I'm gonna share this from Jon Kabat-Zinn's novel, Coming To Our Senses:
Meditation is Everywhere
Picture this: Medical patients meditating and doing yoga in hospitals and medical centers around the country and around the world at the urging of their doctors. Sometimes it is even the doctors who are doing the teaching. Sometimes, doctors are taking the program and meditating shoulder to shoulder alongside their patients...
Thirty years ago it was virtually inconceivable that meditation and yoga would find any legitimate role, no less widespread acceptance, in academic medical centers and hospitals. Now it is considered normal. It is not even thought of as an alternative medicine, just good medicine. Increasingly, programs in mindfulness are being offered for medical students and for hospital staff." ~Jon Kabat Zinn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I was in the hospital, I can verify that was so. We did have stretching and yoga/tai chi classes, and mindfulness and various things were explored. "Positive affirmations" which I usually consider not really helpful, actually were encouraged. And now that Ive seen how they use them, I see now that they can be a good medicine, not necessarily denying a problem, but if you have a good seed, planted near a weed, you can still uproot and toss the weed, or the 'despair weed' or the 'anxiety' or 'paranoia' weed, along with the positive flower, and tender it.
Years ago yoga and meditation would've been thought of as 'new age.' Now, its more acceptable. Less fear, less judgment even of it being associated with 'this or that' religion, but a healthy and mindful practice.
My assessment is because as the world gets more stressful, esp in the USA, but everywhere really, we've had to look further past our boundaries.
So meditation and yoga and mindfulness offer another 'medicine of sorts' and should be encouraged more. Its to combat one thing which really I can put it in a ball quickly - our biggest issue: STRESS.
