I’m a primary care internist working with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Group in Beverly Hills. I’ve been caring for my patients since 1984. It’s very important to me that I help my patients become as healthy, physically and psychologically, as they can be. I feel I have a duty to do whatever I need to do to accomplish that goal. I believe all physicians should feel that way.
Over my many years of practice, I’ve come to realize that to help my patients be their best, I need to be my best. If I’m upset, stressed, worried, distracted or just not having a good day, that diminishes what I can bring to my encounter with my patients. The healthier the healer is, the better they can heal.
I think there is great truth to the proverb “physician, heal thyself” (Luke 4:23). Healing oneself means more than just not being sick. A healthy, happy, calm and collected doctor is a better doctor.
A doctor who meditates becomes better
The research on meditation is clear. Multiple studies have shown that people who meditate are less stressed, more relaxed, more empathetic, more creative and better able to assess situations correctly.
Being a physician is a stressful profession, often requiring long hours and a clear head in order to make difficult, life-and-death decisions. You don’t want your doctor to bring their stress, anxiety and preoccupations into the examination room with them.
How can a physician ‘leave it all behind’ so that when they are caring for you, your health is their main focus? Exercise can help, but research shows it’s not as good as meditation for stress reduction. Yoga is a better stress reducer than exercise, but again, it’s clear from the literature that Yoga takes a back seat to meditation as a stress reducer.
As a long-term, twice a day, every day, meditator (I began practicing Transcendental Meditation in 1975), I can attest to the fact that meditation has made me a better physician.
I’m not saying I’m a better physician than some of my non-meditating colleagues. There are many doctors I know who don’t meditate, and many of them are much calmer, kinder and more clever than I am. I am saying, though, that meditation has helped me be more of who I want to be as a physician. I believe it has helped me fulfill my duty to be the best physician I can be.
Based on my experience and research, here are five steps that physicians could take, in addition to the things we learned in medical school, to become better healers:
5 steps to becoming better healers
Step One
The first and most important step is to have a tool, a technique, that allows us to go beyond our problems and stressors. Being constantly immersed in problems and stress, without a respite, will burn out even the most dedicated physician. To be our best, we need to get away from it all at least once or twice a day. The best technique for doing that is meditation.
Meditation is based on the premise that each of us, at our core, has an ocean of silence within that is beyond problems, anxiety, fear and stress. Contacting that, even for a moment, gives us sanctuary and respite from the outside world that contains those issues. After meditation, the problems of our world seem a little less problematic.
Day after day, year after year, contacting that silence within changes us. This change is a permanent, physiological one, not just a temporary change in our mood or point of view. Years ago, a simple research experiment was conducted that demonstrated this biological change.
Researchers hooked up subjects to the equivalent of a lie detector, which essentially measures small changes in stress. The researchers blew a loud horn 11 times in front of each subject, while they were hooked up to the lie detector. The first time the horn was sounded, the lie detector showed great stress, rising the most during the first loud blast. Each subsequent time the horn was blown, the rise was less. The subject’s physiology adapted and was less bothered by the horn with each subsequent sounding.
Then, the researchers randomly divided the students into two groups. One group was taught how to meditate and told to do it for 20 minutes, twice a day, before breakfast and dinner. The other group was given a 20-minute relaxation tape to be done sitting, with eyes closed, twice a day before breakfast and dinner. A month later, they retested the groups in the middle of the day, hours from their last meditation or relaxation tape session.
The control group, given the relaxation tape, had no change in their response to the loud horn. The meditation group showed that the noise of the horn bothered their physiology significantly less than the control group and in comparison to their first test. Their bodies and minds had become immunized to the stress of the horn.
The meditation group had physically changed, becoming more stable and less labile. Subsequent research has shown that, over time, this mental and physical immunization to stress grows with repeated daily meditation.
Step Two
The second step a physician can take to improve their meditation practice and thereby enhance the beneficial effects of their meditations is to practice breathing techniques, called pranayama, prior to meditation.
Doing so relaxes the breath, which spontaneously happens during meditation, but starting meditation with relaxed breath makes it easier to meditate deeply and effectively. Even two or three minutes of pranayama before meditation will help a lot.
Step Three
The third step is to practice asanas prior to doing pranayama and meditation. Asanas, often called Yoga postures, relax the body, allowing the calming effects of pranayama and meditation to proceed more effectively.
Step Four
The fourth step is to eat well. It has been said that we are what we eat, and that food is medicine. Junk food, fast food, food that is eaten in a hurry or at the wrong time, and food not suited to our body type upsets the body and mind, making it difficult to meditate well.
Step Five
The fifth step is to sleep at the proper time. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, ‘Early to bed and early to rise makes us healthier and better able to meditate effectively and efficiently, which is one of the keys to being a better healer.’
I went to medical school to learn what I needed to know to be a physician. Since then, I’ve learned much more about what it takes to help my patients get healthy and stay healthy. I meditate not only for the benefits it brings me, but also for the benefits it brings to my patients. I hope my colleagues will do the same.
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