#185 We underestimate our innate capacities

     “The challenge is, can we live more consciously? In a sense, mindfulness and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) are really about the art of conscious living. … Our work in MBSR is based on the conviction that … we have infinitely more capacity and dimensions – and I emphasize the plural – that we usually simply ignore. Even the educational system emphasizes only certain aspects of development, such as critical thinking, but it doesn’t emphasize somatic experience or intuitive experience or the cultivation of compassion or, for that matter, self-compassion or empathy and all sorts of other aspects of being human – including perhaps the most fundamental of all – awareness itself, which is an innate capacity we share by virtue of being human.”               Jon Kabat-Zinn

         Gazella K. Bringing mindfulness to medicine: An interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. Adv Mind Body Med 2005; 21(2): 22-7.