Customer Reviews

Mindfulness for Beginners

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This CD is an introduction to mindfulness that is aimed at an audience of Westerners who are not familiar with Eastern philosophy. This audio provides the foundational concepts necessary to have a meditation practice and gives a taste of several different types of practice.

The first CD covers concepts such as the present moment, the definition of mindfulness at attending to what is arising in the moment, awareness, the relationship between mind and heart, etc. It also covers the importance of openness and curiosity vs. judgment and identification with what is going on. That is to say, it distinguishes between a witness of what is arising and the phenomena in question. In other words, it makes the point that there is something standing behind the mind, emotions, sensations, etc. and that this something is a type of consciousness called witness consciousness. This CD also goes into the important of allowing (non-striving) vs. a desire that pushes toward acheiving something. In the last section of CD Zinn contrasts awareness which is passive and accepting with thinking which arises out of desire.

The second CD provides an introduction to some minfulness practices such as mindful eating, breath meditation, mindfulness of the body as a whole, mindfulness of objects such as sounds, thoughts and emotions. It also introduces the notion of meditation as pure awareness without judgment. One might compare this to pure experience without desire or aversion. Although one is given a taste of each of these practices, none of them are comprehensively covered and the guided meditations are not long enough for practice purposes except for a complete beginner.

In general, meditative practices are divided into concentration practices (narrowing the attention) and mindfulness practices (awareness is expanded in a detached way). On the this CD, all of the practices are termed mindfulness practices, but the CD actually contains both types which in essence are about attending to different aspects of reality in different ways.

As someone who teaches meditation to Westerners myself, I find this an excellent, gentle and easily accessible introduction. It achieves what it sets out to do, which is to provide a philosophical framework for a meditation practice and the very basics of starting one.

If you enjoy this tape and you want to take things deeper, then Guided Mindfulness Meditation (Guided Mindfulness) by the same author would be a logical continuation. The book Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation would also be a great next step. Something complimentary that build on it, but is a bit more heart-centered would be Meditation for Beginners. There is also a listmania list on my profile for meditation that has other recommendations.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a program used in hospitals and medical clinics around the world. Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches a foundation for mindfulness that encourages healing. He is the founding director for the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

The first CD explores the philosophy and practice of mindfulness. It is entertaining and I love Jon Kabat-Zinn's sense of humor. This is the section where you learn about positive qualities you can cultivate to enhance your life and negative aspects that can be poision to the body and heart.

The second CD then explores an actual practice session where you experience keeping your attention on the moment. Paying attention on purpose can be enlightening all on its own as you awaken to a more compassionate moment and unveil inner wisdom.

Meditation is a universal practice and you don't need to belong to any specific religion to experience the benefits of exploring moments of relaxing peace.

Jon Kabat-Zinn's calming voice is wonderful to listen to and his guided meditation sections explore a variety of essential principles needed to enjoy a meditation session. Eventually you start to breathe more deeply, relax into not thinking and happiness rises from within. It is truly a beautiful way to reconnect with who you truly are and while you may assume sitting quietly is hardly doing anything at all, it is amazing what can be accomplished in silence.

Meditation strengthens you so you walk through the earth with a different focus, more awareness and even more confidence. This CD does focus on the basics of meditation and therefore is perfect for anyone who wants to heal the mind, body and spirit.

~The Rebecca Review

I have been lucky enough to take two Mindfulness courses and they have changed my life. Both were run by excellent course leaders but nothing compares with hearing Mindfulness founder Jon Kabat Zinn discuss the philosophy and methodology behind it. His wit, compassion and way with words themselves make CD1 compulsive listening as well as explaining the reasons for CD2 which are the practices themselves. I cannot recommend this highly enough to anybody who wants to learn about themselves and especially those seeking release from troubled mind states such as anxiety and depression. Buy it- Mindfulness practitioners will tell you honestly that they make no promises to 'fix things' but it might change your life too...

I bought this CD at the recommendation of a social worker. I'm a perfectionist, which frequently leads me to experience anxiety. I've lived this way for 50+ years but it's not healthy. However, it has been the norm for my life. Yes, I've done some counseling over the years, which has been extremely helpful but I constantly battle with trying to do too much, making it all perfect and then dealing with the anxiety that follows.

Although I've tried relaxation techniques in the past, I learned that Jon Kabat-Zinn's information is more than relaxation. It is learning to incorporate "mindfulness" into my busy, waking day. I found the information in this CD to be very informative. I've only listened to the CD two times and will need to repeat several more times to better learn this technique. Kabat-Zinn is the narrator and his voice is excellent as a reader or narrator. I highly recommend this CD, as well as the follow-up CD I am now listening to, "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Mediation in Everyday Life".

While going through classes to try and grasp this concept I still could not grasp the practice. This CD made things so clear. It is extremely helpful & informative. I appreciate the authors tone and easy to follow language!
I will probably purchase follow up products from this author.

I have read the author's book on Mindfulness. It was great. I was hoping the CD was something I could use with my therapy clients and family members who need an intro to Mindfulness. The material on the CD is way over the head of the average person - not for beginners, in my opinion. He uses a lot of unfamiliar words, phrases and concepts that the 'beginner' would not know. Maybe this would be useful for someone who had already been exposed to mindfulness and needed some encouragement to practice it.

