11 Best Books Written By Jon Kabat-Zinn

The landmark work on mindfulness, meditation, and healing, now revised and updated after twenty-five years.
 
Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health if we let it, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection, and disease. Based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this classic, groundbreaking work—which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology—shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing. By engaging in these mindfulness practices and integrating them into your life from moment to moment and from day to day, you can learn to manage chronic pain, promote optimal healing, reduce anxiety and feelings of panic, and improve the overall quality of your life, relationships, and social networks. This second edition features results from recent studies on the science of mindfulness, a new Introduction, up-to-date statistics, and an extensive updated reading list. Full Catastrophe Living is a book for the young and the old, the well and the ill, and anyone trying to live a healthier and saner life in our fast-paced world.

Quotes from Full Catastrophe Living;

“Mindfulness is “the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

“Knowing what you are doing while you are doing it is the essence of mindfulness practice.”

“Before we convince ourselves that our bodies are too this or too that, shouldn’t we get more in touch with how wonderful it is to have a body in the first place?”

“Acceptance…simply means that, sooner or later, you have come around to a willingness to see things as they are.”

“It is not that mindfulness is the ‘answer’ to all life’s problems. Rather, it is that all life’s problems can be seen more clearly through the lens of a clear mind.”

“You have to accept yourself as you are before you can really change.”

“Unawareness can cause us to miss much of what is most beautiful and meaningful in our lives – and, as a consequence, be significantly less happy than we might be otherwise.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn changed the way we thought about awareness in everyday life with his now-classic introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are. Now, with Coming to Our Senses, he provides the definitive book for our time on the connection between mindfulness and our physical and spiritual wellbeing. With scientific rigor, poetic deftness, and compelling personal stories, Jon Kabat-Zinn examines the mysteries and marvels of our minds and bodies, describing simple, intuitive ways in which we can come to a deeper understanding, through our senses, of our beauty, our genius, and our life path in a complicated, fear-driven, and rapidly changing world.

In each of the book’s eight parts, Jon Kabat-Zinn explores another facet of the great adventure of healing ourselves — and our world — through mindful awareness, with a focus on the “sensescapes” of our lives and how a more intentional awareness of the senses, including the human mind itself, allows us to live more fully and more authentically. By “coming to our senses” — both literally and metaphorically by opening to our innate connectedness with the world around us and within us — we can become more compassionate, more embodied, more aware human beings, and in the process, contribute to the healing of the body politic as well as our own lives in ways both little and big.

Quotes from Coming to Our Senses;

“Meditation is a way of being, not a technique.”

“[Meditation] is about allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and as you are, and for the world to be exactly as it is in this moment as well.”

“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, especially in regard to our relationships with people and with nature.”

“It is life itself that becomes the teacher and the curriculum.”

“Just by meditating, by sitting down and being still, you can change yourself and the world.”

“The knowing of things as they are is called wisdom.”

“Awareness itself is the teacher, the student and the lesson.”

When Wherever You Go, There You Are was first published in 1994, no one could have predicted that the book would launch itself onto bestseller lists nationwide and sell over 750,000 copies to date. Ten years later, the book continues to change lives. In honor of the book’s 10th anniversary, Hyperion is proud to be releasing the book with a new afterword by the author and to share this wonderful book with an even larger audience.

Quotes from Whereever You Go;

“Mindfulness is an ancient Buddhist practice which has profound relevance for our present-day lives.”

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention…Mindfulness means being awake.”

“Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself.”

“‘What is my job on the planet?’ is one question we might do well to ask ourselves over and over again.”

“Trust is a feeling of confidence or conviction that things can unfold within a dependable framework that embodies order and integrity.”

“Part of our mind is constantly evaluating our experiences, comparing them with other experiences or holding them up against expectations and standards that we create, often out of fear.”

“Thinking you are unable to meditate is a little like thinking you are unable to breathe, or to concentrate or relax.”

An Invitation to the Practice of Mindfulness.

We may long for wholeness, suggests Jon Kabat-Zinn, but the truth is that it is already here and already ours. The practice of mindfulness holds the possibility of not just a fleeting sense of contentment, but a true embracing of a deeper unity that envelops and permeates our lives. With Mindfulness for Beginners, you are invited to learn how to transform your relationship to the way you think, feel love, work, and play―and thereby awaken to and embody more completely who you really are.

Here, the teacher, scientist, and clinician who first demonstrated the benefits of mindfulness within mainstream Western medicine offer a book that you can use in three unique ways: as a collection of reflections and practices to be opened and explored at random; as an illuminating and engaging start-to-finish read; or as an unfolding “lesson-a-day” primer on a mindfulness practice.
Beginning and long-time meditators alike will discover in these pages a valuable distillation of the key attitudes and essential practices that Jon Kabat-Zinn has found most useful with his students, including:

• Why heartfulness is synonymous with true mindfulness
• The value of coming back to our bodies and to our senses over and over again
• How our thoughts “self-liberate” when touched by awareness
• Moving beyond our “story” into direct experience
• Stabilizing our attention and presence amidst daily activities
• Three fundamental mental factors that cause suffering
• How mindfulness heals, even after the fact
•Reclaiming our wholeness, and more

The prescription for living a more mindful life seems simple enough: return your awareness again and again to whatever is going on. But if you’ve tried it, you know that here is where all the questions and challenges really begin. Mindfulness for Beginners provides welcome answers, insights, and instruction to help us make that shift, moment by moment, into a more spacious, clear, reliable, and loving connection with ourselves and the world.

