Book: Gulp – Mary Roach
Sorry, another digestion book 🙂 But, hey, its an important topic. This book, unlike some I’ve reviewed, isn’t a manual on digestive health, mind / gut link or the human microbiome. Its a more whimsy, although still serious, work about...Book: Gut – Giulia Enders
Subtitled “The Inside Story of Our Bodies Most Underrated Organ”, this 2014 book is a new look at digestion, drawing on our growing knowledge of how digestion and the GI (Gastro-Intestinal) Tract works. This is a rapidly changing area of...Book: Science of Flexibility – Michael Alter
Its been on my shelf for a wee while, but eventually I got to reading this. First thing to say, as the name suggests, it is science based – so for anyone wanting a light read, this isn’t the book. Second thing to say, third edition, 2014, in...Book – Stress Proof – Mithu Storoni
Subtitled “The scientific solution to protect your brain and body – and be more resilient every day”, the author of this work is a doctor and neuroscientist, so potentially can shed a lot of light on this rather vexed area of stress and...Book: The Evolution of Biomechanics – Stephen Braybrook
We take for mostly – unless injured or differently abled – how we move. Yogis maybe think about it a little more, along with others in the movement world, either students or practitioners (and arguably the later should always be the former as well)....Book: Heart: The Inside Story of our Body’s Most Important Organ – Johannes Hinrich von Borstel
Between 60 and 100 times an hour at rest – and more if we are exercising, stressed or startled – the heart beats and pumps our blood. Assuming an average of 80 beats a minute, thats 4,800 per hour, 115,200 a day and 42m beats a year. ...Book: The Bhagavad Gita (translation Eknath Easwaran)
Three of the things – many things – I love about Yoga is the rich heritage behind it; that you can dip into this as much or as little as is appropriate for you; that Yoga meets you where you are. For some Yoga is a physical practice of fitness or...Book: Into the Magic Shop – James Doty
The intriguing subtitle of this book is “A Neurosurgeons True Story of the Life Changing Magic of Compassion and Mindfulness”, based on the authors own experiences. We meet the author as a child, perusing an interest in magic, and picking up the...Book: Muscles and Meridians – The Manipulation of Shape – Phillip Beach
So this wasn’t quite the book I was expecting it to be. Perhaps in hindsight it never could be as the idea of aligning muscles – gross anatomy – and meridians – energetic anatomy would be forced. Although, of course, there has been some...Book: The New Science of Breath – Stephen Elliott
The subtitle to this short book gives a good idea as to its content, “Coherent Breathing for Autonomic Nervous System Balance, Health and Well-being”. Stephen Elliott researched and brought together the idea of Coherent Breathing, and this 2005...Book: Core of the Yoga Sutras – BKS Iyengar
As one of the foundation texts for yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are something most of us come across, either as structured study or by osmosis during class when themes come up. The sutras themselves are quite terse, so need interpretation – remember...Book: Gender Medicine – Marek Glezerman
The subtitle to this book is “The Groundbreaking New Science of Gender and Sex Related Diagnosis and Treatment”, and the author purports to look at sex and gender related differences and how these impact health and medical treatment. This isn’t...Book: The Mind Gut Connection – Emeran Mayer
This book is subtitled “How the hidden conversation within our bodies impacts our mood, our choices and our overall health”, and it’s a 2016 book making it relatively up to date. So, at some stage we’ve all experienced “gut...Book: The Ecology of the Soul – Aidan Walker
The subtitle to this book is “A Manual for Peace, Power and Personal Growth for Real People in the Real World”. Based around the authors analysis of seven powers – Nature, Creativity, Endurance, Love, Communication, Focus and Connection, he takes us...Book: Acu Yoga – Michael Reed Gach
The first thing to say is that this isn’t a new book – 1981 – although its the first time I’ve read it. Some things don’t change though, including Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Its in TCM that this book is based, more...Book: And Breath – Rebecca Dennis
Come back to the breath…. how many times have you heard that in a yoga class? The breath is so vitally important in our health and wellbeing that I make no apology for another book in the topic. This is a refreshingly simple and straight forward read with an...Book: The Healing Power of the Breath – Brown & Gerbarg
Breath. Where do I start. We do it all the time, mostly in the background, but it’s unique in being an automatic body function that we can exercise an element of control over. It’s a key thread running through a yoga class. Breath supports yogas energy...Book: Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind over Body – Jo Marchant
The author is a science journalist, and coming from a scientific background presents a scepticism about non conventional approaches to healing and wellbeing – there’s almost a paradox in the books title, can there be “Science” in mind/body...Don’t Get Stressed About It! Stress And How Yoga Can Help
This is an article I wrote for Island Magazines, but it bears distributing wider as Stress and the Nervous System seems to come up a lot in class and, let’s face it, which of us haven’t been stressed at some time? Don’t Get Stressed About It! How often do...Socials and Feeds
