Contemporary Authors

• Make Peace with Your Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Your Inner Critic New World Library (Novato, CA), 2016

• Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery - November 1, 2006 New World Library, https://www.amazon.com/dp/1930722559/ref=cm_sw_su_dp

• Mark Coleman - http://markcoleman.org/

  Mark is an inner and outer explorer, who has devotedly studied mindfulness meditation practices for three decades. He is passionate about sharing the power of meditation and has been teaching mindfulness workshops and meditation retreats in six continents for the past fifteen years. Mark holds a MA in Clinical Psychology and works individually with people as an executive coach and consultant, drawing on his extensive experience in working with people as a therapist. Mark is a senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a renowned leader in the mindfulness field, and teaches regularly with pioneering teachers such as Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg.

  Mark has always been keen to share the fruits of meditation to wider audiences and founded The Mindfulness Institute, where he has brought mindfulness trainings to Fortune 500 companies and the non profit sector across North America and Europe. Through the Mindfulness Training Institute Mark leads Professional Mindfulness Teacher Trainings in the US and UK annually. Mark is a trainer for Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, developed at Google and leads their mindfulness and emotional intelligence leadership programs worldwide.

  Mark is writer and author of Make Peace with Your Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Help Free You from the Inner Critic, and Awake in the Wild: Mindfulness in Nature as a Path of Self-Discovery. He is an unabashed nature lover and through his organization Awake in the Wild, Mark likes nothing more than sharing his passion for integrating meditation and nature. He has led wilderness meditation retreats from Alaska to Peru, taking people on inner and outdoor adventures.

  Mark lives in Marin County, California and enjoys spending his free time hiking, biking and kayaking.

• Psychology Today - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethical-wisdom/201701/make-peace-your-mind-conversation-mark-coleman

  Mark Matousek Mark Matousek
  Ethical Wisdom
  Make Peace With Your Mind: A Conversation With Mark Coleman
  The popular mindfulness teacher and therapist on silencing the bully within.
  Posted Jan 31, 2017
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  Mark Coleman is an internationally recognized mindfulness facilitator who has guided students on five continents to find greater peace and fulfillment through nature-based mindfulness practice and mindfulness retreats. The founder of The Mindfulness Institute, Coleman is the author of several books, including Awake in the Wild and the recently published, Make Peace With Your Mind. A popular mindfulness consultant, he has worked in a variety of corporate settings, bringing the gifts of meditation to such companies such as Proctor and Gamble, Gucci, Prana, Dolce Gabbana, Gap, Responsys and others. He leads backpacking and nature-based retreats, and has a counseling practice in the Bay Area, where he integrates his Masters in Clinical Psychology and meditative work and works with people how to integrate their mindfulness practice into daily life. We talked about useful tools for stopping the battle within and confronting our inner critic and bullies.

  Mark Matousek: How did you go from being an angry young man to someone devoted to mindfulness practice? Did you come to some life-changing moment of truth?

  Mark Coleman: I was an angry young man, as you say. I was a punk rocker, blaming the government, corporations, and anything external, like my family, for my anger. I was pretty miserable, festering in my own mind. I began to think, there has to be a different way, there has to be another way out. I started unconsciously seeking, picking up books and looking at teachers, and I stumbled on this Buddhist meditation center at the east end of London. Back in the early 80’s, meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhism were pretty obscure. In any case, I went into the center and the people there seemed to have a certain presence and quality, stillness and purposefulness. I had the sense that they were on to something that I was intuiting but had no access to. So, I started meditating and as soon as I turned that lens of attention inwards, it was like, okay, game over. This is what I’d been looking for to resolve some of these inner conflicts and pains.

  MM: With this new book, you’ve turned into something of an expert on the inner bully and critic, in fact. What do most of us misunderstand about the bully within?

  MC: I think one of the misconceptions is that we need it to function, to get out of the bed in the morning. That we need it for our work, and to become a better person. So we listen to its voice in the guise of self improvement, or being better at our job, better at decision-making or ethical choices. In fact, the bully is a faulty mental construct, a habit that we look to that’s not so useful.

