Tag: watkins publishing

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

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

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.

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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.

Happiness and Other Small Things of Absolute Importance by Haim Shapira

Happiness and Other Small Things of Absolute Importance by Haim Shapira
haimshapira

Happiness and Other Small Things of Absolute Importance does not resemble a self help book as much as it does a long, meandering lecture by your favorite professor.

Shapira talks about happiness, the passage of time, love, death, money, and so much more by tying it to classic literature and his own musings. I loved it.

There is little that Shapira doesn’t cover in these pages and, when you’re done, you feel as if you’ve just had a long discussion with a very dear friend.

“This little book is meant to change your perspective on almost everything in your life- and primarily the concept of happiness. … As serious and life-changing as the voyage to the land of the Things That Matter may be, it’s no less important to enjoy the ride.” loc 27, ebook. Shapira succeeds with flying colors.

His humor shines through his words. There aren’t any laugh-out-loud moments, but I found myself grinning throughout: “There’s empirical proof that How-To-Be-Happy Books are useless. If just a shred of the promises made in many of those books came true, the world would be knee-deep in incomprehensible quantities of bliss. We all know that this is not the case.” loc 73, ebook. True story.

My favorite parts were about the importance of a positive mind-set and love.

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This passage is about being positive: “Anyone who has lived on this planet long enough knows that pessimism is the natural way to think. It requires no effort, like a rock rolling downhill. It’s much harder to push the rock up the hill, to think positively. Just see the effort it takes to think like (Winnie the) Pooh, to find a bit of magic and grace in everything. That is a mission worthy of the wise.” loc 387 I agree.

I also found the sections on anger and forgiveness to be very meaningful.

Here, Shapira is talking about the futility of being angry and how we can learn to control our tempers, rather than have them control us: “My wife, a chemical engineer by profession, has reached an important understanding. In nature, she told me, each substance has a typical, unique and fixed boiling point. We can artificially change it, however, by using other substances that act as inhibitors, thereby raising the boiling point. For example, anyone who cooks knows that salted water takes longer to boil than water alone. The same applies to people. Their boiling points can be raised. Wisdom can be salt for our water…” loc 610, ebook.

Recommended for spiritual seekers, happiness chasers, and anyone who wants to learn more about themselves. This book is a gem.

Some similar reading, if you liked this: How to Talk About Places You’ve Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel, The End of Self-Help: Discovering Peace and Happiness Right at the Heart of Your Messy, Scary, Brilliant Life, or The Power of the Heart: Finding Your True Purpose in Life.

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

The Out of Body Experience: The History and Science of Astral Travel by Anthony Peake

The Out of Body Experience: The History and Science of Astral Travel by Anthony Peake

I found this to be a fascinating study into the various forms of out of body experiences and the science behind them. Unfortunately, the second half of the book that deals with quantum mechanics and multiple dimensions went over my head.

So, The Out of Body Experience may lend itself more towards engineers and mechanical-minded types rather than artists, but that’s ok. Engineers need interesting books to read too. 🙂

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Peake is very clear about the goals of this book: “In its pages I will review the evidence that such altered states of consciousness are subjectively real experiences; I will delve into the science by which consciousness can seemingly locate itself outside of the body and I will, finally, present my own hypotheses as to what may be happening when a person experiences such perceptions.” loc 98, ebook.

I felt like he accomplished all of that, but I was left with a sense of confusion/awe rather than clarity/awe. I had the same feeling when I tried to listen to a lecture by Amit Goswami. I knew enough to know that I had no idea what he was saying.

In this passage, he’s talking about shamanistic out of body experiences, something I do know a bit about: “Indeed, in my discussions with my shaman contacts, it became clear that what is encountered is a series of worlds full of archetypes pulled up from the deepest areas of the subconscious mind. However, what is of significance is that these beings seem to have motivations of their own, as if they have an existence independent of the shamanic traveller.” loc 261, ebook It is pretty trippy stuff.

Peake also tackled why remote viewers have trouble proving the validity of their experiences with verifiable facts in lab settings: “I am absolutely convinced that Ingo Swann believes he actually perceives information by remote viewing. In his books and articles he comes across as a genuine and honest individual, but the evidence seems to contradict this. … In my opinion he is remote reviewing, but not doing so in this dimension.” loc 1157, ebook.

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Frankly, I always wondered about that too — why can’t remote viewers see whatever they want whenever they want or why are they sometimes completely wrong? The US military spent a pile of money developing a protocol that only works some of the time, but, the fact that it works at all blows my mind.

Peake presents the hypothesis that lucid dreaming and out of body experiences are two sides of the same coin: “The hypnagogic and hypnopompic states are really the same phenomenon that places consciousness in that liminal region between sleep and wakefulness. The only difference is in the circumstances. The hypnogogic state is experienced on going to sleep and the hypnopompic state is experienced on waking up. We define an OBE when a subject is unaware of their soma.” loc 1541-1558, ebook.

So, in layman’s terms I think he’s saying: out of body experiences happen when you’re awake, lucid dreaming happens when you’re asleep, but otherwise it is the same type of non-ordinary consciousness.

One more interesting fact, just one though, because otherwise my brain might explode:“Now, the fascinating thing about (the) electromagnetic spectrum is that the human eye can only see a very small section, the part we call ‘visible light’… If the electromagnetic spectrum were a roll of movie film that stretched for 2,500 miles (this is the distance between London and Jerusalem), the visible spectrum would be the size of one film frame, about three inches. This is just how little we human beings see of the real universe that is out there and yet most of us believe that ‘seeing is believing’! If we could see radio waves we would see a sky full of galaxies, not stars.” loc 2024, ebook.

Can you imagine — a sky full of galaxies? I can.

Recommended for the seriously scientific minded.

If you’re more into the history of the phenomena rather than the science, just stop reading before the second half of the book.

Some of the reads mentioned in here that you may want to pick up: Journeys Out of the Body by Robert A. Monroe,Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences by Penny Sartori, or for some general remote reviewing information: The Seventh Sense: The Secrets of Remote Viewing as Told by a “Psychic Spy” for the U.S. Military by Lyn Buchanan.

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