Book Review: Calming Your Anxious Mind by Jeffrey Brantley

Calming Your Anxious Mind

how mindfulness & compassion can free you
 from anxiety, fear & panic

by Jeffrey Brantley, MD

Stop!  Pay more attention to yourself and your life!

This is Brantley's second edition of this work, adding and expanding information and specific exercises in the activity of mindfulness and how it can influence one's experience with fear, anxiety, and panic.  Gently ... his book comes with a warning:  mindfulness is not always easy to achieve or sustain.  There will be times when you don't like it, when you are filled with doubt and don't want to do it.  You must be willing to do it anyway.  Want to take up this challenge?

In addition to specific information about the practice of mindfulness he also shares real life stories by those who have worked with mindfulness during a panic or anxiety attack, or when they find themselves in the grip of fear.  These stories bring the healing experience down to earth and offer demonstrations of the pace of healing and relief which seems to normalize this journey of paying attention in the pace of our modern world.

"Making room for things means being willing to name them and to let them be as they are.  Being mindful is about being here, now, and being clear and concrete about what is here with us."  This book will help you on this journey of being with your experience, thus healing it.  We all experience fear and anxiety to some degree and I recommend this work as an addition to your library and spiritual tool box.

Review written by Sanna Rose.

Calming Your Anxious Mind is available at Stepping Stones Books and Gifts