Meditation really does work. It really is a game changer. The things you see and read in the news about mindfulness are not all hype. I titled this post Meditation 101 because I’d like to share some insights that get to the foundation of the practice. These insights are important for beginners to understand, and nonbeginners can benefit from reminders that keep us inspired, motivated, and engaged.

There are many amazing resources out there for learning how to meditate. I learned through the Ten Percent Happier books and app, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I also did 15 or 20 neurofeedback sessions, which helped me understand what calm brainwaves feel like. I’m not sure I could have figured that out on my own. If you think neurofeedback might help you, look around—your local therapist or counseling center might offer it.

But this post is not about how to meditate. Today, I’d like to focus on the deeper question of why to meditate. After all, you’re not likely to make time to do something, if you don’t know why anyone would do such a thing in the first place.

Eastern Medicine vs Western Medicine

A few years ago, in a strange and quirky book, I encountered a succinct description of Eastern medicine vs Western medicine. The author of the book traveled to Hainan Island, in China. He asked his guide and interpreter what he thought about Eastern medicine vs Western medicine. The guide and interpreter offered the following analysis:

“If I have some disease or any headache I will come to the hospital for urgent things. But in daily life, I would like to have some Chinese medicine for my best health. Chinese medicine can help with good health, and in daily life. But it cannot cure a disease. . . . You know Western medicine can do a little harm to the body. Chinese medicine seems to have less harm. But Chinese medicine takes a long time to cure.”

These words stuck with me for years. What the guide seems to be saying is that the two types of medicine work in different ways, and for different purposes. Both are important in his life. Western medicine is great at curing a disease or ailment that’s already present, but isn’t as good at preventive maintenance. Eastern medicine is great at preventive maintenance and general health and well-being, but isn’t as good at quickly fixing a major problem.

(The strange and quirky book in which I discovered this gem is called The Geography of Madness by Frank Bures.)

If you own a car, you probably get regular oil changes, tire rotations, wiper fluid refills, and other tune-ups. These are minor procedures that you get done even when nothing is wrong or broken. You do this to keep the car in good working condition: to prevent larger problems. If something does go wrong with the car, you get diagnostic tests, and once the problem is pinpointed, you get repairs or replacements in a more major procedure. But it’s better to avoid problems through preventive maintenance, because it’s annoying, time consuming, and expensive to have a broken car.

This is common knowledge among vehicle owners. But while the same principles apply to our bodies, the knowledge is not as common—at least not here in the West, or at least not for all parts of the body. In the past few decades, we have seen great awareness arise around the importance of preventive maintenance when it comes to exercise and eating healthy food. Most people know that regularly exercising and eating well can prevent future diseases, even if they haven’t yet implemented these findings. But preventive maintenance for the mind is, I believe, behind in this, and only recently starting to catch up in the public understanding and imagination.

Why Meditate? My Story

I have a history of struggling with anxiety, plus physical ailments related to anxiety. I realized a while back that I needed some kind of preventive maintenance—something that Western medicine was seemingly unable to provide. If I had an anxiety attack, there were all sorts of pills I could pop and psychotherapists I could consult. But my doctors were generally silent about how I might manage my health so that that the anxiety attacks didn’t happen in the first place.

From my reading, I knew that Eastern thought held amazing promise. So I tried meditation. But it was hard. One year ago, I wrote a blog post about how difficult I found it. I wrote: “It seems that my anxieties are preventing me from using meditation as an anti-anxiety technique.”

However, over the long term, I have found that this type of Eastern medicine works just as the guide implied it would. Meditation does help “with good health, and in daily life.” In other words, it helps keep me healthy and well in the first place. Also, meditation “takes a long time to cure.” Yes. A long time. But it “seems to have less harm” than prescription drugs. Yes. Less harm.

I am happy to report that I have made astonishing progress in meditation in the past year. Whereas, a year ago, I struggled to sit for 5 minutes, I can now do 10 or 15 minutes easily. I no longer experience weird muscle tension while I meditate. But the most profound change I’ve noticed is that my daily practice does, truly, ground me. It does, truly, leave me feeling refreshed afterward and prevent the worst of the anxiety beasts from appearing.

I still find meditation supremely difficult. But I also find it supremely worthwhile. It’s a long road, this meditation journey. Yes, it’s the long game. It doesn’t cure instantly, like pills. But it does cure. And it cures in ways that are not also harmful.

So, why meditate? Here’s the Meditation 101 answer: meditation works in preventing problems of the mind, and there are no side effects. I’ll take it!

A Poem That Offers Insight on Why to Meditate

Today’s blog post arose out of me discovering the following poem by Hafiz (from the book The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky). Check this out, friends.

