Here are 100 books that Mindful Parenting fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a psychologist, consultant, author, and father based in Massachusetts, and I am also a former special education teacher. After discovering mindfulness as a young man when I was struggling with my own stress, substance abuse, and mental health challenges, I became determined to share with others. I love reading and writing books, sharing child development and mental health tips in workshops worldwide, and helping kids, families, and schools be their best. I’m also the author of twenty books for adults and kids, including Alphabreaths (2019), Growing Up Mindful (2016), and Feelings are Like Farts (2024).
Susan is an old friend but also one of the original teachers of mindfulness for kids, and both books offer a range of practices, theory and research. Mindful Games is exactly what it sounds like, and exactly what many of us want in teaching mindfulness to kids- fun, simple, exercises for all ages that teach her “ABC’s” of Acceptance, Balance, and Compassion.
A practical and playful guide for cultivating mindfulness in kids, with 50 simple games to develop attention and focus, and to identify and regulate emotions
Playing games is a great way for kids to improve their focus and become more mindful. In this book, The Mindful Child author Susan Kaiser Greenland shares how parents, caregivers, and teachers can bring mindfulness into the classroom or home. She provides 50 entertaining games that develop what she calls the new “A, B, C’s”—Attention, Balance, and Compassion—for your child’s learning, happiness, and success, offering context and guidance throughout. She introduces:
I’m a psychologist, consultant, author, and father based in Massachusetts, and I am also a former special education teacher. After discovering mindfulness as a young man when I was struggling with my own stress, substance abuse, and mental health challenges, I became determined to share with others. I love reading and writing books, sharing child development and mental health tips in workshops worldwide, and helping kids, families, and schools be their best. I’m also the author of twenty books for adults and kids, including Alphabreaths (2019), Growing Up Mindful (2016), and Feelings are Like Farts (2024).
This book is one of my favorites, and by my favorite mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh no less. Full of hands on activities, arts and crafts, and beautiful illustrations and simple instructions. I was initially skeptical of some of the instructions and practices, but was amazed at how well they “worked” with kids.
Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children is the fruit of decades of development and innovation in the Plum Village community's collective practice with children. Based on Thich Nhat Hanh's thirty years of teaching mindfulness and compassion to parents, teachers, and children, the book and enclosed CD cover a wide range of contemplative and fun activities parents and educators can do with their children or students. The activities are designed to help relieve stress, increase concentration, nourish gratitude and confidence, deal with difficult emotions, touch our interconnection with nature, and improve communication.
Planting Seeds offers insight, concrete activities, and curricula that…
I’m a psychologist, consultant, author, and father based in Massachusetts, and I am also a former special education teacher. After discovering mindfulness as a young man when I was struggling with my own stress, substance abuse, and mental health challenges, I became determined to share with others. I love reading and writing books, sharing child development and mental health tips in workshops worldwide, and helping kids, families, and schools be their best. I’m also the author of twenty books for adults and kids, including Alphabreaths (2019), Growing Up Mindful (2016), and Feelings are Like Farts (2024).
I appreciate this small guide (with audio) is a simple accessible guide to bringing mindfulness into daily life for younger kids. It does not get bogged down in theory or explanations but gets right to the point with simple, fun practices that exhausted parents, and educators can share with their children and students.
Simple mindfulness practices to help your child (ages 5-12) deal with anxiety, improve concentration, and handle difficult emotions—with a 60-minute audio CD of guided exercises
Mindfulness—the quality of attention that combines full awareness with acceptance of each moment, just as it is—is gaining broad acceptance among mental health professionals as an adjunct to treatment. This little book is a very appealing introduction to mindfulness meditation for children and their parents. In a simple and accessible way, it describes what mindfulness is and how mindfulness-based practices can help children calm down, become more focused, fall asleep more easily, alleviate worry, manage…
I’m a psychologist, consultant, author, and father based in Massachusetts, and I am also a former special education teacher. After discovering mindfulness as a young man when I was struggling with my own stress, substance abuse, and mental health challenges, I became determined to share with others. I love reading and writing books, sharing child development and mental health tips in workshops worldwide, and helping kids, families, and schools be their best. I’m also the author of twenty books for adults and kids, including Alphabreaths (2019), Growing Up Mindful (2016), and Feelings are Like Farts (2024).
