John Kabatzin is a scientist, writer, and teacher who helped create the field of stress

reduction.

He's clinically demonstrated the benefits of ancient traditions of mindfulness and meditation,

and he's adapted these for mainstream Western medicine and society, for people who are

healthy or living with chronic illness, for Olympic athletes and corporate cultures.

John Kabatzin offers wise perspective on inhabiting the ordinary and extreme stresses

of our lives.

Technology may function 24-7, he points out, our minds and bodies do not.

But he has practical and spiritual tools accessible to everyone, for slowing down time and opening

to our lives.

It doesn't actually take any more time to say goodbye or hug your children or whatever

it is in the morning when you're on your way to work.

But the mind says, I don't have any time for this, but actually that's all you have

time for is this, because there's nothing else than this.

So when your four-year-old can't decide which dress she wants to wear, that's not a problem

for you, unless you make it a problem for you, that's just the way four-year-olds are.

And the more we can sort of learn these lessons, the more we will not be in some sense running

towards our death, but in a sense opening to our lives.

I'm Krista Tippett, this is on being from APM, American Public Media.

Don Cabazzin is the founding director of the renowned stress reduction clinic, and the

center for mindfulness in medicine, health care and society at the University of Massachusetts

Medical School.

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