Saki F. Santorelli, EdD, MA, is an educator, author and clinician. He retired as Executive Director of the UMass Medical School Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society. A professor of medicine, he was the very first intern at Dr Jon Kabat Zinn's Stress Reduction Clinic, from where Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) originated. His entire career has been dedicated to the integration of mindfulness into public health and well-being, propelled by his recognition of and trust in the innate goodness of human beings.

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Saki Santorelli

<h4>SAKI SANTORELLI is interviewed by AMIR IMANI as part of a webinar series about mindfulness, love,
 compassion and the way of the heart.</h4>
Q: Today we are very delighted to have my dear friend, mentor and
 teacher, Dr. Saki Santorelli, with us. Saki was the Executive Director of The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine,
 Health and Society at the University of Massachusetts, USA, for 17 years. I have been a witness to his deep
 contribution to bringing mindfulness to the public and the profession, globally.
Saki has been one of the main pulls for me into the mindfulness
 practice, through his loving presence and brotherly support from afar. He will be speaking to us on love, compassion
 and the heart in this way.
Thank you Saki, and welcome to this session with us.
SS: Thank you so much, Amir and Samaneh. It’s
 lovely to be with all of you.
Today I would like to begin by offering you the deepest sense of gratitude and
 appreciation for the work that you are doing in your part of the world, wherever you are. So how about if we begin
 by, each of us in our own way, setting an intention for what we hope for in this next hour together?
You know there are often surface reasons, then there are deeper reasons, and then there
 are deeper than that reasons. For example, you might feel at a professional level, which is a good thing. But if you
 drop down a little further into your heart: What’s really brought you to this, to give yourself over to this for an
 hour of your life, when you could be doing so many other things? And it’s that deeper seed that I’m suggesting you
 attend to.
People come for a whole range of reasons, but then there is some deeper reason for being
 there as well. For example – we never did a formal study about this – all of the 37 years that I was at the Center
 for Mindfulness, we saw people with cancer and heart disease and a huge range of medical and psychological issues.
 And while they came certainly for some relief from the psychological or physical suffering associated with those
 conditions, the single-most frequently stated goal was peace of mind.
So they knew something deep inside themselves, even in the midst of whatever they were
 suffering with, physically or psychologically, that was quite different than the symptoms that they were
 experiencing. So it’s that deeper reason that I am asking, or suggesting, that you invoke or intend and attend to as
 we continue.
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Even right in this moment I feel that we are dear, dear companions, that we are joined
 together by a certain commitment, a certain dedication, and a certain view of human beings: in some very real way,
 the view that human beings are actually filled with a certain kind of genius. They are capable far more than they
 might imagine or certainly far more than most cultures would suggest is possible. It’s as if there’s a treasure that
 they are, that they have forgotten. You know what I mean? You know that in yourself how easy it is to forget?
So you could say that in a very real way the true and real work of any of us, as
 teachers of mindfulness-based programs, is to remember. And that remembering is deeper than the intervention. In
 fact I don’t even like to call MBSR an intervention; we avoided calling it an intervention from the beginning. And
 we avoided calling it a therapy as well. Rather we said it’s an approach or a path. I don’t know what the word is in
 Farsi, but I think in Arabic it is tareeq; it’s a way.
That doesn’t mean all of the competencies that have been described as central to MBSR or
 MBCT teacher development are not important. They are important. I’d read the paper by my dear colleagues, Rebecca
 Crane and Mark Williams, when it came out years ago, about the competencies, and I asked myself, “Are these
 competencies all an aspect of MBSR?” My answer was yes. Then I asked myself another question, “Will these
 competencies be enough to walk into the classroom and teach?” My answer was no.
That doesn’t make them unimportant. It’s just that the central competency in my view, in
 my experience, is the cultivation of the human heart. And that has everything to do with the quality of embodiment.
 And every one of us will embody it in a different way. And it expresses itself probably universally as a kind of
 sympathetic nature, a kind of tenderness and softness – not passivity, but softness – and a kind of mercy.
So maybe for a moment you can just be attentive to that part of yourself. It’s right
 here. You might say it actually shows up as a kind of assertive kindness, warmth and friendliness towards oneself
 and one’s experience. In a very real way we’re asking the people that we work with to come to our courses or
 classes, to cultivate the same quality towards themselves and their experience.
In that, of course, on one hand we’re talking about the quality of tenderness or
 softness of the heart. On the other hand, you probably know well that that the heart is fierce, it can take
 everything, and it can keep giving. I’m not talking about something romantic, but it takes just that kind of an
 organ, if you will, of sensitivity and sensibility, to actually help people meet and in some way be relieved from
 their own suffering and their own pain.
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So if we look a little more deeply into mindfulness itself, there are two dimensions to
 it. On one hand there is what’s often called the instrumental dimension. It has to do with the development of skills
 and competencies, in a sense of effort and improvement over time. Maybe in our modern vernacular we’d say that has
 to do with acquisitional learning. For example, if I have to learn Farsi, I’d learn from the very beginning. I’d
 have to go very slowly, and I would probably feel like a failure or that I’m not getting it. If learn to play the
 piano, I go slowly. I learn the notes then the scales before I can play any music.
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 the same with learning to practice mindfulness. It is a practice
 in the sense that it has its own progression, and over time people often report changes. And if you’re a mindfulness
 practitioner, you discover that there are changes that take place over time. And it’s the same with the various
 competencies that have been identified in the development of MBSR teachers: over time people get more skillful at
 those competencies.
Then there is this other dimension of mindfulness practice that is non-instrumental.
 There’s nothing to get. There’s nothing to improve upon. There’s nothing to gain. It’s already complete. And you can
 see that instrumental is nested in the non-instrumental. For example, how could you love another human being if love
 wasn’t already a part of you? How could you appreciate beauty if beauty wasn’t innate? How could you appreciate the
 light of the sun if light wasn’t an innate part of you as a human being? This is what Rumi was talking about,
 several hundred years ago, when he talked about two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, one already complete.
So what’s it like to walk into the classroom knowing that you’re sitting in front of 10
 or 15 geniuses, who are already complete but they don’t know it? You can’t tell them that, you can’t give them a
 lecture about that. You can’t tell them, “Just believe me, because I know.” Our job is to embody that in some way,
 and then help them over time, simply assist them to become familiar with the depth that’s already a part of them.

