Quantum Wellness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Health and Happiness by Kathy Freston

From the Publisher

An instant New York Times bestseller embraced and endorsed by such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Ellen DeGeneres, and Marianne Williamson, Quantum Wellness is the breakthrough book that created a national trend.

This life-changing guide teaches us how to reach our highest level of health and contentment through small, focused changes. Featuring a foreword by #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, Quantum Wellness will forever change the way readers approach healthy living.

Publishers Weekly

Former model Freston (The One) writes intimately about healing and finding wellness through "incremental changes that vault us to a new experience of ourselves." Peppered with examples from Freston's own path to more conscious, healthier living (quitting smoking, becoming vegan), the book methodically addresses what it means to be healthy in mind, body and spirit and how the three are inextricably intertwined. Some of Freston's prescriptions-such as cleansing, meditation and yoga-are familiar and feel like Hinduism and Buddhism lite-but her contention that "[w]e cannot thrive as individuals without tending to the ills of this world and all its inhabitants" is powerfully argued. The book devotes considerable attention to promoting vegetarianism ("It's about having integrity in the most fundamental of our actions-eating"), and in keeping with the book's attention to "incremental" change, Freston introduces ways for even the most hardened carnivore to start leading a cruelty-free life. With compelling chapters on dealing with crisis and an innovative section on "personal energy management," Freston invites-and equips-readers to become their own healers in moments of sickness, despair and loss. (May)

Susan B. Hagloch - Library Journal

The medical profession is constantly learning more about the mind-body connection, i.e., how our emotions and attitudes can impact our physical health. Freston, author of the best-selling The One and habituA© of Oprah and The Early Show, extends that concept, arguing that making small attitude adjustments and changing thinking patterns can have a beneficial effect on one's health, looks, and life. She outlines eight "Pillars of Wellness"-Meditation, Visualization, Fun Activities, Conscious Eating, Exercise, Self-Work, Spiritual Practice, and Service-and explains how they contribute to a healthy existence. She emphasizes, for example, the spiritual component of eating foods that have been prepared humanely (the more this reviewer hears about factory-farmed livestock, the less appetizing steak and chicken breast seem) and points out the studies that show that such foods are, in fact, more healthful. Essentially, this is a well-argued and clearly explained demonstration of Socrates's contention that the unexamined life is not worth living. Recommended wherever Freston's other books were popular.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

We live in extraordinary times. Just taking in the news of one day, you can hear about people rising to spectacular new levels of wealth even while others lose their health or homes in a maddening bureaucracy; there are species which are disappearing seemingly into thin air juxtaposed with new planets being discovered and researched; cyberspace is supercharged with ever better ways of getting closer to each other and the things we want to know about, and traveling the globe is easier and faster than it has ever been before. There are scientific breakthroughs and heated up wars and industries which continue to amp up their profits in ways that can make your head spin. Indeed, the world is moving at breakneck speed and it takes an enormous amount of effort just to keep a strong foothold and firm balance.

With each passing year the stresses of everyday life seem to challenge us with ever greater urgency. We work harder than ever, have less time to prepare healthy food, and depend all the more on quick fixes and medicines to keep our bodies running. We are told to be on alert for terrorism, coaxed to keep up with an economy that seems to have taken on a life of its own, and now we are being warned that the environment is taking a turn for the worse. We are being diagnosed with more illnesses and malfunctions even while our life expectancy is increasing. We do what we can to maintain our equilibrium and wonder still how long this game will continue until something gives.

Ours is a civilization that seems to be poised for some sort of a breakthrough; some would call it a new age, while others caution that we might be nearing the end of an era. One thing is for sure though, and that is that we are the cause of what is yet to come—for ourselves and for the earth. We are a vitally significant group of people occupying the planet, armed with information and technology; we have the ability to step beyond the status quo and change for the better. Or otherwise.

How we choose to live now—today—will not only dictate the way our personal prospects unfold, but will also help to determine the future prospects of humankind. We are all connected by our source, each made up of the same stuff. Modern physics has proven what spiritual sages have been saying for thousands of years: that all matter is essentially vibrating energy.

We consist of moving electrons, protons, and neutrons and these bare components when investigated more closely really just drill down to vibrating energy that has no boundary. Essentially, beneath what appears to be our skin and bones and cells, we are bare beingness, shifting and flowing energy operating under the illusion that we are separate and apart from each other. The very force which makes up the oceans and trees and brain circuitry and creative art also makes us up.

The way I see it, we are all individual expressions (or creations, if you will) of God, or Spirit. We may have different ideologies and stand firmly in our own bodies, but we are very much bound to one another by this core shared source that powers us all. We are inextricably interconnected to every other being that exists. And so, what one of us experiences, we all, on some level, also experience.

How we eat, medicate ourselves, work, worship, and relate to one another deeply affects every other aspect of life. Therefore, we can no longer just plod along hoping that things will just work out; we have to work them out by starting at home. If we want to create wellness—peace, health, prosperity, and happiness—for ourselves, we also have to consider things holistically in that we address all of life as part of our program.

The word quantum means “a sudden and significant change; an abrupt transition.” Hence Quantum Wellness refers to a radical shift in the quality of our personal lives. It is an evolution on every level of being: physical, mental, and spiritual. The good news is that we can and will experience radical results from small and incremental changes: simple transitions in our diet, slight shifts in the way we resolve conflict and communicate, and some gentle new practices to strengthen our spiritual lives.