Meditating beyond ailments

Using meditation to treat - and cure - certain childhood ailments. This is the promise kept by Pr Tu-Anh Tran. The pediatrician has developed a meditation method adapted to children that produces spectacular results, and sometimes even makes it possible to dispense with the drugs usually prescribed.

Alex is 9 years old, and it's not easy for him. He's very anxious and impulsive. He has a lot of tics: he scrapes his tongue to the point of bleeding, has sudden head movements, trips over himself... Sometimes he spouts an avalanche of swear words. At home, bedtime generates incoercible anxiety, and he screams and bangs his head on his bed. At school, Alex has trouble reading, understanding and concentrating. He gets very agitated. Alex has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD.

So his parents took Alex to see Professor Tu-Anh Tran, head of pediatrics at the CHU in Nîmes... Two months later, the tics have disappeared. And if the occasional swearword or crunch still pops up, Alex is much calmer and more composed. How did Tu-Anh Tran treat Alex? Meditation! Meditation means observing what's going on in your body and mind to understand the phenomena inside you," explains the pediatrician, who has been meditating himself for 30 years. From this observation comes the understanding that enables us to unblock the physical or psychic blockages at the root of suffering."

Observe what's going on in your body and mind

When he meets young Alex, the doctor analyzes that his mind is very fast, but his body is slower. As a result, his body can't keep up with his thoughts: he fidgets, falls, stutters and has tics. " Using meditation, I helped him to slow down his mind and relax his body, so that he could better articulate his movements and thoughts, and regain harmonious gestures," explains Tu-Anh Tran, who has created a university diploma in Meditation and Health.

The practice of meditation spread throughout the Western world in the 1980s, with the rise of mindfulness meditation. At that time, some child psychologists began offering the practice to their young patients. It was a failure, " explains Tu-Anh Tran, " because the way they presented meditation from an intellectual angle wasn't at all suited to them. With children, there's no need for speeches; everything comes through bodily sensation."

Spectacular results

And Tu-Anh Tran knows all about children's sensations. For 10 years, the doctor has been working at Bicêtre Hospital. A specialist in inflammatory and rheumatological diseases in children, he treats little patients suffering from algodystrophy or fibromyalgia, who are in constant pain. " Pain that is sometimes no longer relieved by medication", explains the pediatrician. So the practitioner set up meditation sessions for these children. The results were spectacular," recalls Tu-Anh Tran, " the children were in much less pain and regained their motor skills.

To achieve such an improvement, the pediatrician has developed a meditation practice specifically adapted to children. A two-phase method. First objective: to calm down. "Children start by practicing conscious breathing. All they have to think about is breathing, which helps them refocus. The mind returns to the body and the present moment, without wandering between the future and the past.

Confronting suffering to heal

Once the children have grasped the power of concentration through conscious breathing, Professor Tran moves on to the second phase. "It's a phase that's all too often neglected in Western meditation practice, and yet it's what heals. And the doctor has healed many children.
Physical suffering, stress, concentration problems, learning difficulties, hyperactivity, eating disorders, anxieties, sleep disorders, anxiety, academic failure, dropping out of school, depression, phobias, chronic illnesses, inflammatory and autoimmune pathologies, acute and chronic pain... The list of ailments that can be relieved by meditation is long. "In some cases, meditation can even be used to reduce or stop medication altogether," explains the doctor.

It also helps to bring balance back into families that are sometimes thrown into turmoil by their child's difficulties. " Many parents come to me saying 'I've tried everything', and they're the first to be surprised by the changes that come about thanks to the practice of meditation. And they're not the only ones: the headmistress of Alex's school was so impressed by his progress that she asked Tu-Anh Tran to teach her meditation techniques to teachers, so that they could practice them with their pupils...