Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

“Mastering Life’s Energies” by Maria Nemeth, PhD

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Subtitle: Simple Steps to a Luminous Life at Work and Play

Recommended to me by: Aubrie De Clerck

Maria Nemeth offers step-by-step instructions on how to move from a fog of confusion to living with “clarity, focus, ease, and grace.”

I do want to live with clarity, focus, ease, and grace, but I didn’t start reading in a fog of confusion. I did find some useful insights in this book.

She distinguishes between unhelpful Monkey Mind and helpful voice of wisdom. She characterizes Monkey Mind as insistent, survival-oriented, tensing the body, carrying a sense of dread or impending doom, defensive, and humorless.

By contrast, the voice of wisdom tends to be compassionate toward self and others, spacious, the heart relaxes, contains gentle good humor, generosity of spirit, kindness, open-heartedness, and the sense that all is well.

She reminds us to see people as whole and complete in themselves, rather than in need of fixing or rescuing.

She asks how you see your body, and then how does your body see you? I had never thought about that. I paused to ask myself this question, and my body says it misses me when I’m not present to myself. She proposes that our bodies love us, and my experience agrees.

I also found parts of the book condescending or irrelevant. She sometimes seems to forget that her reader does not need fixing.  Her strangely short list of Life Intentions reads more as her personal definition of How To Be A Good Person rather than as a generally applicable list. There is far too much talk about dieting, even when she notes that “weight loss” is not a positive goal. Repeated mentions of her “thousands of clients” did not strengthen the book’s message for me.

Recommended, with some skimming.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Encyclopedia of Energy Medicine” by Linnie Thomas

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Recommended to me by: Rosalind Bell

Linnie Thomas, from Tualatin, OR, has researched and described 65 different energy medicine modalities. She was inspired by her own difficulty in finding and choosing an energy medicine class. She is now a Healing Touch practitioner.  About the author.

Like most encyclopedias, this book is not meant to be read from cover to cover, but rather to serve as a reference. I got about halfway through before the modalities began to blur together.

Each section includes a few pages describing the modality, a session, the training process, and where it is taught. I found the articles most helpful if I had experienced a session in that modality before. If I was completely unfamiliar with a modality, the brief description wasn’t enough to give me a feel for it. If I have training in a modality, I noticed the information that was left out.

I recommend this book for someone who is curious about modalities they’ve received before, or who is considering training in energy medicine and wants to explore their options.

Available at biblio.com.

“The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion” by Christopher K. Germer, PhD

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Subtitle: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions.

This “un-self-help” book by a clinical psychologist shows how to stop fighting uncomfortable emotions and accept them with self-compassion instead. Step by step, Germer shows how to be kind to ourselves, listen to our bodies, and bring in difficult emotions.

I liked his analysis of the stages of acceptance (as distinct from the stages of grief):

Stages of Acceptance:

  1. Aversion – resistance, avoidance, rumination
  2. Curiosity – turning toward discomfort with interest
  3. Tolerance – safely enduring
  4. Allowing – letting feelings come and go
  5. Friendship – embracing, seeing hidden value

He carefully notes pitfalls along the path for trauma survivors. For example, it can be triggering to focus on the breath during meditation, so an external focus such as holding a stone or watching a candle could be more calming.

I was pleasantly surprised by his awareness of diversity and discrimination. Even a few mentions of those issues go a long way toward fostering my trust of a white male author as I read. For example, his stories contain some same-sex couples. On the subject of medication, he advocates deciding what’s most kind for yourself.

The second half of the book describes metta or loving-kindness meditation. Phrases like “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease.” are directed first toward the self, then toward a loved one, then toward someone neutral, then to a difficult person or enemy.

He describes the backdraft which can occur with this meditation, a rush of feelings similar to the rush of flame from opening a door on a fire.

I had a hard time staying with this part of the book. Perhaps it was from a backdraft of feelings. Perhaps it was my reaction to the instructional tone. I’m having a strong response to being told what to think or how to feel lately, even when I’m reading a self-help book.

