New World Mindfulness

SELF-HELP / SPIRITUALITY We are all busy--and we all long for quiet and connection. Yet despite the growing body of evidence supporting the benefits of mindfulness, the hectic pace of modern life leaves little time to devote to meditation, relaxation, and contemplation. In New World Mindfulness, mindfulness teacher and therapist Donald McCown and physician Marc Micozzi provide techniques to successfully integrate mindfulness into real life so we can rise above the stress of work, family, and community that can easily pull us out of the moment and into states of tension, anxiety, or depression. Dispelling the two big myths of mindfulness--that it is an "exotic" activity and that it requires you to "slow down and find more time"--the authors present a history of mindfulness in the West, from the American Founding Fathers, Thoreau, and Emerson up to present-day leaders in the field such as Jon Kabat-Zinn, and reveal a high-speed form of contemplation ideal for even the busiest lives. Exploring the physiological impact of mindfulness practices for stress, anxiety, depression, and coping with serious illness and major life changes, the authors show that mindfulness is not about being silent and alone--it can even be practiced as a family or community. Not prescribing change but rather working from within, this book connects Western no-nonsense, get-it-done pragmatism with the yearning for beauty and balance that makes a full life truly fulfilled. DONALD MCCOWN is assistant professor of integrative health at West Chester University of Pennsylvania and the former director of the Mindfulness at Work program at the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine. With Marc Micozzi, McCown is the coauthor of Teaching Mindfulness. He lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. MARC S. MICOZZI, M.D., Ph.D., is adjunct professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University School of Medicine and the founding director of the Policy Institute for Integrative Medicine in Washington, D.C. The author and editor of Fundamentals of Complementary & Alternative Medicine and coauthor of The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion, he lives in Bethesda, Maryland, and Rockport, Massachusetts.

Foreword by Richard Lowe

Acknowledgments

Preface

Note to Readers on Citations and Language


Part 1
Getting Situated in Time and Space
1 Mindfulness in Early America
2 Mindfulness in Late America
3 America Went Far to Find What It Left at Home
4 Are You Waiting for an Invitation?

Part 2
Navigating Your Busy Life
5 You’re Never Lost in the Present Moment
6 Gravity: North and South on Your Compass
7 The Breath I: East and West, Inside and Outside
8 The Breath II: The Breeze across the Inner Landscape
9 The Breath III: The Storms and Stillness of Subjective Experience
10 Disposition: A Map of the Terrain of Your Immediate Experience

Part 3
Putting Down the Guidebook
11 In Search of the Springs of Life
12 Reclining: There Is a Place Past Sleepiness
13 Sitting: Where Stillness and Change Meet
14 Standing: Opening to the World
15 Walking: Practice at the Speed of Life

Coda A Walk on Mount Misery, a Glimpse of Mount Joy


Suggested Reading for Learning and Practice

Notes

Bibliography

Index