Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness (Paperback)

~ Jon Kabat-zinn (Author) "It is difficult to speak of the timeless beauty and richness of the present moment when things are moving so fast..." (more)
Key Phrases: mindful yoga, lovingkindness practice, stress reduction clinic, Soen Sa Nim, New England, Dalai Lama (more...)

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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"...whimsical, wise, genuine, intimate, surprising, scholarly, liberating, brilliant, and practical look at how we can become who we fully are..." -- Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

"Coming to Our Senses invites us to sanity, offering a practical, life-altering way to cut through the clutter . . ." -- Daniel Goleman

"A deeply optimistic book, grounded in good science and filled with practical recommendations for moving in the right direction." -- Andrew Weil, M.D.

"A wealth of . . . miracles that mindfulness can work in our everyday lives." -- Thich Nhat Hanh

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Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion (January 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786886544
• ISBN-13: 978-0786886548
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #13,494 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

185 of 191 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	O. Brown "Ms. O. Khannah-Brown" (Twopeas, WA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness (Hardcover)

*****
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.
*****

146 of 157 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Kirk McElhearn "Mac author and journalist and... (A village in the French Alps) - See all my reviews

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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.

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Where's the Editor?, May 28, 2006

By	M. Schwartz - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness (Hardcover)

First, I'm a big fan of "Wherever You go There You Are," Kabat-Zinn's previous book. There, in a series of pithy chapters, he encourages readers to slow down and be fully aware in the present moment. It's very inspirational. The writing is eloquent; it is simple, spare and unhurried and, as such, itself exemplifies the idea of an uncomplicated here-and-nowness.

With "Coming to Our Senses," however, the writing has changed. We now have lengthy, complicated sentences, repeated ideas, and frequent use of many words where a few will do. For example, from the Introduction: "This capacity for paying attention and for intelligent action can be cultivated, nurtured, and refined beyond our wildest dreams if we have the motivation to do so." Cultivated, nurtured, AND refined? Yes, all three words do have subtly different meanings, but how about "developed" for all three? Plus, the idea itself is just a bit trite, and comes complete with that "beyond our wildest dreams" cliche.

OK. What follows is the reason for my "Where's the Editor" heading. It too is from the Introduction. Take a deep breath and prepare to exhale slowly:

"Even so, these hidden dimensions, or what we might call new degrees of freedom, are potentially available to us, and will gradually reveal themselves to us as we continue to cultivate and dwell in our capacity for conscious awareness by attending intentionally with both awe and tenderness to the staggeringly complex yet fundamentally ordered universe, world, terrain, family, mind and body within which we locate and orient ourselves, all of which, at every level, is continually fluxing and changing, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, and thereby providing us with countless unexpected challenges and opportunities to grow, and to see clearly, and to move toward greater wisdom in our actions, and toward quelling the tortured suffering of our tumultous minds, habitually so far from home, so far from quiet and rest."

Wow! Editors! Where were you? How did this sentence escape the scalpel? Also: "fluxing" AND "changing?" This sentence is continually fluxing and changing and transposing, shifting, metamorphing, varying and permutating.

Note too that, like "Wherever You Go...," each chapter is a self-contained short essay on a topic. In "Wherever...," all chapters hew fairly closely to the overall theme of mindfulness. Here, while mindfulness and meditation are often front and center or lurking in the background, to my mind the topics range much further afield. The result is a volume that reads like a collection of fairly disparate columns the author could have written for a newspaper or magazine. That's OK, but expect observations that come at you from a hundred different directions, rather than chapters which necessarily build on the one(s) preceding.

Jon Kabat-Zinn has done an incredible service in expressing the value of mindfulness for the general reading public in "Wherever You Go...." But this one is flabby and indulgent. It could have been much better.