I returned the CD and got a refund.

If you have tried to meditate only to discover that it's extremely difficult, this CD can get you going on the right path. If you are an experienced meditator, you may find this CD unnecessary.

The package includes two CDs. In the first CD, the author starts by explaining what mindfulness is: "paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, as if you life depended on it, non-judgmentally". It explains how the mind is always busy thinking about one thing after another, incessantly. I have listened to this CD more than once, and every time I get something more out of it.

In the second CD the author gives you several guided mindfulness exercises that allow you to quiet the mind in a progressive way. This is perhaps the most valuable aspect of this CD, that it guides you, through baby steps, down the path of meditation.

The author leads you first to focus on a simple task: eating a raisin. As you discover that you can focus on that, the CD then takes you to focus on other things like sounds, and sounds only. As you do the sound exercises, you begin to witness your thoughts, how you judge the sounds, how you interpret the sounds and so forth.

The last exercise is mindfulness as pure awareness. You no longer focus on anything but experience life by witnessing everything: sounds, thoughts, emotions, and anything else that comes in and out of your awareness. This step has the odd effect of giving you extreme peace of mind.

I have bought other products by the same author: a book called "Wherever you go, there you are", "Coming to your senses" and a "Mindfulness Meditation" CD. I recommend getting the Mindfulness for Beginners first and if you find it useful, then read these other books and get the meditation CD. I have also bought several copies of this CD as a gift to friends and family, not everyone has taken to it, but those that have spent the time going through the exercises have told me that the exercises have helped them become more relaxed and "at ease in their own skin".

On my end, mindfulness has completely turned around my life. I went from worrying about the future, worrying about what people thought of me, to enjoying life as it unfolds. Kabat Zinn was recommended to me by an organizational consultant that saw me stressed out worrying about my job and my life in general. Up until then, I had tried meditation multiple times by focusing on my breathing, but I failed miserably at it. When I started listening to this CD, I began to break through a wall of thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts, circling in my head.

If you have been curious about meditating but struggled to do it, this CD can get you unstuck and on a journey of self discovery that will completely transform your life.

I am a therapist and coordinator of therapeutic activities for an intensive psychiatric service team. I run a lot of DBT groups and was hoping I could supplement them with this resource. I was really disappointed after listening to it. I found the exercises to be overly intellectual and cerebral. This was so different from the experience of the author's books. It felt as though the author was filling a need to hear his own voice! This incessant talking left little space for observation. While I would highly recommend his books I would not recommend this CD for someone beginning mindful practices.

The author provides a powerful framework and practical set of principles and straight forward exercises for living in the now and gaining peace of mind. The book has less spiritualism - which can be off putting for some - compared to Tolle's A New Earth or The Power of Now (which offer profound insights from an enlightened human being, IMO).

I have been looking for a way to explain mindful meditation to my deeply religious friends, who, here in the southeast, tend to put up a wall against anything they think may be asking them to challenge their faith in the Lord. Of course, one cannot speak of mindfulness meditation without mentioning the Buddha, and Kabat-Zinn does so by placing him in the context of the great thinkers, e.g., Einstein, Newton, who have innovated ideas of such profundity that they dramatically altered our understanding of what's going on here. This is a wonderful cd for that. However, it is based significantly in an intellectual discussion and requires full attention and replaying it over and over to understand everything he is saying here. In that regard, it is exactly what I had been looking for.

I prefer it, as well, to Jack Kornfield's Meditation for Beginners. Kornfield places more emphasis on the spirituality of mindfulness. My thought is that the practice of mindfulness will deepen one's spirituality. It's the direction of the causal arrow. I pursue mindfulness because of its practical applicability to my daily life. As a consequence, my spirituality is deepened. This is opposed to the causal arrow going the other way: I want to deepen my spirituality and took up Buddhist practices, and got the practical benefits of mindful meditation as a consequence. It's the same door, I suppose, but it's how the door looks, say, to a devout Christian. One looks like the door to a tool shed, the other looks like a forbidden door to to some alien mysticism. Thinking that a Christian will find the first door less intimidating or threatening, I prefer to turn my Christian friends onto the benefits of mindful mediation by handing them the Kabat-Zinn cd and saying, "This will make you a better Christian," which it will. Jack Kornfield's approach injects a little more of the spiritual aspect up front. He even tells of a cartoon he saw one time where this fellow was walking down the sidewalk with a sandwich board which said, "Jesus is coming soon." There was a little fellow behind him with a sign that said, "Buddha here now." My Christian friends would find that offensive and they would turn away from mindfulness because of its being a perceived threat to their spirituality.

Whereas Kornfield comes to it from his training as a Buddhist monk, Kabat-Zinn comes at it from his training as a scientist. If you prefer the more spiritual approach, then go with Kornfield. If you prefer the more deeply intellectual approach, go with Kabat-Zinn. By using these terms to describe the different approaches, by no means do I disparage either one. I understand that by my stating my preference for Kabat-Zinn, it could feel as if I am speaking against Kornfield. I am not. They both lead to the same place, and both will be very very good at helping you get there.