A practical and warmly reassuring guide to fortifying the body and mind for the fight of a lifetime.
Zinggrebe presents a wide-ranging primer that asserts the health benefits of alternative medicine, meditation, a proper diet, and spiritual growth.
The author, a German physician and life coach who founded a nutritional supplements company,revisits his struggle at the age of 40 with lymphoid cancer, which he survived despite a dire prognosis in 2017. He underwent conventional chemotherapy, but he also attributes his recovery to a “toolkit” of alternative therapies, lifestyle changes, and other practices. His regimen included simple meditation and breathing exercises that relieved stress, anxiety, and depression; visualization exercises in which he imagined scenes of medications killing cancer cells and doctors telling him he was cured; verbal affirmations, proclaiming the effectiveness of healing processes; law-of-attraction drills in which he practiced emotions of certitude while contemplating goals; and “power moves” that expressively mimed robust health: “I stretch both arms up to the sky, splaying my fingers and making myself look as tall as possible,” he explains of his own power move. “I then stick my chest out and hit my chest with my fists firmly twice.” Zinggrebe also recommends moderate exercise, fasting for 16 hours a day, and nutritional supplements, including vitamin D and polyphenols such as curcumin. He also has practical tips for cancer patients, from searching questions to ask doctors—“If your son, your mother, your partner or you were sitting here instead of me today, what treatment would you recommend to them?”—to the importance of noteating favorite foods before chemotherapy because the ensuing nausea may put one off them. Later chapters survey other healing modalities, including sessions with a medium.
Zinggrebe’s treatise is aimed at patients facing new cancer diagnoses who feel understandable panic and disorientation; he knows this terrain well and writes about it in moving, evocative prose: “On the outside, I had plenty to keep me busy. But on the inside, I was slowly collapsing….I asked myself if there was even any point to life now that I had nothing left to give and I found myself capable of doing less and less.” The author provides lucid, easy-to-follow instructions for various therapeutic exercises and explains the scientific rationales behind them, as when he writes of an activity that he says will “activate your parasympathetic nervous system considerably and sink your blood pressure and heart rate.” Much of the book is a searching disquisition of the influence of the psyche on the body, and Zinggrebe writes about it in rich, colorful language that makes the topic feel accessible, even playful: “imagine the actual radiation as…brightly colored rays of energy whose only mission is to attack harmful cells,” he suggests in a passage on visualizing successful radiation treatments. “You can picture [cancer cells as] the bad guys in a movie, clinging to the abyss with their last ounce of strength before falling to their death.” Cancer patients interested in exploring nontraditional approaches to treatment will find much intriguing and hopeful information here.
A practical and warmly reassuring guide to fortifying the body and mind for the fight of a lifetime.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9783982611143
Page Count: 326
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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