I started meditating in my min-40s as I was in a stressful job. I resisted at first, thinking I was too busy and that I couldn’t make my active mind go quiet. I persisted though and soon discovered that I had a better day all around on days when I meditated and seemed to be pushing water uphill when I missed my morning meditation.
Intrigued by this, the engineer in me researched why this might be. I started writing books on how it can help and I learned how to script and record my own meditations. Over fifteen years later, I find myself as one of the top meditation guides on the Insight Timer app, with over 4 million listens.
The author of this book, Frances Trussell, explains so succinctly why the blessing of our self-aware mind can so easily become a curse for so many humans. So mindfulness and meditation is not so much about having no thoughts or making your mind go blank. Rather it is about coming to a different relationship with your thoughts. On the other side, lies a life of bliss and freedom.
We all wish to be more mindful, engaged, present - loving the life we are living, but is this possible and how? You Are Not Your Thoughts: The Secret Magic of Mindfulness makes the journey into a mindful way of being a profoundly simple one, both to understand and to access. It is a book for those who want to truly know the power of mindfulness to transform their experience of life. '...There are thousands of books out there to help us combat our inner self-destructive voice... if I could go back in time and read only one book on…
I am a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in ADHD. My passion for dreams overlaps with my interest in ADHD which is commonly associated with daydreaming. I have intensively studied dreams in courses, conferences, experiential dream groups, and in years-long therapy that focused only on dream interpretation. I have seen dreams offer insights and at times solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems in my client's lives and also in my own life. I am an author writing on ADHD, executive functioning, and depression including the books The Gift of Adult ADD and The Six Super Skills for Executive Functioning. Dreams can offer insights into all of these conditions suggesting perspectives and healing actions.
I included this book because the most important part of dream interpretation is recording your dreams. This journal has space for your to write a title for the dream as recommended in the previous book Dream Work. In addition to writing out the dream, there are boxes to check off the category of dream – from a nightmare to mundane - and a checklist to note the prevailing emotion. There is space to draw images from the dream and a section to reflect and try an interpretation. You can use any of these features and the journal, by offering space and checkboxes, deepens engagement with the dream, and may offer directions you wouldn’t have thought of by yourself.
Perplexed by inappropriate, recurring, or just-plain confusing dreams? Make friends with your subconscious-and its head-scratching contents! Cheaper and considerably less nosy than a shrink, this bedside analyst offers an easy format for recording your psyche's odd nocturnal missions and interpreting their significance. Because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar-but not usually.
I’m Kai Storm, author of reality-based urban fiction and erotica, erotica blogger, YouTuber, and Podcaster. I love reading books that feel real, that make you feel, and that teach you something as they entertain you.
I loved this book’s story flow; the realism and the grit of it gave me chills. I absolutely love books that make me feel something, that give me something to walk away with.
The characters in this book make you see the story being told in your mind, and with every twist, you feel them all.
I'm an author from New Zealand, who writes fiction and non-fiction for adults, but I'm also an accidental children's book writer. Accidental? I never thought I would write books for children, but the then 10-year-old in our family demanded a children's book, and the popular Elastic Island Adventures series was born. I always remember how much joy I got from discovering books as a child, so I'm interested in books that are fun for children but encourage creativity and literacy. I love when books are so enjoyable that children don't realize how much they are learning, where they can enjoy exploring the 'theater of the mind'.
The Just series is by a New Zealand author and is perfect for slightly older children, 11 to 14 years.Just Keep Going is an engaging read with delightful characters and wonderful messages about the environment and the importance of friends and family, with a main character who proves to be resourceful, caring, and brave. It's the perfect blend of real life and fantasy, encouraging the theater of the mind to get children positively thinking about many issues.
Becky always loved visiting her dad in New Zealand until she returns during the pandemic.
Now he’s got a baby with her new stepmum and everything has changed. Worse still, her windsurfer hasn’t arrived yet, so there’s nothing for her to do but wait for Mum who is stuck overseas.
Then Becky finds a strange stone at Whale Bay and her luck changes. She makes new friends, joins an environmental group, borrows a windsurfer, and has several close encounters with a bottlenose dolphin who simply won’t leave her alone.
But what is wrong with the dolphin? Is it trying to…
This is a book like no other! With its first sentences, it gripped me, and I couldn't put it down till the very end. The same happened to everybody I recommended it to.
Formally, it is part of a trilogy, and I loved to read all three of them. Its style is dry and almost merely reporting, and yet it is emotionally involved in a powerful way.
Is what we are told meant to be real? Or is it only the product of a traumatized mind trying to cope with war, poverty, pain, abuse, and the endless yearning for what is lost? Are the twins, the protagonists of this trilogy, really two separate fictional characters or rather one with a dissociated mind? A thrilling question till the end.
Twin brothers, left with their evil grandmother at a time when war has blurred all distinctions between good and evil, learn to steal and kill in the name of survival and create their own loveless morality
The human mind fascinates me. Perhaps that’s why I got a PhD in Psychology, and have spent decades in the counseling field. That, of course, brought me in touch with all kinds of minds. Why do people do the things they do, make the choices they live with? We learn patterns in childhood that keep us safe. What if those patterns no longer work in adulthood, or worse, were built on false beliefs? Do life’s events shape us or do they merely show who we were all along? In my psychological thrillers, I explore such things. Even the bad guys have their stories.
