Every Breath You Take: How to Breathe Your Way to a Mindful Life by Rose Elliot

Every Breath You Take is one of the finest mindfulness manuals that I’ve ever had the pleasure to pick up.

Practice by practice, Elliot takes the reader from the simple and concrete observation of the breath to the complex and abstract juggling of mind stuff. Along the way, she provides stories and anecdotes of those who have walked these paths before us and shows that, no matter where you are in your life, you can become more aware and grounded in the present moment and how beneficial that can be for you.

She began her journey like most of us- convinced that mindfulness was too difficult: “I struggled with the practice. I found it dreary, dull and boring- all that ‘notice-what-you’re-doing-while-you-clean-your-teeth’- I just couldn’t get to grips with it at all. … when I was on the point of giving up altogether, I met a monk… and he quietly suggested that it is helpful to link mindfulness practice to breathing. This really helped.” loc 16.

Elliot is so relatable that she made me feel like, if she could do this, I could do it too.

A reminder that mindfulness isn’t just a ‘Buddhist’ thing: “…it is to the Buddha that we owe mindfulness, but that does not mean you have to ‘be a Buddhist’ (whatever that may mean), or indeed of any religion at all to practise it. The breath is universal, as is spirit, so we can all benefit.” loc 46. If we can breathe, we can watch the breath. We just need to remember to do it.

I loved Elliot’s gentle humor which was evident throughout: “You can use the irritations of daily life as reminders to take a mindfulness breath- and this way you’ll certainly get plenty of practice! For instance, such reminders might be: Being held up in traffic or a red light when you are driving. Waiting for the kettle to boil or for a bus or a train that’s late- waiting for almost anything. Lining up at the bank or at the grocery store checkout, or anywhere, for that matter. When someone is being really irritating, how great to know you have your own inner source of peace so they can’t bother you.” loc 237.

It is as if life is chock full of opportunities to take mindful breaths 🙂

My favorite part of the book was the many teachings about attachment. “When we can accept things as they are now, but recognize that they will change, and accept that too, we will know peace.” loc 793. I feel more peaceful already!

The Epilogue where Elliot talks about grieving for her husband and using these breathing exercises to make it through is especially touching. This is not just someone who talks the talk- she’s out there walking the walk. Highly recommended for anybody at any level of ability who wants to learn more about mindfulness.

Some further reading: How to Relax, The Wisdom of the Breath: Three Guided Meditations for Calming the Mind and Cultivating Insight, or Being Peace.

Thank you to NetGalley and Watkins Publishing for a free digital copy of this book! And, thank you for reading.

Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People by Matthew Diffee

Sadly, the best part of this book is its inspired title: Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People.

The rest is either clever, but not funny, or offensive depending on the page.

It’s a shame really- the artwork itself is great and it’s clear that Diffee is a talented cartoonist. I just didn’t connect with much of the work.

Out of all of it, my favorite cartoon was on page 188- Moses: The Teen Years where a young adult version of Moses is depicted staring into a mirror, carefully parting his long hair with a comb. The worst was the entirety of Chapter Eight: For Smart Attractive Indians and Eskimos and really soured this whole book for me.

Pick up at your own risk, I can’t really recommend it. Some graphic novels that I DO recommend: Penguins with People Problems or Shakespeare’s Guide to Parenting.

Thanks for reading!

The Call of Spiritual Emergency: From Personal Crisis To Personal Transformation by Emma Bragdon

Though a bit dated (written in 1990), Emma Bragdon presents information about “spiritual emergencies,” what they are and how to help your loved ones or yourself through it.

To begin, what is a “spiritual emergency”? : “Spiritual emergence is a natural process of human development in which an individual goes beyond normal personal feelings and desires-ego- into the transpersonal, increasing relatedness to Higher Power, or God. … When spiritual emergence is punctuated by profound emotions, visions, psychosomatic illness, and compelling desires to behave in unusual ways, including suicidal thoughts, the spiritual emergence becomes a crisis, a spiritual emergency.” pg 1.

This process can be absolutely terrifying if the person has no idea what is going on and is surrounded by professionals who are also clueless.

I think that the main problem with integrating such experiences is that modern society neither supports or recognizes them as valid: “People in our culture are afraid of speaking openly about spiritual experiences, because psychic phenomena… have been considered symptomatic of psychosis. Most psychiatrists, psychologists, and even clergy have believed that most spiritual experiences are indicative of either retarded development or emotional disease.” pg 12.

The clergy part of that passage is particularly interesting to me. These are the so-called experts on the spiritual realm, yet, when something breaks through into reality, they’ve got nothing.

