The place from which I look at the benefits of mindfulness meditation is in my work with people who want to create more meaningful lives, including better, healthier, more satisfying relationships. I'm a clinical psychologist who believes that being emotionally present and authentic is the cornerstone of emotional well-being. I'm also trained as a neuropsychologist, who knows that the better integrated a brain is, the better it works. It's a bit like needing the left hand to know what the right one is doing in order to get anything done. (I don't just use that phrase lightly - in cases of damage to the corpus callosum, the brain's bridge between the right and left hemispheres, one hand quite literally doesn't know what the other is doing, with one buttoning up the shirt and the other following behind, unbuttoning it.)

So from that stance, let's take a look at the notion that mindfulness meditation leads to people becoming zoned-out, self-involved bliss-ninnies.

"Don't people use meditation just to escape?"

Is it possible for people to hide out in meditation? Yes. People who "use" meditation to escape, just like using drugs or alcohol to escape, can closely resemble the "kindly, calm pod person" that Judith Warner wrote about in a New York Times blog post. The added "benefit" of using meditation as your drug of choice is that, unlike zoning out on alcohol or drugs (or TV, surfing the web, and so on), you can also adopt a "more enlightened than thou" stance that some meditators have been known to take, much to the annoyance of those around them.

Even Jack Kornfield, PhD, one of the pioneers and great teachers in the use of mindfulness meditation in the West (and also a psychologist), points out that "[m]editation and spiritual practice can easily be used to suppress and avoid feeling or to escape from difficult areas of our lives." He goes on to say that "the sitting practice itself... often provide[s] a way to hide, a way to actually separate the mind from difficult areas of heart and body."

Obviously, this isn't the approach to mindfulness meditation which I advocate. This will become more clear as we go on.

"The people I know who meditate just ended up being more self-involved."

This can happen, too. In one variation of this, sometimes people who meditate profess that their practice is making them "more present" when in fact they're just more self-involved. Judith Warner again:

[P]eople who are embarked on this particular 'journey of self-exploration,' as [Mary] Pipher has called it, tend to want to talk, or write, about it. A lot. But what they don't realize - because they're so in the moment, caught in the wonder and fascination and totality of their self-experience - is that their stories are like dream sequences in movies, or college students' journal entries, or the excited accounts your children bring you of absolutely hilarious moments in cartoons - you really do have to be the one who's been there to tolerate it.
For the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it's stultifyingly boring.

What she's describing (okay, complaining about) is not "real" mindfulness, though. Mindfulness isn't about droning on and on about your own inner exploration, ignoring the feelings of others (or your own), or gushing your newfound love for all of humanity. Mindfulness is about developing a larger capacity in yourself for empathic, attuned, contingent connection.

That last sentence is vital: Mindfulness is about developing a larger capacity in yourself for empathic, attuned, contingent connection.

• empathic = being able to see things from another's point of view, getting a sense of their intentions, and being able to imagine what something "means" to another person

• attuned = allowing our internal state to resonate with the inner world of another, to "get" someone else's inner state, allowing us to feel connected

• contingent = responding to another in a way which is informed by what we sense in them, not just what we think or feel

(These definitions as presented here are largely influenced by Dan Siegel, whose latest book, Mindsight,I highly recommend.)

A thumbnail sketch of what this looks like: You talk to me, and I listen with an open heart and an open mind, tuned in to you while also being aware of my own internal state. And my response to you, if I'm being mindful, is contingent on what you're saying and feeling and communicating - not just my own internal experience. When I talk, I'm speaking with mindful awareness of my internal state as well as being attuned to you, and I pay attention to shifts in myself and in you while I speak, to be able to remain connected, attuned and empathic.

That would be a far cry from being self-involved.

"Seems to me that people who meditate aren't dealing with their real problems."

It's also true that many who meditate may need additional help. As Jack Kornfield put it in his essay, "Even The Best Meditators Have Old Wounds To Heal":

There are many areas of growth (grief and other unfinished business, communication and maturing of relationships, sexuality and intimacy, career and work issues, certain fears and phobias, early wounds, and more) where good Western therapy is on the whole much quicker and more successful than meditation.... Meditation can help in these areas. But if, after sitting for a while, you discover that you still have work to do, find a good therapist or some other way to effectively address these issues.

Jack, in his honest wisdom, goes on to say that many American vipassana (mindfulness meditation) teachers who have gotten stuck in disconnection, fear, or other unconscious places, have sought out psychotherapy.

(As a brief aside, I would say that the same seeking of good psychotherapy should be true of anyone leading others in a quest to better understand themselves, or to heal emotionally. That includes psychotherapists. It's my strong opinion that good psychotherapists have done (and continue to do) work in their own psychotherapy, and need to have the capacity for empathic, attuned, contingent communication.)

So, mindfulness meditation isn't a one-size-fits-all cure for everything that ails you. It is, however, powerfully helpful, whether on its own, or in conjunction with psychotherapy.

I've had people come into my practice who have been meditating for years, who have found that they've resolved much but can't seem to crack the core of the issue, and their meditation practice serves them well in the psychotherapeutic work.

I've also worked with people who have been in psychotherapy on and off for years with different therapists, benefitting from it but with the next level of growth seemingly out of reach. When we've added mindfulness meditation to the mix, they've begun to make some remarkable progress which they hadn't been able to before.

"Can meditation really change people for the better?"