In this follow-up to the million-copy bestseller Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Professor Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman reunite to show readers how to use the hidden foundations of mindfulness to rediscover calm and reclaim your life in our chaotic world.

Use the hidden foundations of mindfulness to rediscover calm and reclaim your life in our chaotic world

There are moments in life that decide your fate. They ripple into the future and dictate how you experience the world in the moments that follow; either positive and uplifting, dark and chaotic, or flat and dull.

What if you could recognise these moments before they seized control of your life? What if you could use them to set sail for a better future? What if all moments, big and small, could be harnessed this way?

In Deeper Mindfulness, Oxford Professor Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman reunite to present a new eight-week guided meditation programme that takes mindfulness to the next level. Deeper Mindfulness reveals how the latest advances in neuroscience, combined with millennia old wisdom, can be used to transform your life. These discoveries open the doors to a deeper layer of mindfulness known as the 'feeling tone'. This sets the 'background colour' that tinges your entire experience of life. It is also the tipping point from which you can reclaim your life in an increasingly stressful and chaotic world.

Proven effective at treating anxiety, stress and depression, the practices in Deeper Mindfulness offer a new and more fruitful direction for both novice and experienced meditators. It also allows the rest of us to approach life with renewed strength, vigour and equanimity.

Deeper Mindfulness by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, read by Mark Williams (Audiobook extract)

These are breathing timers that use the sound of the waves as a less insistent invitation to breaths to a rhythm than a discrete sound cue such as a bell.
We find they are more open to the natural variation in breathing cycles so you don't feel as driven by the timer rhythm. 
The invitation is to try the different timers out from shorter cycles to longer ones and find one that is a comfortable rhythm. After a few days of practice at that rhythm, explore how it is to use the next longer rhythm.
The 5 second one is suitable for most people - taller people or those used to longer breath cycles may find the 6 second one fits more comfortably with a larger lung capacity. 
As ever - just do what is kind and follow the advice of your health professionals if you have any doubts.
While the tracks are 30 minutes long, 5 minutes would be the maximum any one unfamiliar with breathing practices would be advised to do. 

The book 'The Healing Power of the Breath' by Brown and Gerbarg offers a detailed description of the approach. There is a bit of dubious science in their suggestion that a breath cycle of 10 seconds is ideal for all - though they do suggest taller people need a longer breath cycle. The source material for this idea comes from www.coherence.com  - which is mix of interesting physiology of breathing and some more fringe yogic mystical ideas. 

Overall it would seem a more cautious view would agree that longer slower breaths are very helpful but it would need biofeedback to  be sure you were breathing with 'coherence'. 

6-sec-Breath-Timer

A 40 minute variation on a body scan that invites awareness of muscle movement and easing and loosening around active or tight muscles. 
This is a  'field reconding' (a great term for a raw recording from a workshop so has noises along with the spontaneous  guidance).

Body Scan - 40 minutes moving & loosening (field recording)

White Noise Water Sounds - Waves & Underwater

Soothing Sounds of the Sea - Anti Stress & Deep Sleep Nature Sound

Relaxing Sounds from The Sea

Surf for Healing 4

ResiliencePlus&#174; offers free resource to enhance resilience, health and well-being. 
We focus on building and sustaining our resilience through simple and accessible mindfulness practices. 

The aim of this stream is to build a developing resource of free content to support mindfulness practice.

We also provide training in the using these approaches to teach mindfulness in 1-2-1 or group contexts. 

6-sec-Breath-Timer

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