The Book Jungle - St Leonards.

Lynn: Front to Back

Friends, friends of friends and friends of friends of friends have cancer. I always recommend this book by Lynn Kohlman, whose career change from model to photographer inspired the book's title, Lynn: Front to Back.

For me, it's up there with only a handful of books that are guaranteed to put me back-on-track fast whenever I feel directionless. I regularly turn to it for inspiration. In quick succession, Kohlman was diagnosed with breast cancer, her mother died, she underwent a double mastectomy and then, after a seizure, was diagnosed with highly aggressive brain cancer.

Despite the subject matter, this book is no sob story. It's about working out what inspires you in life and doing it. From reading subsequent material about Lynn, for example, this interview, I learned that she was in her second marriage, that she'd been sacked from a prestigious job. None of this is in the book. Her passion for photography, yoga, the outdoors and above all friends and family shines through instead. It's not that other stuff didn't happen, didn't exist, or that there was denial at play, it's just that Kohlman's diagnosis forced her to focus on what truly mattered to her. It's a life lesson I take from this book over and over again.

There are many moving passages, especially from friends and family towards the end of the book, but perhaps my favourite is from Lynn's son Sam, who was 17 at the time:

'How to be happy cannot be taught in a classroom. Rafting through Idaho, the last place one might expect to find a New York City kid, I have found that the key to my happiness is in following the things that I have learned to love. This may seem simple and obvious, but I have met very few people who have put this belief into practice'.

Self Healing, Yoga and Destiny

A rediscovery from my bookshelf, although more of a booklet than a book at only eighty pages, Self Healing, Yoga & Destiny.

From page 22: ‘When viewed by an outside observer, Hatha Yoga exercises appear to be purely physical; actually, however, their mental side is the more important ... Persons who practice yoga exercises without concentration will not succeed in controlling the forces they awaken through the exercises. They can attain physical results, healing, gaining or losing weight, or strengthening their muscles, but they will not attain the true goal of yoga. On the other hand, persons who exercise with concentration will come to recognise how the vital energies they arouse flow through the nervous system and ... physical energies are transformed into mental and vice versa. They will also understand that for each and every one of us our fate is nothing other than the projection of our Self into the external world and that we can hold in our own hand the steering wheel of our fate. How to recognise this and how to use the steering wheel properly is what we learn in the high school of yoga’.

Oh, and I'm totally loving Momo's blog at the mo' ...

Books on Seats

Forget bums on seats, it’s books on seats that count in our house... If pictures speak louder than words then this latest collection (all given to me for Christmas) just about sums up my life: books on raw food, running, Buddhism, vintage clothes/dressmaking, yoga, and a peek into someone else’s life via a journal.

It’s an odd time of year, the days feel muddled to me, and I can’t wait for the clarity of the new year, but in the meantime, feast your eyes (if you haven’t already) on Poppy’s very beautiful raw cacao site!