Health Fitness Diet

Teaching your child to read is monstrously important, and there's no better way to do it than with everyday opportunities for laughter and play. Bringing Up Bookmonsters is full of fun ways to build literacy at home--no flashcards or timers required! Feed your budding bookmonster's brain as you:

The Mama Sutra is an essential parenting handbook to more than forty methods to calm fussiness, encourage bowel movements, and (the holy grail) help everyone get back to sleep. Meet the Lucky Rabbit, the Drunk Monk, the Spraying Mantis, and other time-tested and scientifically proven ways to help your baby feel better, developed with help from experts in the ancient art of holistic healing. Whether your little one is experiencing reflux, colic, constipation, or something you can't quite identify, the simple and fun positions, holds, and massages in this adorable illustrated guide present solutions to soothe them, one beneficial pose at a time. You will become your baby's own enlightened guru.

For half a century we have been trained to believe that our right brain hemisphere is our emotional brain, while our left brain houses our rational thinking. Now neuroscience shows that it's not that simple: in fact, our emotional limbic tissue is evenly divided between our two hemispheres. Consequently, each hemisphere has both an emotional brain and a thinking brain. In this groundbreaking new book, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor presents these four distinct modules of cells as four characters that make up who we are: Character 1, Left Thinking; Character 2, Left Emotion; Character 3, Right Emotion; and Character 4, Right Thinking.

Everything we think, feel, or do is dependent upon brain cells to perform that function. Since each of the Four Characters stems from specific groups of cells that feel unique inside of our body, they each display particular skills, feel specific emotions, or think distinctive thoughts. In Whole Brain Living, Dr. Taylor shows us how to get acquainted with our own Four Characters, observe how they show up in our daily life, and learn to identify and relate to them in others as well. And she introduces a practice called the Brain Huddle--a tool for bringing our Four Characters into conversation with one another so we can tap their respective strengths and choose which one to embody in any situation.

The more we become familiar with each of the characters in ourselves and others, the more power we gain over our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, and our lives. Indeed, we discover that we have the power to choose who and how we want to be in every moment. And when our Four Characters work together and balance one another as a whole brain, we gain a radical new road map to deep inner peace.

Dr Tim Cantopher knows two essential truths about depression and depressive illness.

One: it's strong people who are most vulnerable to it; people whose standards are high, whose ethics are powerful, who want their lives to be meaningful.
Strong people, like you.

Two: depression is a physical illness, and this book explains just that.

Depressive Illness will explain all the above in detail, and more importantly, give you effective ways to get well and stay well. It covers symptoms, what to do when you get ill, medication, recovery, lifestyle changes, psychotherapy and problem-solving skills, including mindfulness.

Most of all, take heart - people recover from depressive illness and remain mentally well, and you can, too.

It's time to change the way we see babies.
Drawing on principles developed by the educator Dr Maria Montessori, The Montessori Baby shows how to raise your baby from birth to age one with love, respect, insight, and a surprising sense of calm. Cowritten by Simone Davies, author of the bestselling The Montessori Toddler, and Junnifa Uzodike, it's a book filled with hundreds of practical ideas for understanding what is actually happening with your baby, and how you can mindfully assist in their learning and development. Including how to:

The oldest cultures in the world have mastered the art of raising happy, well-adjusted children. What can we learn from them?

"Hunt, Gather, Parent is full of smart ideas that I immediately wanted to force on my own kids." --Pamela Druckerman, The New York Times Book Review

When Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff becomes a mother, she examines the studies behind modern parenting guidance and finds the evidence frustratingly limited and the conclusions often ineffective. Curious to learn about more effective parenting approaches, she visits a Maya village in the Yucatán Peninsula. There she encounters moms and dads who parent in a totally different way than we do--and raise extraordinarily kind, generous, and helpful children without yelling, nagging, or issuing timeouts. What else, Doucleff wonders, are Western parents missing out on?

