Erin Sands Shares an #Excerpt from THE DUNES @TheDunesBook #AmReading #NonFiction #SelfHelp

The Dunes

In the heart of the universe, in a land not so far away, exists a place of imminent transformation. It is a place undiscovered by most, and sought out by a daring few, a place where the best and the worst are revealed without filter, and the quest, though formidable, begets a masterpiece of the soul. In this place, a war is waged against the stagnant heart that seeks to cling to what was and cripple new life with old fears. And so it has been that only the brave in spirit venture upon it, content to reap its end result as their reward. Thus believing in change, they call this place “The Dunes”.

Not for the delicate, The Dunes is a glorious 300-foot-high, 75-degree incline of soft sand that has been bleached by the blazing sun. At first glance, it is awe-inspiring. Its beauty is evident, yet uncompromising, in its call. It is a majestic uphill sand climb resolutely postured as the menacing hurdle to divine destiny. Yet, still they come to answer its call. Still they arrive consumed by the desire to be more than they were when they began, hoping that what lies inside of them is the fullness of life available beyond The Dunes.

Our story begins on a very beautiful and very hot day at The Dunes. It is 105 degrees outside and we find a man and a woman baking in the afternoon sun. One stands at the top of the 300-foot mound, the other, at the bottom.

The One: I love you.

The Other: And I love you.

The One: I want you with me. Take this journey, meet me at the top and trust that everything will be all right.

The Other slowly considered the request and believing that their love was heaven sent elected to rise to the challenge. But wait…

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised in the Bay Area of Northern California, Erin grew up with an innate love for dance, theatre and the written word. A graduate of Loyola Marymount University, Erin began her career in the arts as an actress and choreographer. After booking several notable roles in television and film, Erin began to use her gift of writing in blogs featuring political and social commentary, as well as developing content for theatrical use.

Although The Dunes, is a divine departure from Erin’s previous writings it is by far her most cherished work to date. “I wrote The Dunes initially as self therapy because I needed to release some painful experiences and disappointments from my past. I had this thirst to walk in the complete fullness of life with joy as my constant companion. I had no idea what effect it would have on other people. But when I saw people read it and be released from fears that had held them back for years…when I saw people forgive and be able to walk in the freedom forgiveness brings…when I saw people commit and serve and how those things opened up new opportunities in their life, I was just humbled. Humbled by the awesome power of God and humbled that I had been allowed to go along for the ride”.

When asked why she writes, Erin pauses and reflects on the truth of her heart. “I write because although I am only now beginning to truly love the process, I have always loved the outcome. Like a composer, words become my notes. I string them together in song eliciting the response of my reader, grafting a picture of my soul. Where besides the written word can you effect change so utterly and so succinctly? What besides the written word can pierce the universal collective mind? Everything begins with a thought, but it isn’t until that thought is articulated in written word and those words passed down can life changing movement happen. It must be written, it must be expressed on tablet, and when it is, we all become greater, whether the writing be genius or fatuity, it has evoked thought and debate. Why wouldn’t I want to be apart of that phenomenon? Why wouldn’t I want to share my story, give my testimony…add my paradigm to the mix? Whether it is a novel, a poem, an essay or an article, it is humanity visited. An insight into a new or sometimes shared truth. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. And with that I live my life”.

If there was a journey that could masterfully change your life in seven revelations...would you take it? 

In life, sometimes the kernels of wisdom and the richness of revelation can be found in the most innocent of stories; and so it is with The Dunes. Join one man and one woman in an exquisitely simple yet remarkably profound journey as you discover with them that the mountain you must climb in order to live the abundant life of your dreams is located squarely within your heart. 

Illuminated in seven revelations; The Dunes carries the reader on a journey to not only examine the obstacles that are holding them back in life but to conquer and over come them as well. With each revelation The Dunes intimately calls on the reader as the journey companion to face a challenge…a dare if you will that requires an uncompromising commitment to change. In the family of faith-based self help books, The Dunes stands alone, simultaneously taking the reader from fiction to life and back again, equipped with a tailor made journal for the readers inner most secrets and reflections. The Dunes is part allegory, part testimony and part journal, but the best part is the healing it offers your heart. When you’re ready to step out of your comfort zone and step into the miracle of your life…The Dunes awaits. 