That’s why I have written – and I continue to know more than simply believe – that the
 central risk in MBSR or MBCT is that we’ll become blinded to the non-instrumental and the instrumental will take
 over.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">The central competency in my view, in my experience, 
 is the cultivation of the human heart.</h5>
<hr>
So maybe we’ll take a moment and just sit with this question: How is it inside me to
 hear this, to feel it in some way? Not because I’ve said it, but how is it for you?
This really means that our job is to be students. To listen. To serve. To see if we can
 meet every situation, or many situations, in a way that they provide us with a certain kind of learning, a certain
 kind of insight and understanding. We become kind of intoxicated, so we’re a little drunk. You could say in some
 real way that mindfulness, in its most universal form, expresses itself in a deep and powerful way in remembering
 that we’re actually sober. That our senses serve us. That our mind serves us.
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And then, more centrally, the cultivation and the development of the human heart happen.
 It becomes the central characteristic of mindfulness, because it has everything to do with a slow disillusioning of
 this thing we call ‘myself’. So we move from that position of inhabiting and strengthening the self to recognizing
 that all human beings suffer, all human beings have the capacity to be free and liberated.
So thank you for letting your beauty shine out into the world. We know that there’s a
 lot of uncertainty in the world, a lot of darkness, and a lot of fear. And there’s no value in pretending otherwise.
 But in the middle of all of that, there is the capacity for us to shine forth, to feel this indelible bond between
 us, to touch deeply and know the deep, deep resources that we have within, and that the world has changed through
 very small numbers of people doing very radical things. By radical I mean fundamental. This is fundamental: the
 reality of what mindfulness is in the life of human beings is fundamental.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;"> 
 There is the capacity for us to shine forth, to feel this 
 indelible bond between us, to touch deeply and know 
 the deep, deep resources that we have
 within.</h5>
<hr>
I would like to end with a few lines of Hafiz, as he’s dear to me. The soil of Iran has
 given the world a universal voice through this human being. At the end of one of his poems he says the following
 lines:
Be strong, Hafiz! 
 Work here inside time, 
 where we fail, catch hold 
 again, and climb.

