Mindfulness book free download peters pdf

Download here! Your daily guide in applying mindfulness to the everyday routine without any effort. Click the button below to download and start your mindfulness journey! This easy to digest guide introduces you to the basic concepts of mindfulness and how you can use it in your daily life effortlessly. Mindfulness benefits are stunning and undeniable.

Regular practice can help you alter your brain, improve your mood, concentration, and more! Mindfulness at Work For Dummies provides essential guidance for employees at all levels of an organization who are seeking more focus and clarity in their work.

It explains how mindfulness can help employers wishing to implement mindful practices into the workplace, and provides leaders and mentors within an organization with the tools they need to become more effective leaders and coaches. The audio download contains guided mindfulness exercises and meditations suited. An investigation of thegrowing trend among major companies, including Fortune giants, to promote mindful activities like meditation and yoga in the workplace, and its often surprising effects on productivity, strategy, and employees mental health ".

A mindful revolution is reshaping the workplace. The world's most dynamic businesspeople are using mindfulness to become happier and more fulfilled at work - and more successful.

In Mindful Work, New York Times business reporter David Gelles explains how mindful managers are using meditation, yoga and other mindfulness techniques to boost leadership, reduce stress and improve health.

Featuring insights from revitalised employees, high-level managers at global companies and meditation masters, Mindful Work is an inspirational guide to the upsurge in.

The essays in Acceptance and Mindfulness Treatments for Children and Adolescents—which are edited by two luminaries in the field of third-wave behavior therapy—offer a much-needed adaptation of these revolutionary techniques for young people and their families, providing a wealth of new approaches to therapists, counselors, and other helping professionals. This book presents the latest neuroscience research on mindfulness meditation and provides guidance on how to apply these findings to our work, relationships, health, education and daily lives.

Presenting cutting-edge research on the neurological and cognitive changes associated with its practice Tang aims to explain how it reaps positive effects and subsequently, how best to undertake and implement mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness neuroscience research integrates theory and methods from eastern contemplative traditions, western psychology and neuroscience, and is based on neuroimaging. This workbook offers diverse strengths-based tools to incorporate the Creative Mindfulness Technique CMT into clinical practice.

It provides an essential understanding of the ethical scope of practice, ensuring that clinicians consider the depth of their own training in the implementation of the CMT art directives. Chapters explore aspects such as attachment and art therapy, multicultural considerations when using art with clients, mindfulness, the eight dimensions of wellness, and the application of CMT techniques with clients affected by PTSD, anxiety, and.

A book for people who want less stress and more happiness Mindfulness for the Mindless will show you that by using mindfulness you can be: - Happier with yourself - Happier in relationships - Happier at work - Less anxious and stressed - Less reactive and judgemental - Kinder and more compassionate - Mindful without meditating This no nonsense guide to mindfulness will show you how to stop mindlessly existing and how to start enjoying a fuller life.

A team of researchers at McGill University recently found that authors of mindfulness studies tend to spin their positive results, downplaying negative results. Given the small sample size and weak statistical power of the pool of studies examined, McGill researchers were concerned by the skewed results.

Other teachers and practitioners, usually those who also have a professional investment in promoting mindfulness, have advocated that such rapid secularization of mindfulness is necessary if it is to be made more widely available and relevant to a modern society. Clearly, extracting a spiritual and meditative discipline from its social and historical contexts in which it originates has radically changed the meaning, function, and fruition of mindfulness practices in the West.

On the one hand, Buddhism must change as it takes root in the West. Traditional concerns for preserving the authenticity, integrity, and canonical authority with regard to Buddhist conceptions of mindfulness, while admirable, have failed to take into account the pluralistic nature of Western society.

In addition, such a defensive and reactionary posture also fails to address the inevitable migra- tion and transformation of Buddhism in its encounter with modernity.

As David Loy has argued, the East and the West need each other, and this meeting has already begun to come about. Buddhism will change and is changing, as it mixes with the dominant values of modern Western cultures. What is gained and what is lost? Another equally important question and central concern of this volume is what is mindfulness for?

