Mindfulness for Beginners

An Invitation to the Practice of Mindfulness

We may long for wholeness, suggests Jon Kabat-Zinn, but the truth is that it is already here and already ours. The practice of mindfulness holds the possibility of not just a fleeting sense of contentment, but a true embracing of a deeper unity that envelops and permeates our lives. With Mindfulness for Beginners you are invited to learn how to transform your relationship to the way you think, feel, love, work, and play and thereby awaken to and embody more completely who you really are.

Here, the teacher, scientist, and clinician who first demonstrated the benefits of mindfulness within mainstream Western medicine offers a book that you can use in three unique ways: as a collection of reflections and practices to be opened and explored at random; as an illuminating and engaging start-to-finish read; or as an unfolding “lesson-a-day” primer on mindfulness practice. Beginning and long-time meditators alike will discover in these pages a valuable distillation of the key attitudes and essential practices that Jon Kabat-Zinn has found most useful with his students, including:

• Why heartfulness is synonymous with true mindfulness
• The value of coming back to our bodies and to our senses over and over again
• How our thoughts “self-liberate” when touched by awareness
• Moving beyond our “story” into direct experience
• Stabilizing our attention and presence amidst daily activities
• Three fundamental mental factors that cause suffering
• How mindfulness heals, even after the fact
• Reclaiming our wholeness, and more

The prescription for living a more mindful life seems simple enough: return your awareness again and again to whatever is going on. But if you’ve tried it, you know that here is where all the questions and challenges really begin. Mindfulness for Beginners provides welcome answers, insights, and instruction to help us make that shift, moment by moment, into a more spacious, clear, reliable, and loving connection with ourselves and the world.



About the Author

Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is the founder and director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and associate professor of medicine in the Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine. His clinic was featured in 1993 in the public television series Healing and the Mind with Bill Moyers. Jon Kabat-Zinn is the author of Wherever You Go, There You Are and Full-Catastrophe Living: Using Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness.