Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding


Daniel E. Lieberman - 2021
    Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion.Exercised is entertaining and enlightening but also constructive. As our increasingly sedentary lifestyles have contributed to skyrocketing rates of obesity and diseases such as diabetes, Lieberman audaciously argues that to become more active we need to do more than medicalize and commodify exercise.Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, Lieberman suggests how we can make exercise more enjoyable, rather than shaming and blaming people for avoiding it. He also tackles the question of whether you can exercise too much, even as he explains why exercise can reduce our vulnerability to the diseases mostly likely to make us sick and kill us.

The Hidden Messages in Water


Masaru Emoto - 2001
    Using high-speed photography, Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors. The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health.

Super You: Release Your Inner Superhero


Emily V. Gordon - 2015
    Their origins are almost always marked by traumatic events that leave them helpless and scared. Batman witnessed his parents’ murder. Superman was sent away from his dying planet with no one to guide him as he grew up. Orphaned Catwoman was forced to steal food to survive on the streets of Gotham.What makes these superheroes super is their determination to not be defined by helplessness. They embrace their origins, their flaws, and their mistakes, and strive every day to become the best versions of themselves – for the benefit of themselves and others.Super You is a fun, friendly, and unabashedly geeky guide to becoming the superhero of your own extraordinary life. Author Emily Gordon examines comic book tropes to find lessons that anyone can apply toward overcoming tragic events and adversity in their own lives. With activities in every chapter to help identify each person’s superpowers, special tools, personal kryptonite – and weapons against it – Super You is the perfect sidekick for every growing hero, empowering everyday people to transform into the most kick-ass versions of themselves.

The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy


Valerie Ann Worwood - 1993
    A necessary resource for anyone interested in alternative approaches to healing, this book contains more than 600 easy-to-follow recipes for essential oil treatments and aromatherapy.

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked


Adam Alter - 2017
    We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans. In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist. By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good—to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play—and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.

Deep Kindness: Practicing Kindness in a World that Oversimplifies It


Houston Kraft - 2020
    But with quotes like, “Just be kind” or, “Throw kindness around like confetti,” we’ve oversimplified what it takes to actually demonstrate kindness in a world crying out for it. Deep Kindness pairs anecdotes with actions that can make real change in our own lives, the lives of others, and throughout the world. Diving into the types of kindness the world needs most today, this book takes an honest look at the gap between our belief in kindness and our ability to practice it well—and shows us how to put intention into action. Exploring everything from the empathy gap to the skill of emotional regulation, Deep Kindness is perfect for anyone who believes in a kinder world and recognizes that there is a lot of work to do before we achieve it.

The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can: Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer


Gretchen Reynolds - 2012
    With the latest findings about the mental and physical benefits of exercise, personal stories from scientists and laypeople alike, as well as researched-based prescriptions for readers, Gretchen Reynolds shows what kind of exercise—and how much—is necessary to stay healthy, get fit, and attain a smaller jeans size. Inspired by Reynolds's wildly popular “Phys Ed” column for The New York Times, this book explains how exercise affects the body in distinct ways and provides the tools readers need to achieve their fitness goals, whether that's a faster 5K or staying trim.

Energy Medicine: The Science and Mystery of Healing


Jill Blakeway - 2018
    

Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond


Chris Crowley - 2004
    A breakthrough book for men--as much fun to read as it is persuasive--Younger Next Year draws on the very latest science of aging to show how men 50 or older can become functionally younger every year for the next five to ten years, and continue to live like fifty-year-olds until well into their eighties. To enjoy life and be stronger, healthier, and more alert. To stave off 70% of the normal decay associated with aging (weakness, sore joints, apathy), and to eliminate over 50% of all illness and potential injuries. This is the real thing, a program that will work for anyone who decides to apply himself to "Harry's Rules."Harry is Henry S. Lodge, M.D., a specialist in internal medicine and preventive healthcare. Chris Crowley is Harry's 70-year-old patient who's stronger today (and skiing better) than when he was 40. Together, in alternating chapters that are lively, sometimes outspoken, and always utterly convincing, they spell out Harry's Rules and the science behind them. The rules are deceptively simple: Exercise Six Days a Week. Eat What You Know You Should. Connect to Other People and Commit to Feeling Passionate About Something. The science, simplified and demystified, ranges from the molecular biology of growth and decay to how our bodies and minds evolved (and why they fare so poorly in our sedentary, all-feast no-famine culture). The result is nothing less than a paradigm shift in our view of aging.Welcome to the next third of your life--train for it, and you'll have a ball.

