Simply Mindful A 7 Week Course And Personal Handbook For Mindful Living

Comprehensive 7-Week Course with Concepts, Skills and Research Mindfulness is not a magical panacea, but when understood and applied properly, it offers the benefits of greater wholeness, connection to others, and balance for dealing with life's ups and downs. Simply Mindful offers an easy-to-follow curriculum that is science and research-based. Written by international mindfulness expert, psychotherapist, award-winning author and former Buddhist monk Donald Altman, MA, LPC, these pages can help anyone gain the real-life benefits that mindfulness offers. Ideal for individuals, educators, coaches, counselors and business persons who want a step-by-step approach to learning and mastering mindfulness, as well as using this guide to teach mindfulness to others, either individually or in a group setting. Simply Mindful brings all the essentials you need to know about mindfulness into this one book--because it includes everything from an overview of the ancient, traditional four foundations of mindfulness and its role in Buddhism, to how it was introduced into Western healthcare and business. Plus, it delivers a clear understanding of the core concepts of mindfulness, along with 36 detailed practices and skills for learning and applying it at work, at home and in relationships. Whether using this guide for yourself or teaching others, you'll appreciate how the curriculum in Simply Mindful includes new science and research that illustrates the benefits of how mindfulness works in the brain and body. Plus, the skills in these pages can be used for developing acceptance and compassion, as well as for managing stress, improving relationships, boosting creativity, and enhancing productivity. In the pages of Simply Mindful you'll discover: - The latest neuroscience behind mindfulness and stress reduction. - Cutting-edge research about why present moment awareness improves health, creativity and productivity. - Over 35 detailed practices for learning and applying mindfulness--from mindfulness of the breath to intentional awareness and the loving-kindness practices. - The 5-Steps to G-R-E-A-T Mindful Self-Care which are like your boot-camp for preparing a successful mindfulness practice. - A Dedicated Mindfulness at Work Chapter, for building collaboration, increasing productivity, and boosting creativity--including research and practices. - A Dedicated Mindfulness at Home Chapter for applying mindfulness at home, for cultivating caring relationships--including research and practices. - Handy tools for finding practices and getting more information, such as an Index of Exercises and Practices, Biographical References, For Further Reading and Online Resources. Whether you're distracted and exhausted, or calm and connected, here's your all-natural resilience-building remedy. REVIEWS Simply Mindful is for today's coaches and leaders. It integrates science and practice to give you the essential tools help you become more productive and satisfied with your life. - John Baldoni; executive leadership coach and author, Grace Mindfulness expert Donald Altman has done it again, offering refreshing and timely mindfulness exercises and advice in an effective format. Prepare to be transformed by the end of your journey. - Chris Willard, PsyD; educational consultant and author, Growing Up Mindful Reading Simply Mindful is like taking a natural stress-reducer more powerful, longer lasting and safer than any stress relief drug. The only side-effects are more joy, calm and tranquility. - Randall Fitzgerald; journalist and author The simple and practical exercises in this well-researched guide make it perfect for teachers, therapists and their clients, or anyone desiring to live mindfully, with greater awareness, compassion and joy. - David Nez; art therapist, teacher and author, The Tree

A Complete Guide to Mindfulness Tools for Clinicians At last, an authoritative book filled with mindfulness tools that deliver an essential set of engaging, practical strategies along with key research and evidence-based information. The awareness boosting methods in this guidebook offer participants a means of reappraising and observing negative and anxious thoughts, habits, pain, and stress in fresh ways that produce new insight, positive change, and a sense of hope. Featuring over 40 easy to use, reproducible handouts and expertly crafted, guided scripts—such as working with the breath, overcoming depression with here and now pleasantness, calming the anxious mind with sense grounding, expanding a client’s strength narrative, the stress pause S-T-O-P technique, and meditations for peace, acceptance, and re-envisioning pain—this book is ideal for clinicians wanting to integrate mindfulness into their work.

