Autumn bookshelf

Books for autumn

Cosy up and relax with our pick of the best new books for the darker nights…

Head and Heart Yoga Therapy and Art Therapy Interventions for Mental Health

Ellen G Horowitz has produced a gem of a book aimed at using yoga and art therapy practices to help improve mental wellbeing. It’s useful for yoga teachers and health professionals who want to understand how yoga can enhance mental and physical treatment outcomes. It’s a great mesh of Western psychological ideas with traditional Eastern philosophy and a very pragmatic approach. There are lots of practical exercises, reflection techniques and insightful case studies as well as easy to follow photography sequences. It would be an excellent buy for anyone seeking to broaden their service portfolio since sessions would lend themselves to both individual and group classes online. Published by Handspring.

Trauma Healing in the Yoga Zone

Our second selection from Handspring Publishing is Joann Lutz’s Trauma Healing in the Yoga Zone. Again, this is aimed firmly at professional yoga teachers and mental health workers, including those working within the military environment.

Lutz offers an original and compelling model of nervous-system informed, traumasensitive yoga, drawing on classic yoga, somatic psychotherapy and neuroscience research. It is organised around the eight stages of classic yoga practice and includes scripts of chair yoga postures, the three-part deep breath, and the Integral Yoga version of yoga nidra, for use by professionals who are not certified as yoga teachers.

Tuning the Human Biofield

Sound therapy is a rapidly growing area of holistic therapy. As such, Eileen Day McKusick’s updated guide to the basics of Biofield Tuning, using tuning forks to clear trauma stored in the human energy field, is a thoughtful starting point for those who wish to learn more.

The technique involves using tuning forks of different frequencies to locate stored trauma in the body and then clear it. The book includes detailed maps of the energetic biofield that surrounds the body, showing where specific emotions, memories, traumas, and pain are stored. Again, this could be a useful addition to your reading list if you’re keen to explore new avenues of healing for energy workers, massage therapists, body workers and sound healers.

The Healing Power of Pleasure

At its most fundamental level, Julia Paulette Hollenbery’s latest book takes the idea that what feels good to us, does us good too and helps us discover – or rediscover – sensual pleasure and delight. She classifies these pleasures into seven spiritual “medicines”-slowing down, embodying, deepening, relating, pleasure, power, and potency to help us feel more powerful, more connected and more alive.

The book is filled with reflections, practical somatic and breathing exercises, prompting questions, meditations, and energetic transmissions for each medicine. It seems particularly timely following the pandemic as we reset our priorities and values.

Homebrewed Vinegar

Fermenting expert and best-selling author Kirsten K. Shockey offers a creative and comprehensive guide to making naturally fermented vinegars from a wide variety of ingredients. There are sixty different recipes included, from familiar favourites like Apple cider vinegar more exotic concoctions made from leftover juicing pulp or brown bananas, wildflowers or beer. You can even make your own balsamic vinegar as well as vinegar tonics, infused vinegars, and oxymels.

It’s an ideal book for beginners, covering everything from the chemistry of vinegar making to equipment, brewing, bottling, and aging. There are insights into vinegars made around the world and the traditions associated with this ancient skill.

Our Spiritual DNA

Carmel Niland’s guide to deciphering your spiritual lineage looks at the roles, energies, and essence of 12 Ascended Masters and how each of them holds a strand of our spiritual DNA. It’s a bit outside my personal comfort zone, but Niland explains that alongside our physical double helix DNA, we all carry an energetic code or 12 stranded spiritual DNA that links us back to a divine ancestry. Down throughout the centuries this spiritual DNA conveys itself in patterns of behaviour, character traits, and life purpose, connecting each of us to a specific Ascended Master.

Toxic Legacy

Stephanie Steniff’s Toxic Legacy had been described as the Silent Spring of our time. Steniff, and MIT scientist puts together a convincing case that Glyphosate the active ingredient in the world’s most commonly used weed killer - is responsible for debilitating chronic diseases, including cancer, liver disease and many more. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the most commonly used weed killer in the world. Steniff draws on an increasing body of scientific research suggesting glyphosate’s deadly disruption of the gut microbiome, its crippling effect on protein synthesis, and its impact on the body’s ability to use and transport sulphur, not to mention several landmark legal cases, tells a very different story.

The Book of Stones Robert Simmons and Naisha Ahsian

A must for all lovers of crystals and gemstones, this explores 455 crystals, minerals, gemstones, and their metaphysical energies, including vivid colour photographs for each stone. It’s a mine of useful information and guidance on working with stones and the majority of the listings are illustrated.

It’s a great choice whether you’re just starting out or need an expert reference guide. The authors provide personal insights on the subtle energy properties and spiritual applications of the stones. The entries conclude with the spiritual, emotional, and physical healing qualities of the stone and an affirmation for evoking its potential benefits. This edition also includes an index of the stones’ healing and energetic properties, making it easy to find the stone best suited to your needs.

The Moon Cycle Cook Book Healing in Hospitals and Clinics

We thought this book was so important that we asked the author, Sandy Edwards, to write an article for this issue of the magazine. It’s a compelling, research-based argument for healing to be offered in all hospitals and hospices. After all, what is medicine without treating the whole person, rather than their symptoms?

Holistic therapists will find the account of the largest clinical research trial of spiritual healing in the world fascinating. This outcomes of this two-year medical trial, which involved 200 chronically ill hospital patients demonstrated that spiritual healing (energy medicine) can support the healing process of a patient, whether they are in pain, sick, stressed, or depressed. In many cases, these patients had been suffering for a long time with little hope of recovery. Yet they improved substantially in numerous ways after receiving just five 20-minute healing sessions.

All titles can be ordered from your local bookshop, bought directly from the publisher or bought online. n

In The Moon Cycle Cookbook, bakery founder Devon Loftus and nutritionist Jenna Radomski empower women to nourish themselves with recipes for sweets, savoury meals, and snacks, organised around each of the four phases of the menstrual cycle. Every recipe is formulated with the knowledge of hormonal fluctuations during each cycle phase, using ingredients that replenish and support essential nutrients. The really good thing, though, is that everything tastes great.