Why Can't I Meditate?: how to get your mindfulness practice on track

Description

There are now thousands of students completing Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and other mindfulness programmes around the world. However, on completion many will struggle to continue or will stop, with the intention of starting again in the future. WHY CAN'T I MEDITATE? addresses this problem. It combines accounts by new meditators of their struggles, and successes, with insights from a wide variety of the most accomplished teachers, representing every school of mindfulness teaching. It identifies, investigates and offers many practical solutions to get our mindfulness unstuck and firmly establish a regular practice. This is a book for anyone who has sat on their meditation seat or cushion and wondered whether they should go on. Contributors include: Stephen Batchelor, Rebecca Crane, Christina Feldman, Geshe Tashi Tsering, Choji Lama Rabsang, Willem Kuyken, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Franklin Sills, Philippa Vick and Martin Wells.

Nigel Wellings is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who works within a contemplative perspective. Initially training with the Association for Group and Individual Psychotherapy (AGIP) he later became a member of the Association for Independent Psychotherapists (AIP) and has also served as Director of Training at the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology. He is a founder member of the Forum for Contemplative Studies and a facilitator on the Bath and Bristol Mindfulness Courses. He is the author, with Elizabeth Wilde-McCormick, of several books, including Nothing to Lose: Psychotherapy, Buddhism and Living Life.

I am very happy to finally see someone writing about why people can't meditate. I've known Nigel for many years; he's a sincere practitioner who has been thinking about how to untangle the blockages in the human mind for some time now. We had a lot of discussion together about the ideas presented here and I think his book will be very useful. It's helpful to know the underlying causes of meditation problems - this book shows how to work with them. - Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Author, 'Open Heart, Open Mind' People learning mindfulness often ask, "I know mindfulness practice is helpful, how can I best establish my meditation practice?" Now I can recommend this wonderful book. Nigel Wellings offers insightful, compassionate and eminently practical guidance based on his extensive personal experience as a teacher and practitioner and interviews with some of the most accomplished mindfulness teachers in the field. - Willem Kuyken, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Exeter .... insightful and helpful.... I really like your discussion of the different selves within us and how one can be in conflict with another and that people who are fearful of unknown parts of themselves, their shadow, are going to struggle with compassion, becoming caught up in conflicts and struggles in contrast to observing them as 'nature's mind at work'. - Professor Paul Gilbert, author of The Compassionate Mind This book is easy to read and accessible. The format of its clear chapters addressing particular points and its many accounts from personal practice makes it very digestible. It is delivered with a lightness of touch and some humour. It helps to normalise and universalise the processes that seem so personal and which give rise to so much internal judging. - Rebecca Crane, Director, Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice, Bangor University