Fortuitously, I have been a meditator for close to 50   years. I have had personal training from traditional Eastern teachers. About 20   years ago, I received professional training and certification in Ayurveda, the Traditional Medicine of India. A comprehensive textbook on Ayurveda also resulted. With these, retraining in both Buddhist and Yoga meditation further refined my capacities. On the scaffolding of Western science and medical training, this contribution aspires to demystify what may have been viewed as occult, if not eclipsed from the rigors of Western examination. As a member of Yale Medicine's Physician Engagement, Wellness, and Burnout Prevention Committees, my contemporary rebooting added timely relevance, made sharing these skills possible, and added credibility to this book.

My colleague, Justin Brewer, has underlined how modern science and findings from his laboratory research into brain mechanisms linked with mindfulness reinforce the validity of nonconscious changing—providing evidence that this works. My training in meditation ran parallel to several personal psychoanalyses in London and New Haven. The overlap of both approaches exposes implicit information bringing it to conscious awareness, and access to effortful mental and behavior change, notably nonconscious changing seen and felt consciously. The broad impact of this self-modulation on purposeful self-regulation has remained an effective work-life asset for me.

I extend my gratitude to Elsevier Press for allowing me to formalize an overview of meditative awareness. This book is a schematic introduction to the complex and formidable task of making sense of mindfulness in the 21st century. Learned Mindfulness as part of my model of emotional intelligence innovates proposals in this text written above all, for other physicians.

The Introduction is an encapsulation of the book's essence.

January 2019