I still love the feeling of indulging in a good book. Whether it’s perusing the isles of a book store or online, the feeling of book bliss is still the same when I cozy up to the book and sink into new exploration.
Here are some of my favorite books and the reason why:
A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson
I found this book during a time after a break up with a boyfriend.
My long standing pattern of pushing people away as a defense had really taken me out of my comfort zone as I realized for the first time that I was only hurting myself.
The words cut like a knife when he said, “Fine Jenn, you win, You are alone”.
What was I running from and what was I doing? When I found this book, I cried and cried as I flipped through the pages and could identify with many topics.
This book was a wake up call for me with so many of my beliefs and showed me that I needed to return to love in the most simplest and yet most profound ways that I have ever known.
Review: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles is the first book by author Marianne Williamson and is to date the biggest selling book of interpretation of the spiritual thought system found in the book A Course In Miracles. A New York Times Best seller, most estimates claim that A Return to Love has sold in excess of three million copies.
Success through Meditation by Russell Simmons
“Our manager’s crazy, he always smokes dust, he’s got his own room at the back of the bus” Beastie Boys- No Sleep till Brooklyn
Yup, those lyrics were talking about music mogul Russell Simmons
I don’t do shit ‘till I meditate – Russell Simmons
I was given this book as a gift. This small read packs an incredibly huge punch. If you think meditating is all koom-ba-ya, and keeping things still, learn how to incorporate it in your life with just 20 minutes a day and start to move and shake things up.
Review: Russell Wendell Simmons is an American entrepreneur, producer and author. The Chairman and CEO of Rush Communications, he cofounded the hip-hop music label Def Jam Recordings and created the clothing fashion lines Phat Farm, Argyleculture, and Tantris. Simmons had a net-worth estimate of $340 million in 2011.
Master entrepreneur, original hip-hop mogul, and New York Times bestselling author Russell Simmons shares the most fundamental key to success—meditation—and guides readers to use stillness as a powerful tool to access their potential.
In the New York Times bestseller Super Rich, Russell Simmons proved that to be rich is more than just having money in the bank—wealth is about balance, joy, and conscientious living.
In Success Through Stillness, Simmons shows the connection between inner peace and outward success through interviews with other successful leaders in various industries, and how learning to be still has been instrumental in his own career. Simmons attributes his meditation practice with changing his life for the better and says that there is no “bad” way to meditate, only different forms for different people.
In this highly anticipated new book, Russell Simmons guides readers into finding greater clarity and focus, and explains how to be healthier in both mind and body. Simmons breaks down what he’s learned from masters of meditation into a guide that is accessible to those unfamiliar with the practice.
The Afterlife of Billy Fingers by Annie Kagan
I stumbled upon this book but I don’t remember how. I do believe with all of my heart it was delivered at just the right time with the help of a loved one from above.
It was in 2015 after a long continuation of trying to find peace with the loss of someone that I loved very much. The act of suicide devastated every cell in my body and it was one of the rockiest roads that I have ever had to climb
This book literally soothed my soul. It confirmed my belief that we are connected even in death. It helped make the days better and brighter as I looked forward to a conscious relationship with all of my loved ones that have transitioned over. Now, each day is a roller coaster of communications and signs to remind me that I am never alone.
Review: Annie Kagan is not a medium or a psychic, she did not die and come back to life; in fact, when she was awakened by her deceased brother, she thought perhaps she had gone a little crazyIn “The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There’s Life After Death,” Kagan shares the extraordinary story of her after death communications with her brother Billy, who began speaking to her just weeks after his unexpected death.One of the most detailed and profound ADC’s ever recorded, Kagan’s book takes the reader beyond the near-death experience. Billy’s vivid, real-time account of his on-going journey through the mysteries of death will change the way you think about life. Death and your place in the Universe.In his foreword, Dr. Raymond Moody, author of “Life after Life,” explains the phenomena of walkers between the worlds, known to us since ancient times, and says that Dr. Kagan’s thought-provoking account is an excellent example.
Yoga for Life by Colleen Saidman Yee
I discovered this treasure as I was on Amazon.com playing around. You know how they always give you recommended items based off of your previous purchases. Well, this amazing book showed up and I was delighted the moment it landed on my doorstep.
I am a strong believer in allowing our poses to have a song and dance to work through an issue or emotion. When I read her story and how she crafted beautiful sequences with postures to relate to specific topics, I was hooked and you will be too.
Review: From a rebellious young woman with a dangerous heroin habit to a globe-trotting fashion model to “First Lady of Yoga” (The New York Times), Colleen Saidman Yee tells the remarkable story of how she found herself through the healing power of yoga—and then inspired others to do the same.
I’ve learned how to extract the beauty of an ordinary day. I’ve learned that the best high exists in the joy—or the sadness—of the present moment. Yoga allows me to surf the ripples and sit with the mud, while catching glimpses of the clarity of my home at the bottom of the lake: my true self.
The very first time Saidman Yee took a yoga class, she left feeling inexplicably different—something inside had shifted. She felt alive—so alive that yoga became the center of her life, helping her come to terms with her insecurities and find her true identity and voice. From learning to cope with a frightening seizure disorder to navigating marriages and divorces to becoming a mother, finding the right life partner, and grieving a beloved parent, Saidman Yee has been through it all—and has found that yoga holds the answers to life’s greatest challenges.
Approachable, sympathetic, funny, and candid, Saidman Yee shares personal anecdotes along with her compassionate insights and practical instructions for applying yoga to everyday issues and anxieties. Specific yoga sequences accompany each chapter and address everything from hormonal mood swings to detoxing, depression, stress, and increased confidence and energy. Step-by-step instructions and photographs demonstrate her signature flow of poses so you can follow them effortlessly.
Yoga for Life offers techniques to bring awareness to every part of your physical and spiritual being, allowing you to feel truly alive and to embody the peace of the present moment.
A Path to Modern Yoga by Elliott Goldberg
This book is new to me and an exciting treat. In all the yoga books I read both for school and in my personal enrichment, this book really streamlines yoga in it’s whole and a viewpoint that while so broad makes the reader hone in on the authenticity that is the practice of yoga.
There is a long history and deep philosophical practice that is attached to yoga. I think there is such beauty in finding your community within yoga and that sense of community is heightened as you come to learn the roots and branches of yoga.
Review: In The Path of Modern Yoga, Elliott Goldberg shows how yoga was transformed from a sacred practice into a health and fitness regime for middle-class Indians in the early 20th century and then gradually transformed over the course of the 20th century into an embodied spiritual practice–a yoga for our times.
Drawing on more than 10 years of research from rare primary sources as well as recent scholarship, Goldberg tells the sweeping story of modern yoga through the remarkable lives and accomplishments of 11 key figures: six Indian yogis (Sri Yogendra, Swami Kuvalayananda, S. Sundaram, T. Krishnamacharya, Swami Sivananda, and B. K. S. Iyengar), an Indian bodybuilder (K. V. Iyer), a rajah (Bhavanarao Pant Pratinidhi), an American-born journalist (Louise Morgan), an Indian diplomat (Apa Pant), and a Russian-born yogi trained in India (Indra Devi). The author places their achievements within the context of such Western trends as the physical culture movement, the commodification of exercise, militant nationalism, jazz age popular entertainment, the quest for youth and beauty, and 19th-century New Age religion.
In chronicling how the transformation of yoga from sacred discipline to exercise program allowed for the creation of an embodied spiritual practice, Goldberg presents an original, authoritative, provocative, and illuminating interpretation of the history of modern yoga.