Reading Archives - Madhu Bazaz Wangu
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Reading

Thursday, June 12, 2025

Posted on June 11, 2025
in #Reading Poetry, Creativity, Imagination, Reading
4 Comments

In Praise of PoetryPoetry grows on us. Reading poems aloud can turn into an enjoyable exercise, but more importantly, it helps refine our thinking and enhances journaling. You may not want to become a poet but you learn to have a grasp on words and how they have power to stir deep feelings and emotions in you that you may not have experienced before.  Reading poetry is a private, intimate experience. It widens our emotional space by stirring self-examination. It helps us deal with paradoxical emotions we don’t understand. Poems have messages that speak directly to us. When a poem links with our heart, it feels like the poet has shared a secret. The relationship between the poet, the poem, and the listener inspires awe and delight. A boy reading sitting...

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Thursday, May 1, 2025

Posted on April 30, 2025
in Reading
5 Comments

Reading to Heal In December 2023, I had my left knee replacement surgery. The pain was unbearable. For a few days post-surgery I experienced a few spurts of awakenings. These pikes of wisdom must have been due to the pain pills and the adjustment my leg was making with its new bionic part. I was in a state of deep consciousness that felt devoid of ego, spacious. And in those awakenings here’s what I realized: That billions of people around the world, similar to the health care workers I was surrounded with, are going about doing what they do each day – toil and struggle to make lives better for their families and themselves. And that majority of people are good. Through media – printed, visual, verbal – we are kept informed about...

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Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Posted on April 28, 2025
in Reading
3 Comments

Our brain can adapt, master new skills, store memories and information, and even recover after a traumatic brain injury. This is called neuroplasticity. The lifelong capacity of the brain to change and rewrite itself in response to the stimulation of learning and experience. One of the skills that contributes to brain’s neuroplasticity is reading. It allows our brain to grow, expand, learn, and relearn.  Some older individuals in their eighties or nineties, even if they were avid readers when younger, lose their ability to recall. A short story may be easier to comprehend but reading a novel and remembering all they read until the end eludes them. “Research shows that along with diet and exercise, reading can stave off signs of dementia. Reading, journaling, meditation and other mentally stimulating activities, no matter the...

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Thursday, April 24, 2025

Posted on April 23, 2025
in Being in Nature, Reading
5 Comments

Did you know that stress stimuli can be deflated by reading a well-written book? Reading someone else’s made-up world is a release and a relief. Reading offers your mind the opportunity to recreate a world and in journaling you may expand it beyond the confines of your personal imagination. In children’s literature, stories explain the world using pictures and simple words. When I read Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax to my five-year-old grandson, he viscerally understood the meaning of “deforestation,” “sustainability,” and “protecting the environment.” This story beloved by children teaches kids to treat the planet with kindness and stand up and speak up for others.  With lessons on the beauty of nature, especially imaginary Truffula Trees, it speaks of the danger of taking our earth for granted. Written fifty years ago by this visionary, the story is timely,...

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Tuesday, April 16, 2025

Posted on April 15, 2025
in #Story Telling, Reading, Travel
4 Comments

Some more benefits from daily reading as evidenced from scientific research groups: Researchers from Yale School of Public Health showed that reading for 30 minutes a day can add two years to your life span. It keeps the brain active enough to prevent a decline in thinking and processing. Another research study at the University of Sussex shows that reading even for 6 minutes (!) before falling sleep reduces stress. It is better than listening to music or drinking a warm cup of milk. A book is not only a pleasant distraction but also actively engages and expands your imagination, thus helping you enter an altered state of consciousness. Cognition associated with Alzheimer’s is strengthened by reading, which builds discerning power that can compensate for the loss of brain cells damaged by aging and...

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Thursday, April 10, 2025

Posted on April 9, 2025
in Meditation & Journaling at Ashby Ponds, Reading
2 Comments

Singing the praises of reading Horace Mann, the  American public education reformist advised, “Resolve to edge in a little reading every day even if but a single sentence.”  Erasmus, 15th century scholar and humanist wrote, “Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite and worth remembering.” “When you walk in the mist, you get wet,” says the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen. He means that you absorb the stuff you take in and the environment that surrounds you.   Reading lets you step out of your cloistered life and dwell in the midst of masters. By the process of unconscious assimilation, good books enter your mind. Reading improves vocabulary, reasoning, concentration, empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence. Read new books and read old books. Read books written by living writers and those from earlier eras. Read everything you feel is relevant....

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Posted on April 7, 2025
in Creativity, Daily Reflections 2025, Imagination, Reading
4 Comments

Whether reading for pleasure or personal growth, what you enjoy depends on your interests and experiences. What you choose to read is as unique as what you enjoy eating or wearing. When you select a book to read, what are you seeking? Pleasure, growth, transformation? It is not what you choose to read but what happens to you when you are absorbed in reading – that pleasurable feeling of forgetting who and where you are, temporarily experiencing life through someone else’s perspective! I read to be entertained, to learn, to adventure into unknown worlds where my heart is slashed, where my guts are punched, or a brick falls on my head. With each book I read, my emotional and intellectual sensibilities emerge and deepen. In 2003, a group of doctors in Wales...

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Thursday, February 27, 2025

Posted on February 26, 2025
in Daily Reflections 2025, Nonverbal Activities, Reading, Spirituality, Writing
4 Comments

In The Happiness Project: Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, bestselling author Gretchen Rubin writes that she had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places – a city bus. “The days are long, but the years are short,” she thought. “Time is passing, and I’m not focusing enough on the things that really matter.” In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her own happiness. Reading her musings, I remembered how many decades ago it occurred to me that I could not change the world but I could change myself. But how? I reread the world wisdom books, researched new scientific literature on meditation and mindfulness, and read tons of...

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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Posted on February 17, 2025
in Journaling, Reading
6 Comments

Paying attention and being aware of what is happening outside is important but not as important as being attentive and self-aware of our inner landscape. Such an attitude leads you to a better understanding of yourself.   Physical changes and impermanence are perpetual. When life’s transient nature registers in our mind we hear the whispers of the primordial questions, “Is that all there is?” “Is there anything permanent?” “What is authentic about my life?” “What is that which truly makes me happy?” In our younger years we pay attention to only our outer appearance, what we see reflected in the mirror. Our awareness is directed outward upon things, people, and places. With age, if we are fortunate, we turn inward towards the things that give meaning to our life, help us find a...

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THE BLACKENED MIRROR-A SHORT STORY

Posted on September 20, 2023
in Reading, Travel
0 Comments

CHANCE MEETINGS: Selected Review Excerpts:Chance Meetings . . . encourages deep thought and arouse the spirit to examine the beauty and harshness of the human condition. Wangu's gift for sensory detail and her lyrical prose take the reader on a cross-cultural journey. . . (Rosemary Hanrahan MD, MPH, Author and Life Coach) In Chance Meetings, an eloquent collection of stories, Dr. Wangu weaves a rich tapestry of the human condition with the strong, clear language of myths. Whether it's a tale of an impoverished orphan in India with no family or friends to turn to in a desperate moment, or an elderly American woman imprisoned within the walls of illiteracy, each story hangs like a bead on a japa mala - for the reader to touch and be touched by the...

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