About book Teach Us To Sit Still: A Skeptic's Search For Health And Healing (2010)
This is such an intriguing book. it starts out being about prostate problems and becomes a deeply engaging inquiry into the nature of body/mind, pain and silence and change. Parks is a very good writer and his ability to capture the meditation experience is astounding. He also nicely recreates the medical experience. In the end it is part memoir, part meditation and part wry self-examination. As an added bonus, Parks is a keen reader and there is much intriguing literary analysis going on as well. This is a good book on a number of intriguing fronts. Patient, student, teacher and writer exploring ultimately the power of words, the power of silence and the nature of healing. This was a hard one to rate. It deserves a lot of stars because it's so worth reading and learning from. But it's not easy to read. Not because the writing is bad - it's great, actually. It's just that the content challenges so many (mostly Western) assumptions about the connection between body and mind, between health and thought. The author is a challenging personality as well - tense and obsessive, but also thoughtful and caring and a skilled story-teller.What makes the book so worthwhile is what the author discovered as he explored treatments for his chronic illness and sought alternatives to medication and surgery. Although his illness involved urology and pelvic pain, what he learned about meditation and massage applies far more broadly. The book will appeal especially to people who work and revel in words - writers, linguists, analysts, and all of us who tend to over-think every issue and dilemma. When do words become a barrier to meaning and understanding, when do they become a substitute for the experience of life? It all sounds kind of flaky, I know, but strangely enough this is a book for skeptics, not eager believers.
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This book is an inspiration. It hasn't changed my life - yet. But it will.
—daddysoliveoyl
His personality is as painful as the book
—Daniela
