Lemuria Bookstore Blog

‘”What about mamma?”  The woman psychiatrist asks her patient, another woman, who is lying on a divan in the early 1960s.  “What about mamma been doing to you, dear?  I know she’s given you the enemas,”  the psychiatrist continues.  “And filled your bladder up with cold water, and I know she used the flashlight on [...]

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The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things on Off and Start Getting Stuff Done by Piers Steel, Ph.D. Harper Collins (2011) For the last few months, I’ve been thinking about why distractions, so constant in modern life, keep us from having authentic face-to-face experiences. It seems every experience is interrupted by someone informing us [...]

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Arts Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul by Shaun McNiff, Shambhala Press, 2004. There are many ways to be creative. Whether you paint, play a musical instrument, arrange a vase of flowers, or put together your own recipe, it seems that all of these activities free the mind from daily troubles or sooth a deeper [...]

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Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy by David Richo (Shambhala, 2010) Trust is defined as “a firm and hopeful reliance on the fidelity, integrity, or in the ability of a person or thing.” It is not dependency but rather an inner assurance, a confidence that gives us a sense of security, [...]

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Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (Harper, 2008) Dan Ariely defines predictably irrational: Our irrationality happens the same way again and again; our irrational behaviors are neither random or senseless, they are systematic and since we repeat them again and again, predictable. Predictably Irrational (PI) addresses imprinting, why we [...]

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Diane Ackerman has written a book about the brain; she’s written a book about the holocaust and one about gardening. Her writing is always vibrant and intimate, but with her latest book, she has explored the territory of her own nightmare: her husband’s stroke which left him unable to communicate, and its aftermath of rehabilitation. [...]

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StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath (Gallup, 2007) A few years ago for his birthday, my dad decided that, instead of giving him presents, he wanted us all to read the book Now, Discover Your Strengths and take the accompanying online assessment. He had just finished the book and was obviously excited. Marcus Buckingham and Donald [...]

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A good dream book is hard to find.  This is the lesson I’ve been learning since this summer.  Already fascinated by the idea of dream interpretation, seeing Christopher Nolan’s Inception and having it blow my mind proved to be the starting gun on my dream research. But I soon found that I would have to [...]

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When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds  That Sabotage Our Relationships by David Richo Shambhala  (2008) Earlier this year, I read an illuminating study on our responsibilities for our interactions with others, especially those we care the most about. While slowly reading this emotionally challenging book, I was thinking I would restart immediately [...]

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The Invisible Gorilla and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons (Crown, 2010) Chabris and Simons shared the 2004 IG Nobel Prize in psychology for their now famous “Gorilla Experiment”. While teaching at Harvard 12 years ago, this single experiment launched a whole new wave of ideas on how we [...]

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