Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

nonfiction

“Embracing Your Subconscious” by Jenny Davidow

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Subtitle: Bringing All Parts of You Into Creative Partnership: Conscious & Subconscious, Head & Heart, Masculine & Feminine, Adult & Child, Waking & Dreaming

Recommended to me by: Jenny Davidow

Jenny Davidow’s clear, practical, non-judgmental book covers a surprising array of techniques to make friends with your subconscious. Learn to decode your dream symbols, negotiate inner alliances, create positive endings, take fantasy vacations, transform outdated beliefs, heal your inner child, dream lucidly, connect with your creativity, and widen your choices in your waking life. Vivid examples and detailed exercises encourage you to make these techniques your own.

As seen in the parallel paired contrasts in the subtitle, the book emphasizes stereotypical, Jungian ideas about masculine and feminine attributes. In addition to being passive and receptive, femininity is paired with childhood and innocence. In several examples, women resolve relationship issues, while men resolve career issues.

Both outer relationships and the “inner marriage” between (stereotypical) masculine and feminine aspects are heterosexual, with no discussion of other possibilities.

This book safely skirts the realm of “you control external reality with your thoughts” while offering practical tools to negotiate improvements in your internal reality. Recommended, with the noted caveats.

Available at biblio.com.

“Trigger Point Self-Care Manual” by Donna Finando

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Subtitle: For Pain-Free Movement

Trigger points are small knots of tension within muscles. They cause local taut bands of muscle fibers and dispersed pain in predictable patterns. Steady, firm but not aggressive pressure helps resolve trigger points and the seemingly intractable pain they cause.

Clear, detailed, and encouraging, this book helps you find and treat your own trigger points. Donna Finando covers each major section of the body, including diagrams of trigger point pain patterns for the relevant muscles. The pain patterns, actions, and stretches are discussed for each muscle.

The full discussion for muscles that affect more than one section of the body is repeated in each section. For example, the scalenes appear three times, since they can cause pain in the neck, shoulder, and down into the arm and hand. Some of the introductory material is also repeated.

The repetition is annoying when reading through the book, but could be useful when using the book as a reference, eliminating the need to flip between sections.

Highly recommended if you have ongoing pain of mysterious origin. Even if the pain has some other underlying source, there may be trigger points involved. You’ll become more familiar with your body as well as reduce pain when you seek out and treat your own trigger points.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Forgive for Love” by Dr. Fred Luskin

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Subtitle: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship

Recommended to me by: my sister

There are some good ideas in this book, delivered in a patronizing, lecturing tone with a lot of repetition. Yes, people choose each other for a reason, and it’s useful to remember that when times get hard. No, staying with someone when pregnant and later having more children with them is not always an uncomplicated free choice in our misogynist society.

One of the recommended techniques is deep breathing to calm the nervous system. I liked the explicit tie from nervous system activation (stress) to continued struggles, and from nervous system calming to forgiveness. The more we can calm our nervous systems, the better we feel, regardless of how others behave.

I also liked the repeated statement that forgiveness and acceptance are two different things. One can forgive someone for behaving badly, and still get out of range of their bad behavior.

Being forgiving means understanding that you can’t force your lover to change just because you are uncomfortable, inconvenienced, or disturbed. It is up to you to manage your emotional reactions, not the responsibility of your partner. Once you are able to forgive, you can deal with the [original] problem with dignity and openness, not blame.”

Other good advice: Notice what does work, since our attention is often drawn to what doesn’t work. Be grateful for the blessing of being loved. Change “You must …” to “I wish…” and drop unenforceable rules. Grieve the losses when you don’t get what you want. Both recognize that you are flawed, and give yourself a break. Forgive yourself.

Sadly, the example couples are all heterosexual and all painfully adherent to their stereotypical gender roles, except in two examples where the roles are still stereotypical but it looks like the names have been swapped.

Race, ethnicity, and income are not mentioned, but all the names and stories read as white, European-American, and middle class.

