Daniel J. Siegel: Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence. TarcherPerigee, New York, 2018, 379 pp

Excerpt

In Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence, Siegel describes a new meditation method called Wheel of Awareness (WoA), which consolidates scientific findings on different mindfulness-based practices into one comprehensive mind training. Siegel identifies three essential components of such training—focused attention, open awareness, and loving-kindness—that enhance mental health and well-being and, for the first time in the history of meditation practices, he fuses them into one technique. But WoA does not simply combine or mirror established approaches to meditation. Its design is a consequence of the author’s reflections on the nature of the mind and complex systems theory he has been working on for more than two decades. He theorizes that one facet of the mind is a process regulating the flow of energy and information, and also that this process of mind is embodied, relational, emergent, and self-organized. According to Siegel, the good condition of the complex system is demonstrated by its quality of integration, which means a balanced linkage of well-differentiated, uniquely specialized parts of that system which then can work together in an optimized way. For Siegel, integration is a fundamental mechanism of health and cultivating the uninterrupted integration of the process of the mind in daily life helps achieving a state of well-being. WoA is a practice of cultivation of integration in one specific domain: consciousness. …