A holistic guide for integrating wellness practices into everyday life all year long.
Lind, a certified yoga teacher, offers an introduction to mindfulness, movement, and stress relief for time-pressed people.
The author encourages readers to embark on a yearlong health journey involving yoga, meditation, breathwork, and other self-care strategies. First, she says, readers must gather essentials, including a yoga mat, journal, and comfortable clothes; then, they’ll be ready to set an intention and get to work on wellness strategies. Lind introduces forms of meditation, including yoga nidra (a naplike, full-body relaxation), walking meditation, and silent meditation, reassuring readers that such actions “will either drive you up the wall or make you wonder what you’ve been waiting for all this time.” Readers can learn breathwork, such as alternate nostril breathing (to “feel zen”). A practice known as “Skull Shining Breath” uses forceful exhales for detoxing. Tapping, also known as the “Emotional Freedom Technique,” can help “karate-chop through emotions” via taps on nine meridians throughout the body, she asserts. Lind highlights yoga poses that she says can tap into each of the body’s seven chakras (energy centers). Shoulder shrugs and neck stretches can help one shed “the weight of the world (or your to-do list),” according to the author, and journaling may be used to celebrate strengths, dream about the future, appreciate the body, or forgive oneself. Lind recommends writing down five things for which one is thankful each day, even if it’s as simple as “Thanks to socks for existing.” Some of the advice feels obvious or overexplained, such as “ensure your nostrils are clear. You only need to grab a tissue or hanky and blow. Throw the tissue away and wash your hands.” Overall, though, Lind effectively provides readers with a range of simple techniques to improve their mental, emotional, and physical well-being. With a friendly tone and casual language (“Yaaaas! We. Got. This”), she offers readers motivation in weekly, bite-sized servings. She also includes helpful alternatives for various activities, such as a walking meditation around the house when the weather is bad.
A holistic guide for integrating wellness practices into everyday life all year long.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798345797686
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