So that’s what we’re all doing here: working inside time, failing, catching hold again,
 and climbing. And I thank you for climbing. We’ll reach out and help one another.
Q: Thank you, Saki, for showing us how to climb, just by sitting still
 and feeling.
To be continued&nbsp;
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Interview by AMIR IMANI</h4>
<hr>

Insight of the heart – part 1

<h4>We continue SAKI SANTORELLI’s interview with AMIR IMANI as part of a webinar series about
 mindfulness, love, compassion and the way of the heart.</h4>
Q: As a student, Saki, what I learnt from
 you is not to be afraid. This is what you taught me in my training – not to be afraid of not knowing and to rest
 in just being. And what you call heart and love, you get the power through that. You get the courage to “not
 know” through loving. I am always amazed to see how science is showing that this is healing. And the clients are
 amazed how they are transformed by just being.
Now, how do the complexities of the mind
 affect your work as a teacher? Say you have a mild depression, for example. Do you need to reach a stage of full
 recovery? Or does this mild depression dissolve through your practice and through your teaching practice?

SS: Well, I would say it depends. If the depression or anxiety is very, very
 strong in the life of the teacher, it could make working with other people more difficult. On the other hand, we all
 have bouts of depression or sadness or anxiety or uncertainty or insecurity. So it seems to me it’s not a question
 that you shouldn’t teach if you feel some depression, but how will you work with that anxiety or depression or
 uncertainty in a way that is real and genuine, and the fact that it’s known to you.
If you develop a relationship with that situation or that condition within yourself, it’s often the way you develop
 what are called the insights of the heart. In some real way your struggles and your sufferings actually have the
 potential to open you and open the people with whom you work with to bring new ways. So it can be a great service to
 you and your teaching, because it makes you so much more sensitive to others, and your work with yourself in those
 situations and conditions will inform you about how to work with other people.
So you don’t have to be completely cured. If that were the case, we wouldn’t do
 anything. We’re all lame!
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">In some real way your struggles and your sufferings 
 actually have the potential to open you 
 and open the people with whom you work 
 to bring new ways.</h5>
<hr>
Q: Would it help to say, “Keep some pain!
 It may help you in your teaching”?
SS: [Laughing] I wouldn’t say, “Keep it.” I would
 say, “If you’ve got it, you’d better work with it.”
Q: You give an example in your book,
 Healing Thyself, of the wounded healer from Greek mythology, Chiron, who is better able to connect with
 his patients because of his suffering.
SS: Yes, exactly. Those wounds actually help us
 meet other human beings. It is exactly what I was saying before: your sympathy is aroused, your tenderness is
 aroused. Your understanding of the other is informed and aroused.
Q: I remember my early days, Saki, in the
 teacher training, in the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. It is a requirement of the teacher
 training program to be a patient first. I found myself listening to these 35 so-called patients, talking their
 hearts out about their pain, their anguish, and I was feeling nothing. I was baffled: Why am I not feeling the
 pain that they are talking about?
Then I spoke to the teacher of our group
 about this. She hinted that it would come when I opened up to myself. So, starting with my own wound first, and
 then opening to the other – it looks like that for me.
SS: Yes, in a very real way we’ve been taught,
 especially as health care professionals, to separate ourselves from the people we work with, because the view is
 that then we’ll serve them better. My experience is quite the opposite. If I am able to discover some semblance of
 what they’re experiencing within myself, I can serve them far better.
I may not have the same content: somebody may have cancer and I may not have cancer, but
 have I suffered from something else? Yes. I may not be addicted to a substance, but do I experience addiction? Yes.
 And what is that like? What does it do to my body, my mind, and my psyche? What do I know about that in myself? What
 does awareness tell me, show me?
And I then can go to that source and maybe at least be in the “not knowing,” as you
 described it, Amir. I may have some sense of, “Where can I put my first foothold? Where can I put my first
 handhold?” This is exactly what Hafiz is saying in that poem. I don’t have to know the second or third or fourth
 step. I simply have to be present and take the risk of taking the first step. The development of our relationship
 will guide the second step.
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Q: When there are stressful sensitivities
 of life, if mindfulness practices create more sensitivity, should we reduce the length and number of the
 practice sessions? How do we find balance in terms a healthy dosage of practice?
SS: Well, these are all important questions. I
 think in some ways it’s true that mindfulness practice can make us more sensitized, and in some way it is parallel
 to what is happening in the class, in the course for people. For example, sometimes in the early weeks people say,
