Can Mindfulness Practice Slow the Progression of HIV?Tom Moon, MFTIn a recent column (The Power of Mindfulness) I mentioned that research is now underway to determine whether or not mindfulness meditation practice can slow the progression of HIV. Several people asked for more information about this, so what follows is a more detailed discussion of the question.Mindfulness has been described as the practice of not contending with life. It refers to a state of awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally, to things as they are. In mindfulness, we stop going with our thoughts, feelings and impulses and just let them come and go on their own while anchoring our attention in the body. Mindfulness has been practiced by Buddhists for almost twenty-six centuries, but entered the mainstream of western medicine through the pioneering work of Jon Kabat-Zinn in the late 1970s. He and his associates at the University of Massachusetts Medical School developed an eight-week training called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), which utilizes various mindfulness meditation and yoga practices to help patients lower stress and cope with pain and illness. The training is so highly effective in relieving stress that it is now offered to patients in over 200 clinics and medical centers in and outside of the U.S.How is this relevant to the treatment of illness? The relationship between stress and illness is a focus of the relatively new science of psychoneuroimmunology, which has amassed a mountain of data since 1975 demonstrating that stress can produce profound health consequences. When stress is of limited duration it can actually have beneficial effects on the immune system. But when the anxiety, fear, tension, anger or sadness of stress last for a long time or become chronic, the system is unable to maintain its equilibrium, and observable health declines can follow. In one epidemiological study, for example, mortality from all causes increased in the month following a severe major stressor such as the death of a partner or loss of a job. Prolonged stress has also been shown to be linked to increases in total number of white blood cells, as well as decreases in the number and percentage of helper T-cells and suppressor T-cells.But is the converse true? If stress decreases T-cells, can lowering stress through mindfulness practices reverse that process and slow the progression of diseases such as HIV? It is a reasonable question. Prior research has demonstrated that MBSR improves mood and reduces stress, and other studies have shown that stress and depression are associated with more rapid HIV progression.In July of 2008, researchers at UCLA reported the results of a study which provides the first indication that mindfulness meditation stress-management training can have a direct impact on slowing HIV disease progression, said lead study author David Creswell, a research scientist at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA. He added ...if this initial finding is replicated in larger studies, its possible that such training can be used as a powerful complementary treatment for HIV disease, alongside medications.In this study, 48 HIV