Do you feel like your life is operating on warp speed?
Are you so caught up in all of your daily activities that you end the day feeling like you don’t have a clue as to what really went on?
With the modern world’s emphasis and value on speed, fast, and now, it’s hard to get through a day without feeling constant pressure, strain, and a “Hurry up!” attitude. In fact, it seems like most people are more interested in how fast things happen rather than how well things get done. Living in the present is almost an absurd attempt with the all of the stresses and strains we’ve let society put on us.
In this first of its kind book, Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness, Susan Smalley and Diana Winston take the reader on an easy-to-read lesson into the art and science (just as the title states) of mindfulness and how it can transform your life. If you’ve ever wanted to discover living in the present and how empowering and freeing it can be, Fully Present teaches you how.
Understanding Mindfulness and Living in the Present
Mindfulness is the art of being aware and paying attention with openness and curiosity to the present moment. Mindfulness can transform your life in ways you can only imagine.
Fully Present begins with the authors’ own personal accounts of their experiences with mindfulness. Susan Smalley tells the reader how despite her seemingly happy dream life as a mother of three, successful professor, and wife of a successful Hollywood entrepreneur, she was really feeling angry, resentful, and out-of-touch inside. Living in the present didn’t exist. Smalley explains how her life transformed into one of connectedness, deep peace, and true compassion for others as well as herself. She learned to live in the present and appreciate it for all it is and all it isn’t.
As for co-author Diana Winston, she explains to the reader how she came upon mindfulness, living in the present, and how vital it is to having a truly happy life. As a meandering new college graduate, Winston took to traveling to India. During this journey she became interested in many of their teachings—including mindfulness—from Buddhist teachings. She almost immediately became immersed in this way of living and of thinking, which included many mediation retreats and even a year spent as a Buddhist nun in Burma.
These two authors beautifully weave a tale of living in the present that encompasses both their personal stories as well as science and art. Fully Present offers a baseline view of what mindfulness is and how to make it part of your life from both the scientific and art perspective. If you feel rushed, out-of-touch with yourself and others, angry, upset, depressed or just feel you aren’t living in the present, Fully Present provides the tools and insight to set you free.
A Perfect Merge of Science and Art
Fully Present offers both an understanding in the scientific realm of what living in the present and mindfulness actually are, as well as the art of mindfulness. Not only does the reader come to understand with the mind what mindfulness is, you’ll also learn how to make this mindfulness part of your life on a daily basis.
Mindfulness is helpful to any person regardless of who you are, where you’ve been, or where you want to go. If you want to live life in deep inner peace and feel contentment that is unwavering, Fully Present is the tool to take you there.
Both Susan Smalley and Diana Winston work at the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) at UCLA—which was founded by Susan Smalley.
To read other 5 Star Reviews, visit Amazon > Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness
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