And humanity is the poorer for it.

Bragdon then relates numerous instances of men and women from all over the world who have gone through this process and reminds us: “In all the major religions of the world can be found examples of people … who have been through intense and sometimes physically and emotionally debilitating periods of spiritual experiences and ultimately attained transpersonal levels of consciousness.” pgs 81.

It makes one wonder, if Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, or pick-your-prophet had been born in the modern era, would his/her vision just been medicated into oblivion?

Bragdon points out that the problem is in the attitudes of the religious and medical establishments- the places that should be the most educated and accepting of these sorts of troubles: “The administrators of (religious) institutions are inconsistent in their view of spiritual experience as part of spiritual growth. The conventional religious establishment is similar to the conventional medical establishment, which is so ambivalent about the reality of spiritual experiences that it doubts their validity altogether.” pg 101.

When did we completely separate the health of the body from that of the soul? After all, one won’t work without the other.

Then, she goes on to talk about all of the different ways that these sorts of experiences emerge from drug use, sex, stress, and just life.

It is so pervasive that it seems that it must be a part of the human experience, but it is hard to study and come to grips with in scientific terms because the phenomena can’t be forced or replicated.

Despite these difficulties to categorize and treat it, Bragdon suggests that being present for the person going through it is enough: “What these people do want is acknowledgement, recognition that they aren’t crazy, and the companionship of others who know what they have experienced is real.” pg 113

So, even though this book was written 26 years ago, I don’t think that we’ve really made that much progress in that time- at least not in the arena of holistic medicine or transpersonal psychology.

Some further reading: Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, Dreambody: The Body’s Role In Revealing the Self, or The Power of Myth.

Thanks for reading!

F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers by Richard Benson

Necessity is the mother of invention. When these students didn’t know the answers, they pulled out all the stops to come up with something- sometimes with hilarious results.

At other times though, I despaired for the future…

I think that F in Exams would be enjoyed the most by current or former educators.

I read some of these aloud to my husband who used to be a college professor and he laughed so hard that he had tears in his eyes. Then, it led to a conversation about not knowing the answers on tests and making stuff up to fill in the blanks.

He admitted that he had done so once in a marketing class and the prof had given him points for his creativity.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever attempted joking my way into a better grade. This book makes me wish that I had, just once.

His favorite: Question: “What was Sir Francis Drake known for? Answer: Sir Francis Drake circumsized the world with a 100 foot clipper.”

My favorite: Question: “Clair was well prepared for her interview. Explain how Claire may have prepared herself for the interview. Answer: Had a bath and put on her lucky pants.” There’s a lot to be said for a pair of lucky pants.

F in Exams would make excellent reading material for a doctor’s office or any other place where you need to spend a few moments relaxing (ahem, powder room?), in which case, you should buy your own copy. Otherwise, I’d recommend borrowing this short little book from your local library as I’m sure that I’m not going to feel the need to pick it up again.

Thanks for reading!

The Taco Cleanse: The Tortilla-Based Diet Proven to Change Your Life by Wes Allison

Deciding what to eat for dinner was becoming a drag, but luckily for me, the library has an enormous foodie section. I dug through the cookbook collection and discovered this gem- The Taco Cleanse.

Part satire, part traditional recipes, The Taco Cleanse makes you laugh while you prepare delicious, vegan eats.

From the copyright page: “This book contains the opinions and ideas of its authors, plus large quantities of total BS. Although the recipes are intended to be accurate and tasty, all other content is solely intended to be hilarious.” And it is.

This book isn’t just about the food: “Now, we want to be clear that supplementing- that is, drinking beverages that traditionally accompany tacos- is acceptable as long as you are getting all of your tacos in. Margaritas should be added on an as-needed basis for the top levels of the cleanse, but at Fuego (the highest cleanse level) you should be adding them at least a couple of times a week, working up to every day.” pg 4.

To your health. 🙂

My favorite part was the author’s insistence on Taco Journaling: “One of the most powerful things you can do in your taco journey is taco journaling. Writing down your thoughts during your Taco Cleanse now will be like having a time machine for your future. Future You can go back and see how you’ve changed over time, where you had taco successes and taco failures. … Every time you open your journal, you will feel peace in your heart.” pg 26.

They really nailed the self help tone that is prevalent in most “dietary” cookbooks. It is really very clever and worth the read, even if you’re not planning on trying the recipes.

