Mediterranean Living’s Top 7 Mindfulness Reads

Having the right tools will greatly aide you when embarking on a mindfulness journey. Here are our top seven mindfulness reads, that are practical and offer great focus. We have something for everyone in this eclectic list of fun and interesting books.

Gratitude Works: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity

One important piece of The Mediterranean Diet and Lifestyle is being grateful for all that you have. Cultivating gratitude is a great launching point to becoming more mindful in both our thinking and our actions. There are many super strategies you can employ to become more grateful for everything in your life, including the basics.  You can also cultivate gratitude for the food that you eat, which will improve your relationship with food.

Cultivating gratitude might seem like a luxury, but it can have a huge impact on your health and happiness. Studies show that gratitude can even improve your blood pressure and your immune function. WEB MD shares an excellent article about gratitude and its many positive effects on your health. You can find the article here. 

One of our favorite tools for cultivating gratitude is “Gratitude Works: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity.” This small book is authored by Robert A. Emmons, who also wrote the best-selling book titled simply “Thanks.” This book gets high marks and offers a highly practical approach to tap into the benefits of gratitude. It’s a step-by-step guide that offers up effective daily gratitude practices.

Stop here to get a copy of Gratitude Works. 

Emmons is also exploring gratitude with UC Davis. He is doing cutting edge research on the impacts of gratitude. You can learn more here. 

Little Book of Mindfulness:

10 minutes a day to less stress, more peace

Here is a great read for anyone just “dipping their toe” into mindfulness exploration.  This book gets fantastic reviews and is highly readable and engaging. Dr. Patrizia Collard shares simple practices that you can do in just five or ten minutes a day. Simply reading this book is relaxing! This is the kind of book you can pop into a bag and carry around with you for inspiration. Or keep it in a place at home where you will pick it up and get a refresher on practicing mindfulness.

This book explores how you can live more in the present, find acceptance, practice compassion, feel more gratitude, eat mindfully and more. I think of it as a one-stop shop for many important aspects of mindfulness.

Stop here to get yourself a copy of this popular read. 

Wellbeing

We are big fans of “WellBeing: The Art of  Living” by Mark Vernon. This tremendously absorbing read features a focus on happiness and it’s connection to being part of something bigger. This book sings the praises of finding happiness through finding goodness instead of looking at the bits and pieces of what might make a good life.

Vernon explores the thinking of great Greek philosophers on wellbeing and connects that to the values and beliefs of these philosophers that could create better wellbeing for you now. Vernon asks us to tap into these ideas and consider how we can apply this ancient thinking to our own personal lives. At Mediterranean Living, we appreciate this book showcasing connections to the broader world and universe as a way to find happiness. We believe that communing with and feeling connected to others is one of the most important pieces to finding health and happiness.

Pick up Wellbeing here for a deep and thoughtful read on the art of living. 

The Mindfulness Colouring Book

Doesn’t everyone love to color? Well, coloring is becoming all the rage with adults. There are vast numbers of coloring books that are being published. We think it is a good thing that adult coloring books are catching on. The mere act of coloring is a mindfulness practice and a great stress release. There’s a reason we love to doodle in boring or stressful meetings! The action of doing something creative is a great way to take the edge off in stressful situations.

Our first choice for an adult coloring book is “The Mindfulness Colouring Book: Anti-stress Art Therapy for Busy People.” Written by Emma Farrarons, this book is hugely popular and helpful.

Grab a copy to de-stress and find your way to calm. 

And, if you are interested in exploring other adult coloring books, you might like this CNN article that explores the top hits. 

Savor

At Mediterranean Living, we love to eat. This is just one of the many reasons that we love Savor by Thich Nhat Hanh and Lilian Cheung. We have a full review of Savor on the Mediterranean Living website. Here is just a taste of what we had to share:

One of the basic tenets of a Mediterranean Lifestyle is to eat slowly and savor your food. In this spirit, we bring you a review of Thich Nhat Hahn and Dr. Lilian Cheung’s book, Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. Aligned with our mission at Mediterranean Living, the book teaches us a way to be mindful in our eating habits to ensure both a healthy weight and positive well being. It was created with the understanding that some of our current ways of addressing weight gain are not fruitful and that there is another way to create a good balance in our relationship with food.

Stop by to read the full article on this helpful and easily digestible read. 

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

It’s more than ourselves and the people around us that make up the landscape of our overall wellbeing. Our physical environment has a strong impact on how we are feeling mentally, which in turn affects our health and happiness. From being in nature, to walking through art galleries to enjoying music, we can immerse ourselves into environments that make us feel calmer and more positive.

The home is a place where we spend a large chunk of time. So, it makes sense that we would want to create an environment that brings us peace and calm. You know that fabulous feeling you get when you go to a spa or a nice hotel? It is possible to get that same feeling in your own home. Our purchasing choices and how we set up our living space impact our mindset and our level of motivation. There are many books out there about feng shui and how it can create a peaceful and calm environment. Additionally, you can work with a, feng shui practitioner  to design a relaxing environment in your home.

It’s also important to be able to maintain a comfortable and relaxing environment for the long-term. A messy and chaotic environment can leave you frazzled, especially if it is also highly cluttered. If you would like to make your environment more peaceful, consider the New York Times Bestselling book: “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. This book has received many well-deserved accolades and many people have spoken to how this book has affected their life in positive ways.

If you would like to neaten things up, stop here to get this helpful book. 

You can also stop by Marie Kondo’s website to review an excerpt of the book. Here is a link to her Tidying Up website.

Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (And their Parents)

We even have something for the kids! You’ll love Eline Snel’s book, “Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (And their Parents).” This book has the perfect approach for teaching mindfulness to kids. Snel keeps these mindfulness exercises simple and fun. “Sitting Still Like a Frog” focuses on specific techniques that are great for children to learn in a more direct way through this book. These include such concerns as reducing anxiety, keeping calm, managing anger or falling asleep.

The book comes with an audio CD with guided meditations by Myla Kabat-Zinn, who, along with her husband Jon Kabat-Zinn, is an expert in mindfulness.

Stop by here to get a copy for you and your kids. 

Have a great time exploring some of these mindfulness reads. We would love to hear what you think of our selections. You can share your feedback by commenting below.

Happy reading!