He is far from the only person who has made changes.
``I've seen Martha in action and how people respond to her. She is very down-to-earth, and people identify with what she is talking about,'' Anzicek said.
A group of Kimball graduates meets weekly in the Grass Lake Medical Center, something Anzicek heartily supports based on research and personal observation on how meditation helps people handle stress. She also recommends yoga and other activities that quiet the mind.
``If people knit or like to watch birds, I tell them, `Sit and relax and enjoy it. Or take a walk in nature,''' said Anzicek, a family physician who meditates almost every day for 20 to 30 minutes, exercises five days a week and walks on weekends with her husband, Dr. Mark Leventer.
``We live in a society that tells us to do more. But meditation teaches us to slow down, take time to have some periods of quiet,'' she said.
Silence, and how to sit in it, is how Kimball begins her classes.
Our minds, she said, are like puppies playing with balls, pushing and biting and running around the room in a frenzy.
Mindfulness Meditation slows that pace by quieting the mind. This, in turns, allows the mind to explore other options, other choices we may not have ever considered because we were too scattered, to0 busy playing with that ball.
``It is liberation, freedom, peace from the mind,'' Kimball said.
``Not that we see we are in a room with four chairs and a table and the walls painted green, but it helps us develop a detachment. As you sit with it, you see what comes from it,'' Kimball said.
For instance, a single mother whose boss is so awful that she hates going to work has built up a great deal of anger that often crosses into hopelessness because she needs the paycheck.
Meditating and listening to her body breathe, gradually relaxes her muscles fraught with anger and tension. And then ideas float to the surface: ways to approach the boss and the job itself that may get a better reaction, or people to network with to land a different job.
``What budges us off our conditioned self is, unfortunately, pain,'' Kimball said, whether physical or mental, in the case of the single mother and her boss.
Meditating doesn't mean a person's life will become pain- or stress-free. It means the meditator is able to learn to take in stride what life hands him or her. For instance, Kimball has struggled with her weight over the years and is now thin.
``I lost 70 pounds six times. I have six lifetime Weight Watchers memberships,'' she said. ``I remember the cashews had voices. But they go away. What makes the suffering isn't the cannoli, it's the mind that thinks it hears it calling.''
Meditation is a 24/7 practice, she said. Kimball sits in ``formal practice'' in an enclosed porch in her home every morning at 5:30 a.m. for 30 to 40 minutes. The rest of the day is informal practice, her mind linking back to that peaceful state in her meditation room early that morning when stressful incidents come up.
And they do, almost regularly.
``I learn to ask myself, `What choices do I have?''' Kimball said. ``There is a better way to be with what is.''
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