I took it in my twenties and, to my relief, answered “no” to enough questions. I took it again in my thirties and stopped answering around question 5 — “Have you given up hobbies or activities you used to enjoy?” — because I thought that was stupid. Of course I’ve given up hobbies and activities I used to enjoy — I have a toddler.

Maybe you’ve never taken the quiz, or maybe you have. I know my in-box is full of emails from people who are asking themselves the same questions that quiz asked me. And their answers pulse with the same level of unnecessary detail and caveats I used to mutter at my computer screen.

I’m going to offer a completely different alternative. This suggestion is likely to make some very smart and well-meaning heads explode, but it’s a question worth asking if we’re ever going to really change how we view this stuff.

Who cares if you’re an alcoholic?

Honestly. Who cares? What would it mean if I told you that you were? What would it mean if I told you you were not?

Let’s play out each scenario:

Scenario 1: Yes, You Are an Alcoholic

Congratulations, you’ve acquired an unwanted label! Instead of feeling empowered to explore your relationship with alcohol with openness and curiosity, it becomes a thing. It means you possibly have to…what? Seek support? Go to a 12-step meeting? Confess your condition to your friends and family?

And now suddenly changing your relationship with alcohol — which could have been a positive choice you make for yourself — now becomes an impossible chore, a “broken piece” in you that you have to “fix,” a standard for judging yourself and others. Your perspective shifts from How can I take the best care of myself possible, so I can feel connected and alive in my life? to feeling jealous and comparing yourself with others who are “not alcoholics” and “get” to drink “normally.”

Now maybe, you don’t mind taking on the label alcoholic because it gives you a real reason to abstain from drinking. It’s cold, hard proof you can show your friends and family and coworkers when they ask why you’re not having wine with dinner. “Oh, I can’t do that anymore,” you say, as you pull your alcoholic ID card from your wallet and lay it on the table with a satisfied smile, “I am an alcoholic.” Kind of like turning down dessert because you’re diabetic. Because what other reason is passable? You couldn’t possibly just…choose not to drink. Shudder.

I’m making this scenario sound absurd because it is. Most people would rather be diagnosed with a personality disorder than alcoholism. What it really comes down to is this: Do you give yourself permission to make your own choices — choices that are good for you?

Scenario 2: No, You’re Not an Alcoholic

You sigh with relief. Thank God, you think. Now I can go back to drinking my wine without worrying that I’ll soon find myself drinking vodka out of the bottle in my bathtub — just to keep from beating the kids.

Maybe you skip the wine here and there because you remember how great you felt for that month and a half when you gave it up for Lent. Maybe you do a Dry July or a Sober October, and each time, you feel that same surprising sense of optimism and openness to life.

But you go back to alcohol because, well, you’re not an alcoholic. Your spark dims a bit. That pesky anxiety gnaws at you. You’re generally hazy and less motivated. But that’s just life, right? You’re not an alcoholic, so these feelings can’t be related to the margarita you had last night. Alcohol’s only real side effect is a hangover, right?

Besides, you can quit easily — whenever you want. What’s two glasses of wine with dinner, anyway? Life is meant to be lived! C’est la vie and carpe diem! You’ve never suffered any negative consequences from drinking, really. You’re not like the girl whose book you read, who crashed her car and got a DUI and left her daughter unattended during a blackout. Or the person who drank in the mornings, or the one who lost custody of his kids, or the one who lost his job because he called in sick too many days because he was hungover.

It’s not like that.

It’s fine.

You’re fine.

It’s not like you’re an alcoholic.

* * *

See what I mean? The label means too much. Addiction is so stigmatized in our society that we think there are only two types of people when it comes to drinking: alcoholics and everyone else. And if you’re not in the first bucket, drinking is fun! In fact, who would quit unless they had to?

One woman wrote me a letter describing how her mood and outlook improved after a month without wine, and — because feeling so much better surprised her — she was concerned she might be an alcoholic. As if only alcoholics feel better when they don’t drink.

Being an alcoholic or not had no bearing on the anxiety and cravings she felt around dinnertime the first week she didn’t drink. No, those cravings surfaced because alcohol is an addictive substance and a social buffer and she wasn’t using it anymore. She’d become used to life with alcohol and had maybe even become addicted to it. Because it’s addictive.

Here’s the dirty little truth no one likes to admit — everyone feels better in the long run when they don’t drink. Not just alcoholics — everyone. Because putting alcohol into your body isn’t life giving; it’s life sucking. Nobody’s life actually improves because of alcohol, even though most people I know would scoff at that — That’s what you think [*wink, wink* *clink, clink*] — and society tells us otherwise ten ways to Sunday.

Most people have no idea what their bodies feel like without it for an extended period of time. Alcohol is so normalized, so everywhere, so much a part of the fabric of mainstream society that most people will never experience life without it unless they’re forced to.

Weird, right?

Isn’t it completely f@#king bizarre that we don’t question (and, in fact, highly encourage) regular consumption of a drug that’s more harmful and causes more deaths than cocaine, heroin, and meth combined? If someone stopped doing coke for a month and felt better, we wouldn’t sit there and wonder whether they were an addict or could go back to recreational line snorting. Or let’s look at smoking, which we were duped for decades into thinking was actually fine, and even healthy! Now that we know better, nobody questions the decision to stop smoking. Smoking is just so obviously stupid and dangerous.

And yet, alcohol is still cool. Unless you’re an alcoholic. In which case you’d better deal with it…

…quietly…

…over there…

…without ruining the party for everyone else.

# # #

Laura McKowen is the bestselling author of We Are the Luckiest, host of the Tell Me Something True podcast, and founder and CEO of The Luckiest Club, a global web-based sobriety support community. Beloved for her soulful and irreverent writing, Laura has been published in The New York Times, and her work has been featured by The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, the Today show, and more. Visit her online at http:/www.lauramckowen.com.  

Excerpted from the book We Are the Luckiest. Copyright ©2020 by Laura McKowen. Printed with permission from New World Library — http://www.newworldlibrary.com.

Many women regard their loss of libido as part of their fading youth. Our libido levels are often a well-kept secret, and not something we consider an acceptable part of social chitchat over cocktails, even with our best friends. There are no standards for a normal level of libido, and there is no such thing as a normal sex drive. What is normal for one couple may be abnormal for another. You can judge your libido only by your own standards. If you are concerned that your sexual desire has diminished, the good news is you can take action to restore it.

