Life And Death In One Breath

"Death is a cosmic joke. If you get the joke, when you fall on the other side, it will be wonderful. If you don’t get the joke, when you are here you fear the other side, and when the other side comes, you just don’t know what it is about. If death becomes a laughing matter in your life, life becomes an utterly effortless process – there is no need to restrain yourself in the process of life; you can live your life absolutely, totally." – Sadhguru For ages, most of humanity has placed 'life' and 'death' at two ends of the existential spectrum – favoring one, fearing the other and continuously floundering between the two. Only when someone who has consciously traversed between both life and death offers to articulate some aspects of it, does humanity get a glimpse of what lies beyond the horizon of its normal perception. In this book, with his extraordinary insights, coming from a profound inner experience, Sadhguru reveals that life and death are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. It is only by embracing both that we can break the shackles of our self-made struggles and be set free. With numerous vibrant colour images, the book is a breath-taking journey through Sadhguru’s wisdom.

For ages, most of humanity has placed “life” and “death” at two ends of the existential spectrum – favoring one, fearing the other and continuously floundering between the two. Only when someone who has consciously traversed between both life and death offers to articulate some aspects of it, does humanity get a glimpse of what lies beyond the horizon of its normal perception. With his extraordinary insights, coming from a profound inner experience, Sadhguru reveals that life and death are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. It is only by embracing both that we can break the shackles of our selfmade struggles and be set free. In his own words, he says: “Death is a cosmic joke. If you get the joke, when you fall on the other side, it will be wonderful. If you don’t get the joke, when you are here you fear the other side, and when the other side comes, you just don’t know what it is about. If death becomes a laughing matter in your life, life becomes an utterly effortless process – there is no need to restrain yourself in the process of life; you can live your life absolutely, totally.” “The distance between your life and death is just one breath, isn’t it?” – Sadhguru

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

One Breath is a gripping and powerful exploration of the strange and fascinating sport of freediving, and of the tragic, untimely death of America’s greatest freediver Competitive freediving—a sport built on diving as deep as possible on a single breath—tests the limits of human ability in the most hostile environment on earth. The unique and eclectic breed of individuals who freedive at the highest level regularly dive hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface, reaching such depths that their organs compress, light disappears, and one mistake could kill them. Even among freedivers, few have ever gone as deep as Nicholas Mevoli. A handsome young American with an unmatched talent for the sport, Nick was among freediving’s brightest stars. He was also an extraordinary individual, one who rebelled against the vapid and commoditized society around him by relentlessly questing for something more meaningful and authentic, whatever the risks. So when Nick Mevoli arrived at Vertical Blue in 2013, the world’s premier freediving competition, he was widely expected to challenge records and continue his meteoric rise to stardom. Instead, before the end of that fateful competition Nick Mevoli had died, a victim of the sport that had made him a star, and the very future of free diving was called into question. With unparalleled access and masterfully crafted prose, One Breath tells his unforgettable story, and of the sport which shaped and ultimately destroyed him.

"Built on her ... Modern Love column, 'When a Couch is More Than a Couch' (9/23/2016), a ... memoir of living meaningfully with 'death in the room' by the 38-year-old great-great-great granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson--mother to two young boys, wife of 16 years--after her terminal cancer diagnosis"--

A Breath of Life is Clarice Lispector's final novel, 'written in agony', which she did not live to see published. Sensual and mysterious, it is a mystical dialogue between a god-like author and the creation he breathes life into: the speaking, shifting, indefinable Angela Pralini. As he has created Angela, so, eventually, he must let her die, for life is merely 'a kind of madness that death makes.' This is a unique, elegiac meditation on the creation of life, and of art.

At the age of fourteen, Amy Wright Glenn began to question the Mormon faith of her family. She embarked on a life long personal and scholarly quest for truth. While teaching comparative religion and philosophy, Amy was drawn to the work of supporting women through labor and holding compassionate space for the dying. Amy shares moving tales of birth and death while drawing on her work as a birth doula, hospital chaplain, and her own experience of motherhood. We are born, we die, and in between these irrevocable facts of human existence the breath weaves all moments together. "Birth, Breath, and Death" entwines story, philosophy, and poetic reflection into transforming narratives that are full of grace.

Helps you explore and share your personal responses to dissection. This book shows the anatomy cadaver as a bridge spanning the chasm that lies between ignorance, darkness, and death on one side and knowledge, health, and life on the other.