Practical, applicable health guidance validated by a remarkable collective of revered Chinese elders.
A career physician touts the prescription for a long, healthy life span.
Utah-based cardiologist Day was a distinguished but overworked physician who believed that his daily jogging would keep him healthy, but his diet lacked proper nutrition. Increased episodes of chronic pain, lethargy, and sleeplessness proved to be warning signals to make changes. Recalling his history working with Chinese immigrants in Manhattan during his teens, Day sought out a solution by visiting the rural “Longevity Village” of Bapan in southwest China, where community, social support, mindful consumption, and centered peace of mind create long-standing wellness. After becoming fluent in Mandarin, the author and his wife began traveling there in 2012 to visit one of the village’s elder statesmen, 114-year-old Boxin, and ask him about “the secret to a long and healthy life.” Day chronicles their time spent in the bucolic settlement commingling with Boxin and the wise elders of Bapan, absorbing knowledge on the customs the physician hoped would translate to his Western medical practice. Despite a rather discrediting detail in Bapan’s centenarians (they possess no birth certificates to substantiate their advanced ages), Day shares the lessons of its citizens in seven chapters describing practical advice for incrementally creating radical personal transformations in health and well-being. Unsurprisingly, eating well tops the list, and the author promotes organic, fresh food over processed; he also includes a simple boiled-seeds–and-greens recipe for Boxin’s cherished “longevity soup.” Other key aspects of the plan are mindfulness in mood, breathing patterns, and disconnection as well as physical motion and aligning oneself with the positive aspects of community. Finding a rhythmic sleep balance and developing a purpose in life round out what Day has discovered to be the ultimate guide “toward happier, healthier futures.” In outlining these health models, the author proves there’s great value in conscientious, streamlined living and that it’s achievable by everyday people by employing improved lifestyle choices.
Practical, applicable health guidance validated by a remarkable collective of revered Chinese elders.Pub Date: July 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-231981-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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