Amy Saltzman is another early adopter of mindfulness for young people and comes at her work with deep compassion and wisdom. Her activities, including movement and arts, engage kids of all ages, and her spinoff programs for athletes and teens are also wonderful approaches to sharing mindfulness with children.
Teaching kids stress management skills early in life will help them to grow into happy and healthy adults. And if you work with children or adolescents, you know that kids today need these skills more than ever. The pressures they face in the classroom, on the playground, in their extracurricular activities, and at home can sometimes be overwhelming. So how can you help lay the groundwork for their success?
A Still Quiet Place presents an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program that therapists, teachers, and other professionals can use to help children and adolescents manage stress and anxiety in their…
My career began in television, and the demands wore on me over time. I started realizing that I cared just a little too much and too intensely. It was not emotionally or mentally healthy nor sustainable in the long run. Thus began my journey. Reading a few books turned into several courses, eventually leading to a PhD in Conscious-Centered Living. I realized I wanted to share with others what I learned along the way. However, coming from a creative background, I wanted to take a creative approach toward becoming happier and more content – and do it in a sustainable way. Thus, my book was created to help other seekers.
I think Dan Harris’s book is an excellent introduction to meditation, which is a game-changer on one’s path to happiness. It was the first thing I got on board with when I started seeking ways to manage my wellbeing better.
Plus, being in the entertainment industry, I enjoyed the peek into his life as a journalist and news anchor. I so identified with his stories about the demand and stress of television production. It was realizing that these factors in my own world were not sustainable and became the catalyst for my inner journey.
Today, life is 180 degrees different. I feel much happier and more content and want to share what worked for me with other seekers.
My entire academic life of over 20 years has been focused on how to help people and organizations become their Best Self. I am the author of 15 books. Six of my books were published by Academic Presses: Cambridge University Press; Stanford University Press; and Columbia Business School Publishing. My work has appeared in over 400 global media publications including Fortune magazine, European Business Review, HBR, SHRM, Fast Company, WIRED, Forbes, INC., Huffington Post, Washington Post, Business Week, the Financial Times,CEO World as well as on CNBC Squawk Box, Fox Business News, Big Think, WSJ Radio, Bloomberg Radio with Kathleen Hayes, Dow Jones Radio, MSNBC Radio, Business Insider, and Wharton Radio.
I love this book. It was the book I used years ago to learn how to do Mindful Meditation which transformed my way of being and enabled me to become a better person and a better learner.
Mindful Meditation taught me how to have a Quiet Mind so I could really listen to others and learn from others. I started out doing Mindful Meditation 3-5 minutes a day. It was hard. But I kept at it improving to 10 minutes then to 20 minutes then to 30 -40 minutes a day.
I learned how to be still and fully present. It helped me build better relationships with others. It is a key building block for Inner Peace.
We may long for wholeness, suggests Jon Kabat-Zinn, but the truth is that it is already here and already ours. The practice of mindfulness holds the possibility of not just a fleeting sense of contentment, but a true embracing of a deeper unity that envelops and permeates our lives. With Mindfulness for Beginners you are invited to learn how to transform your relationship to the way you think, feel, love, work, and play-and thereby awaken to and embody more completely who you really are.
Here, the teacher, scientist, and clinician who first demonstrated…
I am a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto who studies the social neuroscience of the self and human emotion, with a focus on how biases in self-representation shape emotional reactions that determine well-being. I am particularly interested in how cognitive training practices such as mindfulness meditation and yoga foster resilience against stress, reducing vulnerability to disorders such as depression. I’ve always wished we had better ways of communicating fascinating and important discoveries in neuroscience and mental health to a wider audience, so we combined our teaching experience in the fields of mindfulness, yoga, sports, and clinical psychology to write this book.
It’s hard for me to explain just how important this book has been in Western culture. Part autobiography, part meditation manual, this book is what popularized the modern mindfulness movement, beginning with Jon’s first forays into teaching ‘secularized’ mindfulness practices in the basement of a medical school building in the late 1970s.