In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world's most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don't have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop--it's built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones.

Maya parents are masters at raising cooperative children. Without resorting to bribes, threats, or chore charts, Maya parents rear loyal helpers by including kids in household tasks from the time they can walk. Inuit parents have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids cry, hit, or act out, Inuit parents respond with a calm, gentle demeanor that teaches children how to settle themselves down and think before acting. Hadzabe parents are world experts on raising confident, self-driven kids with a simple tool that protects children from stress and anxiety, so common now among American kids.

Not only does Doucleff live with families and observe their techniques firsthand, she also applies them with her own daughter, with striking results. She learns to discipline without yelling. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies can impact children's mental health and development. Filled with practical takeaways that parents can implement immediately, Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink the ways we relate to our children, and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American families.

Edith Eger's powerful first book The Choice told the story of her survival in the concentration camps, her escape, healing, and journey to freedom. Oprah Winfrey says, "I will be forever changed by Dr. Eger's story." Thousands of people around the world have written to Eger to tell her how The Choice moved them and inspired them to confront their own past and try to heal their pain; and to ask her to write another, more "how-to" book. Now, in The Gift, Eger expands on her message of healing and provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the thoughts and behaviors that may be keeping us imprisoned in the past.

Eger explains that the worst prison she experienced is not the prison that Nazis put her in but the one she created for herself, the prison within her own mind. She describes the twelve most pervasive imprisoning beliefs she has known--including fear, grief, anger, secrets, stress, guilt, shame, and avoidance--and the tools she has discovered to deal with these universal challenges. Accompanied by stories from Eger's own life and the lives of her patients each chapter includes thought-provoking questions and takeaways, such as:

-Would you like to be married to you?
-Are you evolving or revolving?
-You can't heal what you can't feel.

Filled with empathy, insight, and humor, The Gift captures the vulnerability and common challenges we all face and provides encouragement and advice for breaking out of our personal prisons to find healing and enjoy life.

Have you ever felt a crushing wave of panic when you can't for the life of you remember the name of that actor in the movie you saw last week, or you walk into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? If you're over forty, you're probably not laughing. You might even be worried that these lapses in memory could be an early sign of Alzheimer's or dementia. In reality, for the vast majority of us, these examples of forgetting are completely normal. Why? Because while memory is amazing, it is far from perfect. Our brains aren't designed to remember every name we hear, plan we make, or day we experience. Just because your memory sometimes fails doesn't mean it's broken or succumbing to disease. Forgetting is actually part of being human.

In Remember, neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. You'll learn whether forgotten memories are temporarily inaccessible or erased forever and why some memories are built to exist for only a few seconds (like a passcode) while others can last a lifetime (your wedding day). You'll come to appreciate the clear distinction between normal forgetting (where you parked your car) and forgetting due to Alzheimer's (that you own a car). And you'll see how memory is profoundly impacted by meaning, emotion, sleep, stress, and context. Once you understand the language of memory and how it functions, its incredible strengths and maddening weaknesses, its natural vulnerabilities and potential superpowers, you can both vastly improve your ability to remember and feel less rattled when you inevitably forget. You can set educated expectations for your memory, and in doing so, create a better relationship with it. You don't have to fear it anymore. And that can be life-changing.

Melanie says: Lisa Genova, author of the acclaimed novel Still Alice, helps us to easily understand the language of memory and how it functions. Forgetting is normal and shouldn't feel upset when you inevitably forget. There are strategies you can learn and ways to improve your long-term health. And that can be life-changing.

Everyone knows that high IQ is no guarantee of success, happiness, or virtue, but until Emotional Intelligence, we could only guess why. Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our "two minds"--the rational and the emotional--and how they together shape our destiny.

