Mills - Inhale, exhale, repeat: a meditation handbook for every part of your day

This twenty-four-hour guide draws inspiration from neuroscience, the arts and Eastern wisdom. Please dip in and out of these pages during the day to find a meditation to suit the moment. Alternatively read it from start to finish for a nice grounding in meditative life. Ive based the comings and goings of this guide on the lives of many of the people I meet in the city. Please feel welcome to keep hold of the meditations that suit you best and apply them to your schedule.

Here are a few interesting ways to use this book:

1. Turn to first thing in the morning and pick an inspired meditation to start the day with.
2. Prepare for a big work event using the simple focusing meditations in .
3. Overwhelmed by 3 p.m.? Try the Gap Meditation and re-start your afternoon with clarity and calm.
4. If you often open a bottle of wine after a long day, try first flicking through to ; take the Switch Off From Work Meditation and transition happily from day to night.
5. You can discover and mindfully cook recipes for healthy meals in .
6. Unlock the joy of days off by trying the Art and Beauty Meditations, also in .
7. Open this book at the appropriate time of day and get back on the wellbeing wagon, feeling great once again, wherever you are!

TIP: Read the poem The Little Vagabond by William Blake to stay cheerful and warm on your mindful path.

Were all living faster, working harder, and often so busy we forget to take a moment to sit back, close our eyes and just, breathe. Yet this hectic lifestyle can get us down, making us lethargic, stressed and burnt out. So how to break the cycle?

Inspired by traditional eastern lessons of meditation and mindfulness, neuroscience and insights from literature, Emma Mills offers fresh and simple tools to keep our minds healthy, from that early morning coffee through to the moment you climb into bed, without having to invest in expensive detox courses or far-flung retreats. She guides the reader through a course of a single day, with easy tips, meditations, recipes, literary recommendations and practical takeaways that can be completed in a matter of minutes.

So just inhale, exhale, and repeat and let a sense of calm and focus transform your day.

Emma Mills is a writer and meditation teacher with a passion for sharing ideas about living well. She helped to pioneer a new form of poetry therapy with MIND and the NHS, and is the mindfulness expert on the board of advisers at Neom Organics. Today, she has her own private practices in London and the Midlands. Emma holds events across the UK, and frequently travels overseas to present workshops and collaborate with leading brands on special projects.

Also by Emma Mills:

Relish

I dont know about you, but I think life is precious.

I want to feel free and joyful all the time not just during designated moments like the five minutes at the end of yoga or during the four-week holiday period.

Wouldnt it be great if we could find calm and happiness whatever were doing at work, in relationships, even if were busy trying to change the world? Feeling this good could help us get it right more often with those we care for, and see us step into important meetings with nothing to prove and everything to give, feeling wholly comfortable in our own skin.

There is a new sort of calm and you dont have to be a saint to experience it. It involves a simple inner shift that turns every new day into an adventure.

One of the keys to this way of being is meditation, a simple practice thats available to you whoever you are. Its not about undertaking a personality transplant, its just about tapping into that deep river of calm that we all have access to.

I am hugely passionate about helping you to feel happier and healthier through not only meditation, but a holistic approach to life that includes a balanced diet, wellbeing, good work, creativity and also beauty whether for you that means MAC or Macbeth.

Lifes too short for unnecessary suffering and a lack of loving connection between us, so wherever you are, at whatever stage of life, get to it!

I hope this book will be the travel guide you need to navigate the modern day with style and grace.

With love,

Emma

Just like physical exercise, meditation can take many forms.

Essentially, meditation is an activity that asks you to focus your attention in a particular way. This could be by concentrating on the sight of a flower, listening to a voice as it leads you through a guided meditation, or simply by focusing on your own breath as you inhale and exhale. Sometimes youll do it with an aim in mind, such as improving your concentration or relaxing after a long day at work.

Meditation is also a chance to gather your thoughts and reflect on yourself and your life. From this quiet reflection youll grow used to sitting in that inner space I call The Middle (see ). From there, you can start to explore ideas about life or even make enquiries into the nature of things, such as, for example, deciding to meditate on what animates a flower or a topic like the nature of innovation, or perhaps contemplating the Pink Floyd album The Dark Side of the Moon.

Some of the meditations in this guide invite you to focus your attention in one direction or another. Others have a goal or revolve around something you are looking into. Yet meditation can also be a time to sit quietly and just be without any agenda. Here you have an opportunity to let thoughts, feelings and senses appear, unfold and dissolve. This just being approach can give us some much needed breathing room.

Its wise to meditate with an attitude of discovery. In doing so, you leave the door of opportunity wide open and the many wonderful, yet unexpected benefits of meditation will come your way. Each meditation in this book can offer you its own set of special qualities. Some promote focus and concentration, others have a nice calming effect, and the fun, explorative practices spark inspiration. The meditations here have been divided into three categories and you can use this key to find one to suit your mood in any given moment.

Meditations to inspire

Meditations for focus

Meditations for calm