Healthy Brain, Happy Life


Wendy Suzuki - 2015
    Wendy Suzuki one day woke up and realized she didn’t have a life. As an almost-40-year-old award-winning college professor, world-renowned neuroscientist, she had—what many considered—everything: tenure as a professor at New York University; her own very successful neuroscience research lab; prizes for scientific discoveries on cognition and memory; articles published in prestigious scientific journals. As a woman and a scientist, she was the envy of her peers and lauded by her superiors. On paper, she had a stellar career and an impeccable record. What could she possibly be missing? Everything else. Suzuki was overweight. She was tired. She was lonely, had strained work relationships, and for the first time in her life, completely without direction. So she resolved to change her life. The first step--get moving. Everyone knows that exercise makes you feel better—that when you hit the gym despite the dread, you leave in a better mood. Healthy Brain, Happy Life offers the real science of how exercise effects your mind. Using Wendy’s journey from frumpy, fat and frustrated to fit and fabulous as a guide, Healthy Brain offers not just the HOWS of making exercise an important part of life, but the WHYS of the benefits it brings. But movement is just the first step to being Brain Healthy. Once you get your body and mind hooked on exercise, you bring in practices in mindfullness to calm stress and allow your minds to wander to unlock creativity. As your brain begins to change (something called neuroplasticity), the benefits build--you get fitter, improve your memory, increase your ability to work quickly and move from task to task easily. Along with Dr. Suzuki’s 4 minute Brain Hacks, Healthy Brain, Happy Life offers a simple program for changing your life, straight from a leading scientist’s personal experience.

The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race


Daniel Z. Lieberman - 2018
    In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it’s why we gamble and squander. From dopamine’s point of view, it’s not the having that matters. It’s getting something—anything—that’s new. From this understanding—the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it—we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion – and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.

Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart


James R. Doty - 2016
    Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Her final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart.Doty would go on to put Ruth’s practices to work with extraordinary results—power and wealth that he could only imagine as a twelve-year-old, riding his orange Sting-Ray bike. But he neglects Ruth’s most important lesson, to keep his heart open, with disastrous results—until he has the opportunity to make a spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him. Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop shows us how we can fundamentally change our lives by first changing our brains and our hearts.

Judgment Detox: Release the Beliefs That Hold You Back from Living A Better Life


Gabrielle Bernstein - 2018
    Petty resentments will disappear, compassion will replace attack, the energy of resistance will transform into freedom and you’ll feel more peace and happiness than you’ve ever known. I can testify to these results because I’ve lived them. I’ve never felt more freedom and joy than I have when writing and practicing these steps.My commitment to healing my own relationship to judgment has changed my life in profound ways. My awareness of my judgment has helped me become a more mindful and conscious person. My willingness to heal these perceptions has set me free. I have been able to let go of resentments and jealousies, I can face pain with curiosity and love, and I forgive others and myself much more easily. Best of all, I have a healthy relationship to judgment so that I can witness when it shows up and I can use these steps to quickly return to love.The Judgment Detox is an interactive six-step process that calls on spiritual principles from the text A Course in Miracles, Kundalini yoga, the Emotional Freedom Technique (aka Tapping), meditation, prayer and metaphysical teachings. I’ve demystified these principles to make them easy to commit to and apply in your daily life. Each lesson builds upon the next to support true healing. When you commit to following the process and become willing to let go, judgment, pain and suffering will begin to dissolve.And the miracles will keep coming. Once you begin to feel better you start to release your resistance to love. The more you practice these steps, the more love enters into your consciousness and into your energetic vibration. When you’re in harmony with love, you receive more of what you want. Your energy attracts its likeness. So when you shift your energy from defensive judgment to free-flowing love your life gets awesome. You’ll attract exactly what you need, your relationships will heal, your health will improve and you’ll feel safer and more secure. One loving thought at a time creates a miracle. Follow these steps to clear all blocks, spread more love and live a miraculous life.

On Death and Dying


Elisabeth Kübler-Ross - 1969
    Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's famous interdisciplinary seminar on death, life, and transition. In this remarkable book, Dr. Kübler-Ross first explored the now-famous five stages of death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Through sample interviews and conversations, she gives the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, the professionals who serve that patient, and the patient's family, bringing hope to all who are involved.

Outsmart Yourself: Brain-Based Strategies to a Better You


Peter M. Vishton - 2016
    The surprising thing is just how counterintuitive some of these strategies can be. Feeling the urge to procrastinate? Do nothing for 20 minutes and you'll feel ready to get to work. Want to strengthen your athletic performance? The imagination and mental "practice" can be just as beneficial as putting on your sweats and heading to the gym. Come down with a case of the blues? Try eating some fermented foods such as yogurt or sourdough bread. Outsmart Yourself: Brain-Based Strategies to a Better You will give you insights into how your mind works and the tools you need to make lasting change. Taught by Professor Peter M. Vishton, Associate Professor of Psychology at William & Mary, these 24 exciting lectures give you a wealth of practical strategies to strengthen your creativity, improve your problem-solving, enhance your health, and generally improve your well-being. Whether we're distracted by too many tasks, being influenced by crafty marketers, or simply living in a rut of bad habits, our conscious brains aren't always guiding us toward the best actions. Fortunately, Professor Vishton offers the latest in scientific research to outsmart the subconscious.