Tiredness, lack of energy, and mood swings can put a strain on the most solid relationship. At the same time, falling levels of estrogen can result in the lining of your vagina becoming dry and uncomfortable. When this happens, penetration can become painful and, in extreme cases, the tissue may tear and bleed. If you are also suffering from night sweats, it’s not surprising that you don’t feel very sexy.

Many women suffer in silence, thinking this is an inevitable part of growing older. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are plenty of things you can do naturally to repair the vaginal lining, encourage the cells to produce mucus again, and rekindle your libido.

Quiz: How’s Your Libido?

1. Have you lost your sex drive?
2. Do you have sex less often than you used to?
3. Do you find sex painful?
4. Does your vagina feel dry?
5. Have you stopped looking forward to having sex?
6. Have you stopped communicating with your partner on an intimate level?
7. Are you too tired for sex?
8. Has your enjoyment of sex diminished?
9. Do you make excuses to avoid sex?

If you answered yes to more than two of these questions, try the following action plan to give your sex life a boost.

Causes of Loss of Libido

Low libido may have multiple causes, not all of which are related to menopausal changes. Excessive weight gain or weight loss, irregular periods, hair loss, or excessive hair growth may all signify hormonal problems that can result in a low sex drive. Other hormone disturbances, like thyroid problems or galactorrhea, a white milky discharge from the nipples, can also cause low libido, as can the hormonal changes at the time of menopause that cause night sweats and insomnia. Childbirth — now more common than it used to be among women approaching the age of menopause — also affects libido with rapid changes in hormone levels and disturbed sleep.

Sometimes women are put off sex because intercourse is too painful. The pain may be due to infection, vaginismus (spasm of the vaginal muscles), an enlarged or displaced uterus, or another hormonal abnormality. Additional causes of low libido include a history of long-term illness, lack of energy, and psychologically distressing past experiences.

Sex can also be off putting if it leads to urinary tract infections (UTIs). When the vaginal tissues are fragile, they can be damaged by pressure from penetration. This can make the urethra vulnerable to infection, especially if you are short of vitamin D and magnesium, two common deficiencies.

Stress, worry in the here and now, and depression often take their toll on sex drive. When you are mentally preoccupied with pressing problems, the body naturally diverts its energy to helping you through the troubled times, and sexual desire may take a back seat.

Herbal Helpers

The good news is that there is no need to accept falling libido levels as an inevitable part of aging. Energy levels often begin to wane prior to menopause, as estrogen levels decline and symptoms of estrogen withdrawal and long-term nutritional deficiencies start to show. Symptoms subside, and libido can be rekindled, once nutrient levels have been replenished and the body is supplied with naturally occurring phytoestrogens (see chapter 3). In addition, a number of traditional medicinal herbs contain active ingredients that can improve mood and raise energy levels and libido.

Maca root, cultivated in Peru, has been used as a safe aid to health for more than two thousand years. It stimulates the hormone-producing glands in the body. A few studies suggest that maca can alleviate sexual dysfunction, reduce vaginal dryness, and improve libido. There are thirteen different types of maca. Each has a different color and active ingredient content. Although most of them apparently work better for men than for women, maca has been shown to help to control menopause symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, and fluctuating moods. It may also strengthen bones and improve sleep.

Ginseng is considered to be nonaddictive and far safer to use than stimulants, and is used to reduce the effects of stress, improve sexual performance, boost energy levels, enhance memory, and stimulate the immune system. It contains vitamins A and B6 and zinc, which helps the production of thymic hormones, necessary for the functioning of the immune system.

Ginseng is an adaptogen, which means that it has the ability to normalize body functions. For example, it helps to regulate blood sugar levels, which is of particular use in treating diabetes, and lowers blood pressure if it is too high.

St. John’s wort has also been shown to help boost a waning libido. A German study published a few years ago, on a group of 111 women with libido problems before menopause, showed that 60 percent of the participants had regained their libido significantly after a twelve-week course of 900 mg of St. John’s wort per day.

Horny goat weed (Epimedium, also known as barrenwort) has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. It has been shown to increase sexual interest in both men and women. Another herb, tribulus, thought to increase the production of testosterone in men and increase their sex drive, has also been shown to significantly boost libido in women.

Maryon Stewart is the author of Manage Your Menopause Naturally and 27 other books. A world-renowned healthcare expert, she has helped tens of thousands of women around the world overcome PMS and menopause symptoms without using drugs or hormones. Visit her online at http://www.maryonstewart.com.

Excerpted from the book Manage Your Menopause Naturally. Copyright ©2020 by Maryon Stewart. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

The frequency, duration, and intensity of hot flashes vary from one person to another. You may get several a day or be plagued constantly, day and night. They may last from a few seconds to several minutes. (The average is four minutes.) As well as the sudden rush of heat, you may experience a racing heart, dizziness, anxiety, and irritability.

Night sweats are severe versions of hot flashes that can cause you to wake up drenched in perspiration. You may even have to change your pajamas and sheets.

If you’re woken up this way, night after night, you’re bound to feel exhausted. Worse, because physical contact with a partner can trigger a hot flash, many women avoid it, which can lead to feelings of rejection and relationship problems. Here are some ways to feel better fast.

Cooling Your Hot Flashes

• Don’t be embarrassed by a hot flash.
• The moment you feel one coming on, stop what you’re doing. Take several slow, deep breaths and try to relax. This may help reduce the severity of the hot flash.
• If possible, drink a glass of cold water and sit calmly until it passes.
• Wear layers that you can easily take off when you feel yourself getting hot. Clothes made of natural fibers, such as cotton, help your skin breathe.
• Keep your bedroom cool at night and put a fan, wet wipes, and a cold drink by your bed.
• Use cotton bedlinens and pajamas.
• Eat small, frequent meals. The heat generated by digesting a large meal can sometimes bring on a hot flash.
• Exercise regularly. Being in good shape reduces your propensity to sweat and reduces hot flashes.
• Don’t smoke. Research shows it increases the risk of overheating.
• Include plenty of phytoestrogens in your diet. (
• Try scientifically based supplements, like Promensil and Femmenessence MacaPause, which have been shown to reduce or even eliminate hot flashes and night sweats.

Did You Know?

It’s likely the hot surges you experience are the result of your brain trying to kick-start your ovaries into producing estrogen. Ovarian function does not decline in a straight line, which means that estrogen levels — and the severity of hot flashes — can fluctuate.

Maryon Stewart is the author of Manage Your Menopause Naturally and 27 other books. A world-renowned healthcare expert, she has helped tens of thousands of women around the world overcome PMS and menopause symptoms without using drugs or hormones. Visit her online at http://www.maryonstewart.com/book.