FIND A BETTER JOB

Now
That
All your worry
Has proved such an
Unlucrative
Business,
Why
Not
Find a better
Job.

What a lovely metaphor. Yes, if you have a job that’s not earning you sufficient money, it makes sense to get a different one: one that pays better. That’s a concept we Westerners can easily understand. But the same applies to worry. Thinking in this way is less familiar to us. Is worry helpful? Is worry personally lucrative? It’s important, of course, to plan for the future. However, all the excess worry that many of us do, above and beyond mere planning, is unhelpful and often detrimental. And yet, still we worry.

We worry and we worry. We get into bad patterns that we don’t know how to break free from. We don’t give our brains an oil change, we don’t give our neurons the exercise that keeps them firing smoothly. And so we trap ourselves in greater and greater worry, until some major part breaks, and the entire thing needs to be taken into the shop for some astronomically expensive repair service. For, keep in mind that, in contrast to your vehicle’s parts, your body parts are not so easily replaced. Especially not your brain parts. Any broken brain parts must be painstakingly repaired.

Why not find a better job?

Schizophrenia runs in my family. To learn more about this mental illness is, for me, a way of trying to understand a piece of my family history. So when I saw a book called The Collected Schizophrenias featured at my local indie bookstore, cute cover and all, I had to buy and devour it.

The Collected Schizophrenias is a collection of essays by Esmé Weijun Wang. Each of the essays puts a different focus on her experiences as a woman living with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. The writing is fabulously direct, concise, and honest. This book, like A Mind Unraveled by Kurt Eichenwald (which I previewed earlier this year), does a great job of dispelling common myths about the illness at hand (Eichenwald writes about epilepsy), while offering insights into how to thrive in the face of the illness’s difficulties.

I admire Wang’s strength in writing and speaking about her experiences. Mental illness is still, despite great strides forward in this area, stigmatized. One of the first and most important steps in fighting stigma is to hear and to understand. What is it like to live with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type? Wang endeavors, in this book, to explain.

It’s important to hear her. Wang points out that most information about the collected schizophrenias is presented from the perspective of an observer witnessing the words and behavior of someone else. For example, referring to a statement as a delusion implies that one does not believe the statement oneself. But the helpfulness of the outsider perspective goes only so far.

What does it feel like to be the person herself? Wang shares a few of her worst times in this passage:

“I’ve seen myself forget to feed my dog. I’ve seen myself remember, and then not care enough to do it. Sometimes I can’t even say more than two words or move. There are periods when I know that my husband has been replaced by an identical robot.”

To fully understand this passage, it’s important take into account the rest of the essay. For the essay is about some of Wang’s worst times . . . and best times. She tells a touching story about serving as a camp counselor for children with bipolar disorder. She was instrumental in helping a boy transform from hating the camp to loving it—from feeling all alone to feeling that he had friends. Here’s a passage about one of Wang’s best times. A camper was feeling sick:

“I told him to try and relax. I stroked his bangs with the palm of my hand. I hummed Chinese lullabies, and the longer I stood and stroked and hummed and whispered, the stiller he became, until he was asleep.”

It is important to remember, about oneself and others, that we all have our good and bad days. A diagnosis is not a life sentence. I don’t think it should be one, anyway. A diagnosis is, or should be, a tool to help people understand some of their personal roadblocks and look for ways to move forward.

I can personally identify with the worst-times and best-times passages. I know what it’s like to have terrifying thoughts along the identical robot theme. I also know what it’s like to sometimes want to reach out and help others, but other times feel removed from any reality except what’s in my head. It is unclear to me whether almost everyone has such thoughts and feelings, or whether it’s in my blood. That second possibility would not surprise me one bit!

On the other hand, reading this book drove home to me the seriousness of this illness. A recurrence of philosophical musings and doubts, even when they become obsessions, is a very different beast than a persistent feeling of utter certainty. Wang notes that on her bad days—which can last for months—she is incapable of doing things that others can easily do on their bad days. She also notes that powerful psychiatric drugs have given her a stability that she would otherwise lack.

But to return to the original hand . . . I suspect that we human beings are a lot more alike than we usually admit.

What are you like at your worst and best?

The inquisitive one traveled to London. It was going to be an exciting adventure!

While in a crowded street market, the inquisitive one saw some postcards. “I could send these to my nephew and niece!” thought the inquisitive one, as a bunch of people jostled into the back, shoulders, and butt. When the inquisitive one went to pay for the postcards, there was a terrible realization: the credit cards, cash, phone, and passport were all missing!

Instinctively, and in a panic, the inquisitive one ran to that timelessly universal haven for inquisitive types, the public library. Frantically, the inquisitive one Googled what to do when lose passport England USA help! and scanned through some websites. Next, the inquisitive one logged into the email account and composed a message.

