Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself (Self Help Book)

Law of Attraction. How the Brain Works. Habitual Thinking. Change.

The recently released, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza does a nice job of combining the Law of Attraction with research about the brain. The book is relatively easy to read and immediately practical. It describes why, despite our best intentions, we stay stuck in self-defeating ways of thinking and behaving. It describes how we identify our “self” from a neurological point of view. It then describes how we can create a new “self.”

I am a great fan of Joe Dispenza. He was one of my favorite people in What the Bleep. I loved Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind even though at times I felt overwhelmed by the amount of detail. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself has just the right amount of science for me. Right from the very beginning, the way the book is written caused me to start contemplating the ideas, even when I was engaged in my daily activities. Although Dispenza never directly refers to Eastern Philosophy, many of the ideas in the book echo Tai Chi and Zen mindfulness principles. This book makes sense to me. It is a wonderful book for people who feel stuck in their lives and want to change.

Passage (Book)

Near Death Experiences. Disasters. The Titanic. Mazes and Mirrors. Metaphors. Messages. Confabulation. Identification.

Passage is another Connie Willis novel that needs to be read by the heart as well as by the head. The winner of the 2002 Locus Science Fiction Award as well as a nominee for four other major awards, Passage is a science fiction novel that deals with near death experiences. It is also a novel about the vulnerability of human beings to the “disasters of life”: disease, accident, old-age, violence, and the loss of a loved one.

Briefly, Dr. Joanne Lander studies near death experiences through interviews. She is approached by Dr. Richard Wright, who has found a way to simulate near death experiences through the use of a drug, to collaborate on a study. When they run into some problems finding appropriate subjects for the study, Joanne offers to go under using the drug. Her simulated NDE convinces her that NDEs have some purpose, and she becomes obsessed finding out what that is. Richard looks at NDEs only in terms of the neurology and biochemistry. Their combined preoccupations lead to tragedy as well as triumph. The story includes interesting secondary characters, including Lander’s best friend who works in a dangerous ER, a precocious girl with a heart condition and a love of disasters, Joanne’s old high school teacher who has Alzheimer’s and his niece/caretaker.

I admit that I sometimes find myself becoming impatient with Willis’s books: “Can we just get to the point?” She seems to be repeating very similar scenes over and over again. In the case of Passage, the characters come very close to finding out an answer and then something thwarts them at the last minute. In some ways this plot style is similar to watercolor painting in which layers of paint are put down in order to achieve an effect. Willis uses repetition to help create emotion. This may help explain why reading her books is so cathartic for me. I had a couple of good sobs while reading Passage. Since finishing the book last night, I have found some of the scenes replaying in my head. Willis is one of my favorite authors.

Self-Compassion (Self-help Book)

Compassion involves recognizing our shared human condition, flawed and fragile as it is.

Compassion is a term that is both familiar and foreign to me. While I find myself using it more and more, I am not totally confident that I know what it really means. I associate it with Mindfulness and Buddhist practices, which have gained in popularity in recent years. Trying to apply this concept to myself feels even more awkward. Self-Compassion, the recently released self-help book by Kristin Neff, PhD, has been a nice introduction for me.

Neff defines self-compassion in terms of three major factors: self-kindness, a common humanity, and mindfulness. She describes the role of self-criticism in people’s lives. In addition, she goes out of her way to differentiate self-compassion from self-esteem. The book draws on research as well as Neff’s experiences.--One of the most interesting ideas for me is that a person can help regulate the level of oxytocin, the love hormone, in their body.--The book also includes exercises for the reader to try.

This book has a lot of great ideas to ponder. It also includes good references to other books on compassion and happiness. While the book works well as an overview, I personally would have liked more focus on applying the ideas to my own life. Those of us whose family motto was “There is no excuse for not doing things right the first time” need more repetition, more stories, and more practice. The author also went off on some tangents, which I am not sure were helpful. It is still a very worthwhile book.

Yoga for Anxiety (Book)

A Kinder, Gentler Approach to Anxiety.