Drawing on groundbreaking brain and behavioral research, Goleman shows the factors at work when people of high IQ flounder and those of modest IQ do surprisingly well. These factors, which include self-awareness, self-discipline, and empathy, add up to a different way of being smart--and they aren't fixed at birth. Although shaped by childhood experiences, emotional intelligence can be nurtured and strengthened throughout our adulthood--with immediate benefits to our health, our relationships, and our work.

The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Emotional Intelligence could not come at a better time--we spend so much of our time online, more and more jobs are becoming automated and digitized, and our children are picking up new technology faster than we ever imagined. With a new introduction from the author, the twenty-fifth-anniversary edition prepares readers, now more than ever, to reach their fullest potential and stand out from the pack with the help of EI.

The author of the bestselling Plant Paradox series takes a fresh look at one of the top health issues plaguing Americans--fatigue--and offers a revolutionary plan for boosting energy and revitalizing mental and physical stamina.

In his bestselling books, The Plant Paradox and The Longevity Paradox, Dr. Steven R. Gundry offered game-changing perspectives on our wellbeing. In The Energy Paradox, Dr. Gundry expands upon his previous discussions of gut, microbiome, and mitochondrial health, linking immune malfunction to the mental and physical symptoms of fatigue--including exhaustion, brain fog, depression, anxiety, and low metabolism.

As Dr. Gundry explains, feeling tired, moody, and zapped of energy is not normal, no matter your workload or age. Fatigue is an SOS flare from the body, one that is intended to alert us that something is wrong. In his clinical work, Dr. Gundry has found that his patients who complain of feeling sick and tired all the time almost always have something in common: the inflammation markers of a leaky gut.

In The Energy Paradox, Dr. Gundry will offer readers the information and tools necessary to quiet the autoimmune battle raging within--a battle that depletes precious energy reserves, leaving you drained and prone to mood disorders and weight gain. With new guidelines on how to increase mitochondrial energy production and nourish the microbiome; 30 new Plant Paradox-approved recipes; and lists of energy-boosting foods to consume and energy-depleting foods to avoid, The Energy Paradox will help readers take back their lives, giving them the energy they need to feel, look, and be their best.

The new uplifting book from Matt Haig, the New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library, for anyone in search of hope, looking for a path to a more meaningful life, or in need of a little encouragement.

"It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard."

THE COMFORT BOOK is Haig's life raft: it's a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to Haig's future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Chasing the Scream, offering a radical new way of thinking about depression and anxiety.

There was a mystery haunting award-winning investigative journalist Johann Hari. He was thirty-nine years old, and almost every year he had been alive, depression and anxiety had increased in Britain and across the Western world. Why?

He had a very personal reason to ask this question. When he was a teenager, he had gone to his doctor and explained that he felt like pain was leaking out of him, and he couldn't control it or understand it. Some of the solutions his doctor offered had given him some relief-but he remained in deep pain.

So, as an adult, he went on a forty-thousand-mile journey across the world to interview the leading experts about what causes depression and anxiety, and what solves them. He learned there is scientific evidence for nine different causes of depression and anxiety-and that this knowledge leads to a very different set of solutions: ones that offer real hope.

Pilates is exercise for your mind, body, and spirit, but what if your body won't cooperate? How can you take advantage of all Pilates has to offer--strengthening your core, enhancing your flexibility, and even improving your posture--if you think you're too old or too big or too physically unable to perform the Hundred, the Shoulder Bridge, or the Double-Leg Stretch?

No matter what your age, size, or physical ability is, you can do every exercise in Pilates for Everyone. Each Pilates exercise shows the typical movements for gaining the physical and mental benefits from that exercise. Then each exercise offers at least three variations performed by people just like you to help you find the right modification that fits who you are. This way, no matter which version you perform, you're going to reach similar goals.

Pilates for Everyone includes these features:
- 50 step-by-step exercises for specific body areas
- Step-by-step modifications for every exercise
- 10 routines that combine exercises from the book for maximum benefits
- Expert advice from Micki Havard on how to get the most out of your practice

A pioneering music educator reveals how music can supercharge early childhood development--and how parents and educators can harness its power.