Here it must be noted that, due to shock and anxiety, the inquisitive one had been stricken with a psychological disorder! The inquisitive one could no longer distinguish fact from fiction, information from misinformation! Furthermore, the inquisitive one could no longer recall a single rule of spelling, grammar, or word usage! Consequently, the email read as follows:

Not knowing whom to put on the To: line, the inquisitive one sent it to every contact in the address book. Then the inquisitive one waited for a reply.

But no one replied! The inquisitive one kept checking the email for hours, but then, night fell. The library closed. The inquisitive one was forced to scrounge through trash bags for food and sleep in an alley.

The next day, the inquisitive one fell in with a band of drug dealers. But the inquisitive one, having no talent for sales, was not able to make any money. As the days passed, the inquisitive one started to despair of ever again eating something that didn’t come from a garbage bag. But then a fellow drug dealer invited the inquisitive one to, along with him, ditch the drug dealers and join a band of political agitators: which the inquisitive one gladly did.

This was a better situation because the political agitators took tea and crumpet breaks 15 or 20 times daily, which filled the belly nicely. These political agitators were pro-Brexit, or anti-Brexit, or anyway they had a very specific stance regarding Brexit. However, due to their use of incomprehensible words such as queue, quid, lift, and mummy dear, the inquisitive one was not able to determine what precisely that stance was.

Anyway, a few days after that, Fortune smiled even more happily on the inquisitive one: someone replied to the email! The inquisitive one collected $10,000 using the bank information sent by a (wonderfully kindhearted!) acquaintance, whom the inquisitive one vaguely remembered having met a couple of decades previously. Oddly, though, at the U.S. Embassy, the inquisitive one learned that, contrary to what the Internet very clearly stated, such a large sum of money was not required.

While the U.S. Embassy was working on issuing a new passport, the inquisitive one (with wonderfully kindhearted generosity!) gave the remainder of the cash, as well as the bank information, to the good drug-dealer-turned-political-agitator friend.

This friend, the inquisitive one had been astonished to learn, was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark! Well, or maybe he was Charles, Prince of Wales. In all honesty, the accents in this city were so thick that the inquisitive one could hardly understand a word anyone said. Or was he a Nigerian prince? In any case, he was a prince, but he had fallen on hard times and lost his throne. He promised to return all the money, and significantly more, to the (wonderfully kindhearted!) decades-old acquaintance of the inquisitive one, and to give the (wonderfully kindhearted!) inquisitive one a sizable pile of precious stones and jewels, once his throne was properly restored. And it surely would be restored within the next few days, due to the temporary loan of the money in the account!

The inquisitive one, strangely and sadly, lost contact with the prince at that point. But the very next day, the U.S. Embassy issued the inquisitive one a new passport! While the inquisitive one was not able to recover the lost credit cards, cash, or phone, the issuance of the new passport was a truly wondrous occurrence: and the inquisitive one’s anxiety faded away. Knowledge of spelling, grammar, and word usage returned. Also recovered was psychological sanity, including the ability to understand what was real; what was possible but unlikely; and what was rabid delusion.

MORAL: Health is better than wealth; and it’s easier, as they say in the wisest countries, to pass a needle through a camel’s eye, Amen.

What do we pay doctors to do?

Use medical instruments to collect data? Record that data in our charts? Perform procedures? Prescribe medications? Give referrals to other medical specialists? Recommend home care remedies and strategies?

Have I forgotten anything?

The author of a new memoir would say YES!

Kurt Eichenwald has written an astounding memoir, published last year, about his lifelong struggles with epilepsy . . . and people. He tells a story that made me cringe and kept me riveted. I was especially intrigued because his story has so many similarities to my own.

I do not suffer from epilepsy. I have not suffered from drug side effects to the extent that Eichenwald has. But I have suffered from debilitating medical issues. I have also suffered from drug side effects. And I have suffered, like Eichenwald, from the missteps, overconfidence, and occasional outright hostility of other people, while I was trying to attain the medical care I needed.

Perhaps one day I will write my story. But I’m not sure I have much to express that Eichenwald hasn’t already brilliantly covered in A Mind Unraveled.

Experiencing a health problem is scary. Full of fears and anxieties, we turn to doctors for their expertise; and we believe what they tell us. We want to believe; we feel that we have no choice but to believe. But Eichenwald tells a horrific story of doctor after doctor failing him. He was misdiagnosed, multiple times. He was treated with condescension and disrespect, multiple times. He was prescribed medications that almost killed him, multiple times. He was wrongly informed that his seizures were not epilepsy, but a psychological disorder, multiple times.