Are mindfulness-based interventions limited to a palliative for individual stress relief and mental hygiene, or can mindfulness programs develop in ways that call into question deeply rooted cultural assumptions which have been the source of so much misery, injustice, and unnecessary suffering in the modern Western world? Or will mindfulness be used to accommodate to those cultural assumptions? Is mindfulness practice or any medi- tative discipline the main reductive ingredient that can function as a neutral tool or technique independent of its context?

Numerous contributors to this volume show how mindfulness in the West, under the claim that it is derived from Buddhism, has become severed from not only Buddhist ethical contexts, but also its roots in Buddhist philosophy and soteriology.

Such a claim is also an appeal to a universal view of human beings that transcends culture and context. Rather than developing a critical pedagogical framework for mindfulness programs which could potentially challenge, interrogate, and transform our deeply rooted Western cultural values and assumptions, the majority of clinical, school-based, and corporate mindfulness training pro- grams are informed by biomedical models of stress and well-being.

The medicalization of mindfulness has limited program curricula to essentialist constructs that explain stress as an individual pathology, deflecting attention away from culture and context. Indeed, the cultural dominance of the biomedical paradigm has reinforced the notion that disease including psy- chosomatic symptoms such as chronic stress, depression, and anxiety , along with interventions for enhancing health and well-being is a matter for autonomous individuals.

Individual- istic, laissez-faire oriented mindfulness programs, perhaps unwittingly, are preserving the status quo and maintaining institutional structures that con- tribute to social suffering. It values higher states of consciousness that are historically intended to lead to deep and irreversible insights into the nature of reality, including a dissolution of a separate sense of self as a real and permanent identity.

Buddhism offers a soteriological solution to human suffering based on a deep and embodied insight into the nature of reality. This is liberation from suf- fering, a non-dual wisdom that manifests as spontaneous and uncontrived universal compassion for all sentient beings. Preface ix The West tends to emphasize exterior, objective, or third-person per- spectives that promote the historical progress of society and social institu- tions through science, technology, and economic growth materialism, consumerism.

While this has occurred to an extent, this volume is critically concerned with the numerous ways the West employs the Buddhist-derived practice of mindfulness out of context and in ways that reinforce its problematic ten- dencies.

The contributions in this volume situate the mindfulness movement within broader philosophical, historical, and cultural contexts. The theory and practice of mindfulness and its various manifestations in health care, edu- cation, contemplative neuroscience, and corporations are examined in terms of how mindfulness is being influenced and shaped by cultural assumptions, institutional structures, economic systems, and political forces.

Given that the mindfulness movement has spread to practically all domains of society, as editors, we have solicited and selected a wide range of contributions from authors in order to offer a more transdisciplinary perspective.

What these dif- fering perspectives share is a core concern with the ways in which the nexus between the mindfulness revolution in the West and Buddhism is shaping and being shaped by each other. Further, each of the contributors of this volume deeply care about the dissemination and practice of mindfulness in society; their varied breadth and depth of professional and personal experi- ence provides a multitude of voices that provoke, question, and challenge the status quo.

It is intended for academics, clinicians, scientists, and Buddhist teachers and scholars, social activists, and university students, as well as mindfulness practitioners who are sympathetic to the need for more critical inquiry and cultural analyses of the mindfulness movement. The purpose of such critiques is grounded in the faith that secular mindfulness practices can be reformed and reoriented to enhance the common good.

The effects of social, political, and economic factors, as well as the situational stressors caused by our major institutions themselves, are left out of such mainstream accounts. It is in this spirit that criticism plays a role in fostering civic or social mindfulness—where those teaching and practicing mindfulness turn critical attention outward to include institutions, histories, socioeconomic, and cultural influences that contribute to, and are often causes of, social suffering.

