Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World

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This book walks you gently through the beautiful, messy process of being human, and teaches you how and why all can be well My latest book provides a concise guide to letting go and finding peace in a messy world, simply by taking the time to breathe. Known side effects: You will start to smile more. You will worry less. Life won’t bother you so much.

Newly developed by the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, it has become an extremely popular programme for Oxford University students wanting to equip themselves with the tools to cope with stress, perform at their best and enjoy student life fully. Mindfulness is very beneficial for chronic pain. Studies show that pain ‘unpleasantness’ can be reduced by 57 per cent. Experienced meditators can reduce it by 93 per cent. 12International bestselling and award-winning author Dr Danny Penman provides a concise guide to letting go and finding peace in a messy world, simply by taking the time to breathe. Lifeischaotic, but if you follow the mindfulness meditations in this programme you will become more resilient and less anxious, and develop the courage necessary to make difficult decisions, create new ideas and to follow them wherever they should lead. Keep calm… and carry on breathing: The simple exercises that can alleviate pain and help sufferers cope with anxiety, stress and depression Designed specifically to help ordinary people who are struggling to keep up with the demands of the modern world. As Mark Williams writes in the book, this will help you ‘understand where true happiness, peace and contentment can be found’ and teaches you ‘how to free yourself progressively from anxiety, stress, unhappiness and exhaustion’.

In time, you may also find it helpful to revisit the meditations you have found supportive in the past: for example, the body scan, sitting with sounds, thoughts and feelings, or the befriending meditation. And if you return to practicing any of your usual meditations, feel free to use your feet, seat or hands as alternatives to the breath.

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I have been living with depression and anxiety for almost 15 years and have found the mindfulness exercises I’ve done in my counselling sessions to be extremely helpful. I’d like to have some suggestions for resources to use outside of counselling to continue developing my skills. I have also found CBT to be helpful, although my exposure to this is very limited. I can imagine that the 2 in combination would make a fantastic tool for me to use in all aspects of my life. Despite my struggles, I’ve managed to achieve a challenging career specialty in the allied health professions and value greatly the strategies and tools I am able to draw on to help me manage my symptoms and allow me to get out and enjoy my life. Dissolve anxiety, stress and unhappiness, enhance your mind and unleash your creativity with these simple exercises. And with each little moment of mindfulness, discover a happier, calmer you. It really is as easy as breathing… It is paying full conscious attention to whatever thoughts, feelings and emotions are flowing through your mind, body and breath without judging or criticising them in any way. Dissolve anxiety, stress and unhappiness, enhance your mind and unleash your creativity with these simple exercises. And with each little moment of mindfulness, discover a happier, calmer you.

You are the observer of your thoughts. It’s a subtle distinction that’s only perceived with practice. You’ll find written instructions here (they’re worth reading to familiarise yourself with the technique). A person whose mind isn’t wandering, isn’t meditating….. With this in mind, over the next few weeks we’ll be giving away as many of the meditations from our book, Mindfulness, as possible. All of the meditations are from the core Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) programme co-developed by Professor Mark Williams of Oxford University. As you know, I wrote Mindfulness with Mark. MBCT has been proven by countless clinical trials to treat and prevent anxiety, stress, depression, unhappiness and exhaustion. For these reasons, we want to make as much of our Mindfulness course as accessible as possible. If you find the meditations useful, please let all of your friends and family know where they can get them (and feel free to Tweet or blog about them and our book too). The Three-minute Breathing Space was created to deal with such situations. It’s a mini meditation that acts as a bridge between the longer, formal meditations detailed in our book Mindfulness and the demands of everyday life.

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Your thoughts are a running commentary on the world; a ‘best guess’ of what’s truly happening. Often, your thoughts will reflect the powerful emotional currents swirling through your mind, body and breath. Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are a frantic work in progress, sometimes they are wrong. Williams and Penman nail it when they describe how we can run from life (and ourselves) but we'll never escape. DEEPER MINDFULNESS holds true to its name: the authors expertly point out how to identify those critical driving forces in our lives - feelings, and how feelings feel - but importantly have provided a pragmatic path and clear steps that we can take to leverage our minds to live better lives. Based in deep wisdom and written with compassion One of the great ironies of mindful awareness is that it often seems to evaporate just when you need it the most. When you’re becoming increasingly burned out, you tend to forget just how useful it can be for dealing with the feelings of being overwhelmed by the world’s seemingly relentless demands. When you’re becoming angry, it’s difficult to remember why you should remain calm. And when you’re anxious or stressed, you feel far too rushed to squeeze in a twenty-minute meditation. When you’re under pressure, the last thing your mind wishes to be is mindful – tired, old thinking habits are infinitely more seductive. Having sold more than 250,000 copies globally, it is estimated that 1 in every 8 UK households now owns a copy of 'Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World'.The co-author, Professor Mark Williams, is one of the world’s leading researchers in mindfulness and co-founder of MBCT (clinically proven to help prevent relapse into depression). He is also the founder of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre at Oxford University and the Centre for Mindfulness Research Practice at Bangor University, two of the world’s top mindfulness research and teaching institutes.