Jon Kabat-Zinn

• If we are honest with ourselves, most of us will have to admit that we live out our lives in an ocean of fear.

• It is a commonly held view that meditation is a way to shut off the pressures of the world or of your own mind, but this is not an accurate impression. Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing clearly and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.

• Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely the path that is your life.

• Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.

• How we see and hold the full range of our experiences in our minds and in our hearts makes an enormous difference in the quality of this journey we are on and what it means to us. It can influence where we go, what happens, what we learn, and how we feel along the way.

ADDRESS: 8-Week Stress Reduction Program Stress Reduction Tapes

or Professional Training Information P.O. Box 547

The Center for Mindfulness Lexington, MA 02420

University of Massachusetts,

Medical School

419 Belmont Ave. 2nd floor

Worcester, MA 01604

PHONE: 580-856-2656

WEBSITE: www.umassmed.edu/cfm www.mindfulnesstapes.com

I recommend that you get started with Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s book, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life. This is the follow-up book to Full Catastrophe Living, in which he presented basic meditation techniques as a way of reducing stress and healing from illness.

In Wherever You Go, There You Are, Dr. Kabat-Zinn outlines the Buddhist technique of “mindfulness,” a method of living fully in the moment without judgment. This book is a great primer on meditation and mindfulness; you don’t have to be a Buddhist or want to be a Buddhist to practice meditation or to read this book.

To Dr. Kabat-Zinn, meditation is important because it brings about a state of “mindfulness,” a condition of “being” rather than “doing” during which you pay attention to the moment rather than the past, the future, or the multitudinous distractions of modern life. Meditation, he tells you, “is a Way of being, a Way of living, a Way of listening, a Way of walking along the path of life and being in harmony with things as they are. Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judge mentally.”

Wherever You Go, There You Are contains brief, clear chapters on different meditative practices and what they can do for you. Dr. Kabat-Zinn explains that the idea that meditation is “spiritual” is often confusing to people. He prefers to think of it as what you might call a workout for your consciousness.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn’s work was featured in Bill Moyers’ PBS special, Healing and the Mind, and in the book of the same title. Dr. Kabat-Zinn has received a number of honors and awards, including the Interface Foundation Career Achievement Award and the New York Open Center’s Tenth Year Anniversary Achievement in Medicine and Health Award in 1994.