Inprint - New Books of interest by Jeanne Spiro

Living Artfully by Sandra Magsamen. (Free Press, $25.00, Hardcover.)

With today’s packed schedules of back-to-back meetings, client lunches, taking kids to soccer/ballet/band practice, and occasionally cleaning the bathroom, fun and creativity usually take a back seat to responsibility and obligation. A recent UCLA study documents that at age five, on average, we engage in creative tasks 98 times a day, laugh 113 times, and ask 65 questions. By age forty-four, the numbers fade to 2 creative tasks a day, 11 laughs, and 6 questions. But there are simple things we can do to bring more joy, beauty, and meaning into our lives every day, to feel good about ourselves, and connect with those we care about.

To Sandra Magsamen, living artfully is the ultimate form of communication. An award-winning artist who is head of a multimillion dollar gift company, Sandra was originally an art therapist. She worked with all kinds of troubled people to help them find a way out of their isolation by communicating without words and through their creativity. She encourages readers to use their own creative language, the images, words, sounds, food, or crafts through which they most easily express themselves, to connect more deeply and joyfully with the important people in their lives.

Living Artfully is not a how-to book, but a why-to. It is also a guide into a new cultural movement in which people choose to live with a creative purpose, celebrating the people, places, and moments that make life truly meaningful.

Power, Freedom, and Grace: Living from the Source of Lasting Happiness by Deepak Chopra. (Amber-Allen Publishing, $18.95, Hardcover.)

In Power, Freedom, and Grace, Deepak Chopra considers the mystery of our existence and its significance in our eternal quest for happiness. Who am I? Where did I come from? Where do I go when I die? Chopra draws upon the ancient philosophy of Vedanta and the findings of modern science to help us understand and experience our true nature, which is a field of pure consciousness.

When we understand our true nature, we begin to live from the source of lasting happiness, which is not mere happiness for this or that reason, but true inner joy. By knowing who we are, we no longer interfere with the innate intelligence of the cosmos. Instead, we allow the universe to flow through us with effortless ease, and our lives are infused with power, freedom, and grace.

Being in Balance: 9 Principles for Creating Habits to Match Your Desires by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. (Hay House, $14.95, Hardcover.)

Being in Balance shows you how to restore balance in your life by offering nine principles for realigning your thoughts so that they correspond to your highest desires. Imagine a balance scale with one end weighted down to the ground, and the other end, featuring the objects of your desires, sticking up precariously in the air. This scale is a measurement of your thoughts. To restore the same balance that characterizes everything in our universe, you have to take up the weighty thoughts so that they match up to your desires.

The seasons reflect the overall harmony of life. For example, winter passes and the blossoms emerge. This is balanced by a need to have the trees rest, so autumn arrives on time and helps the trees ready themselves for another period of repose. This book is dedicated to the idea that we’re a vital component of this creative process and have within ourselves the wherewithal to create all that we want if we recognize and revise the out-of-balance thoughts.

Truth Heals: Dismantling The Lies That Make Us Sick by Deborah King, Ph.D. (Influence Press, $21.95, Hardcover.)

She had the world by the tail. As a young hot-shot lawyer, Deborah King’s star was on the rise. She acted the part of the happy, ultra-liberated supergirl so well that everyone around her was convinced of her boundless success. The truth was very different. She was an alcoholic and out-of-control, swinging between sexually promiscuous manic phases and depressive descents into the depths of hell. She was a very sick girl pretending to be fabulous, smiling through gritted teeth when she woke in beds of men she did not know, in rooms she did not recognize. She knew she was in trouble, but it took a diagnosis of cancer to stop her in her tracks and get her to look squarely in the face at the truth of her life.

In order to heal from cancer, in order to live and not die, she was forced to stop hiding the truth about what it meant for her to grow up with a cold, uncaring mother and a father who sexually abused her from the time she was little more than a toddler. Her recovery from cancer at age 29 led her to a rigorous study of healing and on to a Ph.D. in Healing Science. Today she heals others, tapping into energy distortions caused by her clients’ painful pasts, guiding them to release the secrets that keep them chained to a less-than-healthy life.

