Witnessing Hippocratic Integrity

I am lying on the carpeted floor of the spacious and spanking new faculty conference room at the UMass Medical Center with a group of about 15 patients in the dwindling light of a late September afternoon. This is the first class in the first cycle of the Stress Reduction and Relaxation Program, later to become known as the Stress Reduction Clinic, that has just been launched here. I am midway through guiding us in an extended lying-down meditation known as the body scan. We are all lying on our backs on brand-new cloth-encased foam mats of various bright colors, clustered together at one end of the room so as to better hear my instructions. …