>The Buddha told monks to take meals silently, with no books or conversations to distract them, only an awareness of what their body needs to get through the day. When they felt full, they stopped eating, even if that meant leaving food in the bowl.
When teaching mindfulness as a DBT skill as often as I do - up to 10 times per month - I have to come up with new material to keep my classes, and myself, interested. Often, group members have heard the typical DBT core “what” mindfulness skills of:
And the “how” skills of:
But rarely have they been exposed to the actual origins of the DBT skill of mindfulness. In my studies, I’ve found that it’s a very deep and complex topic. I’ve not even been able to scratch the surface and I wish I had the time to understand it better.
To that end, I’ve been using Mindfulness in Plain English to help guide my reading and discussion points. Yes, that’s the full book as a .pdf. Unbelievably, the publisher has allowed us to post it for free as long as I don’t charge you for it. Quite amazing. Please feel free to re-distribute it far and wide.
Dr. B