By Rebekah Borucki
Published by Hay House, 2017
As you know by now, the Next Few Steps blog is all about helping you to cut through the crap and find the best information from the best sources, so you can make well-informed decisions on topics to move you from passive to active.
An area many newbies, including me, have trouble with is starting meditation. No matter how grown up I think I am, it still has that hippie-dippie feel, despite nearly every productivity guru extolling the virtues of a restful mind.
This book is a well-written, in-depth look at mediation from a newbie like me’s perspective. The title alone draws me in and challenges some of my preconceived perceptions about how hard and frustrating the process is. Even the busiest of us can surely find 4 minutes! Interesting hypothesis! Let’s look deeper!
To kick off, this book is designed for beginners or at least those that have tried it and found that the process doesn’t chime with them. However, don’t make any snap conclusions that this is a book for dummies. The detailed tasks, including different positions to aid the meditation process as well as in-depth explanations that will scratch the learning itch for those who question everything (my sons when they were 5-year-old being three of them!)
The first chapter – Meditation is easier than you think – puts your mind at rest from the get-go. The start of Chapter 2 debunks such myths as ‘meditation is just thinking about nothing’ and ‘you have to meditate for long periods of time’. Hence the book’s title,I suppose.
The rest of chapter 2 explains different poses you can use to link to different chakras and a clear Q&A section at the end for FAQs.
Chapters 3 – 11 identify the variety of benefits of meditation: meditation for happiness, for self-esteem, for confidence, for grief and loss etc. Each one is split up into mantras you can say to aid your meditation and some ‘Spread the Love’ quotations to inspire you.
Following this, each chapter has ‘4 minutes to…’ sections that detail exactly what you need to do to bring that quality into your lives with some more mantras and thinking behind some of the concepts covered.
However, this is not a theoretical text. Every step of the way is explained and what you should be doing and thinking is set out in activities for you to try. It also includes some more general tasks to try out whilst meditating – including preparing for the task to help you gain the most out of it.
Rebekah ends by reaffirming how far you have come, how to keep the momentum going (a subject dear to my heart and one I am dedicated to helping my reader develop through NFS).
If you have an inkling to start meditating and are not really sure where to start, this might be the book for you. Personally, I struggled with the section about chakras but that could well be your vibe down to a tee!
And Rebekah doesn’t pull her punches. At one point she says, “If you aren’t at a healthy weight and you don’t have a medical condition that prevents you from losing weight, you have to accept that your actions have led you to this place.” Even though we might be aware of this, sometimes this in-your-face writing might not be to everyones’ taste.
However, Rebekah definitely shows how much she cares for her reader throughout the book and if is clear that following her advice will help a novice to develop their understanding in a practical way.
However, this book definitely presents a difficult subject in an engaging manner and if you can get on board with the basic principles, then this might be the perfect book for you to get a copy of!
Conclusion: ‘You have 4 minutes…’ (Simple 4 minute meditations for inspiration, transformation and true bliss) by Rebekah Borucki, has 27 different meditations practices across a wide variety of subjects as you are guided through beginning your practice of practical and spiritual meditation.
Homework:
When you finish the book, fill in the Odd Book Review form to help the information stick and make sure you apply at least one takeaway to your life.
What are some of your own mediation hacks? Share them with us below!