Oops, did I say half a year ago no more “finding love” books? Tough noogies, because they are by far my most popular reviews.

I’m willing to go out on a limb and call Calling in “The One”: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life by Katherine Woodward Thomas the best book of its kind. I say that even though I did this entire workbook-style book cover to cover faithfully for seven weeks, three YEARS ago, and have still not called “The One” in close enough for me to actually kiss him hello. No matter, I believe he is merely delayed. Besides, I have gone through so much positive transformation in the last 3 years that back then I never would have attracted the sort of man I’d actually want to be with from here on out.

The author tells her journey-to-love story in the preface. She was a forty-one year old psychotherapist who was single but wanted to be married and have a child. It took a lot of inner work, but it happened for her, and in this book she guides us to make it happen for ourselves (sans child for me please).

The format of the book is that it is divided into seven weeks, each with a theme, and there is a lesson for each and every day consisting of a few pages to read, some practice, which can be a meditation or action, but most typically involves an exercise requiring thought and writing. Some weeks are fun, others more challenging (week three: healing core wounds). It is the type of book that would be ideal to do as a group with friends (or a meetup group) or with at least a buddy. Although at this point in my life it is not my main focus, and I believe I have done most of the work and “The One” will show up when the planets are better aligned for it, it is possible at some point I would revisit the book again, and next time I think it would be very rewarding to work with a buddy or a group.

Calling in The One is a spiritual book, and Woodward Thomas is inspiring. As it’s been a while since I read the book, I just reread the last lesson and loved her advice about focusing on our own development: “Contrary to popular opinion, all the good ones are not taken. They are, however, holding out for someone as fabulous as they are. So, I’d rather encourage you to spend your energy cultivating your own greatness. Instead of spending your time judging and assessing whether or not others are everything you think they should be, concern yourself with whether or not you yourself are everything you’ve ever dreamed of and hoped for.”

Even though I didn’t meet “The One”, I did meet and start seeing a very sweet guy around week 4(?) of doing this book. When I met him, I had been single for a long time, alone a lot, but occasionally dating some jerks that today I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. He was much younger than me and hadn’t dated since his girlfriend had died years earlier, and not at all before that either. He was a lovely caring guy (who was even into self-help!). We had a beautiful connection and even though ultimately I didn’t think he was the one for me, and he wanted to experience dating other women, it was nevertheless a positive experience I attribute to the work I did with this book.

Check it out – this book is the best!

Guest-reviewed by David King

Fearless Living, by Rhonda Britten, changed my life. Although I am a voracious reader (I like to say a ‘ferocious reader’), I don’t usually trend towards the self-help section of a bookstore. However, by chance, at a really low point in my life, I heard Rhonda Britten speak. I hated the dramatics in how she told her story, yet I found a bit of truth in what I heard; I saw she knew something about fear and how it could control a person’s life. I bought the book, read it, and it changed my life.

“Read it” probably doesn’t convey the relationship necessary to make effective changes with this book. Just reading it might give you some hope or inspiration, which is all right if that’s all you want. But I worked the exercises to get my results, even calling on outside help (phone consultations with a life coach) once or twice when I got stuck.

Recently, two members of my family got into a fight and it’s unclear if they will ever make up. Although it was practically a fight about nothing, they each got so triggered by the other person that it escalated to the point where they may never talk to each other again.

After reading The Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming your Power, Creativity, Brilliance and Dreams, by Debbie Ford, it seems even sadder to me because I see that these two individuals are so similar. Each is so quick to anger and so unwilling to take any responsibility for the fight. To each of them, it is all the other person’s fault. The simple truth is that whatever difficult interactions you have with others, it is not about them and what they did to you; it is all about you, for your learning. Another person will only bother you when they display qualities that you cannot accept or acknowledge in yourself.

At first, the title of the book sounded a bit creepy to me. I probably would not have picked it up myself if it had not come highly recommended by a friend. I had heard of shadow work before, having had an acquaintance who had spoken of “owning his shadow side” (a phrase that no less creeped me out). However, I didn’t know what shadow work was until I read this book.

It is simply that, in order to become a happier, more powerful, more whole person, we must recognize and accept qualities of which we are unconscious. If we are unconscious of these qualities, how are we supposed to recognize them? Again, they are the qualities we project onto other people. So anything that drives you crazy about another person is a quality that you yourself possess, but are unaware of and will probably deny. The book contains many examples of people Ford has helped in her workshops (who sometimes have needed persistent confrontation to bump them out of denial and into remembering a time when they experienced this quality within themselves). The process of realizing you do have a quality within you frees you from its grip on you. After all, getting irritated with people and denying that you have a quality you can’t tolerate takes energy.

Within ourselves, we are like a hologram of the outside world. The whole world is within us, and we need to become conscious of our hidden parts; we are powerless if we see them only in others and not ourselves. This includes positive traits that we admire in others. These are our “light” shadow; we project upon others positive traits that we feel we are lacking, but they are truly within us and we must find them consciously. As Ford says, “whatever inspires you is an aspect of yourself. Be precise about what you admire in someone and find that part in yourself. If you have the aspiration to be something, it’s because you have the potential to manifest what you are seeing.”

