I first came across Dan Harris via the Minimalists, and I've been an on and off listener of Dan Harris's podcast for a few years. This book has been on my reading list for a quite a while. I picked it up because I wanted a burst of motivation for trying meditation again.

Dan is a journalist working for ABC news. The book details his journey from a curious sceptic to a converted avid meditator. The book is a slow sell for meditation.

He spends some time in the book describing how he began his career. During this time, Dan's mentor asked him to cover religious groups - this started as mainly covering Christian groups, often evangelicals groups, but then his producer, Felicia, suggested he do a story on Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher. This led Dan to do a piece on Deepak Chopra, Joe Vitale, and so on.

Another significant step on his path to mediation was reading a couple of books by Mark Epstein. After reading Epstein's books, Dan looked the author up, met up and became friends. Mark advised Dan to go on a ten-day meditation retreat with Joseph Goldstein. Dan describes the meditation retreat in great detail - giving a day by day breakdown of what he did and how he felt about the experience.

As well as having a professional interest in doing stories on these people, Dan was looking for something for himself - how to understand himself better and how to be less stressed. As Dan tells the story of his journey into this world, he shares insights he found and explains how it had affected his life.

I found it a great book to read. Dan's intermixing of autobiography, and spiritual journey makes a compelling read. And once I'd finished this book, I'd added several other books to my reading list.

My summary doesn't do the book justice in any way - and if it sounds interesting to you, I'd highly recommend the book. Although it's been a few weeks since I finished the book, and I've not managed to get back into the habit of mediating myself.