When we seek to make any change to our routines, thought processes, and especially our mental wellbeing, establishing new and healthy habits requires daily practice. This book offers simple and habit-forming activities that seem perfectly designed to develop both an artistic practice and mindfulness. I will recommend this book to those looking to de-stress, as well as those who want to nurture their creative impulses.

This informative workbook from Janet Slom incorporates the Mindfulness-based self-expression tactics in approachable and applicable ways to help those with stress and anxiety.
An Artful Path to Mindfulness provides nine weeks of information to work through with art projects and journal entries. I see this being very helpful and therapeutic for creative types struggling with a block or burnout due to everyday stress.
Many thanks to New Harbinger Publications, Inc. and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy.

Felt like this was way longer than it needed to be and not very helpful. Very typical of the normal self help books that are on the shelves these days. There were some nice journal prompts throughout the book that really helped in reflecting and moving forward through the path to mindfulness. However I do not think I would recommend this book to another person. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

As an art lover and someone interested in mindfulness, I was excited to read this book. It ended up not being a good fit at all and I had to make myself get through it. It is very wordy and lacking the fun sort of creative spark I was expecting. The exercises did not inspire me (make endless marks on the paper, write things out and then rip up the paper and then glue them into a collage...) and it felt more like unpleasant homework than an enjoyable workbook. It may have been easier to work through a physical copy but reading through the digital ARC was not personally rewarding.

As a student of therapeutic art, I had extremely high expectations for this book. I started reading this book with the idea of a book I could recommend to a therapeutic art client. I found the wordiness of the text and the numerous projects which were not included made the book more complicated than necessary. Considering the book is marketed as a workbook, I would have prefered all activities included in the book. I believe the book could be useful for a reader to develop an art-based mindfulness practice,

Bit fan of mindfulness and always intriguing to read a new book.
For me a little too simple but some great pointers and would be a good first read or introduction .

I knew Immediately that I was going to love this book at the descriptions of drawing and how different lines and shapes can tell a story, express emotions and so much more.
I loved the Abstract style being exhibited here in MBSE (Mindfulness Based Self Expression). The benefits explained were also exciting to read. All the ways it could improve my life flashed before my eyes as I read. Such as how drawing can improve my ability to connect with my true nature and my awareness. Also in being present. All of these have been at the top of my list for areas of focus in my life.

I felt so intuitively that I was meant to read this book. I enjoy practicing yoga, body scans, and meditation. In fact, I try to do them everyday. As well as being more creative. I've always felt a deep connection to my creativity and artful expression. With the emphasis on these 2 ways made me really excited to do the work in this book.

I liked the italicized informative paragraphs throughout.

The exercises were easy and engaging.

I would recommend this to everyone.

As someone looking for ways to bring mindfulness more into my life, this book was both insightful and offered a unique perspective on linking creativity and mindfulness. Would recommend for those who are looking to bring more calm and creativity into their lives.

This book takes an artistic, outside-of-the-box approach to understanding mindfulness and becoming more present within our own body and mind. It both explains mindfulness and different methods of meditating as well as provides well thought-out examples of how readers can implement these ideas into their every day lives. There are countless practical exercises in this book, albeit many are pretty off-the-wall and may take getting out of your comfort zone to give a go, but that only is healthy for this process I think.
What I can say with confidence is that each of these activities, whether or not you agree with their effectiveness, were carefully thought out by the author and every action had a thorough explanation for how this exercise could improve your path to mindfulness. The body scan exercises stood out to me the most in this book as effective. For example, I enjoyed the re-assembling of the body scan into a collage to create relationships between perceptions of the self. I found this to be a very creative solution to looking at perception, and an effective one. I also enjoyed the 'ugly drawing' exercise to become more aware of the inner critic.
The variety in this book is what left the greatest impression on me; not all exercises seemed like a reimagining or rewording of the last. There were exercises for partners and groups, and ways to have a 'meditation retreat' all by yourself at home.
I did think some exercises might be best suited for younger audiences, at least on a wider scale - for example, the mask-making exercise. These exercises were effective and fun, and definitely crafty, but I imagined them better suited for audiences of ages 10-15 or so as an introduction to the concept of mindfulness.

A wonderful, therapeutic read for writers and artists of all levels. Slom's book expands on mindfulness techniques by mindfulness expert and author Jon Kabat-Zinn. Her book is accessible, uses simple tools for its practices, and offers many prompts and reflection questions for the reader to participate, creating an at-home retreat on mindfulness for themselves. I enjoyed the opening and introduction to Slom's background in mindfulness and the inclusion of poems and parables to illustrate points. I found this book very easy to read and understand and also very helpful.

I thought this book was interesting. MBSE-Mindfulness Based Self Expression is a new concept to me. I thought the premise brings a different perspective to mindfulness, making it a more 'active' process. But, I thought the art project ideas were somewhat remedial-drawing dots on the page-doodling. It would have been helpful if the Author offered more specific assignments to provide direction by offering daily suggestions, areas to focus on.
Thank you NetGalley & New Harbinger Publications the opportunity to read this book.

janne boswell
https://seniorbooklounge.blogspot.com/

As someone who genuinely believes in MBSR techniques, this is a really good collection that can inspire you to actually take up things or execute thoughts that genuinely reduce one's stress and help attain an appreciable level of mindfulness.

I love mindfulness books. I have extremely high expectations for books such as this and unfortunately this one wasn't for me. I found I wasn't overly engaged with the execution and lacked inspiration. The amount of text was tedious for me and I was also disappointed that so many of the activities were external and not incorporated within the actual book itself. The term 'artful' also led me to expect some visuals or at least different inspiring colours and formatting, but it was just all text.

I support the information and the overall message but unfortunately this one isn't for me.

I am a huge, giant fan of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). A few years ago, I was really really struggling at work which ended up impacting my life and made me extremely unhappy. I was lucky that my company offers a free MBSR course, so I took the eight-week course and it completely changed my life. My sadness went away, I slept better and felt hopeful again.

As a person who loves art (and MBSR) and introspection, this book feels like it's written for me. Much like the MBSR curriculum, this is a nine-week course with specific activities each week. Each week contains some movement/meditation, some art, some journaling.

You can of course read the book cover to cover for the takeaways and new ways to approach mindfulness, but my personal recommendation would be to do the book slowly, intentionally as it's written to be used. The biggest part of the MBSR course, for me, was making the time 3x a week, for so many weeks in a row, to be present and silent and aware again and again. This is always a practice so the repetition and continual showing up is a crucial part of the experience.

with gratitude to netgalley and New Harbinger for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have been making an active effort to become more mindful, but not until this book did I find myself successful. This book is divided into weeks' worth of mindful art exploration activities meant to unleash your creativity and become in tune with your own self identity. Many of these activities I can see becoming part of social-emotional learning motivational activities for my students.

An Artful Path to Mindfulness combines a type of self-help book with lots of really interesting artistic exercises you can do to help unblock yourself and reach deeper into your being to really find true mindfulness. It is split up into an eight week series, and continues to build on itself as the weeks go on. This is meant to be a tool or resource book for someone who wants to incorporate mindfulness into their life over time. I also think it's an enjoyable read if you just want to read it cover to cover for some new insights and tips on how to be more mindful, how to find inner peace, and how to meditate. I read it cover to cover and really enjoyed all of the insights and felt like it is a really original approach to mindfulness I have not seen before in other similar books.