Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 176
•
Trim: 5½ x 8½
978-1-5381-2906-7 • Paperback • September 2019 • $19.95 • (£14.99)
978-1-5381-2907-4 • eBook • September 2019 • $18.50 • (£13.99)
Diane R. Gehart, Ph.D., is an award-winning professor of Counseling and Family Therapy at California State University, Northridge, and author of numerous best-selling books for professionals, including Mindfulness and Acceptance in Couple and Family Therapy and Mastering Competencies in Family Therapy. She maintains an active psychotherapy practice in the Los Angeles area, working with adults, couples, and families to find effective and meaningful ways to address their greatest life challenges—while having some fun along the way. You can follow her on YouTube. Learn more: www.dianegehart.com and www.mindfulnessforchocolatelovers.com.
Author’s Introduction: Would You Rather Eat Chocolate than Meditate?
Warning: Couch Potatoes and Voyeurs
1 Chocolate Meditation: A Taste of the Good Life
2 From Chocoholism to Chocolate Snobbery: Becoming a Seeker of Extraordinary Happiness
3 Chocolate Is a Vegetable: Mapping the Truths You Live By
4 Who Moved My Chocolate? Befriending Problems, Befriending Life
5 One Bite Is All It Takes: Mindfully Waking Up to Your Life
6 With or Without Nuts? Crazy Wisdom and the Back Door to Happiness
7 Fierce Compassion: Opening Your Heart to Milk, White, and Dark
8 There’s No Wrong Way to Eat a Reese’s—Or Is There? Ethics and Happiness
9 Artificial Chocolate and Comfort Foods: Dangers and Pitfalls on the Path
10 The Art of Savoring: Joyfulness as a Way of Life
Notes: Academic Bits and Pieces
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
In this interactive study, the author walks readers through meditations, worksheets, and exercises that provide a road map (not a treasure map) to joy. . . . Chocolate is used as a lure and a reward for these activities, enabling readers to understand just what does and doesn’t result in happiness. It’s quickly apparent that happiness lies in the present moment, and Gehart uses a sense of play and years of experience as a counselor to encourage participants to shift their thinking from an outer to an inner focus and to enjoy the journey. Readers willing to put in the effort and dig deeply into their thoughts will be rewarded with both chocolate and inner peace.— Booklist
Rarely has a work tackled life’s weightier themes with such relaxed confidence and freedom. Gehart faces down subjects fraught with meaning in every reader’s life with a smile rather than a wagging finger and it makes the experience of reading Diane R. Gehart’s Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers a rewarding ride from beginning to end.— Indie Source Magazine
Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers is well written and constructed from beginning to end and stands as a work you can return to long after first reading. . . . I hope this won’t be Gehart’s last word on the subject; the world can use more books like this.— Mobangeles
. . . one of the most impressive aspects of Diane R. Gehart’s Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers is her willingness to recognize, from the outset, that her potential readers likely know what changes they need to make in their lives to enjoy greater personal happiness. She identifies motivation, or lack thereof to be exact, as the principal stumbling block preventing people from incorporating a different design for living promising greater personal satisfaction and a stronger connection to individual ideas of happiness. Her positive point of view on the latent potential within us all is refreshing; each of us, mired in discontent, can slip into the trap of blaming insurmountable internal limitations on our failure to know joy. Gehart sees no such limitations, only possibilities.— Independent Music and Arts, Inc.
