A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled

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As the title suggests, Wax wants to impart guidance to people who are overcome with stress and constant worries. She outlines the principles and fundamental practices of mindfulness and then exhaustively promotes its efficacy in soothing mental unrest, improving self-understanding and contributing to continued human evolution. As well as self-improvement, the book covers social mindfulness and ways mindfulness can assist with raising children and dealing with teenagers. I made it easy for myself by incorporating mindfulness into other daily activities. This could be 5 minutes of mindfulness while combing my hair, or during a face massage when I get a sinus headache. This strategy helps reduce fidgetiness or the preoccupation of not doing mindfulness right. Having lived with depression on and off for most of her life, Wax was interested in psychology and how mindful therapy could help to keep her level headed. This frank, hilarious guide will make you laugh AND offers useful advice for everyone. Win-win * Look Magazine * Ruby Wax is out of it. Her words, not mine. “Can he [the photographer] take pictures of me with my sunglasses on?” she asks, and for once, she isn’t joking. She is semi-slumped on the sofa in the living room of her Notting Hill home, eating kebabs that her housekeeper has made. “I’m really glazed. I’m out of it with the medication. They’ve added something new and I’m supposed to take it at night but I took it in the day.”

Many of the mindfulness books out there have no personality ( I know because I’ve read a lot of them) whereas this title has you almost hooked from the outset. Being so relatable and humorous, this book is well worth a read if you just want a simple yet detailed beginners guide to mindfulness that doesn’t beat around the bush. What exactly is in the book?In the book’s second chapter, Wax provides a simple encapsulation of mindfulness: “Mindfulness is a way of exercising your ability to pay attention. When you can bring focus to something, the critical thoughts quieten down.” Her eldest daughter Marina, who is 27 (Maddy and Max are 22 and 24), helped her get better this time. It was only after Wax had Marina that she realised the thing she occasionally felt, or didn’t feel, was not a virus but depression. The problem – or one of them, anyway – is that it’s clearly much too easy for this good and useful mindset to be co-opted for dubious ends, such as passivity and resignation, or distracting people from things they ought to be upset about. (From the brilliant Ladybird Book of Mindfulness, part of the new satirical series aimed at nostalgic grown-ups: “Mindfulness has taught Leanne to accept things as they are: rubbish, expensive, unfair and out-of-date every six months.”) Or, alternatively, self-absorption. (“Clive likes to practise loving-kindness meditation … Clive finds this easier than bothering to meet his friends or lending them money.”) In fact, as the psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach points out, the “radical acceptance” of mindfulness needn’t entail resignation or narcissism; on the contrary, it embodies a refusal to dwell in comforting illusions, and may thus be an essential precondition for positive change. In my book I present my own six-week mindfulness course with the blessing of Mark Williams, my professor at Oxford and co-creator of MBCT. With my programme you don’t have to perch on a gluten-free cushion, you can do the exercises anywhere, anytime; in the gym while pumping the pecs, or while eating a chocolate-chip cookie (or both at the same time).

Well timed and combines a theoretical, practical and personal account of mindfulness... an easy, uplifting, humorous read * The Psychologist * Ruby discovered comedy at the age of 16 as an unsuccessful way to get boys; she studied psychology at Berkeley but dropped out and moved to the UK, where she could escape her parents and train with the Royal Shakespeare Company. mind, for half my life. The adult-hood half. I rationalize it like this: of course, my attention is always everywhere because of my faith and my intune-ness to my feelings. I observe myself living my life, and I live it- both at the same time. Although, it doesn’t have all the answers (and no book ever will) Ruby Wax’s Frazzled will guide you in the right direction. If you enjoy the practice of mindfulness, you can then build on what you learn in this book. Ruby Wax A Mindfulness Guide For The Frazzled Review

She proposes the notion that stress only exists by virtue of humankind’s advanced evolution (it doesn’t affect our cousin, the ape). But, while we’re capable of wonderful ingenuity and each in possession of a ratatouille of emotions, we’re still animals and thus prone to automatic, primal responses. What’s it called? “I don’t know what it’s called. It starts with an R.” She pauses, breaks into a smile. “Is that helpful? Maybe he’ll let me put my glasses on.” In recent years she has morphed from TV star to poster girl for mental illness via a masters in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy at Oxford University. Not that she can stand the term mental illness. “It’s just illness. Mental health is physical. It’s your brain, which is a physical part of you. You either have a disease or you don’t,” she says.