Truth Heals probes the stark, naked, unadulterated truth and its powerful impact on the energies that produce the health issues we encounter between birth and death. Through telling her own story and the stories of her clients and some public figures, King defines the individual healing process as it is affected by the expression, or suppression, of personal truth.

A Small Moment of Great Illumination: Searching for Valentine Greatrakes, the Master Healer by Leonard Pitt. (Shoemaker Hoard, $22.00, Hardcover.)

Some lives are changed by war or natural disaster, others by a birth or death in the family. Author Leonard Pitt was irrevocably altered by a footnote. This handful of words in tiny text led to A Small Moment of Illumination, Pitt’s tale of literary adventure and the ensuing discovery of enigmatic master healer Valentine Greatrakes.

Valentine Greatrakes was a wealthy seventeenth-century Irishman who discovered one day that he could cure everything from cancer to leprosy by the laying on of hands, a blessing he believed was bestowed upon him by God. His uncanny healing powers stirred controversy in both Church and State, invited the scrutiny of scientists, theologians, physicians, and philosophers, and garnered a following of thousands wherever he went. Greatrakes was pronounced miraculous and denounced as a quack, both adored and attacked in his time. Yet he did heal, using natural methods that are widely sought today and heralding advances in medicine that are now common practice. When Pitt saw an original copy of the healer’s book, he had to have one for himself. After searching worldwide, he found one, of all places, in his own backyard. This is the story of what Pitt uncovered.

The Book of Martial Power: The Universal Guide to the Combative Arts by Steven J. Pearlman. (Overlook, $27.95, Hardcover.)

Across the various martial arts, basic principles about the body in combat lead to different, often contradictory, philosophies and techniques. A practitioner of Judo might advocate grappling, reasoning that most fights converge into close range after a short time, making grappling the most effective technique for defeating an opponent. An advocate of Tae Kwon Do, however, would argue that one should strive to maintain a distance in an encounter that would allow one to use one’s most powerful weapons, the legs. Both are reasonable claims.

As a lifelong student and teacher of multiple styles of martial arts, Steven Pearlman has sought to distill from these disciplines not a fusion of techniques, but rather a compilation of fundamental principles that can guide the individual martial artist to the ideal action. Through his exploration of a set of basic principles both physical and spiritual, Pearlman arrives at a path to martial power open to all martial artists, a path that crosses the boundaries of style without bastardizing the techniques of the original disciplines.

The Book of Martial Power will capture the minds of martial artists and anyone interested in finding a path to success that is not beholden to a specific form but is instead driven by fundamental principles.

The Yoga of the Nine Emotions: The Tantric Practice of Rasa Sadhana by Peter Marchand. (Destiny Books, $16.95, Paperback.)

Rasas are the essence of our emotions that exist in both the body and the mind. The tantric tradition recognizes nine Rasas that represent our basic emotions. They are love, joy, wonder, courage, calmness, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust. A study of the Rasas provides us with an objective language for examining our emotions and increasing our emotional intelligence. Those who practice Rasa Sadhana learn to overcome negative emotions in order to pursue better health, enhanced spiritual growth, and enduring happiness.

Our emotions are continuously affected by the interplay of our senses, the elements, food and the life force in our body. Peter Marchand presents the technology for changing our emotional patterns in the form of practical physiological and philosophical tools from tantric and ayurvedic traditions. He explains the nature and purpose of each Rasa and how we can strengthen or weaken one Rasa through another. He also offers ayurvedic cooking guidelines and daily routines for balancing sensory input and strengthening emotional health, including fasting from negative emotions as well as how to energize positive ones. As we master our emotions through the practice of Rasa Sadhana, we gain true control of our lives and our relationships with others.