The life-changing international bestseller reveals a set of simple yet powerful mindfulness practices that you can incorporate into daily life to help break the cycle of anxiety, stress, unhappiness, and exhaustion. Mindfulness promotes the kind of happiness and peace that gets into your bones. It seeps into everything you do and helps you meet the worst that life throws at you with new courage. Based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), the book revolves around a straightforward form of mindfulness meditation which takes just a few minutes a day for the full benefits to be revealed. MBCT has been clinically proven to be at least as effective as drugs for depression and is widely recommended by US physicians and the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence—in other words, it works. More importantly it also works for people who are not depressed but who are struggling to keep up with the constant demands of the modern world. MBCT was developed by the book's author, Oxford professor Mark Williams, and his colleagues at the Universities of Cambridge and Toronto. By investing just 10 to 20 minutes each day, you can learn the simple mindfulness meditations at the heart of MBCT and fully reap their benefits. The book includes links to audio meditations to help guide you through the process. You'll be surprised by how quickly these techniques will have you enjoying life again.

'Donald Altman's Travelers is a gripping mystical journey through Time and Space, rooted in the reality of a Psychiatric Hospital. A Psychiatrist journeys into his young patient's universe and together they fight his inner demons which turn out to be both real and imagined. The outer demons make this book a real thriller in the unique microcosm of the Hospital which reverberates and expands to illuminate the forces unleashed in our world today. Both chilling and moving.' Lyle Kessler, Tony nominated playwright and screenwriter of Orphans and The Saint of Fort Washington A Mysterious Traveler. A Sentient Canine. A Psychotic Patient... Grieving psychiatrist Ben Banks can't find a way to heal from loss. But when a mystifying, miraculous and mind-bending trio arrive at the psych ward, the Doctor is forced to confront his deepest fears and beliefs about the nature of consciousness and reality - even death. With his marriage, career and life hanging by a thread, he faces demons both real and imagined, all the while being transformed forever in this inspiring story of hope, healing and renewal.

The landmark work on mindfulness, meditation, and healing, now revised and updated after twenty-five years Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health if we let it, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease. Based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this classic, groundbreaking work—which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology—shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing. By engaging in these mindfulness practices and integrating them into your life from moment to moment and from day to day, you can learn to manage chronic pain, promote optimal healing, reduce anxiety and feelings of panic, and improve the overall quality of your life, relationships, and social networks. This second edition features results from recent studies on the science of mindfulness, a new Introduction, up-to-date statistics, and an extensive updated reading list. Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well and the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in our fast-paced world. Praise for Full Catastrophe Living “To say that this wise, deep book is helpful to those who face the challenges of human crisis would be a vast understatement. It is essential, unique, and, above all, fundamentally healing.”—Donald M. Berwick, M.D., president emeritus and senior fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement “One of the great classics of mind/body medicine.”—Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom “A book for everyone . . . Jon Kabat-Zinn has done more than any other person on the planet to spread the power of mindfulness to the lives of ordinary people and major societal institutions.”—Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin–Madison “This is the ultimate owner’s manual for our lives. What a gift!”—Amy Gross, former editor in chief, O: The Oprah Magazine “I first read Full Catastrophe Living in my early twenties and it changed my life.”—Chade-Meng Tan, Jolly Good Fellow of Google and author of Search Inside Yourself “Jon Kabat-Zinn’s classic work on the practice of mindfulness to alleviate stress and human suffering stands the test of time, a most useful resource and practical guide. I recommend this new edition enthusiastically to doctors, patients, and anyone interested in learning to use the power of focused awareness to meet life’s challenges, whether great or small.”—Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Spontaneous Happiness and 8 Weeks to Optimum Health “How wonderful to have a new and updated version of this classic book that invited so many of us down a path that transformed our minds and awakened us to the beauty of each moment, day-by-day, through our lives. This second edition, building on the first, is sure to become a treasured sourcebook and traveling companion for new generations who seek the wisdom to live full and fulfilling lives.”—Diana Chapman Walsh, Ph.D., president emerita of Wellesley College

