I've recorded some brand new guided meditations to help you cope with lockdown, which you can access totally free. Lockdown is the perfect time to begin, or strengthen, a meditation practice. In this challenging period, you may be experiencing feelings of uncertainty, isolation, frustration, boredom, anger, and destabilisation. Since there is little we can do about the pandemic except stay safe, the one thing we should focus on is what we can control: our mental and emotional response to the lockdown.

Lockdown provides you with an excellent opportunity to work on training your mind and using it to help you de-stress. The mind is the best coping tool we have because it is always with us - even in lockdown. If your mind has been going crazy with unhelpful thoughts and panicky feelings, you might disagree with how helpful the mind actually is. But this is where practising meditation can come to the rescue. Guided meditation is especially useful if your brain is going loop-the-loop because another voice providing some instruction can help you focus better.

With lockdown especially in mind, the first three meditations I have recorded are designed to calm and soothe you, to help you sleep, and to cultivate states of mind that will help you deal with difficulties. They are all available for free on a meditation app called Insight Timer. I'll get into the meditations and what they help with below. Click on the title to go directly to the meditation. If you don't have the app, you may only be taken to a preview. So, y'know, get the app. It's free!

Breaktime Relaxation (15 mins)

If you're stuck indoors and the kids are going crazy, or if you're driving yourself mad with stressful thoughts, take a break with me. For 15 minutes, you can totally let go and relax. In this meditation, we will relax the body and quiet the mind by travelling into nature. After listening to this meditation track, I hope you will feel calm and grounded. It's a nice, simple mediation that is suitable for both beginners and experienced meditators.

Breathing The Brahma Viharas (45 mins)

The Brahma Viharas are what Buddhists call the four sublime states. They are beneficial states of mind that help us to deal with life skillfully and consist of: Loving-kindness, equanimity, sympathetic joy, and compassion. You don't have to be a Buddhist to do this meditation. And you don't have to be interested in Buddhism to know that kindness and compassion can help you to feel better. In this meditation, we use personal mental imagery and breathwork to cultivate these helpful states in the brain and body. It's simpler than it sounds and I'm with you every step of the way.

Sleepy Yoga Nidra (30 mins)

I came across Yoga Nidra when I had insomnia. I was gobsmacked to find that just listening to a Yoga Nidra recording had the power to knock me out when three Nytol and a Horlicks hadn't touched the sides. I researched the practice and found that Yoga Nidra mimics a state close to the one we approach when we fall asleep naturally. In fact, Yoga Nidra means "Yogic Sleep". I now do Yoga Nidra whenever I struggle to sleep or if I just feel the need for rejuvenation. And now I've recorded my very own version. Yoga Nidra is really easy. You just follow the instructions and come into a state of deep relaxation. Use it at bedtime for sleep or during the day to rest and restore the body and the mind.

I will be recording more meditations, so if you enjoy these, then you can follow me on Insight Timer. Just download the app, go to my page, and click follow.

If you're going to start, start right. I don't know who said that, nor if anyone actually did, but it's great advice. And it leads me nicely onto another quotation, which you may recognise if you've read my book 'Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways to Get Smart Fast'.

“Socrates was famous for a few things: sporting an astonishingly curly beard, rarely bothering with footwear, pondering, and stopping total strangers in the street to quiz them on their beliefs.” 

This quotation was selected by Publishers Weekly for their monthly best 'first lines' feature, where they give a nod to creative indie authors' book beginnings.

It's an honour to have my line chosen by the top international book trade magazine, which has been running since 1872. Mind you, Socrates was around before paper was even invented.

I'd not heard of the 'First Lines' competition until recently, but I understand why it's a "thing". Every book has to capture your attention quickly in today's marketplace. Potential readers don't have much free time.

Thanks to Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, browsers can check out the first few pages to see whether or not they should bother investing time and money in a book.

I'm sure we can all recall a few of our favourite first lines. Mine include:

"All this happened, more or less."

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

"It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

George Orwell, 1984

"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys."

Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

Samuel Beckett, Murphy

My favourite first lines all score points for subversive humour, originality, and piquing interest.

If you'd like to read the other five first lines that were featured, along with mine, pick up a copy of Publishers Weekly dated 28 October 2019. You can get Instant Wisdom on Amazon or order it from all good bookstores.

If there was a free indie review service where the reviewer offered to buy your book from Amazon, review it fairly, then broadcast the results to hundreds of thousands of book-hungry followers, with absolutely no catch, would you submit?

I did. That’s how I got my latest 5-star review for ‘Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways to Get Smart Fast’. To celebrate, I’m going to share with you the awesome free service I used.

