Believe it or not (ha! I’m sure you believe it by now), I struggle with stress.
I put a ton of pressure on myself, constantly over-schedule my days and weeks, and panic when I can’t complete all my “to dos” or meet all my goals. However, as I’ve gotten older and – not necessarily wiser – but maybe more mindful, I’ve been trying to integrate ways to manage and eliminate that excess stress.
In theory, I’ve been interested in meditation for quite a long time. In practice, I just haven’t found a way to actually practice it. Everything I’ve read – from books to websites – and the online courses I’ve joined, it all just seemed so elusive.
But, in his book A Creative Toolkit of Meditations, William Blake makes the practice seem so much more attainable or accessible. In fact, the whole idea of a “toolkit” appealed to me more because he allows you to pick and choose what parts of a meditation practice will work for you.
The book is divided into main sections, which are then broken into chapters. At the end of each chapter is a meditation (or, a few in some cases). By the end of the book, you’ve been given a handful of meditations to try. That process worked for me because I could decided to continue practicing the ones that worked for me and let go of the ones that didn’t. (Right now I’m working on the loving-kindness meditation.)
Overall, the book was easy to read and understand without a lot of esoteric, vague language that you find in a lot of similar-genre books. If you’re interested in mindfulness or meditation, I highly recommend A Creative Toolkit of Meditations. I plan to keep this one on my shelf to reference and reread periodically!