Mindfulness Books

Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness

By Susan Smally and Diana Winston

Fully Present book

Mindfulness—the art of paying attention with an open and curious mind to present-moment experiences—has attracted ever-growing interest and tens of thousands of practitioners, who have come to the discipline from both within and outside the Buddhist tradition. In Fully Present, leading mindfulness researchers and educators Dr. Sue Smalley and Diana Winston provide an all-in-one guide for anyone interested in bringing mindfulness to daily life as a means of enhancing well-being. Fully Present provides both a scientific explanation for how mindfulness positively and powerfully affects the brain and the body as well as practical guidance to develop both a practice and mindfulness in daily living, not only through meditation but also during daily experiences, such as waiting in line at the supermarket, exercising, or facing difficult news.

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Make Peace with Your Mind

By Mark Coleman

Make Peace With Your Mind book

The inner critic is the voice inside our heads reminding us that we are never “good enough.” It’s behind the insidious thoughts that can make us second-guess our every action and doubt our own value. The inner critic might feel overpowering, but it can be managed effectively. Meditation teacher and therapist Mark Coleman helps readers understand and free themselves from the inner critic using the tools of mindfulness and compassion. Each chapter offers constructive insights into what creates, drives, and disarms the critic; real people’s journeys to inspire and guide readers; and simple practices anyone can use to live a free, happy, and flourishing life.

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The Book of Mu

By Melissa Blacker

The Book Of MU book

The word “mu” is one ancient Zen teacher’s response to the earnest question of whether even a dog has “buddha nature”. Discovering for ourselves the meaning of the master’s response is the urgent work of each of us who yearns to be free and at peace. “Practicing Mu” is synonymous with practicing Zen, “sitting with Mu” is an apt description for all Zen meditation, and it is said that all the thousands and thousands of koans in the Zen tradition are just further elaborations of Mu.

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Bringing Home the Dharma

Bringing Home the Dharma book

By Jack Kornfield

If you want to find inner peace and wisdom, you don’t need to move to an ashram or monastery. Your life, just as it is, is the perfect place to be. Here Jack Kornfield, one of America’s most respected Buddhist teachers, shares this and other key lessons gleaned from more than forty years of committed study and practice.

Bringing Home the Dharma includes simple meditation practices for awakening our buddha nature—our wise and understanding heart—amid the ups and downs of our ordinary daily lives.

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Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery

Awake in the Wild book

By Mark Coleman and Jack Kornfield (Introduction)

“Nature deficit disorder” has become an increasingly challenging problem in our hyper modern world. In Awake in the Wild, Mark Coleman shows seekers how to remedy this widespread malady by reconnecting with nature through Buddhism. Each short (two to three pages) chapter includes a concrete nature meditation relating to such topics as Attuning to the Natural World, Reflecting the Rhythms of Nature, Walking with Compassion, Releasing the Inner Noise, Freeing the Animal Within, Coming into the Peace of Wild Things, Weathering the Storms of Life, and more. Incorporating anecdotes from the author’s many nature retreats, Buddhist wisdom and teachings, important nature writings by others, and nature itself, the book invites readers to participate in, not just observe, nature; develop a loving connection with the earth as a form of environmental activism; decrease urban alienation through experiencing nature; embody nature’s peaceful presence; and connect with ancient spiritual wisdom through nature meditations.

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Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Wherever You Go There You Are book

By Jon Kabat-Zinn

When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened.

The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “Now what?

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Coming to our Senses, Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness

Coming To Our Senses

By Jon Kabat-Zinn

Ten years ago, Jon Kabat-Zinn changed the way we thought about awareness in everyday life with his now-classic introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are. Now, with Coming to Our Senses, he provides the definitive book for our time on the connection between mindfulness and our physical and spiritual wellbeing. With scientific rigor, poetic deftness, and compelling personal stories, Jon Kabat-Zinn examines the mysteries and marvels of our minds and bodies, describing simple, intuitive ways in which we can come to a deeper understanding, through our senses, of our beauty, our genius, and our life path in a complicated, fear-driven, and rapidly changing world.

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Calming Your Anxious Mind – How mindfulness and compassion can free you from anxiety, fear and panic

Calming Your Anxious Mind

By Jeffrey Brantley

Drawing on techniques and perspectives from two seemingly different traditions, this second edition of the self-help classic Calming Your Anxious Mind offers you a powerful and profound approach to overcoming anxiety, fear, and panic. From the evidence-based tradition of Western medicine, learn the role your thoughts and emotions play in anxiety. And, from the tradition of meditation and the inquiry into meaning and purpose, discover your own potential for presence and stillness, kindness and compassion-and the tremendous power these states give you to heal and transform your life.

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Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

Mindful Eating book

By Jan Chozen Bays, MD

The art of mindfulness can transform our struggles with food—and renew our sense of pleasure, appreciation, and satisfaction with eating.

Drawing on recent research and integrating her experiences as a physician and meditation teacher, Dr. Jan Bays offers a wonderfully clear presentation of what mindfulness is and how it can help with food issues.

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Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha

Radical Acceptance book

By Tara Brach

For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much–just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work–to make us feel that we are not okay.

Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully.

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The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology

The Wise Heart book

By Jack Kornfield

Experience the Transformational Power of Buddhism’s Psychology of the Heart with Bestselling Author Jack Kornfield

You have within you unlimited capacities for extraordinary love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom—and here is how to awaken them. In The Wise Heart, celebrated author and psychologist Jack Kornfield offers the most accessible, comprehensive, and illuminating guide to Buddhist psychology ever published in the West. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, a journey to the highest expression of human possibility—and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives.

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