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This contribution on the occasion of Professor Yutaka Haruki's retirement consists of two parts. Part One is a general introduction to MBSR and Part Two reports the results of an outcome study using mind fulness meditation practice with psoriasis patients while they are undergoing ultraviolet light treatment.
Since the emergence of MBSR in 1979, this model for the integration of mind fulness meditation practices within clinical mainstream medicine and psychology has spread to medical institutions around the world. It has given rise to a wide range of research projects, and papers, as well as several reviews (see Baer, 2003, and Bishop, 2002) and an increasing number of doctoral dissertations on various applications ofmindfulness meditation. It has also given rise to other mindfulness-based interventions, such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), which combines MBSR with cognitive therapy and has been demonstrated to be effective for relapse prevention in chronic depression. MBSR can be seen as a flexible vehicle for the seamless integration of eastern meditative dharma practices and perspectives within a western paradigm of behavioral intervention. As such, it is under investigation in studies that build on the results obtained by Davidson, Kabat-Zinn, Schumacher, et al (2003) (see Coleman, 2003).
PART I: Mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and the mainstreaming of Buddhist meditative practices within western medicine and health care: Recent clinical outcomes and directions for future research
Introduction
It gives me great pleasure to contribute to this volume in celebration of the career of Dr. Yutaka Haruki, whose enduring love for meditation and meditation research has helped shape the field of health psychology and mind/body medicine. He has trained and inspired a generation of meditation researchers around the world. Many of his old friends and students have assembled in Bari, Italy to present this volume to him on the occasion of his retirement as Dean of the Waseda University School of Human Sciences.
I first met Yutaka via an introductory letter from him, from which I learned that he was the translator of my book, Full Catastrophe Living(Kabat-Zinn, 1990), which describes mindfulness-based stress reduction, the approach we developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center toward integrating Buddhist meditation practices within the mainstream of Western medicine. Yutaka invited me to participate in the International...