Rather than staying in that basement, Jon’s combination of scientific training, deep commitment to understanding the mechanisms of the mental joy and suffering, and passion for helping others came together to create one of the first and most influential Western meditation training programs: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. This program has been the foundation for decades of scientific research as western culture as come to appreciate the importance of training ourselves for mental health and wellness.
This book is the story of that program, it takes you firsthand through the rationale and practices that have helped so many people, acting…
The landmark work on mindfulness, meditation, and healing, now revised and updated after twenty-five years
Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health if we let it, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease. Based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, this classic, groundbreaking work—which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology—shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing. By engaging in these…
I'm an author, movement coach, and yoga teacher. I've been practicing yoga on and off for about 48 years. I was introduced to yoga by my mom through a really old book called Be Young with Yoga at 3 years old. Yoga has been a part of my entire existence in one way or another. I have had the honour and privilege to study with yoga teachers and educators for the past 30+ years and it has been life-changing. I have been a yoga teacher and movement coach for 30+ years, I have watched yoga make sad people feel better, injured people get strong, and shy people become leaders in their communities around equity and diversity.
Meditation is an amazing tool for stress relief, mental clarity, focus and balance. Meditation has been shown to help with depression, mental health, and reduction of blood pressure. This book helped me to establish a consistent and meaningful meditation practice. The author Anusha is an incredible teacher and advocate for increased mental health awareness. She provides a practical and sustainable approach to meditation.
With just five minutes of meditation a day, you can achieve a more focused, balanced, and peaceful life. Join wellness consultant Anusha Wijeyakumar, MA, as she shares the transformative meditation program that she developed for California s world-famous Hoag Hospital. You will discover the vital intentions and five-minute meditations designed for heart opening, chakra balancing, trusting your inner truth, embodying courage and strength, and more. These meditations and pranayama-breathwork exercises will help you create more joy and peace in your life while learning to control negative internal chatter. Raised in the philosophy of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) on her way to…
I’ve been fascinated by—and working with—the chakra system for more than 40 years. Because of my practice as a metaphysician, I have long sought the meanings behind what we experience as reality. Meaning is what makes reality worth living. The chakra system is a vital key to creating a life past surviving to thriving. Over the years, I’ve seen detective work in the chakra system unravel issues from the past, present, and future gently and for keeps. Every single one of us should know our chakras as a matter of basic health, and my 40 years of experience with clients proves it!
The first edition of this book is visually stunning, and I like it, first, for that reason—chakras need color and beauty and imagery and vitality, not black and white prose. They are, after all, the animation of the life force itself viewed through a prism. How that could possibly ever translate into just words on a page, I’ll never understand. Second, her practices are simple and exemplary with Archetypes, Altars, Physical Exercises, Crystals, Meditations, Daily Questions/Journaling, and Affirmations. They touch on all four aspects of each of us: Body, Heart, Mind, Spirit. Information about chakras is fine but useless. Working with your own chakra system is the entire point as far as I’m concerned.
The Book of Chakra Healing is a comprehensive guide to the ancient Indian system of chakras. These centres of 'spinning energy' in the body help maintain your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual balance. This book offers practical ways to work on your chakras and shows you how to unblock and rebalance your energy. Understanding chakra healing involves colour, knowledge of ancient myths, archetypes, bodywork, crystals, meditations, visualizations, open questions and affirmations.
As a trained therapist, educator, and coach for expectant and new parents, I understand on a deep level the importance of creating a strong foundation in building a family. I also was personally humbled at how difficult the transition to parenthood was for me and the challenges it presented in my relationship with my husband. While we’ve grown exponentially, I wanted to make it a little easier for other expectant parents to avoid some of the pitfalls that aren’t spoken about as much in becoming parents. I also wanted to help the new little beings arriving in the world to have more resourced, present parents. It’s a win-win.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is a world-renown specialist in mindfulness – the mind-body experience of being fully present and aware in the moment. Mindfulness is an effective practice for optimal emotional and physical health and well-being. We know that people around the world parent in many different ways, depending upon their background, culture, life experience, etc. What I love about this book is that if you want to learn to be more present in our highly-distracted, busy world, there is a gentle way to move toward having more of this presence in life, no matter your background – with your children, partner, and others. The wisdom of mindfulness found in this peaceful book helps develop greater empathy and connection with ourselves and those in our family.