Speaking of which, I personally plan on trying Minimalist Nacho Cheese pg 128, Infinite Fish Tacos pg 145, Smoked Brisket and Jalapeno Mac and Cheese Tacos pg 149, and the Frito Pie Tacos pg 152. Decadent.

Recommended for people who are experiencing a dinner idea slump or anybody looking for an excuse to drink a margarita (or two).

Thanks for reading and happy taco eating!

Trance Dancing with the Jinn: The Ancient Art of Contacting Spirits Through Ecstatic Dance by Yasmin Henkesh

I read The Golem and the Jinni a few months ago and realized that I knew next to nothing about the mythology of the Jinn. Not that I’m an expert on golems either, but I had at least been exposed to the idea.

Trance Dancing with the Jinn is a book about kinetic meditation (trance dancing) but it also documents the history of the Jinn as written in the Quran and other sources as well as the biological and historical reasons that humans go into trance.

In addition to the mythology and biology, I learned about how trance dancing at meetings called “zars” is an outlet for women who have very little control over any other aspect their lives in Northern Africa.

The author is clearly a believer in the existence of “the Invisibles” but, if you don’t share the same beliefs, this book still has plenty of fascinating information for those interested in cultural, religious, or feminist studies and ritual dance.

The author asks the reader to have an open mind: “Do you believe in Invisibles or do you consider them an outdated tradition from an ignorant past? What if you had a safe, drug-free way to see for yourself? Would you be curious enough to try it- even though the method takes practice and you probably won’t succeed on your first attempt?” loc 200.

Yeah, I’m down for that.

I don’t think it is that difficult to entertain the idea that there may be intelligences that exist that can’t be perceived in normal states of consciousness.

As Henkesh reminds us: “According to NASA’s website, “Everything on Earth, everything ever observed by all our instruments, all normal matter- adds up to less than 5% of the Universe… The rest is a complete mystery, but an important one. Roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy, while dark matter makes up about 27%.” This energy and matter are called “dark” because they do not reflect light… or interact with electromagnetic forces. We only know they are there by their effects on gravity…” loc 233, ebook.

Only 5% has been observed- that leaves a whole lot that we haven’t even looked at yet.

Western researchers are still discovering how and why trance works, but they at least acknowledge that it exists: “Neurologist Oliver Sacks once wrote, “Normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, live entirely different potential forms of consciousness.” loc 267.

The most fascinating part of this book was the emotional outlet that trance dancing has allowed women for hundreds of years: “… thousands of women in Egypt still turn to the zar when modern medicine fails them. If doctors cannot find the cause of their physical or mental ailments, they assume supernatural forces are involved. … Diagnostic zars can last anywhere from a day in Egypt to a week in Sudan and Ethiopia.” loc 2530-2548

I had never heard of this and looked up some examples of zar/trance dancing on YouTube. Go ahead, take a look:

I can see how such flowing, uninhibited movements would feel therapeutic now, so I can’t imagine the relief I’d feel if I was not allowed to have a job or leave the house without a male by my side. I’d probably be trance dancing non-stop.

Some further reading/listening for those interested in trance: Ecstatic Body Postures: An Alternate Reality Workbook, Seeking Heaven, or Brainwave Journey.

Thank you to NetGalley and Llewellyn Publications for a free digital copy of this book! And, thank you for reading.

Dying to Wake Up: A Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back by Rajiv Parti

Rajiv Parti was living a materialistic dream with the house, car, and beautiful wife to prove it. But, the many things in his life didn’t bring him comfort when he developed prostate cancer and a bunch of unfortunate side effects from the surgery to remove it.

Addicted to pain pills and disconnected from the people around him, Dr. Parti underwent emergency surgery and experienced something so incredible, that when he woke up, he completely changed his life, developed a new form of holistic health treatment, and gave up many of the possessions that were weighing him down.

This is the memoir about that experience and Dr. Parti shares it in the hopes that it will change the reader’s life or at least bring comfort to those who are struggling in their current life experience.

Like many of the other memoirs I’ve read by medical professionals, Dr. Parti talks about the completely scientific view he had of the soul, which is to say, if you couldn’t see it and measure it, then it doesn’t exist.

Also, working on the technological edge of medical breakthroughs in the treatment of various diseases, had given him an invincible feeling.

This experience blew that attitude away: “Feeling like a master of the universe is easy in the world of modern medicine. … Maybe it’s a sense of cheating death for others that gives us cardiac surgical teams the vague feeling that we can overcome our own death. Of course that isn’t true. … Reality popped that myth for me.” pg 10

In his near death experience, Dr. Parti not only encountered his father, but also a huge crowd of his ancestors.

