Coming to Our Senses : Healing Ourselves and Our World Through Mindfulness

Rating:
Summary: Simple words, powerful message
Review:
We Americans have a difficult time integrating Eastern ideas into our Western lives. For over twenty years Jon Kabat-Zinn has been doing so in the most practical way, through his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

Drawn from his insight along with his professional and personal experiences, Dr. Kabat-Zinn creates a deep, rich work here which should be read, followed, and taken to heart by everyone with a desire to heal. This healing can be felt and take place on multiple levels simultaneously. Coming to Our Senses is a book which will help you along your way. I highly recommend it to seekers wherever they find themselves at the current moment.

This work is subtle in its message and easy to read. But don't be fooled by its simplicity. This is a powerful work for personal and societal transformation.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: "Coming to Our Senses" is a very in depth and thoughtful exploration of mindfulness. This masterfully crafted work will be (or at least should be) a classic. Mindfulness, or the practice of being more awake and aware of the present moment, is vital to our emotional, physical and spiritual health. In this book, the phrase "coming to our senses" has more than its common meaning. It also refers to the wisdom of being more attuned to our senses in this present moment. As your mind wanders (as all of our minds do) bring your self back to enjoy your sense of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. In other words, Jon Kabat-Zinn asks us to really "wake up" and smell the roses... he also urges us to wake up and hear the music, feel the breeze, taste the food and to see the art of everyday life. Towards the end of the book, Jon Kabat-Zinn addresses not only individual suffering and health, but also gives a wise perspective on what it might take to make a healthier world community. The endless pursuit of material objects or a life of distraction will not bring long-term peace or happiness. This book may help you begin or continue the very worthy practice and adventure of mindfulness.

Jay Winner, M.D., author of Stress Management Made Simple: Effective Ways to Beat Stress for Better Health



Rating:
Summary: Incredible book! Jon Kabat-Zinn delivers...
Review: *****
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.
*****


Rating:
Summary: Huge disappointment full of nonsense
Review: I hate to be the one to say so, but this book is a great disappointment. I have read all of the author's other books and have his mindfulness compact discs which I use on a frequent basis, and found them all terrific and very helpful. But this book is a mismash of short essays, with no pattern or insight in most of the chapters, although I did find the discussion on our relationship with time worthwhile. For me though, the biggest problem with the book is that it is full of clichés with no thought behind them. In one brief sitting, I came across the following nonsense: "no one's views, opinions, and feelings in a group are invalid" (p. 449); "in life there are actually no problems" (p. 462); and the unbelievably false and pc statement concerning rap music that it is "much more creative, poetic, nuanced and socially aware than anything" that the author and his friends did in their youth, specifically, playing stickball (p. 470). Well, I don't know much, but I do know that there are views and opinions that are invalid (e.g., women are not as smart as men), that there are problems in life (the author's detailing the medically extraordinary efforts of Christopher Reeve to retain and regain some of his body's functions certainly qualify as a problem he had in his life), and that rap music is horrible, debased, and qualifies as a virus (try this on: "Kill the white people; we gonna make them hurt; kill the white people; but buy my record first; ha, ha, ha" ("Kill d'white people," Apache, courtesy of the slime at Time Warner, 1993.) I found all this nonsense in just one sitting at which point I gave up. I may not know as much as the author does about mindfulness, but I do know when someone's not thinking. And the author was not thinking when he put this one together. Buy one of his earlier works, and take a pass on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: I was excited to see a new book from Kabat-Zinn, but so far I have found many of the "chapters" seem to have a tiny scrap of an idea that has somehow been blown into several pages--much ado about nothing, I'm afraid. Actually, an incredible amount of much ado, given the length of the book. I plan to separate wheat from chaffe to get what I can from my purchase.

Rating:
Summary: A book about much more than healing
Review: If I taught a class in being fully alive and well, this would be the assigned text. Not that it resembles a textbook. It doesn't. It is as comprehensive and well organized as an academic might wish, yet it has the personal story-telling flow of the popular self-help genre. So, it is easy to read while it weaves together complex philosophical, spiritual, scientific and practical living issues and makes them understandable and immediately useful.

The author does indeed teach about the application of mindfulness meditation and other practices to the healing of our bodies and minds. (In fact, this book is a treasure chest filled with what-to's, why-to's and how-to's.) And, he teaches us how to create a mentally and spiritually rich life, filled with well-being. But, as a further accomplishment, he points the way to healing the existential wound of our conceptual "separateness" from each other, our world and the universe.

Perhaps the appreciation of our interconnectedness will lead us to the healing of the world.