This book is organized in a friendly manner and gives innumerable suggestions to improve your mental and physical health. Also provides basic education about the mind body connection. It is a basic text for anyone with interest in self improvement and healthy coping skills.

This book is awesome, It mentions great ways to reframe our toxic way of thinking in an optimistic approach. I would love to teach this material in a class because it affects all of us 100%. The concepts and ideas are staggering and if we apply these principles to our daily lives we are going to live longer and more productive lives as well as reduce depression, hostility and divorce. If you can read, read this book, you will not be disappointed! If you are a therapist ot teacher it would be even more beneficial for you to spread this wonderful knowledge like wildfire. thanx :)

I am a psychologist teaching part-time in a family practice residency. I have been using this book for several years to teach resident physicians ideas and skills to help their patients get better faster. The book does a good job of linking the fascinating world of mind-body medical research with practical ideas about how to change. In particular, the authors help everyone get off to a good start by normalizing the process of change and suggesting ways to avoid relapse. Another strength is the emphasis on a variety of methods to increase relaxation and picturing success, two time-tested skills. I recommend this book without reservation.

Healthy Pleasures written by Robert Ornstein and David Sobel is a book about the medical benefits of pleasure, that is longer, healthier life.

The book is divided up into three parts and each of those has chapters relative to the topic. Healthy Pleasures proposes a new approach to the way women and men manage their health. This book is a readers guide through the maze of myths and misconceptions that stand in the way of health.

In the book the reader will find scores of practical suggestions, based on recent scientific discoveries, on how to live in a way that enriches, rather than just maintains, health: ways to mobilize positive beliefs, expectations, and emotions... from cognitive therapy, relaxation training, and successful behavior modification practices.

Because people are naturally drawn by the pleasure principle to many of the things which promote health, this makes the book easy to follow. The emphasis of this book is the importance of pleasing rather than punishing ourselves... food, drink, rest, work, sunrises and sunsets, too... in a refreshing affectionate light found in the brain's pleasure centers.

Great,usefull,open minded,with energy and ideas. Healthy Pleasures is the healthy pleasure of living without fighting with oneself.

Ornstein and Sobel write an entirely readable book about an important topic. Everyone knows that we need to exercise and eat right to be healthy. But not everyone knows that many of the things we ENJOY are healthy. And enjoyment ITSELF is healthy!

The authors go into great detail about the different ways you can enhance your health and enjoyment and they cite research to back up what they're saying. Indulge yourself in pleasure: Music, good scents, good flavors, optimism, naps, fun, pets, good friends, etc. These are some of the healthiest things you can do.

If you are interested in maintaining or improving your health AND interested in having a good time along the way, this is the book for you. I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, and I'm an expert on what is effective and what is not. The ideas and research behind this book are important and valuable and very much worth reading.

This is an incredible compilation of all of the facets to historical exploration of the human mind. Selected writings from the Iching, Willaim James, Charles Tart, Dorothy Lee, Aldous Huxley, Inderes Shah, Gay Luce, Carl G. Jung, and Arthur Deikman, and modern (circa 1972) experiential scholars.

The book includes six sections each with an intelligent introduction by Robert E. Ornstein to readings from a variety of perspectives on human consciousness:

I. The Scope of Psychology II. Two Modes of Consciousness III. The Construction of "Ordinary" Consciousness IV. The Traditional "Esoteric" Psychologies V. Contemporary Sufism VI. An Extended Concept of Man

This is a fantastic treatise on the wholeness of collective human experience, and addresses the tendency for each of us to take our subjective realty as more than an experience. If you can find a copy of this book take a look. Great for all students of human consciousness.

rwboyd@mindspring.com

Filled with unique illustrations of the brain in an imaginative manner, combined with powerful information regarding the clinical anatomy of our CPU, this is a must read for those working with brain injured individuals or who would just like to understand the magic that is our mind.

The most striking aspect of the authors'work is the magnificent way in which the various layers of the brain/consciousness are paired with the drawings evoking our ancient evolutionary history. Rather than a modern suburban house built on a scraped lot, the brain is portrayed as a ruin with succeeding layers built on top of each other. I believe the book succeeds in conveying a sense of mystery as to how we are able to function as modern homo sapiens while carrying around with us the results of milennia of evolution: the hope and the danger as it were. And yet, this is all achieved in a very light-hearted and entertaining manner.

A really great introduction to the workings of the brain. Truly memorable illustrations: so much better than those dry, factual diagrams you get in most textbooks. This book is an easy read, and keeps a lively pace. Its only drawback is that it is a little dated, but any book on a subject under such intensive research is likely to be a bit out of date by the time it reaches the lay-reader. Highly recommended though.

Being interested in learning new things, I decided to pick up a book on psychology from library. I am glad that I picked this one as my first book on this subject.