 “I’m feeling worse than when I started. I thought this was supposed to make me feel better, but I feel worse.”
They’re speaking about the fact that through the development of their attention and
 awareness they are becoming more sensitized to their situation, both externally and internally. And that is a lot to
 comfort in oneself. And they often express frustration because they are more aware of what’s going on, but they
 don’t yet have the capacity to do anything about it. That seems to me to be a normal part of the learning process.
 What begins to happen is turbulence. And their awareness is perturbing their system. It is because there’s the way I
 was, and then there is what I perceive now; and that differential creates a kind of friction or discomfort.
The skill of the teacher becomes really important in that moment, in terms of how do we
 titrate the right dose? Just to keep that, but not too much. Too much is overwhelming; too little, transformation is
 not possible. They’re involved in a kind of alchemy, in the sense that there is a phase of dissolution before
 reintegration.
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So as a teacher and a practitioner of mindfulness, as you said, we’re all involved in
 the same process of how to ascertain the right dose to have some sense of balance. I think that involves getting to
 know oneself better and better. And also, if it’s possible to work with a teacher, it’s helpful as well because the
 teacher can help with that dosage.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">So as a teacher and a practitioner of mindfulness, 
 we’re all involved in the same process of how to ascertain 
 the right dose to have some sense of balance. 
 I think that involves getting to know oneself better and better.</h5>
<hr>
You have to be careful not to push yourself so hard that you’re doing yourself harm, and
 at the same time you have to really look deeper into your practice and see if it is being motivated by love and
 kindness. And if there is any sense that you’re pushing too hard, you have to back off.
Often we instrumentalize practice so much, because we want to gain something. And while
 it takes effort to practice, there is a kind of skillful effort, which has a degree of resting in the way things are
 versus pushing too hard against them. And if that’s the case, which is not unusual, then you need to ask yourself
 some really good questions like: Who is pushing so hard? Who wants to breakthrough and to what? And what is
 motivating? They are not necessarily comfortable questions, but they are fruitful. They help us to be with life and
 ourselves as we are and as life is.
So maybe we can make this the last question, Amir.
Q: I think this will be a good one for us.
 We have been keeping the best for last. What is falling in love?
SS: Okay, the best for last!
Well, that question has been asked by human beings since human beings were on the Earth.
 And it’s portrayed in a very particular way in our cultures. Usually it is portrayed as romantic and intoxicating,
 and it’s usually about what we want. It has its beauty and its value and its function, and it’s quite wonderful. It
 doesn’t last though. At least that particular expression of it doesn’t last. And not unusually we go looking for it
 somewhere else; it’s a kind of addiction.
I think, for me, love has a lot of pain in it. In some real way, to be able to even come
 closer to saying “I’m in love” means that we’re actually putting someone else in front of us. Our care for them
 becomes more powerful than our care for ourselves. And in some very real way it portrays a kind of death. And that
 death is not just metaphoric, because it always involves a diminishment of the usual idea of the self. The pleasure
 and the pain of the other become more important than the pain and pleasure of the self.
<hr>
<h5 style="text-align: center;">In some very real way we know we are in love, 
 because in some way we’re becoming bigger in 
 what appears to be our diminishment. So it means 
 that we start to give rather than look to receive. </h5>
<hr>
And that means in some very real way our ego is being slowly dissolved. The kind of
 separation between the self and the other is being eroded. So in some very real way we know we are in love, because
 in some way we’re becoming bigger in what appears to be our diminishment. So it means that we start to give rather
 than look to receive.
It seems a fitting way to end.
Q: And it’s also a beautiful way to begin,
 Saki. The sheer fact of touching our wounds, ourselves, for the first time – however it may be, not pleasant,
 it’s painful even – but the touch, the connection, for the first time is like falling in love for us. And that
 moment we are bigger than before.
SS: Yes, because we begin to discover how big we
 already are. The world is always squeezing us down, and of course awareness is fathomless and boundless, and
 touching that boundlessness is … Love simply arises and is known.
Q: How about rephrasing it to “rising in
 love?”
SS: Yes, I was going to say that!
Q: Thank you so much for raising the
 awareness of this small group. And all this started 20 years ago with a simple act of kindness from your side,
 and it’s amazing that we never forget kindness, especially when it’s not asked for, it’s just given to us. Thank
 you.
SS: Thank you so much. May we continue to travel in
 this caravan together.
<hr>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">Interview by AMIR IMANI</h4>
<hr>

Saki Santorelli

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