Worth a look for those who enjoy self-help books focused on healthy lifestyles.
Holistic health counselor and co-star of the award-winning documentary Super Size Me, Jamieson (Vegan Cooking for Dummies, 2010, etc.) tackles the age-old question of what women really want.
The author explains food cravings with the intent of helping women understand and overcome their private relationships with food. “It’s human nature, after all,” she writes, “to yearn, to long, to want, to desire.” Jamieson deconstructs how a habit such as stashing a “secret” chocolate croissant in an office desk drawer often becomes part of an unconscious daily routine. She explores the brain/body connection, identifying helpful techniques such as yoga, Pilates, conscious breathing and visualization that can help women better relate to their bodies and help calm their minds. The author also advocates for the practice of detoxing as a route to spiritual enlightenment, as well as a means for healing. “All of this may sound a little bit woo-woo and corny,” she writes, “but it’s not.” Jamieson dips into the science of neurogastroenterology, describing how “trusting your gut” by maintaining a healthy microbiome is a crucial aspect of overall health, and she discusses the importance of healthy sleep patterns and the joys of napping. Jamieson’s additional health prescriptions include less time spent sitting, avoiding artificial light when possible and getting more sunshine. The author advises a change of mindset; rather than thinking that you have to exercise, let loose and play like when you were a child. Jamieson weaves her personal reflections together with case studies of clients working on such issues as eliminating unhealthy foods from their diets, off-kilter family relationships, body alienation and sexual pleasure. The author includes links to her website offering helpful tips, interviews and quizzes on a variety of topics, including meditation, detox strategies and recipes for healthful smoothies.
Worth a look for those who enjoy self-help books focused on healthy lifestyles.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1476765044
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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