Glimpses of Mahayana - Book review

As promised, here's my review of 'Glimpses of Mahayana." 

Generally I take about a month to read most books about Dharma. This allows me time to digest what I'm reading and apply teachings to my life as I go, but my enthusiasm for the subject generally means I want to read a bit almost every day. Occasionally I'll read a Dharma book that's more academic or has really non-conceptual teachings that require a lot more time to digest - like anything on the Heart Sutra, for example - and I'll chew on these for several months. 

This book, however, I powered through. I just couldn't get enough. I think I finished it in five days and will happily pick it up and read it again and again and again. Because this book has really good, really pointed stuff in it that's so easy to apply right here, right now. 

I found myself writing very enthusiastically in the margins, filling it up with "Yes! Totally" or "Just like that teaching by..." or "This happened to me when..." 

It's like the ultimate practitioner toolkit - the very basics and how to use them to work with your life all the time. It really highlights the difference between intellectually understanding the teachings and having a lived, felt experience of them - knowing them in your bones through application. 

Everyday Zen - Book review!

This is one of the most pithy books I've ever read. But then, it's written by a Zen teacher so I suppose that's to be expected. 

What do I mean by pithy? Well, I found myself saying "YES! That! So much that!" to most of it - and writing a lot of pointed lines down in my journal or on my arm. Writing dharma on my arm is something I've been doing for about three years now. It's like ultimate reminders of practice tools. I feel like there's something about the physical act of putting it on my skin that helps me become saturated with dharma so I don't have any excuses when something is up for me. 

But I digress. 

This book is all about practice - not practice as in knowing how to do a particular technique but the actual application of teachings in our lives in any given moment so there can be real transformation. It's not for the faint of heart. It's not for anyone looking to transcend the difficulties of their life or use meditation to 'feel good.' 

This is a very cutting book that really asks you to work with your own mind. 

Some pithiness from this book:

"Enlightenment is not something you achieve." 

"No matter what the work is, it should be done with effort and total attention to what's in front of our nose." 

"When you sit, don't expect to be noble." 

"Life is the way it is." 

"If we understand that each moment of our life is the teacher, we can't avoid practice." 

"There's nothing wrong with our self-centred thoughts except that we identify with them." 

"Trusting in things being as they are is the secret of life." 

"There is no special time or place for great realisation." 

"We can't love something we need." 

"All I  can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That's all I can do." 

"Always the practice effort is to see what life requires us to give as opposed to what we personally want to give - which is not easy." 

"It isn't important that we are upset; what is important is our ability to observe the upset."

"The quality of our practice is always reflected in the quality of our life." 

"...searching outside ourselves is not the way." 

"All of practice is to return ourselves to pure experiencing." 

"Love expects nothing." 

"If life were not impermanent it wouldn't be the wonder that it is." 

"Expect nothing from life and you will enjoy it." 

"Any aspect of ourselves that is not observed will remain muddy, confusing, mysterious." 

"We only know our lives when we experience them directly." 

"To look outside of ourselves for true peace and satisfaction is hopeless." 

"When we are attached to the way we think we should be or the way we thing anyone else should be, we can have very little appreciation of life as it is." 

"So our practice is about making fear conscious, instead of running around inside our cell of fear, trying to make it look better and feel better." 

"Life is not a problem." 

"In times of confusion or depression the worst thing we can do is try to be some other way." 

"Sadly enough, some of us die without ever having lived because we're so obsessed with trying to avoid being hurt." 

"The strength in our practice, and the ability to communicate our practice to others, lies in being ourselves." 

"If I feel completely muddled, it isn't that there's a problem that I have to find some way to solve; I just don't know who I am in connection to that problem." 

"Freedom is the willingness to risk being vulnerable to life." 

"True commitment and true love have no 'ifs'."

"What we expect we rarely get." 

"The more we are aware of our expectations, the more we see that our urge is to manipulate life rather than live it just as it is." 

If even just one of these lines resonates with you or sparks your curiosity, please read this book. Really, really. And then I recommend moving onto 'Glimpses of Mahayana' - which is another superbly pithy, pointed book. I've just realised I've never written a review of it and I feel I should. Next blog post... I promise. 

To Terry Pratchett - No one is ever gone when they are not forgotten

Here's to Terry Pratchett - arguably my favourite author of all time. 

