Knowing YourselfNovember 21, 2007 4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Nicely put together book, using modern cognitive therapy merged with more traditional meditation practices. Includes a guided meditation CD for folks new to meditation. Another tool in the efforts to understand and alleviate the pain and waste of depression afflicting so many people today.
Mindful BrainNovember 17, 2007 4 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-BeingInteresting combinatin of academics and personal experience. The contents make a profound difference in my meditations which of course are affecting my daily life.
InterestingAugust 8, 2007 6 out of 26 found this review helpful
This is an interesting book. I bought it because I live in Los Angeles, and there is a Mindful Awareness program at UCLA. I wanted to see what that program was all about before I joined it. [...] which is the mindful awareness research center site (MARC)at UCLA. There you can download some mindful awareness meditations. They are pretty good in helping you get into a state of greater mindful awareness.
Could be a life changing bookJuly 3, 2007 10 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book outlines the steps one can take to develop a self observer. It is the self observer within us that allows us to become architects of our destinies. Backed up with current research on how emotional trauma or experience lays down pathways in our brains that, once identified, can be re routed if need be.
The Mindful BrainJune 13, 2007 48 out of 49 found this review helpful
I found the content of this book fascinating and important (5 stars) but the writing ponderous and redundant (2 stars), for the most part. It is an ambitious attempt to synthesize and interpret scientific research and the author's personal experience in an emerging field that is fraught with speculation. Perhaps because of this, the author appears to have cobbled together every study potentially relating brain function and mindfulness, weaving back and forth to make every possible connection, rather than following a few salient lines of thinking and explicating them clearly. Difficult as it was to digest some of the material (I am a practiced reader of science but had to read too many sentences too many times), I benefited personally and immediately from several of the concepts presented such as streams of awareness, parenting styles ("secure attachment"), approach mindset and mindful education, and I look forward to further research in this field. I had imagined the brain research to be further along than it is and expected more about research on meditation, so I was a tad disappointed, but this is not the author's fault. In spite of the poor presentation, there was some delightful new learning for me and I am glad to have read this.
