This Moment Is Your Life (and So Is This One): A Fun and Easy Guide to Mindfulness, Meditation, and Yoga

Learning to exist in the present moment is a difficult yet rewarding task, Gates suggests in this clear and instructive handbook. Chapters focus on mindfulness, yoga, breathing, and meditation, with detailed descriptions of techniques and best practices. The mindfulness section explores living with intentionality through refocusing the mind. Journal prompts, self-assessments, and other activities urge readers to apply the ideas to their own lives. Meditation activities include a “Meditative Body Scan,” or paying attention to different parts of the body, and “Naming Thoughts,” which involves quietly observing, labeling, and releasing detrimental thoughts. In Vanderploeg’s warm illustrations, brightly clothed figures demonstrate the yoga poses and breathing exercises. Gates emphasizes that mindfulness is a way of seeing one’s self and the world, which can be achieved through taking basic steps. An end section offers “5-Day Mindfulness Challenges” for readers seeking additional structure as they embark on their own mindfulness journeys. Ages 10–14. (May)