One of the best ways to spend National Day of Unplugging is to spend time reading in your favorite spot in nature. Our team pulled together a list of books about nature, mindfulness, and rest that we’ll be curling up with on March 5th to give you some inspiration to disconnect, unplug, and escape into a great read.
The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices by Casper Ter Kuile
In Casper Ter Kuile’s book, The Power of Ritual, he makes a case for taking our everyday habits and routines and doing them intentionally, with our full attention and focus, to turn them into rituals. By doing so, he argues that we can heal our relationships with ourselves and others, find community, and ultimately find spiritual meaning and fulfillment in our everyday lives.
Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith
In Sacred Rest, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith outlines the seven types of rest that she finds those she encounters in her clinical practice struggle to get – physical, mental, emotional, mental, spiritual, sensory, social, and creative. Getting inadequate rest in any of these areas can really affect your health, happiness, relationships, creativity, and more, so she uses this book to describe how to identify the rest you need and then take practical steps to recharge. If you feel you need permisson to rest, let Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith write you a permission slip.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
After the last year we’ve all head, Wintering is a book you shouldn’t miss. Katherine May writes about a period of profound difficulty in her life when her husband fell ill, her son stopped going to school, and she dealt with her own health issues as well, and while this is a personal narrative, she draws from lessons learned from literature and the natural world to embrace this period of difficulty and identify the opportunities amidst the difficulties. While we typically view difficult times as periods to be endured and ended as soon as possible, Katherine May offers up an alternative perspective that takes a step back and recognizes the cycles in nature that can remind us of the cycles of our own lives and the truth that while there are fallow periods, abundance will always come around again.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In Braiding Sweetgrass, she brings her scientific knowledge into conversation with the indigenous wisdom that plants and animals are our greatest teachers. She argues for embracing and respecting the language and lessons of the natural world around us in order to develop an ecological consciousness that will allow us to work with the natural rhythms and cycles of the earth instead of continuing to take from the environment in unsustainable ways.
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski
In Burnout, sisters Emily and Amelia Nagoski explain why the experience of burnout is different for women. Their perspective considers all the societal pressures that women face while taking a look at the biological cycles that can get out of rhythm in today’s world. Most notably, they walk you through the reasons that rest, human connection, and working with your inner critic are all important contributing factors to the recovery process.
The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
In The Body Is Not an Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor offers radical self love as the path forward to address your relationship with yourself as it has been molded by the belief systems and institutions in which we live. She encourages us to take a look at our own body shame, and in doing so, inspire others to reflect in what really matters, who they are, and where the stories we tell ourselves about our bodies really come from.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
How to Do Nothing is the perfect book to bring with you on your next Getaway. In this book, Jenny Odell examines the role of technology in what is now an attention economy – she sees our attention as the most precious resource we have and encourages readers to start being more intentional with the ways we give our attention. She argues that when we take back our attention and start spending it more mindfully, we can make bolder decisions with our lives, our time, and in our connections with the people and things that mean the most to us.
Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge
In Silence, Erling Kagge, a Norwegian explorer and the first person to reach the South Pole alone, offers an insightful meditation on the role of silence in our lives to provide us with enough space to find meaning and gratitude. In our always-on and busy world, Erling Kagge’s book is a beautiful examination of how to find the things that are most important to us by slowing down and being intentional with where we allow noise into our worlds.
Ready to escape with your next favorite read? Book your Getaway today.