As usual, I was listening to podcasts while doing the housework when an interview with Rick Hanson entitled “From Intellectual Knowing to Felt Knowledge” on The Science of Success Podcast caught my attention. The way Dr. Rick approached mindfulness blew my mind. Among many other interesting aspects of mindfulness, like mindfulness practice changes the structure of our brain, and disengagement from negativity and rumination, what made me curious about his book Neurodhrama was when he spoke about three steps to extend pleasant moments, in other words, ways to prolong happiness. Then I thought to myself “I must read this book.”
This book is all about mindfulness practice and how it affects our brain and life. What happens in our brain when we experience meditation and feel emotions inherent to human nature, which hormones are released when we feel anger, happiness, shame, so on and so forth.
The major theme of the book is to reduce suffering through understanding the foundations of what causes craving and understanding inherent human feelings, whether pleasant or unpleasant feelings. He underscores that suffering is inevitable, however, we might handle it smoothly through mindfulness, accepting, understanding, and letting it go.
As a meditator, I enjoyed the book because I learned more about mindfulness, its effects on my life, along with how to understand and deal with craving and suffering. The book gave me good knowledge about this regard. There are some guided meditations and mantras that you can use to develop your strength. For example, let’s suppose that I want to enhance my sense of patience, awareness, safety, or connection, there’s a guided meditation and exercises for each one of these needs.
In conclusion, I’d recommend this book for those who want to know more about themselves and want to put their hearts into mindfulness and self-knowledge.
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