Overall, I recommend this book. It has much less fixing and more compassion than most self-help books. It’s a delight to see a psychologist advocating self-kindness and acceptance as a way toward healing.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Riding Between the Worlds” by Linda Kohanov

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My response to The Tao of Equus doesn’t begin to express the impact it had on me. I immediately looked for Kohanov’s next book.

Riding Between the Worlds contains less abstract theory and more stories from clients and from her own life. It also contains a helpful adaptation of Karla McLaren’s work with emotions into an Emotional Message Chart.

For example:

Emotion Message Questions to Ask Intensification
Anger Proper boundaries should be maintained or rebuilt.

Incongruence.

 What must be protected?

What must be restored

What is the emotion behind the mask, and is it directed toward me?

 Rage, fury (exploding at those who’ve violated our boundaries)

Shame, guilt (anger toward self when we’ve violated others’ boundaries)

Boredom, apathy (masks anger that can’t be dealt with – a nonviolent coping strategy

Kohanov validates my experiences with transmission of emotions from one person to another, describing the many ways that happens with both people and horses in her practice.

She also talks extensively about congruence and how important it is to both horses and sensitive humans. Incongruence, a mismatch between what someone is feeling and expressing, can cause trouble both for the incongruent person who is suppressing feelings, and the beings around them who may be the target of deception or explosive release.

Kohanov also presents her hard-won list of skills for building community:

  1. Using emotion as information.
  2. Sitting in uncomfortable emotions without panicking.
  3. Sensing and flowing with the emotions of others, again without panicking.
  4. Reading “misbehavior” as a form of communication.
  5. Understanding the dynamics of shared emotion: distinguishing between instructive personal feelings, conditioned (False Self) emotional patterns, affect contagion, empathy, ambience, and emotional resonance.
  6. Resisting the temptation to aggressively “fix” people, horses, uncomfortable situations, etc.
  7. Creating a psychological container of support, what Kathleen Ingram calls “holding the sacred space of possibility.” This fully engaged form of patience is crucial to tapping innovative solutions that arise from the eighth ability:
  8. Activating the Authentic Self.

The only sour note in the book occurs when she creates a false sense of suspense by telling half a story and then inserts 30 pages of other material before returning to the story.

Highly recommended for anyone who believes they are too sensitive or too emotional.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Hand Wash Cold” by Karen Maezen Miller

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Subtitle: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life

Recommended to me by: Shambhala Sun excerpt.

Miller is a Zen Buddhist priest and teacher. This memoir is organized around three household tasks as metaphors for Zen living – laundry, dishes, and gardening. I enthusiastically agree with the premise that household maintenance is an integral part of life, rather than something to be suffered through or outsourced.

At the same time, I had trouble warming to this tale of unhappy high-powered businesswoman in one marriage turned Zen stay-at-home mom in another. She says about the second, current marriage: “No, ours is not a marriage of friends making nice. … Ours is a marriage of adversaries making peace.” I’m glad that works for her. I don’t think it would work for me.

I did like her take on parenting: “There is no right way to parent; only a right-now way. … Children always show us the present moment unfolding.”

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Tao of Equus” by Linda Kohanov

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Subtitle: A Woman’s Journey of Healing and Transformation through the Way of the Horse

Recommended to me by: A client.

Linda Kohanov and her herd of sensitive horses offer equine facilitated psychotherapy. Together they help both horses and humans recover from trauma, regain their balance, and treat each other with more respect.

This many-layered book contains autobiography, horse stories, client case studies, myths, theories about emotions and the brain, and diatribes about traditional horse training.

Kohanov convincingly claims that horses are intelligent partners, extraordinarily capable of reading and reflecting the emotions around them. She contrasts postconquest thought, divorced from the body, with preconquest thought, congruent with the body. Horses respond to lack of congruence as a threat, thus giving feedback to help people reconnect with their body and emotions.

One case study highlighted how we tend to respond to agitation by mirroring it. Instead, we can consciously calm ourselves, inviting the other person (or horse) to become calm as well. I’ll keep that technique in mind.

Before reading this book, I had heard of equine facilitated therapy without much interest. As I was reading it, I wished Kohanov’s ranch were closer than Arizona so I could go try it out. Her combination of sensitivity and groundedness sounds similar to the healing work I do.

Available at bookshop.org.