Resource and Reading List

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Heart Health

Our program is based on the Cardiac Wellness Program at Harvard, and the books we use are written by Herbert Benson, MD and Aggie Casey, RN, who developed the program there. Both Mind Your Heart and Lowering Your Blood Pressure present information on exercise, nutrition, and stress management.

Mind Your Heart, A Mind / Body Approach to Stress Management, Exercise, and Nutrition for Heart Health. By Aggie Casey, MS, RN and Herbert Benson, MD

Lowering Your Blood Pressure. By Aggie Casey, MS, RN and Herbert Benson, MD

Nutrition

We use Eating Well’s Cookbooks as an important resource in our Program. Each book opens with an extensive introduction to the subject at hand (such as Heart Disease) and address related treatments and lifestyle changes that can help readers make positive changes in their health and wellness. This is followed by healthy menu suggestions and recipes. Our favorites are:

Eating Well for a Healthy Heart Cookbook. By Philip Ades MD and the Editors of Eating Well Magazine

Eating Well Diabetes Cookbook. By Joyce Hendley and the Editors of Eating Well Magazine

The Eating Well Diet. By Dr. Jean Harvey-Berino, PhD, RD and the Editors of Eating Well Magazine

Relaxation Response

Learning to elicit the Relaxation Response is central to our teaching in the Cardiac Wellness Program. This can be done with any variety of methods. The following CDs are used to introduce patients to the relaxation response at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Harvard. They are available on line at www.mbmi.org/home. Our favorites are:

Meditations for Personal Health and Well Being, by Aggie Casey and Jim Huddleson: 3 meditations used in the Cardiac Wellness Program. They include gentle yoga to relax the body, followed by deep relaxation and affirmations.

Creating a New “Now,”by Ann Webster: 2 meditations. The first is used to calm the mind and body, and “just be.” The second is a guided imagery to help plant seeds for your future.

Building a Meditation Practice, by Margaret Baim: 4 meditations. These include contemplation and insight meditations to increase your awareness of your inner resources.

Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness is the cultivation of moment-to-moment awareness by learning to quiet the mind and experience the present moment as it unfolds. Jon Kabat-Zinn has used the practice of Mindfulness to treat patients in the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center for 30 years. His program has been adapted to many settings world wide, where it is taught in schools, workplaces, hospitals, clinics, and prisons to name a few.

Books on Mindfulness Meditation:

Wherever You Go There You Are. By Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. This is a good introduction to Mindfulness in daily life.

Full Catastrophe Living. By Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. This book is an introduction to the clinical use of Mindfulness. It details the MBSR program developed by Dr. Kabat-Zinn, including instructions on yoga, body scan, and sitting meditation.

Coming To Our Senses. By Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. A more comprehensive book on Mindfulness in our personal lives and beyond.

Our favorite guided meditation CDs for beginners include:

Mindfulness for Beginners. By Jon Kabat-Zinn

Meditation for Beginners. By Jack Kornfield.

Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Guided Mindfulness Meditation Series:

Series 1 contains four 45 minute tracks: a body scan, a sitting meditation, and two yoga practices (1 lying down, 1 standing). This is the CD that compliments the book Full Catastrophe Living.

Series 2 contains 3 sitting and 3 lying-down meditations of varying lengths (10 min; 20 min; 30 min), plus lake & mountain meditations and tracks with just silence and bells.

Series 3 contains meditations focusing on the breath, body, mind, and heart (each 20-30 minutes in length), plus a brief walking meditation. This is the CD that compliments the book Coming To Our Senses.