  Think about ethical choices, for example. We have this beautiful thing called conscience where we feel and intuit what is right or wrong. Whereas the critic has a simplistic view of what’s good and bad. Conscience is all about using discernment, discrimination and assessment, rather than looking to the rather crude form of advice from the judge that’s mostly attacking our sense of worth or value, instead of giving us helpful information.

  MM: How can we neutralize the bully without engaging with it? Obviously, we want to intercede on our own behalf, but we don’t want to get into a conflict with the bully. Can you describe that process?

  MC: Yes. You know the subtitle of my new book is How Mindfulness Compassion Can Free Us From The Critic. Mindfulness is the ability to be aware, to note, to notice. When we apply that to our thoughts and mental habits, we bring a clarity of awareness in seeing what’s just an ordinary thought and what’s a judging thought that’s pejorative or putting us down in some way. So, we first bring that lens of awareness, and then we can do all kinds of different strategies. We can inquire.

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  Mindfulness is the primary tool in that we get a little space between ourselves and the thoughts and then we actually can be more responsive, as in: Do I want to listen to that? Do I want to ignore it? Do I want to say “no thank you”. Do I want to inquire if that’s really true or helpful? So we start with mindfulness and we’re not engaging, because as soon as we do that, we’ve given the critic authority. Instead, we want to notice the critic but not give it any attention, not really give it much value.

  MM: That moment between thought and emotion is so split second, though. The body is already feeling emotions before we’ve even realized the bully has kicked in. How do we work with the emotions once they are in the gut? Or is it just about 'sitting with the discomfort'?

  MC: We need compassion once the critics views have landed. Often we feel bad, unworthy, and deficient. And so, we need to have a kind response to that. In my own life, one of the first significant moments came when I was in meditation and the critic was really assailing me about something; for the first time I felt how painful it was in the heart. Seeing how painful it was and then allowing the response to the critic to come through from compassion and a fierce self protection. With mindfulness, we can be with the experience in more immediate way. When we find ourselves flooded with an emotion that’s come after the judgement, we’ve often missed the very judgment that triggered the emotion. It's possible to roll backwards and ask: so what’s the view or idea that I missed while doing something—writing or whatnot—that suddenly I went from feeling okay to feeling hopeless? You notice, oh, that’s when my critic came in and said it was pathetic, I’m not a writer. That's where I can say, "Okay, that’s the thought—is that true? Is that useful? Thank you [critic] for your opinion. Now go have a nice day."

  MM: Let’s talk about the negativity bias. As you write about in your book, we’re actually born with this hardwired tendency toward negative thinking. Negative thoughts and experience impact us more powerfully than the positive do. How can this knowledge affect our relationship to the critic or bully?

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  MC: To some degree, the critic arises out of that negativity bias in that our brains are oriented towards threat and toward survival. The critic really started as a survivor mechanism in early infancy and childhood when we were trying to navigate our early family system and culture; when we’re learning how to fit in so we could optimize that flow of love and affection. It was an internal voice telling us to shut certain patterns and reactions down, that negativity bias that’s always looking for what's wrong, looking for the threat. That tendency gets dovetailed into the critic, so that we don’t just notice what’s wrong. Instead, the critic comes in and nails us, slams us for it.

  For example. Let’s say you grew up in an very unstable family and as a result have an anxious disposition. Your brain is orienting toward anxiety, then the critic comes in and says, “Well, you shouldn’t be anxious. Here you are in your home, what's your problem, get over yourself. You’re really pathetic for being anxious. All the successful people are not anxious." This voice just dovetails onto the already skewed lens we have and judges or ridicules or belittles us for that. We live with that sense of not being enough, and it causes a very painful state.

  MM: As a teacher of mindfulness, do you find that anger has its purposes in the process of awakening?

