Teach Us to Sit Still

His journey will open your mind to the possibilities of mindfulness

Polly Vernon, Sunday Telegraph

A movingly honest book that is about a great deal more than breathing and meditation

Susan Hill, The Lady

A lovely, well-told story... Parks is a conscientious and expert companion whom it is hard not to like

William Leith, Observer

Tim Park's account of curing his ill health through meditation is intensely engaging.

John Carey, The Sunday Times

Tim Park's digressive memoir of his debilitating but ultimately life-affirming struggle with pelvic pain made me leak a few tears, guffaw a lot, and besides quietly instructing me in some fresh perspectives... (it) ultimately taught me an eminently practical lesson about coping with age and mortality. Must I utter the blurbish cliché? Why the hell not: Teach us to Sit Still made me laugh; it made me cry; and it made me seriously think about taking up Vispassana meditation.

Will Self, The Times

[Parks} writes with forensic precision about all he experiences, physically and mentally... Even those free of illness will find Parks's journey gives us much to ponder about the effects of modern living.

Ben Felsenburg, Metro

Parks writes wonderfully well about his body as he is reluctantly reconciled to its existence alongside his mind.' '...All the more moving for avoiding new age fakery. Anyone plagued by chronic aches and pains will find much to cheer them in this most unusual and engaging book.

Jane Housham, Express

Parks is an excellent writer, capable of writing wittily and with great beauty about the near indefinable

Seven, Sunday Telegraph

Funny, painful and quietly profound book

Doug Johnstone, Scotsman

Beautifully written and painfully honest...a fascinating, perceptive and rewarding read

The Big Issue

Teach Us to Sit Still is a small triumph of narrative artistry, luxuriantly written and full of bone-dry humour. I'd recommend it to any man over 45 who frets incessantly about his health - which is to say, any man over 45.

Marcus Berkmann, The Spectator

This is a book about a redemptive conquest of the disbelieving self. There surely hasn't been a more attractive portrait of male obsession since Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch.

Jasper Rees, Mail on Sunday

This is a crazy, wince-inducing, uplifting book ... Parks has done a service to the many people who would never look at a cheesy self-help book or try anything with a whiff of spirituality about it

Financial Times

A maverick book

Richard Mabey, Guardian Summer Reading

A sophisticated, literary and colourful book

Daily Telegraph

A wonderful, paradoxical book - one that wouldn't exist if Parks's spiritual journey were complete. In that sense, his loss is our gain

The Guardian

Often moving and occasionally hilarious...it articulates inner processes that are notoriously resistant to word. Parks really lets his readers feel what it is to let go

Dan Gunn, Times Literary Supplement

It is a lovely, well told story of a coming together of a mind and a body

Valeria Lawlor, Irish Catholic

a lucid, literary and funny exploration of the language of illness

The Times

The story of Tim Parks' journey back to health is well told and frequently very funny

William Palmer, Literary Review

Funny and inspiring

Esther Freud, Daily Telegraph, Christmas round up

A writer of high intelligence, when writing about the personal, cannot help touching the universal.

Kate Saunders, The Times, Christmas round up

His journey is inward as well as outward, and involves a brutally honest, darkly comic self-examination of his life and character, written with Parks' usual stylistic verve.

David Lodge, Guardian, Christmas round up

An internal, rather than geographical shift with his gripping account of how he reinvented his lifestyle in order to combat a debilitating and unexplained illness

Mariella Frostrup, Psychologies

You can just see it - the tests, the diagnosis, the poignant memories. But it turns out the problem is not as serious as Parks thought. He's been sitting at a desk, typing, for decases. He's kisy as tense and anxious, physically and mentally. The thing is: how do you find a cure for that?

Evening Standard

This is one of the most interesting and revealing testaments you will ever get from a writer. From one of Parks's calibre, it is remarkable, and I sometimes found myself wondering if he had given too much of himself away. But if he has, then we should just be grateful for his generosity. Peace be unto him'

Saturday Guardian

You do not need to sign up to a monotheistic dogma or believe in dream - catchers to have ['spiritual' experiences], he argues. Parks's book is a fascinating testimony to that assertion'

The Times

It's a brilliant, brilliant book, funny, sharply intelligent, at times pleasingly grumpy, at others comfortably erudite, often all four at once'

Daily Mail

Reading this book is like being privy to the case files of a patient undergoing psychoanalysis. The material is exploratory, an extended period of musing. It invites us to make our own individual reflections. More food for thought than a manual on better living. It's also more engaging than it sounds, thanks to a good dose of detached humour

Thebookbag.co.uk

Sharing his humbling and elevating story he thoughtfully explains how he found solace in the alternative, through breathing and meditation. A personal and spiritual journey.

Charlotte Vowden, Daily Express

Littered with literary and cultural allusions, this memoir is engrossing and surprising as Parks struggles against ingrained scepticism in his testimony to the positive impact of meditation

James Urquhart, Financial Times

Parks's discoveries will fascinate not only writers but all citizens of an information age steeped in and propelled by language.

New Yorker

A sophisticated, literary and colourful memoir of Parks's battle with chronic illness, and how he moved beyond conventional medicine to find relief in vipassana, a form of Buddhist meditation.

Daily Telegraph

Surprising, frequently funny

Herald

Teach Us To Sit Still is mind-blowingly good

Viv Groskop, Red Magazine