Mindful June 2017

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ATTENDING
Medicine, Mindfulness,
and Humanity
Ronald Epstein, MD Scribner
MARROW
A Love Story
Elizabeth Lesser HarperCollins
A family physician and a professor at the
University of Rochester School of Medicine,
Ron Epstein has been working to improve how
doctors treat others for decades. Together with
colleague Mick Krasner, he has encouraged
caregivers to pay attention to what’s happening
in their own minds and bodies as they interact
with patients—with particular attention to how
they communicate and the quality of the time:
Are they really “attending” or are they not quite
all there? In 1999, Epstein launched a small
revolution with “Mindful Practice,” a piece in
the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association. Ten years later, he and Krasner
reported in the same journal on the results of
their mindfulness work with doctors: They were
more present, less stressed out, and more attentive
to patients, and they incorporated mindfulness
skills into their everyday lives. (See Mindful,
October 2014: “The Doctor is Not Well.”)
Now, Epstein has contemplated and compiled
all he has learned from using the lens of selfawareness
to view the health-care system and
the lives of the people in it. Both analytically
clear and empathic, he guides us to a vision of
a new kind of doctor in a new system: covering
everything from how doctors need to pay attention
to their mindware (the thought processes
they use to make diagnoses and decisions), using
meta-cognition (being aware of your own thinking)
to healing the healer (how to travel the path
from burnout to resistance), to what makes a
compassionate and humane health-care system
(one where small acts of kindness can make
“the unbearable bearable”). Attending is a long
overdue book that needs to be read by doctors,
caregivers, health administrators, and patients
who care about human-centered medicine.
When she learns she’s the
perfect match for her sister’s
bone marrow transplant to
fight cancer, Elizabeth Lesser
begins a life journey she never
imagined. The cofounder
of the Omega Institute and
author of the best-selling
book Broken Open, Lesser
has been a seeker for her
entire adult life and a benevolent
chronicler of the human
condition. But this experience
she shares with her younger
sister goes far beyond any
Do mindful and money even
belong in the same sentence?
Money is such a scary thing,
fraught with so much fear and
emotion. And most advice
about money offered in the
mainstream media plays on
that fear and anxiety: Are you
prepared for retirement? Is
your money working hard
soul-searching she’s undertaken
on the couch or on the
cushion. Along the way, the
sisters get the rare opportunity
to truly explore—and
heal—their past, and find
themselves on a completely
transformed field of friendship,
and indeed, love.
Beautifully written, deeply
poignant in its honesty, this
book is far more than a story
about sibling relations; it’s a
memoir about touching the
marrow of life itself.
MINDFUL MONEY
Simple Practices for Reaching Your
Financial Goals and Increasing
Your Happiness Dividend
Jonathan K. DeYoe New World Library
enough for you? Are you
spending too much? DeYoe’s
approach to money is honest
and free of hype. Money will
never make us happy, he tells
us right off. It’s merely a tool
we need to use to live our life.
That said, he goes on to offer
very practical, non-preachy,
down-to-earth counsel.
80 mindful June 2017