I never met him but I feel like I've lost a dear friend. He made me laugh. Often. Loudly. Until tears streamed down my face.

He also inspired me as a writer. He inspired me to be creative and clever and imaginative. He inspired me to think outside the box and write my characters until they felt like solid, real people I might one day meet.

He also taught me a lot. He taught me about politics and literary history, about geography and philosophy, about plays and poetry. About life. 

I am grateful to have lived in his time, to have grown up reading his stories and to know that I can visit him again whenever I want by picking up Mort or Wyrd Sister or Hat Full of Sky or The Hogfather or Snuff or Equal Rites or any number of others - it's nearly impossibly to pick a favourite.

Here's to a man who wrote about the weirdos and the freaks and the little guy and the oppressed in an alternative world of his own imaginings.

Thank you, Terry, for sharing your imagination so skillfully and with such grace and talent. 

The world is better for having had you in it. 

Nausicaa - Book Review

Last week I was laid low with a stomach bug. I don't do well with being ill in that I don't like not being able to take care of myself. I'm very aware of this and also very aware of how unhelpful it is because it generally means I over-do things and make myself worse or make an illness last longer than necessary. 

I was just reaching a 'twitchy' point in my recovery where I really desperately wanted to do something but was physically incapable of anything beyond sitting up and occasionally walking downstairs to make myself tea. Walking across my room left me utterly fatigued. 

But I've been working on the many forms of resistance I encounter in myself and recognized this as yet another. I took stock of things, told my brain that the best thing for it to do was to just be very still and let my body recover, and then I went in search of reading material to occupy it. 

I really couldn't even muster the energy for a novel and reading Dharma was definitely out - at which point I remembered some lovely Graphic Novels that had been gifted to me at Christmas! 

I jumped right in and before long I:
A) wanted a Squirrel Fox
B) was convinced that Nausicaa is one of the coolest protagonists ever created

I've made my way through two of the four volumes I have an have concluded that Nausicaa is a Tender-Heart of Sadness Bodhisattva Warrior. 

To unpack that a little - it means that she is totally aware of the pain of the human condition and willing to do whatever it takes to alleviate that pain, even though she knows it's pretty much an impossible task.

Barring one character in the series there's not a single person she meets that she in unable to relate to and find good in. In fact, it's beautifully written so we may first encounter a supposed 'bad' guy and within a matter of a few pages we suddenly see the fullness of the character in a new light. They are complex and their motivations are never inherently 'evil'.

In fact, the single 'evil' entity seems to not even be human. As armies go to war with one another the painful truth of holding onto 'me' and 'mine' is exposed in such a way that it's difficult not to view the world through Nausicaa's eyes: Everyone is worthy of care and love and we all share the planet so maybe, just maybe, we should take care of each other?

No Time To Lose - A Book Review!

It's been a while since I've done a book review and in light of my exhibition of dharma-inspired artwork at the Oolong Tea House in Calgary this month I thought it would be suitable to review a bit of dharma* that has hugely influenced my life. 

My first forays into Buddhism began when I started seeing my psychologist. As someone involved in the Shambhala community she had a lovely balance of psychological expertise and common sense in Buddhist packaging. In many of our sessions she referred to Pema Chodron and told me that a lot of what I said and how I thought fit with her teachings. Eventually I caved and bought a Pema book: Start Where You Are. 

Reading Pema made me realise that I was a Buddhist, through and through. Her teaching style is clear and easily understood even without extensive knowledge of Buddhism. It really is common sense and she presents it in such an accessible way that I was soon hooked. 

I moved on to read The Places That Scare You and When Things Fall Apart and then I purchased this book:

I was fully prepared for more of the same, so imagine my surprise as I began reading and realised this book was not Pema's usual pithy instructions, but a commentary on a famous Buddhist text written in 700A.D.: The Way of the Bodhisattva. 

This was dharma - deep, profound teachings on Buddhism and how to be an effective, authentic, genuine human being. 

At the time I'd only been meditating for a few months. My grasp of Buddhism was weak although I was already aware of an unwavering enthusiasm I had for it. Here was a practice that asks us to work with our own minds, empowers us to be our own greatest teacher and teaches that the most difficult moments in our lives are the best for having a lasting transformative effect. 

But 'The Way of the Bodhisattva' is not exactly beginners Buddhism text. 

