Mindfulness In A Digital World

Welcome to a master class in mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn is regarded as "one of the finest teachers of mindfulness you'll ever encounter" (Jack Kornfield). He has been teaching the tangible benefits of meditation in the mainstream for decades. Today, millions of people around the world have taken up a formal mindfulness meditation practice as part of their everyday lives. But what is meditation anyway? And why might it be worth trying? Or nurturing further if you already have practice? Meditation Is Not What You Think answers those questions. Originally published in 2005 as part of a larger book entitled Coming to Our Senses, it has been updated with a new foreword by the author and is even more relevant today. If you're curious as to why meditation is not for the "faint-hearted," how taking some time each day to drop into awareness can actually be a radical act of love, and why paying attention is so supremely important, consider this book an invitation to learn more -- from one of the pioneers of the worldwide mindfulness movement.

Using a lens of mindfulness, this book explores how digital dependencies can displace attention and undermine attentional control, leading to experiences of stress and mindless involvement with digital technology. Using qualitative interviews with teachers and students of mindfulness programmes, the book explores the challenges and opportunities for reconciling digital interactions with mindful practice. A phenomenological analysis of participants’ digital experiences shows three different imperatives (relating to digital capabilities, hyper-reality and algorithms), that can drive unconscious forms of interaction and encourage a delegation of attentional control that draws users away from the present moment. The book concludes by exploring the implications of these (extra-conscious) imperatives for understanding digital addiction. It also provides a set of guidelines for a digital approach to mindfulness practice that can encourage beneficial relationships with digital technology into the future.

Today we need a new type of leader. As we enter the fourth industrial revolution, we need leaders with the wisdom to address new ways of working, to make positive change in the world. One of the key premises of Mindfulness-Based Leadership is that leadership is about being, not becoming. We make a bigger difference by looking within ourselves than by striving to become what we are not. While mindfulness has often been perceived as a solitary activity, this book reveals how it is applicable on a wider scale – in groups, businesses and the wider community. Mindfulness-Based Leadership shows us how to balance self and organisational goals, to erase the real and imagined internal conflicts between what we believe in and what we do in reality. Mindfulness expert Kathirasan K presents a unique 56-day course on Mindfulness-Based Leadership. Each day introduces a new facet of mindfulness – through guided introspection, acceptance and mindful practice – illuminating the ways in which we can unlock the leader within ourselves.

In Modern Mindfulness, Rohan Gunatillake argues that to lead more mindful, calm and happy lives, switching off is the last thing we need to do. Instead he gives readers ideas, principles, and techniques to bring awareness, composure, and kindness whatever they are doing. Filled with over sixty practical exercises, the author’s mobile mindfulness approach gives the benefits of meditation to even the busiest of lives. Ideas from Modern Mindfulness: - Learn to fade out instead just falling asleep - Learn to watch TV mindfully (yes, it’s possible!) - Make mobility part of mindfulness (we’re always on the move!) - Use technology for good instead of evil (no need to do a digital detox). - Learn to “whack-a-thought” and stay centered

From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. In recent years many of us have begun to look at the pluses and minuses of our online lives and to ask how we might more skillfully use the tools we’ve developed. David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the “fast world” of high tech and the “slow world” of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced, and more effective, while online. In a series of exercises carefully designed to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers watch themselves closely while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment with unplugging for a specified period. Never prescriptive, the book opens up new avenues for self-inquiry and will allow readers—in the workplace, in the classroom, and in the privacy of their homes—to make meaningful and powerful changes.

Put down that smart phone All too often, we allow digital life to overtake real life: we use devices to entertain children, and ignore our friends across the table to look at a (probably meaningless) e-mail, post, or text. Unplugged helps you disconnect and regain a healthy balance between your human relationships and technology. It includes step-by-step plans for minutes-long, hour-long, day-long, and weekend detoxing programs; interviews with celebrities like Arianna Huffington (founder of The Huffington Post) and Lewis Lapham (founder of Lapham's Quarterly) who have addressed the issue; and "mindfulness" techniques that teach you how to manage your online world in a healthy way.

This book aims to be the first comprehensive exposition of "mindful journalism"—drawn from core Buddhist ethical principles—as a fresh approach to journalism ethics. It suggests that Buddhist mindfulness strategies can be applied purposively in journalism to add clarity, fairness and equity to news decision-making and to offer a moral compass to journalists facing ethical dilemmas in their work. It comes at a time when ethical values in the news media are in crisis from a range of technological, commercial and social factors, and when both Buddhism and mindfulness have gained considerable acceptance in Western societies. Further, it aims to set out foundational principles to assist journalists dealing with vulnerable sources and recovering from traumatic assignments.

This innovative text, built on the foundations of Watson's Caring Science, demonstrates how nursing professionals can develop virtual relationships that encompass caring and understanding in professional, teaching/learning, and everyday cyber communications. It describes how caring and love can transcend distance, space, and time in our increasingly virtual world to preserve the basic fabric of humanity as we physically interact less and electronically interact more. Straightforward and concise, the text offers specific practices for teachers, students, and professionals to support caring in a digital world, along with practical examples that enable readers to envision ways to create their own caring online presence. The text provides examples of initiatives aimed at establishing ongoing intent to care on levels ranging from personal to global. Included are a variety of educational activities that rely on digital resources to facilitate interaction, collaboration, learning, and connection. Learning objectives and knowledge-check questions in each chapter reinforce information, and a corresponding MOOC and other free professional online trainings are available to readers to augment study. Key Features: Built on Watson's Caring Science and expanded through Sitzman's research Contains specific information and practical examples for faculty, students, and professionals who interact online Provides examples of online caring initiatives from personal to global Validated by seven research studies and extensive online experience of the authors