Excerpted from the book Manage Your Menopause Naturally. Copyright ©2020 by Maryon Stewart. Printed with permission from New World Library — .http://www.newworldlibrary.com

Feeling like you are losing your memory at midlife can be very frightening, especially if you think it’s permanent. Many women secretly wonder if these “senior moments” are the beginning of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease or dementia and are truly freaked out.

If you forget what you are saying in midsentence, what you went into a room for, or where you put your car keys, you are not alone. It’s one of the commonest symptoms of menopause. You are not losing your marbles. We all start to forget things as we age, say the experts. Among a group of people asked to memorize a list of seventy-five words read out five times, the average eighteen-year-old scored 54, a forty-five-year-old scored 47, and a sixty-five-year-old scored just 37.

No one knows the reason for sure, but it’s thought most memory problems at this time of life are due to a combination of poor concentration, lack of motivation, tiredness, anxiety, and stress, rather than loss of brain cells. Feeling fuzzy-headed is also thought to be related to the hormonal ups and downs associated with menopause. Nutrition plays a role too: the brain goes into economy mode when it has a low level of nutrients, which makes thinking less clear. And as we grow older, our circulation slows down, and less oxygen reaches our brain cells.

Some parts of the brain particularly involved with verbal memory are rich in estrogen receptors, so there could be a physiological link between hormonal status and brain function, as suggested by research undertaken by Sandra File at Guy’s Hospital in London.

Like our muscles, our brain needs exercise in order to function optimally. Many of us don’t stretch our brains as much as we could. Following a nutrient-dense and phytoestrogen-rich diet, leading an active lifestyle, not smoking, limiting alcohol intake, and keeping your brain well exercised can all help to keep you sharp.

Food for Thought

The brain is dependent on glucose, essential fats, and phospholipids. Several B vitamins are also essential for memory and mental performance. Zinc and magnesium are necessary for neurotransmitter function. It follows that including certain nutrients in your diet can help boost your concentration, attention span, and both short- and long-term memory. Research also suggests that brain-boosting supplements can help improve your memory. Indeed more than three hundred medical studies have been published on memory, most indicating the benefits of taking daily supplements.

An extract made from the leaves of Gingko biloba, commonly known as gingko or the Chinese maidenhair tree, has gained recognition over the past thirty years for helping restore vascular function and memory. Ginkgo improves circulation, which in turn increases blood flow, carrying more nutrients and oxygen to the brain. This helps restore short-term and long-term memory, helping you to think more clearly and concentrate better.

Foods rich in the antioxidant vitamins A, C, and E help mop up free radicals, the rogue molecules that can cause cell damage in the body, including the brain. Good sources include richly colored fruits and vegetables, such as bananas, red peppers, spinach, and oranges.

Oily fish is rich in omega-3 essential fatty acids and folate, which are vital for the functioning of the brain and nervous system. Good sources include sardines, salmon, herring, anchovies, and mackerel.

Eating soy has been shown to improve memory in menopausal women. These research findings have led to speculation that soy may also help maintain cognitive function in older women and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Quiz: How Sharp Is Your Brain?

• Do you ever forget what you went upstairs for?
• Do you have trouble remembering telephone numbers?
• Do you find it hard to concentrate?
• Do you forget a person’s name the moment after you’ve been introduced?
• Are you prone to absentminded acts, such as putting milk in the cupboard instead of the refrigerator?
• Have you ever missed an appointment because you forgot it? Do you have to write arrangements down the minute you make them for fear of forgetting them?
• Have you ever forgotten the name of someone you know well?
• Do you frequently lose your car keys?
• Have you ever forgotten what you were saying midsentence?
• Have you ever gone to mention something important to someone, but gone completely blank?
• Have you ever put something in the oven and forgotten to take it out?
• Have you ever said you would do something for someone, but completely forgotten to do it?

If you answered yes to more than three questions, it’s time to try some memory-boosting foods and supplements, as well as doing some mental exercises.

Staying Sharp

Many studies show that stimulation is the key to good memory and that people who take part in lots of different types of mental activity have better powers of recall. The more active your brain is, the better your memory is likely to be, and the more different ways you use your mind, the easier you’ll find it to remember things. It’s all to do with being active, rather than passive: whether you actively concentrate and focus on things or whether you just let them wash over you.

Try the following exercises to sharpen your mental faculties:

• Do a mental exercise every day — a crossword, sudoku, word search, or quiz. If you don’t know the solution, look it up, then try to remember it the next day.
• When doing your finances, ditch the calculator and use your brain instead.
• Take up new activities — gardening, knitting, or anything involving physical coordination.
• Memorize your shopping list before going to the store.
• Engage in games that stretch your brain, such as chess or bridge.

Our memory allows us to learn new things and store millions of facts and figures in words, sound, and picture form. Even if we fed information into our brain every second of our lives, it would find room to store all we needed to recall. We rely on the information retained in our memory to respond to environmental and social stimulation every day of our lives.

Maryon Stewart is the author of Manage Your Menopause Naturally and 27 other books. A world-renowned healthcare expert, she has helped tens of thousands of women around the world overcome PMS and menopause symptoms without using drugs or hormones. Visit her online at http://www.maryonstewart.com/book.

Excerpted from the book Manage Your Menopause Naturally. Copyright ©2020 by Maryon Stewart. Printed with permission from New World Library — http://www.newworldlibrary.com.

These findings are consistent with a 2017 study by Dr. William Pridgen that suggested taking the anti-EBV medications Famvir and Celebrex for six months can help a subset of people with CFS and fibromyalgia. I’ve also seen this in thousands of people that I’ve treated.

Meanwhile, another recent study shows that an old diuretic called spironolactone (Aldactone) is also active against Epstein-Barr syndrome. Combining it with other antiviral treatments may enhance their effectiveness, although this must be done cautiously, as the diuretic can lower both testosterone and blood volume. And both of these are already low in people with fibromyalgia.

