how to use your Guided Mindfulness Meditation Practice CDs

As with the Series 1 and Series 2 CDs, these Series 3 guided meditations are tools that invite and reward
something more than a casual listening. They are designed to be used on a regular basis to help you
develop and deepen a daily meditation practice and thus to strengthen the qualities of mindfulness
(moment to moment non-judgmental awareness), compassion, including self-compassion, and
lovingkindness in every aspect of your life. The programs vary from 20 to 47 minutes in length. The real
challenge, no matter which band you choose to work with at any given time, is to step out of time
altogether and into the timelessness of the present moment. All bands include stretches of silence of
varying lengths for being in relationship to your own experience moment by moment, based on the
guidance you are receiving during the periods when I am talking. But again, the real challenge is to make
the entire time, even during the guidance, into your own direct experience by dropping "underneath"
the words to what, where and how they are inviting you to pay attention. In this way, the whole program
becomes an occasion to cultivate mindfulness, and not just the periods of silence. The suggestion is to
follow the instructions as best you can without getting caught in them, to perceive and open to what and
where they are pointing, rather than falling into thinking about them in a cerebral and conceptual way,
or trying to figure out what they are for, or what you are supposed to be feeling. Whatever you are
feeling (and thinking) is what you are "supposed" to be feeling and thinking. The question is, can you be
aware of it, and take up at least temporary residency in that awareness?

These programs develop the array of mindfulness practices described in Coming to Our Senses,
beginning with mindfulness of breathing and mindfulness of body sensations on CD #1. We learn
through practicing together to settle into and rest in awareness itself as the breath and other body
sensations are "featured" within the field of awareness, almost as if we were "awarenessing" without
doing anything, like a mirror, simply including what comes within its scope, rather than being an
observer of something separate from ourselves. Resting in awareness, and being the knowing that
awareness is without any forcing become the unifying themes of all these guided meditations, even
though they feature different aspects of the interior and outer landscapes of our' experience. Through
regular practice we become more and more familiar and intimate with these landscapes and what
unfolds from moment to moment within them. In the process, we become more intimate with the
"domain of being," that aspect of what and who we are that is far bigger and more magnificent that the
stories we tell ourselves about what and who we are. CD # 1 includes a band (c) with less guidance and
more silence, which you may find useful once you get the hang of resting in awareness from the two
bands with more instruction.

CD #2 features the cultivation of mindfulness via the experience of hearing whatever is coming to the
ears, attending to the soundscape, and to the experiencing of thoughts and emotions unfolding from
moment to moment, what you might call the mindscape. This CD also includes a lying down meditation
in the yogic corpse pose, specifically designed to help us learn how to cultivate mindfulness while lying
down, to actually learn how to fall awake to the full range of our present moment experience rather
than, as so often happens when practicing while lying down, inadvertently falling asleep.
CD #3 features the practice of choiceless awareness, in which we let go of selecting specific objects of
attention to feature in the field of awareness and to be mindful of, and instead, invite our awareness to
be so spacious that it includes anything and everything that might arise in any present moment, in the
nowscape, just as a mirror does not choose what to reflect but reflects whatever comes before it. This
CD also features instructions for mindful walking meditation, which can be practiced on your own once
you have listened to the instructions.

CD #4 features an extended lovingkindness meditation, directed both inwardly and outwardly, in which
we cultivate intimacy with the landscape of our own heart, the heartscape, and open to its capacity for
deep nurturance, empathy, and healing for ourselves and for others. It also includes a guided meditation
on how to bring mindfulness effortlessly into every aspect of everyday life, into what you might call the
lifescape. When all is said and done, perhaps this is the most profound and most important of all these
practices, and vvill make the most difference in your life and the lives of those you love.

Ultimately, when you have made the practice your own, you can practice in silence and stillness, and in
daily life, without using these CDs any more, or perhaps using them on an occasional basis as
appropriate to fine tune your practice and to support and enhance the daily discipline. But it is also fine
to keep on using them when you practice, as many people do.

CAUTION

Do not use these programs while driving!

This set of CDs is meant to be used in conjunction with Dr. Kabat-Zinn's book, _Coming to Our Senses:
Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness_, Hyperion, NY, 2005 For additional Guided
Mindfulness Meditation Practice CDs, see Series 1 and Series 2.

To purchase additional copies of this program, or for more information or to communicate with us,
please see www.mindfulnesstapes.com. www.mindfulnesscds.com or write:

Stress Reduction Tapes and CDs P.O. Box 547, Lexington, MA 02420.

Produced and directed by John Wager, Galileo Multimedia, Saratoga Springs, NY