Let's Not Call It Meditation: Practical Guidance For People Who Think They Can't Sit Still and Quiet the Mind

In a down-to-earth way, Let’s Not Call It Meditation takes you beyond mistaken ideas about meditation, why people do it, and what it’s supposed to do. It is all about experience— your experience.
This book is a personal invitation to go on a journey. It does not ask you to be anyone other than who you are or to change your life situation. You don’t have to join a group or a religion.
There are no rituals, initiations, or dues. You need only bring a willingness to listen, and a curiosity about change. The text reads like a friendly and lively conversation with the reader. Throughout the book, Padme weaves real life stories that connect everyday life experience to awareness and meditation. Her words gently jostle the reader towards a new possibility, a fresh perspective, and a truly authentic way of living that is available to every single one of us.
As your caring guide, Padme invites you to embark on the adventure of a lifetime!

What Readers Are Saying:

"Let’s Not Call it Meditation makes meditation so accessible and commonsensical and enticing that you might just realize that it’s for you. What’s more, you might just realize that it is not what you think, and that it’s orientation to living is already not unfamiliar to you, perhaps just underdeveloped. Enjoy this adventure of a lifetime, so sweetly and articulately offered by the author out of her own love for life in the face of its inevitable challenges.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn
Author: Full Catastrophe Living and Coming to Our Senses

"A mark of great spiritual wisdom is simple, plain, unadorned beauty, of which this book is a superb example. Padme Nina Livingstone shows us how to penetrate beyond the fussiness of language, titles, and concepts to the core realization of what really matters. Let's Not Call It Meditation is a fine contribution, a genuinely spiritual teaching."

Larry Dossey, MD
Author: The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things

"The subtitle of Livingstone’s work is ‘Practical Guidance for People Who Think They Can’t Sit Still and Quiet the Mind”— pretty self-explanatory! Mixing testimonials, personal accounts and practical advice, the book provides a non-threatening route into meditation. As such, it would make good introduction to the beginner, but I also found much of value here, as it is so easy to forget to go inside in the mad dash that is the modern world. I found Livingstone’s exercises easy to follow and the prose both light-hearted and friendly, making the book a relaxing read. There’s nothing ground-breaking or particularly new here, but the book is none the poorer for it, offering a distillation of the main spiritual ethos and a route to personal growth and peace. One to keep beside the bed."

Emma Mitchell,
Paradigm Shift magazine, October 2007

“…sharing her deep understanding of personal growth and meditation, Padme’s profound insight and personal stories will support any reader on their own inward journey.”

Dr. Heather Daly, PhD., Director Center of Health and Well-Being

“...a gift, both for the committed seeker and for the person who has some inkling that turning inward may be a way of exploring the mystery of being human, and has questions or reservations that stand in the way.”

Dr. B. Freedberg, Clinical Psychologist

A Review for Let’s Not Call It Meditation: Practical Guidance for People Who Think They Can’t Sit Still and Quiet the Mind:

If you have contemplated starting a “meditation” practice but didn’t know where to start, this book is for you. You need not be a practicing Buddhist or someone with years of meditation experience. In Let’s Not Call It Meditation, Padme Nina Livingstone takes the mystery and fears out of meditation and explains this higher state of awareness in terms we can all understand.

Padme begins this easy-to-read book discussing the 7 Key Elements for Growth and evoking the reader’s ability to “remember who you really long to be.” Padme creates vivid pictorials by describing a person’s whole beauty as a flower with the six petals of curiosity, humor, gratitude, compassion, 100% responsibility, and creativity. Padme helps the reader understand aspects of their life that get in the way; mistaken beliefs, fears, and the top myths of meditation. She then delves into helping you begin your own awareness journey. Using her life experiences as a catalyst, Padme weaves entertaining stories along with practical applications into a tapestry of useful information. For anyone interested in starting a meditation practice, this book is a must.

Padme teaches awareness meditation and has a private practice in spiritual guidance. In addition to Let’s Not Call it Meditation, she has published three awareness CD’s; Forgiveness Meditation, Uncovering Compassion, and Remembering Awareness.

Aimee Wood is a freelance writer and was Co-Leader of the Rochester chapter of Holistic Moms before moving to the Washington, DC area.

About Padme Nina Livingstone
Padme Nina Livingstone has spent most of her adult life as a wife, mother, and homemaker. She began her spiritual journey with Roshi Kapleau at the Rochester Zen Center, and continued to attend retreats intermittently for twenty-five years with Toni Packer at Springwater Center. She now teaches awareness meditation in Rochester, NY, continues to learn about being alive moment-to-moment, and maintains a website and an occasional blog at www.aquieterplace.com.