Train Your Brain, Engage Your Heart, Transform Your Life: A Two Step Program to Enhance Attention; Decrease Stress; Cultivate Peace, Joy and Resilience; and Practice Presence with Love

by Amit Sood

Have you ever wondered if there is a way to integrate science and spirituality to nurture a healthier brain, and abiding peace and joy? Is there a universal language of happiness and suffering? How can we overcome the limitations of attention deficit, negative ruminations and fear? Are peace, joy, resilience, and altruism hardwired within us, and if so, why do they play hide and seek with us and are not so easily accessible? Scientists and mystics have been asking these questions for a very long time. In his book, Train Your Brain....Engage Your Heart....Transform Your Life, physician and integrative medicine expert Dr. Amit Sood answers these and many other questions. Dr. Sood synthesizes concepts from neurosciences, psychology, philosophy, and spirituality to offer a practical, hands-on approach to cultivate a healthier brain. By training our attention and refining interpretations, by nurturing gratitude, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, and higher meaning and purpose, and by developing deeper relationships, better self care, meditation, and prayer, we can cultivate the level of objectivity required to successfully cope with daily obstacles like stress and illness. The skills train your brain's higher center to help you decrease the negative ruminations of the mind and enhance its engagement with the present moment and its contents. The skills also engage your heart to fill the present moment with greater joy. This book is not a one way dialog but offers an interactive experience using concepts and exercises many of which have been tested in research studies. The book offers a complete program toward enhancing present moment awareness and embodying greater gratitude, compassion, acceptance, forgiveness, and higher meaning and purpose-a state of Heartfulness.

Genres: Nonfiction

443 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2009

Reviews

[David Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book by an obviously brilliant physician author. The first part of the book is an excellent summary of the whole book, and it is chocked full of research on the benefits of meditation, with citations if you'd like further reading. One of the best books on meditation I've ever read.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a life-saver for me. No apologies.

[Kris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. If everyone read it and followed it honestly, human societies would be as perfect as they could possibly be.

What is this book? It’s a guide to relieving stress and negativity by focusing on the present and choosing to interpret incoming data positively.

Sounds simple and sounds like common sense, but everyone knows this is a difficult thing to do in practice. This book gives you the practice. It uses science to explain the parts of the brain and how they affect your thoughts, allowing you to clearly see the processes that trap us in unpleasant situations. It shows you how to control those processes.

The writing is a bit unpolished at times (English is the author’s second language and the book seems to have been published locally). But the structure of the book repeats and reenforces the messages in a pedagogically effective way so that they stick after you put the book down.

If you have suffering in your life, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

[Linda Thibodeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

I also went to Dr. Sood's workshop. This is a great book for anyone, whether in the field of psych. or social work, or to help self in terms of higher brain work. Awesome stuff.

[A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amit Sood's work is unoriginal, uninspiring, and could use some major proof reading - it seems that the name Mayo Clinic is the only thing that promotes his work.