Books: Power of Presence Lesson 2

A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness: The Comprehensive Session-by-Session Program for Mental Health Professionals and Health Care Providers

– Christiane Wolf MD PhD, J. Greg Serpa PhD

Mindfulness-based interventions have exploded in popularity due to their success in treating everything from everyday stress to more serious mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This breakthrough book provides professionals with a comprehensive, session-by-session guide to teaching mindfulness, complete with the scripts and training materials needed to teach introductory mindfulness in a wide variety of settings, despite theoretical background.

Mindfulness—once an ancient practice honed in Buddhist monasteries—is now a mainstream, evidence-based, secular intervention employed by trained health and mental health professionals worldwide. The rapid spread of mindfulness increasingly involves psychologists, physicians, social workers, therapists, counselors, spiritual advisers, life coaches, and education professionals trained in their respective disciplines. Additionally, research continues to show that mindfulness is an effective treatment for anxiety, depression, stress, pain relief, and many other illnesses.

If you are a professional interested in teaching mindfulness, this book will provide you with everything you need to get started right away. The introductory, six-week protocol outlined in this book is easy-to-use, and can be implemented in a variety of settings, ranging from an outpatient mental health clinic to an inpatient oncology clinic, from a substance abuse recovery program to educational settings.

In addition, this book will tell you what to bring to each class; provides outlines for each session; offers scripts to help you differentiate the weekly meditative practices; and provides invaluable resources for further study and professional development. If you’re looking to integrate mindfulness into your professional work, this is your go-to guide.

The Mindfulness Toolbox: 50 Practical Tips, Tools & Handouts for Anxiety, Depression, Stress & Pain 

– Donald Altman

A Complete Guide to Mindfulness Tools for Clinicians

At last, an authoritative book filled with mindfulness tools that deliver an essential set of engaging, practical strategies along with key research and evidence-based information. The awareness boosting methods in this guidebook offer participants a means of reappraising and observing negative and anxious thoughts, habits, pain, and stress in fresh ways that produce new insight, positive change, and a sense of hope.

Featuring over 40 easy to use, reproducible handouts and expertly crafted, guided scripts—such as working with the breath, overcoming depression with here and now pleasantness, calming the anxious mind with sense grounding, expanding a client’s strength narrative, the stress pause S-T-O-P technique, and meditations for peace, acceptance, and re-envisioning pain—this book is ideal for clinicians wanting to integrate mindfulness into their work.

PRAISE FOR THE MINDFULNESS TOOLBOX:
“The ceaselessly creative Donald Altman, in his never-ending quest to make mindfulness practice accessible to anyone motivated to learn it, has once again broached new ground in elaborating simple, useful techniques for applying mindfulness in everyday life. The Mindfulness Toolbox is a veritable wonderland of user-friendly implements of mindfulness practice, all laid out to maximize a new (and maybe not-so-new) practitioner’s ability to effectively use applied mindfulness. The Mindfulness Toolbox will be a tremendous aid and benefit to all people who practice and teach mindfulness. – Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., author of Brain Lock and You Are Not Your Brain

Donald Altman’s newest book, The Mindfulness Toolbox, is an important work for how it will reduce emotional and physical suffering in the world. Highly practical and well-organized, the book tackles the key areas of stress, anxiety, depression, and pain. The evident care and attention given to the guided scripts and handouts will help build the therapeutic relationship with patients—all the while guiding them gently and persistently toward a more expansive awareness and a deepened sense of self-compassion and self-acceptance. I highly recommend it. – Christopher Kennedy Lawford, best-selling author, Symptoms of Withdrawal, Recover to Live, and What Addicts Know

In an era of high popularity for anything labeled with the word “Mindfulness”, Altman has written a user-friendly and practical book that is as fun to read as it is helpful. He provides great handouts and suggestions for how to describe mindfulness to clients so that they can gain peace of mind when feeling anxious and optimism in the face of depression. Highly recommended. – John B. Arden, Ph.D., author of The Brain Bible

Inside-Out Healing: Transforming Your Life Through the Power of Presence 

–Richard Moss

Join world-renowned consciousness teacher and healer Richard Moss in an exploration of the power of presence in your life. Presence is associated with feelings of aliveness, connection, creativity, satisfaction, and flow. It is presence that frequently is the “difference that makes the difference” in your ability to enjoy life, heal emotional wounds, experience intimacy, and support the growth and transformation of others. This inspiring book presents powerful principles, tools, and practices for transforming self-limiting patterns of thought and behaviors and for staying in the present even in the midst of very difficult feelings. Drawing from individual counseling sessions and utilizing practical exercises, Dr. Moss demonstrates how awareness and presence can be applied to support change in yourself and others, thereby creating a solid bridge between knowing and doing. Inside-Out Healing will help you: Become more available and fully connected with yourself and others Build a solid foundation for healing in all areas of your life; Be better able to handle difficult situations with more elegance and ease; Improve both personal and professional relationships; Expand your capacity for genuine empathy and compassion; Experience more richness, gratitude, and fulfillment in your life and relationships Are you ready for a shift of consciousness that liberates your mind and heart? Whether you’re motivated by illness, relationship unhappiness, or the desire to excel and experience life to the fullest, this book holds the keys.

Earthing

– Clinton Ober, Dr Stephen T Sinatra M.D., Martin Zucker

‘Earthing’ introduces readers to the landmark discovery that living in contact with the Earth’s natural surface charge – being grounded – naturally discharges and prevents chronic inflammation in the body. This effect has massive health implications because of the well-established link between chronic inflammation and all chronic diseases, including the diseases of ageing and the ageing process itself.

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

– Jon Kabat-Zinn

“[The] journey toward health and sanity is nothing less than an invitation to wake up to the fullness of our lives as if they actually mattered . . .” –Jon Kabat-Zinn, from the Introduction

Ten years ago, Jon Kabat-Zinn changed the way we thought about awareness in everyday life with his now-classic introduction to mindfulness, Wherever You Go, There You Are. Now, with Coming to Our Senses, he provides the definitive book for our time on the connection between mindfulness and our physical and spiritual wellbeing. With scientific rigor, poetic deftness, and compelling personal stories, Jon Kabat-Zinn examines the mysteries and marvels of our minds and bodies, describing simple, intuitive ways in which we can come to a deeper understanding, through our senses, of our beauty, our genius, and our life path in a complicated, fear-driven, and rapidly changing world.

In each of the book’s eight parts, Jon Kabat-Zinn explores another facet of the great adventure of healing ourselves–and our world–through mindful awareness, with a focus on the “sensescapes” of our lives and how a more intentional awareness of the senses, including the human mind itself, allows us to live more fully and more authentically. By “coming to our senses”–both literally and metaphorically by opening to our innate connectedness with the world around us and within us–we can become more compassionate, more embodied, more aware human beings, and in the process, contribute to the healing of the body politic as well as our own lives in ways both little and big.