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Cultivating more mindfulness in your life — really tuning in to the present moment — can help you become more resilient to daily stress and anxiety. And it’s something you can do anytime, anywhere with the right reading tools — no grand yoga retreat required.
We’ve rounded up some of the latest and most helpful books on mindfulness, which focus on activities from baking bread and planting seeds to cultivating a Jedi mindset. Go forth and be calm.
The best 16 books on mindfulness
- The Chaos Antidote: A Fable About Mindfulness
- Craft Your Own Happy: A Collection of 25 Creative Projects to Craft Your Way to Mindfulness
- Growing Mindful: Explorations in the Garden to Deepen Your Awareness
- Star Wars: The Jedi Mind: Secrets from the Force for Balance and Peace
- Mindful Living Journal: Journaling Practices for a Sacred and Happy Life
- Bread Therapy: The Mindful Art of Making Bread
- Island Mindfulness
- Quick Calm: Easy Meditations to Short-Circuit Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroscience
- An Artful Path to Mindfulness: MBSR-Based Activities for Using Creativity to Reduce Stress and Embrace the Present Moment
- Mindfulness Meditations for Stress: 100 Simple Practices to Ease Tension and Find Peace
- Happy: A Beginner’s Book of Mindfulness
- Outsmart Negative Thinking: Simple Mindfulness Methods to Control Negative Thoughts, Stop Anxiety, & Finally Experience Happiness
- Practicing Mindfulness: Finding Calm and Focus in Your Everyday Life
- Reclaim Joy: A Guided Journal to Discover Simple Pleasures Every Day
- Mastering Mindful Eating: Transform Your Relationship with Food, Plus 30 Recipes to Engage the Senses
- Chronicle Books Mindfulness Dice
Pricing guide
All prices are for physical books. Here’s how the pricing breakdown works:
$ = under $12
$$ = $12–$20
$$$ = over $20
With a nearly 5-star rating on both Amazon and Goodreads, it’s clear that readers are loving this book. Inside you’ll follow a group of women as they journey through personal struggles and learn from their leader, Veda, about how to practice life-changing skills that act as an antidote to the chaos.
Though the story is told in the format of a fable, you’ll leave with practical skills about how to practice sitting meditation, develop all your senses, perform mindful movement, process difficult emotions, host a day of silence, and create mindfully in your everyday life.
Price: $$
It’s true that mindfulness isn’t just sitting on a cushion and meditating. If you love relaxing with crafts, keeping your hands busy with these colorful feel-good projects is a great way to practice mindfulness.
This book contains 25 beginner-friendly projects to draw your attention away from all the screens, away from your anxious thoughts, and into slow moments of focus, flow, and positive intention — from cross-stitching and paper craft to embroidery and more.
Price: $
Calling all folks with green thumbs (or anyone who loves the Earth)! The natural world can be an incredible tool in cultivating deeper levels of mindfulness. You can practice the activities in this book in your garden or in any green space, whether it’s your backyard, a park, or a woodland trail.
Joann Calabrese teaches you how to use the natural world as your portal to deepening awareness, with playful exercises in exploring the senses, movement, creativity, and the elements. There’s also a whole section on using 52 different plant correspondences as mindful focus (e.g., marigold and optimism or dandelion and resilience) — one for each week of the year.
Price: $$
Buy Growing Mindful: Explorations in the Garden to Deepen Your Awareness online.
If you’re a “Star Wars” fan, you’re probably on board with taking sage advice from the likes of Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Qui-Gon Jinn.
The book contains quotes and lessons from numerous Jedi and “Star Wars” characters and includes accompanying lessons on breathing, posture, meditation, self-care, reflection, and mindfulness. There are also 20 color illustrations throughout, making it a visual collector’s item in addition to a useful tool.
Price: $$
Buy Star Wars: The Jedi Mind: Secrets from the Force for Balance and Peace online.
Through the healing practice of journaling, this book invites you to fully tune in to the present moment. Inside its rose gold-detailed cover, you’ll find prompts on compassion, gratitude, developing a “sacred outlook,” connecting with nature, intention and manifestation, and discovering your life path.
The Mindful Living Journal invites you to live more consciously, compassionately, and creatively to deepen the mindful moments in your life. Use the Mindful Living card deck to enhance your practice even further.
Price: $
Buy Mindful Living Journal: Journaling Practices for a Sacred and Happy Life online.
Many people are discovering how therapeutic the process of breadmaking can be after spending more time at home. Kneading dough can be a Zen moment of slowing down and tuning in to the present… not to mention you’ll get delicious bread as a result!