My first reading of it was a bit of a slog. I struggled through it but stoically stuck to it because at the time Pema's books were acting as a life-line. As long as I had a book of Pema's to read I felt like I could control my anxiety, keep an even keel and maintain a sense of sanity I desperately needed. 

Looking back I'm both proud of and amused by my efforts. I was seeking comfort in her writing and instead I was confronted with a scholarly text composed twelve centuries ago that asked me to do the work. 

This didn't phase me. In fact, as soon as I finished reading it I flipped back to the introduction and began again. I wanted to understand the words because I had found comfort in reading them - but not for the reasons I'd found comfort in reading Pema's other writing. 

There was something about how applicable The Way of the Bodhisattva was to my own life at that time, even though it was over a thousand years old and had been composed for a very different audience. I think this must have been my first glimpse of having an understanding of the four noble truths: 

Life is suffering. Suffering is due to attachment. Attachment can be over come. There is a path to do this. 

I began to see them beyond the simplistic Western view of 'Life's a Bitch' and understood that they were pointing at the fundamental ambiguity of being human: Life changes, inevitably, constantly, and this terrifies us. It has always terrified us. As human beings we really don't like the idea that we and everyone we know are impermanent so we scramble for something to hold onto in an attempt to feel better about the fact that we'll get sick, grow old and die. 

The Way of the Bodhisattva is teaching us how to live well by flipping our habitual patterns on their head. Rather than scrambling for ground, it's asking us to experiment with what might happen if we opened up to, accepted, and embraced this groundlessness. 

What would our lives be like if we didn't resist our experience? What would life be like if happiness was more than getting what we want and not getting what we don't want? What would life be like if we let go of an idea of how it 'should' be? 

I'm now reading No Time To Lose for the fourth time. It's been years since my third reading of it and my practice has deepened significantly since then. Now as I read it there is a familiarity with the language I lacked upon my first, second and even third reading. 

I've come to really value re-visiting teachings because with each new experience I have the way I work with my mind and the way I live in the world transforms, so each time I come back to dharma I've read or listened to before I get something different from it. I'm excited to see what I get out of this commentary now, after over a year of daily meditation, completing the first five levels of the Shambhala training and daily consumption of Buddhist talks and books. 

Even if you're not a Buddhist, this text in particular does hold some incredibly profound and pithy instructions. I recommend it very highly. Regardless of what your understanding of Buddhism is, it offers so much to make us see how every situation is workable and everything we experience has value. 

*Dharma is the word for the traditional Buddhist teachings/text. 

Bearing Witness - A Book Review

A few weeks back a co-worker brought in 'The Kite Runner' for me to read. I'd heard of it but I didn't know what it was about. I ended up reading that and two other books by Khaled Hosseini in three weeks and it was the third one I read which really struck me the most. 

First of all I'll say that as far as his way of writing goes - it's not always fantastic. He delivers analogies and metaphor in a rather heavy-handed way and his characters recap things mentioned in previous chapters in more detail than is necessary. But it wasn't the way it was written that struck me. 

It was the intensity of the stories. 

I realise this is fiction but it's a fictional account of actual historic events - of a Communist occupation, militia warfare and Taliban rule. 

I've recently come to realise that I'm hugely ignorant about the politics of the Middle-East and even most of Asia, to be honest. In school we were bombarded with the World Wars but always the Canadian, British and American side of it and always just what occurred in Europe. 

In the past I would avoid books like this because they were just too intense for me. Even in the fictional context, I found the stories too difficult to bear. I've always been a bit high-strung when it comes to violence. Graphic violence in horror films cause me to pass out. 

But recently I've had a shift in my experience and started doing what Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel refers to as 'bearing witness'. This is a practice that allows us to open up to the world as it is. 

It's not about being passive but about acknowledging the truth of the human condition - which is that life can be incredibly painful and brutal at times. In the case of Afghanistan this has been a stark reality for decades. War tore through the country leaving destruction, chaos, and death. The rule of the Taliban saw half the population so oppressed they may as well have been dead and indeed, many people took that as their only way out. 

It's a painful thing to face up to - especially living in the West where we are largely sheltered form such things or easily become numb to what we see in the news. 

I used to refuse to watch the news because I found it depressing. I said it was always the same so why bother? All it did was perpetuate a sense of negativity and gloom. 

Since discovering Elizabeth's teachings and her practice of Bearing Witness this has changed for me. I now watch the news so that I can learn and become a more effective human being. 