The price of spironolactone treatment is only $0.20 a day. For most healthy people, it’s also quite safe. However, there are concerns using it to treat CFS/FMS:

• Because it’s a diuretic, spironolactone can dehydrate people. But people with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia already tend to be chronically dehydrated. This is because having CFS/FMS lowers your antidiuretic hormone, which leaves you “drinking like a fish and peeing like a racehorse.” Some people I’ve treated have improved with prescription antidiuretic hormone pills (DDAVP or vasopressin, the same medication used for bed wetting). In those needing spironolactone who have low blood pressure or orthostatic intolerance, it can be combined with the DDAVP.
• Spironolactone lowers testosterone levels, which are already in the lowest 30% of the population in 70% of men and women with CFS and fibromyalgia. Research by Prof. Hillary White of Dartmouth showed that treating women who had fibromyalgia with testosterone, despite normal blood levels, decreased their pain. So testosterone levels need to be monitored and optimized when using this treatment.
• Anything that kills off a chronic infection can trigger a “Herxheimer reaction,” which is a severe flare up in symptoms. Years ago, a young woman I was treating was put on spironolactone for high testosterone (called polycystic ovarian syndrome). The first dose put her in the emergency room. I assumed it was because of the diuretic effect and her orthostatic intolerance. But now I suspect it was a Herxheimer reaction. So when adding spironolactone, especially combined with other antivirals, it’s important to start with a very low dose.

Bottom Line?

Spironolactone offers another potential tool for treating people whose CFS and fibromyalgia began with an acute viral infection, have the severe form that leaves them housebound, or who have chronic flu-like symptoms. However, it needs to be used cautiously for the reasons noted above. Fortunately, simple measures can prevent these problems.

In her new memoir We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life (New World Library, January 7, 2020), McKowen flips the script on how we talk about addiction and encourages readers not to ask, “Is this bad enough that I have to change?” but rather, “Is this good enough for me to stay the same?”

We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.

For so long, all I could see was what I would be losing by giving up drinking — love being only one representation of many. Despite all the aphorisms and positive thinking and stories I’d heard from other sober people promising me otherwise, all I could feel was the loss. Augusten Burroughs, in his book This Is How, said that what worked for him in getting sober was to find something he loved more than drinking. I understood that intellectually, and it sounded awfully catchy and inspiring, but it just didn’t feel true for me.

Being in that room with Seane, feeling whatever had been sparking up in me — even in the midst of all the emotional angst and discomfort — I started to get it. For the first time, I could imagine chasing something bigger.

Here’s what is true, for you and for me: the grief and the sadness are real. When you give up something you’ve relied on as heavily as I relied on alcohol, even when that something is actively destroying your life, it is a true loss. You can’t deny that, and more importantly, you don’t have to.

I thought there was something wrong with me for feeling so heartbroken. How could I actively miss a thing that had nearly cost me everything, including Alma?

There was nothing wrong with me, though. Alcohol had been my friend. It had carried me through a lot of pain I might have otherwise not been able to withstand. It had softened experiences that needed to be softened. It had been there for me always, without question. My drinking — and whatever it is you do to feel better — was born of a natural impulse to soothe, to connect, to feel love. And although alcohol hadn’t actually delivered those things, it was absolutely yoked to them in my mind. In my heart and body, too. It was just what I knew.

So of course I was terrified without it. Of course I missed it. The absence of it was terrible. And necessary. Maybe it’s helpful to linger there for a minute, in the terrible and the necessary. To start to see them as the same. Maybe in this way, pain is not such a problem.

When I saw Seane up there, doing what she did, I realized it wasn’t in spite of her pain that she was doing these things but because of it. She knew exactly what it took to walk through the fire. That is what I recognized in her. That was why I believed her.

Because that strength was in me, too.

I had always quashed my pain and cut it off before it could burn all the way through. I drank it away or ate it away or disappeared into another person or work. Being there over those four days, without contact with Jon or Alma or the comforts of home, had given me a taste of what it was like to just let it burn. I felt it. I felt it all over my body. And although it was excruciating most of the time, there were a few moments when I surrendered the fight and simply allowed everything to wash over me. In those moments, I found that right alongside the sharp intensity and unease, there was some small part of me willing to stay, another voice softly saying, I am willing to be here.

Behind all those nos and never-agains is a much bigger yes. It might not seem clear now, but it will be clear soon. Listen to the voice. Listen to your body. This is in you already.

There is a life that is calling you forward, begging you to meet its eye, to glimpse its vision for you. You can get only so far by running away from what you do not want. Eventually you will have to turn toward what you do. You will have to run toward a bigger yes.

Excerpted from the book We Are the Luckiest. Copyright ©2020 by Laura McKowen. Printed with permission from New World Library — http://www.newworldlibrary.com.

Starting in the 1960s, Duke was an ecologist with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), joining Battelle Columbus Laboratories (1965-71) for ecological and ethnobotanical studies in Panama and Colombia. During this formative period, Duke lived with various ethnic groups, pursuing what became a lifelong passion for learning from peoples whose traditions are rich with knowledge of the healing properties of plants. Eventually, Duke became chief of the USDA Medicinal Plant Resources Laboratory.

Duke’s book, The Green Pharmacy (St. Martin’s, 1997), is the standard setter in its field, having sold over one million copies in English. It is now translated into eight languages. Duke has also authored or co-authored 40 other books on herbs, spices and foods, along with 400 articles (half in peer-reviewed journals). He remains a popular lecturer on the subjects of ethnobotany, herbs, medicinal plants, and new crops and their ecology.

In 1995, Duke retired after 30 years with the USDA. Before retiring, he brought his Father Nature’s Farmacy database online at USDA. It is now one of the most frequently consulted databases with the Plant Genome Project at USDA. Duke’s database is especially useful for determining biological activities and healing potentials of food ands herbs.

For further information: www.greenpharmacy.com.

Please tell us how you first fell in love with plants.

There was an old man across the street from me in the Birmingham, Alabama suburbs that had his rabbits to talk to, and every now and then he would walk me through the nearby woods in the foothills. He taught me about chestnuts when we had chestnuts, and watercress. That was when I was about age five, and I think he was about as old and gangly as I am now. We both profited from these mutual walks through the woods. And I have been in love with botany ever since.

All of us learned in grade school that many of the first European explorers set sail across the ocean in search of spices. I personally love spices but I can’t really see risking life and limb to procure them. What’s your take on this?

I have a bad poem on that. It only takes four or five lines. I recited this in ’92 when it was the 500th anniversary of Columbus setting sail. The poem goes like this: “Columbus set sail/looking for black Indians and black pepper/and he took the wrong ocean/and he found red Indians and red pepper/and he changed the cuisine of the world.” As of today, capsicum (red pepper) is one of my ten favorite medicinal spices, and one that is recommended for certain maladies that I have.

What are some of your other favorite spices?

Two years ago, I would have said that garlic is the most important in my garden. Garlic is in more than 20 plots of the 80 plots in my garden. It’s also good for some of my ailments. It’s a constant battle in my mind over which is most important to me. But garlic is so good to eat and so easy to grow, that I can find it in one condition or another in my garden year-round.

