Pioneer of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, discusses some of the background, rationale, and current status of mindfulness based intiatives for their over 20 year history of practice for the treatment of a variety of health problems. The majority of MBSR programs, like that initiated by Majumdar et al., have been conducted as uncontrolled, exploratory outcome studies, many of which indicate that MBSR can indeed contribute to greater health. The results of these studies, together with more recent approaches in mindfulness-based cognitive therapies (MBCT), also help highlight some of the methodological issues that will need to be attended to as mindfulness-based interventions are gradually refined in response to a range of different individuals and conditions. (Zach Rowinski 2005-03-04)