Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

This is the best self-help book I have ever read. It is easy to read and provides clear and concise methods to gain the wisdom to cope with the stresses encountered in everyday life. The author's language, writing skill and ability to provide examples in nature to explain Mindfulness are beautiful. Telling us to pay attention to our breath to keep our focus and get back on track he talks about sitting with dignity and paying attention to the things around us. He gives many examples that include standing, walking, laying down, and doing everyday things while practicing for a minute to 45 minutes depending on our life circumstance at the time. My favorite analogy is that of the mountain. He state: "Mountains are quintessentially emblematic of abiding presence and stillness." "By becoming a mountain in our meditation, we can link with its strength and stability, and adopt them for our own. We can use its energies to support our efforts to encounter each moment with mindfulness, equanimity, and clarity. It may help us to see that our thoughts and feelings, our preoccupations, our emotional storms and crises, even the things that happen to us are much like the weather on the mountain. We tend to take it personally, but its strongest characteristic is impersonal. The weather in our own lives is not to be ignored or denied. It is to be encountered, honored, felt, known for what it is, and held in high awareness since it can kill us. In holding it in this way, we come to know a deeper silence and stillness within the storms, mountains have this to teach us, and more if we can come to listen." I recommend this book to anyone who is stressed, angry, and unable to escape or deal with their unpleasant environment.

Review for Amazon by Jerry Woolpy of Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn This is a book that defines meditation as awareness of yourself in the immediate present. It is not mystical, spiritual, or religious. It explains thinking as an epiphenomenon of the mind and the self as an ever changing nonentity linked to situations. We tend to think in the past and the future ignoring the sensations of the moment that we are actually in. By taking time to be mindful of our breadth, a pleasant image, or a compassionate idea, for five, fifteen, or even forty-five minutes a day we can reinforce a mindset to actually witness our connectedness to the universe and to discern an objective sense of the truth without the bias of selfish judgments and personal tastes. Mindfulness may help us to correct the direction of our lives (karma) toward relieving suffering and not causing the suffering of others (ahimsa). It provides a new way of being alive instead of trying to be something that you are not already. But like charity recommended in the Talmud, do not do it for self-aggrandizement or to impress others. It is strictly a personal effort. Mindfulness does not stop the vicissitudes of your life, but it helps you to cope with them. The apt metaphor is “You Can’t Stop the Waves but you Can Learn to Surf”. Contrary to common opinion, mindfulness is not shutting-off from the world but it is seeing the world more clearly. It involves concentration (samadhi) rather than relaxation. And it is not a way of doing. If someone hits you with a stick, rather than hitting back, you consider the chain of events that may have led to the hit. Maybe you should be angry at the hitter’s parents or the lack of compassion in the hitter’s upbringing. Notice how all events are connected. What may look like a show of strength may actually be weakness. Consider being soft when your impulse is to be hard. Mindfulness is openness, curiosity, availability, engagement. You can meditate sitting, standing, or even walking. The right way is the way that you choose to do it. Peter Matthiessen has written: The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. Mindfulness makes us aware of choices that we did not know we had. When you stop outward activity with a decision to sit, you may break the flow of bad karma and open the possibility of replacing it with good karma. The current edition of the book adds at the end: We all are. Perfectly what we are, including all our imperfections and inadequacies. The question is: can we be with it? Can we sit with it? Can we know it? Can we embrace our own wholeness and embody it, here, where we already are, in the very situations, good, bad, ugly, lost, confusing, heart-rending, terrifying, and painful, that we find ourselves in?

This book's six-word title not only captures the essence of its message, but in fact actually serves as an executive summary of its thesis. Which - stated in slightly more than six words! - goes something like this: We're all constantly in motion, going from one activity to another, being with one person after another, having one thought after another. It's easy to lose ourselves in this continuous stream of change, such that we sometimes speak and act with insufficient awareness of the impact of our words and our deeds. But, through the practice of staying mindful, we need not "lose ourselves" in any situation. We can train ourselves to be more fully self-aware no matter what the circumstances. Wherever we happen to be at any particular moment, that is the right time and the right place for mindfulness, precisely because that is where we happen to be at that moment. Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the renowned Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, structures his book into three distinct sections. The first part ("The Bloom of the Present Moment") considers the manifold virtues of staying focused on our present-moment experience, as opposed to dwelling on past events and/or planning for future events. The second part ("The Heart of the Practice") offers useful instruction on various aspects of practicing meditation, and includes some very useful scenarios for meditating outdoors in nature. The third and last part ("In the Spirit of Mindfulness") gives practical examples of taking the learning from meditation practice and putting that learning to good use in everyday situations. This closing section finds the author very generously sharing from his own experiences with mindfulness in daily life, even in some instances where he himself fails in his efforts to be mindful. These episodes proved for me to be the most powerful passages in this extraordinarily useful book - one that can be of service to both the beginning and the seasoned meditator, and one that can be returned to again and again for renewed insight into the practice and the benefits of always being right there, wherever you are.

