ChiWalking: Fitness Walking for Lifelong Health and Energy

If you’re looking to get fit in 2010, pick up a copy of Danny and Katherine Dreyer’s book: ChiWalking: Fitness Walking for Lifelong Health and Energy. You may be thinking, “Walking? Is that really going to help me get in shape?” In a word, yes. As you’ll see from the studies in the book, walking just 30 minutes a day promotes better physical and mental health all around. The ChiWalking program can be used by absolute beginners or running pros, making it the perfect gift for anybody.

Reviews:
“This program will totally revolutionize the way you run.”
– Baron Baptiste, author of Journey into Power

“ChiRunning gave me a precious gift. After being unable to run for ten years because of injury, at age 52 I’m again enjoying pleasurable, injury-free trail runs in the Shawangunk Mountains.I can now move on land with the same economy, flow, and mindfulness that make swimming such bliss for me. I tell people that ChiRunning is an owner’s manual for anyone who has legs and the desire to use them for health and happiness.”
– Terry Laughlin, author of Total Immersion

“The most exciting and revolutionary book to hit the running community this decade.”
– Toby Tanser, author of Train Hard, Win Easy

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Have you ever stopped to think about what’s in the food you’re eating? If the answer is no, pick up a copy of Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.” Pollan’s book questions our culture’s notion of a healthy, balanced diet and attacks processed foods that claim to work miracles. The solution for all of us moving forward? Eat less meat and sugar and more fruit and veggies. Hey, isn’t that what Mom said?

Review from Booklist:
Expanding on a theme from his popular The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2007), Pollan mounts an assault on a reigning theory of the relationship between food and health. For Pollan, “nutritionism” offers too narrow a view of the role of eating, confining its benefits solely to food’s chemical constituents. This has resulted in an unnatural anxiety about the things we humans eat. To counteract this, Pollan appeals to tradition and common sense. The “Western diet,” with its focus on meat as the principal food, produces cardiovascular problems, and nutritionists’ attempts to correct this with a high-carbohydrate and sugar regimen has served only to spawn a generation of obese diabetics. Although Pollan doesn’t advocate eliminating meat or any other whole food, he wants to place vegetables and fruits in the center of things, reassigning meat to the status of a side dish. Given the continuing fascination with Pollan’s earlier work, this smaller tome will surely generate heavy demand. –Mark Knoblauch –

The Good Life - Jesse Dylan

Whether you’re new to the notion and practices of holistic medicine and body/mind/spirit consciousness, or a forty-year veteran, Jesse Dylan’s new book, The Good Life, deserves a place in your library.

It is a comprehensive, clear, and highly accessible selection of fundamental wisdoms that promote personal health, happiness, and peace. Filled with personal stories, as well as valuable understanding, The Good Life is a smartly written, smooth, enjoyable read. From “Healing Through Joy” to “Increasing Vitality at Every Age,” to “Learning to Forgive” (and twelve more chapters), the book reveals the humanity and brilliance of such luminaries as Dr. Michael Roizen (You: Staying Young and You: The Owner’s Manual), Lynne McTaggart (The Field), Dr. Bernie Siegel (Love, Medicine & Miracles) Dr. Joan Borysenko (Minding the Body, Mending the Mind), Jim MacLaren (Choose Living Foundation), and Bob Proctor (You Were Born Rich/Law of Attraction expert), among others. In the Introduction, Dylan shares a bit of his own story of personal transformation. At this time of ever-expanding awakening, The Good Life will serve its readers as a strong foundation for understanding and growth.

The story of Dylan’s own journey from famous rock and roll radio jock to holistic health and wellness author and broadcaster – the subtext of The Good Life – reflects how our greatest difficulties can provide the seeds for our transformation, rebirth, and new meaning. Named one of the top five radio personalities in the world, few people might imagine how painful and disrupted Dylan’s own childhood was.

Dylan’s father was a successful broadcaster of the 1960s who was swept up in the swinging Hollywood party circuit. As he became lost in alcohol, Dylan and his six siblings struggled to cope with life. Various substances found their way into their lives. Dylan admits, “It seems like I screwed up absolutely everything possible by the age of fifteen.”

