Books, Holiday, Recommended, Seasonal
Reading Rituals
This year, many people will have been deprived of their usual way of celebrating Christmas. Whether this is normally ‘tContinue reading
Braving 2020
When I wrote my first post of the year on compassion, little did I know how important that would turn…
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, Resmaa Menakem (2017)
While the author is clear that he is speaking specifically to American experience, this book is much more widely applicable in terms of understanding white supremacy. Menakem reframes this as white body supremacy and makes the case for healing bodies – all bodies, before real progress can take place. The…
Oneness With All Life: Awaken to a Life or Purpose and Presence, Eckhart Tolle (2008)
This book of quotations from Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth (2005) is really designed for those already familiar with the author's work. In his introduction, he recommends reading no more than one chapter at a time, at most, stopping to re-read whatever resonates and allowing the words to sink in.…
Mindfulness for Health: A Practical Guide to Relieving Pain, Reducing Stress and Restoring Well-Being, Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman (2013)
This book offers mindfulness practices specifically for those dealing with chronic pain, injury or any other health conditions that feel limiting. Both authors suffered significant injuries themselves and are no strangers to pain. A key element of mindfulness for pain is understanding primary and secondary pain, where primary pain is…
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Mark Williams and Danny Penman (2011)
This is one of the best introductions to mindfulness for anyone wishing to get started with mindfulness practice on their own. This eight-week guide is based on the MBCT programme. There’s enough theory here to be motivating and inspiring, but not enough to get bogged down in. This is a…
New Year’s Resolutions and Self-compassion
It’s that time of year when tradition might be prompting us to think about new year’s resolutions, and there is…
The House Without Windows, Barbara Newhall Follett (1927)
The charm of this book lies, at least partly, in the author's personal history. Barbara Newhall Follett's original manuscript was finished just a few days after her ninth birthday, only to be lost in a fire. The version that is published is her painstaking reconstruction completed aged twelve. To be…
The Salt Path, Raynor Winn (2018)
And ahead of us? The walk, only the walk. The Salt Path charts the journey of Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth, from the point at which they lose everything. A poor investment and a naïve trust in justice over legal process leads to them being forced from their home…
Full Catastrophe Living: How to Cope with Stress, Pain and Illness Using Mindfulness Meditation, Jon Kabat-Zinn (rev edn 2013)
In this book, Kabat-Zinn describes the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme that he originally developed in 1979 and that was (and still is) taught at the Stress Reduction Clinic in Massachusetts. Kabat-Zinn’s incredible contribution to participatory medicine in the form of MBSR is now world-famous, and has led to a…
Sitting with difficulty in Twelfth Night (1601-2)
Sitting with difficult feelings is perhaps the most challenging task of mindfulness. It’s natural to feel aversion to painful thoughts,…