Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness Read Online Free PDF Page A

conventional psychiatric treatment
    with mindfulness training and other self-regulation tools to enhance psy-
    chological well-being across the lifespan. http://www.marc.ucla.edu and
    http://www.lidiazylowska.com.
    Foreword
    Anytime a handbook such as this one appears, we know from experience
    that it represents a kind of pause in the head-long momentum of research,
    inquiry, and application within a field; a moment in which we can individu-
    ally and collectively stop and reflect, take a breath so to speak, and consider
    where we are at. In twenty years, if it does its job, many of the details herein
    might be obsolete, or perhaps seen as na¨ıve or preliminary; even as, in the
    broad-brush strokes of the field and its inevitable links to, if not, hopefully,
    embeddedness within the dharma, many aspects of these pages and findings
    will always be germane, perhaps even timeless and wise. In twenty years,
    this book might, as most handbooks do, take on a new role as an historical
    object in its own right, a marker of a creative moment in the history of an
    emerging field, still in its infancy.
    But in this here and this now, this handbook is a marvelous vehicle for
    gathering from far and wide a range of different current views and efforts. It
    offers the contributors an opportunity to say to the world and to each other:
    “This is what we have been thinking,” “This is what we have tried,” “This
    is what we have seen,” “This is what we suspect is going on,” “This is what
    we have learned.” It is also an occasion to say with a degree of openness
    and candor: This is where we have not succeeded, or were surprised, or dis-
    appointed.” “This is what we feel is missing. “This is what we don’t know.”
    Or even, “This is what we suspect we don’t even know we don’t know.”
    Most of the presentations in this book do just that, and the authors are to be
    congratulated for their openness and courage in this regard. As a result, this
    handbook presents a rich treasure trove of important issues for contempla-
    tion, deep inquiry, and study, as well as a hearty invitation to come to it all
    with a broad and an open-minded skepticism, renewing hopefully, over and
    over again, our commitment to keep a beginner’s mind, in Suzuki Roshi’s
    immortal phrase [1].
    A volume such as this one is a potentially powerful resource for actually
    educating ourselves to the nature of possibly new dimensions embedded
    within our own work and the work of others ... orthogonal ways of thinking
    and seeing that can reveal and open up new dimensions of clinical under-
    standing and care as well as new dimensions of basic research into questions
    such as the nature of what we call mind , and how it relates to emotion,
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    xxvi
    Foreword
    thinking, consciousness, awareness, attention, perception, the brain, the
    body as a whole, and what we call “the self.”
    As so many of the contributors point out, none of us should imagine that
    we fully understand mindfulness, nor its implications in regard to these or
    other questions. Nor should we fall into the conceit that we come even close
    to fully embodying it in our lives or work, whatever that would mean, even as
    we speak of the importance of doing so. It is very important that we neither
    idealize nor reify whatever we mean when we speak of mindfulness. Really,
    we are all beginners, and when we are truthful about it, we also cannot but
    be humbled by the enormity of the undertaking. This is a very healthy frame-
    work to adopt. Happily, it is palpable in the work presented here by the many
    different authors and groups. The editor, Dr. Didonna is to be congratulated
    for taking on such an ambitious and challenging project and shepherding it
    to completion.
    It is also important to keep in mind that, as deep and broad as the author
    list is for this handbook, there are many more colleagues out there, liter-
    ally around the world, who are doing important work under the