Joel Levey - The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration, and Meditation: Ancient Skills for Modern Minds

PRAISE FOR The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration, and Meditation

An excellent primer for waking up. Practice these techniques and your life will change.Richard Strozzi Heckler, Ph.D., author of Anatomy of Change

By far the best plain-language and practical book on mental training. Mind-Body Wellness

What a beautiful book! We need so much in our world to focus on how to be instead of how to do , and [this book] shows the way.Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words

Skillfully weaves together contemporary insights into the value of and need for meditation in our lives with many extremely evocative suggestions for different ways to practice.Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Wherever You Go, There You Are

A thoroughly useful, practical guidebook offering a distillation of many years of study and practice. Yoga and Health

This is a wonderful example of learning to change the world from the inside out; of being in the world but not of the world; of strengthening our inner life and consequently enhancing the quality of our outer work. I can think of no more important reading for the caring and intelligent business leader.Charles Terry, Director of Philanthropy, The Rockefeller Foundation

[The Leveys] work has great prospects for bringing the inner sciences to a very wide section of people who may not under ordinary circumstances come into contact with the inner technologies of mental development and transformation.His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I urge you not only to read this book, but even more, to live with it and see how it softly strikes into your mind, your heart and your ability to put your talents to work.William C. Miller, author The Creative Edge

The methods included here work wonders. As a satisfied user of so many of them, I affirm that they truly deepen the appreciation of life.Ram Dass, author of Still Here

A useful guide full of practical strategies for making the personal changes necessary for making lasting and beneficial social and organizational changes.Tom Campbell, M.C.P, Executive Assistant to the Washington State Speaker of the House

Many of the current problems in business and society are the result of limited thinking. Our rapidly evolving, interdependent world requires that we learn to think in a new and integrated way. This book helps open the door.Michael Lindfield, Internal Organization Development Consultant for Boeing Aerospace, and author of Dance of Change

With clarity, compassion and remarkable insight, the Leveys offer the reader dozens of delightful entrees into the world of meditation. They free meditation from the commonly held notions of rigidity, and set it soaringfresh and joyfulinto the heart and mind of the modern-day spiritual explorer.Peg Jordan, Author of The Fitness Instinct

There is no question that relaxation and meditation are desperately needed in todays stressful society. The Leveys book wisely emphasizes the need for relaxation and concentration exercises as skills needed to practice good meditation. Numerous good techniques are presented in this book.C. Norm Shealy, M.D., Ph.D., Coauthor, The Creation of Health, and Founder and Medical Director of Shealy Pain & Health Rehabilitation Institute

Practical and down-to-earth, this is a remarkable and comprehensive workbook for mastering the stress of life. NAPRA ReVIEW

In this beautiful book, the Leveys condense two decades of study, experience, and teaching in the art of self mastery. Hopefully everyone who reads this book will make room in their life for the practices and growth program that it illustrates.Dr. Elmer Green, Coauthor of Beyond Biofeedback, Director of the Voluntary Control Program, Menninger Foundation

The Leveys are making inner quality control technology available to the West.Bill Veltrop, Founder, International Center for Organization Design

What we are striving for, whether we know it our not, is to make our life a work of art, so that every move we make is both appropriate and contributes to our increasing satisfaction and mastery. This unique book opens the possibility for doing that. The Leveys provide the most up-to-date guide to living yet base it on techniques that have stood the test of centuries, even millennia.Michael Ray, Ph.D., Coauthor, Creativity in Business, and Professor of Creativity and Innovation and of Marketing, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

To our many kind teachers and to the awakening of wisdom within us all

Y ou are holding in your hands a life rafta generous, life-saving gift from Joel and Michelle Levey. In our daily lives, we all are forced to navigate turbulent seas. There doesnt seem to be any firm ground in sight, and at any moment in our day, we can be abruptly knocked off course from our plans and our ideals. But as the seas mount in strength and the winds of change become more fierce, there are ways to feel grounded and peaceful. Many of these ways are offered in this book; they are a strong, and very practical life raft.

Its important to realize how our modern techniques of goal-setting and planningthe techniques we learned to employ as we wrestle the world into the shape we wanteddont work in turbulence. In fact, they do just the opposite of what we might hope: as our plans get tossed by the winds of change, we become more stressed, less effective. We dont know how to navigate in uncertainty and ambiguity.

And yet, this knowledge exists. For millennia, many great teachers and people struggled with their own fears, and they developed practices and ways of being that are absolutely relevant to our present situation.

This is the great gift of this book. It is a gentle and generous offering of practices and perspectives that have helped people find peace for thousands of years. But in receiving this gift, you must offer a gift to yourself: the gift of time time to pause, to reflect, to practice whats offered here. For most of us, time seems to have disappeared. This is the Age of Frenetic Activity. Our lives are over-committed, our childrens schedules match our own in craziness, and we feel pressure to be available 24/7. Most of us resent this hyper-activity and, if we ever have time to sit quietly, we wonder about the meaning of these frenetic lives were leading. Is all this activity leading somewhere worthwhile? At the end of our lives, will we feel satisfied with what weve accomplished? Will we have contributed to the greater good? Are we becoming more effective in our lives and more helpful, or are we just becoming increasingly and senselessly more busy?

Joel and Michelle provide expert guidance in three types of practices that have generally disappeared from our busy lives. We are guided from dynamic relaxation, to concentration, to meditation. My own experience with these practices is that once I experienced relaxation, I was eager to go to a deeper, quieter place. These exercises provide so much benefit that you only need to try one or two, and then your whole being will yearn for the next level of peace. When I do any one of these practices, Im startled to realize what Ive been letting pass me bysilence, breathing, reflection, calmness, centeredness.

We are each responsible for cultivating peace; no one will do it for us. The demands of the worldof work and familyconstantly call me away from peace. It doesnt take much to pull me off centerit can be the first phone call of the morning, an angry driver on my way to work, a news report, a crying child. But having tasted peace, I now notice what it feels like to be pulled off balance. I notice the way it feels to be anxious, resentful, angry, or fearful. I feel the contrast between these emotions and inner peace; I hear it in my voice, feel it in my energy, see it in my thoughts. Having learned how to cultivate peace, I know now that I can consciously choose for peace, in any situation, at any time. But not if I havent taken time to do some of the practices that lead me into peace.