Using the information and ideas in The Mini-Retreat Solution, you can design and create your own mini-retreats using the following resources:

Meditative Music and Nature Sounds

This is a selection of my favourite meditative music and nature sounds recordings. I love how Dan Gibson weaves nature sounds and music together into a soothing soundscapes. Listen and relax to the wonderful recording of the beautiful poems of Rumi by Deepak Chopra & Friends.

Self-massage Mini-Retreats

• Easyto follow self-massage guidance
• KathySheck, Aurora Massage Therapy Clinic

Progressive Muscle Relaxation Mini-Retreat

• In depth guide to Progressive Muscle Relaxation online

Stretching Mini-Retreats

• Stretchingin the Office online instructions by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety
• Stretchware, a software program that reminds you to stretch
• Stretchingin the office Slideshow
• Robin Armstrong, Chiropractor & Yoga instructor

Contemplation Mini-Retreat

• www.quotationspage.com
• www.quotationsbook.com

Sensory Journey Mini-Retreat

If you don’t have the opportunity to retreat outside, you can take the sensory journey in your home or office and bring nature inside with these wonderful sound recordings

Play with Words Mini-Retreat

Playing with words can be so much fun. The randomword generator will get you started with a word and you can let your imagination take you from there.

Fascinated with Words Mini-Retreat

Here are a few online dictionaries to get you started. Type in any word you wish and discover its many meanings.

• www.thesaurus.com
• www.merriam-webster.com
• www.yourdictionary.com

Acts of Kindness Mini-Retreat

• The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation provides many ideas and tools on how to bring more kindness into your community.
• The Motto of WeAre What We Do is that Small Actions * many people = Big Change. Check it out and get involved.
• PayIt Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde: A great novel that shows how small acts of kindness can change the world. A little boy does something good for three people and asks them to pay it forward and do something good for three more people, who in turn will be asked to do something good for three more people…each act a link in the chain of human kindness.

• Pay It Forward is also an action plan within a work of fiction. Since the book was released in January of 2000, a real-life social movement has emerged, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. What began as a work of fiction has already become much more.  Pay it Forward Foundation
• Power Of Giving by Azim Jamal and Harvey McKinnonThis book shows you how the simple act of giving can improve your health, your relationships, your company’s bottom line, your happiness and more… It helps you
  find and cultivate your own personal giving potential and make conscious choices about giving at the right times,
  places, for the right causes and people.
• How Full Is Your Bucket?: Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath & Donald Clifton This book reveals how even the briefest interactions affect your relationships, productivity, health, and longevity. Organized around a simple metaphor of a dipper and a bucket, and grounded in 50 years of research, this book will show you how to greatly increase the positive moments in your work and your life — while reducing the negative.

Gratitude Mini-Retreats

Thanks!: How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier  by Robert A. Emmons
A scientifically groundbreaking, eloquent look at how we benefit – physically, psychologically, and interpersonally
- when we practice gratitude. In Thanks!, Robert Emmons draws on the first major study of the subject of gratitude, of “wanting what we have,” and shows that a systematic cultivation of this underexamined emotion can measurably change people’s lives. Thanks! inspires readers to embrace gratitude and all the benefits it can bring into their lives.

Overcoming Barriers to Mini-Retreats

Taming Your Gremlin (revised Edition) by Richard Carson

There is a creature inside each of us that can stop us in our tracks, take the wind out of our sails and make us feel about three inches tall. Get to know this creature, your inner critic, and turn it into a strength instead of a weakness. This book offers a light and humourous approach in dealing with your inner saboteur and taking charge of your destiny.

Other Resources

Press Pause … Press On: Bringing Balance & Perspective ToWork & Life  by Patricia Katz
This book offers strategies for restoring a rhythm of renewal to work and life. No more crash and burn. No more blur and
endure. 64 sanity-saving strategies for finding perspective, productivity and peace of mind.

SixtySeconds: One Moment Changes Everything  by Phil Bolsta
Sixty Seconds is an uplifting collection of intimate, heartfelt stories from prominent people who share their personal experiences with the profound. Their interviews illustrate that sacred moments of illumination and insight are available to all of us.

Happiness at the Speed of Life by Jim Smith
It’s an easy-to-read set of principles wrapped around short essays, personal reflections, and stories. Woven in you’ll find lessons, exercises, tips, tools and ideas, giving you specific actions and practices to “exercise” your happiness muscles in your personal life and workplace. It is through the adoption of these principles that you can learn to become a happier, more appreciative, person.