  MC: That's a very topical question at the moment, isn't it? There are a lot of people pre- and post- election who are feeling a lot of outrage and anger and a need for a much more active response—especially from the spiritual, progressive community —to election results, appointments and possible things coming down the pipe that may be impactful for many communities. In the Buddhist tradition, where mindful meditation comes from, anger is regarded as a somewhat unhealthy,unskillful emotion because we can be blinded by it. We don’t see clearly and tend to do things and say things that are harmful out of the anger because we don’t have clarity.

  But I do believe there’s a place for anger in spiritual life. Just as a mother protects a child, as parents protect offspring under threat, we need a place for the conscious use of that fire. The positive side of anger as fierceness. There are plenty of times we need fierce compassion, fierce love. Just like when a child does something that is very harmful and we say "No!", we need some kind of fierceness. There’s a certain kind of fierceness that can look like anger and has that fire of anger, but the difference is that it’s not blinded with reactivity.

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  MM: How can we transcend the polarizing force of our politics through mindfulness? Counter the external bullies? Move past us versus them?

  MC: Well, of course, that is the million-dollar question. How do we get beyond the polarity, the division, the otherness? One of the tools I like a lot is the Just Like Me practice. It’s one of the empathy practices where we put ourselves in the other’s shoes. Rather than get caught up in the difference in the ideologies, we actually come back to the fundamental idea: just like me, this person on the opposite political spectrum wants to be happy, wants to be safe, wants to thrive, wants to be healthy, wants to find peace of mind. For the most part, we can generalize in that way. If someone is acting out negatively, I can say, "Just like me, I can also go unconscious, I have my biases. Just like me, I get reactive." So we’re not neutralizing or equalizing or saying we’re the same, but we’re not as different as we think we are. I often think people on opposite sides of the political spectrum may have similar values around care, around thriving or around independence, or around helping the disadvantaged, but they have different ideologies, different ideas and philosophies about how to go about that. It’s important that we start to see each others humanness, while at the same time not losing sight of those differences, views and speeches and actions that do cause harm, that we’re clearly taking a stand against.

  MM: Isn't that the essence of forgiveness?

  MC: Yes. Seeing our humanness and seeing that we all have our limitations and follies. But again, forgiving is not about condoning an action that causes harm. That’s really a key distinction. There’s a lot of critique of the spiritual, meditative, Buddhist world, that it can lend itself to too much passivity. It’s important that we see clearly with wisdom and awareness, but also take action. We don’t just sit quietly on the side line: that’s not necessarily what’s going to be useful at this time. We need to forgive—but mindfully. We need compassion that powered by wisdom. That's the way to address our bullies.

Make Peace with Your Mind: How Mindfulness and
Compassion Can Free You from Your Inner Critic
Publishers Weekly.
263.32 (Aug. 8, 2016): p52.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Make Peace with Your Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Your Inner Critic
Mark Coleman. New World Library, $15.95 trade paper (248p) ISBN 978-1-60868-430-4
Coleman (Awake in the Wild) devotes this appealing book to laying out a mental tool kit of meditation techniques designed to bring calm to the
distressed mind. In his late teens, Coleman, feeling unhappy with himself and others, stumbled upon mindfulness meditation. This much-writtenabout
practice offered him an escape from his tormented thinking, and a practice that he found to be more effective than any pill or philosophy.
The book is divided into five parts, each including practical exercises to assist the reader with examining uncomfortable thoughts and behaviors.
The first two parts focus on the origin of the inner critic and how it manifest itself, with the remaining three parts delving into letting go of
regrets, raising self-esteem, and of course, the how-to of mindfulness meditation and its many benefits. Of the many recent books on mindfulness,
some have discussed the practice as a tool in one's life or career, but Coleman focuses squarely on the goal of achieving inner peace and
practicing compassion toward oneself and others. For self-improvement enthusiasts searching for ways to calm a stressed mind, this book is sure
to help. (Nov.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Make Peace with Your Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Your Inner Critic." Publishers Weekly, 8 Aug. 2016, p. 52.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460900391&it=r&asid=ccca6f4e4004f3a81138e5973ab8f12a. Accessed 14 May
2017.
5/14/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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• Wildmind
  http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/book-reviews/make-peace-with-your-mind-by-mark-coleman
  Word count: 842

  “Make Peace With Your Mind,” by Mark Coleman
  March 28, 2017 Bodhipaksa

  Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Indiebound.
  Mark Coleman is a senior meditation teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, as well as an executive coach and founder of the Mindfulness Institute. And he’s written a very rich, readable, and practical book on the practice of self-compassion.

