Hey Brahmas! As the semester comes to a close and Finals Season approaches, we know how stressful this time can be. If you're looking for some ways to relax and unwind from the stress of finals, the Library's got you covered! This Finals Season, we are highlighting books, eBooks, and online resources that can help you improve your mental and emotional wellbeing. Plus, from December 4th to 15th, we'll have Relaxation Stations near the Library's entrance, where you can solve puzzles, play with Legos, do coloring pages, and more. Feel free to stop by anytime you need a study break! We hope you find something that helps you relax and have a little fun.
Remember, there are lots of resources to support you here on campus, including tutoring, counseling, mental health support, basic needs assistance... and of course, your friends here at the Library!
Hang in there, Brahmas — you've got this! Good luck!
The Mind-Body Stress Reset: Somatic Practices to Reduce Overwhelm and Increase Well-Being by
Harness your mind-body connection for lasting ease and well-being In our busy, get-it-done-now culture, stress has become the new normal--a normal that's embedding itself into our minds and our bodies. If left unchecked, stress can dictate how we think, feel, and act. Overwhelm, anxiousness, malaise, and unease are a daily experience. And over time, these stress-reactions turn into habits, leaving us stuck in a mental and physical rut. So, how can you soothe stress before it becomes your go-to? In this practical and accessible guide, you'll find powerful and effective tools for calming stress in both mind and body. Based on the innovative Mind-Body Reset (MBR) program, you'll learn how to stop stress in its tracks with simple somatic exercises. You'll also discover how you can "reset" your nervous system, alleviate stress flare-ups, and boost your overall health and happiness. If you're ready to combat stress, cultivate calm, and live a more vital life, it's time for a reset!
Show Your Anxiety Who's Boss: A 3-Step CBT Program to Help You Reduce Anxious Thoughts by
Is anxiety running your life? Does it dictate where you go, what you do, or who you spend time with? Does it keep you trapped in a bubble of fear and panic? Anxiety can happen anytime, anywhere--that's why you need simple, in-the-moment skills to stay grounded when worry takes hold. This user-friendly guide will help you gain the upper hand on anxiety, and stop avoiding the people, places, and things that make you anxious--and start living the life you were meant to live. In Show Your Anxiety Who's Boss, you'll find a practical and direct three-step approach grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you respond to anxious thoughts, respond effectively to future challenges, and make peace with uncertainty. If you're ready to live a full and vital life without anxiety constantly getting in the way, this straightforward guide will show you how to get back on track. With this powerful book, you'll learn how to: Make useful predictions, instead of anxious fictions Take action and overcome avoidance Accept and redirect anxious or negative thoughts "A wonderful resource for anyone struggling with anxiety." --David F. Tolin, PhD, ABPP, author of Face Your Fears "Joel Minden has taken wisdom from decades of anxiety treatment research and distilled it into an accessible, compelling book." --Kathryn H. Gordon, PhD, psychologist
The Resilience Workbook: Essential Skills to Recover from Stress, Trauma, and Adversity by
Why do some people sail through life's storms, while others are knocked down? Resilience is the key. Resilience is the ability to recover from difficult experiences, such as death of loved one, job loss, serious illness, terrorist attacks, or even just daily stressors and challenges. Resilience is the strength of body, mind, and character that enables people to respond well to adversity. In short, resilience is the cornerstone of mental health. Combining evidence-based approaches including positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness, and skills for regulating stress, The Resilience Workbook will show you how to bounce back and thrive in any difficult situation. You'll learn how to harness the power of your brain's natural neuroplasticity; manage strong, distressing emotions; and improve mood and overall well-being. You'll also discover powerful skills to help you prevent and recover from stress-related conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, anger, and substance abuse disorders. When the going gets tough, you need real, proven-effective skills to manage your stress and heal from setbacks. The comprehensive and practical exercises in this workbook will help you cultivate resilience, stay calm under pressure, and face all of life's challenges. This book has been selected as an Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Book Recommendation--an honor bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.
Draw Every Little Thing: Learn to Draw More Than 100 Everyday Items, from Food to Fashion by
Draw your bicycle. Draw your favorite food. Draw your garden. Step-by-step projects, prompts, and creative inspiration make it fun and easy to draw one hundred everyday items. Whether it's a pet, the local café, or the contents of the kitchen cabinet, Draw Every Little Thing demonstrates just how easy it is to render the world around you with little more than a pencil, paper, and paint. This aesthetically pleasing book familiarizes you with a range of drawing tools and materials, including graphite pencil, pen and ink, colored pencil, and gouache, before offering a quick overview of basic color theory. Each subsequent chapter is then devoted to a specific theme--kitchenalia, hobbies, neighborhood haunts, and much more--and packed with simple step-by-step drawing projects. Encouraging you to jump around so you can draw what immediately inspires you, the book shows you how to develop your own personal style, as well as add color to your drawings using gouache and colored pencil. Crafty projects round things out, allowing you to use your newfound skills. Filled to the brim with whimsical artwork and loads of creative ideas, Draw Every Little Thing encourages artists of all skill levels to draw any time inspiration strikes.
