What Women Want
Maxine Mei-Fung Chug

After thirty years of research, Sigmund Freud still felt the great unanswered question was: “What does a woman want?” Fifteen years into her own journey as a psychotherapist, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung believes her collaboration with her patients holds the answers. Through the profound and moving stories of seven very different women, Maxine Mei-Fung Chung sheds light on our most fundamental needs and desires. From a young bride-to-be struggling to accept her sexuality, to a mother grappling with questions of identity and belonging, and a woman learning to heal after years of trauma, What Women Want is a deeply intimate examination into the inner lives of women. Based on hours of conversations between Maxine and her patients, this book lays bare our fears, hopes, secrets and capacity for healing. With great empathy and precision, What Women Want presents a fearless look into the depths of who we are, so that we can better understand each other and ourselves, and empower us to claim what we truly want.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Why Does It Still Hurt?
Paul Biegler

Paul Biegler, a science journalist and former doctor who has been on his own pain journey, investigates the true source of chronic pain and emerging therapies including cognitive therapy and graded exercise exposure, that take advantage of neuroplasticity to rewire the brain and end suffering. As he knows only too well, pain isn’t all in a person’s head. Pain is real, but its meaning is often misunderstood. Through conversations with scientists, doctors, and people who have overcome chronic pain, Biegler shines a light on rigorous new studies and emotional personal stories that are changing the way we understand and treat pain. Most importantly, he shows how to take control over persistent pain and truly heal.

An exclusive article by Paul Beigler called Death By Comfort has been published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Line In The Sand
Dean Yates

Dean Yates was the ideal warzone correspondent: courageous, compassionate, dedicated. After years of facing the worst though, including the Bali bombings and the Boxing Day tsunami, one final incident undid him. In July 2007, two of his staff members were brutally gunned down by an American helicopter in Iraq. What followed was an unravelling of everything Dean thought he knew of himself. His PTSD was compounded by his moral wound – the devastation of what he thought he knew of the world and his own character and beliefs. After years of treatment, including several stints inside a psychiatric facility, Dean has reshaped his view of the true meaning of life. Here, in all its guts and glory, is that journey to a better way of being. Dean has been to the blackest heart of humanity and come out with strength and hope. Line in the Sand is a memoir that is going to resonate for generations to come. It tackles the most important topic of our age in an unforgettable way.

An extract from this book was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Outlive – The Science & Art of Longevity
Dr Peter Attia

This is the ultimate manual for longevity, and a groundbreaking manifesto on living better from the world’s top longevity expert.

For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of ageing that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late, prolonging lifespan at the expense of quality of life. Dr Peter Attia, the world’s top longevity expert, believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalised, proactive strategy for longevity. This isn’t ‘biohacking,’ it’s science: a well-founded strategic approach to extending lifespan while improving our physical, cognitive and emotional health, making each decade better than the one before. With Outlive‘s practical advice and roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before. This is the ultimate manual for longevity, and a groundbreaking manifesto on living better from the world’s top longevity expert.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

We Need To Talk About Ageing
Melissa Levi

This book will help you to clarify your options, find your way through the aged-care maze, make informed, values-aligned decisions, and ultimately experience greater meaning, joy and connection.

With over a decade of experience specialising in older people’s mental health and dementia in Australia, clinical psychologist Melissa Levi has helped more than a thousand older people, and their families, navigate the ageing journey. While every family’s story is unique, Melissa has come to know that we all share common fears and questions about ageing – the same questions that her own family had when her grandfather was diagnosed with dementia. In We Need to Talk About Ageing, Melissa encourages us to understand that while getting older is inevitable, the experience doesn’t need to be overwhelming, or clouded with uncertainty or confusion. Melissa provides expert information on what to expect as you get older, how to identify symptoms of common medical and psychiatric conditions in later life, and, most importantly, what you can do and where to go for help. Melissa also shares practical strategies, tips and discussion prompts, so you and your family are equipped to have the big conversations about ageing and are empowered to plan for the future.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Rethinking Our World
Maja Gopel

A compelling and persuasive look at the social transformations needed to cope with our environmental crises.

As this major German bestseller reports, our world is at a tipping point, and we feel it every day. On the one hand, we have never been so well off; on the other hand, we find destruction and crisis everywhere we look. Whether throughout the environment or within society, our systems are under stress. In this book, Maja Göpel, co-founder of the Scientists for Future initiative and a former secretary-general of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, explains that this new reality didn’t just happen overnight, but rather is a result of our continuous actions — actions propelled by principles and beliefs, which have shaped us as a society over generations. We do not solely face an environmental crisis, but also a social one. It’s time to question our principles, set new goals, and re-evaluate our priorities. It’s time to rethink our world, because if we want to keep our livelihoods, we need to find a way of living without draining our planet any further. We need a fair distribution of wealth and a way to reconcile the social with the ecological. Critical, yet full of encouragement, Maja Göpel chooses surprising and enlightening examples to illustrate how we can leave behind our familiar ways of living to achieve a better future.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Under Her Skin
Sue Williams

The remarkable story of Professor Fiona Wood AM, world-leading burns specialist and one of Australia’s most innovative and respected surgeons, whose ground-breaking research and technology development has changed the lives of burns patients. When three bombs tore out the heart of Bali and destroyed so many Australian lives in 2002, burns surgeon Professor Fiona Wood and her team were there to help. A pioneer in the field of burns and reconstructive surgery, Fiona made world headlines with the use of her own invention of ‘spray-on skin’ to help minimise her patients’ terrible scarring. Fiona was later made Australian of the Year, voted Australia’s Most Trusted Person for an unprecedented six years running in the annual Reader’s Digest poll and acclaimed as a ‘National Living Treasure’.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Living In The Light
Deepak Chopra

A ground-breaking guide to the philosophy and practice of yoga from master of modern meditation Deepak Chopra.

More than a form of exercise, yoga is a way of existing in the world rooted in physical, mental and spiritual practices. It defines everyday life as ideal and brings every experience, no matter how small, into the light. In this revelatory book, international bestselling author Deepak Chopra offers a simple eight-week programme covering the eight stages of transformation in yoga including transcendence, wholeness and breath. Featuring 50 poses in delicate line illustrations, created by Chopra and his long-time instructor Sarah Platt-Finger, Living in the Light will guide beginners and enthusiasts alike in nurturing a state of total awareness and a deeper understanding of self.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Women We Buried, Women We Burned
Rachel Louise Snyder

Rachel Louise Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and home at age 16. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel managed to talk her way into college and eventually travelled the globe as a journalist. Survival became her reporter’s beat, and in places like India, Niger, and Cambodia, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. A piercing account of Snyder’s journey from teenage runaway to reporter on the global epidemic of domestic violence, Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a necessary story of family struggle, female survival, and the transformative power of resilience.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.

Inconceivable [Fiction]
Alexandra Collier

Alexandra Collier was a writer living in a light-filled Brooklyn brownstone in New York with the man she loved. But when she woke up to a ravenous hunger to have a baby that her partner didn’t share, her life took a sharp turn. She found herself back in Melbourne at 37, single, heartbroken and living with her parents. Ally began dating with dedication, with sometimes hilarious and often soul-crushing results. Like many 30-something single women, though, she found that her reproductive timeline was rapidly outpacing her romantic life. So she began to explore a controversial option: conceiving a baby with donor sperm.

This review was published in the SEP/NOV 2023 issue of The Art of Healing.