What Now? Meditation For Your Twenties & Beyond by Yael Shy
Early adulthood is filled with intense emotions and insecurity. What if you never fall in love? What if you can’t find work you’re passionate about? You miss home. You miss close friends. You’re lost in the noise of how you think you should be living and worried about wasting what everyone says should be the best years of your life.
What Now? shares mindfulness practices to help twentysomethings learn to identify and accept their feelings and respond—not react—to painful and powerful stimuli without pushing them away or getting lost in them. This is not about fixing yourself or being “better.” You are already completely whole and completely worthy.
Yael Shy offers expert guidance on beginning a meditation practice and explores how to bring that practice to love, social media, justice, and the ups and downs of everyday life.
Awards:
Winner of the Mind Body Spirit Award for Best Meditation Book of 2017
Winner of the Nautilus Silver Award, 2017
Praise for What Now?
“Part of what makes What Now? such a special read is Yael’s ability to take meditation out of the ephemeral and make it real-life relevant. Yael does this through her unflinching honesty in sharing her own anxieties, challenges, heart breaks and triumphs. Never arrogant, deeply humble and always purposeful, What Now? makes a strong case for why meditation can help anyone better understand a moment or a life, one lived and one still unfolding. It’s clear that meditation has helped Yael become whom she always was meant to be– and helped her write an absolutely beautiful book.”
- Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation, She Persisted and It’s your World
“Shy draws from her own experiences to offer meditation advice to 20-somethings in this light, approachable guide... What sets Shy’s offering apart is her candor in revealing her own vulnerability as a young person, including romantic break-ups and peer pressure during college, her struggle to find her spiritual place after being raised Jewish, and a revealing section on entering the job market. When writing about heartbreak or loneliness, she describes a three-part sequence of reactions—being overwhelmed, turning a mindful eye to her body-mind, and developing a healthy relationship to her emotions—that serves as a model for practicing meditation... This easily digested, insightful book will be welcomed by her target audience.”
- Publishers Weekly
“What Now? is a wonderful book, straightforward, personal, and engaging. Its grasp of basic Buddhist teachings and meditation techniques is impressive, and it extends them into areas of interest for young people, all the way up to activism, relationships, and even sex. I can’t think of a better guide for young people in search of honest spirituality than Yael Shy.”
- Norman Fischer, former Co-Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and Founder of The Everyday Zen Foundation, What Is Zen? and Training in Compassion
“The key question is how do you have an integrated life? In this book, Yael brings us through her own struggles and joys of living a life of attention, compassion and awareness. It is refreshing to read and a joyful offering to the world.”
- Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, Co-Founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, Editor of Awake at the Bedside
"Yael Shy’s new book offers meditation as more than the self-help method du jour, but as a way to choose your next steps in life, meet strong emotions as a source of power, and navigate beyond harsh self-judgment to become who you long to be."