Mindfulness involves learning to be more aware of life as it unfolds moment by moment, even if these moments bring us difficulty, pain or suffering. This is a challenge we will all face at some time in our lives, and which health professionals face every day in their work. The Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living programme presents a new way of learning how to face the pressures of modern living by providing an antidote which teaches us how to cultivate kindness and compassion – starting with being kind to ourselves. Compassion involves both sensitivity to our own and others’ suffering and the courage to deal with it. Integrating the work of experts in the field such as Paul Gilbert, Kristin Neff, Christopher Germer and Tara Brach, Erik van den Brink and Frits Koster have established an eight stage step-by-step compassion training programme, supported by practical exercises and free audio downloads, which builds on basic mindfulness skills. Grounded in ancient wisdom and modern science, they demonstrate how being compassionate shapes our minds and brains, and benefits our health and relationships. The programme will be helpful to many, including people with various types of chronic or recurring mental health problems, and can be an effective means of coping better with low self-esteem, self-reproach or shame, enabling participants to experience more warmth, safeness, acceptance and connection with themselves and others. Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living will be an invaluable manual for mindfulness teachers, therapists and counsellors wishing to bring the ‘care’ back into healthcare, both for their clients and themselves. It can also be used as a self-help guide for personal practice.

Did you ever wish you knew the secret to bouncing back from life's toughest roadblocks, wounds, and obstacles? According to psychotherapist, international mindfulness teacher, and former Buddhist monk Donald Altman, there is no secret. There is simply the skill of applying mindfulness to whatever new problem knocks on your door each day. It works because mindfulness rewires your brain and dramatically changes your relationship to the problem. The 101 mindfulness 'tools' in this book will give you newfound hope, optimism, and strength. These are simple, yet powerful mindfulness practices that you can apply in just a minute or two -- whether you're facing something extremely annoying or seemingly insurmountable. Those you know may think you've found a secret elixir to wash away your problems. But you'll know the secret is just retraining your brain with 101 Mindful Ways to Build Resilience.

Without proper support, navigating the icy waters of grief may feel impossible. The grieving person may feel spiritually bankrupt and often the loss is so painful that the bereaved may lose faith in what they once held dear. Mindfulness meditation can restore hope by offering a compassionate safe haven for healing and self-reflection. While nobody can predict the path of someone else's grief, this book will guide the reader forward through the grieving process with simple mindfulness-based exercises to restore mind, body and spirit. These easy-to-follow meditations will help the reader to cope with the pain of loss, and embark on a healing journey. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of grief, and the guided meditations will calm the mind and increase clarity and focus. Mindfulness and Grief will help readers to begin the process of reconstructing the shattered self that is left in the wake of any major loss.

Imagine an 8-week program that can help you overcome depression, anxiety, and stress--by simply learning new ways to respond to your own thoughts and feelings. That program is mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and it has been tested and proven effective in clinical trials throughout the world. Now you can get the benefits of MBCT any time, any place, by working through this carefully constructed book. The expert authors introduce specific mindfulness practices to try each week, plus reflection questions, tools for keeping track of progress, and helpful comments from others going through the program. Like a trusted map, this book guides you step by step along the path of change. Guided meditations are provided on the accompanying MP3 CD and are also available as audio downloads. Note: The MP3 CD can be played on CD players (only those marked "MP3-enabled") as well as on most computers. See also the authors' The Mindful Way through Depression, which demonstrates these proven strategies with in-depth stories and examples. Plus, mental health professionals, see also the authors' bestselling therapy guide: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, Second Edition. Winner (Second Place)--American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award, Consumer Health Category ÿ

College students and other young adults today experience high levels of stress as they pursue personal, educational, and career goals. These struggles can have serious consequences, and may increase the risk of psychological distress and mental illness among the age group now commonly referred to as "emerging adults." Scientific research has shown that practicing mindfulness can help manage stress and enhance quality of life, but traditional methods of teaching mindfulness and meditation may not be effective for college-age adults. This fully updated second edition of Mindfulness for the Next Generation describes an evidence-based approach for teaching the useful and important skill of mindfulness to emerging adults. The manualized, four-session program outlined here, Koru Mindfulness, is designed to help young adults navigate challenging tasks, and achieve meaningful personal growth. Rogers and Maytan, psychiatrists and developers of Koru Mindfulness, also discuss the unique stressors emerging adults face, identify effective teaching techniques for working with them, and review the now-robust research supporting mindfulness for stress reduction in a scientifically rigorous yet reader-friendly way. Among the features new to this edition are new data on the effectiveness of the curriculum, an introduction to the Koru mindfulness teacher certification program, and adaptations for culturally informed practice, reflecting the international appeal of Koru Mindfulness as well as its growing use outside of college settings, and extensively revised in-session scripts. Mindfulness for the Next Generation is written for therapists, teachers, health professionals, and student service providers.