Practice Scripts and Descriptions

This chapter presents scripts for a range of practices, including the core practices of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), and practices that approach the teaching intentions from different perspectives. They are specific embodiments of the “emptied” motions or gestures of the teaching intentions, drawn from our own authenticity, authority, and friendship. If Chapter 7 characterized the water marks or tide lines of the intentions, perhaps the practices in this chapter are objects found at those lines — a piece of driftwood, a pretty shell, a polished piece of broken glass. They are that concrete, and that unique. Perhaps their usefulness is found in the way that driftwood might be used by an artist: taken home, looked at reflectively, and then abstracted into a new creation. Take these for inspiration, not imitation. Feel the gestures called out in the margins, don’t follow them.