The Meditator's Handbook: A Complete Guide to Eastern and Western Techniques

by David Fontana

Describing the theory and practice of all the major Eastern and Western approaches to meditation, this handbook unifies the insights provided by these great spiritual traditions with those of modern psychology.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction

244 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1998

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

David G.J. Fontana FBPsS was a British psychologist, parapsychologist and author. He was Professor of Psychology at Cardiff University. He was also visiting professor at Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Algarve.

Reviews

[cat!]

nice introduction to the history and practice.

[Martha]

Overview of meditation as it relates to the major world traditions and modern psychology. Emphasizes one-pointed concentration; don't focus on the breath as it enters your nostrils and travels down to your abdomen, but rather, choose to focus either on the breath as it enters, pauses, and then exits at the nostrils (without wandering) or on the abdomen as it expands and contracts (without wandering). I was especially drawn in by the chapter on visualization strategies, beginning with a simple white circle on a dark background, progressing to visualizing colors and shapes, and finally to objects and scenes.

[Ellen Stansell, PhD, RYT]

The author gives a systematic, intelligent, and sensitive answer to the question "what is meditation?" He outlines major types of meditation practiced in Eastern and Western tradition in a way that highlights their similarities. While I suspect that, in doing so, he may sacrifice some of the uniqueness of each technique, I still think the framework he creates is very helpful. I am enjoying this book. The writing style is acceessible, even inspiring at times. This would be a great intro book on meditation to recommend to someone interested in meditating, but who hadn't yet chosen a technique to practice.

[Elle]

This is a good introduction of the different practices in meditation. Some topics covered are shamanism, christian mysticism, the kabbalah, yoga, koans, zazen, kundalini, visualization and tai chi. The book first gives culture information, and then goes on to explain the meditation technique. I like the way the book describes the meditation process of each tradition - of course this is a highly subjective area, but good nevertheless. It attempts to explain what exactly you are to think about when you are meditating.