353 of 360 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent book for beginners, but skip the companion CD, August 12, 2004
This review is from: 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. (Paperback)
This is an excellent book for beginners and skeptics (and I was both). It makes meditation easy. Really! It's also very well-written, reader-friendly, easy to read, and witty.
The book plugs a companion CD, available only at the author's website for $17. I bought the CD, have used it, and would like to review it here, so that those of you who buy the book can better decide whether you should spring for the CD.
The CD contains 16 tracks.
The first eight tracks are very short (e.g. 2-minutes), and summarize some of the content from the book. These short tracks are useful reminders of some of the key points in the book, but as the CD tells you, it is not intended to substitute for the book.
The rest of the CD consists of 8 "guided meditations," one for each week of the book's 8-week program. In each of these tracks, the author spends a few seconds telling you what activity you're supposed to do, then he tells you to start, then 8 minutes later a gong sounds, signaling you to stop. About every two minutes during the meditation, the author interrupts you to say things like "Has your attention drifted? That's okay, just return your focus to your breath." This type of reminder might be useful, especially at first, but after a while, I found it intrusive. Also, the sound of his voice is not especially soothing or gentle. For me, it's better to just do as the book says - use a common kitchen timer set to 8 minutes.
Aside from the occasional interruptions, there is complete silence during the 8 minute meditations. I prefer the silence to the soft new-age music or nature sounds on some other meditation CDs.
In my opinion, the CD is not a good value: the total amount of content on the CD is about 20 minutes, maybe less. This is due to the fact that the CD has a lot of silent parts during the guided meditations; this silence is appropriate, but it reduces the amount of time available for spoken content. And, more importantly, all of the spoken content on the CD--and much more--is already in the book.
On the plus side, the service was excellent - the CD arrived two days after I ordered it.
In summary, I recommend the book highly if you're a beginner. But my opinion is that you skip the CD and save your money.
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65 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Build a lasting practice., September 5, 2005
This review is from: 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. (Paperback)
This book is an 8 week program on meditation for beginners where each week the book teaches you a different meditation technique. The program has you meditate for just 8 minutes a day every, which taught me to concentrate on my meditation more while building a habit of meditating every day. Although I have tried some Zen meditation in the past, the techniques I learned in this book gave me better tools to meditate. After completing the book I have been able to keep up with my meditation practice. If you would like to build a lasting meditation practice in your life, I highly recommend it.
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104 of 110 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Now I know why Time Magazine says it's so great., April 19, 2005
This review is from: 8 Minute Meditation: Quiet Your Mind. Change Your Life. (Paperback)
Time Magazine calls 8 Minute Meditation "The most American form of meditation yet"--and now I know why.
I've always wanted to meditate, but thought it too confusing and difficult. Besides, who has the time? But 8 Minute Meditation changed all that for me.
Davich has totally stripped the mumbo-jumbo and complexity out of meditation. He has chosen 8 minutes a day as the optimal time for us folks to use for meditation. Why? Because it's the time between 2 TV commercials! He says that if you can watch 8 Minutes of CSI, the Simpsons, or American Idol, you can learn to meditate--for real.
The book offers more than just a fun and informative read: It's a complete meditation program that starts you meditating as soon as you pick it up. All you have to do is meditate for 8 minutes a day! After one week, you move onto a new meditation technique. After I did this for just 8 weeks, I found myself for the first time in my life, a real mediation habit.
Part 3 of 8Minute Meditation is called The Upgrade. And in it Davich shows you how to take your 8 minute a day practice and expand and deepen it. It also shows you how to bring your meditation into yout daily life. Like the meditation technique Davich calls Just One Dish. So you can even be practicing meditation while you are doing household chores or at the supermarket. (Be careful though in your car!).
After the 2nd week, I ordered the 8 Minute Guided Meditation CD from his website 8minutes.org. I found it extremely helpful alongside what was happening in the book. All I had to do was sit down, find the meditation technique of the week, push the play button. I heard a sonorous gong, and then Davich lead me through my 8 minute meditation for the day. He doesn't talk alot, but when he says something it's perfectly timed to bring me back to the meditation. It worked so well for me. Let me actually sink into what I was doing.
Using the CD and use the book together was for me really powerful. It gave me a meditation practice. Finally. And easily.
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