I've debated and struggled for months about doing a series on mindfulness. I will start with book reviews on Untethered Soul by Micheal Singer, and The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. Both were introduced to the larger public by Oprah Winfrey - Singer in 2012 and Tolle in 2007.

Here's why I've debated this series; this channel has been all about scientific evidence. Stress management through mindfulness tends to be the antithesis of science. It changes the focus from problem-solving to experience.

There is a group known as a "marriage of western and eastern thought". It's called Palouse Mindfulness. To me, they're not so much a marriage of the two. They're using western science to document the effect of eastern thought patterns and techniques.

Untethered Soul starts with a typical yogi's technique of reductionism of self; asking the question, "who am I"? It strips away the assumptions that we are our externals: physical attributes, roles, and relationships. We are, instead, an internal entity experiencing the external world.

The Power of Now starts off focusing on the mind's construct of time. Problem-solving focuses on the past and future. These are, again constructs of a problem-solving mind. Now is the experience of that internal part of us that is mindful, the Watcher ( as opposed to the Thinker).