Robert starts the book with a simple question and starts discussion around the question and ends the book with a similar question. His opinions and conclusions are very well convincing and well supported with facts. Most of the stuff mentioned in the book just make SENSE.

The organization of the book and the style in which the book was written may not be the very best but the contents of the book make it worth reading.

This book is a concise and inspiring introduction to what behaviorists left out of psychology, written by a pioneer in the scientific study of consciousness. Ornstein writes with humor and clarity, discussing with equal ease those questions of psychology that science can in principle answer, and also with those which require experiential, rather than experimental, answers. This is a classic, with much of continuing relevance 30 years after first publication.

Reviewers and readers alike should remember the words of Omar Khayyam quoted in this book: "I am a mirror, and who looks at me, whatever good or bad he speaks, he speaks of himself."

I liked this book very much. Much like Wilber's Spectrum Ornstein does a good job at objectively studing the eastern disciplines. And provides some useful information on how the brain works. This book is quoted in the bibliography of Wilber's Spectrum of Consciousness.

A good book but try "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" from the same author. Much more comprehensive written after this book.

This is a classic, well worth (re-)reading twenty years later. The author's later EXPLORING THE WORLD OF LUCID DREAMING isn't actually more _comprehensive_ than this book, but rather more practical, "a step-by-step guide to lucid dreaming: how to do it, and what to do with it." LUCID DREAMING, in contrast, includes material on NDEs, OBEs, dream telepathy, mutual dreaming, and other topics for which lucid dreaming has important implications. It is a _different_ book, addressing "why?" sorts of questions, perhaps with more philosophical depth, and certainly more implications, while EXPLORING... focusses on "how?"'LD techniques, and "what?"'LD applications.

LUCID DREAMING is currently out-of-print, but widely available in libraries, used book stores, and conveniently'Amazon.com. If you are interested in dreaming and transcendence you'll want to read this book. And if you're interested in lucid dreaming, you'll want to re-read it.

The best book of Lucid dreaming writen by the man who discovered Lucid dreaming and proved it to the scientific community. He is a visionary and this is his masterpiece.

Partly as a result of Ornstein's earlier book on the divided brain 25 years ago, the terms left and right brain have become part of of daily vocabularly. Even adverts talk about developing the right brain. Not surprisingly there are a lot of confusions on the topic as well. That's why Ornstein's return to the topic should be welcomed by anyone with an interest in the brain and how the mind works. He shows how the simple idea that people are either left or right brained is simply wrong but that the two work together in fascinating ways that we are only just beginning to understand. For a fine example of entertaining yet easy to understand science writing, turn to his section describing what is involved in understanding a joke and the different way patients who have lost the use of parts of their left or right brain respond to jokes. Other topics like dreams and schizophrenia also can be seen in a new light when seen from this interaction between the hemispheres. This is a lot shorter than Steve Pinker's latest work on the Mind and a lot more entertaininly written and contains many more fresh insights Jerome Burne, (London-based journalist specializing in psychology)

All of Robert Ornstein's very readable books help us to understand how our minds work. In The Right Mind, Ornstein uses clear ordinary language to describe the past, present, and future of world thinking about the roles of the brain hemispheres. If the right hemisphere specializes in contextual understanding, then this book could very well be subtitled: A Context for Context.

One of Robert Ornstein's great gifts is his ability to presentcomplicated historical and scientific material in a concise, lucid andentertaining fashion that lay readers like myself can understand and enjoy. THE RIGHT MIND embodies a daring shift in his paradigm for brain function from the 1970's, regarding the two hemispheres as complementary rather than dichotomous,the right providing the scaffolding and the left the building blocks. I was as startled and amazed when I read this book as I was when I read Ornstein's THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

I found this book discouraging...depressing. The information may be of value to students of psychology but not to people who prefer a postitive outlook.

Trying to do scientific reading on consciousness studies can often be as pleasant as pulling teeth, the stuff of nightmares for those who are not biology majors. For all those interested in the subject but yearn for an authoritative scientist who speaks layman's English, this book is for you. Dr. Ornstein was one of the groundbreaking researchers in hemispherical differences in brain functioning (right v. left), and here he treats the reader to an eminently enjoyable exploration of how--and why--human consciousness likely evolved, what its true properties are, and what these mean for understanding ourselves. The illustrations in the book are priceless and hilarious (much in the tradition of Macaulay's "The Way Things Work), along with Ornstein's witty writing style and easily digestible prose to communicate complex ideas and concepts in a lucid, exciting manner.

