THE DISCIPLINE OF STOPPING

Most books about stillness were written by people who find it easy. This one wasn't.

If you are capable, driven and slightly embarrassed to be reading a book about sitting quietly - if you have already tried this twice and given up both times - this is the working guide nobody wrote for you.

It is not a memoir and not a devotional. It is a practical manual to the Christian contemplative practices, honestly described, for restless competitive people who find silence close to unbearable. Every instruction has a time attached. Every chapter says what actually goes wrong.

And it promises you nothing. No calm, no focus, no better sleep, no productivity. Not one claim about your health, your work or your mind. What it offers instead is the truth about the first five minutes, the flat year, and the boredom nobody warns you about - which is why people who read it are still practicing when the enthusiasts have stopped.

What's inside:

- Why the usual advice fails achievers, and the four moves you will make that guarantee failure

- What stillness is not: not relaxation, not emptying the mind, not a technique for getting more done

- The first five minutes, described minute by minute, so nothing surprises you

- Why almost everyone should start with slow movement rather than sitting

- The wandering mind, and the reframe that turns every distraction into the practice working

- Why a fixed time beats a good mood, and how to build a small daily office around a real job

- Walking, single-tasking, silence with other people, and a practical, unmoralised chapter on the phone

- Boredom - the real obstacle, and the one almost nobody writes about honestly

- Dryness: the long months when nothing happens and most people quit

- What actually changes after a year, described modestly and without promises

- How to write a rule you can keep, and how to stop turning stillness into another thing to be good at

Warm to Christian readers and drawing on the contemplative tradition as its main line, it treats the parallels in other traditions as ordinary rather than as a problem, and it says plainly and early that these practices are not treatment and that anyone in real distress should see a doctor or counselor.