Mindfulness in Eight Weeks: The revolutionary 8 week plan to clear your mind and calm your life. Michael Chaskalson

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      As we campaign in Parliament and in government to raise awareness of the benefits of mindfulness training more generally, I hope this new book will open many more eyes to the great benefits that are so readily available with mindfulness practice

      Chris Ruane MP

       Introduction

       Mindfulness Is Everywhere

      When I first started practising mindfulness in the UK back in the 1970s, very few people outside of Asia had heard of it. Now it’s everywhere. TIME Magazine devoted a recent cover to it, US congressmen and British Members of Parliament are vocal about its benefits, public courses abound, there are widely respected programmes available for schoolchildren and young adults, the US Marines are building it into their training, top corporations offer training in it to their employees, scientists study its effects (there are around 40 peer-reviewed scientific papers on the theme published every month) and NICE, the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence that advises the UK National Health Service on appropriate treatments, recommends an eight-week mindfulness course as a front-line intervention for certain conditions.

      Almost every week another mainstream publication, a magazine or newspaper, carries an article that speaks of the popularity of mindfulness and its apparent benefits, and there seems to be an unending stream of books about it.

      So Why Another Book?

      Because it’s one thing just to read about mindfulness and quite another thing to practise it. The aim of this book is to support you in its actual practice. You can use the book as a do-it-yourself manual for learning mindfulness in a structured way or you can use it to supplement the teaching on a teacher-led eight-week mindfulness programme. You can also use it simply to find out more about the approach and to try some of the ideas and practices for yourself.

      The book is built around an eight-week mindfulness course that is a combination of the two most popular and widely researched mindfulness approaches – Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). However you use this book, you will get the most from it by actually trying out some of the mindfulness practices taught here over a period of time.

      My intention is for this book to be practical and – as much as possible in this medium – experiential. Although I will refer from time to time to the considerable scientific research into the effects of mindfulness training and I will be discussing some of the theory that underlies the approach, all of that is intended to support and illuminate the actual practice of mindfulness. The true meaning of mindfulness emerges ultimately from its practice and that is something you have to do for yourself. In the end, it is only by practising some of the methods of mindfulness that you can discover their real significance and begin to share in the very considerable benefits that they offer. Those benefits are really considerable – so many and various – and are accessible to people in a wide variety of contexts.

      I teach mindfulness in many different settings these days. My associates and I run public self-enrolment eight-week mindfulness courses in London and elsewhere. We also bring programmes like the one outlined here to people in organisations – banks, Internet companies, media organisations, financial and professional services companies, the UK’s National Health Service and so on. I work with large groups or one-to-one with senior staff. I’ve taught people working at senior board level in large global organisations and I’ve worked in a space littered with potting compost teaching a course to the staff who run a plant nursery alongside clients who have learning difficulties. Sometimes we teach the full eight-week programme, sometimes we deliver a shorter introduction. We teach Mindfulness for Leaders courses and we teach mindfulness for general staff. But, however or wherever we teach, the basic premise of the work remains the same: when you’re more skilled at working with your mind and mental states things go better for you and for those around you.

      After training in mindfulness myself for around 40 years now, and teaching others for much of that time, I feel I can say this unequivocally – mindfulness works.

      How to Use this Book

      The heart of this book is an eight-week mindfulness training course, and that is reflected in its structure. Each chapter comprises instructions for a particular set of practices that you can engage in that week. The practices are cumulative and follow one another in a particular order – building from week to week.

      The core course material is laid out in one consistent style. All the other material – apart from the home practice – can be thought of as somewhat optional reading. These breakout boxes are marked with different icons:

      The icon

tells you that a box contains instruction and guidance that are necessary for the course.

      The icon

shows that the box contains ideas that I’ll be referring to as the course unfolds.

      The icon

shows that the box contains a description of the set home practice for this week.

      The icon

lets you know that the box marked by it contains useful information that is not absolutely necessary for you to know as you follow the course. Read it if you’re interested, or skip it if you’d rather.

      The icon

tells you that the box contains a poem or a story that further illustrates some of the points being made in that chapter.

      I have also provided downloadable audio materials to support each week’s mindfulness practice. These can be found at www.mbsr.co.uk/mp31.php. There are two streams of daily practice that you can follow. The first stream follows the home-practice pathway of ‘classic’ MBSR and MBCT in suggesting that you do at least 40 minutes of home practice each day. Most of the research findings showing significant changes as a result of engaging in MBSR or MBCT have been based on a daily practice programme similar to this.

      If you’re using this book as part of a teacher-led group-based eight-week course, do follow Stream 1 home practice unless your instructor suggests otherwise.

      Having said all that, I’m aware that undertaking 40 minutes a day of home practice, especially without the support of a group, can be a real challenge. For that reason I’ve devised a second stream of practice. Stream 2 home practice takes no more than 20 minutes each day and may be useful for those who are using the book alone to guide their mindfulness training and who don’t have regular access to a teacher-led group.

      The daily practice programme for each week of the course is laid out at the end of the chapter for each week, and Stream 1 and Stream 2 home-practice guidance is clearly delineated.

      Finally, if you’re using the book as part of a teacher-led course, you’ll get the most from that course if, once you’ve read this introductory chapter, you leave any further reading until after you have participated in that week’s class with the teacher. Try to avoid reading ahead – it can undermine the effects of the work you’ll be doing on the course itself.

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