Calm: A Practical Guide to Mindfulness Based on the Popular App―Simple Meditation Habits for a Busy Life

Based on the popular iPhone app, a visually exciting, practical, and playful interactive guide to twenty-first century meditation that provides simple tools, tricks, and habits to find tranquility and focus, improve creativity and productivity, achieve better mental and physical health, and ultimately transform your life.

Achieving mindfulness doesn’t require a huge lifestyle shift or special training. It’s about mastering simple habits that work with the demands of your busy life. It uses the abilities you’re born with: creativity, spontaneity, and awareness of the world around you. There are no rules to follow or break. Everyone can achieve calm—including you.

In Calm, Michael Acton Smith combines fascinating neurological research, ancient wisdom, and real-life experiences to demystify meditation and show you the many simple ways to be mindful everyday. Crafted to resemble a journal, filled with beautiful and inspiring artwork, and divided into eight life-balancing sections—Nature, Work, Creativity, Children, Travel, Relationships, Food, and Sleep—Calm can help you change your perspective and rediscover the pleasures of the world. Each section blends fascinating research, creative prompts, activities, instructions, and insights that will stimulate your senses and inspire you.

Calm can be used multiple times a day or whenever you need it to find a little peace. Take a walk without a fixed destination, savor a piece of chocolate on the tip of your tongue, plant a seed, doodle aimlessly, turn off your mobile phone for five short minutes. Smile, breathe, and go slowly. Calm your mind—and change your world.

Michael Acton Smith, OBE, is the co-founder of the hugely successful Calm app. In 2014 he was appointed an OBE for services to the creative industries. Michael Acton Smith is frequently listed among the most influential people in the digital industry and has appeared in the Guardian's "100 Most Powerful People in Media," Wired's "Top 100 of Britain's Digital Power," and The Times' "100 to Watch list." He lives in London and can be found on Twitter @acton.