![]() ![]() Meditation can be used to deal with pain or negative emotions. Focus on all parts of the body (and relax the muscles in them), starting from toes, going up via all limbs to the jaw and face, with all the detailed steps in between.ĥ. It is important not to focus on them in a conceptual way, for example, don't think "Now I'm inhaling/exhaling.", but just to observe it without comment.Ĥ.B. One can focus on either stomach, chest, nostrils, or all of them. Breath is merely a very useful anchor to focus on, in order to avoid focusing on all the other things.Ĥ.A. (B) Focusing on the breath is the most common technique in meditation, lending its name -directly or indirectly- to spirituality (that is, the occupation with breath, or with the soul) but even this is not essential to meditation. Namely: (A) The yoga seating poses are felt as the most comfortable ones in many eastern countries, but for the western cultures this may correspond to sitting on a chair in an upright manner. Meditation is commonly associated with practices that derive from the cultures where the art of meditation has been primarily developed, but which are only accidental to meditation. At the start, it will usually only work for a few seconds at a time.ģ. Meditation has to be trained like a muscle, one cannot expect that thinking of nothing will work at the first time. Definition of meditation: Meditation is about perceiving without conceptual framework.Ģ. If you're interested in meditation or mindfulness, but are wary of the spiritual/philosophical/dogmatic trappings that are often associated, this book is for you.ġ. However, the detail of how one might apply mindfulness to manage anxiety or ADD for example, are frustratingly absent.įully Present fills in those blanks, and gives readers a framework for applying mindfulness techniques to everyday life. In Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, the author frequently describes a patient with a difficulty such as anger control problems or ADD, then ends unsatisfactorily with, ".and then I taught him some mindfulness techniques and he lived happily ever after." In The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, mindfulness is frequently referenced as one of a few techniques that have been successful in overcoming an obstacle to happiness that is being covered. ![]() Mindfulness has come up in many of the books that have influenced my thinking on psychology, the mind, and how to better approach your thoughts and emotions. The "art" section seems to usually discuss how it can be applied to day-to-day life, and the "practice" section describes a mindfulness technique for the specific are that is being discussed. The first section touches on the relevant scientific evidence, often pointing out when it is in the hypothesis stage, or when there are only early studies. As advertised, each chapter is broken into three sections. I do recommend this book because it does have great nuggets of information in it, but I'd also recommend skimming through a lot of it and just focusing on the parts that you think will be useful.Ī great broad overview of mindfulness for a secular audience. It's disappointing that the book isn't better written because I think it contains a lot of great information and there's several practices from this book that I found helpful and am implementing in my life. I suppose it's possible they were trying to be funny, but it really didn't seem like that. I believe the real reason people are more afraid of snakes than toothbrushes is because one is possibly poisonous and one is a freakin' toothbrush! It would have made far more sense if they had said cars or hamburgers, which both actually have a chance at killing you yet are less likely to scare people. For example: "Today the remnants of these readily made fears are evident by the disproportionate number of phobias that people have toward snakes and spiders compared with things to which they are exposed far more often, such as kittens or toothbrushes" (p.103 in the paperback edition). The writing also could have been clearer and better worded at times. I felt that a lot of these could have been cut-this is for lay people and not a grad paper after all. Studies were often described even if the author admitted that they were not rigorous enough to suggest anything other than the need for further research in that area. I also felt that there was a bit too much of both. Because it tried to appeal to rational and irrational parts of the mind it included a lot of examples of scientific studies and anecdotes that covered the same ground. I think it could have been edited down a lot though. I like the idea of presenting the research that backs up the utility of mindfulness along with information on how to practice it. ![]()
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