3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

LIVING DEEPLY  Marilyn Sclitz, Cassandra Vieten, and Tina Amorok (2007). Living Deeply:  The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life The book is based on 900 surveys and interviews conducted between 1997 and 2008. The chart on page 7 summarizes 41 religious/spiritual themes from east, west, and indigenous/earth worldviews. There are in-depth ideas for journaling at the end of each chapter. The qualities of transformative life practices include: intention, attention, repetition, and guidance...and the challenge for all of us is to integrate meaningful life practices into everyday life such that ultimately, life becomes the practice. One practice that anyone can do is to make one's home and workplace a holy space...make it beautiful, simple, use images, add music, and include reminders to do your "practices" with objects, posters, jewelry, post it notes...

GOOD CHEMISTRY Julie Holland (2020). Good Chemistry:                                     The Science of Connection                                     from Soul to Psychedelics. Holland is a medical doctor and psychiatrist with experience working in mental hospitals, emergency rooms, and in private practice. She began experimenting with psychedelics early in life.  The book is filled with research and case studies. I appreciate the organizational structure of the book around self, partner, family, community, nature, and the cosmos. This parallels my  SONG of life structure of self, others, nature, and God-Goddess-the Divine.  Each chapter has practices for connecting. For example, the first chapter on connecting with self describes a breathing technique whereby one breathes in and out ...

SUMMER MEMORIES Mary Balogh (2002). A Summer to Remember . Balogh grew up in Wales and taught school in Canada before beginning her novel writing career. All her books are about love and have a happy ending.  This book is set in London and the English countryside during the Regency era. Kit Butler, a military man of honor, courage, and light heartedness, and Lauren Edgeworth, a proper lady, strike a bargain to pretend to become engaged for a summer (for reasons that you'll have to read in the book), and they end up falling in love. There are many nuggets of wisdom in this romance novel that include themes of freedom, family, responsibility, honor, and of course love. What do you think of the following bits of wisdom from this romance novel: 1. When given the choice of honor or love, always choose love. 2. Don't wait to tell someone you love them...do it today for you may not have the chance tomorrow! 3. It's okay to be a little silly, child-like, and have some fun.

WAKING TIGER Peter Levine (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Levine, holder of two doctorates and at the time of the book (1997) has 30 years of clinical experience working with trauma patients, presents a perspective on healing trauma called "somatic experiencing."  Levine admits, that there are no scientific research papers testing the efficacy of the somatic experiencing method, and in my google scholar search for papers with "somatic experiencing" in the title written by Peter Levine in September of 2023 showed the most recent 2018 article reported clinical cases related to somatic experiencing but still no experimental testing of the method. summarizing my understanding of the book, when confronted with a stressful situation, and unable to fight or flee, the human body will immobilize (freeze), and when the danger has passed, the body naturally releases the energy generated by the trauma (e.g., intense shaking)...the issue for most humans is that we inte...

IMAGERY Jeanne Archterberg (1985). Imagery in Healing:                                                         Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Archterberg has a PhD in psychology and is a researcher--the book, as of 2023, is 38 years old, yet it is very applicable today...the book reads more like a scholarly treatise than a how to book for everyday living.  I appreciate the attempts to acknowledge and connect Shamanistic wisdom and practices to modern medicine throughout. Archterberg explains that shamans journey via nonordinary consciousness to bring back medicine for the people, holistic healing for the soul and the body via practices like: sweat lodge, sensory deprivation, sacred plants, and sonic methods (drums, rattles, and chants).  The role of healing imagery in facilitating physiological changes in the ...

MIRRORS OF THE EARTH Asia Suler (2022). Mirrors in the Earth:                                       Reflections on Self-Healing from the Living World. Suler is a herbalist, founder of One Willow Apothecaries , and teacher. She draws on stories throughout her life and wisdom both ancient (indigenous) and new (research) to describe and explain how the earth (the natural world) mirrors and reflects our own lives, providing practical advice for living. Each chapter ends with a practice, meditation, or reflection that i found valuable.  Some of the many insights/lessons: your life is garden...you get to decide what to plant, how to tend...you will also need to decide your hard and soft boundaries, what to prune and what to weed...identifying what is your life and what needs to be released. trauma is part of everyone's life, and learning to release and heal from trauma is ev...

TURN ON Timothy Leary (1965, 1999). Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out Leary was a University Professor at Harvard who is best know for his experiments with LSD. The book is part lectures, part interviews, and part essays. Given all the media hype about Leary, i was surprised at how much common sense i encountered, and how much he speaks to learning, hope, and love.  He begins with a chapter on how to start your own religion (to invoke the rights of the first amendment in US law) with family and friends, a tribe of people living together in community with their own laws...a place where sacrament is consumed (it need not be LSD, but anything that is spiritually meaningful to the community, something that binds the community together in ceremony)...a place preferably in nature where one feels protected and nurtured.  The BIG ADVICE is to drop out of society's robot world/mind, and turn on to God/Goddess (the Spirit), nature, and the body and mind, and tune in (dropping back into socie...