Editors Note Jan/Feb 2008 - Page 2


Just as important as what it can do for clients is what it can do for therapists. As Front writes, neuroscientists are beginning to describe how meditation can help develop the neural circuits that close the old gap between body and mind, and between self and others--the foundation of psychotherapy. "In my own work as a therapist," he writes of his introduction to meditation during the 1980s, "I was often aware of how challenging it was to stay fully present with clients, especially the ones who pushed my buttons. Might the practice of mindfulness--that is, a direct, full-bodied experience of the present moment--help therapists develop more attunement to, and empathy with, clients?" In fact, mindfulness did just that. "This experience of rich, embodied awareness can help us listen better to what's going on inside us--a vital prerequisite for truly hearing and empathizing with others."

Not that mindfulness is easy, even for trained therapists who've been practicing it for many years. In his luminous and moving article about his own bittersweet quest for inner peace and self-acceptance, David Treadway describes what every mature, honest meditation practitioner knows only too well: "[Meditation] is incredibly hard. The mind is so out of control--beset by fears and fantasies, reliving the past, projecting onto others, making up dreams, in constant, restless motion. Just being isn't natural to the human mind. That's the blessing and the curse that makes me different from my cat."

There's an ironic sense of coming full circle in the profession's love affair with mindfulness. Notwithstanding all the mean things that have been said about the old psychoanalysts, maybe they got something deeply right--the importance of quiet, nonintrusive, nondirectional listening--the power not just of silence, but of genuine presence, that more often than not, transcends words.

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