Since opening her famed Parisian conservatory over three decades ago, Joan Koenig has led a global movement to improve children's lives and minds with the transformative power of music. With a curriculum and philosophy drawn from cutting-edge science, L'Ecole Koenig has educated and empowered even its youngest students, from baby Max, whose coordination and communication grow as he wiggles and coos along to targeted songs and dance, to five-year-old Constance, who nourishes her empathy, creativity, and memory while practicing music from other cultures. In The Musical Child, Koenig shares stories from her classrooms, along with tips about how to use the latest research during the critical years when children are most sensitive to musical exposure--and most receptive to its benefits.

A gift for parents, caregivers, musicians, and educators, The Musical Child reveals the multiple ways music can help children thrive--and how, in the twenty-first century, its practice is more vital than ever.

New York Times Bestseller

Bestselling author and peak performance expert Steven Kotler decodes the secrets of those elite performers--athletes, artists, scientists, CEOs and more--who have changed our definition of the possible, teaching us how we too can stretch far beyond our capabilities, making impossible dreams much more attainable for all of us.

What does it take to accomplish the impossible? What does it take to shatter our limitations, exceed our expectations, and turn our biggest dreams into our most recent achievements?

We are capable of so much more than we know--that's the message at the core of The Art of Impossible. Building upon cutting-edge neuroscience and over twenty years of research, bestselling author, peak performance expert and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, Steven Kotler lays out a blueprint for extreme performance improvement. If you want to aim high, here is the playbook to make it happen!

Inspirational and aspirational, pragmatic and accessible, The Art of Impossible is a life-changing experience disguised as a how-to manual for peak performance that anyone can use to shoot for the stars . . . space-suit, not included.

Everyone is getting old; not everyone is growing old. But the path of purposeful aging is accessible to all--and it's fundamental to health, happiness, and longevity.

With a focus on growing whole through developing a sense of purpose in later life, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? celebrates the experience of aging with inspiring stories, real-world practices, and provocative questions. Framed by a long conversation between two old friends, the book reconceives aging as a liberating experience that enables us to become more authentically the person we always meant to be with each passing year.

In their bestseller Repacking Your Bags, Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro defined the good life as "living in the place you belong, with people you love, doing the right work, on purpose." This book builds on that definition to offer a purposeful path for living well while aging well.

New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims is back with a groundbreakingly frank guide to being a grown-up

What does it mean to be an adult? In the twentieth century, psychologists came up with five markers of adulthood: finish your education, get a job, leave home, marry, and have children. Since then, every generation has been held to those same markers. Yet so much has changed about the world and living in it since that sequence was formulated. All of those markers are choices, and they're all valid, but any one person's choices along those lines do not make them more or less an adult.

A former Stanford dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising and author of the perennial bestseller How to Raise an Adult and of the lauded memoir Real American, Julie Lythcott-Haims has encountered hundreds of twentysomethings (and thirtysomethings, too), who, faced with those markers, feel they're just playing the part of "adult," while struggling with anxiety, stress, and general unease. In Your Turn, Julie offers compassion, personal experience, and practical strategies for living a more authentic adulthood, as well as inspiration through interviews with dozens of voices from the rich diversity of the human population who have successfully launched their adult lives.

Being an adult, it turns out, is not about any particular checklist; it is, instead, a process, one you can get progressively better at over time--becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and gaining the knowhow to keep going. Once you begin to practice it, being an adult becomes the most complicated yet also the most abundantly rewarding and natural thing. And Julie Lythcott-Haims is here to help readers take their turn.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the author of the international mega-bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck comes a counterintuitive guide to the problems of hope.


We live in an interesting time. Materially, everything is the best it's ever been--we are freer, healthier and wealthier than any people in human history. Yet, somehow everything seems to be irreparably and horribly f*cked--the planet is warming, governments are failing, economies are collapsing, and everyone is perpetually offended on Twitter. At this moment in history, when we have access to technology, education and communication our ancestors couldn't even dream of, so many of us come back to an overriding feeling of hopelessness.