The only way to create lasting, effective change, is if we understand the fullness of any given situation. Something like war is incredibly complex and while old age, sickness and death can never be stopped, war can be. But only when we take a holistic view of it. It can't be prevented or stopped if we think we 'know' what must be done of feel there is a single definitive 'answer'. There can't be an Us Vs. Them approach. It must be something that we address as a human problem - not a problem of a politic view or a particular country or group of individuals. 

Reading these books and particularly 'A Thousand Splendid Suns', has been a bearing witness practice for me, a way of furthering the understanding I have about the importance of developing compassion, discriminating awareness and seeing clearly what can be done to be effective human beings on the planet. 

Getting a bit Zen - A Book Review!

Not done a book review for a while. Mostly because I've not managed to read anything I felt like recommending super highly. But this past weekend I finished a few books and one in particular has been really brilliant: 

This was recommended to me during a meditation retreat. I was familiar with Ezra Bayda and his primary teacher, Charlotte Joko Beck, from many of the podcasts I listen to. Seriously - if you want to find great philosophical or contemplative writing, listen to a few podcasts and you'll soon have an insurmountable reading list.

But I digress....

I enjoyed this book immensely. Whilst Ezra is a student of Zen, much of what he writes about is incredibly similar to the mahayana and vipassana teachings I'm most familiar with - but also, like so many Buddhist texts, a lot of it is general common sense. More of that 'stuff that just really makes sense regardless of the package it comes in'.

In such books the teachings can become quite repetitive, which is fine because I feel it solidifies my understanding to hear the same thing taught in a different way. In the case of this book the old teaching that came across in a very new way is the practice of asking 'What is this?'

One of the great misunderstandings of meditation practice is that it's something that's meant to help us 'transcend' or 'transform' ourselves. This is not true at all and something that took me quite a while to figure out.

Meditation isn't about fixing or answering or changing anything. Meditation is a formal practice of being present. It's a practice of accepting, being and embracing. And it's a practice of curiosity.

Regardless of the school of Buddhism a person follows, the four noble truths are at the heart of the teachings and the first truth, 'Life is suffering' is what we learn to open up to through meditation. Asking the question 'What is this?' is a great way to do this and something I began trying out as soon as I'd read Ezra's explanation of it in this book.

The idea is not a nihilistic one. It's one that invites us to see the world as it actually is, rather than how we want it to be or expect it to be or imagine it to be based on a storyline we've developed. I find this difficult to put into words and appreciate how challenging it is to teach such a thing, which is why I loved this book so much. I feel that Ezra, especially in the final chapter, really gives clarity to what it means to accept and embrace the nature of the world.

It's not a passive experience - it's an experience that gives us great clarity and allows us to act skillfully because we're not restricted by what we think we know.

I don't know that I've explained any of this well so to summarise - this book was really great and super helpful for my practice. I think, regardless of whether Buddhism is your thing or not, that most people would benefit from reading it.

Transported to another world - Book Review

A colleague brought this book in for me to borrow. She was fully aware of my ridiculous habit (This ended up being my 29th book of the year and I'm not around 34 or 35) and wanted to feed it.

I'm not always up for recommendations as some people tend to recommend books indiscriminately. I try my best to find out what genre someone likes before going on and on about a book which may  simply not of interest to someone. I do, however, talk about what I read quite a lot. And it's paid off as my colleague got it right - 100%!

This book is prose that reads like poetry. Within moments I was transported to Malay. I could feel the humidity, smell the tea bushes as they were being harvests and feel the coolness of the mist descending from the mountains.

It was also incredibly eye opening for me. Primarily set in Malay just following the end of World War II, this is the story of part of the world I honestly don't think I've ever had any historical reference for from the 1950s. I didn't really grasp the absolute brutality of the Japanese military and the fallout once the war had ended - which led to the country being what we now know as Malaysia.

Whilst my formal education was pretty damn good I'm still stunned at the gaps in my awareness of what happened in the world east of Europe. The stunningly described imagery in this book contrasted intensely with the pain and suffering of so many people at a time when the entire world was being torn apart by war.

I found myself reflecting on my visit to Hiroshima last year. While in Japan I went to the Peace Garden built around what was ground zero for the atomic bomb. I'd always been taught about it in such a way that the Americans were painted as these brutish bullies whilst the Japanese were poor innocents caught in an excessive retaliation.