Super Easy Knitting for Beginners by
This accessible beginner's guide covers everything you need to know to start knitting, featuring clear, step-by-step, photo-illustrated instructions. Want to learn how to knit but are not sure how to start? With Super Easy Knitting for Beginners, adapted from Carri Hammet's best-selling Knitting 101, you will feel confident in your skills quickly and eliminate frustrating mistakes and missteps. Learn what you need, how to read patterns, how to select yarn, and how to troubleshoot problems and turn yarn into charming knitted accessories and clothing. Building skills through fun projects, you will find success quickly and easily while gaining confidence to try another project. Super Easy Knitting for Beginners includes: Knitting basics How to get started Tools and materials Right-handed and left-handed knitting Basic knitting stitches How to read a knitting pattern Knitting tips and tricks Troubleshooting mistakes Fun beginner-level projects, including scarves, baby blanket, felted bag, shawl, and more This is the most comprehensive beginner's book available, yet it won't overwhelm you with details and instruction you don't need or want, so you can start enjoying your knitting hobby immediately.
Papier Mâché: A Step-by-step Guide to Creating More Than a Dozen Adorable Projects! by
Your favorite childhood craft is back in a big way! With Art Makers: Papier Mache, you can learn to craft and create using papier mache-a fun, easy, and hands-on hobby that both kids and adults will love.
Did you know that you can watch movies for free through the library? Check out the databases below to browse available feature films and documentaries.
This link opens in a new window
Make the most out of your college experience with these manageable self-care tips that are easy to incorporate into your busy college lifestyle. As a student in college--you're dealing with a lot. At times this can be physically, mentally, and emotionally draining between classes, homework, activities, and building a new social life for yourself. But the secret to making sure these are the best years of your life is making time for self-care. If you've been working for hours on your latest paper, take a walk around campus to get moving. If you're feeling tired after a long week of classes and activities, give yourself permission to say no to those Friday night plans and take a relaxing evening for yourself. Self-Care for College Students offers suggestions that help you tackle every aspect of taking care of yourself from the simplest tasks to rewarding activities that might require more planning. Whether it is making sure you eat a healthy meal to utilizing your school's support services, there is advice for any situation. In this book, find realistic and practical self-care activities that you can try right away to maximize your college experience. Each activity is designed to help you refuel, such as making sure you get enough sleep to developing an exercise routine. Start making time for you and make your college years the best of your life--all while building lifelong habits for success and happiness for years to come.
This appealing, accessible reference volume enables readers to easily understand what creates and constitutes stress--an unavoidable part of modern life--and learn about the psychology behind relaxation.What is "stress," from a psychological and physiological perspective? Why is it important to "unwind" and relax? Can some forms of stress actually be good? And how do people outside the United States relax? Part of Greenwood's The Psychology of Everyday Life series, this book defines in non-scientific language what stress and relaxation are, addresses factors related to our daily experiences with stress, identifies the negative effects of stress, and describes how to reduce stress and achieve relaxation. Readers will see how relaxation techniques are practiced around the world--and by people of all ages--and learn how "chilling out" can not only make you happier but may also help you live longer.The book also provides a critical-thinking section that challenges readers with questions such as "Are relaxation drinks effective?" The opposing viewpoints, written by scholars, encourage readers to consider the evidence on both sides of the debate and decide for themselves which answer makes the most sense. The scenarios presented in the book help readers to see the practical applications for relaxation techniques via an analysis of what is happening in the example and why particular recommendations may be made.
The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy received the Spirituality & Practice Book Award for 50 Best Spiritual Books in 2017 by Spirituality and Practice Website. The poems expertly gathered here offer all that one might hope for in spiritual companionship: wisdom, compassion, peacefulness, good humor, and the ability to both absorb and express the deepest human emotions of grief and joy. The book includes a short essay on "Mindful Reading" and a meditation on sound from editor John Brehm--helping readers approach the poems from an experiential, non-analytical perspective and enter into the mindful reading of poetry as a kind of meditation.
Well known for applying mindfulness to the treatment of depression, pioneering researcher John Teasdale now explores the broader changes that people can experience through contemplative practices. What goes on in our minds when we are mindful? What does it mean to talk of mindfulness as a way of being? From a scientific perspective, how do core elements of contemplative traditions have their beneficial effects? Teasdale describes two types of knowing that human beings have evolved--conceptual and holistic-intuitive--and shows how mindfulness can achieve a healthier balance between them. He masterfully describes the mechanisms by which this shift in consciousness not only can reduce emotional suffering, but also can lead to greater joy and compassion and a transformed sense of self.
Through a series of lucid and engaging exercises, readers are invited to discover healthier and more effective digital practices From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. In recent years many of us have begun to look at the pluses and minuses of our online lives and to ask how we might more skillfully use the tools we've developed. David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the "fast world" of high tech and the "slow world" of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced, and more effective, while online. In a series of exercises carefully designed to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers watch themselves closely while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment with unplugging for a specified period. Never prescriptive, the book opens up new avenues for self-inquiry and will allow readers--in the workplace, in the classroom, and in the privacy of their homes--to make meaningful and powerful changes.
