A Life Worth Breathing is a highly recommended read
This month’s recommended book is A Life Worth Breathing: A Yoga Master’s Handbook of Strength, Grace, and Healing by Max Strom which was gifted to me by my lovely editor Victoria Woodhall.
The book was very enriching, giving me much inspiration and ideas to incorporate into the work I do.
3 reasons to read A Life Worth Breathing
Three things that I really enjoyed and took away from the book include:
1. Leadership challenge
Towards the end of the book, Max talks about activism. It’s a short section with a practical exercise that I look forward to completing next weekend. It invites the reader to find a problem one complains about. Complaining often signals our emotional connection to something.
I look forward to asking my family, friends, and colleagues about when I tend to complain most and what about. I am also going to pay more attention to what tends to bring out the complainer in me. Once you pin this down, Max invites you to write down possible solutions to this problem and to dedicate yourself to putting one or more of them into action. I like this form of constructive activism very much and I believe you will too.
2. Taking responsibility for creating our best life
I loved the message of this book. It is essentially about taking responsibility for creating our best life in a way that nurtures our bodies, hearts, and minds. Max links this to yoga a great deal but the core message applies to us all, on and off the yoga mat. If you’re paying for your “best life” with your health, then you may want to stop and think about this more. We thrive in balance.
3. Simple exercises
I really liked this simple exercise he has on page 184 which reminds me very much of the spirit of making time count. In it, Max asks you to consider the finite temporality of life and awake to better choices by replacing old habits that no longer serve you with better ones.
One example that I liked from his list was: “Every time you read the news, you could instead be reading the words of the greatest souls who have walked the earth.”
His suggestion to divert some of the time we consume the news which is fed to us towards reading the material that opens our minds and hearts is a brilliant one. I find that books nurture my mind, heart, body, and spirit far more than news.
Read and be inspired
I have no doubt that reading his book will inspire you. And, if you find waking up tired, finding yourself a slave to your mind’s ego, needing to connect with your emotions and create a life worth breathing, check out our retreats. They use my integration methodology to really help you connect within and become more whole, resilient and full of aliveness. Here one attendee talking about her experience from our last gathering in April.
“The work is fun and subtle yet powerful and intense. I found myself wholly integrated within the group as I have never experienced before. I had a real conception with myself and others which hasn’t shifted. I have fallen in love with myself and others again. I am on the journey of forgiveness which is happening now through dreams. I am re-energised and excited about my life and others. Amazingly powerful! “
Debby