They shared messages of forgiveness and love: “Love is the most important thing there is, my grandfather communicated to me. I am glad to let you know that simple truth while you can still make change in your earthly life.” pg 44

But his time on the other side wasn’t all light and love, Dr. Parti also had the (fairly rare) experience of seeing hell and the suffering souls within it.

This is entirely my opinion, but I think that the detached manner in which Dr. Parti was living his life brought forth a major wake-up call from the spirit world. He saw hell first and then heaven and, in a way, that could be a metaphor for his life experience.

I don’t believe in “hell” myself other than the nightmare that people can create in their own minds and lives, but, I didn’t experience it like Dr. Parti did. This memoir does not focus on the hell portion of the narrative, but, with the rarity of that experience, it could have. That, in itself, says something.

When Dr. Parti “comes back”, he knows that he wants to start a new life and a new focus, but he doesn’t know how.

The information for developing a new type of medicine comes to him slowly during meditation: “What is (the new mode of healing) anyway?” “…It is how nonpharmacological treatments in combination with drugs can heal things like depression and addiction and other diseases. It’s about searching one’s own soul to fight back against the hollowness that pharmaceuticals alone or alcohol and illegal drugs create or don’t really fill.”pg 91.

He eventually develops meditations and lifestyle changes as well as a manifesto for treatment.

To me, the most fascinating part of this memoir was the communication between himself and the spirit world once he was back.

For readers who are unfamiliar with near death experiences, Dr. Parti provides a broad background with some of the major historical figures who went through it.

Like Jung: “(Carl) Jung’s NDE led to a split with Sigmund Freud, who believed that spiritual experiences were fantasies. Jung, however, considered spirituality an important part of our well-being saying that life has purpose beyond material goals and that our main task, the path we should all be on, is the one that leads to our own connection with the universe.” pg 124

Ultimately uplifting and empowering, Dying to Wake Up is another excellent entry into the literature about near death experiences.

Recommended for anyone who questions why we are here or what comes after. Some further reading: Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart, Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing, or Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences

Thanks for reading!

The Space Within: Finding Your Way Back Home by Michael Neill

No matter how many books I read on meditation, I always seem to learn something new when I pick another one up.

The Space Within is one of the more excellent books that I’ve discovered- not pushing any particular way of being, just quietly encouraging the reader to go within and embrace what’s there.

On separating our consciousness from the universal energy that surrounds it, Neill compares the mind to a book and I’m sure most Goodreads users, like me, could easily connect with the metaphor:“Think of ‘quiet’ not as an absence of thought but as the space inside which the noise of your thinking arises. What makes this tricky, at least to begin with, is that at first glimpse the noise is more interesting than the quiet …look at the white background of this page. Chances are you can still see the words, and even read them, but without noticing it, at some point you will once again become absorbed in the words and stop seeing the white of the page.” loc 192, ebook.

Why bother to meditate? : “There is a space within you where you are already perfect, whole, and complete. It is a space of pure Consciousness- the space inside which all thoughts come and go. When you rest in the feeling of this space, the warmth of it heals your mind and body. When you operate from the infinite creative potential of this space, you produce high levels of performance and creative flow.” loc 207

And more, promises Neill. I’ve meditated for many years and I’ve experienced some extraordinary things. It wasn’t always easy and it didn’t happen all at once, but I can say, from personal experience, that this particular claim is absolutely true.

Photo by Samuel Theo Manat Silitonga on Pexels.com

Thoughts are incredibly powerful things. I think we forget just how life changing your personal perspective can be: “… we live in a world of unrecognized thought. Thought is the architect of both hope and despair, the source of every color in the emotional rainbow. … But unrecognized thought demands our attention and fills our consciousness. And when we get caught up in thought, we lose our way.” loc 324, ebook.

And also: “We live in a world of thought, but we think we live in a world of external experience. The mind is not a camera, it’s a projector. We can’t tell the difference between an imagined experience ‘in here’ and what’s going on ‘out there’- and that confusion creates a lot of confusion.” loc 375, ebook.

You create your own reality- but it’s easy to forget that and blame other people for your circumstances.

When I read this next passage, I thought of How The Secret Changed My Life and the incredible importance that people placed on feeling good.

Neill points out that it isn’t anything to get wound up about: “There’s no such thing as a solution to a feeling. Because we don’t recognize this fact, we spend huge chunks of our time and energy trying to ‘solve’ our feelings by changing them to ‘better’ ones or eliminating them altogether. … When it’s okay to feel good when you feel good and bad when you feel bad, recognizing that as thoughts change, the feelings change with them, there’s no need to prefer one feeling over another, let alone attempt to fix it. And when you really see that for yourself, you being to experience more of the deeper feelings that make life worth living.” loc 457, ebook.

