Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness [Hardcover]

Jon Kabat-Zinn (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 5, 2005

From the bestselling author and renowned mindfulness teacher, scientist, and educator. . .a guide to living a meaningful life.

This follow-up to the widely praised national bestseller Wherever You Go, There You Are is yet another revolutionary offering from Jon Kabat-Zinn, showing readers how the power of mindfulness can bring radical change to their lives.

In the national bestseller Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn struck a chord in contemporary society that continues to reverberate to this day. It has been embraced by politicians, business leaders, and celebrities and endures as a classic with readers. In his groundbreaking new book, Dr. Kabat-Zinn teaches us how to harness the power of mindfulness to effect profound change in our personal lives and in the world.

As stress continues to exact a toll on everyday life, people are increasingly turning to ancient, meditative methods, which have been tested by science, to relieve the ill effects and become more focused, healthy, and proactive. Kabat-Zinn has been for decades at the forefront of this mind/body movement and the revolution in medicine and health care it has spawned, demystifying it and bringing it into the mainstream. In Coming to Our Senses, he shares how every human has the capacity to mobilize deep, innate resources for continual learning, growing, healing, and transformation through mindfulness.

Woven into eight parts, Coming to Our Senses uses anecdotes and stories from Kabat-Zinn's own life experiences and work in his clinic to illustrate healing possibilities. At its core, the book offers remarkable insight into how to use the five senses -- touch, hearing, sight, taste, and smell, plus awareness itself -- as a path to a healthier, saner, and more meaningful life.

This is the definitive book for our time on the connection between mindfulness, health, and our physical and spiritual well-being.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. "For any of us, perhaps our greatest potential regret may be that of not seizing the moment and honoring it for what it is when it is here," writes bestselling author Kabat-Zinn (Full Catastrophe Living; Wherever You Go, There You Are; etc.). The scientist who pioneered the use of the Buddhist technique of mindfulness (or moment-by-moment awareness) to help patients cope with the stress and pain of illness arrived at this poignant lesson after seeing the way his father, an eminent immunologist who suffered from Alzheimer's disease, lost all sense of who he was and what was happening to him. In a passionate tour de force that blends personal experience with cutting-edge science (his own and others'), poetry and insights culled from many traditions, Kabat-Zinn sets out to awaken us to the true potential and value of a gift that most of us take for granted: sentience. Our lack of awareness of our impact on the rest of the world amounts to "a kind of auto-immune disease of the earth." Borrowing an analogy made by the neuroscientist Francisco Varela, Kabat-Zinn compares the way our immune system senses the whole of our bodily self to our potential for a mindful awareness. That is, the practice of cultivating this conscious, heightened sentience leads to the realization of our wholeness, as we begin to realize that we don't live just within the envelope of our own senses, sensations and thoughts but within the whole of all that is. Kabat-Zinn illuminates the many facets of this selfless way of being, not just with Buddhist understanding and verse but with quotes from Einstein ("A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe' "), Dickinson, Rilke and many other Western greats. Ardent, personal, frankly opinionated in places, this book seeks to wake up as individuals and as a culture. It is a treasure trove of contemporary wisdom.
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Review

"A passionate tour de force that blends personal experience with cutting-edge science, poetry, and insights culled from many traditions." -- Publisher's Weekly, starred review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 631 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; 1 edition (January 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786867566
• ISBN-13: 978-0786867561
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.8 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #140,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, as well as professor of medicine emeritus. He lives in the Boston area. Hor Tuck Loon has been guiding meditation for the past twenty years, drawing parallels from many ancient wisdom teachings and also from his years of experience in the journey of mindfulness. He lives in Malaysia.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#27 in Books > Self-Help

#35 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#71 in Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#74 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

#27 in Books > Self-Help

#35 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#71 in Kindle eBooks > Health, Fitness & Dieting

#74 in Books > Religion & Spirituality

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

237 of 246 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible book! Jon Kabat-Zinn delivers... January 27, 2005

By O. Brown HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

*****

This book woke me up, literally. "Coming to Our Senses" is a large, long, and for me---difficult, book about mindfulness. That said, it is well worth the read. The experience of reading this book was an awakening for me to the world outside my head, where I live most of my life, and where I suspect most of us live our lives. I don't think how I can explain HOW this happens, either, but I know it does.

