Mind Your Life -a review

There are things that warmed me to this book before I even read it: I was pleased that the author, Meg Salter, had learned to 'do mindfulness' in everyday life -some of it rather busy and ordinary- rather than by going away on retreats. I was interested too by Meg's coaching background in relation to this, intuitively feeling that this could potentially form a helpful alliance with mindfulness in the everyday; not least because there is a feeling of kinship between that and some of the spiritual direction work I do.

The book reads very calmly and seems likely to suit real novices in the mindfulness 'game'. It doesn't take much for granted and explains fairly carefully what is involved and -importantly in my view- why. There's a good explanation of what mindfulness exercises are intended to do and this is cross-referenced implicitly by including some helpfully selected first-person pieces from a variety of ordinary practitioners. There is also a well-distilled and presented case made for the potential benefits which doesn't overpromise but rather simply presents the evidence.

For myself, as someone who leads mindfulness meditation sessions, I found different takes on familiar things and some potentially helpful exercises or ways to do them which may benefit me and those I regularly give examples to by leading them through exercises.

What I really appreciate about this book is the careful descriptions of exercises from the point of view of experience and what it may be like. It is well observed, at least it seems so from my subjectivity, and helpful in the detail at each point even though a number of exercises are the same basic thing simply run through different sensory modalities, yet the differences are captured and enable the 'translations' to be better calibrated, so to say.

There's also an interesting set of exercises on noticing the endings of things that we have in our sensorium and this is used as a further set of exercises towards transcendence. This is really intriguing and worth pursuing.

All in all, I'd say that this book is likely to be useful to people starting out in meditation and mindfulness as well as having enriching things to offer to those, like me, with some experience. It's the kind of book to be kept around as a kind of workbook and reference book, perhaps alongside a journal.

Mind Your Life on Amazon
Meg Salter’s Website
Meg Salter on Facebook
Meg Salter on Twitter

#MindYourLife

Mind Your Life: How Mindfulness Can Build Resilience & Reveal Your Extraordinary:

Just so you know: I received this book free from the author and publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I am not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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