Mindfulness training represents only a sliver of the plethora of Buddhist meditation methods Lopez In addition, even within Buddhism, there are varied conceptions of mindfulness across various schools and traditions Dunne ; Sharf The establishment of mindfulness in meditation, however, is not merely a function of memory, nor merely a passive and nonjudgmental attentiveness to the present moment exclusively, but an actively engaged and discerning awareness that is capable of recollecting various teachings, ethical commit- ments, and the eradication of greed, ill will, and delusion.

It is also worth noting here that the Buddhist tradition is not monolithic. In other Buddhist schools and traditions, such as Tibetan Buddhism, mindfulness has never been foregrounded or relegated such central status as a core practice. This progressive and graduated approach is considered foundational to providing the educational and values-based framework for contemplative practice.

This is understandable given that the goals of therapeutic mindfulness diverge from traditional Buddhist soteriological aims for total and complete liberation from suffering. Indeed, the mainstreaming and medicalization of mindfulness has often been conjoined with enhancing sensual pleasures, intensifying appreciation for present-moment aesthetic experience, and seeking happiness in various mundane worldly concerns career success, relationships, better sex, weight control, and so on Wilson Bodhi is able to describe how early Western Buddhist teachers severed the explicit connections between insight meditation and Buddhist spirituality.

Next, in Chap. Loy calls on the mindfulness movement to go beyond its current individualistic, consumerist orientation in order to mitigate the causes of collective and organizational dukkha. In Chap. He offers a cogent analysis of how the rise of modern mindfulness is linked to the processes of detraditionalization, the global spread of capitalism, and widespread adoption of new information technologies.

In addition, King explores the modern history of attention, tracing how these trajectories have produced divergent contemporary accounts of mindfulness. The history of attention, King argues, cannot be separated from the history of mindfulness given how both streams are implicated in the rise of digital technologies and neoliberalism as cultural phenomenon.

Geoffrey Samuel undertakes the task in Chap. Brazier questions whether the modern ver- sion will prove to be simply a weak variant, or a step on the way to a more wide-ranging transformation of our cultural values. She goes on to argue that in particular cultural contexts, mindfulness programs could explicitly or implicitly convey religious meanings or facilitate religious and spiritual experiences.

Despite the use of secularizing rhetoric, she contends the sep- aration of mindfulness from its religious worldview and values may not be entirely possible. Stress, disengagement, and discontent are pathologized as an individual-level phenomenon within the majority of mindfulness programs. This is particularly true in corporations where mindfulness programs aim at the formation of an entrepreneurial self that is willfully productive and responsible for their own self-care.

This framing essentially depoliticizes mindfulness training curricula by foreclosing alternative pedagogical encounters that could foster critical engagement with the causes and condi- tions of social suffering that are implicated in power structures and economic systems of capitalist society.

Mindfulness then can be envisioned as a form of embodied mental cultivation that is employed productively in the workings of power. It is important to point out that this mode of control is not repressive or coercive, nor is it a sinister form of mind control or brainwashing as some mindfulness propo- nents have misrepresented recent critiques of contemporary mindfulness.

Rather, the recontextualization of mindfulness in late capitalist society is a cultural and political translation that relays neoliberal values in the formation of a new subject that is freely choosing to control his or her own freedom. In this respect, mindfulness also represents a new form of biopower where both the mind and body become sites for self-disciplinary control, self-surveillance, and self-optimization. As a disciplinary apparatus, mindfulness can also serve to ensure that subjects are constituted as private and atomistic individuals that not only voluntarily participate in their own governance, but also come to forget and forfeit bonds of solidarity and collectivity.

This ideology of individual autonomy strongly resonates with neoliberal values of freedom, choice, authenticity, entrepreneurialism, and competitiveness. Jeff Wilson begins this section with his chapter that describes how mindfulness meditation has been shaped and influenced by capitalist values and marketed as a commodity to Western consumers.

Wilson provides a detailed analysis of the popular magazine Mindful, paying particular attention to its advertising policies and featured advertisers.