CAUTION: Readers of this book are subject to significant changes for the better. Side effects may include frequent smiling and enjoying life in every season.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Non-fiction

Rating – G

More details about the author

Connect with Erin Sands on Facebook & Twitter

Website www.thedunesbook.com

Sarah Nicholson's Thoughts on Freedom by Jonathan Franzen @EvolutionWoman #NonFiction #BookClub

Footsteps I Follow: Authors I Admire --- Jonathan Franzen - Freedom

While I've been primarily focused on writing non-fiction over the last decade, I am a very big fiction fan. I love to be drawn into a richly imagined narrative world. Jonathan Franzen’s deeply engaging novel Freedom is  one of these. It is an exploration of the disappointments of adult life and of what depth may emerge, through complication and pain, when the glow and bloom of youthful certainty, hedonism and adventure burn away.  Set inside the questions of this age, Franzen’s principle characters stare into the void of a classic existential crisis of meaning: Who am I? What is all of this about? What is it to be good? How can I be good when I’ve never been me? What is virtue? What has value?

Franzen's reflection on behalf of his character Walter exemplifies this: “He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to live. Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive’s sake.” Life in Freedom is not without hurt, pain and loss; but, neither is it without joy, awe, connection and celebration. Growth is found through grappling with the complexity of the resolution of the cost of the sorrows with the joys; the costs of living and the costs of not living. 

In the end Freedom’s characters seem to have found a way to love each other and the world; they have perhaps experienced love and forgiveness in its right measure. In this Freedom verges on a celebration of the tragedy of life in Nietzsche’s sense: “saying Yes to life even in its strangest and most painful episodes, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustible vitality even as it witnesses the destruction of its greatest heroes … Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge… but in order to celebrate oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity — that tragic joy included even joy in destruction.”
 

I once heard Franzen speak at the Sydney Opera House. He said that he fell in love with his characters –  “full of contradiction and possibility” – and felt empathy with their life challenges. It was perhaps most compelling for me to hear him admit that he took “no moral position” on them. I think Franzen offers his reader a great gift in doing this. If you identify, as I did, with the struggle of Freedom’s characters to find their way inside this beautiful and difficult world, with the struggle to be good to one other and to themselves, with the struggle to love and to confront its costs,  then Franzen’s loving gaze and his empathic, non-judgmental curiosity become transmissions that flow through the river of the text and into you: that truly is a great gift.

The story of human evolution that we've been commonly told is one built on the shoulders of male heroism, competition and dominance; but, what if it isn't the whole story? This book tells the lost story of women in evolution.

The Evolutionary Journey of Woman: From the Goddess to Integral Feminism looks towards a future that brings together and reintegrates women's wisdom traditions through establishing a spiritual lineage for women that is traced all the way back to ancient Sumer with the goddess Inanna. Marrying the ancient wisdom traditions with adult developmental theory, this book charts a pathway towards the full spectrum of possibilities for women's self-actualisation in the coming Integral age. The Evolutionary Journey of Woman is academically rigorous, historical, philosophical and spiritual, but, most fundamentally, it is a narrative that will change the way you think about woman as a heroine of history.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre - Non fiction, Women's Spirituality

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Sarah Nicholson on Facebook & Twitter

Website www.sarahnicholson.org

Renewal "Anytime" 10 Day Detox by Lisa Consiglio Ryan @LisaConsiglioR #Wellness #Detox

Lose weight, energize, and glow with over 50 recipes and complete 10 day detox plan. This whole foods cleanse includes detailed menu plan, shopping list, and bonus recipes to make after your cleanse. Renewal "Anytime" also includes pre-detox plan, daily instructions, FAQ's, and post-detox next steps.

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre – Wellness

Rating – G

More details about the author

Connect with Lisa Consiglio Ryan on Facebook & Twitter

#Excerpt from IS YOUR CHAIR KILLING YOU by @KentBurden #AmReading #AmWriting

If you are struggling with your weight, listen up. The work that Marc Hamilton, PhD and Dr. James Levine are doing points directly to one conclusion: Sitting down is your worst enemy. Even if you look at only healthy people who exercise regularly, the ones who sit the most have larger waistlines and have more unhealthy markers like higher blood pressures, higher blood sugar levels and more heart disease and cancers than those who sit less often. Even more proof that remaining in the seated position for too long adversely affects your waistline even if you exercise. 

In fact, people who sit for more than three hours each day are just as fat whether they exercise or not. You may be thinking that this is just not possible; after all, the people who are exercising are burning more calories, so it follows that they should be thinner, right? Wrong. Hey baby, the numbers don’t lie. The problem is that we burn only a small percentage of calories during exercise. Most of the calorie-burning we do during the day happens not while we are “exercising,” but while we are just living our everyday lives. 

