Since 1979, more than 18,000 patients have come through the Stress Reduction Clinic. There are now more than 250 MBSR programs in clinics and hospitals around the world.
In Los Angeles, Zeltzer refers patients to Goodman, who taught MBSR with Kabat-Zinn in the early days of the program, and who continues to teach the technique through InsightLA. But meditation remained esoteric to many on Zeltzer's team until they could learn the basics and ask Salzberg and Goodman questions about the practice.
"Previously, we had talked about meditation in the abstract," Zeltzer said. "And a lot of the team members wondered how it was going to work."
Zeltzer got interested "in the relationship of mind and body and health" during her fellowship in adolescent medicine at Los Angeles Children's Hospital in the 1970s. "What led to the differences in symptoms and suffering in adolescents who had the same disease?" she wondered at the time. "Why were some able to endure medical procedures without too much problem, while others fell apart?"
Realizing that the mind has a powerful effect on the body, Zeltzer used her first NIH grant in the early 1980s to study the benefit of hypnotherapy prior to spinal tap operations. "Spending a period of time each day just sitting and 'doing nothing' was one of the most important lessons that I learned in my hypnotherapy work," Zeltzer said. This journey into silence led to an interest in meditation, which increased exponentially when Zeltzer began studying the practice with Goodman in 2002.
Now Zeltzer wants to scientifically measure the effectiveness of meditation on kids with pain.
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Converts meet skepticism
People who have been helped by meditation, whether physicians or laypersons, have encouraged the use of meditation in pain management.
"It was life-changing for me," said Phoebe Larmore, an L.A.-based literary agent who represents authors Tom Robbins and Margaret Atwood.
For over two decades, Larmore was plagued with acute back pain and consulted with top specialists at medical centers such as Stanford University's and the Mayo Clinic, to no avail. At her worst, she weighed 80 pounds and was on morphine.
Then a doctor at UCLA gave her a meditation tape.
"I used it over and over and was able to have a few moments in which I was above the pain and could get my breath and hold onto hope," she recalled.