In this captivating blend of science and memoir, a health journalist and former cellist explores music as a source of health, resilience, connection, and joy. Music isn't just background noise or a series of torturous exercises we remember from piano lessons. In the right doses, it can double as a mild antidepressant, painkiller, sleeping pill, memory aid--and enhance athletic performance while supporting healthy aging. Though music has been used as a healing strategy since ancient times, neuroscientists have only recently discovered how melody and rhythm stimulate core memory, motor, and emotion centers in the brain. But here's the catch: We can tune into music every day and still miss out on some of its potent effects. Adriana Barton learned the hard way. Starting at age five, she studied the cello for nearly two decades, a pursuit that left her with physical injuries and emotional scars. In Wired for Music, she sets out to discover what music is really for, combing through medical studies, discoveries by pioneering neuroscientists, and research from biology and anthropology. Traveling from state-of-the-art science labs to a remote village in Zimbabwe, her investigation gets to the heart of music's profound effects on the human body and brain. Blending science and story, Wired for Music shows how our species' age-old connection to melody and rhythm is wired inside us.
Journalist Rina Raphael looks at the explosion of the wellness industry: how it stems from legitimate complaints, how seductive marketing targets hopeful consumers-and why women are opening up their wallets like never before. Wellness promises women the one thing they desperately desire: control. Women are pursuing their health like never before. Whether it's juicing, biohacking, clutching crystals, or sipping collagen, today there is something for everyone, as the wellness industry has grown from modest roots into a $4.4 trillion entity and a full-blown movement promising health and vitality in the most fashionable package. But why suddenly are we all feeling so unwell? The truth is that deep within the underbelly of self-care--hidden beneath layers of clever marketing--wellness beckons with a far stronger, more seductive message than health alone. It promises women the one thing they desperately desire: control.
A compelling and incisive book that questions the overuse of mental health terms to describe universal human emotions Public awareness of mental illness has been transformed in recent years, but our understanding of how to define it has yet to catch up. Too often, psychiatric disorders are confused with the inherent stresses and challenges of human experience. A narrative has taken hold that a mental health crisis has been building among young people. In this profoundly sensitive and constructive book, psychologist Lucy Foulkes argues that the crisis is one of ignorance as much as illness. Have we raised a 'snowflake' generation? Or are today's young people subjected to greater stress, exacerbated by social media, than ever before? Foulkes shows that both perspectives are useful but limited. The real question in need of answering is: how should we distinguish between 'normal' suffering and actual illness? Drawing on her extensive knowledge of the scientific and clinical literature, Foulkes explains what is known about mental health problems--how they arise, why they so often appear during adolescence, the various tools we have to cope with them--but also what remains unclear: distinguishing between normality and disorder is essential if we are to provide the appropriate help, but no clear line between the two exists in nature. Providing necessary clarity and nuance, Losing Our Minds argues that the widespread misunderstanding of this aspect of mental illness might be contributing to its apparent prevalence.
Thirty years ago, "mindfulness" was a Buddhist principle mostly obscure to the west. Today, it is a popular cure-all for Americans' daily problems. A massive and lucrative industry promotes mindfulness in every aspect of life, however mundane or unlikely: Americans of various faiths (or noneat all) practice mindful eating, mindful sex, mindful parenting, mindfulness in the office, mindful sports, mindfulness-based stress relief and addiction recovery, and hire mindful divorce lawyers. Mindfulness is touted by members of Congress, CEOs, and Silicon Valley tech gurus, and is even beingtaught in public schools, hospitals, and the military.Focusing on such processes as the marketing, medicalization, and professionalization of meditation, Jeff Wilson reveals how Buddhism shed its countercultural image and was assimilated into mainstream American culture. The rise of mindfulness in America, Wilson argues, is a perfect example of how Buddhism enters new cultures and is domesticated: in each case, the new cultures take from Buddhism what they believe will relieve their specific distresses and concerns, and in the process create new forms of Buddhism adapted to their needs. Wilson also tackles the economics of the mindfulness movement, examining commercial programs, therapeutic services, and products such as books, films, CDs, and even smartphone applications. Mindful America is the first in-depth study of this phenomenon-invaluable for understanding how mindfulness came to be applied to such a vast array of non-religious concerns and how it can be reconciled with traditional Buddhism in America.
Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when we don't sleep. Compared to the other basic drives in life--eating, drinking, and reproducing--the purpose of sleep remained elusive. An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming. Within the brain, sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming mollifies painful memories and creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge to inspire creativity. Walker answers important questions about sleep: how do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us and can they do long-term damage? Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer's, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and accessible, Why We Sleep is a crucial and illuminating book.
Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and Well-Being provides a comprehensive approach to stress management honoring the integration, balance, and harmony of mind, body, spirit, and emotions. The holistic approach taken by internationally acclaimed lecturer and author Brian Luke Seaward gently guides the reader to greater levels of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being by emphasizing the importance of mind-body-spirit unity. Referred to as the "authority on stress management" by students and professionals, this book gives students the tools needed to identify and manage stress while teaching them how to strive for health and balance.
Have any feedback you'd like to share about this book display? Fill out our Book Display Feedback Form.