HSCL Wellness

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
"Write about what keeps you awake at night." That's the advice James Pennebaker and John Evans offer in Expressive Writing: Words That Heal. This book will help you overcome the traumas and emotional upheavals that are keeping you awake. You'll resolve issues, improve your health, and build resilience. Based on nearly 30 years of scientific research, the book shows you how and when expressive writing can improve your health. Its clear explanations of the writing process will enable you to express your most serious issues and deal with them through writing. Book jacket.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
Expressing painful emotions is hard--yet it can actually improve our mental and physical health. This lucid, compassionate book has introduced tens of thousands of readers to expressive writing, a simple yet powerful self-help technique grounded in scientific research. Leading experts James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth describe how taking just a few minutes to write about deeply felt personal experiences or problems may help you. Vivid stories and examples yield compelling insights into secrets, self-disclosure, and the hidden price of silence.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
Keeping a journal can help the writer to develop a better understanding of themselves, their relationships and the world around them, as well as improve skills of problem-solving, decision-making and planning. The book includes advice on working with individuals, facilitating a therapeutic writing group, proposed clinical applications, practical techniques, useful journal prompts, exercises and case vignettes. This clear guide to the basics of journaling and its development as a therapeutic medium will be a valuable handbook for therapists, health and social care practitioners, teachers, writing facilitators and any professional seeking personal development in themselves or their clients.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
DeSalvo shows how anyone can use writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life. Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won't help you; in fact, there's abundant evidence that the wrong kind of writing can be damaging. DeSalvo's program is based on the best available and most recent scientific studies about the efficacy of using writing as a restorative tool. Writing as a Way of Healing includes valuable advice and practical techniques to guide and inspire both experienced and beginning writers.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
Clinical studies show that writing about painful experiences can enhance immune response, reduce recovery time and promote physical, psychological and social well-being. Providing support and gentle advice, this guide to emotionally expressive writing is the perfect gift for someone struggling with trauma or emotional difficulty.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
Powerful and exciting, Poetic Medicine illustrates the unique role that poem-making can have in addressing the situations that lead us to renewal in our lives. John Fox's book is designed for readers wanting to tap their creative energy in order to make a difference in the world, including educators, therapists, parents and their children, writers, couples, and the infirm. With the poetic tools, instruction, and accounts the author supplies in Poetic Medicine, readers can start now to make their own poems while addressing, acknowledging, accepting, and taking charge of their lives.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
This accessible book explores the therapeutic possibilities of poetry and stories, exploring ways of selecting appropriate works for discussion, and providing techniques for facilitating personally relevant and growth-enhancing sessions. Combining theory with a multitude of case examples and innovative ideas for practical, experiential activities, this book is a valuable introduction for creative arts therapy students and practitioners, mental health and medical professionals, and anyone else interested in the healing possibilities of creative expression.

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This accessible book explores the therapeutic possibilities of poetry and stories, exploring ways of selecting appropriate works for discussion, and providing techniques for facilitating personally relevant and growth-enhancing sessions. Combining theory with a multitude of case examples and innovative ideas for practical, experiential activities, this book is a valuable introduction for creative arts therapy students and practitioners, mental health and medical professionals, and anyone else interested in the healing possibilities of creative expression.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
Narrative medicine is a fresh discipline of health care that helps patients and health professionals to tell and listen to the complex and unique stories of illness. Narrative medicine training in literary theory, philosophy, narrative ethics, and the creative arts increases clinicians' capacity to perceive the turmoil and suffering borne by patients and to help them to cohere or endure the chaos of illness. This text is offered to all who seek the opportunity for disciplined training in narrative medicine. By clearly articulating our principles and practice, this book provides the standards of the field for those who want to join us in seeking authenticity, recognition, affiliation, and justice in a narrative health care.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
These meditative essays range in subjects from a transcendental encounter with a pack of coyotes ironically juxtaposed with her neighbor's claim that nature "has gone out of vogue," to Loren's mother's slow yet all-encompassing deterioration from Parkinson's, and the unexpected way the Loma Prieta earthquake eroded her depression by offering the author a sense of her small place in a wild and worthwhile world. Loren has an empathetic and gentle approach to the world. In detailing the intricacies of human relationships and consciousness-fear of death and time, cooperation born of clashing viewpoints, tradition's beauty even when destructive, a love of language, a sense of loss amid the fast-paced materialistic world-she peels back the film of popular thinking in order to expose herself to the secrets so few of us ever see.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
The first book for the general public about the importance of mindfulness in medical practice, Attending is a groundbreaking, intimate exploration of how doctors approach their work with patients. The secret, he learned, was mindfulness. Dr. Epstein "shows how taking time to pay attention to patients can lead to better outcomes on both sides of the stethoscope" (Publishers Weekly). Drawing on his clinical experiences and current research, Dr. Epstein explores four foundations of mindfulness--Attention, Curiosity, Beginner's Mind, and Presence--and shows how clinicians can grow their capacity to provide high-quality care. The commodification of health care has shifted doctors' focus away from the healing of patients to the bottom line. Clinician burnout is at an all-time high. Attending is the antidote. With compassion and intelligence, Epstein offers "a concise guide to his view of what mindfulness is, its value, and how it is a skill that anyone can work to acquire" (Library Journal).

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
A distilled, crystal-like companion to H is for Hawk, Birds Art Life celebrates the particular madness of chasing after birds in the urban environment and explores what happens when the core lessons of birding are applied to other aspects of art and life. Moving with ease between the granular and the grand, peering into the inner landscape as much as the outer one, this is a deeply personal year-long inquiry into big themes: love, waiting, regrets, endings. If Birds Art Life was sprung from Maclear's sense of disconnection, her passions faltering under the strain of daily existence, this book is ultimately about the value of reconnection--and how the act of seeking engagement and beauty in small ways can lead us to discover our most satisfying and meaningful lives.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
As medical director of the famed Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Lee Lipsenthal helped thousands of patients struggling with disease to overcome their fears of pain and death and to embrace a more joyful way of living. In his own life, happily married and the proud father of two remarkable children, Lee was similarly committed to living his life fully and gratefully each day. The power of those beliefs was tested in July 2009, when Lee was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. As Lee and his wife, Kathy, navigated his diagnosis, illness, and treatment, he discovered that he did not fear death, and that even as he was facing his own mortality, he felt more fully alive than ever before. Enjoy Every Sandwich distills everything Lee learned about how we find meaning, purpose, and peace in our lives.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
There is a disconnect between knowledge and behaviour that is only getting worse. We propose a dash of inspiration. This book takes an in-depth look at what motivates behaviour change through stories of people who were inspired to make daily choices to promote their health and well-being. From the mum who started running to support her five-year-old son's fight against cancer to the seventy-three-year-old man who decided he no longer wanted to be obese, the contributors will inspire you to do the most with your time on earth. Spread throughout the book are tips and suggestions based on the latest research from an exercise and behaviour change expert and a registered dietician, who encourage readers to take action.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
Compelling and witty, Liane Holliday Willey's account of growing to adulthood as an undiagnosed 'Aspie' has been read by thousands of people on and off the autism spectrum since it was first published in 1999. Bringing her story up to date, including her diagnosis as an adult, and reflecting on the changes in attitude over 15 years, this expanded edition will continue to entertain (and inform) all those who would like to know a little more about how it feels to spend your life `pretending to be normal'.

Available in print at the Health Science Center Library
In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, Elisabeth Tova Bailey shares an inspiring and intimate story of her encounter with a Neohelix albolabris--a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own place in the world. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world can illuminate our own human existence, while providing an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.