The (40th) year of living mindfully

Edited by Jill Wright, 27 May 2014

I think we must be in the middle of a mindfulness explosion right now. Over the past few months I've been coming across articles in everything from Harvard Business Review to Time magazine, the New York Times, The Times of London etc., etc. about a practice that can achieve extraordinary results in everything from alleviating anxiety to improving clarity of thinking.

Huffington Post declares that 2014 is "the year of living mindfully", and it might very well be right.

For a comprehensive list of links to many of these articles, you might head to This Mindful Life, run by a British teacher, Becky Ridgewell.

The text book she uses is Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Professor Mark Williams (Oxford University) and journalist Danny Penman. It's definitely worth reading, and the supporting web site has some handy mindfulness resources.

I also had a reminder today, as I read an article about Harvard University health psychologist Dr Ann Webster, who has been incorporating mindfulness techniques in her practice for years.

She pointed out that this "modern" mindfulness movement has actually been around for quite some time.

Dr Webster did an internship with Herbert Benson, the Harvard cardiologist and mind-body expert whose book, The Relaxation Response, came out in 1975. We're therefore on the verge of 40 years of mindfulness (not counting all those centuries of meditation practice from which it all sprang).

If all the articles and the resources don't serve to get you started in mindfulness practice, you might like to sign up for our own mindfulness class, in June.

Tags

• mindfulness
• psychology
• psychology apps