#Reading #RereadingBooks Archives - Madhu Bazaz Wangu
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#Reading #RereadingBooks Tag

Tuesday, June 24,2025

Posted on June 23, 2025
in Flourishing, Meditation & Journaling at Ashby Ponds, Sharper Brain after Retirement
6 Comments

Today's inspiration is geared more toward Ashby Ponds' Mindful Creators than Mindful Writers because, if I remember correctly, the age range of MWs is younger. But it never hurts to know things in advance to prepare for future health benefit. So here it goes: By the age 85 and older, about a third of people have dementia. Prevention is the most powerful antidote to this illness. You can’t prevent something you cannot see and dementia is one such illness. It increases exponentially after age 65. The mental decline is linked to lifestyle: physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, social isolation, poor sleep, lack of mentally stimulating activities and misuse of alcohol. All opposites of the eight good habits we’ve been reading about and hopefully practicing.  Prevention should start early. Our Ashby Ponds community may...

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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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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, April 3, 2025

Posted on April 2, 2025
in Journaling
2 Comments

Below is a slightly revised version of the Inspiration (Day 91) from the book, Unblock Your Creative Flow. After reading the nightmarish poem, “A Dream” by Hermann Hesse in his book, The Glass Bead Game, I shuddered. A feeling of restlessness creeped in. The only way I could eliminate that feeling was to journal about it. I wrote what ended up being a short story.  Here is a summary:I walk to the monastery on the hill and enter the building. Its walls are lined with books from ceiling to floor. The spines of the gilded lettered books glitter in the morning light. I pull out the one closest to me. The spine reads, Meaning of My Life. The leather cover tooled in gold promises a story still untold. What wisdom will the book...

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