From January to March the Akamai Wellness Book Club read Get Some Headspace. The author, Andy, is a former Buddhist monk and now he’s considered a mindfulness meditation expert. He was busy, sometimes worried, and tired. He used his own personality to design a program of mindfulness that can easily fit into anyone’s daily routine.
Andy’s idea is 10 minutes a day can make a world of difference and in the book describes the exercise and techniques. He uses images of a busy street or a body of water to help us understand his techniques. He also included research on the benefits of meditation.
The club’s conversation easily flowed for an hour. Most of the time was spent on our own experiences with meditation. One member shared that she finds the best time is after work and before we start doing our after-work stuff like cooking, cleaning, and going to the gym.
The things we didn’t like about the book was that it was frustrating to finish. Practicing techniques is built into the book and the author encourages the reader to stop reading and try to technique. For us, it made it hard to keep us on track with reading and we felt like we couldn’t sit down and enjoy the book. Lesson learned! There will be no more books that make us practice things while reading!
The club agreed that it made us think more about how we can fit meditation in our lives, what keeps us from doing it, and considering ways to make changes so that we can do it more often.
The club’s next book is Thrive by Arianna Huffington. Details on the Akamai Wellness Book Club can be found in a previous post.
