The following is an excerpt from book 2 of Meditation Is Not What You Think: Mindfulness and Why It Is So Important, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, published by Hachette Books. Copyright © 2018 by Jon Kabat-Zinn. "The most important thing to keep in mind when practicing meditation lying down is that, as with every aspect of the cultivation and embodiment of mindfulness, it is about falling awake. But because whenever we lie down there is always the “occupational hazard” of falling asleep, we actually have to work at remembering to fall awake in the face of a not-insignificant possibility that we might drift into drowsiness and unawareness and fall asleep. With ongoing practice, however, it is … [Read more...]

The following is an excerpt from Meditation Is Not What You Think: Mindfulness and Why It Is So Important, by Jon Kabat-Zinn, published by Hachette Books. Copyright © 2018 by Jon Kabat-Zinn. "It is hard to notice but also hard not to notice that awareness, when we dwell within it, has no center and no periphery. In that way, it resembles space itself and what we know of the boundary-less structure of the universe. Yet, despite Galileo, the Copernican revolution, and Hubble’s astounding discovery of the expansion of the universe in all directions from every location, we still tend to think and feel and speak as if the cosmos were centered on our little planet. We speak of the sun … [Read more...]