This book is part cookbook, part guidebook, and all about how making bread can help improve mental health. Breadmaking is a skill that helps you develop mindfulness through all the senses (we can just imagine that fresh-out-of-the-oven scent!).
Price: $$
Are you traveling light today? What’s weighing you down? Author Janet Autherine ties in the life lessons she learned growing up in Jamaica and as an adult immigrating to the United States. She suggests that “living light” makes it easier to face life’s challenges.
This inspiring book offers insights and actionable tips to start and end your days with good energy, nourish your whole self, and avoid negativity through self-care. Each chapter contains an inspirational quote and peaceful “Island Mindfulness” mantras.
Price: $$
Short on time? We bet you can spare at least 5 minutes. And that’s all you need to start transforming your mental health.
This kind and competent guidebook shares how you can start reducing your off-the-charts stress levels with everyday mindfulness practices that fit even the most packed schedule. These quick practices will help your mind and body feel better — with minimal commitment.
Price: $$
Buy Quick Calm: Easy Meditations to Short-Circuit Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroscience online.
Mindfulness-based self-expression (MBSE) draws on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for a creative approach that blends art with meditations, gentle yoga, breath work, and body scans. With this book as your guide, you’ll learn how to step out of autopilot and live more proactively instead of reactively.
You can also use this book as a journal to record your creative moments and to really communicate with who you are in the moment. This book is for everyone, whether you’re a seasoned artist or have never drawn anything in your life. Most exercises take 10 to 15 minutes, though there’s no rush.
Price: $$$
Stress can manifest in many ways and differently for each person. This book contains 100 straightforward meditations for a wide variety of stressors. Depending on what’s causing your tension, there’s a mindfulness meditation to help you return to a calmer state of being.
This book covers the very basics of mindfulness and meditation, plus ways to deal with chronic stress and relieve tension from specific mega-stressors like divorce, job loss, and becoming a parent.
Price: $
Buy Mindfulness Meditations for Stress: 100 Simple Practices to Ease Tension and Find Peace online.
Marketed as a children’s book, this beautifully illustrated guide is perfect for introducing young ones and beginners of all ages to the concept of mindfulness.
It touches on the important aspects of mindful living, including feeling, discovering, smelling, listening, and appreciating the world around you. It’s a great bedtime read or a perfect intro to mindfulness.
Price: $$
If you’re tired of getting stuck in that cycle of anxious thinking and worrisome thoughts, we feel you. This short read is concise but full of practical tools to help you break free from negative thinking.
One reviewer writes that it’s “Refreshing to read something from such a realistic point of view, from an author who has experienced anxiety and negative thinking himself, and overcome.”
Price: $
This new edition of a well-loved book expands on the author’s original time-tested approach of integrating mindful practices and habits into your everyday life. It’s an interactive book that first models best practices and then invites you to participate with prompts and quizzes based on the author’s Mindfulness Training Program.
You’ll find reflections, actions, and practices for reducing anxiety, calming the mind, transforming negative thoughts and habits, increasing productivity, and resolving emotional traumas.
Price: $
Buy Practicing Mindfulness: Finding Calm and Focus in Your Everyday Life online.
If you love a new prompt every single day, then this 365-day workbook is for you. It has a new mindful activity, prompt, or ritual for every day of the year. A mindfulness practice doesn’t need to be complicated, but consistency is always a good thing when it comes to mental wellness. These pages leave you space to write, draw, find joy, and live a slower, more peaceful life every. single. day.
From the author, who is an Ayurveda therapist and the editor of indie mindfulness magazine Oh, you’ll learn all kinds of ways to find joy in daily things like listening to birdsong, creating your own morning motto, and appreciating the steam rolling off that cup of tea.
Price: $$
Buy Reclaim Joy: A Guided Journal to Discover Simple Pleasures Every Day online.
Mindfulness is a practice you can bring to any aspect of life, including eating. If you’re looking to change your relationship with food and develop healthier, more conscious eating habits, then mindfulness can help.
Nutritionist Michelle Babb guides readers in cultivating a positive eating mindset with mindfulness practices specific to mealtimes. Plus, the book includes 30 vegetarian recipes to help you engage all your senses.
Price: $$
This last one isn’t technically a book, but it is a valuable (and fun!) item to have in your mindfulness toolkit. This cute little round box includes six wooden dice with 36 different soothing mindfulness practice prompts on them, plus an accompanying instruction booklet. Each die represents a different category of prompts: meditations, mantras, movements, breath work, journaling, and self-care goals.
There are thousands of possibilities, but we recommend starting out by rolling just one or two dice at a time. It’s an easy, interactive way to practice mindfulness.
Price: $$$