  Although we’ve never met, Coleman and I started our spiritual paths in similar places. Back in 1984, while I was throwing myself into Buddhist practice at the Glasgow Buddhist Center, Coleman was doing the same at the London Buddhist Center, both of which are part of the Triratna Buddhist Community. Our spiritual paths, even though they have diverged since then — I’m still practicing within Triratna while he embraced the Insight Meditation tradition — have also converged, in that we’re both deeply involved in the practice and teaching of self-compassion.

  For both of us, there was an intense practical and personal need to do this. We were both angry young men, and full of self-hatred. We both now see the importance of compassion in this difficult world we find ourselves in — for ourselves and others.

  The constant theme running through “Make Peace With Your Mind” is the “Inner Critic” — that all-too-familiar nagging voice that tells us over and over that we’ve messed up, that we’re not good enough, that things we did were idiotic, that we look bad in photographs, that people will judge us because we’re too fat, too skinny, too old, and so on.

  Coleman explains over a number of chapters the problems that self-judgement causes in our lives, from the undermining comments we make about ourselves, to “imposter syndrome,” which causes very accomplished people to doubt their abilities. (No less than John Steinbeck wrote, “I am not a writer. I have been fooling myself and other people.” Wow!) He points out that self-judgement is universal. We all have this trait, and it’s a relief for many people to realize that they are not alone in suffering from self-criticism and doubt.

  He helps us to understand the inner critic too, showing us that it has a role in protecting us from transgressing rules, or doing anything that might bring censure. “The problem,” as he points out, “is that it does not go away. It’s like a broken record, constantly repeating.” And this continues, sometimes, though our whole lives. We accumulate many such self-critical habits as we go through life. Each one has the function of protecting us, but the toll they take outweighs the benefits, and they can end up making our lives hell.

  Coleman provides a lot of information about the inner critic, and it’s all useful. It’s a long time, however, until we get to the point where he explains how to work with our self-criticism.

  We start with mindfulness, recognizing that our self-critical thoughts are indeed no more than thoughts and that we don’t have to take them seriously, practicing non-identification, and even learning to laugh at the inner critic’s antics.

  Coleman also explains how to be kind to ourselves and stop treating ourselves as “the enemy,” and even to “befriend our own pain as much as we do with our loved ones.” This involves accepting and turning toward our pain, opening up to our vulnerability, and relating to our pain compassionately.

  Toward the end of the book he takes us “beyond the critic” — beyond mere freedom from self-criticism, and into a positive appreciation of the good that is to be found in ourselves and others, and into a life in which peace and ease naturally arise.

  This is a rich and comprehensive guide to the practice of self-compassion. It contains moving anecdotes and examples from the author’s own life and from the lives of others he has known in his capacity as a teacher. It’s particularly enriched by the inclusion of a practical guide at the end of each chapter. Even the more theoretical parts of the book conclude with us being asked to turn to our experience. And so my earlier comment that it takes a long time to get to the chapters on dealing with the inner critic should be tempered with an awareness that these practical guidelines foreshadow the later material, and give us plenty to do. The first chapter, for example, which is on the topic of recognizing how the brain can change and grow in response to our experiences, ends with suggestions to observe things in a public place that we dislike or like, and also to reflect on things in ourselves that we appreciate.

  I’d highly recommend this book to anyone suffering from self-criticism or self-esteem issues. It offers a rich and varied selection of tools for moving from self-hatred and the suffering it brings, to living more lightly, joyfully, and self-compassionately.