Who said it?

A new celebrity memoir, perhaps surprisingly, includes talk of mindfulness practice. Guess who?

Here’s the quote in question — a definition of mindful awareness:

What is mindful awareness? Well, it’s part meditation, really, a state of contemplation, and an awareness of one’s own body, feelings, consciousness, thoughts, and one’s place in time and space. It’s about stopping and breathing. It helps you deal with anxiety, gives you a sense of well-being, and helps you find the calm.

Mindfulness meditation tunes you in to everything that’s going on at that very minute, deep in that universe inside you. And when you explore your inner universe, you connect more fully with the outer universe.

Mindfulness makes you more empathetic; it strengthens portions of your mind that you want to improve; it helps… you… cope!

So who said it? None other than Captain James T. Kirk — or rather, the man famous for playing him, William Shatner. The quote comes from page 27 of Shatner’s new memoir, Shatner Rules: Your Guide to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World At Large. There, the actor and author recounts an evening at his home with three names Mindful.org readers might well know: Marvin G. Belzer, Ph.D, Susan L. Smalley, Ph.D, and Diana Winston, three experts from UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, also known as MARC.

Mindfulness, Shatner goes on to say, has been key to making the most of his busy days. You can read this and more in his book.

Learn more about MARC here.