Since the 1990s, mindfulness has been one of the most prominent techniques to handle stress and anxiety. Through breathing- and meditation techniques, mindfulness attempts to harvest psychological benefits by addressing the body as well as the mind. One of the most prevailing techniques that constitute mindfulness is Zen-Meditation, a method that was linked to psychology already in the 1920s by the Japanese Buddhist reformer, D.T. Suzuki. This paper explores how Suzuki presented a modernized Zen philosophy in the post-war era to the North American publics and how Neo-Freudians such as Karen Horney and Erich Fromm considered Zen as a complement to therapy in order to go beyond emotional structures formulated in the society of cold-war America. Moreover, the paper proposes that Fromm’s interest in meditation and his collaboration with Suzuki unlocked the idea of the body as a gateway to the mind in psychoanalysis. An idea that boomed in the 60s and constituted mindfulness at the end of the 70s.