While at Hiroshima I really appreciated that war is war is war and no one is excused or excusable for their behaviour. There is equal blame on all sides involved because we've decided to take sides and draw lines on a map on a globe where we all have to live together. The whole idea of countries is arbitrary and a bit ridiculous when Earth is viewed from space. To think that we can justify killing each other because someone crossed an imaginary line or wanted their imaginary line to go out further seems not only childish but like the definition of insanity.

Reading this book really reinforced the fact that there are no winners in something as brutal and mindless as war but it also was a reminder of how important it is to forgive, to grieve, and to appreciate what life offers.

Re-reading Pema - a Book review

'Start Where You Are' was the first book I read by Pema Chodron. She is, by far, the most influential teacher in my life and I remember that reading this book was like having someone take all these jumbled ideas and thoughts and contemplations in my head and putting them down on paper. 

Recently I've found myself re-reading a lot of the Buddhist books I own as I've found a deepening of my understanding means I'm getting whole new levels of insight. 

To pick this book up again was amazing because in some ways I felt like I'd not actually read it before, like so many of the words hadn't really sunk in on that first reading five years ago. I know a lot of it probably has to do with my understanding of Buddhism. Whilst Pema writes in an accessible way, regardless of whether you practice Buddhism or not, she does use many Buddhist words and phrases in her work - which don't really make sense without reading or studying classic Dharma texts. 

But there was something else about re-reading it that made me feel like I'd simply not had an appreciation before. It was almost like the first reading was giving me a glimpse of the possibilities and on the second reading I could look back and go "Yes! Yes! Yes! All those things!" 

It's the difference between liking an idea and grasping is intellectually to actually just knowing and experiencing something first hand. 

I love all of Pema's writings and teachings but this book will hold a fond place in my heart simply for being the first. It was the first time someone who wasn't obligated to do so said, "You're fine just the way you are." 

It's powerful and very transformative to be told that right now, right here, no matter what is going on, you have everything you need to be a happy, fulfilled human being - because the very nature of your experience is the stuff of waking up and being open to life. 

A Great Canadian Author - Book Review

It's Canada day! So it seems appropriate to do a review of an author I only recently discovered and have come to really, really love.

This isn't so much a book review as an author review but the three books of his I've most been impacted by are:

Girlfriend in a Coma, Hey Nostradamus, All Families are Psychotic

The first Douglas Coupland book I read was 'All Families are Psychotic'. I was in desperate need of something to read and I had some Amazon vouchers to spend. I went into the recommended stuff to see if I could find someone new. Based on my love of A.M. Homes and Kate Atkinson, Coupland came up as a suggestion. I liked the title (I totally judge books by their covers ALL THE TIME and it serves me well.) so I bought it. 

When I began reading it I didn't yet know that Coupland Canadian but it didn't take long for the language and characters to act as a dead give-away. Despite being set in the States, something about it just struck me as inherently Canadian. And then we find out the family is from Canada. 

And this book is amazing because it's just about people and it's really honest. It's honest about how much can happen in a single family and how interdependent we all are. It's also really funny and clever and I came to adore the character so much I hated for the book to end. 

My interested was piqued and I soon began looking for Douglas Coupland books in charity shops. As it turns out, his are the sort of books that end up in such places. They're not thick volumes although their content is thought provoking. 

'Girlfriend in a Coma' asks us to question the very nature of our existence through a strange post-apocolypitic scenario involving a Gen X cast. Many of his books are very much about this generation that came in the wake of the Baby Boomers. 

'Hey Nostradamus' has the voices of four different narrators pulling us through the thread of the story. It's so much about how we are our own little Universes but still intricately connected. This connectivity seems to be something he explores in all his novels. 

I so rarely come across Canadian authors and to find out so incredibly talented and interesting is an absolute joy. If you're only going to read one of his books I recommend 'All Families are Psychotic' but I've been genuinely impacted by all five of his books that I've read thus far. 

Happy Canada day! 

Other awesome Canadian Creative types you should check out: 

Anne Marie-McDonald, author/actor

Esthero, musician

Feist, musician

Peaches, performing artist/musician

James Hergel, painter

Rick Mercer, comedian

Rufus Wainwright, musician

Russell Peters, comedian

Loreena McKennitt, musician

Wintersleep, band

Great Big Sea, band

Life after Life - A Book Review!

And so we bring you another book review!