Turmeric is another plant which I have in my garden but I’ll need to move it into my greenhouse any day now. Ginger, and cinnamon (which is a shrub), I’ll move them into the greenhouse, too. Those are good medicines. I have a database of 2500 plants, of which I would call 200 of them spices. I understand that my database is one of the most frequently visited at the USDA.

Considering the amount of data on handled by the USDA, that’s quite impressive. Prior to your developing these databases that the USDA now keeps, did such databases exist? Did they have other herb or spice databases that you built on? Or are you the one who started this project?

They had none at the USDA. This started in 1977 or 1978, when the USDA accepted my assignment to a major anticancer program of the National Cancer Institute. At that time, I was sent to lead a small group to look for plants that might have anticancer activity, funded by the National Cancer Institute. So that means that way back in 1978, I started this database. It was primitive but we’ve improved it.

When I’m long gone, that will still be there. [In my own personal database] I’ve got almost three times as much data on some of these same questions as you could ask the USDA database tonight. I can take it proprietary, but if I can’t find a buyer for it, I will dump it all into the USDA database and improve it probably five- or six-fold.

Either way, that’s a wonderful legacy to have created and to pass on to others. You mentioned that, starting in the late 1970s, you were part of a project looking for potentially anticancer herbs. Where did that take you in your travels?

My whole lab traveled a lot. I had at least three trips to China, one trip to Panama (my old stomping grounds), one to Ecuador and one to Syria. And though not all of these were necessarily due to the anticancer program, in my USDA career I’ve been to over 50 countries.

I’ve had a charmed career! My God, I feel sorry for those people who spend their 30 years studying wheat or corn. I’ve landed from helicopters in ganja fields in Jamaica, in opium fields in Laos, and driven into coca fields back in the 1970s, when it wasn’t dangerous. I was involved with the USDA alternative crops program where we would try to convince farmers that if they would phase out the narcotics, they would give them some interesting alternatives that might be remuneratively competitive.

How did that work out?

You may have noticed I used the words, “might be” … Because if we came up with a product that was more competitive, the narcs would just pay more. It was a non-winnable situation. I don’t think the USDA would say that, though. Frankly, I think ganja is a great medicinal plant, much better than the synthetic copycats, which cost much more.

You’ve authored or co-authored many books on herbs, spices and foods. Some are academic treatises and others, like the classic bestseller, The Green Pharmacy, are for general audiences. Looking back on your publishing life, what work or works do you recall as the most satisfying, either because you loved writing them or because of the influence they had on readers?

Every time someone comes to a tour of the garden here, we show them a few of the books that I have on hand. And when they ask, “Which one would you buy if you were only going to buy one?” I always say The Green Pharmacy. It sold over a million copies in English and is now translated into eight languages. It was a turning point for me and I actually retired from the USDA a year early so I could work on that. I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made. That’s why I have the Green Pharmacy Garden, with 300 species of plants, mostly built like the chapters of that book. We have a stone in the middle of a plot, say the Alzheimer’s Plot. There, we’ll see rosemary, sage, periwinkle and some of the plants that are still arguably better than the pharmaceuticals like Aricept.

Tell us more about the Green Pharmacy Garden.

It’s a south-facing slope on my home property here. It will revert, upon my death and my wife’s death, to the Tai Sophia Institute, which is an acupuncture and healing institute at the moment, but it’s liable to become part of a laureate university system all over the world.

The garden on the south slope has four long rows that are sort of like sloped terraces, and in each we have about 20 plots. In each plot, we’ve gathered the best medicinal plants for different ailments. For example, we have a Prostate Plot. We have the best sources of lycopene there – the saw palmetto (which we have to bring in before frost arrives), the stinging nettle, and the African pygeum, proven to help the prostate. That’s just one of the 80 plots in the garden. I can send to those who wish a map of the garden, listing all the species in each plot. It’s sort of like a catalog.

Science marches on and we keep learning new things that might be promising. And frankly, I’m really eager, as is my head gardener, Helen Metzman, to get the latest into them. She is being paid by Tai Sophia. She is hardworking, an artist. She builds beautiful structures out of bamboo and vines to keep the garden a place of beauty as well as a place of education.

What role do you have in the herbal masters program at Tai Sophia? Are you teaching there? Guest lecturing?

I’m glad you asked. My garden is where I teach. We like to call it “Tai South Campus.” It’s roughly one and a half miles, as the crow flies, from the Tai Sophia main campus. The students love to come down here for classes. Instead of my giving them a bunch of slides, we squeeze and tug and defoliate. We have one specimen plant, the jewel weed, that ejaculates its seed into the student’s hand. It’s a hands-on experience.

I recall going on an herb walk a long time ago in Iowa and being told that jewel weed was very helpful for poison ivy.

A long-deceased researcher friend of mine discovered that there is an antihistaminic compound in the jewel weed which explains some of the folklore. But it turns out, wildly and surprisingly to almost anyone, that the active ingredient in jewel weed is lawsone, which is also the active ingredient in the dye called henna. Just two weeks ago in class, one of the students rubbed into one side of my goatee, the reddish roots, or prop roots, of the jewel weed. We didn’t wash it for a few days, and it gave me a light yellow tint to my goatee. It doesn’t really work well on gray hair; henna and lawsone work better on darker hair.

A century or so ago, there was a massive shift in the practice of medicine from plants as the primary healing agents (which had been true since the dawn of humanity) to synthetic pharmaceuticals. What would you say was lost and gained in that shift?

Synthetic pharmaceuticals, your genes have never known. And that’s why these FDA approved synthetic chemicals kill over 100,000 people a year. People have no genetic experience with them. We’ve lost the synergies of the mixtures of the 5000 chemicals in each herb, which your genes have known for thousands of years (if you’re Biblically oriented) or millions of years (if you’re evolutionarily oriented).

Each herb, from turmeric to hot pepper, contains about 5000 biological chemicals, or phytochemicals. All are biologically active. I mean, that’s incredible! It’s chaotic. Your genes know these things that your ancestors ate, and your genes will mine them like menus of active chemicals, and pull out the ones it wants and piss out the ones it doesn’t want. [See the Multiple Activities Menu at http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/dev/all.html]. That’s what homeostasis is. You and I and most alternative practitioners know about that, but few of the allopaths think about the fact that the synthetics are unknown to your genes. When you take them, it’s going to throw you out of balance. It might help you in some ways, but it might throw you out of balance in other ways. And then you’ll return to the physician to find out what to do for the problems the synthetic caused.