You know those books that stick with you years after you read them? Well, this is one. Rich characters that feel so real. The anguish of losing a child and the hope that even fifteen years down the road, you might be reunited. Parents who act as I would. A situation so plausible, you are right there with them. Love it when I can’t put a book down.
I’m a multi-genre writer who loves hearing the characters’ voices and getting their stories out there in the world. A lot of my characters are shaped by their gifts, whether they have supernatural ones or not. The things that happen to them shape who they are and how they react to future events. I exist on sarcasm, sass, and hot tea, so many of my characters do too.
I heard this one on audiobook first. The first book is amazing.
What drew me to this one was the character of Cal James. She’s got an unenviable gift of being able to see recent ghosts and interact with them. Her personal life’s a hot mess, but she has a heart of gold, and doesn’t mind punching ghosts.
In Red River, the Wild West is alive and well. When Calamity James reluctantly returns to her hometown for a funeral, she wants answers that no one will give her. Soon, the local sheriff blackmails Cal into helping him solve a missing persons case. Though no one knows it, Cal is uniquely qualified to find homicide victims—she can see the dead. Of course, the dead don’t always cooperate. As the mystery unfolds, Cal falls deeper into her troublesome past, navigates burdensome family matters, and digs up new mischief with old rivals, both dead and alive.
During an intensely productive period as a licensed clinical psychologist, I invented virtual reality immersion therapy described in US Patent 6425764 and authored Virtual Therapy: prevention and treatment of psychiatric conditions by immersion in virtual reality environments. UCSF Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Dr. Lawrence Lurie wrote: “Ralph’s vision is of the whole world, the context is history from the beginning of time. The author quotes Emerson, Dante, Chaucer, Jung and many more from before and after the invention of the printing press. The originality, language, and world view make this book interesting reading. The story is well told in verse, pictures, quotations, and more. I enjoyed the vast expansiveness of the story and the details of many people’s lives.”
The Power of Concentration is a practical guide for developing concentration. I liked this book because it helped me through graduate school when stress was high. The book contributes to a discussion of positive psychology. Concentration is placed within the grasp of each person. The author links concentration to the development of desirable habits while overcoming bad habits." Theron Q. Dumont noted, "Concentration is paying attention to a chosen thought." His work is relevant today given distractions from many corners of life.
This course of lessons will stimulate and inspire you to achieve success; it will bring you into perfect harmony with the laws of success. It will give you a firmer hold on your duties and responsibilities. All your real advancement must come from your individual effort. Success is assured when you are able to concentrate for you are then able to utilize for your good all constructive thoughts and shut out all the destructive ones. It is of the greatest value to be able to think only that which will be beneficial.
I've always believed in the power behind positive thinking, but it’s easy to get caught up in feelings of worry or disappointment. I picked this topic because I feel that perspective is the tool that can help us change a negative attitude into a positive one. We don’t always have control of various things happening in the world around us. However, we do have the power to try to change our perspective and look at things in a more positive way. I believe this skill is essential to find gratitude and happiness in life, and I love how each of these books approach the topic of the importance of perspective in different ways.
In this book, a little girl named Sarah is worried about starting her first day at school. She can’t help but imagine all the terrible things that could happen. Her friend named Benny helps her to change her perspective by showing her all the things that could go right instead of wrong. I really enjoy this book because it’s so easy to let our minds wander to the negative possibilities. I like how this book reminds us to see the good that can happen in situations and also encourages us to find good positive friends like Benny that will help give us a boost when needed!
**From the best-selling Team Supercrew Series** **First Place Winner - Purple Dragonfly Book Awards 2022 - New Author Fiction**
First day? New School? New experience? Feeling scared? Benny the Brave is here to help!
Meet Sarah. She’s about to start a new school that’s on a distant planet. She doesn’t have any friends yet. Her teacher may or may not be a swamp creature. And worse, lunch looks like it’s wriggling, slimy and alive! But just before the school bus arrives, Team Supercrew’s Benny the Brave comes to the rescue!
Team Supercrew’s Benny the Brave reminds kids that they have…
I am a psychological scientist, BBC science communicator, and best-selling author. I am also bisexual. As an academic, my tendency is to immediately look for research and scholarly writing about topics that interest me. But for bisexuality, I found that this was incredibly hard to do. So, I dug into archives and journals, connected with hundreds of bisexuality researchers and activists, and after much searching, I finally found the answers to questions I had had my entire life. I wrote them all down in my new book Bi.
If it’s personal accounts and many different voices you are looking for, The Bi-ble: Vol. 2 is perfect. It includes essays by various bisexual people, giving brief and poignant insights into their lives.
This easy-to-read collection is a good example of the long tradition of anthologies in bi+ literature. Some stories are deeply relatable, others challenge you to look beyond your own experiences. It helped me to realise that while there is a commonality between the experiences of bisexual people, there are important individual differences that we need to keep in mind. No one person can speak for the entire bi community, so this book lets many people have their own voice.
