Beginner's Guide to Mindfulness Meditation with

Before learning meditation, my mind was often racing about all the things I had to get done each day or thoughts at night about what I had to get done the next day--I really had a difficult time getting to sleep. Once I started meditating, I learned how to clear my mind of all the clutter. I can now, at will, shut down that pesky urge to multi-task. I am more relaxed and better focused.I highly recommend this DVD for anyone who is interested and open to learning meditation.

Noisy, unpleasant, distracting background sounds make this an uncomfortable video to watch, much less to use as an actual meditation guide. For some reason the instructor, Ira Israel, opens EVERY segment with a painfully loud, piercing bell tone! After the first shock, I began plugging my ears to get past it to the spoken part. The production quality is not very good; he keeps saying, "You know?" after his sentences and in the first segment, to explain what mindfulness meditation is, he states,"Buddha was a Hindu, just as Jesus was a Jew…" then goes on to mention Buddha's philosophy about the mind. What on earth does Jesus being a Jew have to do with anything??? His speech patterns, his odd verbal tangents, are distracting. In the segment called Day One, he sits in Grand Central Station. This is a 3-minute segment in which the viewer is supposed to join him in the practice, while the noise of crowds of people moving past him is constantly playing in the background. After watching a few minutes of his introductions and meditation guidance, I found I was so tense that I finally shut off the dvd. It's going to be returned.

Ira Israel has truly changed my thought patterns on stress and anxiety. I put it on every night to help me sleep. Very relaxing and engaging.

I found the instructions good,but I have lost interest in meditation.

The locations pictured in this video are amazing. You are taken away to another world. A very good dvd for learning meditation

not relaxing- to watch someone sitting in the middle of grand central station! Concept was good, just rather see something tranquil.

This DVD is the best introduction to meditation. Easy to follow, great voice and so much humor…I always thought meditation was boring but not with Ira Israel.

This is a terrible DVD. It forces you to watch only a short segment, then return to home page. After going through the introduction (in 3 sections) and 1 day of "meditation" I'm sending it on to a thrift shop.