Cynthia H. Craft, Sacramento Bee: As the nation embarks on a top-down overhaul of health care, a simple movement with the potential to improve wellness is quietly growing from the ground up.

It’s called “mindfulness meditation,” an outgrowth of the West’s fascination in recent decades with eastern Buddhist philosophy.

Slowly but surely, experts say, the medical establishment is opening its doors to meditation as research continues to reveal its potential health benefits.

Many of the nation’s hospital systems have come around to offer classes in mindfulness meditation as well as mindfulness-based stress-reduction programs.

Scientific research indicates…

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Stress is a fact of life for many of us, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Mindfulness meditation can make all the difference between feeling stressed out and well-balanced.

For those of you in the Boston area, Sunada Takagi is offering a course on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to help you start down the road to health and wellbeing. The program centers on the ancient practice of meditation, presented in a pragmatic, common sense way. You’ll learn how to build up your inner resources for healing and growing — so you can start taking charge of your life.

MBSR is based on Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s pioneering work …

I’ve been working on getting a daily yoga practice going. I thought it might improve my overall energy levels, and help with the chronic tension in my back and shoulders. But it’s been a “two steps forward, one step backward” sort of path. It’s especially on those days when I’m feeling pretty good that I tend to slack off. I think what the heck, I don’t really need it today. But then one day becomes two, then three… And I find myself feeling sluggish and tight again. Ugh.

So I’m re-experiencing firsthand what it’s like to try and get a healthy new habit going. It sure isn’t easy. How do we keep ourselves motivated?