When you spend most of that time sitting, your body’s metabolism is basically in hibernation mode. Sitting is one of the most inactive things you can do. You burn more calories standing around twiddling your thumbs or chewing gum than you do just sitting in a chair doing nothing. When you are seated, electrical activity in the muscles drops — “the muscles go as silent as those of a dead horse,” Hamilton says, which leads to a series of harmful metabolic effects. Your calorie-burning rate immediately plunges to a third of what it would be if you got up and walked. Insulin effectiveness drops within a single day, and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes rises. So does the risk of being obese. The enzymes responsible for breaking down lipids and triglycerides — for “vacuuming up fat out of the bloodstream,” as Hamilton puts it — plunge, which in turn causes the levels of good (HDL) cholesterol to fall.

The average person can burn an extra 60 calories an hour just by standing. Now, you may not be able to stand all day, but if you incorporate one to five minutes of movements every hour that use upper and lower body strength, balance and flexibility in short bursts like the ones in this book, you are right back up there near that 60 calorie mark. These short bursts of movement also keep your body from going into that hibernation mode that happens when you sit without getting up for long periods of time. “But just avoid the chair is the simple recommendation, as much as you can,” according to Dr. Hamilton. Ok, so we’ve got all figured out now, right? The biggest problem with sitting for long periods is that you burn less energy, which makes it easier to gain weight and, conversely, harder to lose weight…or is it? There also seems to be a “physiology of inactivity” that has a cascading effect on lipids, enzymes and body chemistry that is detrimental to our health and may cause us to gain weight. So the problem is two-fold. Not only are we burning fewer calories as we sit but our body is producing-or not producing- chemicals, enzymes and fats that stymie our ability to stay lean and healthy.

This is where many people throw up their hands and say “I’m screwed, just dig a hole and I’ll jump in.” But there’s evidence that the solution to this problem may be a simple one. To find out more read Is Your Chair Killing You?

Sitting for extended periods of time is as bad for your health as smoking cigarettes. And exercising for 30-60 minutes a day isn’t enough to undo the damage from extended periods of sitting. Is Your Chair Killing You reveals shocking new research showing that sitting for long periods greatly increases your risk of developing obesity, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer. 

Our bodies were designed to move constantly over the course of the day, but most of us sit for hours a day at work and at home! Fitness and wellness expert and award-winning author Kent Burden has created brief, simple movements you can incorporate into your daily life to combat the damaging effects of sitting. 

These simple movements, done standing for 1-5 minutes each hour will burn calories, energize and refresh you, and you won’t even break a sweat; you’ll even improve your back pain. This book is a how-to for weight loss and disease prevention. Read this book–you’ll be healthier in as little as 8 minutes a day.

Nominated for the Dan Poynter Global Ebook Awards and won honorable mention at the Los Angeles Book Festival

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Non-Fiction

Rating – G

More details about the author

Connect with Kent Burden on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.kentburden.com/

#Free #Kindle #ebook - Defying Age with Food by Freda Mooncotch @Kindleexpert

Reclaim Your Health, Energy & Vitality! 

It's What You Eat, Not How Much You Exercise 

In a society that spends billions of dollars annually in seeking better health and appearance through pills, powders, drinks, hormones, exercise obsession, gym memberships, and medical drugs, Freda Mooncotch is making a very bold proclamation with the title of her new book Defying Age With Food: Reclaim Your Health, Energy & Vitality. It’s What You Eat, Not How Much You Exercise! Can we really defy the aging process with what most of us take for granted each day — our food? Freda says we most certainly can in fact dramatically slow our inevitable passage of life while attaining superior health and vitality.

The pages of her new release are not filled with theories, conjecture or speculations; they tell the riveting tale of a woman’s plight to regain her health. In describing her story, Freda literally runs the gauntlet of healing protocols from both the orthodox medical and alternative health fields. What the author accomplished in her success not only gave back her health and beauty, but fired a few heavy artillery rounds across the bows of a good number of our “sacred cows” such as excessive exercise, fad dieting, mega-dosing on supplements, and a pharmaceutical drug reliance that has forged the industrialized world.

This is a must read for anyone wishing to seriously upgrade their nutritional knowledge.

Media celebrity, Kathy Hart said:

“What an eye-opener! I learned more about the effects of food on our body from Freda and her book, Defying Age, than I’ve learned in months of interviewing health experts! Her passion, knowledge and energy are a true inspiration … and those pictures of her in the book are absolute proof of how the right diet can give you a rockin’ body”.

Randy Roach of Muscle, Smoke & Mirrors wrote:

“This is a story of tenacity where a strong determination saw Freda through a fight to reclaim a healthy mind and body while ridding herself of a number of addictions plaguing so much of our society.”

Along with her amazing story and nutritional revelations and tastefully done photos of Freda, this resourceful book also contains recipes that she promises will nourish one back to health, strength, and vitality.

Defying Age with Food by Freda Mooncotch

Amazon Kindle US

Rating – PG

Genre – Non-Fiction

4.7 (25 reviews)

Free until 28 January 2014