A BRAVE Year: 52 Weeks Being Mindful
by Gabriel Constans PhD
Reviewed by Noura. Follow: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Description:
Like the rest of the body, it’s good to exercise the mind. Daily exercise, and meditation, has been shown to increase health, by decreasing stress, which allows the body (and mind) to naturally release endorphins, relax and heighten awareness. This book has fifty-two sessions. It takes courage, bravery, to honestly witness what we discover, inside and out, without turning away or getting caught in the content. It is a brave act to allow oneself to be still, if even for a moment, to look at one’s present experience, and not be doing something.
Review:
A BRAVE Year is a simple and yet effective and powerful tool for increasing self-awareness through meditation. “BRAVE”, which is the acronym for “Before Reacting Access Validate and Explore”, perfectly captures the essence of this wonderful book!
We live in a technologically fast paced world with a lot of information at our fingertips. It’s very easy to be constantly focused on external events at the expense of what’s going on in our inner worlds. “A BRAVE Year” addresses the important need we have to be still so we can be present to ourselves. It’s about turning our attention inward. It’s also about being aware of the space between our reactions and what we are reacting to so we can be aware of the power to make other choices and grow through this freedom.
Gabriel says “It takes courage, bravery, to honestly witness what we discover, inside and out, without turning away or getting caught in the content”. I love how he provides examples on how we could get caught in the content. Gabriel also provides exercises to help us to be more aware of the challenges of our conditioning. Some of these could be negative self-talk, habitual thinking such as believing the worse possible outcome without any evidence of such, the need to be right, the need to blame, and so on.
I love how the book emphasizes the idea of validating, which means we don’t try to stop thinking or feeling, but we allow ourselves to be with that. It’s about being present and letting go of the need to control. This can be challenging when dealing with difficult emotions such as grief or the idea of facing our own deaths. Gabriel tackles these challenging topics with easy and approachable meditation exercises.
This manual offers easy-to-follow instructions and a variety of exercises for the (novice or experienced) reader from which to choose. The exercises can be done comfortably anywhere and anytime with emphasis on the ones that work best for the reader. There is no right or wrong way to do them as long as we find that they are making a difference in our daily lives. This is a well written book anyone can use to easily make mindfulness into a way of life.
The structure of the book, one session for each week of the year, as well as the simplicity of the exercises, address the important need to remember to look within and pay attention to our inner worlds. It has a lot of acronyms that are easy to remember. My favorite one of course is “B.R.A.V.E”!
