Mindful Motherhood

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from the book. . .

page 9, INTRODUCTION

"It wasn’t until I had my daughter that I realized how my spiritual life, particularly mindfulness practices, would help me during the transformation of pregnancy, labor, and early motherhood. I called upon those understandings and skills every day—through mood swings, back pain, stretch marks, a fifty-seven-hour labor, and relationship tensions. They not only helped me with difficult moments, but they also opened me in a profound way to the rewards of pregnancy and early motherhood. I was able to more fully experience those exquisite moments of nursing in a rocking chair in a sun-filled room, reflections dancing on the walls, dust motes drifting in the rays of light, my daughter’s toothless smile, the way she made a soft creaking sound whenever she was falling asleep (eehhhhh, ehhhhhh, ehhhhh). In a card a friend gave me at my baby shower she wrote, "Now your heart will stretch wide open, and you’ll love beyond anything you’ve ever known." This was true and remains true to this day. So, I write this book as a psychologist, a researcher—and a mom."

Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist, director of research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences codirector of the Mind Body Medicine Research Group at California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute in San Francisco, CA, and co-president of the Institute for Spirituality and Psychology.

cassandra vieten and indigo Her research has focused on mindfulness-based approaches to cultivating emotional balance, the involvement of emotion regulation in addiction and recovery, and the factors, experiences, and practices involved in psychospiritual transformation. She has published several academic articles and chapters, has conducted numerous presentations at international scientific conferences, and is coauthor of Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life. She is also an avid soccer player and mom of a spunky eight year old girl named Indigo.

Foreword writer Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D., is a founding teacher of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and a psychotherapist, wife, mother, and grandmother. She is author of several books, including It’s Easier Than You Think and Happiness Is an Inside Job.

“This is a welcome and needed book. These essential psychological practices come from a woman who has earned the right to teach a classical path of human development through motherhood.”

—Robert Bruce Newman, author of Calm Birth and Calm Healing