A unique approach to mental health that blends the spiritual and scientific in a whole-body wellness plan.
A guide to connecting with one’s internal wisdom to foster spiritual and emotional transformation.
Batty-Capps—a “licensed marriage and family therapist, yoga therapist, reiki master, intuitive spiritual guide, and channeler”—uses both her professional expertise and her personal experiences with profound trauma to guide readers toward healing in this work, which the author divides into three parts. Part One explores the power of one’s “inner compass” and describes the experience of sensing “a slight separation from your body sensations, emotions, beliefs, and thoughts, and yet you are fully in your body with what is present.” Part Two focuses on identifying and overcoming old wounds that significantly affect one’s ability to become a fully realized individual. Part Three touches on various topics regarding relationships with others on a philosophical level, with the author reflecting on such broad topics as justice and social hierarchies. Throughout the book’s wide-ranging discussions, Batty-Capps incorporates a wide swath of religious and spiritual practices—from Christianity and Judaism to Hinduism and Buddhism—to help make sense of the individual and humanity as a whole. Having experienced significant emotional and mental health problems (including a later-in-life diagnosis of PTSD due to repressed memories of sexual abuse, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia), the author approaches healing from a trauma-centric perspective and with the utmost care. She emphasizes that a particular meditation, for example, is not designed to help heal “exiles” (the word she uses to describe “parts that hold wounds and are out of conscious awareness”), and counsels that, in the event that exiles do arise during the meditation, readers should contact a mental health professional. Despite repeated plugs for her YouTube channel, websites, and recorded meditations on Spotify, which quickly chafe, the author approaches her topics with a keen sense of awareness and support for trauma-laden individuals. Presenting the material via a competent and compassionate narrative voice, Batty-Capps creates a bubble of comfort and safety in which readers can confidently explore different holistic approaches to wellness.
A unique approach to mental health that blends the spiritual and scientific in a whole-body wellness plan.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798891328426
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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