Not finished reading but 1/3 of the way in, I find it very educational and provides another point of view in a more simple manner with ease of understanding. I especailly like the short 2-page sections which gives a place to stop and think about what one reads and put into practice.

Kabat-Zinn does a wonderful job of applying meditative living to one's moment-to-moment, reality accepting life. Your personal power and clarity for your best life are not in ruminations about the past, not in fear or expectations for the future. The Divine is in the NOW. This book provides a connection to the guidance available in you (from your highest self) to experience life with all of your senses and a knowing that it is about the JOURNEY; not what you did or didn't do; not about judgement or pressure for tasks undone. It is a teaching for living without judgement and with complete acceptance of the way things ARE, NOW. RIGHT NOW. It is about honouring all of the feelings and thoughts you have and knowing that they are only thoughts and feelings. They are not who you are or who you think you should be. It is about NO SHOULDS, OUGHTS, or SHOULD HAVES. Mindfulness is not easy, at least it is not for me, but you practice as best you can and come back to it if you let your thoughts and feelings live you, instead of you recogizing them and letting them pass as the temporary works of your ego and flight or fight reactions (autonomous work of your body) that they are. The book is particulary effective when combined with a daily practice of meditation. Kabat-Zinn has several books. I highly recommend them all. This way of living has supported me out of the effects of a brain injury and a major several year depression. Make this commitment to honouring yourself and your life just as it's bud opens, just as it is it's most fragrant and extant with infinite possibility.

This book started me down a path -- a path I am still on -- studying Buddhist principles. It is written in a gentle voice. Kabat-Zinn shows through his language, his voice, his clarity, and his ideas that he genuinely cares about the people's well being. This book is a place to start, but I wouldn't classify it merely as a beginner's beginning. It is useful and helpful for anyone in the early part of their journey into Eastern ideas. The book is in three main parts with several short chapters in each part. It works well to read a chapter and then ponder it. At the end of a few chapters, Kabat-Zinn suggests exercises, though that is a poor name for them. He labels them "Try." Much better. And indicative of the care with which the book is written. There are podcasts and videos of Kabat-Zinn speaking around the 'net. Check them out. He comes across with the same gentleness, and absolute brilliance, as he does in this book.

I am presently divorcing a man who obviously suffers from NPD. After 12 years of marriage, this book explained everything I was experiencing but couldn't put my finger on. All the lies, the cheating and the CHARM! I am now digging much deeper to the core of all the years of deceit and manipulation...It will be a long road (it is mental abuse), but understanding that they really have no remorse, no empathy, no true emotion, has really helped me move on with my life. I no longer question myself or feel the need to defend myself to his friends or family. They see what he wants them to see. The "Mr. Wonderful" they know has presented constant BS to them about me so how can you blame them? He is so convincing that I bought every line for the last 13 years! This book is HUGE! It is freedom to finally understand what you are dealing with. Even professional counseling is limited because too many counselors are not aware of what NPD really entails. Unless you've lived with NPD, it is hard to understand. I would highly recommend this book to anyone in a rollercoaster relationship that never makes sense and causes you to question your own sanity. It is so important to realize there is nothing you can do to change them so save yourself. It takes time, it is truly painful to accept your life with them was built on a foundation of sand, but this book will help you heal.

I first read this book when I was 19 and recently repurchased it as the original copy is long gone and lost. It's a very good reading for anyone who's really just looking to Center themselves and find effective ways of managing their existence in this world.

同著者の "Full Catastrophe Living" が マインドフルネスによるストレス低減法の詳細な実践マニュアルとすれば この本は、その「こころ」を簡潔にかつ自在に説いた本といえます。 日常生活におけるマインドフルネス瞑想法を多面的に解説しています。 "Wherever you go,there you are" というタイトルの意味は、 どこか条件の良いところへ行っても行かなくても、 あなたの心は今のまま、といったところでしょうか。 ふつうに生活している「いま」を意識して生きることが 瞑想の目的だということでしょう。 各トピックは１〜５ページと短いので、たいへん読みやすいと思います。

poor physical product quality

For us, old people a precious help to live our old age happy and in good health.I gave it to 5 friends and members of our family, and to a teacher in the USA who is meditating with his students every morning. The students love it.! It may help us all to wake up and to realize in what kind of world we are living , and what we can do to make amends right where we are. Since my husband is almost blind, I read 2 or 3 pages every morning, we talk about it and it is an excellent way to improve and deepen our relationship.

Muy bueno como introducción al mindfulness

This books is perfect. I love how is written and I love the content. Reading it is a powerful exercise even if you won't start meditating. If you are thinking about buying it.. buy it! It's really one of the best books I've ever read!