Indie authors often struggle to get quality reviews, especially if their books are not well-known enough to get organic traction. While I am known for my books on addiction recovery, the Wiseism series I am writing is brand new.

So you can imagine how happy I was to find an award-winning review service catering to indie authors whose books have fewer than 15 Amazon reviews.

Indies Helping Indies Book Review Project (IHIBRP) is run by author JB Richards, or Jeannie, as I have come to know this rather wonderful human. She set up the project to give back to the indie community after the support she received for her novels and short stories.

Jeannie has won multiple awards for both her writing and her positive work promoting other independent authors. She’s won the prestigious Golden Quill and the Inspiring Muse Award, among many others.

If your book is accepted into IHIBRP, Jeannie will buy your book, personally read it, and post her review on Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, Facebook, and Twitter. All you have to do is submit your book.

There must be a catch, right? Um, no. This is precisely how I got my review and can proudly share my IHIBRP 5-Star Recommended Read Award Badge. All I had to do was write the best book I could, follow the guidelines and submit my book at the right time.

I hope it goes without saying that you should only submit quality work. Not all books will get a great review. IHIBRP is wonderful, but not magic. You will receive a genuine review by a human being.

Now onto why I wanted to write an article about IHIBRP and Jeannie. Although it’s lovely to be able to post another “I got a 5-star review” article, I wanted to take Jeannie’s lead and pay it both back and forward by sharing this valuable service with the indie community.

My whole experience with Jeannie and IHIBRP has been fantastic. I want other indie authors to benefit and I also want to show my gratitude to Jeannie herself.

Here is a little of what IHIBRP had to say about my book: “Time and again, Burgess hits the mark through her keen observations and amusing interpretations in demonstrating how failure can be turned into success.”

If you want to read the full review for ‘Instant Wisdom’, do so here. If you want to submit your book to IHIBRP, the guidelines are here. Please follow the rules. There is a real (and lovely) human on the end of them.

If you get a glowing review, share about IHIBRP. This service only exists due to positive people like Jeannie in the indie community wanting to help others. Be one of those positive people too.

I have been incredibly lucky to receive some amazing reviews for my latest book "Instant Wisdom". And here we go again! This time I am utterly honoured to receive a 5-star review from Readers' Favorite, one of the largest book review and award contest sites on the Internet.

Readers' Favorite have earned the respect of renowned publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Harper Collins, and have received the "Best Websites for Authors" and "Honoring Excellence" awards from the Association of Independent Authors. They are also fully accredited by the BBB (A+ rating), which is a rarity among Book Review and Book Award Contest companies.

So, here follows their press release about my book. (And special thanks to Jack Magnus for reviewing the book.)

Author's new book receives a warm literary welcome

Readers' Favorite announces the review of the Non-Fiction - Self Help book "Instant Wisdom" by Beth Burgess, currently available at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0957321732.

Reviewed By Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

"Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways To Get Smart Fast is a nonfiction self-help book written by Beth Burgess, a therapist, coach, and author. She’s also the founder of Wiseism.com, a site designed to assist people who want to enrich their lives through amping up their own natural smarts. As a new adult, Burgess had to cope with a crippling anxiety disorder she developed in her mid-teens. Self-medicating with alcohol and the resulting poor decisions she was making along the way made life even more difficult. Then she resolved to change things, to begin using her native intelligence to make changes, to solve problems rather than find ways around them. Her research drove her to learn about other cultures and philosophies, to find techniques that may seem marvelous and fantastic -- except they actually do work.

This is a well-written and insightful look at things people can do right now to make their brains work for them. The author’s down-to-earth approach is a welcome change from those books which promise you riches beyond compare through directed meditation and money mantras. As a long-term bodybuilder and weight trainer, I was already quite familiar with the concept of visualization in turning the most challenging lifts into movements that are easily accomplished. Burgess explains the basis behind this phenomena and goes on to produce backed studies that show how even the simple act of visualizing an exercise can actually result in improved fitness in the involved area. While not a replacement for that jog in the park or those 40 laps in the pool, the idea that seeing and visualizing those activities can make a positive effect on your health was fascinating indeed. With each page of this perceptive, frank and illuminating book, I did become quite a bit wiser and more aware of how much more there is to know. Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways To Get Smart Fast is most highly recommended."

You can learn more about Beth Burgess and "Instant Wisdom" at https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/instant-wisdom where you can read reviews and the author’s biography, as well as connect with the author directly or through their website and social media pages.

Readers' Favorite LLC 
Media Relations
Louisville, KY 40202 
800-RF-REVIEW 
https://readersfavorite.com