Mobilizing the Mind-Body Connection for Healing Your Skin
How to use this CD
If you have psoriasis, you may find this CD helpful in mobilizing and
maximizing your innate capacities of mind and body to enhance healing
and the clearing of your skin. This guided meditation CD is meant to be
done rather than simply passively listened to. That means following
along with the guidance as best you can and practicing what is suggested
from moment to moment as well as in the stretches of silence. This
meditative process invites your full participation and engagement in
following the guidance in the mindfulness instructions and in the
visualization. It is suggested that you practice with Mindfulness
Meditation for People with Psoriasis at least once a day for a period
of at least eight weeks.
A note on the background of this program, from Jon Kabat-Zinn
A scientific study using these mindfulness meditation practices and
guided imagery in combination with simultaneous phototherapy or
photochemotherapy treatments showed that people with moderate to severe
psoriasis who listened to this kind of CD while they were in the light
box had their skin clear approximately four times as fast as people who
just got the light treatment alone [Kabat-Zinn, Wheeler, Light, et al:
Psychosomatic Medicine (1998) 60:625-632].
Mindfulness Meditation for People with Psoriasis utilizes the same
mind-body techniques used by the patients in that study, but here, they
are adapted for use at home without the simultaneous phototherapy
treatments. Because we have not studied the use of these meditative
practices without the ultraviolet light treatments in a controlled
clinical trial, we do not know for certain whether practicing with this
CD by itself, without the simultaneous ultraviolet light exposure, will
produce the same level of increase in the rate of skin clearing as we
saw when these methods were used in combination with ultraviolet light.
Nevertheless, practicing with this CD in a consistent manner may be
beneficial, both for its potential positive effects on your skin, and
also for the overall stress reduction benefits derived from mindfulness
meditative practices in general. These benefits have been documented for
thousands of medical patients referred by their doctors to our
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic, who use similar guided
mindfulness meditation practice CDs daily over a period of eight weeks.
-- Jon Kabat-Zinn
