Associate Editor, The Monthly Aspectarian
Associate Editor, The Monthly Aspectarian
As you fall under the spell of down-to-earth Natural Remedies for Common Ailments , you'll no doubt be pleased all to heck. Nature-versed botanist Celeste White, M.S., shares remedies — homeopathic, herbal and kitchen sink — for the day-to-day conditions many of us really don't want to take medication for. Stuff like an awful cough, canker sores, bloat, arthritis and indigestion. When you read the completely commonsense (and amusingly written) suggestion for redissolving the pooled blood that causes hemorrhoids, you'll probably want to share it with your friends — even through you may prefer not to discuss it out loud. The author explains such helpful adjuncts to your life as a pocket diode (worn in a lefthand pocket, it keeps your body's electromagnetic field in balance); flower remedies (solutions containing flower essences that address different emotional states, including that tried and true panacea, Rescue Remedy); a little glass vial or jar for saving any infernal chiggers or ticks you have removed from your skin — "until you're sure you have no symptoms of Lyme's disease. Or, line them up in a little display on your mantel for a nifty conversation piece." We enjoyed this little book (63 pages) and laud the author for entering her sense of humor into the computer along with "specific, accessible treatments for a whole host of common ailments. Treat yourself to this guide and you'll wonder how you ever got along without it." Check your local health food or book store or send for it from Keswick House, P.O. Box 992535, Redding, CA 96099. $7.95, plus $2.50 per book for postage and handling. [California residents add 7.25% tax.]
Celeste White is also the author of Natural Asthma and Allergy Management, a more sober take . . . but written to be read and understood with ease. White grew up asthmatic, and she did her very successful homework with a combination of acupuncture, herbs, homeopathy, diet, mind/body techniques and lifestyle change. Natural Asthma... "gives you the information you need to make intelligent choices about your holistic health care." (114 pages, $8.95, same send-for as above.)
Wow. Whatta book. Everyday Soul: Awakening the Spirit in Daily Life is about healing and being healed, and author Bradford Keeney takes us with him to the ends of the earth to discover how indigenous cultures use healing abilities that our own acculturation has turned into the deepest of secrets. Highly entertaining, Everyday Soul uses anecdotes of Keeney's adventures to teach us how to tap these abilities with our response to sound, rhythm, movement, light, intentional dreaming and more. The point is, the power to heal oneself and others is inborn. With the author, discover the uses of energy, delve into imagination and most of all, reap the treasure of the divine healing quality of love. With the touch of experience, a wealth of stories and do-able exercises, Keeney — a fine writer — has gifted us with a digest of epic proportions. (Riverhead Books, 186 pages, $23.95.)
Prolific author, scholar, philosopher and teacher Jean Houston punches your ticket for A Passion for the Possible and away you go on one of the most sensuous book trips of the year. Here's a veritable workshop encased in a dust jacket ($16 for 194 pages from publisher HarperCollins). As you begin the book, you are guided on a visualization, an inner journey that, as it takes form, strongly involves the senses. Are you willing to be waylaid by the colorful possibilities surging above/beneath your intellect? A Passion for the Possible unfolds the means for you to create and follow a wondrous itinerary. Allow yourself to be vulnerable to it and you'll recognize the Friend that in your best moments you know is yourself. The ability to use images to fully imag(ine) intentions so they can manifest more easily is enhanced by guidance to being present in the moment — including being present within what Jean calls the treasure house of memory. You'll learn helpful techniques of playing with time. Role models of creativity emerge from the pages, helping us open our own "deep mind." One ploy the author uses is to tell the reader about truly inspired people — such as Helen Keller, deaf and blind but fully alert to senses of hearing and vision and extraordinarily able to express her thoughts and ideas; and anthropologist Margaret Mead, who plumbed Polynesian cultures to discern more about possibilities available to us all as humans. "Beneath the crust of ordinary consciousness, we are all filled with ideas and associations linking with other ideas — the very stuff of evolution moving in us to emerge as innovation." Here are stories of how people, inhabiting more of themselves, look at "reality" in new ways — the creator of Velcro, for instance, and Johannes Gutenberg. Then the book segues into the recurring weave of a visualization. Here the senses are once again alert . . . . In this way, bit by bit, readers are led to tune the senses and prime the psyche. "With a mythic path beneath your feet and the immensity of Spirit holding it all in Love, your life can be a work of art, your great creation, your everyday passion....The Home place you have longed for has always been with you."