While Dylan was in high school, his father was incapacitated in a serious car accident and Dylan’s life changed. In a visionary moment, he saw a rope dangling from the clouds and he felt the message: “Grab on here.” Dylan instantly changed his own prodigal ways and dove into doing everything he could to help his mother raise his younger brothers and sisters. He took jobs to help support the family, and over the years he even grew closer to his father, discovering great gifts in the adversity he too had faced.

Dylan eventually followed his father into broadcasting, landing his first radio job in his teens and quickly distinguishing himself in the industry as a fast-talking zany-humored jock on popular FM rock and roll radio. He was becoming disenchanted with how corporate greed was sucking the creativity out of broadcasting. The last straw happened for Dylan when his host station mishandled a Christmas promotion during the 1990s. Jesse resolved to find a better fit for his talents through a new path and a new morality.

He had become interested in holistic medicine and had begun training and competing in triathlons. While competing in the 1997 world triathlon championships in Nice, France, as a member of the national team, he had what he calls “an epiphany to build a health and lifestyle broadcast network.” This visionary breakthrough led him to create The Good Life with Jesse Dylan, the flagship health and lifestyle show on Sirius Satellite Radio (Jesse Dylan’s The Good Life radio program is moving to CBS first quarter 2009). During the program’s first decade, Dylan interviewed the world’s most prominent authors, researchers and speakers in physical wellness, mental health, and spiritual teaching, and it is this material conveyed through the lens of Dylan’s own life experience that forms the substance of The Good Life book.

To get a sample of his work check out Jesse Dylan’s 10 Tips for Staying Healthy & Well In Times of Stress and Uncertainty. You can purchase the book The Good Life at Amazon.com

Spiritual Liberation - Rev. Michael Beckwith

Although only recently being embraced by the media and the general public, Rev Michael Beckwith has been quietly meeting with world leaders and transforming the lives of thousands every day in Los Angeles for decades.

This new book is a must have for anyone serious about living a more fulfilling and satisfying life.

From the book jacket:

Michael Bernard Beckwith — the dynamic spiritual leader who touched millions of readers and viewers in The Secret and through the spiritual community he founded, the Agape International Spiritual Center — is now sharing his transforming central message and his powerfully accessible means for embodying that message in daily life, a process he calls “aspiring toward spiritual liberation.” Read more

Your Money or Your Life

Your Money or Your Life
Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin.

This is a very powerful foundational book that is very easy to read and understand. They cover some basics about making good decisions when making purchases and the actual long term cost of items. Some helpful exercises and new ays of stretching your dollar.

Great step by step outline on how to have more with less money spent, how to create a wall chart to track declining monthly expenses while showing the increased savings and how this grows over time and what that provides for you. Excellent discussion of attaining real financial independence all while improving your quality of life.

Three great questions:
1. Did I receive fulfillment, satisfaction and value in proportion to life energy spent?
2. Is this expenditure of life energy in alignment with my values and life purpose?
3. How might this expenditure change if I did not have to work for a living?

The 4-Hour Work Week

The 4-Hour Work Week
Timothy Ferriss

This book is a more recent addition to our list and belongs under both Career and Money. Tim Ferris has collected some amazing insights a very short career. He shares some favorite stories and examples that we have been collecting for over 20 years and boils them down into a very easy to read, fun and inspiring collection that will leave you thinking long and hard about the life you have created for yourself. He really gets you to think outside the box and be brutally honest with yourself about what you really want and what you have and what you don’t have right now. This is more about dreams and passion than “things” and one of the reasons we have added it to our selected reading list.

The Millionaire Next Door

The Millionaire Next Door

This books gives a unique view inside the real lifestyles of the rich and famous…some of them anyway. The average millionaire lives more simply and carefully or “consciously” than most people that claim to be conscious and aware.

Thomas J. Stanley & William Danko.

How To Get Out of Debt and Live Prosperously

How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt and Live Prosperously
Jerrold Mundis

This is probably the most helpful book for getting your arms around your personal finances. It has step by step instructions to help you find out how much you spend every month and other tools to help you make sure you get what you need every month without going broke.