Mindfulness, Cancer & Healing - 1 of 3 ~ Sat Dharam Kaur, N.D. Interviews Shinzen Young

I'm speaking with Shinzen Young and internationally recognized teacher of mindfulness meditation. Thank you for agreeing to speak with mission.

I'm interested in your recommendations for women who have been newly diagnosed with breast cancer or are recovering from breast cancer in terms of a meditation technique that may help them both too.

Recover as much as possible from the disease and help him to heal in general.

But what would your recommendations be there is a vast range of possible ways that you can focus your attention.

To deal with the situation of having breast cancer.

Uh.

But the way I like to sort of analyze that situation is 1st to frame it within a broader context. What's true of breast cancer would be true actually of any kind of cancer and what's true of any kind of cancer would be true of any disease.

Or health situation.

Including an injury if you are injured and had to go to the hospital in general.

When one is facing a some sort of Health Crisis of any of any kind.

There are 2 broad ways that People use meditation to deal with that.

And those.

Are not mutually exclusive?

One can do one the other or both. But I think it is important to realize the relationships between them and what they are.

One way of meditating and by meditating. I just mean focusing in some systematic way. So all I mean by meditating so one way to meditate or focus in a systematic way.

Has as its goal to influence the object. Of course of the healing objectively. We want to diminish the cancer. We want to heal. The wound quickly right and so forth so I'd call that impacting the object of course of the healing.

And there.

Are a wide range of?

Procedures different kinds of focuses.

That are aimed at that goal.

In our discussion before we started taping this interview. You talked about a number of approaches that you had studied that have history and background and so forth.

If we look at them as I recall back some of them were specifically aimed at OK. We're going to.

There's going to be healing. There's going to be an actual change in your situation. The cancer is going to get smaller or something like that? Could you remind me? What some of the approaches that was sort of a long one point one of the approaches was?

Was the approach of Bildt Bankston? Who worked with mice and humans. But he tried to teach University students? How to heal cancers tumors in mice and found when there was students were creating images in their minds.

Of positive things that they wanted in their lives and one of those images. Also being that all of the mice were cured. And that they were toasting a glass of champagne together, because all the mice were cured that that that image. Ng and the repetitions of those images as they were holding the nice for an hour a day in a cage.

Allowed them to actually unbeknownst to them cure. Those mice after but a months time they thought at the end of the experiment that the experiment was a gullibility experiment.

That they every few days new mice were put in the cage who had smaller tumors and they at the end of the experiment and didn't believe actually that they had cured. The mice, but it was, it was their mental state at the time that seemed to have influenced the healing with those positive images. They had this was an intentional creation of images right.

OK very good, so that would be the goal are there other?

Procedures that you can think of historically where the goal has been to change the object. Of course, a Doctor Mears. Ainsley mirrors from Australia. He worked in the 1970s with his patients with meditation techniques for cancer. He was also a medical hypnotist an his technique was to create a sense of relaxation have the patient created strong relaxation state stillness of mine and observation of thought.

And in a very quiet quiet quiet name process of the mind without any.

Real image Ng of you know, I'm going to cure this disease. Yeah, it was just to create this place of deep stillness and he seems to have had a 10% success rate in curing cancer.

When this was presented to People.

Was it presented as if you do this? It will have an impact on?

Positive impact on your cancer that that was sort of the stated goal.

I'm not I know that while they were doing the meditation there. There there were not to focus on that in their mind. I think, though, that he became known at the time for this technique. That was helping some People cure cancer. So the implication is if you do this calming an observing ticket may happen. what I would say is that I know that there's some other methods one that I think you don't think very highly of where we try to visualize like PAC man eating up the fact doctor mirrors one of his patients.

Shrank her tumor by doing his technique about becoming completely still and quiet.

And relaxed and he he advised his patients to dupe to practice for an hour or 2 a day. Actually, it was a long period of time. That's by the way that is a significant point. Yeah, we're not talking about a quick fix trivial. But you want a significant change. You may have to put in a significant time in Enerji and one of his patients practice his technique. Shrinker tumor and then tried the Simon Tech date. Simonton technique of actually visualizing the cancer shrinking visualizing the web.

White blood cells attacking like PAC man and while she did that the tumor came back.

And then she abandoned that technique upon his recommendation went back to this stealing quieting technique and the tumor shrank again so that's very interesting case very good when we look at the range of things out there very often what will be talked about is OK. If you focus in this way. It's going to cure your cancer or it's likely to hear your cancer. It's going to help bring an object of change in the situation.

So I would.

Consider that to be 1 basic.

Model there's another paradigm another way to look at things.

That.

Compliments that.

And can be used in parallel or perhaps in lieu of.

This what we're talking about.

The other paradigm says my?

Interest in learning this meditation technique.

Is primarily to reduce the suffering that I experience right due to this situation?

And it may or may not have an object if impact.

But it has a high probability.

Of reducing the suffering whether it has an object of impact or not I think both approaches are equally valid. But my sort of go to approach personally if I have to teach one of the other is.

I'm going to teach you ways of focusing that will reduce your suffering.

The reason for that is.

Several fold.

1st.

A lot of in a lot of the models that you and I talked about.

The.

The claim is that in fact, the object if condition.

Of the cancer has been caused by.

Mental or emotional distress that's a claim I'm not going to comment on the validity of likely but that's

Commonly believed and even in standard medison, they can be a contributing guys. Maybe not the whole cause. Yeah, I believe I could be wrong about this. But I think that the official position of the AMA American Medical Association is that mental and emotional factors weigh in. In one way or another and that's really that's established Medison.

To whatever extent the object if situation is actually the result of suffering.

Mental emotional what have you to that extent if we reduce suffering?

Then they'll be an impact on the object of situation.