by guest blogger Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., author of

1. There’s nothing wrong with hope.
2. Make peace with your body.
3. Give yourself permission to do something you’ve been putting off.
4. Remove something from your self-improvement or to-do list.
5. Ask for support.

excerpt from Everyday Bliss for Women

After I emerged from years of paralysis, I felt a tremendous need to apol­ogize for being slow, overweight, and lacking in strength. I did this by telling the story of my broken back to everyone I met, elaborating on both how much I had suffered—and was still suffering—and how hard I was working on my recovery.

Thanks to brilliant, caring friends and an extraordinarily dedi­cated yoga teacher, I realized that I wasn’t simply a broken-back story and got on with living my life.

by guest blogger Kathryn R. Simpson, M.S., author of The Perimenopause & Menopause Workbook and The Women’s Guide to Thyroid Health

Take this simple quiz to see if you may have low thyroid function:

by guest blogger Sameet Kumar, Ph.D. author of Grieving Mindfully and The Mindful Path Through Worry and Rumination

The old saying “as above, so below” is particularly well suited to learning both the practice of mindfulness and the revolutionizing changes that mindfulness can bring. Mindfulness can change how you experience yourself and thereby affect how you manage your relationships with others. The more mindful you become of your thoughts and feelings, the less likely are you to be controlled by ruminations and irrational worries, or get swept up into the maelstrom of destructive emotions.

by guest blogger Stephanie Silberman, author of The Insomnia Workbook

During the holiday season, many people find themselves sleep-deprived. The reasons for lack of sleep can be positive or negative. Although staying up late at parties, eating and drinking a lot, and having friends and family over at your house can be a significant source of fun and pleasure and something that you’ve looked forward to for quite some time, it can also lead you to deprive yourself of much needed sleep. On the other hand, if the holidays are causing you to feel stressed due to financial concerns, tension at family get-togethers, or other similar reasons, you may be lying in bed at night wishing the holidays were over already so that you could go back to sleeping better. Although it’s quite common to have trouble sleeping during stressful periods of your life, insomnia can easily turn from a short-term problem into a chronic one. Before letting poor sleep affect both your physical and mental well-being, try these simple tips to improve your sleep this holiday season.

by guest blogger Colleen E. Carney, Ph.D., co-author of Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep

So you are lying awake and you can’t shut off your thoughts…sound familiar?

You are in good company. Not being able to shut off your mind is one of the most commonly cited troubles in insomnia. But many people do not have effective strategies to deal with this pesky problem.

The most common “strategy” in popular culture is to count sheep. So is it effective? Let’s first consider why someone would recommend that you count sheep to help you set aside your thoughts and go to sleep. While some believe it is an activity that would promote such boredom as to facilitate sleep, there is probably a better explanation.