Return of the Urban Warrior: High-Speed Spirituality For People on the Run Book

Barefoot Doctor is a British Taoist healer with a refreshingly frank attitude. Unlike many other self-help books, Return of the Urban Warrior doesn't aim to help you slow down your stressful life, but rather to ride along with it, in the true spirit of the Tao. It's not about giving up your life-style, your mobile phone, your lover; "It's not a question of the spiritual or the profane," he says, "but the spiritual and the profane". The exercises in this book are practical. One of the first, and simplest, is learning to control your breathing, slowly in and out, without holding your breath in between. "By decelerating your breath tempo you internally hook on to an easy half-time groove that will enable you to remain relaxed in the midst of high-speed action." From this the author leads on to awareness of three zones of the body--behind the eyes, behind the breastbone, and behind the loins--to be in control of oneself. "The upper chamber houses that aspect of your "one" that witnesses, the middle chamber houses that aspect that feels, the lower chamber houses that aspect that "is" or that drives your "isness"." And we're only a fifth of the way through the book! After this it becomes more complicated, with a "meta-network of eight super-conduits that regulate your universe". Along the way, without making a big thing of it, the author leads the reader through a succession of meditation exercises, visualisation exercises and affirmations. Oddly, for a book meant to grab us with fast-paced ideas we can use in our fast-paced lives, it's a little slow-starting; the Barefoot Doctor has a casual, laid-back style almost at variance with his message. But once it gets going, there's barely a moment to pause. This isn't a book to be read straight through, cover to cover, but one to work through slowly, page by page, until each exercise in it becomes second nature. --David V BarrettRead More