Archives de catégorie : Self Help / Mind, Body & Spirit

COOKING AS THERAPY de Debra Borden

Follow 20 recipes to find calm, improve self-esteem, and form daily habits—in your very own kitchen!—through mindfulness-based cooking therapy.

COOKING AS THERAPY:
How to Improve Mental Health Through Cooking
by Debra Borden
Alcove Press, November 2025

Follow 20 recipes to find calm, improve self-esteem, and form daily habits—in your very own kitchen!—through mindfulness-based cooking therapy.

In COOKING AS THERAPY, licensed clinical social worker and Sous Therapist Debra Borden provides you with all the tools and techniques to have therapy sessions in the comfort of your own kitchen.

Cooking therapy is an experiential therapy that allows you to conduct a therapy session while you cook a meal. Using cooking processes like chopping, kneading, stirring and more, you’ll develop the skills to recognize limiting patterns and behaviors, improve self-esteem, and form healthy daily habits, and you might even have fun incorporating techniques centered around:

– mindfulness—which develops calm

– metaphor—which creates clarity, and

– mastery—which sparks self-esteem.

Luckily, you don’t have to be a great cook to try cooking therapy—or even like cooking. You only need an interest in self-exploration. Borden will teach you the processes involved in preparing a recipe or meal that trigger awareness and even “aha” moments. Unlike talk therapy, cooking therapy sessions incorporate tangible acts. It is less about what you prepare and more of a guided journey to self-reflection through how you prepare a dish.

Debra Borden is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in NY and NJ and a novelist. Her essays and articles have appeared in Women’s Health Magazine and the New York Times. A pioneer in the field of cooking therapy, Debra is thrilled and grateful to be a part of the creative community of mental health professionals, writers, and foodies.

SMALL HABITS, LASTING CHANGE de Tal Ben-Shahar

Cultivate lasting change with simple habits, fromNew York Times bestselling author Tal Ben-Shahar.

SMALL HABITS, LASTING CHANGE
by Tal Ben-Shahar
Alcove Press, January 2026

Do you struggle to make real change because you’re starting too big without building a foundation first ? get a new job, lose twenty pounds, learn a new language? Maybe the tools at your disposal seem inadequate, the prospect of change overwhelms you, and you feel stuck.

In SMALL HABITS, LASTING CHANGE, happiness expert Tal Ben-Shahar provides accessible and easy-to-implement tools, and an easy-to-follow three step process, that can help you realize your goals, aspirations, and dreams.

He starts with simple intervention techniques to reset your mood in as little time as possible—what he calls Happiness Boosters in the form of MVIs (Minimum Viable Interventions), which include:

– Taking three deep breaths
– Writing down five things for which you are grateful
– Reading a quote slowly and deliberately
– Vigorously climbing stairs for 45 seconds

From there, discover how to improve well-being—spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional—and build a stronger base within yourself for committing to change, increasing your willpower, and finding joy in the journey.

The final step in Ben-Shahar’s guide will help you learn how to create the daily rituals that will help you turn goals into habits, and intentions into reality, using the 3 Rs of change:

– Reminders
– Repetitions
– Rituals

With concrete examples, practical, direct advice, and an easy-to-follow action plan, Ben-Shahar shows you that while cultivating lasting change takes motivation, it does not have to be a frustrating experience that is doomed to failure: you’re just starting without the foundation you need for real change.

Tal Ben-Shahar is the New York Times bestselling author of Happier and the co-founder and chief learning officer of The Happiness Studies Academy. He taught two of the largest classes in Harvard University’s history, “Positive Psychology” and “The Psychology of Leadership.” In 2022, Tal designed and launched the world’s first Master’s Degree in Happiness Studies in collaboration with Centenary University. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world.

THE NATRUAL LAW d’Amish Shah

Based on the author’s award-winning documentary, endorsed by Deepak Chopra, THE NATURAL LAW is a transformative guide to Ayurveda for healing, happiness, and connection, sharing the author’s personal health journey and the advice of renowned experts, and offering simple practices for readers to incorporate the power of Ayurveda into their daily lives.

THE NATRUAL LAW:
The Ancient Wisdom of Ayurveda for Modern Healing, Happiness, and Connection
by Amish Shah
Union Square, March 2026
(via Park, Fine & Brower Literary)

Despite being a tech millionaire with access to every specialist under the sun, Amish Shah was brought seemingly to death’s doorstep by a series of mystery symptoms that no Western diagnosis could solve. He credits Ayurveda and a return to his Indian roots with saving his life—the documentary shared his journey, including his interviewing 72+ of the world’s leading experts, and this book offers a deeper dive into the Ayurvedic practices that changed his life, with practical guidance for readers to experience similarly transformative results.

