Falling Awake: How to Practice Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Think you have no time for mindfulness? Think again. "Thoughtful and provocative.... The relevance of this work is unquestionable, as it leaves us inspired and optimistic that true healing really is possible" (Sharon Salzberg). For four decades, Jon Kabat-Zinn has been teaching the tangible benefits of meditation in the mainstream. Today millions of people have taken up a formal mindfulness meditation practice as part of their everyday lives. But how do you actually go about meditating? What does a formal meditation practice look like? And how can we overcome some of the common obstacles to incorporating meditation into daily life in an age of perpetual self-distraction? Falling Awake directly answers these urgent and timely questions. Originally published in 2005 as part of a larger book titled Coming to Our Senses, it has been updated with a new foreword by the author and is even more relevant today. Science shows that the tangible benefits of a mindfulness meditation practice are impossible to ignore. Kabat-Zinn explains how to incorporate them into our hectic, modern lives. Read on for a master class from one of the pioneers of the worldwide mindfulness movement.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, is founding Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is also the founding director of its renowned Stress Reduction Clinic and Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He teaches mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in various venues around the world. He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT in 1971 in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate, Salvador Luria.