Customer Reviews

A Mindful Way: Eight Weeks to Happiness

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I thoroughly enjoyed reading "A Mindful Way" this week. It has a basic Buddhist approach in living your life in the here-and-now, not regretting & re-living the past, or anticipating & fearing the future. To be `mindful' is to be present to each moment. Sometimes easier said than done. Hence, the book's appeal as a primer or manual in learning to be `in the moment'.

I loved the way the book was laid out, with the eight weeks being divided by a preface page with a haiku-type reflection on that page. The ensuing pages of instruction have wonderful quotes on the margins (also leaving great space for making notes).
`A Mindful Way' starts out with 5 weeks of The Five Mindfulness Trainings. Each one a true exercise into deep insightfulness.

I enjoyed the practice sessions which lead me to write out Mindful Memoirs, causing me to re-discover the parts of Self, left too long to languish in forgetfulness. The process of handwriting your memories is an excellent tool for allowing the subconscious to bubble up into consciousness. The breathing exercises, as well as gratitude expressions were so very helpful. I thoroughly relished the experience. So much so, that it has caused me to want to form a community of like-minds, & work through the eight week process together.

I highly recommend this book to all New Thought community!

I've taken a "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction" class, got into the practice, and bought this book mainly because it was foreworded by Thich Nhat Hanh, who is the prophet of mindfulness and also my biggest inspiration. Reading this book was indeed a good review of Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings, I especially liked how the author put those wise sayings in the margins of the book, and the appendixes also look very helpful in organizing and running your own support/discussion group. However, I want to make two points.

First, the author, Jeanie Seward-Magee, suggests different exercises each week, but one repeating exercise is to keep memoir/journal. The first week, you are supposed to write about your sitting meditation, but the rest 7 weeks, you are supposed to write about your past/future: from birth to age 7 in week 2, from age 8 to age 14 in week 3, ..., from age 50 to 70 and over in week 8. (If you are younger, then you should just write about how you'd like your life to be then.) I find this exercise rather contradictory to the essence of mindfulness, living fully in each moment anew! The author mentions in her book that this exercise is to let you "make peace with your past". I believe, if the past haunts the present, then, yes, you need to meditate upon it and fully own your feelings because the past IS alive in the present. But, otherwise, I'm not sure how we'll benefit from pondering upon the past or the future for as many as 7 weeks. So, I asked the teacher of my mindfulness class, and she said "I do not suggest a review of the past, unless it is already present, as in the case of trauma. To dig up the past is more thinking about life, that is no longer liveable. Life, this very moment, has more than enough in it to keep us busy. Contemplations can at moments be useful, but going to past or future is not a helpful way to use the energy." A mindful living as I understand is, to welcome (not resist) each moment with a smile when it arrives and to say bye to (not grab) each moment when it leaves.

Second, mindfulness is the 7th element of the Eightfold Path the Buddha taught, and one of the goals is to observe things the way they are without coloring/distorting them with our subjective judgments/feelings. This is why some mindfulness programs start with the body scan meditation so you can recognize your body sensation especially in stressful moments. If you label the situation as "annoying" or your feeling as "insulted", it is already judgmental implying that someone did something wrong. One alternative is to describe your body sensation, e.g., "tight stomach", "faster heart beat", "shaky voice", etc. This is exactly what "Seeing things the way are" means - without adding judgment. It would have been better if an explanation of this basic but important technique had been included in this book.

For anyone interested in mindfulness or meditation, I'd like to recomend http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572247088 and http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0861713214.