Cover Image: Just Breathe

Just Breathe

Pub Date:   |   Archive Date:

Member Reviews

A really great overview of mindfulness and meditation for upper elementary and middle school students. The illustrations are calming and gorgeous.

Was this review helpful?

Just Breathe by Mallika Chopra is a book that I used often in my classroom to help support mindfulness practices. Students appreciated the easy to understand instructions for the various strategies to utilize on their own. As a class, these were easy reminders and things to be taught to support the whole class in learning to be mindful and self-regulate.

Was this review helpful?

A great primer for mindfulness and meditation for preteens and new adults alike. My daughter found the anger breath useful. We are introducing mindfulness at school and this book has been a nice resource. I have followed the work of Deepak Chopra for years, and Mallika seems just as intentional and calming as her father. Great read.

Was this review helpful?

I got this book on NetGalley. I loved it so much I bought one for our library. Then the teachers wanted to read it too. So I bought more copies. It is great for the kids and adults.

Was this review helpful?

I really enjoyed that this book gives easy to understand ideas for kids to get started with meditation and yoga principles. It was especially helpful in giving me ideas to use with students I work with in elementary school. So many kids have a hard time calming down and reducing their anxiety. These techniques were very helpful.

Was this review helpful?

This book was such a gift to my preschool class. It’s calm, simple language allows us to practice mindfulness any time of day. It is great for both a child reader or a teacher read-aloud.

Was this review helpful?

This is a thoughtfully written book which has much guidance for children on how to be more mindful. It would be a good addition to a classroom where teachers are using mindfulness techniques (as I am trying to do increasingly).

Thanks to Net Galley for the advance reading copy!

Was this review helpful?

Imagine that you feel stressed, tired, and scattered. Rushing from one task to the next, family dynamics pushing and pulling your patience, feeling like you are constantly taking orders from others.

Now, imagine that you're a kid with limited skills to handle these demands.

That is where Mallika Chopra's Just Breathe comes in.

After reading this on NetGalley (thank you!), I was convinced that my tutoring students and parents would benefit from deep breathing, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and movement exercises.

I was not disappointed. The target audience is tweens, but people from age 5 through 95 can develop techniques to increase focus, calmness, and, yes, energy.

Two of my more boisterous students have already benefitted from imagining a place where they feel safe and happy, coupled with deep breathing. In just ten minutes, they went from sleepy and unfocused to feeling more calm and centered. Parents and grandparents give these activities their endorsement as well.

With ample white space and simple, serene graphics, this book beckons the reader with chapter headings such as Breathe, Move, Be Silent, Notice, Ask Questions, and Create.

[book-info number="1"]



The reader feels invited rather than instructed and this makes a difference to kids who feel stressed from academic expectations, rushed schedules, the pressure to win, or any of the family tensions that we all experience.

Just Breathe.

(Thank you to NetGalley for an electronic Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.)

Was this review helpful?

There is so much to love about this book! Meditation and calming excersies that are perfect for children of all ages. I'm going to mimic what others have said about wanting to see this book in an audiobook version. This would be a stunning and VERY useful tool to have in daycare, classrooms, or homes with busy body children. Whether its on audiobook, or read aloud by an adult. Such a wonderful idea!

A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I truly appreciate it!

Was this review helpful?

As an only child I can sing the praises of quiet, quiet time and stillness, but these days, even for many singleton children quiet, stillness, and time to recenter can be a challenge. Modern life is filled with so much stimulatory information for children. For an anxious child, this can spell overstimulation and thus greater stress. Just Breathe provides kids (and their parents!) with an arsenal of methods to learn to slow down, take time to breathe and move and think mindfully. While the publisher designates this as targeting middle-grade kids (and indeed this is a perfect age to present children with the idea of mindfulness and taking time), the book is equally appropriate for high school students who face just as much stress as they forge a path toward adulthood and college.

