Essential tools for healthy lives

Boston-based guest blogger, Kim Shippey, devours books from many fields in his regular job as a staff editor for the Christian Science Sentinel.

I have recently read a book by two psychotherapists with a combined 60 years of counseling experience, Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels. It’s titled The Tools (Spiegel & Grau, New York, 2012), and their purpose, as the subtitle explains, is to transform the everyday problems everyone faces into “courage, confidence, and creativity.”

Stutz and Michaels identify several fundamental issues that “keep people from living the life they want to live.” They provide readers with the main “tools” their professional lives have shown to be highly effective in achieving such goals, and explain how their tools connect us to a “higher force.”

The authors illustrate their findings with dozens of case histories, including several drawn from their own experience. These personal stories, understandably, are especially  convincing and gripping. Continue reading

Think BIG

This week’s guest blogger, Kim Shippey, is an avid reader and an editor for the Christian Science Sentinel. His post takes a look at two books–one new and one a classic–that shed light on prayer and healing. Kim comes from a long tradition of practicing spiritual healing, and he writes this blog from his perspective of growing up with parents who were both Christian Science practitioners, dedicating their time to healing in their community after raising four children.

A recent book by Rabbi Schmuel Herzfeld, Fifty-Four Pick-Up (Gefen, 2012), offers helpful insights into ways in which prayer helps heal the sick, regardless of one’s religious persuasion or measure of respect for and trust in the medical profession.

The rabbi writes: “Let’s not ignore the possibility that prayers simply work–that they actually heal . . . disease. . . . A spiritual approach to our health uses the words of our prayers in order to ground us, strengthen us and heal us. This is what faith is about. It should be something we embrace at all times in our life.” Continue reading