A Humble Tale to Heal Colitis, Calm ADD and Find Inner Peace
Garden State Yogi Book Review
I don’t read much fiction these days…. most of the stuff I read are various articles about yoga, Facebook posts, Inc Magazine, various magazines in my doctors reception areas and the Huffington Post (which I can’t seem to get enough of). Reading non-fiction books or autobiographical tales is not my thing these days…. I used to be a voracious reader of autobiographical tales but not the last decade or two.
I had a long plane ride from Philadelphia to San Diego yesterday and decided to bring Brian Leaf’s Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi along for the ride. It’s amazing how many people don’t bring reading material on a long plane ride and read the Sky Mall catalog for entertainment. Whatever happened to movies on a plane?
As a yoga teacher, I read this book with different eyes since I feel a greater responsibility of the impact of my teachings, both in terms of the impact it has on them emotionally and also physically in terms of helping break apart deeply embedded patterns of tension and tightness as well as limiting beliefs about what is going on in their lives. Brian’s journey into holistic health and spirituality let me reminisce on my own discoveries.
Imagine if Luke Skywalker, Jerry Seinfeld, Elizabeth Gilbert and Mike Myers all contributed some DNA and produced a baby together. That baby would grow up in New Jersey and one day decide to go on a cross-country hippie flavored road trip complete with a visits to Ashrams, White Sands New Mexico, a Grateful Dead concert and naked hot springs. After their cross-country trek Leaf decides to immerse himself a Kripalu-inspired existence. That is the narrative that’s comes to mind in this misadventure full of chuckles, hmmmm, giggles, ah-ha moments sprinkled with plenty of ooommming. Esoteric practices like Ayurveda he demystifies to help him curb his anxiety, colitis and ADD with resolve, discipline and panache.
Brian Leaf takes you on a hippy-flavored adventure
Brian shows us that being spiritual is not exclusive to being goofy and entertaining. If the thought of sitting in silence while connecting to the ether of the universe sounds pretentious then let Senor Leaf show you a world of namastes, accidental happy-ending massages and poop-and-runs with its shimmers of inner-wisdom and soul searching.
So have you read any tales like this or did you read the book? What were your thoughts on it?