The year I read more books than my dad was also the year I discovered Kate Atkinson. I instantly fell in love with her style of writing, her incredibly wonderful characters, and the twists and turns her books take. I read every one of her books excluding her collection of short stories that very year so I've been waiting for a new novel from her ever since.

This is her latest book and it is one of her best in my opinion. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it pulls rank in the top ten books I've ever read.

As with most of her books, the initial chapters are a muddle as the story unfolds. There is tension and mystery but just enough to comprehend and want to learn more. I found this particular book a bit like watching 'Inception'. It's almost confusing but so intriguing that nothing would stop me from reading.

It's also one of those books that so good it's nearly impossible to put down but also so good I wanted it to last forever. As it was I finished reading it in four days. I simply couldn't help myself.

Nerding it up - Book review!

It's been a while since I've written a book review! Time to remedy that with a review of: 

I started reading this over a year ago. I found it absorbing although I had to pace myself by only reading about half a chapter at a time. This gave me the chance to mull it over and do research in between. I was picking it up every two or three days though and thought I'd finish it within a month.

But I made a terrible mistake. I read to the middle of one of the chapters and got busy. So busy I didn't read it for several weeks.

This is not the sort of book where you can leave off in the middle and just pop back in. When I picked it up again I was utterly confused. I'd lost the thread and so abandoned it until recently. To remedy the situation I went back to the start of the chapter I'd been half way through and kept myself on a strict regime of a full chapter at a time.

I love this book. I love it because it asks us to be curious - to explore the universe and look at what is, rather than what we expect or hope. Hawking himself admits being wrong on different accounts because he'd rather learn something new than be 'right'.

My favourite chapter was about the third law of thermodynamics - that everything is falling into chaos. As a Buddhist I love when I'm reading about scientific discoveries and I can find a parallel in the teachings I study and the discoveries of the world we live in. The third law of thermodynamics is akin to the teaching that change is inevitable and constant. Our cells are being born, dying and growing meaning nothing is without constant flux.

For me this knowledge is exhilarating and reading this book has fuelled me to read more, to increase my curiosity and to seek more questions than answers.

The Art of Happiness

I'm up to twelve books read so far in 2014 - lagging behind my dad by quite a few unfortunately. He's had a few flights for work to his advantage. 

Still! I press on. 

Today's review is:

Not actually written by the Dalai Lama, this book is a compilation of conversations Howard Cutler had with the spiritual leader. I've wanted to read it for a long time as Pema Chodron often refers to tidbits from it in her talks. 

I think what I appreciate most about this is how the Dalai Lama shares his insights so openly, with a total lack of spiritual materialism. To give that some context, in case the phrase doesn't automatically make sense to you, 'spiritual materialism' is that air of knowing that someone can put on which just comes across as dogmatic arrogance. It's not really dogmatic in a Buddhist context since Buddhism is non-theistic, but the idea is that spiritual materialism breeds fundamentalism. 

The Dalai Lama is in no way a fundamentalist and genuinely seeks to encourage a path of enlightenment for all beings regardless of their belief system. As he says in the book, "Whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of life is towards happiness." 

The idea is that happiness is not a thing but the very way in which we view our world. His way of communicating these ideas is poignant and beautiful, and he encourages use to test everything he says against our own reason. Blind faith has no value and the Dalai Lama recognizes that in today's age those who follow a religion faithfully are far fewer than it used to be. He embraces this fact and even rejoices in the shift from faith as religious belief to faith as general human practice, without the need to believe in something mythical. 

Loved it and can't recommend it enough! Whether you want a better understanding of Buddhism, you would like to understand people better or you just want some good common sense to read, this is a lovely book. 

The Little Book of Mindfulness

I was asked to review this book for 'Single Step' - a quarterly magazine out out by Depression Alliance. I've gotten involved with them through work as they've recently launched a support forum call Friends in Need. It's a great community and I'm really enjoying being involved in it.

And now, the review! 

I first began to practice mindfulness in 2008 as a way to help me recover from a complete mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with panic disorder and depression at the age of seventeen and at the age of twenty-three the fact that I had no real coping mechanisms or positive mental health practices caught up with me. 

I began seeing a psychologist who specialised in anxiety disorders and used cognitive behaviour therapy as one of her methods of treatment. She recognised very quickly that I was more than willing to work with my thoughts to find a solution to my excessive neuroses and on one of our very first sessions she talked me through the mindful eating of a raisin. 

