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Breathe Empower Achieve*
Helpful Mindfulness Breaks for Women
As a person who has an interest in self-help books, I found the concept of this one to be fascinating. Mindfulness is such a buzzword these days, and I will admit that I am a bit leery of its use everywhere. Mindfulness itself is a hard word to define fully. It definitely has to do with being present, whatever that means for you in a given moment. But there is much more to it. In this book, the author offers 5-minute tune-ups that will either help you calm down (breathing mindfulness), see and get past self-limiting beliefs (empowering mindfulness), or figure out actionable plans as you learn more about yourself (achieving mindfulness).
First she talks generally about what the book will have in it; she also does define mindfulness and why she considers it to be important. The book has been broadly divided into three sections: breathe, empower, and achieve mindful breaks (as laid out by the title). These are mostly short concepts to meditate on although some of them do require you to write or do other actions. Each of these exercises is preceded by a fairly lengthy essay describing what the exercises is meant to do for you and some of its background. I found the essays engaged my mind and made me more interested in trying the exercise. Meditation and inner awareness have been subjects that have interested me for decades, and I enjoyed this spin on it. By the way, this book is geared toward women specifically. The author states that women have some unique responsibilities and challenges that require special acknowledgement and handling. I think each of the book’s parts have value. It is so easy to get stressed and overwhelmed; the breathe section can help with that. If you have beliefs that stop you from going after what you want, the empower section is tailored to that. I recommend this book.