Preface xv Next, in Chap. Payne argues the driving ethic of that culture is the moral imperative to improve oneself, rooted in Puritan theology. Tracing these historical influences, Payne shows how the ethic of self-improvement has infected the ideology of American popular religious culture and how this moral imperative is linked to neoliberalism and foundational to the marketing and promotion of mindfulness. Ng argues that neoliberalism is not a sinister ploy that hides the truth, but is a regime of truth that functions as a political ontology.

It is within this everyday, uncritical acceptance of neoliberalism that conditions how we come to make reasonable judgments and conduct our own lives and behavior. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, Ng explores how mindfulness might function as a disruptive technology of the self within and against these dominant logics. His chapter summarizes and discusses a number of critical articles that have appeared on Web sites and in popular media during the past few years and the responses they have elicited.

Longtime Buddhist meditation teacher Christopher Titmuss explores the recent development of mindfulness in the West since the late s, focusing particularly on the growth of mindfulness programs in large corporations.

In addition, Titmuss calls for the application of a modern variant of the Four Noble Truths to business. Caring-Lobel explains that corporate mindfulness programs have been enthusiastically embraced because they offer a way of mitigating the psychological collapse of postindustrial knowledge workers without con- fronting the social and economic causes of their discontent.

In particular, noteworthy is how his chapter connects the corporate mindfulness movement to the work of past management science gurus going back to Frederick Taylor and Elton Mayo. He calls for a repoliticization of the forms of worker stress and discontent that workplace mindfulness rhetoric and praxis obfus- cate by framing them in purely psychological terms.

In the concluding chapter in this section, Massimo Tomassini begins by reviewing and critiquing the dominant conceptions and applications of mindfulness within corporations. Going beyond these corporate-driven approaches, Tomassini considers a different approach to mindfulness at work, one that is not simply a form of stress reduction or attention enhancement technique, but a liberating communal practice that can occur outside of the normal performance-driven work culture, incorporating more reflective types of practices that are self-determined by the participants themselves.

Collectively, these chapters constitute a genealogy of the mainstreaming of MBIs, and each attempts to historicize and contextualize the emergence of mindfulness within the helping professions and healthcare institutions. It is in this section that authors examine the medicalization of mindfulness and how the behavioral medicine paradigm has been used as an explanatory narrative for making individuals responsible for their own stress and healing.

One of the basic assumptions of MBSR and MBIs is that our failure to pay attention to the present moment, that is, our mindlessness and mind-wandering, is the main reason underlying of dissatisfaction and disease. As Kabat-Zinn , p. The unspoken assumption here is that there is nothing inherently dys- functional with capitalism itself; rather, we simply are not mindful or resilient enough as individuals to be fully functioning, authentic, and happy human beings.

The mindfulness revolution promises to bring relief and resolution to individuals debilitated by the demands of late capitalism, but without any political agenda, or any substantial challenge to the institutional structures which enable capitalism to inject its toxicity system-wide. And, as Goto-Jones points out, the mindfulness revolution also functions as a type of secular, quasi-religion within capitalism, especially in such regions as Silicon Valley where corporate mindfulness programs have become the rage.

The solution for addressing the ills of society and for social change will come about not through any form of political struggle or grassroots political revolution, but through a conservative mindful revolution—training indi- viduals in mindfulness Goto-Jones The mindfulness revolution then is essentially a therapeutic not a political project.

As we saw in Part II, neoliberal mindfulness emphasizes the sovereignty of autonomous individ- uals who can navigate the vicissitudes of late capitalist society by becoming self-regulating and self-compassionate, governing themselves, and by freely choosing their own welfare, well-being, and security.

Rose , p. Offering a critical history of the psychological sciences, Rose is able to describe and articulate how psy- chology is a form of technology which has provided answers to contempo- rary society by legitimizing expert claims to authoritative knowledge production Doran , p.

The modern self is impelled to make life meaningful through the search for hap- piness and self-realization in his or her individual biography: the ethics of sub- jectivity are inextricably locked into the procedures of power Rose , p.

It is important to point out that the regulatory and disciplinary functions of mindfulness that Kabat-Zinn professes are not necessarily conscious aims. As part of the psy-sciences, mindfulness as a liberation technology of the self is a system of expert thought for governing certain forms of thinking, or mental rumina- tions, as governable by individuals themselves.

