Additional Resources
Supplementing guided meditations with additional activities can enhance a mindfulness practice and improve your habit for conscious engagement in your daily life.
Mindful Coloring
Mindful Coloring
Mindful coloring offers significant mental health benefits by reducing anxiety, stress, and depression through a focused, meditative, and creative activity. It calms the brain’s fear center (amygdala), improves focus, enhances fine motor skills, and provides a soothing, low-stakes outlet for emotional expression and relaxation.
If you are interested in mindful coloring, feel free to print resources from: Free Printable Mindfulness Colouring Pages For Adults – Jessie Parker
As you color, try to:
- Settle in (mentally and physically)
- Notice the feel of the pencil in your hand
- Tune into the texture of the page as it touches the pencil
- Meditate on the beauty of the entire illustration
- Take note of how the parts come together to make up the whole
- Be attentive to how the page fills with color
- Let go of any judgement of your coloring skills.
- Appreciate your creative and exquisite self
Mindfulness Apps
Recommended Mindfulness Apps
While cell phones and technology often introduce stress and chaos to our lives, they can also become useful tools in building a mindfulness practice. Explore these popular apps to add a touch of mindfulness to your phone today.
Smiling Mind – a free app and website that offers 70+ evidence-based meditations and tools aimed to improve mental fitness, reduce stress, and improve sleep
UCLA Mindful – a program that offers free, guided meditations in many languages
Healthy Minds – a free, science-based program with guided meditations, programs, and lessons
Mindful – an incredibly helpful website full of guided meditations, articles, and resources that you can try anytime
Meditate Together – a program offering free live and online daily meditations and reflection groups
Insight Timer – a free app giving you access to 45,000 guided meditations Headspace – a mindfulness app created by Andy Puddicombe, a sports science major turned Buddhist monk whose mission is to teach meditation and mindfulness to as many people as possible.
Calm – a popular app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation
Books
Recommended Mindfulness Reading
Reading can be a powerful activity for mindfulness on its own. These books are available through Grafton Library or your local library, and can each help you better understand methods for handling stress and building a mindful life.
The Mindful Twenty-Something: Life skills to handle stress… & everything else by Holly B. Rogers, MD — a great read focused on navigating your twenties with confidence. This book is available at Grafton Library.
Mindfulness for the Next Generation: Helping Emerging Adults Manage Stress and Lead Healthier Lives by Holly Rogers and Margaret Maytan — great for teaching mindfulness to students.
The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness by Rhonda V. Magee — Magee teaches mindfulness as a way to exercise self-compassion, reflect on microaggressions, and face fears that ultimately lead to division
Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn – Zinn teaches how to change your relationship to the way you think, feel, work and play.
The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance by George Mumford delves into the benefits of mindfulness for athletes. This book is available at Grafton Library.
Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn – this book is a foundational guide to mindfulness and meditation.