Peter Occhiogrosso's 3 favorite reads in 2024

I've always wondered why I am so attached to sleeping as much as I can, even when I don't seem to have the time. And now I understand why. I love to dream—and to remember my dreams—and to do that you have to sleep as long as possible. But what I didn't know before is how big a role sleep plays not only in my dream life, but in my health, and how my daily functionality plunges when I get even a little less than 6 or 7 hours a night. I've never believed the people who brag that they just need a few hours of sleep—as little as 3 or 4—and thanks to Walker's astonishing research I know now that they have been lying, exaggerating, or both. I also never fully understood the relationship of dream patterns to length and depth of sleep.Further, I'm glad that I quit drinking alcohol years ago because of how massively it interferes with both sleep and dreaming, which I enjoy so much more than I did the numbing effects of alcohol. I will recommend this book to everyone I know who is raising children because of the astonishing benefits the full complement of sleep will bestow on their children—for the rest of their lives! Matt Walker has performed a great service to humanity by sharing his research, knowledge, and wisdom with us—especially the need for sufficient sleep to grant us an abundant, fulfilling dream life.

As I learned in high school, the Latin word for "breath" is "spiritus," which is the root of our words “spirit” and “spiritual.” In this brilliant book, Nestor traces the role of breath in the spiritual practices of prayer, chanting, and mantra. For instance, he points out, the precise length of time we spend inhaling and exhaling while reciting certain mantras—whether from Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or Indigenous traditions—is virtually identical. He then goes on to link spiritual growth with physical health and vigor. Some 25 years ago, I helped to write a book called The 3-Season Diet, with the American Ayurvedic physician John Douillard, who studied Ayurveda with Maharishi and Deepak Chopra. Douillard taught me the value of nose-breathing, as opposed to the deleterious Western norm of mouth-breathing. This easy-to-learn habit changed my life for the better, and Nestor’s bestselling book accomplishes the remarkable feat of opening up this invaluable practice to a much broader audience. If you follow his simple techniques, explained in plain English—and supplemented by a series of guided breathing directions you can follow while walking, meditating, or exercising—you can become a faster runner and even a better meditator. I applied one of those patterns—inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7, exhale for 8—to a series of the 8 brocades of qigong that I have been doing for years, and it vastly improved my practice. As with Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, this book will improve your health and the health of anyone you choose to share it with. I especially recommend the audiobook version, which includes a complete array of breathing exercises you can listen to.

Albert Potts is a self-taught scholar of ancient Hebrew who has spent years translating the original text of Genesis with exhilarating results. I was consistently amazed at what information he was able to glean from a close reading of the Hebrew text of Genesis. Other recent translators, notably Mauro Biglino, have unearthed new layers of meaning behind Hebrew words such as Elohim and Yahweh, contending that the God of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) was not a spirit at all but a physical being of superhuman proportions and advanced technological abilities. But Potts delves even deeper into the root meaning of the original text to argue—convincingly, if controversially—that the first chapters of Genesis are not a religious parable but a historical documentation. Ignoring the traditional narrative, Potts uncovers a literal record of humanity being genetically engineered by technologically advanced aliens who were reptilians skilled in the science of in vitro fertilization. A similar narrative can be found in cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, such as the Epic of Atrahasis, but Potts is the first to present a translation of Genesis as a description of the genetic engineering of the human race. His book is not easy reading, to be sure, but its implications are mind-opening.