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About the Author
Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder and former director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He also travels across the country teaching workshops on stress reduction and mindfulness. He lives with his family in Lexington, MA.

The time-honored national bestseller, updated with a new afterword, celebrating 10 years of influencing the way we live.
When Wherever You Go, There You Are was first published in 1994, no one could have predicted that the book would launch itself onto bestseller lists nationwide and sell over 750,000 copies to date. Ten years later, the book continues to change lives. In honor of the book''s 10th anniversary, Hyperion is proud to be releasing the book with a new afterword by the author, and to share this wonderful book with an even larger audience.
publisher's note from 2005 edition

...we usually fall, quite unawares, into assuming that what we are thinking--the ideas and opinions we harbor at any given time--are "the truth" about what is "out there" in the world and "in here" in our minds. Most of the time it just isn't so.
We pay a high price for this mistaken and unexamined assumption [...] We may never quite be where we actually are, never quite touch the fullness of our possibilities. Instead, we lock ourselves into a personal fiction that we already know who we are, that we know where we are and where we are going--all the while remaining enshrouded in thoughts, fantasies, and impulses, mostly about the past and about the future, about what we want and like, and what we fear and don't like...
from Introduction 

To understand the transformative power of Ellen Langer's perspective, and to better understand her creative action, I believe it is useful to experience firsthand her version of mindfulness -- the act of noticing new things -- which is actually very easy to practice, if for no other reason than it energizes and engages us and opens us to new possibilities. Further, it is useful to consider the way Langer applies her version of mindfulness to understanding of social psychology and developmental psychology phenomena, and science generally. Her thought, as laid out in her four books on mindfulness and in her many empirical papers, represents a veritable stream of understanding that liberates one from a constrained, passive, rigid view of reality, possibility, and human potential.
Michael Hogan, National University of Ireland, Galway
Langer grabs your attention with eloquent philosophical anecdotes, and then drives her main point home with (very accessible) explanations of shocking scientific studies. No matter who you are (student, doctor, regular dude), this book will change the way you think about health and medicine. It's a great read.
John Adams, reviewer @ amazon.ca

There is no way to turn back the clock or to fight inevitable. We age and the vigor of youth becomes only a memory as we are ravaged by time. Chronic illnesses take their toll, our health and strength diminish accordingly, and the best we can do is graciously accept our fate. Once sckness is upon us, we give ourselves to modern medicine and hope for the best. We can't intervene as time marches on. Or can we? [...]

Mindful health is not about how we should eat right, exercise, or follow medical recommendations, nor is it about abandoning these things. It is about the need to free ourselves from constricting mindsets and the limits they place on our health and well-being, and to appreciate the importance of becoming guardians of our own health. Learning how to change requires  understanding how we go astray. The goal of this book is to convince you to open your mind and take back what is rightfully, sensibly, and importantly yours. 
from Chapter 1: Counterclockwise

I'llbegin with chapters that offer primers on mindfulness (Chapter 1) and on character strengths (chapter 2). These treat each as a separate topic, examining the core concepts, related ideas, research and practices. Chapter 3 offers a theoretical rationale for the integration of mindfulness an character strengths, and summarizes the existing research on corelation and consequences of mindfulness and each of 24 character strengths. Chapters 4 and 5 look closely at the two main ways to integrate these two areas - bringing character strengths to mindfulness (referred to as strong mindfulness) and bringing mindfulness to character strengths (referred to as mindful strengths use). Chapter 6 marks the third section of the book - Mindfulness Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) - a program designed to foster strong mindfulness nad mindful strengths use. MBSP is the first formal training program f character strengths.
[...] Chapters 7 through 14 describe each session of MBSP and include outlines, handouts, scripts, exercises [...] Chapter 15 details a number of ways MBSP can e adjusted to fit certain populations anb settings.
fromPreface

Everyday life is so frantic and full of troubles that we have largely forgotten how to live a joyful existence. We try so hard to be happy that we often end up missing the most important parts of our lives. In Mindfulness, Oxford professor Mark Williams and award-winning journalist Danny Penman reveal the secrets to living a happier, less anxious, stressful, and exhausting life.
from the Publisher

I'm so happy I picked this book up a few months ago. I was really searching for a good starting point to begin a meditation practice and this book really helped. After completing the full eight week program I feel much more relaxed and there is a notable difference in how I engage in everyday life situations and with stressors. The program comes with eight guided meditations that can be downloaded from the website and different combinations of these are used each week along with an accompanying chapter.
a reader's review @ Chapters.Indigo.ca

Atypical meditation consists of focusing your full attention on your breath as it flows in and out of your body (see "A one-minute meditation" on the opposite page). Focusing on each breath in this way allows you to observe your thoughtsas they arise in your mind and, little by little, to let go of strugling with them. You come to realize that thoughts come and go of their own accord; that you are not your thoughts. You can watch as they appear in your mind, seemingly from thin air, and watch again as they disappear, like a soap bubble bursting. You come to profound understanding that your thoughts and feelings (including negative ones) are transient. They come and they go, you have a choice about whther to act on them or not.

Mindfulness is about observation without criticism; being compassionate with yourself. When unhappiness or stress hovers overhead, rather than taking it all personally, you learn to treat them as if they were black clouds in the sky, and observe them with with friendly curiosity as they drift past.
from chapter Chasing Your Tail.

My anxiety level has gone down tremendously after just reading the book and not beginning the meditation yet. This book is a must for anyone having a hard time facing life's normal circumstances or who sees life pessimistically. And it is even more vital for anyone who is facing health problems and is feeling depressed because of them. This man's approach will be a comfort to me for years to come.
a customer's review @ amazon.ca
The author focuses on the advantages of employing "practiced mindfulness" to control and calm our responses without blunting our feelings--and a more convincing introduction to the many modes and uses of meditation could hardly be imagined. In personable, enlightening prose, Kabat-Zinn first explains how to develop a meditation schedule, and in later chapters pragmatically applies his plan to the main sources of stress. An impressive middle section clearly marshals scientific and anecdotal evidence relating state of mind to state of health. And while emphasizing meditation's healing potential, Kabat-Zinn makes no sweeping claims, suggesting that the discipline serve not as means but end.
from Publishers Weekly - Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

I keep coming back to one line from the movie of Nikos Katzantzakis's novel Zorba the Greek. Zorba's young companion turns to him at certain point and inquires, "Zorba, have you ever been married?" to which Zorba replies (paraphrasing somewhat) "Am I not a man? Of course I have been married. Wife, house, kids, everything... the full catastrophe!"
It was not meant to be a lament, nor does it mean that being married or having children is a catastrophe. Zorba's response embodies a supreme appreciation for richness of life and the inevitability of all its dilemmas, sorrows, tragedies and ironies. His way is to "dance" in the gale of the full catastrophe, to calebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of personal failure and defeat. In doing so, he is never weighed down for long, never ultimately defeated either by the world or by his own, cosiderable folly.
[...] ever since I heard it, I have felt that the phrase "full catastrophe" captures something positive about human spirit's ability to come to grips with what is most difficult in life and to find within it room to grow in strength and wisdom.
from Introduction: Stress, Pain, and Illness: Facing the Full Catastrophe