In some other countries, medical physicians prescribe herbs far more than American doctors. For example, German MDs prescribe St. John’s wort for depression more often than prescription medications like Prozac and Paxil. Why is there such a difference?

America is run on a faulty premise, “Better living through chemistry.” And we have been convinced (though I’ve never been convinced) that herbs are dangerous and that synthetic chemistry is the answer to all our problems, when literally it is the genesis of most of our problems.

Tell us about your travels to the rainforests of Central and South America.

Believe it or not, although I’ve been interested in botany and edible plants since the age of five, I didn’t have a major conversion in my life until I moved to Panama in 1965 with my wife and my very young children. And while there, I worked with the Choco Indians and the Kuna Indians in the eastern part of Panama, which is very sparsely populated.

While I was living with these wonderful people, I saw that their children were just as happy and healthy as my children back in the Panama Canal Zone, with the best of American allopathic medicine. And I said to myself, “These Indians are on the right track, if not the righter track.” That was my mid-life conversion to the belief that herbal medicine is better than what we’ve been getting. I truly believe that we are being killed by our medicine. Medicine is the number four killer in the U.S. these days and none of these herbs are doing this killing.

When you take an herb, you get a menu with those 5000 chemicals, which can often help things you weren’t even seeking help for. You take the synthetic medicine and it can help, especially if the diagnosis is correct (and about 50 percent of diagnoses aren’t). But taking any pharmaceutical will upset your body more than if you took an herb. So we’ve gone the wrong direction. And I think those Europeans, who at least tolerate prescribing the herbs, are way ahead of us.

You mentioned something about people visiting your garden and spoke about the Tai Sophia students coming there to learn about the plants. Do you encourage visits by others who are interested?

I like to have groups of between 20 and 30, for a couple of hours. I show them, among my 300 plants in the garden, those that are currently of greatest interest to me. This week, cinnamon is of interest to me, because Avandia [a prescription diabetes medication] is close to being taken off the market, and cinnamon is infinitely better than Avandia. Vioxx has been taken off the market, and I would show them that capsaicin, from the hot pepper, is a better Cox-2 inhibitor than Vioxx was. Vioxx killed 90,000 people within ten years. We’ve gone in the wrong direction. I’ve even had the FDA out here four times, but they were lower echelon people who think more like I do. It’s almost as if the upper echelons are on the payroll of Big Pharma.

It’s nice to know that there is at least someone within the bowels of the bureaucracy with some creative thinking.

The upper echelons of the bureaucracy would not even let us say that prunes are a laxative because it hasn’t been proven to their satisfaction. Let them eat prunes!

That says it all, doesn’t it? Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers?

Well, I’ve been thinking all day about lycopene, from tomato and an herb that I have in the garden which has a lot more lycopene than tomato.

Lycopene is connected with red color in plants, correct?

Yes. The best source I have here among the plants that have been analyzed is an invasive weed called Russian olive or autumn olive. It’s richer in lycopene than tomato, watermelon, guava and the flower pot marigold. Lycopene could probably help prevent every cancer that’s on the books. Turmeric is probably even better. I would recommend those to anyone with any hormone-related cancer. I would also tell them not to listen to their allopath if they tell them, “Don’t you dare take the antioxidants while we’re shooting you with chemotherapeutics.” That’s controversial, I know, but I certainly think that turmeric could be proven better than any chemotherapeutic out there.

But because the turmeric plant can’t be easily patented like a drug, there’s no financial incentive for a drug company to make the necessary investment to test that hypothesis. In theory, government could fund the studies, but they haven’t. Also, I’m guessing that a study in which a group of cancer patients does not receive chemotherapy probably could not be approved, as things stand now.

It costs $1.7 billion now to prove a single chemical according to FDA specifications. And turmeric, provably, has 5000 chemicals. How much would that cost? And what company, or what country, has that kind of money? FDA and FTC are costing many American lives, making it impossible to attain this simple check. The way they could check it out would be to set up a clinical trial. Is turmeric better? Prove us wrong. Instead, the drug companies compare their drug to another drug, or with a placebo.

Daniel Redwood, DC, the interviewer, is a Professor at Cleveland Chiropractic College-Kansas City, and Editor-in-Chief of Health Insights Today and The Daily HIT.

TF: How did you happen to leave college to study at the Esalen Institute?

KD: By the end of my junior year, that was 1970, I’d read every book on awareness, growth, and body work I could find. The authors of many of the best books turned out to be at Esalen. It was clear to me that something new was going on out there that wasn’t happening on my campus. I decided to go right to the source. It was probably the smartest thing I ever did. I spent six months at Esalen, taking dozens of workshops—yoga workshops, encounter workshops, massage workshops, sensitivity workshops, t’ai chi workshops.

You were also saying that Maslow’s book, Toward a Psychology of Being, was a very, important one for you around that time.

Yes. It’s a great book. It provided the whole context within which I was starting to think. It talks about life as being a continuum, with sickness and problems on one end and creativity and vitality, aliveness and brilliance on the other. Maslow suggests that we should experience ourselves as including that whole continuum. We are both the problems and the brilliance. He talks about a kind of growth in which we come to accept both. He calls this kind of acceptance “actualization.” I would recommend that book to anyone interested in body work or personal growth.

Another important book was Will Schutz’s Joy. It spoke of honesty and sensitivity and authenticity. It was a very revolutionary book when it came out in 1967. Since then these ideas have been widely accepted in education and religion and psychology.

Fritz Perls’ books, too Gestalt Therapy Verbatim and In and Out of the Garbage Pail. I really liked his notion of seeing yourself as a whole variety of sometimes disharmonious parts in relation to each other. And working with the separate parts to achieve a more integrated state.

What were the main ideas that the work at Esalen was based on?

I thought of them as realizations. One of the main ones was self-responsibility. I realized that I was responsible for myself to a much, much larger extent than I’d ever imagined. It soon became very clear that I was making choices in the way I breathed and the way I got sick and the way I perceived other people. I learned that I had many more alternatives than I had realized. I began to discover a much greater degree of freedom in my life than anyone had ever led me to believe.

Somehow, up to then, I’d picked up the belief that I wasn’t really empowered in my own right. That I needed to depend on my parents and my teachers and other kinds of “experts.” It was an amazing realization to discover that I was really at the root of my own life. It was pretty shattering, too, because I had to assume responsibility for a lot of situations I’d been blaming on other people and on institutions. On the other hand, I suddenly felt immensely powerful, almost godlike. I realized that if I chose to work on it, I could run a marathon, raise my IQ, learn to control my heartbeat—to do all kinds of things I’d never let myself believe I might be able to do.

