Mind Cure

The popular history of therapeutic meditation in the United States begins much earlier than the 1970s, with women leaders of the late-nineteenth-century Mind Cure movement. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation as a tool for personal healing and social liberation, particularly for women and Black men, linking consciousness transformation to concrete political, economic, and legal freedom. Their work influenced African American religious movements and pressured mainstream religion and medicine. In response, white male doctors and clergy appropriated Mind Cure methods, channeling them into scientific psychology and medicine, stripping away the religious roots and social justice agendas. The book traces this trajectory from Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness boom, revealing what was lost in the process.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Mindfulness is widely claimed to improve health and performance, and historians typically say that efforts to promote meditation and yoga therapeutically began in the 1970s. In fact, they began much earlier, and that early history offers important lessons for the present and future. This book traces the history of mind-body medicine from eighteenth-century Mesmerism to the current Mindfulness boom and reveals how religion, race, and gender have shaped events. Many of the first Americans to advocate meditation for healing were women leaders of the Mind Cure movement, which emerged in the late nineteenth century. They believed that by transforming their consciousness, they could also transform oppressive circumstances in which they lived, and some were activists for social reform. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation through personal networks, religious communities, and publications. Some influenced important African American religious movements, as well. For women and black men, Mind Cure meant not just happiness but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. The Mind Cure movement exerted enormous pressure on mainstream American religion and medicine, and in response, white, male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials appropriated some of its methods and channeled them into scientific psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized, individualized, and then commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell away. After tracing how we got from Mind Cure to Mindfulness, this book reveals what got lost in the process.