A very good reflection on relaxation’s important role in women’s lives. There are a lot of grey reflection questions and realistic examples and suggestions to help add more relaxation into your daily life. The strongest part of the book is when Hobbs provides clear and factual reasons why relaxation can be difficult for so many and how life experiences can impact the ability to relax body, mind, and spirit.

This book is life-changing! Nicola offers easy to implement strategies and ideas to help one destress, claim relaxation as our right, and live a more full and happy life. This is one I will return to again and again. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.

Wow, this is my top nonfiction read of the past few years. Not only did the subject matter hit close to home, but the writing was beautiful and I was left with actionable exercises and steps to become a "Relaxed Woman".

Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"Like many women, I lived much of my adult life as if I were a machine. I overworked, traded sleep for productivity, and stayed compulsively busy, pushing through anxiety and exhaustion, all the while plastering on a smile and pretending I was fine. Until, one day, I couldn’t pretend anymore."

"My relaxed woman journey began with allowing myself to rest— to nap, read fiction, wander by the ocean, potter in the garden, bake banana bread, play board games, set stronger work boundaries, and have slower, spacious, intentionally unproductive weekends— so that my mind-body systems (nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, and immune) could begin to recover and restore from years of chronic stress and unprocessed trauma."

"When we’re hyper-independent, we tend to find it difficult to ask for help and delegate tasks and to feel guarded in our relationships. And because we suppress our own needs, we can resent others when they need our support with things we feel we have to cope with alone." TEAAAAAA

"When we look through the lens of capitalist, patriarchal forces, it’s easy to see why relaxation has become so shame-filled. When we’re exhausted from trying to live up to unrealistic expectations and consumed by our productivity and performance—“ Am I doing enough?” “Am I achieving enough?” “Am I good enough?”— we don’t have the capacity to imagine new ways of being or the energy to begin creating a more loving world."

"People-pleasing is motivated by an attempt to earn love, arising from a sense of threat and fear of rejection. Altruism is motivated by a desire to express love, relieve suffering, and be of service to the world."

"Simply knowing that we are part of a social support system we can flock to in times of stress is incredibly comforting. But over the last decade, our sense of being part of a tribe has decreased. A survey carried out by the Survey Center on American Life in 2021 found that 12 percent of Americans report having no close friends, and a 2023 survey found that 27 percent of adults in Great Britain report feeling lonely."

"Nurturing our relationships doesn’t mean avoiding conflict; rather, it’s about how we can make conflict intimacy-enhancing: productive rather than destructive— an opportunity for growing together rather than a threat to the relationship."

“Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman.”

What a way to start a book. Nicola Jane Hobbs opens that by thirteen, she had stopped resting and started tying her worth to achievement and people-pleasing, a story many women share. She unpacks how our nurturing instincts, and societal expectations, have been exploited by a culture that leaves women exhausted, drained and undervalued.

Blending neuroscience, personal stories, and practical tools, Hobbs argues that rest isn’t indulgent, it’s essential. The book is strongest when it names how deeply ingrained expectations keep women running, and how rest can be a quiet form of rebellion. She acknowledges the horrors happening in the world, and how rest might seem inappropriate or tone deaf but insists that’s exactly why we must imagine something better for ourselves and our communities.

The book offers a lot—ideas, rituals, reflections. For some, it may feel like too much at once, but it works well as a menu, not a mandate.

Hobbs ends with: “I do not want to be remembered as a woman who was always exhausted.”

Painfully relatable.

The tone and pace of this book makes it hard to absorb. There’s so much to read through and parse for relevance, that I found myself often missing the larger takeaway about relaxation.

11% in and I didn’t connect to any of the text; there are many personal anecdotes & this book assumes someone is coming to the page on the verge of burnout & resistant to relaxation.

It would have been helpful for a framework to self navigate the text based on your own experiences & where you are in your journey.

Overall, I like the idea of this but I would greatly benefit from a synopsis and a skeleton of the questions that are scattered within the bodies of text. So that I could do a reflection exercise and sit in a world of my own making, rather than confounding others’ experiences & feelings with my own.

I've been on my own personal journey to a relaxed lifestyle for years, so when I saw this book pop up, I was immediately interested. I hold a masters degree in human behavior so I consider myself an expert in this area.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book and felt there was a lot of useful information, with quality prompts to reflect. The further I got in the book, the more discombobulated it felt. I feel the author was trying to expand the information too much, and that took away from the premise of the book. Many parts felt like repetitive fluff.

I liked that Hobbs covered Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, however, it felt a bit too rushed. I feel she could have dived deeper into this to give more weight to this pedagogy and how it relates to the book. Bonus points for highlighting the fact that this theory wasn’t originally designed as a pyramid.

The section covering manifestation threw me. It was evident that the author isn't an expert in this area, and gave conflicting opinions and information here. It felt disjointed and I feel the book would have been better without this included.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, she very briefly mentions shadow work. While I agree this is a significant aspect of this particular journey, it is a deeply sensitive and complex process that wasn’t covered enough to warrant mention. Shadow work requires a thorough understanding and careful guidance, as it involves confronting the hidden aspects of the self. A more thoughtful exploration could have provided readers with tools to navigate this inner work safely, rather than simply acknowledging its existence. Without further context or resources, its brief mention feels more like an afterthought than a meaningful contribution to the discussion and given its sensitive nature, should be excluded.

Overall, it was a great introduction to living a more relaxed, fulfilling life. I think a few tweaks could make this a powerful resource for women.

I think all women should read this, especially younger ones. It's so often that woman are viewed as the problem solvers in people lives. Moms, sisters, daughters. Somehow the responsibility always falls to woman.

This book explores the idea of feeling secure in just relaxing. Taking time for oneself and not being the person that has to fix everything.

A very important lesson to learn as a woman.