Dancing with Elephants: Mindfulness Training For Those Living With Dementia, Chronic Illness or an Aging Brain

Have you received a terminal or chronic diagnosis? Is your mind succumbing to age or illness? Can you ever find joy, peace, or fulfillment in these challenging conditions? The answer is a resounding YES.

Author Jarem Sawatsky saw the countless guides out there for those caring for the ill and healing the curable, but when he was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease he found there was nothing for those living with incurable illness. He quit his job as a professor and devoted his life to exploring the possibilities of living with chronic conditions. Now he’s bringing his findings and insights to you.

Based on the popular blog of the same name, Dancing With Elephants includes insightful interviews with chronic disease experts Toni Bernhard, Lucy Kalanithi, and Patch Adams. Sawatsky’s landmark book provides support that only a fellow traveler down this road can offer. If you like touching stories, mindful wisdom, and a touch of irreverent humor, then you’ll love Sawatsky’s life-changing book.

In Dancing with Elephants, Sawatsky beautifully models a way to dance in the gale of full catastrophe, to celebrate life, to laugh with it and at himself, even in the face of personal failure and defeat.

- JON KABAT-ZINN, national bestselling author of Full Catastrophe Living


In Dancing with Elephants, Jarem Sawatsky offers a powerful example of the art of real happiness. This inspiring story reminds us just how essential it is to bring lovingkindness into every step of life, no matter how difficult the path

-SHARON SALZBERG, New York Times bestselling author of Real Happiness


… forthright and inspiring… people facing a chronic illness in themselves or in a loved one will learn from his honesty and openness.

-PETER V RABINS, co-author of The 36-Hour Day


Life can be tough and it's even tougher without the ability to find humor. You're either going to laugh or cry, so you might as well laugh. When life seems to be falling apart, Jarem Sawatsky's interesting and entertaining book reminds us that laughter is what we need to not take ourselves too seriously.

-JEN MANN, New York Times bestselling author of People I Want to Punch in the Throat


This is a beautiful and inspiring book. It is full of humor and wisdom about the pain of loss in our life, by a man who is living the severe loss of a debilitating disease. It is a book that we should all read so that loss be not transformed into anger or depression, but into love and radical acceptance.

-JEAN VANIER, national bestselling author of Becoming Human