Elia looked back down at her book. She realized she had been treating the chapters like a set of rigid rules to defeat her mind, rather than a guide to befriend it.

As she practiced her deep breathing, an elderly woman sat on the other end of the bench. The woman noticed Elia’s white-knuckle grip and the familiar blue cover of the book.

"It’s just a feedback loop," she whispered, reciting a line from Chapter 3. "The brain is a muscle that can be retrained."