Finally, after years of worsening epileptic seizures, and years of taking seriously high doses of medication without proper physician monitoring; after years of not knowing where he would wake up next, or with what debilitating injuries; after years of enduring discrimination for having a disability, and personal trauma and that almost resulted in him giving up on life entirely—he finally stumbled upon a doctor who was willing and able to help him. Here’s what happened during Eichenwald’s first consultation with Dr. Naarden:

“After twenty minutes, Naarden had already spent more time speaking with me than any other neurologist ever had.”

What?! No other neurologist had spent more than a total of twenty minutes talking with their patient about a serious, debilitating medical problem?

During that first visit, Dr. Naarden went on to speak with Eichenwald for much longer than twenty minutes. And he continued talking with his patient. He talked with him not just during the initial consultation, but during future visits. And this communication went both ways. The doctor listened very carefully to Eichenwald’s story and asked follow-up questions. He also told Eichenwald, in detail, what he knew about Eichenwald’s current medical situation, what he didn’t know about it, and what he would like to do in an attempt to learn more.

This communication was essential to a correct diagnosis of Eichenwald’s disorder. It was also essential to the series of careful, logical steps the doctor had to take to get Eichenwald’s epilepsy under better control, as well as to prevent high levels of drugs from further damaging the patient’s health. Finally, it was essential in instilling a sense of trust in Eichenwald, who by then had understandably given up on trusting any doctor, and was hesitant to do anything one advised him to do.

When a doctor talks with a patient about a medical issue, this is not wasted time. This is an integral part of the data-gathering process. Anecdotal information from the patient is equally as valuable as measurements obtained from diagnostic tests. When a doctor does not gather information from a patient, key pieces of the puzzle go missing. The doctor is then forced to jump to conclusions.

I was shocked that no other doctor had spent time talking with Eichenwald . . . but I was not surprised. The same thing happened to me. After encountering a series of doctors who misdiagnosed me and gave me wrong treatments and advice, which significantly worsened my problems, I finally stumbled upon one who was willing and able to help me.

How long had each of the unsuccessful doctors spent speaking with me about my health issues, total?

Yep, less than twenty minutes.

How long did the successful doctor spend speaking with me—during my initial consultation alone!—about my health issues?

Yep, more than twenty minutes.

So, what do we pay doctors to do?

I was stumped by yet another medical mystery.

A prescription drug that helps me immensely also makes me tired. I have trouble waking up. I feel fairly alert in the morning, but I ache to nap all afternoon. And forget the evening—I’m ready for bed immediately after dinner.

My doctor has been helping me experiment with different remedies for this problem. Now, granted, I can still function. The problem isn’t severe. In the past, I have been on medications that made me significantly groggier. Still, if I can maneuver myself into a life situation in which I feel more alert more often, I will happily take it.

The trouble, however, is that doctors and scientists, even in this advanced age of medicine and technology, don’t really know how the brain works. And they don’t really know what happens when different chemicals are introduced to it. We know a whole heck of a lot! Sadly, though, that whole heck of a lot amounts to a patchy understanding of what’s going on up there. The brain is just too complex and intricate and multivariate and changeful.

As Gary Greenberg writes in his article “Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris,” in the most recent issue of the Atlantic, “Psychiatrists . . . cannot precisely predict for whom and under what conditions their treatments will work.”

Sigh. That explains why my doctor is forced to help me experiment. Since different people react differently to any given drug, it’s not possible to know beforehand what will work for each patient.

Thus my doctor, thinking we might make a change and see how I felt, prescribed me a new medication.

I felt different right away. Within a few hours, I felt like I was floating on a cloud. A very nice cloud. The niceness of the cloud intensified over the next few days. It became softer and fluffier and cozier . . . and I felt like sleeping. All day long. Zzzz. . . .

In the meantime, I made a profound discovery about this medication. Listen up, literary friends, because this is crucial! This is key! This is vital! My new medication . . . gave me writer’s block!!!!

I could no longer write blog posts! With sufficient amounts of caffeine and junk food, I was able to edit and proofread, but write a paragraph? Nope! (Needless to say, since you are reading this post, I went off that drug pronto.)

Why is this significant? Well, listen to this fine theory of mine. If this drug energizes some people—not me, obviously!—then might it not also cure any writer’s block those people might be experiencing?*

I humbly invite the reps of said drug company to call me ASAP, so we can discuss my payment for this lucrative marketing idea.

*In case it isn't sufficiently clear, this is a joke. Do not try this at home, or at work, or on a sailboat, or at an amusement park, or in an airplane, or anyplace else you might find yourself. Please also refer to the footnote in my original Medical Mysteries post.