Ayurveda offers a transformative framework for thinking about your health. Its healing modalities include herbal medicine, yoga, dietary changes, acupuncture, fasting, massage therapy, and more, all based on understanding your dominant dosha—Vata (air), Pitta (fire), or Kapha (earth/water)—and how to rebalance it for better energy, vitality, and joy, as well as improved relationships, sleep, focus, and presence.

Readers today don’t want another diet. They are looking for profound practices to feel better in their bodies and their lives. Ayurveda has provided that for centuries, and people are finding it through a new lens, en masse, with THE NATURAL LAW.

Amish Shah is a three time “Inc. 500”-listed entrepreneur and philanthropist with a twenty-year career in the fields of health, wellness, and spirituality. His latest documentary project, The Natural Law, has already won nine International Film Festival Awards. Amish’s dedication to holistic wellness extends beyond his work as an entrepreneur and filmmaker, as demonstrated by his two hundred-hour yoga certification and numerous meditation certifications

ZEN ECOLOGY de Christopher Ives

Discover a way of living that can help you slow down and stay grounded—and at the same time reduce your ecological impact and engage more fully with the climate crisis.

ZEN ECOLOGY
by Christopher Ives
Wisdom Publications, March 2025

It may seem as though living ecologically and engaging in activism sacrifices our own enjoyment and happiness on the altar of doing the right thing. In this book, professor, naturalist, and Buddhist author Christopher Ives offers an alternative: a way of living that can actually be more fulfilling than the modern consumerist lifestyle. Rather than deprivation, it can bring us richness.

In Zen Ecology, Chris outlines his environmental ethic as a series of concentric circles, beginning with ourselves and then moving outward into our communities, all the while focusing on spaciousness, mindfulness, generosity, and contentment. At the individual level, we deal with distraction, clutter, and ecological harm. Here, Chris offers ways to help us pay attention, simplify our lives, and lower our impact. Then, we explore how to envision our home as a “place of the Way,” with Zen monastic life as a model for this—without having to be a monk! Next, we realize our embeddedness in nature and emplace ourselves in community with others, including other forms of life. Finally, we build on this basis to engage in activism to create a world that is more supportive of ecological health and spiritual fulfillment.

In this way, we avoid the two extremes of apathy and burnout, and uncover a way of living that is simple, joyful, embedded in nature, connected to others in community, and supportive of collective action.

Christopher Ives is a professor of religious studies at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. In his teaching and writing, he focuses on ethics in Zen Buddhism and Buddhist approaches to nature and environmental issues. His publications include Zen on the Trail: Hiking as Pilgrimage; Meditations on the Trail: A Guidebook for Self-Discovery; Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics; Zen Awakening and Society; a translation (with Masao Abe) of Nishida Kitaro’s An Inquiry into the Good; a translation (with Gishin Tokiwa) of Shin’ichi Hisamatsu’s Critical Sermons of the Zen Tradition. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

LIVING SOFTLY de Tara Stiles

A blueprint for moving from a life of tension and rigidity to one of ease and softness. Readers will learn that softness is a strength. You can accomplish so much more in a soft, easeful state than you can in an amplified environment. It’s time for an alternative to burnout culture, and an alternative to the grit and grin-and-bear-it to success mentality. Discover simple practices to make your life softer and more fulfilling!

LIVING SOFTLY:
Recover Your Energy and a New Sense of Purpose
by Tara Stiles
Balance, Fall 2026
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Tara shows us how we hold ourselves with rigidity at a meeting or during a challenging conversation (making it even more challenging) then go to a yoga class to try to let go. Only to wake up and wonder why our back still throbs. We may even equate stress with achievement. All the while losing sight of what really matters to us.

Tara uses her deep knowledge of yoga, tai chi, shiatsu, and other Eastern practices that are the foundation to unwind our unconscious patterns. Her simple exercises help us walk through our lives with ease, rather than muscling our way through challenges, a surefire path to burnout and physical breakdown. The Six Principles of LIVING SOFTLY, which Tara uses in her workshops as well as with clients include using only the energy that you need (or Wu Wei) and learning to harmonize with your environment, rather than pushing through an agenda.

Readers of Emily Nagoski’s bestselling Burnout are ready for the larger vision of LIVING SOFTLY, which goes far beyond identifying the problem to envisioning a whole new way of living and accomplishing. Tricia Hersey’s readership for Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto will appreciate Tara’s programmatic approach and be drawn to softness as the next step in counter-cultural messaging and living intentionally.

Tara Stiles is a wellness expert, bestselling author, and the founder of Strala Yoga. The Strala approach combines yoga, tai chi, and Traditional Chinese and Japanese Medicine to help people release stress, heal, let go of negative habits, and move more easily through everyday challenges. Tara’s bestselling books, which have been translated into multiple languages, include Strala Yoga, Make Your Own Rules Diet, Yoga Cures, and Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, and she has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, Esquire, and Shape. She lives in New York with her husband and their daughter.