to quiet my mind," admitted Jenna, a fast-talking, funny woman whose energy level would make Katie Couric look depressed. "When I've tried, I've usually fallen asleep." [pagebreak]

Day 1: Learning to Breathe

Reibel redesigned the MBSR blueprint so that our class of eight met in person only twice: first for a full-day workshop and then for a half-day meeting at the end of the course. The rest of the time we phoned it in, meditating via conference call every Sunday night. During the week, we used guided-meditation CDs for 20 minutes a day.

It was damned noisy in the classroom at Jefferson where we had our first workshop--car horns, police sirens, and jackhammers intruded from the street below. But that was nothing compared with the chaos that flooded my brain seconds after I tried to focus on my breathing, which is the centering practice at the heart of mindfulness. It's supposed to be a way to clear and calm your mind, but my mind was anything but clear and calm. In fact, the cacophony was deafening. First, anxiety: "I have five deadlines in the next 6 weeks. I'm never going to make them." Next, recriminations: "You shouldn't have taken on more than you could do." Fear marched in. "What if no one ever wants me to write for them again?"

Then the others arrived: judgments, fantasies, to-do lists, hopes, regrets, crazy stuff out of left field. "What's that smell? Should I put some pepper on those foamflowers—the rabbits have been nibbling off the blossoms. God, I have so much to do. I should be cleaning the house--it's starting to look like a hovel. Is everyone else having some kind of enlightenment, or am I the only one who can't stop thinking about rabbits and dust bunnies? I need to exercise more. I'll start tomorrow..."

If that kind of chatter went on in my brain all the time, no wonder I often found myself struggling to put one word in front of the other. I was spending an inordinate amount of energy on mental time travel, toggling between what happened in the past and what I think might happen in the future. And I was way too in touch with my inner critic. Everything that crossed my mind got a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

And it hit me. This was why I needed to be in the present moment. The perpetual mental struggle to reconcile the past and control the future was futile, not to mention exhausting.

"Just try to pay attention to your breathing for one full cycle of inhaling and exhaling," Reibel urged. But before I even began to let my breath out, the thoughts were back and they'd brought their friends. Once more, I showed them the door.

"Be aware of what you're feeling and accept what is happening," Reibel told us. "Let go of judgments and struggle, and be exactly who you are."[pagebreak]

Weeks 1-2: Clearing the Mind

Meditation turned out to be like algebra class: I thought I understood it while I was there, but as soon as I was gone, I wanted the number for the homework hotline.

It seemed so simple: You just have to sit undisturbed for 20 minutes each day, which I was willing to insist on, and my family was willing to grant, for this 8-week period. You close your eyes and focus on your breath--how your stomach rises when you inhale and falls when you exhale. If you want, you can repeat a word or phrase, either meaningless (a mantra like om) or significant (peace, love, God). When other thoughts arise, you gently nudge them away and refocus on your breath or your mantra.

But even with the guided meditation CDs, where a voice talks you through the process, I couldn't start to put a damper on my thoughts until 15 minutes into my 20-minute sessions. I wasn't alone; all of us were having trouble. During our first conference call, Reibel told us that was perfectly normal. "Just because you have thousands of thoughts doesn't mean you're not meditating," she said. "Just say, 'It's a thought,' then let it go."

Some us of were struggling with more than the difficulty of quieting our minds. As we took turns reporting on our progress, Jean Safran, who'd had a major heart attack 4 years ago in her late 50s, told us she'd canceled a planned vacation in Mexico. Instead, she was heading to Chicago to put her mother in hospice. "I'm meditating every morning and night," she said. She didn't think she could manage without it, but even so, she sounded desperate.

Weeks 3-5: A Surprising Change

I landed a new assignment--one that meant I needed to travel 70 miles every day, making it almost impossible to do a daily 20-minute formal meditation practice. So I turned to what's known in the meditation world as "informal practice." At every stoplight in my 2 1/2-hour commute, I focused on my breathing. Periodically I did a "check-in": I stopped and paid attention to how I was feeling and what I was doing. When I had a break, I took a mindful walk on a nearby trail. At home, I even did mindful weeding and clothes folding.

And I noticed a change: My memory was better. I could recall each clump of daffodils I passed. I realized I hadn't lost my keys in a while.

Then something completely unexpected happened. At a routine visit to the doctor, I had to ask the nurse to take my blood pressure twice because I didn't believe it the first time: My reading had dropped 14 points. It wasn't enough for me to give up any meds, but it was significant.

During the next Sunday session, Ginny, the woman with the stent in her artery, announced that her blood pressure had dropped, too—so precipitously that she'd felt dizzy and light-headed. "My doctor told me to cut back on one of my blood pressure medicines," she said. "And if the dizziness continues, I'm supposed to stop taking it altogether."

Ann was also seeing a difference: She was still worried, but she was sleeping better. "Meditation has helped me be more patient with the kids," she added. "They say I'm spacey, but that's better than being the harpy mom screaming at them."

Jenna was falling asleep, too—but during the meditations. "I'm determined to get through it at least once!" she said.[pagebreak]

Weeks 5-8: The Habit Takes Hold

My meditation sessions were starting to feel important: I was still fitting them into nooks and crannies during my commute, but if I missed one, I'd quickly feel overwhelmed again. I was beginning to think that I'd been wrong to dread being "in the moment"—that the struggle to avoid pain is what actually prolongs it. Meditation doesn't change what happens to you, but it helps change your response. Like the thoughts you gently let go, you realize that life's difficulties, too, will pass.

