Richard W. Sears - Mindfulness: Living Through Challenges and Enriching Your Life In This Moment

Mindfulness is a powerful tool for healing and growth. While timeless in its application, the medical community has only recently been captivated by the research demonstrating its beneficial effects. We have seen the work of Dr. Sears transform the lives of our patients, and are very pleased to see this type of information now become more widely available. Dr. Sears provides both inspiration and practical suggestions for dealing with serious challenges and for living a more fulfilling life.

Steve Amoils, MD, and Sandi Amoils, MD, co-medical directors of the Alliance Institute for Integrative Medicine, Cincinnati, Ohio, co-authors of Get Well & Stay Well: Optimal Health through Transformational Medicine

Thank you Dr. Sears for a clear, concise, practical guide for weaving mindfulness seamlessly into your everyday life! Mindfulness is a simple concept but complex to describe and apply. Dr. Sears, a knowledgeable expert, guides by example with thoughtful and poignant stories from his personal and professional life in his new book, Mindfulness: Living through Challenges and Enriching Your Life in This Moment.

Susan Albers, PsyD, psychologist and author of Eating Mindfully

This book is a practical guide to developing a better understanding of mindfulness and will be useful for anyone interested in discovering how this practice can help us lead wiser lives. Dr. Sears has written about mindfulness in a way that clearly shows how relevant this practice is for exploring and engaging in the joys and challenges of everyday life.

Susan L. Woods, MSW, LICSW, MBSR/MBCT Professional Educator and Mindfulness Meditation Teacher

Mindfulness: Living through Challenges and Enriching Your Life in This Moment is a wonderful new book contributing an essential and most needed fresh new context for dealing with life's challenges, even when things go terribly wrong. It provides the reader with excellent tools and new scientific pathways, with cutting-edge neuroscience and mindfulness training. It is a wonderful, enriching guidebook for charting how to build the necessary new muscles for bringing an evenness to one's mind, self, relationships, and life.

Ronald A. Alexander, PhD, author of Wise Mind, Open Mind, Executive Director of the OpenMind Training Institute in Santa Monica, CA

In a world where mindfulness teachings are now plentiful, Dr. Richard Sears offers a fresh perspective that is sure to interest and enliven you. Dr. Sears integrates a wide range of engaging personal and professional stories, mindfulness practices, and kernels of wisdom that have the potential to transform your practice and leave you with a deeper understanding and appreciation of yourself and others.

Ryan M. Niemiec, PsyD, author of Mindfulness and Character Strengths: A Practical Guide to Flourishing, Education Director of the VIA Institute on Character

This is a clear, insightful book, showing how mindfulness can help us find our way through difficulties as well as how mindfulness can enrich our lives. Dr. Sears' experiences make the book personal and readable.

Thomas Bien, PhD, author of The Buddha's Way of Happiness

MINDFULNESS is a tuning. Sears draws the reader into the focused space of Clear Mind and illumines the action-path. MINDFULNESS harmonizes one's own being.

Michael D. Fitzpatrick, world-renowned cellist and longtime musical collaborator with His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama

This edition first published 2014

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sears, Richard W.

Mindfulness : living through challenges and enriching your life in this moment / Richard W.Sears.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-59757-6 (cloth)ISBN 978-1-118-59758-3 (pbk.) 1. Mind and body. I.Title.

BF151.S43 2014

158.1dc23

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Mitja Mladkovic / iStockphoto

To my daughters, Ashlyn and Caylee, my favorite mindfulness teachers

Richard W. Sears, PsyD, MBA, ABPP, DMin, is a board-certified clinical psychologist, speaker, and consultant. He is a core faculty member of the PsyD Program in Clinical Psychology at Union Institute & University, where he is the Director of the Center for Clinical Mindfulness & Meditation. He is also Volunteer Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Neurosciences at the UC College of Medicine, Clinical Assistant Professor at Wright State University School of Professional Psychology, and clinical/research faculty at the University of Cincinnati Center for Integrative Health and Wellness. He runs a private psychology practice in Cincinnati and conducts mindfulness groups at the Alliance Institute for Integrative Medicine. He is a psychologist contractor with the Cincinnati VA Medical Center, and is also working with the UC Center for Integrative Health and Wellness and Cincinnati Children's Hospital on projects involving mindfulness.

Dr. Sears is author of Mindfulness in Clinical Practice (with Dennis Tirch and Robert Denton), Consultation Skills for Mental Health Professionals