This little book has been on my reading pile for a while, it was some thing I bought in January on the magazine rack of Tesco of all places!
It was worth the wait.
The author is a Clinical Psychologist with an interest in evidence based techniques which has drawn her into exploring mindfulness and this book is a fusion of those two disciplines. The evidence based approach comes across with a text that is simple, clean and non divulging into the esoteric.
The author suggests a definition of mindfulness as:
“coming into the present moment, building awareness, learning detachment”
Later she describes her approach, as set out in this book, as:
“compassion focussed mindfulness techniques in addition to using evidence based techniques to get people to change how they live. This means my clients not only learn how to increase their awareness and detachment from their thoughts and feelings, but they then learn how to take the next step and start living according to their values”
The author makes the point that we often cultivate compassion to those around us, but not to ourselves – and this can be a source of avoidable angst. Self compassion is a very important trait – arguably its an aspect of the yoga principle of Ahimsa.
The text is intertwined with practical exercises, many of which are similar to the ones I use personally or in class. The “85th birthday party speech” was a particularly powerful one – the speech you would wand to give at your own 85th.
This is not the longest book on mindfulness but that is no bad thing – brevity and conciseness have merit!
In all I thought this was a lovely little book, and worth a place on anyones bookshelf. It can be bought on Amazon, and if you visit from this link, Yinspire will earn a small commission.
