Mindfulness for Beginners

Explore the Infinite Potential that Lies Within This Very Moment

By: Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD

Narrated by: Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD

What if you could profoundly change your life just by becoming more mindful of your breathing? According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, you can. What if paying attention on purpose (and nonjudgmentally) could improve your health? Again, according to Dr. Kabat-Zinn—it can.

On Mindfulness for Beginners, this internationally known scientist, bestselling author, and teacher who brought mindfulness meditation into the mainstream of medicine and society gives you immediate access to a practice that can potentially add years to your life, and will certainly enhance the quality of your moments and your years.

Join Dr. Kabat-Zinn to:

Explore five guided meditations that lead you breath-by-breath into the essence of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a program offered in medical clinics and hospitals around the world
• Cultivate the Seven Key Attitudinal Factors of MBSR—qualities of heart and mind that lay the foundation for mindfulness practice and for seeing and accepting things as they are as a first step to working wisely and compassionately with stress, pain, illness, and sorrow as well as life's joys and pleasures
• Free yourself from limiting perspectives, and become more intimate with your own boundless awareness

You're already in the perfect moment for inhabiting this liberating awareness, which is always available, teaches Jon Kabat-Zinn. With Mindfulness for Beginners, he invites you to cultivate mindfulness as if your life depended on it, which it surely does, and experience the magnitude and beauty of who you already are.

Course objectives:

Apply an understanding of the concept of mindfulness
• Utilize simple guided meditations led by Kabat-Zinn
• List the ethical and attitudinal foundations necessary to cultivating mindfulness
• Assess how we can choose where to focus our awareness
• Plan to use mindfulness to help us develop compassion and insight into our true nature

Great start for beginners, but be patient

Overall, it's an easy read for those first hearing about mindfulness and even experienced meditators who appreciate reaffirming.

The quality of reading was imperfect. With odd pauses mid sentence. But since you're supposed to be mindful and non judgmental, it shouldn't be a bother.

Great insights to pick up and spark more interest for further reading.

A great guide

You get out of it what you put in. I like that it’s all about what I can do to empower myself through accountability and reasonable action steps. I recommend to open-minded (including skeptical ones) listeners.

This is really good!

Would you consider the audio edition of Mindfulness for Beginners to be better than the print version?

Yes, for something like meditation, it's more 'real' when you can listen. Also with this book, which I have, you don't get the guided meditations except on c.d.

What about Jon Kabat-Zinn’s performance did you like?

I don't know why one reviewer said it was awful, it was fine, and he does show inflection and passion for it. He is NOT monotone.

Any additional comments?

Listen for yourself, it's a great book for beginners, which I am. Lots of good, easy to understand concepts.

Best Beginners Book for Mindfulness

I've tried many books on mindfulness and nonduality. I've tried Eckhart Tolle, all he seems to do is talk in circles, he maybe a lovely person but 3-4 years of listening to him and basically all that was learned is that I create my own suffering. I could have gotten that much from reading Carl Jung in 3 months. THIS book however there is no BS, no stringing people along in order to make more money, no confusing terminology (ala Tolle -> pain-body -> really? Tolle refuses to use the term Mindfulness causing even more confusion), SO much better than Tolle can even dream of. There is frustration that I could have read THIS book at the same time I read Tolle but didn't. I could have saved myself 4-5 years of confusion and have been living as Awareness from the "get go" with this book 4-5 years ago. Dr. Kabat-Zinn, thank you so, so very much for all the research you and your peers have done. The down-to-earth, no BS, no stringing along language and direct teaching that you command so lucidly and easily made this a breeze. You have made it simple for anyone to learn that we are the awareness and that our thoughts and everything else that is impermanent is "what comes and goes". I wish I could shake your hand, buy you a coffee or just say thank you in person. My only regrets are that I lived so far away from where you did your research that I had to wait 20ish years to even hear of mindfulness in this hillbilly hellscape and last regret was not reading this before any other book on mindfulness. If I could pick one book that all my friends and family had to read, this would be it. I help teach Tolle online and have been sending over 100k (nearing 200k people on website by January) people the message to read you first before any other author whenever I get the chance. Thank you for everything.

Fun intro to mindfulness

Nice simple, interesting and fun intro to mindfulness. Mindful meditation is very well explained. Not complicated at all.