Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World

"This is the book that I would recommend as the most practical one on the list. It takes you through an eight-week course and it has audio to go with it, either as a CD or in digital form, depending on whether you buy the book or the Kindle version. It’s really something that you can follow as a course on your own. I would always recommend doing a face-to-face course if you can because it’s very good to relate directly to a teacher and a group, but if you’re not at the stage where you want to engage that deeply, then this is a great option. The author, Professor Mark Williams, is the leading mindfulness expert in the UK, and he’s the founder of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) which is one of the leading formats in mindfulness. It’s been very well studied, and there’s a large evidence base behind it. He has condensed that MBCT course into a shorter version that someone can do at home. The basic techniques in the course are all focused on mindfulness. But Mark Williams and his colleagues have brought in some elements from CBT that they find to be complementary and helpful. In particular, this course grew up in relation to supporting people who have a history of depression. The biggest factor maintaining depression is the tendency towards rumination, towards cycles of negative thinking that people find very difficult to escape from. Mindfulness is extremely helpful in training this skill, and in learning that a thought is just a thought and that you can make some choices about whether to follow that thought or not. The CBT elements are there especially to reinforce that relationship with thought. It does sounds simple, but if you sit down to try and do it, most people discover it’s actually very difficult. In mindfulness, we use very simple focus like the breath or the body when we sit down to do that. And when people attempt this, they typically find they can’t do it. Nobody can really do it at first. We begin to discover all the many ways in which we can’t do it, which includes our mind being very busy; which includes difficult emotions which come up; which includes working with challenging body sensations. “Mindfulness is extremely helpful in teaching that a thought is just a thought and that you can make some choices about whether to follow that thought or not” A course really helps us to understand how we work with all those different challenges. We begin to appreciate that, although it seems simple just to sit and pay attention to the breath, it’s a very profound practice because we’re actually becoming familiar with our own mental patterns, our own emotions, and the way we work as human beings. A course really helps us to understand the context and to discover the transformative potential in that, rather than it being just about concentrating on our breath which is, in itself, not the whole story. I’m not an expert on Transcendental Meditation, so I couldn’t really say for sure about the differences. My understanding is that TM works with a mantra and it would share some of the same elements as mindfulness meditation. I think it has more emphasis on going into some kind of blissful or transcendental state; whereas mindfulness is not so much about going into any different kind of state: it’s really about being here with things just as they are in this moment."

"Overthinking takes you away from the present moment. If you’re really struggling with overthinking, this might not be the book to start with, because when your mind’s incredibly busy, or you’re feeling very anxious or low, mindfulness can be difficult to engage with. But as a practice, it’s such a useful one, because it draws you back into the moment and back into where you are. It gets you out of your head, back into the world. This is a really nice book, because it is easy to read and relatable, with case studies and different ideas that will match up to what people experience themselves. It’s about breaking that cycle of stress, anxiety, unhappiness and exhaustion. It’s about that struggle to meet the demands of the modern world. Again, it shows how when we start to see our thoughts as just thoughts, or our feelings as just feelings, rather than as how we are at that moment in time or as saying something about us, we have the ability to step back from them. We can be aware of which pathways we follow and where we want to go, and tune into the here and now. This is helpful for starting to notice and recognise your thoughts, which is the first step in my book. But it’s also important for step two, choosing your response, as it’s a way to bring you back to the present. Even if you can do it for just eight minutes, it makes a big difference to how you’re feeling, and disrupts the overthinking spirals that you can get into. It’s a good introduction. I like this one because it’s a course that you can follow, and also because the author is an expert in the field. Professor Mark Williams is the lead on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, so it’s written by an expert. I think that’s important – it’s evidence-based, and something you can follow that’s proven to work."