What were some other realizations?

Another significant one was seeing the ways in which the mind and body were so intimately involved—like dancing partners. The mind really wasn’t separate from the body. Thinking and feeling and perceiving didn’t take place in some little box behind the eyes, as I’d always believed. My mind was present in every cell in my body. That was why the group leader in that early body work group had been able to read out my whole character. It was all there! I got so I could tell a great deal about a person by seeing them stand or sit or walk.

I learned that stress and emotional tension can become focused in a specific part of the body, and that if this happens over a long period of time it will permanently shape the person’s posture so that every movement will express that pattern. And the parts of the body in which emotions are trapped will be the parts most likely to develop malfunctions. For example, if a person needs to cry, but won’t let himself, he may stop the crying by clinching his jaw. If the jaw is held tightly, over a long period, chronic tension is likely to develop in the tempero-mandibular joint or grinding of the teeth or headaches. Or unexpressed anger, trapped in the abdomen, can lead to a wide variety of disorders.

So illness can come from unexpressed emotions.

Yes, and the opposite is also true. If a person in creative or unusually vital or energetic, it’s not just a matter of genetics or blind luck, it’s a result of choices—conscious or unconscious—that he or she is making every day.

So, the body isn’t just a static object, but a constantly-changing, pliable organism.

Yes. We are constantly in process. Our bodies are constantly being shaped by the choices we do—or don’t—make. We can passively let things go on as they are, or we can choose to make changes. I can notice that certain joints are tight and do yoga to loosen them up. If I’m feeling tense and scattered, I can meditate and actually change the kinds of brain waves I’m generating. If I’m having difficulty in personal relationships, I can get feedback from friends on my personal style of relating to people and try some new alternatives. I create myself with the choices I make every day.

So that’s what you started doing at Esalen.

Yes. I started noticing what kinds of choices made me feel good and what choices made me feel unwell. Later, when I started working as a therapist, I tried to help other people learn how to make similar kinds of choices, to design their own lives healthfully. I found that there was a real hunger for tools and skills of physical and psychological self-care.

Why do you think we are seeing this sudden interest in self-responsibility?

I think that a lot of us, whether we’re psychologists or housewives or shoe salesmen, are discovering that we’re not as healthy and fulfilled as we had dreams of being. A lot of people are discovering that giving all your faith and power to your doctor isn’t going to make you any healthier. The feeling that “I don’t know anything about my health and I don’t want to know,” which has been the predominant attitude in this culture, is really changing. People are realizing that an authoritarian medical system in which patients give over all their power to the doctors and function as though they’re deaf, dumb, and blind just isn’t meeting their needs. People are ready to take back a good deal of that power. People want to take care of themselves. And I think that the various kinds of body work are a big part of that.

What are the main approaches to body work?

One useful way of getting your bearings in the field of body work is to group kinds of body work by the general approach. Let me outline ten general kinds of self-care skills in the field of body work:

1. developing muscular strength and tone;

2. developing aerobic fitness;

3. developing flexibility:

4. developing relaxation skills;

5. developing breathing skills;

6. developing neuromuscular coordination;

7. using massage to develop sensory awareness and to fulfill our need to be touched;

8. working on emotions through the body;

9. using the mind to influence the body;

10. using the body to center the mind.
Of course, there’s a great deal of overlap among these ten general approaches.

Developing muscular strength—would that be something like weight lifting?

Yes. That’s one specific way. Pushups, swimming, tennis, basketball, housework, walking, running—any activity that uses the muscles. Anything that makes us really exert ourselves. Muscles that aren’t used get flabby and lose their tone. In addition, it’s important to remember that all the muscles in the body need to be developed in a balanced way. So activities that use a broad range of muscles are the best.

I’d like to ask you, as you go along, to suggest some of the best books for each of the ten approaches.

Sure. For developing muscular strength, the best overall- book is The East-West Exercise Book, by David Smith. General approach number two is developing aerobic fitness, building up the heart as a muscle. It’s a very valuable addition to an exercise program to get a stethoscope and just spend some time listening to your heart. And, of course, monitoring your pulse is an important part of such a program.

In developing an aerobics program, it’s important to remember that you need to perform a vigorous activity such as running, swimming, rowing, or rope jumping—wherein your body is exerting itself to 75 percent of its maximum pulse rate for at least fifteen minutes at least three times a week.

Two other excellent books on improving the health of your heart are Type A Behavior and Your Heart and The American Way of Life Need Not Be Dangerous to Your Health. The best book on aerobics exercise programs is The Aerobics Way, by Kenneth Cooper.

The third category on your list was developing flexibility.

This is where activities like yoga come in. Hatha yoga is a system of postures and exercises designed to gently stretch and tone all the muscles of the body. Yoga works to systematically lengthen, vitalize, and integrate the muscles of the body and to improve circulation and glandular nervous system function. It not only makes you more flexible, but it serves as a means of centering meditation as well.

Four beginning yoga books that many people have found helpful are Richard Hittelman’s Guide to Yoga, The Light of Yoga Society’s Beginner’s Manual, Jess Steam’s Yoga, Youth, and Reincarnation, and Swami Vishnu Devananda’s The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga. A good introduction for older people is provided in Easy Does It Yoga for People Over 60. My favorite introduction to the philosophies behind doing yoga is Joel Kramer’s The Passionate Mind. And the very best advanced book on yoga is the classic by B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga (revised edition).

You also list relaxation skills as an approach to body work.

Few people are really good at voluntarily relaxing their bodies. As the stress of modern life increases, it becomes essential that we learn relaxation skills and take the time to practice them regularly. One of the pioneers in relaxation training was Edmund Jacobson. His system is called progressive relaxation. It’s described in his book You Must Relax!—I’ve always thought that was a pretty funny title. Another system of relaxation training is autogenics. It’s well described in Norman Shealy’s book 90 Days to Self-Health. There’s also a good cassette tape, Autogenic Training, by Vera Fryling, and a good anthology of approaches to relaxation is John White and James Fadiman’s Relax. My favorite book on preventing stress is Ken Pelletier’s Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer.

Another approach you cite is developing breathing skills.

Paying attention to breathing is one of the most underrated approaches to body work. The air we breathe gives us life, yet most of us use only 20 to 30 percent of our lung capacity. We’ve used deep breathing exercises with older people at SAGE, and we’ve found that when people begin to breathe more deeply, their bodies and minds become revitalized. They become more alert and alive. Depression and anxiety often fall away.

