With a new book out this year, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness [1], a brand-new CD set to complement the book, and a January workshop [2] at Mount Madonna Center [3] through Omega Institute [4], it’s a wonder mindfulness guru John Kabat-Zinn finds time to watch a single thought drift by.

Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Stress Reduction Clinic [5] and a college professor and a long time meditator. Mindfulness [6], the meditation method he teaches, has roots in Buddhism’s Vipassana [7], a practice meaning, roughly, “clear-seeing,” in which the meditator becomes aware of her thoughts in the present moment, witnessing them calmly and non-judgementally. It’s also sometimes known as “insight” meditation.

The latest CD set [8] (there are two others), a four-part course in mindfulness released this fall, cultivates awareness in a variety of ways. In part one he focuses on inhaling and exhaling (the “breathscape”) and scanning the body (the “bodyscape”). In part two we listen to ambient sound (the “soundscape”) and tune into our thoughts and feelings (the “mindscape”). There’s also a lying down meditation in which we learn to “fall awake” to the present. In the third CD, we bathe in the “nowscape” and try mindful walking meditation. The final disc features a loving kindness meditation, in which we aim love at ourselves and others to heal the “heartscape.”

Studies have shown that mindfulness can help reduce stress, lessen pain and increase our ability to cope. I find Kabat-Zinn’s work––especially his classic Wherever You Go, There You Are [9] , to be exceptionally soothing and reality-affirming. If the CD doesn’t get you there, consider signing up for the waiting list for his workshop [10] in January.