Includes five guided mindfulness meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn, selected from the audio program that inspired this book.

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.

Welcome to a master class in mindfulness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is regarded as “one of the finest teachers of mindfulness you’ll ever encounter” (Jack Kornfield). He has been teaching the tangible benefits of meditation in the mainstream for decades. Today, millions of people around the world have taken up a formal mindfulness meditation practice as part of their everyday lives. But what is meditation anyway? And why might it be worth trying? Or nurturing further if you already have practice?

Meditation Is Not What You Think answers those questions. Originally published in 2005 as part of a larger book entitled Coming to Our Senses, it has been updated with a new foreword by the author and is even more relevant today. If you’re curious as to why meditation is not for the “faint-hearted,” how taking some time each day to drop into awareness can actually be a radical act of love, and why paying attention is so supremely important, consider this book an invitation to learn more — from one of the pioneers of the worldwide mindfulness movement.

More than twenty years ago, Jon Kabat-Zinn changed the way we thought about awareness in everyday life with his now-classic introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are. He followed that up with 2005’s Coming to Our Senses, the definitive book for our time on the connection between mindfulness and our well-being on every level, physical, cognitive, emotional, social, planetary, and spiritual.

Now, Coming to Our Senses is being repackaged into 4 smaller books, each focusing on a different aspect of mindfulness, and each with a new foreword written by the author. In the fourth of these books, Mindfulness for All (which was originally published as Part VII and Part VIII of Coming to Our Senses), Kabat-Zinn focuses on how mindfulness really can be a tool to transform the world–explaining how democracy thrives in a mindful context, and why mindfulness is a vital tool for both personal and global understanding and action in these tumultuous times. By “coming to our senses”–both literally and metaphorically–we can become more compassionate, more embodied, more aware human beings, and in the process, contribute to the healing of the body politic as well as our own lives in ways both little and big.

Discover how mindfulness can help you with healing.

More than twenty years ago, Jon Kabat-Zinn showed us the value of cultivating greater awareness in everyday life with his now-classic introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are. Now, in the healing Power of Mindfulness, he shares a cornucopia of specific examples as to how the cultivation of mindfulness can reshape your relationship with your own body and mind–explaining what we’re learning about neuroplasticity and the brain, how meditation can affect our biology and our health, and what mindfulness can teach us about coming to terms with all sorts of life challenges, including our own mortality, so we can make the most of the moments that we have.

Originally published in 2005 as part of a larger book titled Coming to Our Senses, The Healing Power of Mindfulness features a new foreword by the author and timely updates throughout the text. If you are interested in learning more about how mindfulness as a way of being can help us to heal, physically and emotionally, look no further than this deeply personal and also “deeply optimistic book, grounded in good science and filled with practical recommendations for moving in the right direction” (Andrew Weil, MD), from one of the pioneers of the worldwide mindfulness movement.

Mindfulness opens us up to the possibility of being fully human as we are, and of expressing the humane in our way of being. Mindlessness de facto closes us up and denies us the fullness of our being alive. This book may on the surface appear to be merely another offering in the genre of daily readings. But deep within these 108 selections lie messages of profound wisdom in a contemporary and practical form that can lead to both healing and transformation. We so urgently need to rotate in consciousness in order to safeguard what precious sanity is available to us on this planet. How we carry ourselves will determine the direction the world takes because, in a very real way, we are the world we inhabit. Our world is continuously being shaped by our participation in everything around us and within us through mindfulness. This is a great work of awareness. Welcome to the threshold . . . to the fullness of arriving at your own door!

By inviting the Dalai Lama and leading researchers in medicine, psychology, and neuroscience to join in the conversation, the Mind & Life Institute set the stage for a fascinating exploration of the healing potential of the human mind. The Mind’s Own Physician presents in its entirety the thirteenth Mind and Life dialogue, a discussion addressing a range of vital questions concerning the science and clinical applications of meditation: How do meditative practices influence pain and human suffering? What role does the brain play in emotional well-being and health? To what extent can our minds actually influence physical disease? Are there important synergies here for transforming health care, and for understanding our own evolutionary limitations as a species?

Yes, there actually is a way to let everything become your teacher, to let life itself, and everything that unfolds within it, the “full catastrophe” of the human condition in the words of Zorba the Greek, shape your ongoing development and maturation. Millions have followed this path to greater sanity, balance, and well-being, often in the face of huge stress, pain, uncertainty, sorrow, and illness.

In his landmark book, Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn shared this innovative approach, known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), with the world. Now, in this companion volume, 100 pointers from that groundbreaking work have been carefully selected to inspire you to embrace what is deepest and best, and most beautiful in yourself.

Whether you are trying to learn patience, cope with pain, deal with the enormous stress and challenges of the age we live in, improve your relationships, or free yourself from destructive emotions, thoughts, and behaviors, these deceptively simple meditations will remind you that you have deep inner resources to draw upon, the most important of which is the present moment itself. Regardless of your age or whether you are familiar with the healing power of mindfulness, this insightful, inspirational guide will help you to honor, embrace, learn from, and grow into each moment of your life.