Freud famously said that the most we could expect from life is ordinary misery. Diane Gehart's Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers refutes this cynical idea. It combines disparate elements (one ancient–Buddhism and one modern–Positive Psychology) to provide a tested roadmap to extraordinary happiness.— Bill O'Hanlon, featured Oprah guest and author of "Do One Thing Different"
A refreshingly fun and sweet take on mindfulness and joyful living. Diane’s gift for translating ancient Eastern philosophies into everyday contexts shines in this approachable yet in-depth contemporary guide.— Bettina Bush, Editor-at-Large, Working Mother Magazine and Host of Working Mother Radio
Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers is an intelligent and humorous guide for anyone who is seeking greater happiness and fulfillment. The wisdom, techniques, exercises and antidotes each give the reader an opportunity for both education and self discovery. This is a great read for those who are knowledgeable in this subject and those who are just beginning.— Stacy Kaiser, psychotherapist and author, "How to Be a Grown Up: The Ten Secret Skills Everyone Needs to Know"
Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers: A Lighthearted Way to Stress Less and Enjoy More Each Day provides scientifically-supported, yet simple, practical tools for helping us along the road to happiness. The concepts are clear and help break though the confusion and inaccuracies disseminated by different sources about what happiness is, how it can be achieved and maintained. I recommend the book as an accessible guide to empirically support principles.— Russell Crane, PhD, LMFT, Editor of Contemporary Family Therapy and Emeritus Professor, Marriage and Family Therapy, Brigham Young University
An empowering and hopeful book that offers practical ways we can all slow down, exhale, and linger in joy, gratitude, and inner calm.— Stephen Mardell, MFT, Clinical Director, Child and Family Therapy Center
"Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers" is a delicious and simple guide, to alleviate stress and anxiety. The exercises are fun, the content makes it possible for readers to learn how to be in the moment with ease and intention, as well as learning to be okay when uncomfortable. It's not just about smelling the roses, it's about eating the chocolate too! I will be recommending it to all my patients.— Laura Rhodes-Levin, LMFT, Founder of The Missing Peace-Center for Anxiety
Readers will find "Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers" to be a therapeutic book that opens the heart, touches the spirit, and expands the mind. Gehart artfully and vulnerably offers her expertise and experience, weaving humor, research, and spiritual teachings to lead readers toward growth and groundedness. A must-read for anyone healing from pain or longing for more.— Jessica ChenFeng, PhD, LMFT, Associate Director of Physician Vitality, Loma Linda University Health
Dr. Gehart deliciously unwraps the depths of life secrets in this profoundly accessible book that teaches us the golden rule of attaining true happiness.— Gerald Monk, Ph.D, author "Intercultural Counseling: Bridging the Us and Them"
This is the only mindfulness with chocolate! This playful book offers opportunities for practice that are clear and accessible. The simplicity of practice is too often difficult to grasp because we complicate it with our concepts, hopes, and expectations. With chocolate, however, you can settle into the pleasant experience, pay attention, and practice more clearly. Attention and presence with chocolate enhances the pleasantness of the experience and provides positive reinforcement for being mindful and skill-building by practicing chocolate-centered meditation. More practices makes more room for more self-awareness and insight and more choice in how you want to live your life. Then your life becomes one of intention and applied skill rather than just condition, habit, and reactivity. I want my life to include more compassion, more peace, and more deep, rich chocolate. — Frank Baird, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor
In Mindfulness for Chocolate Lovers, Dr. Gehart shows readers how to savor their lives, literally and metaphorically. This deliciously wise book is a practical, humorous, directly applicable, and delicious path to embracing you life fully, with all of its twists and turns and swirls. I will personally enjoy this chocolatey, mindful-y goodness as well as use it professionally to help others sweeten their journey. — Tanya J. Peterson, MS, NCC, author of "The Mindfulness Workbook for Anxiety" and "The Mindfulness Journal for Anxiety"
[A] great book to help you calm your mind, ground yourself and find your inner peace. With Gehart’s professional experience in therapy, she is able to guide readers through exercises that help them feel more at ease. Gehart uses chocolate to aid in her descriptions and encourages readers to enjoy some chocolate while performing various mindful exercises. This is a great book to start with if you are new to mindfulness and meditation. However, this is also a great book if you’ve been practicing for a while. Gehart provides many helpful tips and tricks to help keep your mind right.
— Nonfiction Chocolate (Blog)