Meditation

1. O's Little Book of Calm & Comfort

Joy and frustration simultaneously exist in everyone's life — meditation offers people a way to help harmonize that internal dichotomy. This meditation book from the editors at O, The Oprah Magazine, is a collection of essays that grounds the abstract nature of meditation with stories of the pleasures and setbacks that are all part of the human experience. It also includes an enlightening conversation between Oprah and Buddhist monk Pema Chödrön about rebuilding and thriving after going through a personal tragedy. This book is an enjoyable quick read, and it's small enough to carry with you, for flipping back open to a favorite essay at any time.

2. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World 

The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu may be two of the wisest men alive, but their wisdom is gleaned through lives of constant introspection and reckoning with the profound suffering in the world today. This book follows them during the course of Tutu's weeklong visit to the Dalai Lama's home in 2015, in which they discuss what pure, true joy means to every life (even in the face of immense hardship), and also the mental obstacles that can prevent even the most capable people from attaining it.

3. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

The Four Agreements is a book about the ancient teachings passed down from the Toltec peoples of Mexico, which have endured in their relevance to living a full, good life today. The agreements outlined in the book sound extremely simplistic (one of them is "do your best"), but author and spiritual teacher Don Miguel Ruiz breaks these large, vague concepts into specific ways that readers can start to instill positive changes in their day-to-day.

4. Declutter Your Mind: How to Stop Worrying, Relieve Anxiety, and Eliminate Negative Thinking

Our inner voice helps us navigate tricky decisions and work out what we want to say before it comes out of our mouths, but when it turns into a panicked monologue, it can severely impact our quality of life. For anyone who feels too riddled with anxiety and worried thoughts to sit down and meditate, Declutter Your Mind is a wonderful tool to help you remove distractions, cut down on the mental chatter, and reclaim that space for calm contemplation.

5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

If you prefer reading novels to philosophy texts, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a wonderful place to start on the journey to mindfulness. Touted for its pacing, narrative voice, and easily digestible concepts, this story of a father and son on a motorcycle trip serves as a metaphor for the underlying questions about the purpose and true nature of humanity.

6. Get Some Headspace: How Mindfulness Can Change Your Life in Ten Minutes a Day

Meditation, though powerful, is not all that complicated to execute. Andy Puddicombe, founder of the Headspace app (and former Buddhist monk), argues that 10 minutes a day of quiet, focused breathing can make a world of difference in a busy life. This meditation book breaks it down into very simple concepts, using analogies and stories to illustrate the point.

 

7. When Breath Becomes Air

This eloquent memoir from neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi reflects on finding joy and beauty in life, as well as reconciling with one's own mortality. Published posthumously, it is a philosophically insightful book, and also a true affirmation on the value of a life lived to the fullest.

 

8. Balance: Angie's Extreme Stress Menders Volume 1

Find your own stress-free, meditative flow with Angie Grace's book of mandalas. The longer you work on coloring in one of its gorgeously illustrated designs, the more you'll feel your stress melt away, leaving you with beautiful art to admire once you're finished!

9. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

 

If you're looking for advice on how to de-stress that's more down-to-earth than spiritually focused, turn to the straight-talking guru of self-help, Dale Carnegie. Written in a friendly and upbeat voice, he dispenses practical wisdom in each chapter, allowing you to more easily meditate without sweating the small stuff.

10. 52 Lists for Happiness: Weekly Journaling Inspiration for Positivity, Balance, and Joy

Journaling is a great way to get in deeper touch with yourself, and to calm down your thoughts when your brain is feeling frazzled. If free-form writing feels too much like work, we suggest picking up Moorea Seal's 52 Lists for Happiness. Each entry in this gorgeous list-making journal gives you a positivity-focused prompt to help you focus on the things in life that bring you the most joy.

11. The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

This top-rated meditation book is all about looking inward. It helps readers understand their inner selves, and how to sit with their energy in meditation, even when it seems incredibly difficult. Anyone who feels like they fixate far too much on the little things would benefit greatly from the teachings in this book.

12. Wherever You Go, There You Are

This best-selling meditation book introduces readers to a deeper practice to help them significantly reduce their everyday stressors. Author Jon Kabat-Zinn places a big emphasis on the concept of being and not doing, using meditation as a means to become more present.

1. For quick relaxation of the whole body:
   
   
   

• Sit or lie down before beginning this exercise, so you will be able to relax your body completely.
• Gently tense the entire body.
• Then relax and withdraw your mind away from the body.
• Try to avoid any motion, as this will bring your mind back into your body.
• Imagine that your body is jelly-like, without any bones or muscles.

2. Savasana (Corpse Pose) Visualization:

The proper position for corpse pose. You may use props and blankets to make yourself more comfortable. You may stretch your arms out or keep them next to your body.

• Lie on the floor and turn the palms of your hands upward.
• Inhale and tense the whole body, then throw the breath out and relax (repeat two to three times).
• Lie very still and listen or feel your breath. As your calmness deepens, feel your consciousness becoming centered increasingly at the point between the eyebrows. Think of your body as surrounded by space — space in all directions spreading out to infinity.
• Visualize this space gradually seeping through the pores of the skin into your feet, until your feet become space. Visualize this space as gradually coming up into the rest of your body and then your brain. In feeling space in your brain, release from your mind all regrets about the past, all worries about the future. Rest in the infinite ocean of the eternal Present. The objects of endless human concern no longer exist. There is nothing in all eternity but the Right Here, the Right Now.
• You can repeat mentally: “Bones, muscles, movement I surrender now; anxiety, elation and depression, churning thoughts: All these I give into the hands of peace.”

3. Exercise: yoga-star-lisa

Doing yoga postures, or going for a walk or jog, is a great way to relax and rejuvenate your body. Exercise is particularly helpful in the morning or middle of the day, because it will allow you to relax and relieve any stresses without becoming drowsy.

4. Take a hot bath:

Soaking in a warm bath at the end of the day or before a stressful event such as giving a speech is an easy way of releasing physical and mental tension

Note: Make sure you do not become overheated, and drink plently of water afterwords because hot water is dehydrating

5. Take a sun and air bath:

• Go out in the sun. If it’s cold you can bounce up and down to keep warm.
• Slowly inhale counting to eight, hold for eight, then exhale for eight. Repeat until you feel relaxed.
• As you breathe, feel the suns rays penetrating your skin and expelling all worries.
• Stay out for 10 minutes or so, depending on the sun’s intensity.

From 8pm to 11pm is the time for hydration and stimulation, while 11pm to 3am is the time for nutrition and regeneration, and 3am to 5am is the time for resting.

Of course, very few adults are in bed at 8pm and, as the hormone that triggers sleep - melatonin - peaks at around 11pm, this is the time we should naturally get tired.
Seven or eight hours of sleep is ideal for most of us. More than that can mean we wake up looking puffy and feeling sluggish.

Chronic lack of sleep, or poor-quality sleep, has an incredibly negative effect on the way we feel - and on the way we look.
When we are asleep, our cells rebuild and repair themselves (the growth hormone functions only at night). If you don't sleep, this function is impaired.

If you sleep badly, you are likely to become stressed, and this can cause the capillaries to tighten up, affecting the flow of nutrients to the skin and scalp and causing the skin and hair to look dull.