His euphemism "a squadron of simpletons" is a common and welcome refrain--he shows us a human brain equipped with more non-specialized neurons than it will ever need, adaptable to more habitats and social situations we can ever imagine. His tie-in of Freud to Darwin is ingenious, and proves his point that much greater: fundamentally the human brain, he argues (echoing colleagues like Gerald Edelman, etc.), is not a rational mechanism like a computer; it was never designed to be. Instead, it is adaptive: the ultimate gift of evolution to our species of the ultimate survival adaptation--evolution becoming conscious of itself. This book does indeed clear one's mind in a rather "zen"-like fashion, once you understand the transitory and fragmentary nature of ordinary consciousness and the revisionist nature of memory. In the end, Ornstein suggests, such an account of the evolution of consciousness can help our species adjust to its next, possibly final adaptation: conscious evolution, utilizing what we know about human consciousness to better inform our interactions with our species, and with the larger world.

This is a great book for the person on a quest for the evolution of consciousness. Ornstein does a super job of writing about a very complex matter in terms everyone can understand. If you are looking for a place to begin your search on the subject of consciousness be sure to choose this book first.

Robert Ornstein is a neurobiologist and co-author David Sobel is an M.D., and together they can write. This is a clear, readable, informative introduction to the brain and its impact on human health - surely one of the most fascinating frontiers in medicine. I read the 1986 edition of the book; some smart paperback publisher should get Ornstein and Sobel to write a new chapter summarizing the latest research in this fast changing field.

Burke and Ornstein provide a fascinating historical narrative, but never seem to really justify their implicit claim that roads not taken due to technological advance and correlated reliance on linear rationality might have been preferable. Their focus on unforseen consequences of technologies coupled with a critique of political technocracy in varied forms seems a good framework for understanding our present global woes(though not at all a new approach--refer to any of John Dewey's writings on culture from the 20s and 30s). Their contrasting of natural and unnatural modes of human behavior and cognition, though, seem philosophically untenable(the natural being our Paleolithic hard-wiring, the unnatural any cultural addition), as do their prescriptions for solving our ecological/political problems. They advocate direct democracy in small communities with access to excellent education, health, and new arational information systems, a formula almost identical to the old Greek axemaker notion of the Polis(except arational as opposed to hyper-rational). Why the direct democracy of these hypothetical communities would be more accepting of other communities, more willing to recognize the need to share/conserve resources and think in global/holistic ways, more intelligent in their recognition of the deleterious potential effects of new technologies is not clear. "Expert" knowledges have clearly brought horrible consequences in the past few centuries, but the Cultural Revolution brought more tragedy than the AMA ever has. Hegel, axemaker icon though he was, wrote that the Owl of Minerva only spreads her wings at dusk, by which he meant that as mere humans we are always condemned to only understand history retroactively, if at all. We can, of course, do a better job of evaluating technologies in more democratic ways with more of an eye to a sustainable future. Insofar as Burke and Ornstein point to this path, I applaud them.

Technology began as soon as humans determined to use tools. Burke and Ornstein call these people the axemakers. The axemakers' talents offered us a bargain, and we took it, despite its multifarious effects. "In our ancient past, the all-powerful axemaker talent for performing the precise, sequential process that shaped axes would later give rise to the precise, sequential thought that would eventually generate language and logic and rules, which would formalize and discipline thinking itself" (p. xii). Accordingly, with every invention and modification of technology, humans learned to adapt to the effects of that change. The authors of this book argue that for the first time in human progress, "we can consciously take our development in our own hands and use it to generate talents that will suit the world of tomorrow"

Easy reading--interesting -- consistent message. The authors may bend the historical discussions to maintain the metaphor, and how well its double edge works. Language, a primary gift, diminished the elders' responsibility to teach, but offered the opportunity to learn from many sources, past and present. For today's leaders, a warning remains clear: Evaluate what is new and its consequences before rushing to embrace it. The Axemaker continues to hone a double edge of hope and hurt. Burke and Ornstein call upon us to take care -- to avoid the "cut and control" concepts that separate people, ideas, scientific thought, emotional well-being, and society. Technology can work for us if we seek the wholeness of life.

If you are ready to pay attention, and I mean really pay attention, The Axemaker's Gift will alter your perception of the world --- specifically humankind's relationship to the natural world --- forever. In the relatively few pages of this book, James Burke and Robert Ornstein take us on a journey from humankind's beginning to present day, maintaining all along the way their metaphor of the double-edged axe (Every advance has a price).

Books like The Axemaker's Gift (New World, New Mind by Ornstein and Paul Erlich is another) go beyond interesting reading. This material is important. We need to read it; we need to think carefully about it; and we need to act on the sharp (pun intended) insights provided.

The subject matter is essential, the point of view realistic, even if a little dark, and the authors make The Axemaker's Gift an interesting and enjoyable read. As a non-fiction author, I am always impressed with the ability to make serious matters fun, without losing the message.

My recommendation: read it, enjoy it, learn from it.