I started reading it on vacation in Hawaii on my balcony outside, and slowly but gradually I became aware of the environment all around me----the sounds, the smells---and the environment within me---my aches and pains, my feelings, bodily sensations, etc. It was a new experience for me. It was really exciting to have it happen on vacation in Hawaii. I would think though, that wherever you are, if you make the time for the adventure of reading this book, and stick with it, you will have this same "awakening" experience.

Much of the book is about meditation as well as mindfulness, the author's own experiences, and his reflections on our society. He also writes about conventional medicine and how it is beginning to utilize mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn is a fine writer, and though the book is a tome, it is SO worth it. He got me excited about meditation, whereas other books have not. I am a Type A person, so I get anxious at just the thought of sitting around doing nothing for even a few minutes (or seconds); however, the author describes the incredible benefits to be delivered from a simple meditation practice after only several weeks of daily effort, so for me this would be well worth it. It gives you enough information to get started (you apparently really don't need that much), but the author also has references, further reading lists, web site lists, and his own CDs and resources (which he doesn't push but simply offers). After spending almost 700 wonderful pages with him, I trust the author and feel very privileged to have read his book.

The writing style of the book is scientific, philosophical, and grounded, not "new age" at all, another aspect I appreciated. I would encourage you to buy it and read it if you enjoy reading AND thinking, and if you're intrigued at all by the subject matter. I haven't read any of his other books, so I don't know how this one compares. I truly am baffled by previous reviewers who were "disappointed"; in this book, the author definitely delivers! It is a gorgeous hardback book with rough-cut edges (and it smells great too)---well worth the retail price (unlike many hardback books) let alone Amazon's discounted price.

*****

286 of 305 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Four books trying to be one... June 2, 2006

By Kirk McElhearn VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I'm going to be harsher in this review than I should be, since I think the message of the book is essential. I have read Kabat-Zinn's other books, and have the same ambivalent feeling about his first, Full Catastrophe Living, though his second, Wherevery You Go There You Are is much more to the point.

The problem is this: there are four books in here, struggling to break out of a single binding and become individual. Unfortunately, while Kabat-Zinn has great ideas, he is not the best writer, and he rambles. Oh, does he ramble... This 600-page book would have made a great 200 page book, with a great deal of editorial guidance to give it direction. As it stands, it is a mish-mash of unrelated essays about three different subjects: meditation; stress reduction and neuroscience; living in the present; and finally some ramblings about politics.

The meditation parts are well-written, concise instructions on how to meditate, why we want to do so, what sort of techniques to use, etc. The stress reduction and neuroscience parts should be a separate book, where the author could exercise his penchant for wordy sentences and references to studies and tests (and citing his stress reduction clinic over and over). As for the rest, the "living in the present" part, there is a great deal of waste. He says the same things over and over - not necessarily a bad thing, since it gives you different ways of reading similar ideas - but after a while his wordiness gets to you. He can't say something simply; he has to use too many words to say something that could be more poetic. Example: "Our bodies, quantized condensations of vital protoplasm, the most complex and differentiated conglomerations of matter and energy we know of in the universe, arise and pass away." That second clause could be nuked, leaving a more pithy: "Our bodies arise and pass away." Or, with a few modifiers, "Our bodies, complex and uncomprehended, arise and pass away."

In a way, this book seems to be a "toss it all at the wall and see what sticks" collection. There is some internal organization, but not enough. There is no macro-editing (that is, selecting what is really worth saying, and getting rid of the rest). While it is full of good ideas, you need to wade through a lot of chaff to find the wheat. And that is a shame, because Kabat-Zinn is one of the most perceptive authors of books on meditation in a non-religious context.

I hope his next book will be better edited, more taut and concise, and less a compilation of everything he thinks about everything. There is ego in this book, and it disappoints.

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Coming to Our Senses July 7, 2005

By Farm Girl

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Kabat-Zinn's writing is accessible and understandable to those who may not be well-versed in meditation techniques and the concept of mindfulness. He is able to convey to newcomers how to practice mindfulness in every day activities, provides very helpful analogies and images, and gives the reader a concrete idea of the benefits received from practicing mindfulness. He is the best author out there on this subject that I have come across.