New book will help children learn to manage worrying thoughts and feelings

Jason, who lived in Brighton for around 15 years and now lives in Worthing, said: “Imagine Eating Lemons is a rhyming picture book aimed at helping children learn how to manage their worrying thoughts and feelings with mindfulness.

“The book begins with an introduction to the main character Chester Chestnut. Chester is a tiny woodland creature that lives in the forest surrounded by the human objects he has discovered. The rhyming story follows Chester as he begins to worry about his first day at school and not fitting in, his first talent show performance and not being able to sing and being alone in the dark seeing scary creatures. He then uses the practice of mindfulness to redirect his attention away from his thoughts and back to his breath and senses to calm himself.

“The book was inspired by my own struggles with anxiety that began unexpectedly at the age of 25 where I projectile vomited across the dinner table in a restaurant. This first experience happened during a holiday on the other side of the world due to feeling completely out of my comfort zone.

“I then began to feel more anxious more frequently, and for a growing list of different reasons. Anxiety also heavily affected my acting career. I grew incredibly fearful before auditions and being on set. I would feel irritable, snappy, lose my appetite, and I just wanted to stay curled up in the safety of my bed. I also continued to physically vomit when the anxiety was especially bad. After several years of struggling in this way and trying many different approaches to find some peace such as NLP, hypnotherapy, affirmations, float tanks, spiritual books, and YouTube videos, I finally came across the practice of mindfulness. This is where everything I had learnt from all these different areas was brought together. I suddenly had an actual practice and focus when I was beginning to feel anxious. After practising mindful meditation every day for two months, I learnt how to sit with the feeling of emotional discomfort such as irritation, instead of either pushing it away or reacting impulsively to it.

“I learnt how to notice when my attention had drifted towards thinking and then gently redirect my attention to the subtleties of my breath and five main senses. I also learnt that I wasn’t responsible for creating the worrying thoughts I was seeing in my imagination, that was the job of my mind. I learnt that myself and my mind were almost separate and that my mind was simply trying to protect me by pointing out all the worst-case scenarios of what could happen. My body would then react to these worst-case scenario thoughts with the fight or flight response as though the thoughts were happening in reality. Everything suddenly seemed very clear. With this new knowledge I could see that I needed to share the practice of mindfulness with others – especially children. I understood the importance of planting the seed of understanding about how their own mind and body works whilst they are young and open to learning new things.”