Mindfulness for Life: Mindfulness, Meditation, and the Science of Awareness

Michael Baime 

"It is very easy for a doctor to disappoint a patient in need," says Michael Baime M'81. "It is all too easy for that doctor to not even notice the disappointment. It happens every 15 minutes." Over time, this "not noticing" takes its toll on healthcare providers, he adds. "Even the most sensitive and caring physicians begin to feel less and less of the distress that their patients bring them. It just happens." They lose touch with what called them into the profession, the promise of "a deeper kind of healing that was based on selfless caring, on a deeper wish to participate in something more profound than a prescription."

Baime - the director of the Penn Program for Mindfulness who also serves as director of Mind-Body Medicine for the Abramson Cancer Center - has been treating this condition for decades. His method? First, sit still. Second, notice what happens when you do.