"Mindfulness allows you to manage everything more gracefully," Reibel told me one afternoon, as we had lunch at an outdoor café . She should know. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her doctor pulled no punches. "He said, 'Diane, the next year will be total hell, but after that you'll get your life back.' " She thought it over and said, "No way. I'm not going to wait. This is my life. I'm going to live it fully, with everything that comes."

Mindfulness has limits, though: You manage with grace; you're not bulletproof. "I was angry at times," she admitted. "I was scared all the time. And I was in physical pain. But I didn't shut down my emotions."

The old me would have preferred being in a coma for the duration. I said, "That's exactly the kind of moment I never wanted to be in. Don't you wish you didn't have to face it?"

She smiled. "But you have to, if that's what life brings you. The universe isn't here to address our wishes. I look at how I handle life now compared with before I meditated—I'm not as stressed or afraid. Stress comes from trying to fit life into the box we want it to be in, rather than accepting it the way it comes. You might as well live closer to the truth. That's what mindfulness allows you to do."

Serenity Now—Sort Of

I've been living closer to the truth for a few months now. Over time, my daily meditations helped me regard what was happening in any moment with curiosity and kindness, without the mindless chatter and instant evaluation that used to whip me into a frenzy. My 19-year-old son was flunking calculus. I resisted the urge to "help" and let him handle it on his own. (He wisely dropped the course.) My deadlines went back to being simply dates; I reminded myself I'd never missed one in my life. My blood pressure stayed down.

Most of my classmates had similar life-changing experiences. Ann Michael dropped her daily meditation practice for a time but found herself waking up again at night. "I went right back to it," she said. She also suspects that meditation pumped up her immune system: For the first time in years, a bout of strep throat didn't turn into bronchitis.

Ginny Palmer stopped taking one of her blood pressure medicines. Her BP hovers around 110/70—perfect.

After Jean Safran's mother died, she faced other major life events: She was injured at work, a new grandchild was born, and her nest emptied out when her youngest daughter graduated from college. She met it all with uncharacteristic composure. "Meditation kept me in the moment," she said. "It made me realize that no matter what is happening, you can have peace here and now."

Jenna Franceski never got over her sleep problem—and was still struggling with her weight obsession when our course ended—but she continued to give herself frequent check-ins during the day, focusing on her breathing, quieting her mind. "It only works for a few seconds, but that's a few seconds more than before," she said.

The questionnaires we filled out before and after the 8-week session showed the strides we made as a class. Our anxiety scores fell 53%. Our depression scores dropped by an astonishing 75%. And most important for me, I found that you can have ecstasy while doing the laundry. Meditation will always be catch-as-catch-can for me, but even an imperfect practice works. And I never feel guilty if I can't spend 20 minutes meditating in some quiet place where I won't be disturbed. (I still haven't found that Paradise.) Even if I miss a few days or just squeeze in a 10-minute check-in with myself between folding the sheets and the delicates, it's all good. Well, it isn't good or bad. It just is.[pagebreak]

The Payoff of Inner Peace

Sure, nirvana is nice. But here's what else meditation can give you:

A Healthier Heart Patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles were able to lower their blood pressure, blood sugar, and insulin—the triumvirate that is primarily responsible for metabolic syndrome, a leading cause of heart disease and diabetes—by practicing Transcendental Meditation, the form associated with a mantra.

Increased Alertness University of Kentucky researchers found that sleepy people who meditated for 40 minutes did better on a test of mental quickness—pressing a button as soon as an image popped up on a computer screen—than people who'd taken a 40-minute nap.

Better Sleep Studies show that meditation can also help you sleep. One Harvard study found that the brain waves of people who are meditating are similar to those seen as people nod off.

More Brainpower Using sophisticated scans, researchers from Harvard, Yale, and elsewhere discovered that experienced meditators had increased thickness in the parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input—a thicker thinking cap, in other words.

Less Bingeing Mindfulness can help binge eaters recognize when they want to overeat and lower the odds they'll do so. A study done at Indiana State University found that obese women who practiced mindfulness meditation had an average of four fewer binge-eating episodes per week than before they took up the practice.

Happiness When he scanned the brains of experienced Buddhist practitioners, Richard Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found their left prefrontal cortexes—the area of the brain responsible in large part for happiness and pleasure—lit up even when they weren't meditating.

Interested In Trying Meditation?

Here are some easy ways to begin:

Read more about it For a good general overview, try Meditation for Dummies, by Stephan Bodian, former editor-in-chief of Yoga Journal. It's a concise guide to the various forms, with dozens of self-guided meditations. Or read Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, to learn about mindfulness meditation and the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program I took.

Pick your path There are many widely practiced forms of meditation, including mindfulness, Transcendental Meditation, and various spirituality-based practices (for example, Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Tibetan Buddhist). Your choice may be based on your religious beliefs, the proximity of a class, the availability of a book or tape, the time involved, or the cost. Some classes ask for donations, while others have a fee: TM costs $2,500 and is taught over 4 days; an MBSR class, taught over 8 weeks, runs $400 to $550. Kabat-Zinn's four-CD series of guided meditations is only $30—go to Mindfulness

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
More From Anxiety