Divided into sections titled Breathe, Move, Be Silent, Notice, Ask Questions and Create, Just Breathe gives the young reader many ways to achieve more inner peace and mindfulness. Sitting still is often quite hard for children in this age range, so the ideas of moving meditation are invaluable to help children learn to find internal focus even when they have to move. Chopra offers a prompt and instructions for each meditative activity and suggestions about where and how you should engage in that process. She also talks in a general way about the link between your mind and your body. Finding inner peace can only do a body good.

This is a useful book for parents of children with anxiety, but I can also see its benefit for parents of children with developmental issues, sensory integration problems, and other physical challenges. Sometimes reminding a child to s l o w down and breathe is one of the best ways to achieve a happier life with relaxation.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from Running Press Kids/Hachette and NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Was this review helpful?

While this isn't a book I would recommend to read on your own because it's hard to meditate and read at the same time, a teacher wanting to adopt mindfulness meditation in their classroom, they could read the meditations aloud to their students.

Was this review helpful?

I think that “Just Breathe” is perfect for the target age group. I liked what illustrations I saw and I hope that the book comes with an audio CD to help guide listeners in meditation.

Was this review helpful?

Very well written, it's very calming just to read let alone doing the practices. I'd love to see this in an audiobook format with a nice, soothing voice. It was a pleasure to read and I hope many can benefit from it.

Was this review helpful?

This is an excellent, easy-to-understand overview of mindfulness and meditation practices for young people. It covers a full range of topics and issues relevant to kids and teens and provides practical advice for coping and staying calm through meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and intention-setting. What a wonderful introduction to these practices!

Was this review helpful?

A great offering of a book about the process and benefits of mindfulness and mindfulness-based instruction.

Was this review helpful?

Deepak Chopra's daughter has written an eloquent, thorough and inviting guide to meditation with plentiful practice exercises for all ages. Optimal for home, classroom or travel this is the quintessential guide to mindfulness exercises and experience.

Was this review helpful?

I was immediately interested in reading Just Breathe by Mallika Chopra because she is the daughter of Deepak Chopra. I was curious to see what information was provided that I could share with my 12-year-old daughter to help her maneuver through life. I liked how straightforward and simplistic the breathing exercises and guided meditations are for children.

Recently, a research study highlighted that suicide is rising among children. This alarming fact proves that books like this one, which provides numerous techniques on how to deal with stress and anxiety, its necessity. I believe that this book can be used as a bonding tool between children and their parents.

I enjoyed how Mallika Chopra managed to make the book relatable to children and explain the significance of each technique that is being introduced. I would recommend this book for children, who are unfamiliar with using meditation and breathing in their lifestyles. For children, who are familiar with the lifestyle, they may become uninterested in the book.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I shared with my daughter and son, who is 10. Children are exposed to so much more than when I was growing up. Having a book like Just Breathe could save a life and assist a child in effectively managing the ups and downs of life.

Was this review helpful?

A wonderful, empowering book about mindfulness and meditation geared for children although people of all ages will benefit from its wisdom and practical advice. As someone who practices and teaches mindfulness, I will be trying some of the exercises and sharing them with my children and students.
With gratitude to Mallika Chopra for sharing her wisdom and to Perseus Press, and NetGalley for the ARC.

Was this review helpful?

I absolutely love that this is marketed toward youths. There is so much in these young children's lives these days that they NEED a book like this. A way to learn to calm their overstimulated senses and get back to something basic and calm. Training young children in how to handle themselves and learn mindfulness is only going to help as they grow.

Was this review helpful?

LOVE IT! My daughter is only seven but can be an anxious perfectionist, and has happily delved in with me. It's a book that will be a helpful addition to our parenting stack for many years.. it's benefitting the whole family to work through this together, so we are exceptionally grateful for the opportunity to "test and review" via NetGalley. won't be deleting this from my Kindle, as it will see use for quite a while around here. I look forward to dropping a copy off with my daughter's counselor, who works with lots of children with anxiety issues, and I would love to see this book in schools, especially schools where stuff like this isn't always taught or thought about, with a teachers' guide. I think now more than ever it's important to make sure ALL children have access to practices like this.

Was this review helpful?