Take a deep breath.
These books can help start your mindfulness journey and remind you to check in with yourself.
Namaste.
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Laughter Yoga: Daily Practices for Health and Happiness by Madan Kataria, M.D.
Bring laughter into your life at any time of day—no special equipment needed, no new wardrobe, no expensive classes, not even a sense of humor!
Laughter yoga is all about voluntary laughter—how you can learn to laugh even in the absence of humorous stimuli, and reap the extraordinary, scientifically proven benefits, which include stress reduction, pain relief, weight loss, heightened immunity, and, especially, enhanced mood: If you act happy, you’ll become happy—your body can’t tell the difference!
Children laugh more than 300 times a day, adults fewer than fifteen. But it’s easy to start laughing again. The exercises in this book combine voluntary laughter with yogic breathing to give you a full body-mind workout. And it turns out that laughter is the fastest way to reduce stress and the best kind of cardio: Ten minutes of hearty laughter is equal to thirty minutes on the rowing machine.
With Laughter Yoga, join the growing worldwide movement and discover how laughter really is the best medicine.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to Clip from the Audiobook.
Restorative Yoga: Relax. Restore. Re-energize. by Caren Baginski
Rejuvenate your mind, body, and soul through restorative yoga.
Are you seeking balance, healing, and a calmer mind? Unlike active styles of yoga that focus on stretching and movement, restorative yoga emphasizes mindful rest by using props to support your body in complete comfort and relaxation—no flexibility required! Whether you already practice yoga or are just getting started, Restorative Yoga is your step-by-step guide to deepening the connection between your body and mind.
Inside you’ll find practical information on the amazing benefits of restorative yoga, 39 restorative yoga poses, 17 healing sequences for a variety of physical, mental, and emotional conditions, and more!
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
The Genius of Yoga: How Yogic Meditation Can Unlock Your Innate Brilliance by Alan Finger and Peter Ferko
Discover the transformational power of yogic meditation—a practice that goes beyond mindfulness to help you access your innate “inner genius” and source of creative inspiration.
Both mindfulness meditation and yoga practice have reached such a level of popularity that they have revolutionized how we think about tending to the health and well-being of ourselves, our families, our patients, students, and co-workers. But meditation done through a yogic framework goes beyond mindfulness. It not only gives you specific tools for improving health and creating emotional balance, but also offers you an experience beyond the sense-focused mind. It allows you to access atman, your unbound intelligence, or what the authors refer to as your innate “genius.” Accessing atman allows you to go beyond the limits of mindfulness to reach a deep source of creativity and inspiration within you—and connects you to your true purpose and direction in life.
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
Yoga for the Inflexible Male: A How-To Guide by Yoga Matt
Practical, down-to-earth advice on yoga for men, weekend warriors, aging athletes, and anyone else who could benefit from a bit more flexibility.
Thirty-six million Americans practice yoga for its touted benefits: serenity, flexibility, strength, endurance, and reduced stress. Would you like to join them? If so, this simple guide is for you.
Yoga for the Inflexible Male features three yoga practices, each about an hour long and containing around fifteen poses, with most poses having a Good, Not-So-Bad, or Ugly variation so that almost anyone can participate (no XY chromosome, prior experience, or athletic ability necessary). There are breathing tips and easy-to-follow drawings for every pose, and the book is full of genuine yoga wisdom and jokes to make the yoga part go down easy. There are special sequences geared for practitioners of specific sports, such as running, cycling, and golf, and suggestions for props that can be found in any house—so no extra gear to buy.
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Yoga for Everyone: 50 Poses for Every Type of Body by Dianne Bondy
Yoga is for every body, including yours!
For years, yoga books have asked readers to bend over backward (literally!) to conform to their physical demands. It’s time for the opposite—for readers to demand that yoga conform to their individual needs. It’s time for a yoga book to reflect the broader population that would benefit from a yoga practice geared toward them. It’s time for Yoga for Everyone!
This book offers yoga for every type of body: those who are big, small, elderly, pregnant, or of various physical abilities—everyone. No matter who you are or what you look like or what your abilities are, you can do all 50 poses in this book. The variations to classic poses in this book will also allow you to perform all 10 sequences, which combine different poses into one singular experience and focus on specific physical and mental benefits.
So forget what you’ve heard. Yoga isn’t just for the privileged few. It’s meant to be enjoyed by everybody and every body. Yes, you can do yoga—and Yoga for Everyone will show you how!
Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.
Total Meditation: Practices in Living the Awakened Life by Deepak Chopra, M.D.
The definitive book of meditation that will help you achieve new dimensions of stress-free living, from New York Times bestselling author Deepak Chopra.
For the last thirty years, Deepak Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution in the West. Total Meditation offers a complete exploration and reinterpretation of the physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual benefits that this practice can bring. Deepak guides readers on how to wake up to new levels of awareness that will ultimately cultivate a clear vision, heal suffering in your mind and body, and help recover who you really are. Readers will undergo a transformative process, which results in an awakening of the body, mind, and spirit that will allow you to live in a state of open, free, creative, and blissful awareness twenty-four hours a day.
With this book, Deepak elevates the practice of meditation to a life-changing quest for higher consciousness and a more fulfilling existence. He also incorporates new research on meditation and its benefits, provides dozens of practical awareness exercises and concludes with a 52-week program of meditations to help revolutionize every aspect of your life.