This is a great place to start if you’re just learning about meditation/mindfulness but it’s also appropriate for more experienced practitioners- if you breathe or think, you could probably learn something from this book. Some suggestions for further reading: Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, Meditations for Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, or Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hay House Publishing for a digital copy of this book! And, thank you for reading.

Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady’s Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners by Therese Oneill

Unmentionable made me truly appreciate how good I have it compared to my female ancestors.

This clever little book examines the gross, disturbing, and, at times, hilarious “unmentionable” facets of a Victorian woman’s life and also, their powerlessness in society when compared to their male counterparts.

The women’s rights portion sounds grim, but Oneill’s writing keeps it light. I learned so much and was entertained too.

For example, I don’t consider modern cities to be very clean, but Oneill explains in her book, that they are shining examples of cleanliness compared to what came before: Some would argue that the nineteenth century was one of the filthiest times in all of Western history, particularly in any urban, developed area. … Ankle deep in filth, I said, but forgive me, I was inaccurate. You will wish the filth terminated at your ankles. Foulness is everywhere. Grime and rot cling to the very air, the buildings, the people; even the soap is made out of lard and poison.” pg 20, ebook.

All that dirt, but bathing was considered bad for your health and even, depending upon your religious upbringing, immoral! I’ve never read a historical fiction that describes the foul stench of the streets or the crowd upon it… now, I know better. Thanks Unmentionable!

Make up and other personal care products used to be either oily goop or filled with poisonous substances that could kill you or permanently wreck your face.

With this in mind, Oneill gives us a new take on the story of Jezebel: “She painted her face, and tired her head [fixed her hair], and looked out at a window.” “Some think this means Jezebel planned to seduce her way out of this problem; others think she was facing death with composure and dignity. At any rate, her eunuchs saw that they were on the wrong team and shoved her out the aforementioned window, and dogs ate her face. Which reinforces the assumption that her face was coated in sinfully delicious animal fat.” pgs 67-68, ebook.

Because women really had no other choice, being the ideal wife and mother was no laughing matter: “Your only job now that you are a nineteenth-century wife is to do everything within your power during every waking moment to make his life so sweet and full that he will literally dread the glory of Christ’s return, if only because it will mean parting from your secret strudel recipe and the unmatched craftsmanship of your trouser hemstitch.” pg 130, ebook.

So, unreasonable expectations of perfection abounded at home.

Women, especially single, unmarried ones, weren’t supposed to go anywhere alone: “Etiquette for Ladies reminds us that no woman has any business being alone in a museum, a library, or any other such den of unwholesomeness. Wherever you are going, your behavior once you arrive should remain every bit as self-aware-but-pretending-not-to-be as when you were in transit.”pg 165, ebook.

The library is a “den of unwholesomeness”… ha!

But the worst of the era, in my opinion, was the medical community’s attitude towards women. At that time, we hadn’t figured out how the female body worked and didn’t connect the idea that people need intellectual stimulation and purpose for a life well lived.

That lead to the lumping of every female complaint under the title, “Hysteria”: “First I would like to tell you what hysteria actually was. Which is incredibly difficult. Because the only honest definition I can give you is “a misdiagnosis.” Epilepsy, diabetic shock, neural disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, postpartum depression, and bipolar disorders do not necessarily cause similar symptoms, but they were all commonly diagnosed as hysteria.” pg 173, ebook. So, pretty much, everything then.

Oneill reminds the reader that many of the rights, and indoor plumbing, and personal care products that we enjoy today are because of the demands for a better life by women who lived during the Victorian era.

I am so very grateful and humbled for their contributions to society and the sufferings that they endured so that their children’s children’s children would have it better. Some further (non-humorous) reading: Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own or Artemis: The Indomitable Spirit in Everywoman.

Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for a digital copy of this book & thanks for reading!

The Help Desk Book Blog

Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Category: Non-Fiction

Every Breath You Take: How to Breathe Your Way to a Mindful Life by Rose Elliot

Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People by Matthew Diffee

The Call of Spiritual Emergency: From Personal Crisis To Personal Transformation by Emma Bragdon

F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers by Richard Benson

Trance Dancing with the Jinn: The Ancient Art of Contacting Spirits Through Ecstatic Dance by Yasmin Henkesh

Dying to Wake Up: A Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back by Rajiv Parti

The Space Within: Finding Your Way Back Home by Michael Neill

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