Breathing exercises can also help you relax. Working on breathing can be a way to get more deeply in touch with feelings, too. People who are tense and depressed tend to breathe shallowly. A person in a relaxed, joyful state will automatically breathe more deeply.

The best practical book on breathing skills I know of is Breathe Away Your Tension, by Bruno Geba.

Describe what you mean by neuromuscular coordination as an approach to body work.

As we grow up, we learn to walk and to move in certain ways, and then, in early adulthood, our neuromuscular development diminishes and, unless we become dancers or acrobats, we fall into a few familiar patterns of moving our bodies. Many kinds of exercises, like running, involve the repetition of a limited range of movements and therefore leave much to be desired in the way of developing our full neuromuscular capacities. These approaches either encourage us to perform common, everyday movements in new ways or to move in some totally new ways. Improvisational dance and Feldenkrais exercises are two good examples of such approaches.

You can make up your own ways of doing new things with your body, too, like cleaning the house or washing the dishes with your other hand. Or learning to write with your nondominant hand. Or your toes. Or blindfolding yourself and exploring the world using only your other senses. Anything that takes you out of your normal patterns of muscular or sensory activity can be considered valid body work.

These approaches try to get your mind out of a rut. For examples, runners can experiment with adding play, movement, and dance to their regular run. Try running at varying speeds or sideways. Or backward. Of course, there are other sports, like basketball, that require constant improvisation. Aikido, a noncombat form of the martial arts, requires constant improvisation. It’s a good example of high-level training in neuromuscular sophistication. So is playing a musical instrument.

What are some good books in this area?

Two books by Moishe Feldenkrais, Awareness Through Movement and The Case of Norah, and Mabel Ellsworth Todd’s The Thinking Body. A good book on dance is Sweigard’s Human Movement Potential.

Approach number seven is massage.

In massage, one person uses his or her hands to touch and manipulate the body of another. There are many types of massage. Ideally, massage will accomplish several major goals.

Receiving a massage is an excellent way to become comfortable being touched by another person. This sounds pretty elementary, but for many of us, being touched in a nonsexual, caring fashion is not a usual part of our daily lives.

Light massage can facilitate relaxation and stimulate the sensory nervous system. Deeper massage can actually release the tension in our muscles. All kinds of massage can increase circulation and glandular functioning and promote a greater sense of well-being and aliveness.

The best overall how-to-get started book on massage is George Downing’s The Massage Book. Another book that does a nice job of summarizing the importance of being touched for our development and well-being is Ashley Montagu’s Touching.

The eighth approach is working on emotions through the body.

Emotions live in the body, and if they’re not allowed to express themselves, they may become lodged in the body as tension. Many of these approaches make uses of expressive activities in order to relieve the body of stress, frustration, and unresolved feelings. For example, instead of just stretching, you might stretch and scream or yell or make faces. Or you might hit a pillow or kick the floor to release tension. Or you might have a pretend fight with someone using Doffers kind of big, well-padded bat.

In some approaches, like bioenergetics, a therapist manipulates different areas while you focus on the memories and feelings that come up as the tension in the various parts of the body is released.

Nearly all the emotion-focused kinds of body work have grown out of the work of Wilhelm Reich. Rolling, Reichian energetics, Postural Integration, Radix, neoReichian therapies, bioenergetics, gestalt therapy, sensory awareness—these are some examples of body work methods that deal with feelings. Reich’s big contribution was the idea that when emotions lodge in the body, they can distort the body’s structure and impair its function. He then found that it was possible for these emotions to be released, leaving the individual not only feeling better but less susceptible to illness.

Would you recommend any books by Reich himself?

Probably not to start with. Reading Reich is like reading the Torah. There are some good books about Reich, though. Boadella’s book, Wilhelm Reich, The Evolution of His Work, is the best biography. Man in the Trap, by Elsworth Baker, is the best book on his clinical practice, and Bioenergetics, by Alexander Lowen, is a good introduction to Reichian thought. Then, and only then, for a general introduction to Reich’s own writings, I’d suggest The Selected Writings of Wilhelm Reich.

How about number nine, using the mind to influence the body?

In recent years there’s been a growing appreciation for the ways in which the mind can influence the functioning of the body. While most mind-body relationships take place outside of our conscious awareness, we can learn to train our minds to influence our bodies in positive, healing ways.

If you close your eyes and imagine that you’re getting beaten up, your mind will generate one kind of body state. If you imagine that you’re making love, it’ll generate another.

If I asked you to imagine that you’re lying on a warm, sunny beach on a quiet tropical island, your body would probably become more relaxed. Obviously, by choosing certain kinds of visualizations and following certain kinds of suggestions, you can put your body into various states. Some of these states can be useful for relaxing or for healing. Some techniques that make use of this approach are biofeedback, autogenics, selfhypnosis, and visualization.

A good book on visualization is Samuels and Samuels’ Seeing With the Mind’s Eye. Some others on influencing the body through the mind are Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer, by Ken Pelletier, and The Mind /Body Effect, by Herbert Benson.

That brings us to the last category using the body to center the mind.

In these approaches, the idea is to focus the body in such a way so that the mind becomes quiet and clear. Just as stress and unwellness in the body can generate confusion in the mind, stillness in the body can help to produce a deep state of peace of mind.

Probably the most well-known of these approaches is meditation in its various forms. These approaches involve sitting in an alert stillness in order to develop a very centered, transpersonal aspect of the mind. Some of the approaches to mental centering are phrased in religious language. Others are strictly secular. Yogis and meditators have been practicing these kinds of disciplines for years, but contemporary science has only become aware of them recently.

Herbert Benson’s The Relaxation Response is a good overview of meditative approaches. Probably the best how-to-do-it books are Lawrence LeShan’s How to Meditate and Ken Pelletier’s Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer (again). A favorite is Chogyam Trungpa’s Meditation in Action.

Body work covers a big area!

It certainly does. For some people, body work means yoga. For others, dance. For others, sports or massage. The best thing for you may be to sit quietly in a peaceful place for a long time. For me it may be yelling and laughing and hitting pillows.

The fact that there’s no “right way” has made my work in this field very exciting. Instead of some set of rules to follow, there’s a real freedom to explore. There are many, many ways for us to develop our bodies and our minds. All the books I’ve mentioned are ultimately talking about the same thing—each of us has our own unique path to happiness and fulfillment.