Her approach was brilliant as it demonstrated to me the capacity I have for mindfulness and that everyone has an experience of it. Lately mindfulness seems to be ‘trending’ and it’s very easy to get caught up in it on a superficial level without an intrinsic understanding of what it involves. 

The Little Book of Mindfulness is like the Coles notes of everything I have learned in the last six years. I can emphatically say it not only presents mindfulness in an accessible way, but it can act as a refresher or tool for long-time practitioners. 

Sampling tidbits from a multitude of teachers with both psychological and spiritual backgrounds, this offers a well rounded view of the practice and how we can go about making it a conscious part of day to day life.

Book number five

I'm doing quite well with my 2014 reading list. I read five books in January and am working on three at once for February. So many books, so little time!

Today I want to review that fifth book I read: 

I'm a big design nerd and reading this book pushed me right over the edge as far as typography is concerned. It an incredibly fascinating read as Simon Garfield takes us from the early days of hand scribed type to the revolutionary presses of Guttenberg and finally into the modern age where it seems like everyone in their dog has designed a typeface - or at least has one lurking in their imagination.

As a writer and artist I find type absolutely wonderful as it's not just what you communicate but also how you 'dress up' that communication. I felt like a sponge whilst reading this book as I soaked up interesting tie bits about the type that we all see every day. I already knew about the pervasiveness of Helvetica but I didn't really that one of my favourite fonts, Trebuchet, was one designed by the very same who introduced the much reviled Comic Sans to the world. I knew that Times New Roman (What my blog normally publishes in) was created for the Times but I had no idea Futura (Sorry, Blogger doesn't have this one) is nearly 90 years old!

It really was a fun romp to read and I was almost sad to reach the end. If anything it's sparked my curiosity even more and I'll be seeking out similar historical accounts of design.

A Book Review!

I'm a big reader. Last year I read 40 books. In 2012 I competed with my dad to see who could read the most. I finished with 63, beating him by a single book. I'm glad I didn't compete with him last year as he set a new personal record - reading 89 books by the year's end - the most he's read in a year since he started keeping track.

I'm not in the same competition this year although my dad and I always compare our lists when we Skype each weekend. We summarise where we're at, what we're reading currently and what we have coming up.

This regular chat we have is something I love and it got me thinking. I would say probably every fifth or sixth book I read is so incredibly influential that I want to share it with my parents and anyone else willing to listen. Anyone who knows me knows I won't shut up when I've read something particularly good.

So I'm always looking for stuff to write about in this blog and it occurred to me: Why not book reviews?!

What a great way to share something I've discovered!

To start off I'm going to review the first book I finished reading in the New Year:

Bolte Taylor is a neuroscientist, inspired to study the brain after her brother was diagnosed as schizophrenic. 

At 37 she suffered a massive stroke on the left hemisphere of her brain. As a brain scientist she grew very curious about her experience and she attributes her recovery to her knowledge and understanding of the brain's elasticity and ability to create new neural pathways when old ones have been damaged or destroyed. 

I don't want to reveal any spoilers so that's all I'll tell you about the contents. 

I love this book. I love this book so much I'll probably re-read it this year. I love this book so much people who know me will probably soon own their own copies. That's how amazing I found it. 

As someone who meditates I believe very strongly in the power of the mind and the present moment. I have done Cognitive Behaviour Therapy with my psychologist and believe wholeheartedly that working to change habitual thoughts patterns does change how we feel about and respond to life. 

Bolte Taylor's writing confirms all of this and shares it in language that's easy to understand. Reading the experience of someone who has medical training on how the brain works is both fascinating and affirming. The way she breaks down the role each hemisphere plays and how they communicate together is wonderful. Her subsequent revelations based on the experience of 'reconnecting' that communication opened my own mind to new ways of thinking. 

I feel her most profound revelation was that we control our brains, rather than the other way around. This was a discovery she didn't make as a brain scientist but as a stroke patient in recovery. As a result she has developed some incredible tools to ensure a sense of happiness and wellbeing and discourage negative patterns of thought.   

I have been using some of the tools she describes to work with my own thoughts, with profound results. Her insight is incredible and I'm extremely grateful to her for sharing her story. I appreciate that she shared it largely to assist people in recovering from or supporting someone recovering from a stroke, but I think it would be beneficial to anyone willing and interested in working with their mind.