Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being

When a self-improvement book is reviewed I always look for actual experience from people who have tried the methods in the book - not just those read it and agree with it. Well now I am reviewing 'Walk Your Blue's Away' and I can say unequivocally IT WORKS, at least for me. All of my adult life I have been prone to depressive episodes from rejection and loss - even if the loss is very small. Recently a loving and satisfying relationship of 5 years was broken off by my partner. I knew from experience I was poised to nosedive into depression. This was despite many years of zealous embrace of cognitive behavior therapy in which the two sides of the brain battle. An adverse event triggers dejection, anger, depression. With cognitive therapy you have to identify the irrational thought that supposedly triggers your negative emotions, dispute the thought, and find a rational and sensible substitute thought. The problem was the negative emotions would take sometimes years to dissipate and I was constantly ruminating and flashing back to previous events. What Thom's book does is address healing. When you heal from emotional trauma with this method, the two sides of the brain actually are successful in integrating reason and emotion. With cognitive therapy reason and emotion seemed to constantly battle one another without resolution. You might win a battle but the next day another begins. I contend that after 5 daily walks following the simple guidelines of the book, the crushing sadness of rejection has lifted. The memories that previously would trigger bouts of depression are still there but now in the distance. They no longer dominate my mood allowing me to concentrate and get on with my life. At the end of each session my thinking was especially sharp - the corrective rational thoughts that I tried for years to marshal with cognitive therapy were at last automatic. Everyone suffers loss, rejection and emotional trauma. The key, as Thom says is, to facilitate your ability to heal naturally.

We've all been told that walking is good for us. This is an excellent source for learning about the mind and the benefits of walking. The author explains the mechanics of how and why walking helps us to process things like creativity, events, problems and/or solutions as well as healing. Gives specific techniques to use. This is one of the most useful, informative and interesting books I've read.

It's a simple concept: our bodies usually heal rapidly from injury but our minds can suffer for years from upset. Now there's a method for combining the healing powers of the body with the mind: walking, a therapy which actives both sides of the brain to remove 'stuck' emotions. Case studies supplement the author's tips on how to use movement and mind awareness of the stress to mitigate its effects. New age and general-interest health collections alike will find this inspirational.

Don't let the lightweight title, cover, and page-count fool you. This is a breakthrough book, and not just another self-help, happy-talk rip-off. This book can stand proudly next to the most academic psychological tome, and replace much of the pop psychology pap moldering on our bookshelves. To be open to something so important, one first has to know who the author is, what he stands for, and why he can be trusted. I've read several of Thom Hartmann's books, and listened to his daily progressive radio program numerous times. I can only state emphatically: This is a gifted man we can trust. He is the real deal. (See my earlier post on him for more info.) The basics of the book are these: 1. Our bodies are self-healing if we feed it the right food and exercise it properly under the right conditions. Shouldn't our minds and emotions also be self-healing? 2. Rhythmic, bilateral movement is the way we've healed ourselves from traumatic, psychological wounds for hundreds of thousands of years. But until now, we didn't know how it worked. 3. "Bilaterality is the ability to have the right and left hemispheres of the brain fully functional and communicating with each other." 4. Freud's early, very successful work was based on Bilaterality techniques, but after some unfortunate, sensationalistic historical events, he was forced to abandon it for mostly unsuccessful "talk-therapy" methods. Freud tried, but failed, for years to find an equally-successful technique. This history is crucial to our understanding of why psychotherapy evolved the way it did. 5. Devastating events can haunt our every waking moment for years. Some suffer war-caused "post traumatic stress disorders" for years or allow a loved-one's untimely death to ruin their lives, while others are able to move on. Just as we learned to transform our physical health by eating organic food, exercising, and drinking pure water, now we know how to consiously bring ourselves back to a healthy mental state. 6. This discovery comes from Hartmann's own training, observations and experiments, with dramatic results illustrated by case studies and testamonials. 7. Hartmann details a simple, five step technique. 8. Bilaterality has also been used by humans for less-traumatic problem solving, creativity, and motivation. Now we can train ourselves to use it consciously. This book deserves a wide readership and word-of-mouth recommendations. I urge you to read it and pass it on, especially to those whose lives have been darkened by tragedy.

I can't recommend the work of Thom Hartmann highly enough, not just this book but others of his that I have read as well. I've found that walking just ten or fifteen minutes a day can have a huge impact on not just my physical health, but my mental well-being as well. And history shows that Thom is quite right in his observations about the past (such as the anti-Jewish stereotype in "Trilby").