Mindfulness without the Bells and Beads

Foreword by Tal Goldhamer ix Introduction: A Staggered Start xi Part I My Journey With Mindfulness And An Introduction To The Fundamentals 1 Chapter 1 The Power of the Trained Mind 3 Three Skills That Changed My Life 5 The Three Skills Applied 9 Chapter 2 Why Mindfulness Now? 19 Chapter 3 (Some of) The Science of Mindfulness 31 Mindfulness Changes the Brain 32 Mindfulness Reduces the Size and Activity in the Amygdala 33 Mindfulness Increases Activity in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) 33 Mindfulness Increases the Size of Your Hippocampus 34 Mindfulness Increases the Size of Your Insula 35 Chapter 4 How Do Our Brains Work outside a Brain Scanner? 38 Chapter 5 Finding the Signal in the Mindfulness Noise 46 Chapter 6 The Fundamentals of Cultivating Mindfulness 54 Focused Attention Meditation 56 Open Awareness Meditation 65 Chapter 7 Your Journey 67 Part II Diving Deeper: An 8-Week Journey To Exceptional Performance, Leadership, and Well-Being 71 Chapter 8 Introducing the Course 73 Motivation 75 What Do You Need to Give Up? 75 Establishing the Practice 76 Dealing with the Excuse-Making, Judging, and Controlling Mind 78 Chapter 9 Week 1: No Trivial Moments: Moving from Autopilot to Aware 80 Waking Up to Your Life 84 Mindfulness and the Body 87 Chapter 10 Week 2: The Mindset You Bring to Your Experience Matters 95 Nonjudging 97 Patience 98 Beginner's Mind 99 Trust 99 Non-striving 100 Acceptance 101 Letting Go and Letting Be 101 Gratitude and Generosity 102 Shifting from Doing to Non-Doing, aka Being 103 Common Themes, Challenges, and Questions 104 Chapter 11 Week 3: Do You Have the Story or Does the Story Have You? 108 Mindfulness of Sounds, Thoughts, and Emotions 113 Common Themes, Challenges, and Questions 117 Chapter 12 Week 4: The Saber-Toothed Tiger of the Modern World: Everything 121 Stress and Our Stress Response 123 Common Themes, Challenges, and Questions 127 Chapter 13 Week 5: Delving into the Difficult 130 Responding versus Reacting 132 Common Themes,

CLIF SMITH, EY's (Ernst & Young LLP)Americas Mindfulness Leader and Global Mindfulness Network Leader, built EY's Mindful Leadership program, delivering practical training to tens of thousands of EY and client personnel with measurable impact on leadership, performance, and well-being. Raised by a single mother of three, Clif grew up on welfare and lived in government subsidized housing for much of his childhood. He went from having no prospects, being flat broke, and barely graduating high school to learning Chinese, becoming a diplomat, and putting himself through Harvard using the techniques he teaches in this book. Clif's personal journey from poverty to prosperity inspires his work as an author, executive coach, mindfulness teacher, and keynote speaker. Readers can follow his work at clifsmith.com.