An ebullient first-person account of an alternative healing experience that includes step-by-step do-it-yourself instructions.
In 1992, Bays, then a trainer and seminar leader for the exuberant self-improvement promoter Tony Robbins, was diagnosed with a large uterine tumor, which she believes she made vanish through a self-healing process. She subscribed to Deepak Chopra’s belief that emotional memories are stored in the body’s cells, and she set about finding out what unresolved emotional memories were causing her tumor. She quickly arranged for a “simple neuro-linguistic mind-body healing process,” followed by “some good massage bodywork,” “cranial-visceral” massage therapy, colon therapy, meditation, and more therapeutic massage—all while following a strict fresh-fruit-and-raw-vegetable diet. Guided by a massage therapist, she took an imaginary journey to her tumor and confronted the bad memories stored there. Within weeks the tumor was no longer detectable. Bays, who favors terms like “vibrancy” and “boundless joy,” concluded that she had discovered a way to “have a sustained direct experience of the infinite intelligence, Source,” and that she must now show others how to take a healing journey to their own Source, a.k.a. “soul” or “inner awareness,” to become free of emotional and physical blockages. She’s recently been offering two-day workshops in the process, which she calls Journeywork. Here, she not only describes her own experience and the remarkable outcomes of others she has guided on internal journeys but describes just how to do it with a good friend’s help in the privacy of one’s home. For Bays at least, the side effects have been beneficial: when, in rapid succession, her house burned down, her husband left her, the IRS pursued her, and her daughter announced she wanted no further contact with her, the positive-thinking Bays was able to see it all as “somehow a gift from God.”
Mind-body healing and New Age spiritualism, delivered with unremitting enthusiasm.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-4392-6
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
Categories: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT
Did you like this book?
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.
GET IT
The debut memoir from the pop and fashion star.
Early on, Simpson describes the book she didn’t write: “a motivational manual telling you how to live your best life.” Though having committed to the lucrative deal years before, she “walked away,” fearing any sort of self-help advice she might give would be hypocritical. Outwardly, Simpson was at the peak of her success, with her fashion line generating “one billion dollars in annual sales.” However, anxiety was getting the better of her, and she admits she’d become a “feelings addict,” just needing “enough noise to distract me from the pain I’d been avoiding since childhood. The demons of traumatic abuse that refused to let me sleep at night—Tylenol PM at age twelve, red wine and Ambien as a grown, scared woman. Those same demons who perched on my shoulder, and when they saw a man as dark as them, leaned in to my ear to whisper, ‘Just give him your light. See if it saves him…’ ” On Halloween 2017, Simpson hit rock bottom, and, with the intervention of her devoted friends and husband, began to address her addictions and underlying fears. In this readable but overlong narrative, the author traces her childhood as a Baptist preacher’s daughter moving 18 times before she “hit fifth grade,” and follows her remarkable rise to fame as a singer. She reveals the psychological trauma resulting from years of sexual abuse by a family friend, experiences that drew her repeatedly into bad relationships with men, most publicly with ex-husband Nick Lachey. Admitting that she was attracted to the validating power of an audience, Simpson analyzes how her failings and triumphs have enabled her to take control of her life, even as she was hounded by the press and various music and movie executives about her weight. Simpson’s memoir contains plenty of personal and professional moments for fans to savor. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289996-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
Did you like this book?
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