Sometimes a negative shadow for you can be a positive quality. There was a story in the book of a tough woman who wouldn’t have minded if you called her a bitch. She owned tough and mean, but not a soft side. So Ford called her a mushpie, and the woman’s eventual acknowledging this hidden part of her led to profound healing. I related to this story on a lesser magnitude. I’ll admit I am somewhat less comfortable with the idea of soft and feminine than I am with toughness. For that reason certain people bother me, and in reading this book, I have finally figured out why. One person I’ve encountered recently is a woman who has always come across as exceptionally sweet and nice. But for some reason, something in me didn’t like her, and I felt like an ogre for disliking such an obviously good person. I wasn’t sure if I distrusted her or was jealous of her, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I realized she displayed qualities I had hidden deep inside, a kind of softer feminine niceness that I rejected as a child and that stayed hidden until now, manifesting only as a dislike of perfectly lovely people! So now I have to learn to acknowledge that it is there, and that I am that.

The book is full of exercises to help you uncover and integrate your shadow qualities, formal exercises at the end of each chapter as well as others within the chapters. I did some of the exercises and skipped others. Simply reflecting on the reading was helpful to me, as was making it a practice to recognize qualities that annoy me or inspire me in other people, and to think about in what instance I am those qualities. Some of the exercises I liked the idea of, but probably could use a more formal supportive setting like one of Ford’s workshops in order to actually make myself do them.

Now I like the title, Dark Side of the Light Chasers. It implies you can make only limited progress by trying to be all good qualities, by only going for the light. As Ford says so eloquently, speaking of affirmations in the absence of shadow work, “if we put ice cream on top of poop, after a few spoonfuls we will taste the poop again”. Best analogy ever.

Woman Heal Thyself: An Ancient Healing System for Contemporary Women by Jeanne Elizabeth Blum is the topic for my first book review because of its great potential to help women and because I have found it so helpful that I use the system each month.

The ancient healing system referred to in the subtitle is traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and specifically a set of acupressure/acupuncture points known as the Forbidden Pregnancy Points. Pressing these points on a pregnant woman can disturb or even terminate the pregnancy. However, Blum discovered that if a woman massages them during her menstrual period, she can bring her energy system into balance and, in the following month, enjoy the elimination of a whole gamut of PMS and menstrual symptoms.

I first read this book almost two years ago. For several months, in addition to the menstrual cramps I have always had, I was also suffering from angry moods and breast soreness in the week or two before my period. After following the instructions in the book and working my acupressure points for about twenty minutes a day, the very next month I had no breast soreness at all and very little negative emotion. The cramps were also less severe.

Blum cured herself of much more severe symptoms, including a very heavy menstrual flow and endometriosis. Her clients have also employed the system to ease menopause symptoms, reverse early menopause, and to promote fertility.

Blum presents different options: you can massage three different sets of acupressure points (27 points total), one set per day for the length of your period, or you can do one simpler set of ten points and repeat it each day of your period. While I originally began with the more complex program, hoping for maximum benefits, I have recently achieved similar success with the simpler set. I switched in order to memorize the simpler set, thus eliminating the need to lug the book with me if I am travelling. I admit that, from the beginning, I have almost never had the patience to work each point for the recommended 2-5 minutes, which is probably why I have not completely eliminated the cramps, although they are less severe.

Besides the practical “how-to” of the Forbidden Pregnancy Points, much of the book is devoted to the theory of TCM and how to apply it to thinking about your particular health issues. The basic idea is that the acupressure points are located along twelve main channels of energy, called meridians, each governing a corresponding organ. Organs are classified as (and occur paired together as) yin or yang, and the organ pairs are each associated with one of the five elements: earth, metal, water, wood, and fire. For example, kidney and bladder are both organs of the water element, kidney the yin and bladder the yang. Energy flows from one meridian to the next according to a cycle of the elements. Blum says, “If you want to grow a tree, water it; if you need to burn a fire, put wood on it; for good soil, add ashes; from rich earth comes metal; to carry water, use a metal container.” In other words, from water you get wood, from wood, fire; from fire, earth; from earth, metal; from metal, water, thus completing the cycle. This is the “birthing cycle,” the direction energy should flow in the body. If instead you have an energy imbalance, you enter the reverse “destructive cycle” where earth destroys fire, fire destroys wood, wood soaks up water (“destroying” it) etc. It is fascinating reading, but it gets more complicated and is, I think, too difficult for the amateur to apply. The important thing to remember is that energy imbalances, in time, manifest as physical health problems.

But where do these energy imbalances come from? Blum emphasizes that negative emotional experiences and thought patterns create energy imbalances, especially if we experienced them from a young age. If we were abused, or even simply discouraged from expressing emotions, those emotions lodge in our bodies, disturbing the healthy energy flow, eventually creating physical disease or addictions. The chapter “emotions and the body” is full of stories of people’s emotional experiences, how each affects organ energy flows, and what characteristics result from the corresponding incorrect energy flow.

The strongest parts of the book (in addition to the “how-to”) were Blum’s discussions of discovering how to use the Forbidden Pregnancy Points, of healing her own serious physical problems stemming from her traumatic childhood, and of healing clients with various issues. Also interesting were discussions of common problems such as depression, anxiety, and compulsive behavior. There is a theoretically useful section on “Diagnostic Reference for Ailments A-Z”, listing the acupressure points to work for a large variety of physical, emotional and mental problems. The problem is that, when referring to points not along the same energy meridian as, and nearby, Forbidden Pregnancy Points, the diagrams in the book are insufficient; one would have to look elsewhere to be able to accurately locate the points on their body. The final section of the book presents additional tools for healing, which I believe vary in their utility. For example, in the chapter on diet and fasting, Blum relays diet recommendations she was given for her kidney problems; I am skeptical that this would be a healthy diet for everyone.

Overall, Woman Heal Thyself gives us a concrete monthly practice for balance and relief from menstrual problems, as well as a way to address and heal deeper issues that plague us.