Nourish Your Mind

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In this concise, readable book you'll learn useful, do-able skills that you can integrate into every aspect of your life for stress-free success. It will:

- give you tools and skills to manage stress, reduce anxiety and deal effectively with the pace and pressure of 21st century living.
- demystify the most important aspect of what drives us, our relationships and our decision-making - our feelings.
- explain how you can change the way your brain is wired to move effortlessly towards a fulfilling life of clarity, focus and balance.

This short reassuring book is rich in science but low in jargon. It is underpinned by a model which provides proven solutions for combatting stress, anxiety and burnout. The simple, easily learned mindfulness techniques will enable you to rewire your brain and participate fully and enthusiastically with life.

What makes this book unique is the easy to grasp way it explains key aspects of being human, our awareness of ourselves and our feelings. It shows how to live in the present, how mindfulness works in the brain and how to live a happier life. 

Deb Dana guides us to understand and befriend our autonomic nervous system, engaging its healing capacities to connect with ourselves and with our social world.' – Gabor Maté

'Once we know how our nervous system works, we can work with it,' teaches Deb Dana. 'We can learn to access an embodied, biological resource that is always present, available, and there to guide us toward well-being.'

An aggressive email from your boss, or a fight with your partner - these situations aren't life-or-death, yet our bodies may react as if they are. But we can train our nervous system to stop overreacting, and start responding to the world with greater safety and ease, if we know how. In Anchored, expert teacher Deb Dana shares a down-to-earth presentation of Polyvagal Theory, then brings the science to life with practical, everyday tools.

Using field-tested techniques, Dana helps you master the skills to become more aware of your nervous system moment to moment, and change the way you respond to the great and small challenges of life. Here, you'll explore:

• Polyvagal Theory - get to know the biology and function of your vagus nerve, the highway of the nervous system.
• Befriending Your Nervous System - attune to what's going on in your body by developing your 'neuroception'
• Using Your Vagal Brake - discover key techniques to consciously regulate the intensity of your emotions.
• Connection and Protection - learn to recognize and influence your internal cues for safety and danger.
• Your Social Engagement System - find ways to create nourishing relationships with others and the world around you.

Through guided imagery, meditation, self-inquiry, and more, Anchored offers a practical user's manual for moving from a place of fear and panic into a grounded space of balance and confidence.

 Whether it's seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, the achievement of specific fitness goals, or a more harmonious lifestyle, STEERING BY STARLIGHT's colourful anecdotes, case studies, and exercises will point the way.  Described as one of the best known life coaches in America, Martha Beck has demonstrated a rare gift for helping people who have gone off course to find their way back to rewarding lives. She describes the step-by-step process she uses with her private clients to help them fulfill their potential. Bringing together cutting-edge research in psychiatry, neurology, and related fields in an accessible, compassionate, and original way, Dr Beck reveals powerful new methods for solving the problems that beset ordinary people. Using her trademark wisdom, empathy, and engaging style, she connects you with personal coping strategies as she helps you overcome the alienation that is causing you to lose sight of your authenticity. Beck identifies three stages along the path to recapturing a satisfying life: 'The Stargazer', 'The Mapmaker' and 'The Pathfinder'.  

 Anxiety. It's all in your head, right? Wrong.

Psychiatrist Dr Ellen Vora challenges the conventional view of anxiety as a mental disorder, suggesting instead that much of what we call anxiety begins in the body. Rather than our troubled thoughts creating physical symptoms, she argues that many types of anxiety are the result of states of imbalance in our bodies, whether blood sugar crashes, caffeine highs or sleep deprivation.

Her clinical observation shows this type of anxiety is far more preventable than we may realise, responding almost immediately to straightforward adjustments to diet and lifestyle.
Backed by the latest scientific research and Dr Vora's own clinical work, The Anatomy of Anxiety offers a fresh, much needed look at mental health, offering actionable strategies for managing our moods.

She further argues that other forms of anxiety, when listened to and honoured instead of suppressed, can be seen as a course correction to help nudge us back to a more balanced life.

In her groundbreaking book, Dr Vora walks beside us through a healing process to reframe our relationship with anxiety, creating a more joyful and fulfilled life. 

Dear Reader,

I have written this workbook for you to use as a guide on how to drop anchor when life, and the world around you, gets too daunting. It's filled with exercises and information for when you're suddenly forced to confront the hard truths or as I like to call them the BIG SIX realities – difficult emotions, uncertainty, loneliness, change, dissatisfaction and death.

IIt is a WAKE UP call. One that will increase your awareness of every moment through mindfulness.

So SCRIBBLE in it. DOODLE in it. Take it EVERYWHERE. No one is going to see what's inside but you. This is not just another self-help book. Think of it as an evolve-yourself book.

I do hope it helps you hold the rudder straight, no matter how turbulent the waves, and that you come out the other end buoyant, with a new appreciation for the privilege of life.

Love RUBY x

'Cassie Holmes is an expert on time, and this readable, practical book might just make you rethink how you spend yours' Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Think Again

An expert guide to managing your time for a happier, more fulfilling existence.

The most precious commodity we own isn't money. It's time. We are allotted just twenty-four hours a day, and we live in a culture that keeps us feeling 'time poor' - like we never have enough. Since we can't add more hours to the day, how can we experience our lives more richly?

Based on Professor Cassie Holmes's wildly popular MBA class at UCLA, Happier Hour demonstrates how to immediately improve our lives by changing how we perceive and invest our time. Holmes provides empirically based insights and easy-to-implement tools that will allow you to:

-Spend your hours optimally and feel confident in your choices
-Side-step distractions
-Create and savour moments of joy
-Design your days and weeks with purpose
-Look back on your years without regret

Enlivened by Holmes's upbeat narrative and groundbreaking research, Happier Hour will teach you how small changes can have an enormous impact - helping you feel less overwhelmed, more present and more satisfied with your life overall - things that money can't buy. It all starts by transforming just one hour into a happier hour.