While it’s abrupt in places, this colorful manual delivers an appealing exploration of personal energy.
A debut guide examines the power of chakras.
Bailey asserts early on in this work that “the universe is made up of energy, just as our bodies are.” This energy that humans are composed of can be understood through “life force centers,” commonly known as chakras. The author explains that there are seven chakras and each one is different. In the pages that follow, readers are taken on a tour of all seven along with exercises meant to target each chakra. For instance, the first chakra is concerned with the basics of safety and survival. It can be triggered by placing the thumbs on the top of the hip flexors and pressing down. From here, the manual journeys up through the body. There are motivational quotes (including one from Einstein: “Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”) and ideas about living. For example, information on the fourth chakra is accompanied by the adage that “in order to love and be loved, we must create a level of vulnerability.” After the seventh life force center, there are instructions on how to “clear and rejuvenate” your chakras. This process involves removing unwanted energy from one’s personal aura (there is a brief explanation of the extent of the aura). The systematic method begins with the first chakra and moves all the way to the seventh. In the end, readers are encouraged to “believe in your highest creative potential, knowing the divine lives in you.” The book moves quickly and, at just over a hundred pages, is a swift read. Readers interested in investigating the idea of energy centers in the body can take it all in, chapter by chapter, chakra by chakra, quite easily. And the guide’s overall positive nature (along with the brightly colored pages) makes the experience a pleasant one. A short discussion on the mental chatter that can create problems during meditation is meant to put the audience at ease. Readers are told: “Don’t beat yourself up when your mind refuses to shut off.” Of course, the fast-paced nature of the work can also limit some of its appeal. If readers want, say, more information on the importance of their fifth chakras or the best way to begin a regular meditation practice, they will need to go elsewhere. Likewise, the volume delves into the occasional tangent that could have been mined further. For instance, the author mentions how a figure named Babaji channeled something to her while she was meditating. Readers for the most part will be confused about how this channeling works or what else Bailey has learned from Babaji, who is the author’s “main guide” and “has amazing spiritual and loving energy.” While a guide like Babaji may not be vital to dissecting one’s own chakras, this is certainly a topic novices will find intriguing. Channeling, especially for those new to these mind-body-energy ideas, is certainly a noteworthy concept. Still, in the end, the book has much to teach, and it instructs readers in a friendly, concise manner.
While it’s abrupt in places, this colorful manual delivers an appealing exploration of personal energy.Pub Date: April 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982224-02-8
Page Count: 106
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
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