Synopses & Reviews
Being fully in each moment leads to peace and well-being — but its harder than it sounds, especially in a world with constant demands on our time and attention. How do you practice mindfulness when youre faced with difficult coworkers, overwhelming schedules, or stubborn kids? In this book, Donald Altman brings the benefits of mindfulness down to earth and into everyday life. With fifty exercises and practices to build awareness and center attention, you will discover how to savor routine pleasures, build fulfillment in your work, enhance and heal relationships, change unhealthy habits, and connect to peace even in the midst of chaos or uncertainty.
Review
Engage your heart. Engage your mind. Engage your spirit. You have heard all this before, but now Donald Altman can show you how in
One-Minute Mindfulness. This book is chock-full of insightful nuggets that will stimulate your mind and stir your heart.”
— John Baldoni, author of Lead with Purpose
Donald Altmans One-Minute Mindfulness is loaded with wisdom and includes practical exercises for tapping into the power of the here and now. Mindfulness is much more than just a spiritual practice. It awakens us to the joy of life. In the present moment, the whole world sparkles with beauty.”
— Tobin Blake, author of The Power of Stillness
Too much of the time were running on automatic. In One-Minute Mindfulness, Donald Altman gently guides our focus of attention in directions that wake up the senses, nurture the soul, and uplift the spirit — in just sixty seconds! This book helps us make each new minute a potential encounter with life itself; the world very much needs this pragmatic spiritual book...right now.”
— John Selby, author of Quiet Your Mind and Expand This Moment
Synopsis
One-Minute Mindfulness offers a very practical means for getting steeped in the next unfolding sixty seconds of your life. It is part guidebook and part workbook for making this moment count. To that end, 50 techniques offer powerful exercise and/or practice for building awareness and centering attention. All of the awareness skills are oriented to helping readers touch this momentsomething that is much harder than it seems.
The good news is that the effort is well worth it. According to Buddhist psychology, mindfulness is a path to enlightenment. By fostering a curious, compassionate, and open-hearted awareness in each moment, we can be blessed with clarity, joy, peace, love, and wisdom, as well as reduce our own suffering and the suffering of others.
To be alive is to totally and openly participate in the simplicity and elegance of here and now. What is more, a total commitment to the present moment is as close as the tip of your nose and your fingertips. Now is where you take that all important next inhalation and experience the blessings of the body. Only in this minute can the pink dawn of the mornings light stimulate your retinas. It is in this moment that you connect with another persons touch, smile, or hug.
To integrate One-Minute Mindfulness into the various aspects of daily life, the book is divided into five parts. Part 1, One-Minute Mindfulness for Home and Play, shows how to bring awareness to your home lifefrom the early morning hours to the final moment before you go to bed. You will learn to retrain your brain to step out of automatic mode and start to find those nurturing moments that make each day worthwhile and memorable. You may be surprised to find how much joy is waiting for you in places and ways that you never considered.
Part 2, One-Minute Mindfulness for Work and Creativity, illustrates that it is not necessary to view yourself or your work mechanically in order to be productive or creative. Here is where you will learn to apply new filters of gratitude and purpose to the workplace. To engage with your livelihood in a new way can bring optimism and energy to what you doand to how you do it. The exercises in this part of the book will show readers how to move away from perfectionism and toward the process of the next minute where they will find more fulfillment and excitement while still being highly effective.
Part 3, One-Minute Mindfulness for Relationships and Love, offers the tools for healing damaged relationships sixty seconds at a time. The next minute can be like alchemy for finding the gold hidden in each interaction with another. Many awareness skills can cultivate new growth in relationships, such as allowing space for listening, for speaking with kindness, and for expressing true feelings in a safe way. Included is the importance of ritual and how to consciously create rituals that enhance relationships with special and memorable moments.
Part 4, One-Minute Mindfulness for Health and Well-being, explores how to bring clarity and deep awareness to self-care and wellness. Maintaining a sense of balanced health is essential for enjoying life in the next minute. This section shares several useful ways to calm that mind that can reduce anxiety, stress, emotional eating, and negative thinking. Because the body is a container for contacting the next sixty seconds, you will also explore an ancient practice found in many traditions that offers a new and affirming way to directly sense and inhabit the body inhabiting your body.
Part 5, One-Minute Mindfulness for Nature, Spirituality, and Contemplation, touches at the heart of what is nourishing and uplifting. By recapturing child-like curiosity for all things natural and untamed, you can recharge and reinvigorate yourself in the very next moment. Have you ever attuned yourself to natures rhythms or deepen your spiritual path with contemplation? This section demonstrates that no matter where you work or live, there is always a way to find meaning and inner emotional and spiritual riches in the one-mindful minute that awaits you.
For many, the journey into One-Minute Mindfulness will be like coming home to a comfortable, safe place. For others, living in the next one minute will connect them with a sense of hope and optimism. For some, focusing on the next sixty seconds may bring initial anxiety, and eventually a deep sense of relief and peace in relishing the stillness that is all aroundeven in the midst of chaos. Awakening to this moment is, after all, an art that each individual will express in a personal way. However you decide to shape your life by sculpting your attention and awareness, and One-Minute Mindfulness gives readers powerful and satisfying options for how to live their lives one liberating minute at a time.
Synopsis
Being fully in the moment is harder than it sounds, as anyone who has tried not to think about the past or future can attest. Yet the rewards are so great that in Buddhist psychology, it is a path to enlightenment. But what about the mundane thorns in that path, things like difficult coworkers, parenting challenges, and bad habits? Donald Altman (Americas Mindfulness Coach) brings the benefits of present-moment living down to earth and into everyday life. These practices build awareness and center attention in ways that free readers to savor routine pleasures, build fulfillment in work, enhance and heal relationships, reduce stress, change unhealthy behaviors, and connect to peace even in the midst of chaos or uncertainty. Simple yet profound, Altmans techniques illuminate an everyday path to enlightenment; they show how to experience "the power of now."
About the Author
Donald Altman, MA, LPC, is a practicing psychotherapist, former Buddhist monk, award-winning writer, and board member of The Center for Mindful Eating. The author of Meal by Meal and other books, he teaches at Lewis and Clark College Graduate School and in the interpersonal neurobiology program at Portland State University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.