Tue, Oct 27 · 6:30 PM GMT
The Mindful Chapter is launching, and for our first meeting we’ll be kicking things off with a book that invites us to slow down and reflect on our experience of the world.
We'll be exploring our five senses and how paying closer attention to them can help us feel more present, connected, and engaged with everyday life.
It feels like the perfect theme for October, when the world becomes a little more sensory in the height of autumn. The colours of the leaves, the feel of a warmer jumper, the smell of pumpkin spice lattes and stroopwaffles… there are so many small moments to notice and enjoy.
We'll be reading Gretchen Rubin's Life in Five Senses and reflecting on what it means to experience life more fully — from becoming more aware of our surroundings to finding more delight in the everyday.
Follow along on Instagram too for updates: @themindfulchapterbookclub ✨
Meeting details
What you can expect
October book description Life in Five Senses - Gretchen Rubin
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project discovers a surprising path to a life of more energy, creativity, luck, and love: by tuning in to the five senses.
For more than a decade, Gretchen Rubin had been studying happiness and human nature. Then, one day, a visit to her eye doctor made her realize that she’d been overlooking a key element of happiness: her five senses. She’d spent so much time stuck in her head that she’d allowed the vital sensations of life to slip away, unnoticed. This epiphany lifted her from a state of foggy preoccupation into a world rediscovered by seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching.
In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of the five senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature, and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the profound power of tuning in to the physical world.
From the simple pleasures of appreciating the magic of ketchup and adding favorite songs to a playlist, to more adventurous efforts like creating a daily ritual of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and attending Flavor University, Rubin shows us how to experience each day with depth, delight, and connection. In the rush of daily life, she finds, our five senses offer us an immediate, sustainable way to cheer up, calm down, and engage the world around us—as well as a way to glimpse the soul and touch the transcendent.
Life in Five Senses is an absorbing, layered story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives—and, ultimately, how to move through the world with more vitality and love.