What's going on? If anyone can put a name to our current malaise and help fix it, it's Mark Manson. In 2016, Manson published The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, a book that brilliantly gave shape to the ever-present, low-level hum of anxiety that permeates modern living. He showed us that technology had made it too easy to care about the wrong things, that our culture had convinced us that the world owed us something when it didn't--and worst of all, that our modern and maddening urge to always find happiness only served to make us unhappier. Instead, the "subtle art" of that title turned out to be a bold challenge: to choose your struggle; to narrow and focus and find the pain you want to sustain. The result was a book that became an international phenomenon, selling millions of copies worldwide while becoming the #1 bestseller in 13 different countries.

Now, in Everthing Is F*cked, Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us. Drawing from the pool of psychological research on these topics, as well as the timeless wisdom of philosophers such as Plato, Nietzsche, and Tom Waits, he dissects religion and politics and the uncomfortable ways they have come to resemble one another. He looks at our relationships with money, entertainment and the internet, and how too much of a good thing can psychologically eat us alive. He openly defies our definitions of faith, happiness, freedom--and even of hope itself.

With his usual mix of erudition and where-the-f*ck-did-that-come-from humor, Manson takes us by the collar and challenges us to be more honest with ourselves and connected with the world in ways we probably haven't considered before. It's another counterintuitive romp through the pain in our hearts and the stress of our soul. One of the great modern writers has produced another book that will set the agenda for years to come.

Bridget McNulty lost her mum suddenly. She couldn't find the support that she needed in the rawness of her immediate grief, and the loneliness felt profoundly shocking. The Grief Handbook weaves her personal experience with expert psychological insights and practical advice, to enable you to navigate your grief in your own way.

There is no one-size-fits-all recovery process for bereavement. Understanding that each experience of grief is unique, you can stop worrying about how you should be feeling. This interactive journal offers you room to explore your feelings at your own pace, helping you not to shy away from the enormity of your heartbreak.

To be able to move through grief we need to understand our emotions, tune into our needs and know that what we are feeling is normal. Grief isn't something to "get over", but a loss to honour and live with. This gentle book shows us how

The Minimalists show you how to disconnect from our conditioned material state and reconnect to our true essence: love people and use things. This is not a book about how to live with less, but about how to live more deeply and more fully.
--Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk

AS SEEN ON THE NETFLIX DOCUMENTARIES MINIMALISM & LESS IS NOW

How might your life be better with less?

Imagine a life with less: less stuff, less clutter, less stress and debt and discontent--a life with fewer distractions. Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment--a life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you're imagining is an intentional life. And to get there, you'll have to let go of some clutter that's in the way.

In Love People, Use Things, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus move past simple decluttering to show how minimalism makes room to reevaluate and heal the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people. They use their own experiences--and those of the people they have met along the minimalist journey--to provide a template for how to live a fuller, more meaningful life.

Because once you have less, you can make room for the right kind of more.

When a conversation takes a turn into the sometimes uncomfortable and often contentious topics of race, religion, gender, sexuality, and politics, it can be difficult to know what to say or how to respond to someone you disagree with. Compassionate Conversations empowers us to transform these conversations into opportunities to bridge divides and mend relationships by providing the basic set of conflict resolution skills we need to be successful, including listening, reframing, and dealing with strong emotions. Addressing the long history of injury and pain for marginalized groups, the authors explore topics like social privilege, power dynamics, and, political correctness allowing us to be more mindful in our conversations. Each chapter contains practices and reflection questions to help readers feel more prepared to talk through polarizing issues, ultimately encouraging us to take risks, to understand and recognize our deep commonalities, to be willing to make mistakes, and to become more intimate with expressing our truths, as well as listening to those of others.

There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.

Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.

Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.