The contemporary regime of the free individual in capitalist society is now the mindful individual. Brooke Lavelle begins this section with a chapter that examines three modern secularized mindfulness and compassion-based contemplative pro- grams, namely mindfulness-based stress reduction MBSR , cognitively-based compassion training CBCT , and sustainable compassion training SCT. Lavelle challenges the rhetoric that such programs have universal applicability, along with pointing out how the underlying assumption of universality has created a cultural blind spot and bias that has had the result of privileging theory over context.

Her chapter provides a useful framework for under- standing how certain Buddhist contemplative frames i. Next, David Lewis and Deborah Rozelle closely examine mindfulness-based interventions MBIs and in particular mindfulness-based stress reduction MBSR , comparing these psychological treatments to the fundamental tenets and ultimate goals of the Buddhist path of liberation, which they refer to as the Buddhadharma.

Lewis and Rozelle are able to demonstrate that many of the claims put forth by Jon Kabat-Zinn—that MBIs embody the essence of the Dharma—actually have the result of reducing the Buddhadharma to the psychological level, while inflating MBIs to a transcendent level. By providing a cogent ana- logical framework, they are able to show that MBIs are actually a psycho- logical analog of the transcendental realm, with a similar structure but at a very different ontological level. Moloney critiques the popular mindfulness movement by situating its discourse within a much wider historical context originating in the psychotherapy industry.

His chapter illustrates how mindfulness is the latest phase in the privatization of the self that has been underway from the middle of the twentieth century, and in which the applied psychology professions have been instrumental. Manu Bazzano begins Chap. Bazzano instructs us that creative engagement with these three treasures requires a form of active adaptation, rather than simply defending tradition or passively adapting to it.

Active adaptation requires going beyond the reductionism that has characterized the mainstreaming of neoconservative mindfulness practices as they have been propagated through the proliferation of the contemporary neuroscience lit- erature. Next, Steven Stanley and Charlotte Longden report on their research on mindfulness courses using a combination of discourse and conversation analysis of language used within these courses. Mindful subjectivity is produced through the application of liberal power and negotiation of ideological dilemma within inquiry sequences, functioning as technologies of the self.

In addition, she outlines a clinical approach that can help individuals to recognize self-cherishing mentation, illustrating through examples of therapist—client dialogue how such individuals strug- gling with depressive, anxious, trauma-related symptoms and addictions can lessen its deleterious effects. As with cor- porations, mindfulness programs in schools arise within and are influenced by broader neoliberal structures and ideologies.

Within an undertheorized neoliberal climate, mindful- ness programs in schools become a form of governmentality that helps shape individuals to adjust to the needs of a society that must compete in a global economy. What is often omitted from such programs is the critical cultivation of awareness, appreciation, and employment of the cul- tural context and cultural capital of both students and educators; this omis- sion contributes to reinforcing racist systems within education that in turn reproduces racism in the larger social structure.

A number of articles in this section point to ways in which mindfulness can be embedded within edu- cation programs that are informed by critical pedagogy, interconnectedness, awareness of structural inequities, and engaged practices that promote inclusive and universal social justice. Preface xxi In Chap. He defends the merits of social critique and those critics who have called out McMindfulness, the use of mindfulness for self-aggrandizement and adjustment to social institutions that promote greed, delusion, and ill will.

Forbes critically employs concepts from integral metatheory with an emphasis on cultural meanings, optimal human development, and universal social justice within schools. He offers directions toward a critical integral con- templative education that promotes full individual, interpersonal, and social development. In particular, she focuses on the ideology of white conquest that makes invisible the enduring efforts of Asian and Asian American Buddhists in maintaining the legacy of mindfulness practices.

She shows how mindfulness curricula dis- cipline students through neoliberal self-regulation and the racial conditioning of white superiority.

Hsu calls for secular mindfulness to be part of a broader paradigm shift in education that enhances the value of education as a public good.