There was one great example where, early in Dr. Luskin’s couple’s therapy career, a man came in with a long list of complaints about his wife. The therapist sat stunned, thinking that the wife deserved combat pay for putting up with this, and finally responded, “If she met your standards, why would this superwoman hang out with you?” His main point was that the wife forgave the husband for being critical. To me, that highlights the difficult line between forgiving people for having human failings, and tolerating abuse.

Recommended as a first book about forgiveness for heterosexual gender-role compliant white people in monogamous couples, or for anyone else who can be forgiving of the book’s weak points.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Transition and Beyond” by Reid Vanderburgh

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Transition and Beyond

Subtitle: Observations on Gender Identity

Recommended to me by: Reid Vanderburgh, MA, LMFT

Speaking as both a trans man and a psychotherapist, Vanderburgh provides a compassionate, detailed tour through all the aspects of gender transition, from contemplation to completion. Client vignettes provide real-world examples.

The book candidly addresses every question I had about gender transition as well as many I had never considered. It does leave lingering differences to grow up socialized as one gender and transition to another. Conscious resocialization is needed. People transitioning male to female learn about losing male privilege and taking up less conversational and physical space to fit in with other women.

People with DID (multiple personalities) can be transgender, and at the same time a history of abuse is a complicating factor. In abusive families, children may desire to be a different gender to feel less vulnerable or identify with a less abusive parent.

Throughout, the book emphasizes the physically dissonant aspects of having the wrong hormones for one’s gender identity.

If a person is capable of developing truly intimate, honest, fulfilling adult relationships in the gender assigned to them at birth—they’re probably not trans. Part of what it means to be trans is an inability to truly mature into adulthood in one’s birth gender assignment.

Vanderburgh advocates a slow, self-observant approach to hormone therapy to help adult clients confirm that they are on the right path. Some transgender children are certain of their identity from toddlerhood and should be fully supported in social and physical transition when they are ready.

Recommended for anyone who is interested in learning in more depth about what it means to be transgender and how to help make transition easier.

Vanderburgh recently announced the closure of his therapeutic practice to pursue teaching and writing opportunities.

Available at Vanderburgh’s website.

“Stillness” by Charles Ridley

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Subtitle: Biodynamic Cranial Practice and the Evolution of Consciousness

Recommended to me by: Keelin Anderson, LMT

After 35 discouraging pages of philosophical pseudo-science, Ridley subsides into surprisingly practical advice about providing non-judgmental bodywork. Stay present. Check your perceptions with your client to make sure you’re not straying into fantasy. Do your own work first. Don’t interfere with the client’s process.

This book differentiates biodynamic cranial work from biomechanical work, taught by John Upledger as CranioSacral Therapy, and functional work, taught by Hugh Milne as Visionary Craniosacral Work. I like what I’ve heard about biodynamic cranial work’s emphasis on being present and accepting what is, rather than forcing the practitioner’s ideas of health on the client.

I part ways with this book’s spiritual pseudo-science. I don’t know if this is typical of all biodynamic practitioners. I wish people would leave quantum physics and (in this case) embryology out of their energy work. Tell me what you experience – don’t try to “prove” it or justify it by misusing scientific terms.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Balkan Dance” edited by Anthony Shay

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Subtitle: Essays on Characteristics, Performance, and Teaching

I jumped at the chance to learn more about my favorite hobby, and learned more than I bargained for. This book of essays directly addresses the myth that modern Balkan folk dances are innocent indigenous creations, exposing the complex conscious manipulations underlying them.

Communist regimes created folk dance spectacles to convey a sense of unity, prosperity, and celebration. In Yugoslavia, this was particularly elaborate since it wove together several ethnic and religious groups which later fractured back into separate countries. In Bulgaria, much of the beloved “folk” music was composed in the early 20th century for performance.

Minority groups such as Turks in Bulgaria, Muslims in Yugoslavia, and Roma (Gypsies) everywhere were erased or stigmatized in folk dance performances.

The book prompted me to think about what it means for Americans to be studying and performing these dances recreationally. It certainly puts arguments about “tradition” and “authenticity” in perspective when the dance under discussion was initially performed as communist propaganda.

The essays vary from very readable to densely academic. All contain information new to me about a hobby I’ve pursued for years. Well worth investigating if you’re interested in Balkan dancing.

Available at bookshop.org.