Emotional Healing Through Mindfulness Meditation

by Barbara Miller Fishman, Ph.D.

a review by John Gilbert

Emotional Healing Through Mindfulness Meditation (ISBN 089281998-7) by Barbara Miller Fishman, Ph.D. is published by Inner Traditions and available through your local bookseller. According to the cover, this is a book of stories and meditations for women seeking wholeness. I agree, but it was good reading for me as a man too.

Mindfulness Meditation is a Buddhist meditation technique taught by several Buddhist meditation teachers. Dr. Fishman's teacher Shinzen Young wrote the Forward to this book. Shinzen Young is a well-known meditation teacher who serves as the Director of Vipassana Support Institute.

This book tells the story of eight women who overcame what appeared to be overwhelming circumstances in their lives using Mindfulness Meditation. It serves two useful purposes beyond describing the use of this meditative technique:

Shows how people can overcome overwhelming odds against them, and
Gives us the inspiration to overcome our own problems.

Barbara explains in her Introduction: The search for wholeness is essentially an individual effort, something a woman pursues in her dreams and musings and while she's washing the dishes. This may be paraphrased to read: The search for wholeness is essentially an individual effort, something a man pursues in his dreams and musings and while he's washing the dishes. My point is the author's message is good for all of us.

Wholeness is an individual effort and we can all benefit from the lessons others have learned and the path they've trod. We can use their education to help ourselves. We can overcome our problems because they did.

The book also includes a CD of four Mindfulness Meditations which can be used as guides to help us develop our own meditation practices.

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