Author:Ruby Wax
Mindfulness is something of a buzzword at the moment – in this book the author attempts to explain what it means and why it’s important – and how to go about achieving it.
Writing with her usual humour and candour, Ruby Wax dips into her own experiences to illustrate how CBT helped her cope with her own depression and to make this complex subject easier to understand.
The book covers advice for parents, for teenagers and for relationships, and incorporates an excellent six week course (a few minutes daily) of ‘brain exercises’, based on her studies of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy at Oxford University under the tutelage of Mark Williams, and put together with his help.
This is a thought provoking and well-written book which is also laced with humour. Well worth investigating if this is an area that interests you.
Length of Read:Medium
Might appeal to people who enjoyed…
Further reading – the author’s previous effort Sane New World covers similar ground but without too much overlap.
Professor Mark Williams best-selling ‘Mindfulness: A Practical Guide To Finding Peace In A Frantic World’ is one of the leading and most accessible books in this genre (and very usefully comes with a cd of mental exercises to work through in conjunction with the book’s text)
One thing you’ve learned
The mind is a weird and wonderful thing indeed!
I’ve dipped my toe into mindfulness and found it a useful and relaxing tool. There’s an interesting piece from The Guardian here about potential dangers. The gist is that people who become frazzled because they are constantly busy may be keeping busy because they have issues which they haven’t addressed, and when they slow down those issues may rise to the surface with horrific results. These are obviously extreme cases, but I admit it is something I would not previously considered before recommending mindfulness to anyone.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill
I should have said that I have no knowledge of this book. For all I know Ruby Wax mentions that some people may be advised to seek counselling or other help before embarking on mindfulness.