Dr. David Alter

I said earlier that many of the meditative traditions came out of the world's religious or faith traditions.

If you look at prayers,

Many of them are prayers of gratitude.

Well, who are you expressing the gratitude to?

Often, you know, some sort of divine, the God or the gods, whatever your particular faith believes in.

And so prayer is also about connection, remembering that connection, not feeling alone and isolated and lonely.

Because we know there's a researcher out of the University of Chicago, Cassiopo, who talked about the toxic effects of loneliness and disconnection, which COVID gave us in spades.

So meditation is, in a sense, a healing, reconnecting response to the toxicity of illness-induced, pandemic-induced social isolations.

Well, I had an experience about a year ago with a gentleman who,

elderly gentleman had married his childhood sweetheart.

They'd been together 60 plus years.

And she had at this late stage of her cancer journey had stopped eating.

He's witnessing her waste away.

She's in and out of consciousness.

And he came to see me and angry.

Right.

He was suggested to see me.

And I remember him saying to me sort of in a challenging way.

So what the hell are you going to do?

She's going to die.