In Yoga for Anxiety, Mary NurrieStearns, LCSW, RYT and Rick NurrieStearns offer a gentle, compassionate approach to handling anxiety and share wise insights based on their experiences. I originally picked up the book because I thought I could benefit from some Yoga postures that specifically target the fight or flight —anxiety—response. The book delivered on that and a whole lot more. Using the philosophy of Yoga as a foundation, the authors discuss the causes of anxiety and how to calm the mind, providing meaningful questions and exercises. Some of the tools they offer to ease anxiety are mantras, different types of breathing techniques, and awareness/witnessing techniques.

Scattered throughout the book were tidbits that made me think “why didn’t someone tell me this a long time ago!!”  For example, many of us have had plenty of insights into what may have originally caused our anxiety, but then feel stuck about what to do next. The authors offer a simple, yet powerful phrase to say to ourselves when old material comes up in the present: “such an innocent misunderstanding.”  Another powerful insight is the concept of samskara, grooves created in our minds from reoccurring thoughts. It helped me understand some of the frustrations I have had over the years when trying to deal with anxiety. A much smaller, but useful tidbit was the idea of doing mantras—which rightly or wrongly I associated with affirmations—beginning on the out breath, thus engaging the parasympathetic, relaxation, response. Similarly, the authors indicated that people tend to be more relaxed when they inhale through their left nostril. Yet, another major “wow” for me was the idea that we do violence to ourselves by our inner criticism.

Anxiety is a complex disorder, which often requires a multiple-part solution: medicine, diet, exercise, psychotherapy. Yoga for Anxiety never suggests that it has the answer. What it does have are some wise insights and useful tools that can be utilized immediately. The authors understand how to gently coax anxiety out of our lives.

Thanksgiving Conversation (Evolution of Fifth Graders)

The hostess at our Thanksgiving dinner yesterday was a fifth grade teacher, who has been teaching elementary school students for over three decades. In between eating wonderful food, including a chocolate pumpkin bread pudding that was so good that it must have come down from heaven, she told me that fifth graders are biologically different than they were when she started teaching school.

The discussion started with food allergies. Years ago a teacher might have a couple of kids who had to be watched so that they didn’t eat peanuts. In recent years, children have become more sensitive to allergens and more children are affected. My hostess described some of the precautions that the teachers now have to take, including making sure that they don’t have peanut residue on their hands when they correct papers.

Later on my hostess described some of the changes that she has made in her classroom. She has gotten rid of the desks and traditional chairs and replaced them with beanbag chairs and stability balls, with the kids using lap desks. The small movements required for children to balance on the balls help them to focus. I have heard this before with regard to kinesthetic learners and some hyperactive kids. She continued talking about how because kids are exposed to so much digital media, especially computers, their brains are physically different from earlier generations. They process information differently. She explained that schools need to adapt their teaching methods to these changes.

All this from Thanksgiving dinner with extended family! Oh, and I ate pickled watermelon rind for the first, and hopefully not last, time.

More Than Just a Trip to the Beach

I just finished reading A Trip to The Beach by Melinda Blanchard, who is a wonderful storyteller. She describes how she and her husband fell in love with the island of Anguilla, opened a restaurant there, and lived through Hurricane Luis, which destroyed much of Anguilla. After finishing the book, I was curious about the Blanchards, their restaurant, and whether Hurricane Luis really hit after the restaurant’s first year. After doing an internet search, I was delighted to see a picture of the restaurant that looked very much like the picture in my mind. I enjoyed reading about some of the employees that I had read about in the book. I confirmed that while Blanchard took some liberties in the book with details, the dates of the opening of Blanchard’s restaurant and of Hurricane Luis were accurate.

The book provided me with more than just an enjoyable escape. It also provided me with an opportunity to learn and, I’ve now discovered, to keep my brain young.

An article from Reuters on the Internet described an interesting study.

“Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles studied people doing Web searches while their brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging scans.’What we saw was people who had Internet experience used more of their brain during the search,’ Dr. Gary Small, a UCLA expert on aging, said in a telephone interview. This suggests that just searching on the Internet may train the brain -- that it may keep it active and healthy," said Small, whose research appears in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.”

Perhaps a book isn't just something to read. Perhaps it is an invitation to explore something new.