Coming in the Fall!
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happer How-To Book by Dan Harris
Too busy to meditate? Can’t turn off your brain? Curious about mindfulness but more comfortable in the gym? This book, from the bestselling author of 10% Happier, is for you.
ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play Ultimate Frisbee, and use the word “namaste” without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to become one of meditation’s most vocal public proponents.
Harris found that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him less annoying. Science suggests that the practice can lower your blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain. So what’s holding you back?
In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris and Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and “Meditation MacGyver,” embark on a gonzo cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that keep people from meditating. It is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions—all of which are also available (for free) on the 10% Happier app. This book is a trip worth taking.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
A Course in Meditation: A 21-Day Workout for Your Consciousness by OSHO
A 21-day course for modern meditators.
It can be difficult for the hyperactive 21st century mind to relax into an experience of silence and awareness. Recognizing this, the revered mystic Osho developed new meditation techniques to address the challenges of the modern mind. A Course in Meditation demonstrates these techniques in an easy-to-navigate format. Each day, learn a new aspect of meditative living followed by a simple, practical meditation and awareness practice. After each experience, reflect on the accompanying quote of the day, or use the provided space to take notes. Throughout the course, Osho imparts his unique insights on love, anger, relaxation, and more to guide you toward a space of inner acceptance, joy and mindfulness.
A Course in Meditation shows how we can reclaim the meditative nature that we each come in to the world with, but lose over time as we are initiated into the ways of society. From beginners eager to find stillness to more experienced meditators who wish to elevate their practice, Osho’s guide to meditation can teach everyone to separate themselves from their minds for a transformation of consciousness that brings a new understanding of what it means to be alert and responsive to whatever life brings.
Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.
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Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Don’t Hate, Meditate!: 5 Easy Practices to Get You Through the Hard Sh*t (and Into the Good) by Megan Monahan
Meditation instructor, Deepak Chopra protégé, director of Meditation Wanderlust Hollywood, and Lululemon ambassador Megan Monahan presents a no-nonsense guide to meditation for everyday soul-searchers.
This modern guide to meditation from instructor Megan Monahan takes readers beyond empty Instagram truisms to the simple yet effective ways to “meditate their way through the bad shit and into the good shit.” With a fresh voice and perspective, Monahan presents a set of tools grounded in a meditation technique that is impossible to screw up. With her help, you’ll unpack the five spiritual mindsets (Presence, Acceptance, Intention, Nonjudgment, and Trust, aka PAINT) that are key to moving out of constriction and fear and into a more expansive space within yourself and your life. Ultimately, you will quickly notice, at any triggering moment, where you’re getting stuck and how to more consciously move through it. The good news? This process is applicable to everything in your life, from missing a flight to seeing your ex’s engagement photo on social media to losing your job. Wouldn’t it be nice to not be completely leveled by any of those occurrences? Plot twist: After reading this book, taking the quizzes, and doing the themed meditations . . . you won’t be!
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat 25,000 times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.
Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.
Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
The Joy of Movement: How Exercise Helps Us Find Happiness, Hope, Connection, and Courage by Kelly McGonical
The bestselling author of The Willpower Instinct introduces a surprising science-based book that doesn’t tell us why we should exercise but instead shows us how to fall in love with movement.
Through her trademark blend of science and storytelling, McGonigal draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology, as well as memoirs, ethnographies, and philosophers. She shows how movement is intertwined with some of the most basic human joys, including self-expression, social connection, and mastery–and why it is a powerful antidote to the modern epidemics of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.
McGonigal tells the stories of people who have found fulfillment and belonging through running, walking, dancing, swimming, weightlifting, and more, with examples that span the globe, from Tanzania, where one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes on the planet live, to a dance class at Juilliard for people with Parkinson’s disease, to the streets of London, where volunteers combine fitness and community service, to races in the remote wilderness, where athletes push the limits of what a human can endure. Along the way, McGonigal paints a portrait of human nature that highlights our capacity for hope, cooperation, and self-transcendence.
The result is a revolutionary narrative that goes beyond familiar arguments in favor of exercise, to illustrate why movement is integral to both our happiness and our humanity. Readers will learn what they can do in their own lives and communities to harness the power of movement to create happiness, meaning, and connection.
Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
For Kids:
Yoga for Kids: Simple First Steps in Yoga and Mindfulness by Susannah Hoffman; Foreword by Patricia Arquette
Teach your kids about yoga and mindfulness with this mindful yoga activity book. Yoga activities are a great way to teach children about relaxation, meditation, and peace—while having fun at the same time.
This book is packed with yoga activities for kids and mindful games. Kids can stretch into tree pose, bend into butterfly pose, learn how to make a mindfulness jar, and find out why and how we should stretch through a series of fun yoga poses and sequences.
With more than 50 poses and activities, Yoga for Kids has everything you need to know about yoga for children. Children are guided through each pose, to make sure they achieve maximum fun and mindfulness in their yoga practice. Parents are given notes on each pose, to let them know what benefits it brings and how to stay safe.
Yoga for Kids shows that supporting a child’s positive mental health doesn’t need to be expensive, time-consuming, or difficult. Poses and activities help children to de-stress, focus, and get moving while having fun.
Available in Trade Paperback.
Have Even More Yoga Fun with Flash Cards!
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