What is Jaime Kucinskas reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Jaime Kucinskas, author of The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out.

Her entry begins:

Around the holidays, one of my favorite things to do is to wander around a local bookstore and pick up a few books to get lost in over the break. This year, I have been enjoying reading Michelle Obama’s Becoming. She is an excellent writer, who reveals a process of self-growth familiar to so many women, people of color, and others, who slowly gain confidence and self-awareness over the years with the...[read on]

About The Mindful Elite, from the publisher:

Mindful meditation is now embraced in virtually all corners of society today, from K-12 schools to Fortune 100 companies, and its virtues extolled by national and international media almost daily. It is thought to benefit our health and overall well-being, to counter stress, to help children pay attention, and to foster creativity, productivity and emotional intelligence. Yet in the 1960s and 1970s meditation was viewed as a marginal, counter-cultural practice, or a religious ritual for Asian immigrants. How did mindfulness become mainstream?

In The Mindful Elite, Jaime Kucinskas reveals who is behind the mindfulness movement, and the engine they built to propel mindfulness into public consciousness. Drawing on over a hundred first-hand accounts with top scientists, religious leaders, educators, business people and investors, Kucinskas shows how this highly accomplished, affluent group in America transformed meditation into an appealing set of contemplative practices. Rather than relying on confrontation and protest to make their mark and improve society, the contemplatives sought a cultural revolution by building elite networks and advocating the benefits of meditation across professions. Yet, spreading the Dharma far and wide came with unintended consequences and this idealistic myopia came to reinforce some of the problems it originally aspired to solve.

A critical look at this Buddhist-inspired movement, The Mindful Elite explores how elite movements can spread and draws larger lessons for other social, cultural, and religious movements across institutions and organizations.

Visit Jaime Kucinskas's website.

Writers Read: Jaime Kucinskas.

--Marshal Zeringue