Mindfulness Meditation for People with Psoriasis

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