Friends around you are doing yoga, Qi Gong and other ‘New Agy stuff’ to improve their well-being and lower their stress levels? If you have so far been rather sceptical with regard to Eastern meditative practices entering Western psychological practices, here is a book that may help you change your mind.
Being a manifesto, it calls the reader to wake up to a scientifically underpinned way to a life of more happiness and less stress. It gives us a well-researched summary of the latest results of studies into mindfulness-based interventions. From anxiety disorders to depression, from eating disorders to chronic fatigue, from living with HIV to living with psoriasis, there is not a field of mental health or chronic physical illness that has not been treated with the plough of meditative interventions. After all, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is being recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence for relapse prevention of depression. And if the scientific evidence does not convince you, maybe your personal experience of meditation will: this book adds in some easy-to-follow meditation practices that you can start today. With each chapter following thematically a section of a guided meditation practice, from meditation of the breath, to the body, our thoughts and our feelings, it invites us to create space within ourselves to look at life in general, being lived in a more mindful way, by ‘paying attention, here and now, in a non-judgmental way’ (Jon Kabat-Zinn).
The book calls for a mindful approach to individual suffering and for more mindfulness-based interventions within the National Health Service and the world as a whole. Here lies its inherent weakness: it is a manifesto of enthusiasm for developing more mindfulness, but it risks promoting mindfulness as a panacea for all ills of individuals as well as shortcomings of our society and modern life in general.
The authors weave in basic concepts of the Buddhist dharma and oscillate between Western science and Buddhist philosophy. As much as they try to reach as many people as possible with their wake-up call by addressing our spiritual as well as our more pragmatic scientific side, there is the risk of promoting enthusiasm-based medicine rather than evidence-based medicine. An attached CD with some guided meditative practices for beginners would have come in handy. A somewhat loud and attention-seeking cover for this paperback does not do its overwhelming usefulness any favours.
Once the reader overcomes these limitations, he or she will find a well-referenced contemporary summary of the scientific evidence about the fascinating area of mindfulness-based interventions. In addition, we are being reminded that we all can benefit from slowing down and becoming aware of what is happening in this moment, in a non-judgmental way.
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