The Mind S Sky

Your mind is like the sky. Sometimes it's clear and blue - but sometimes a raincloud thought comes along and makes everything seem dark. So what can we do about rainclouds? This beautiful picture book, written by psychologist Bronwen Ballard and illustrated by award-winning artist Laura Carlin, shows children that worries and negative thoughts are normal and helps them develop healthy thinking habits. Tips on mindfulness and extra resources for parents are included at the back of the book.

The bestselling author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way delivers fascinating essays on the human mind, the search for extraterrestrial (and thus nonhuman) intelligence, comet strikes as a source of species extinction, near-death experiences, apocalyptic prophecies, information theory, and the origin of laughter. Praise for The Mind’s Sky “It is a joy to read The Mind’s Sky. What a sense of humility in the face of mystery—the spirit of Ulysses, as Tennyson put it, determined ‘to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield’—and sense of poetry too!”—John Archibald Wheeler, physicist, Princeton University “A few chapters into this wonderful book I suddenly realized that I was taking wider views of my own mind’s sky than I have enjoyed in a long time. Ferris illuminates (among other matters) the mysteries of laughter, nirvana, common sense, and Joe Montana. He makes us think big thoughts.”—Jonathan Weiner, author of The Next 100 Years and Planet Earth “One of our best and most imaginative writers, Timothy Ferris has never been afraid to tackle big themes. The Mind’s Sky is a dazzling and provocative synthesis of inner and outer space. This book is sure to be as controversial as it is elegant.”—Dennis Overbye, author of Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos

Owner of "the most remarkable mind on the planet," (according to Entertainment Weekly) Daniel Tammet captivated readers and won worldwide critical acclaim with the 2007 New York Times bestselling memoir, Born On A Blue Day, and its vivid depiction of a life with autistic savant syndrome. In his fascinating new book, he writes with characteristic clarity and personal awareness as he sheds light on the mysteries of savants' incredible mental abilities, and our own. Tammet explains that the differences between savant and non-savant minds have been exaggerated; his astonishing capacities in memory, math and language are neither due to a cerebral supercomputer nor any genetic quirk, but are rather the results of a highly rich and complex associative form of thinking and imagination. Autistic thought, he argues, is an extreme variation of a kind that we all do, from daydreaming to the use of puns and metaphors. Embracing the Wide Sky combines meticulous scientific research with Tammet's detailed descriptions of how his mind works to demonstrate the immense potential within us all. He explains how our natural intuitions can help us to learn a foreign language, why his memories are like symphonies, and what numbers and giraffes have in common. We also discover why there is more to intelligence than IQ, how optical illusions fool our brains, and why too much information can make you dumb. Many readers will be particularly intrigued by Tammet's original ideas concerning the genesis of genius and exceptional creativity. He illustrates his arguments with examples as diverse as the private languages of twins, the compositions of poets with autism, and the breakthroughs, and breakdowns, of some of history's greatest minds. Embracing the Wide Sky is a unique and brilliantly imaginative portrait of how we think, learn, remember and create, brimming with personal insights and anecdotes, and explanations of the most up-to-date, mind-bending discoveries from fields ranging from neuroscience to psychology and linguistics. This is a profound and provocative book that will transform our understanding and respect for every kind of mind.

You know when you're having a really bad day and nothing seems to go right? You feel scared, sad and mad all at the same time, and you don't know what to do. This little book about mindfulness can help you. It will teach you how to mediate and grow your heart. It will help you create space around your feelings, accept yourself as you are and discover your inner wisdom. With nine simple mindfulness exercises, you can learn how to soften your emotions, grow your heart, feel protected and discover your inner wisdom. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of and present in each moment. Through it, you can relax your mind, improve your health, and develop kindness to yourself and others. Mindfulness training is for anyone, no matter what age or background. It is not tied to any specific religion or cultural tradition, and requires no special equipment. The method is simple, but the mind is tricky. With practice, and attention, you can find your Big Sky Mind in every day life.

Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these "myths" did not begin as fiction. This absorbing book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists' interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the local myth of its origin. The Klamath tribe saw it happen and passed down the story--for nearly 8,000 years. We, however, have been literate so long that we've forgotten how myths encode reality. Recent studies of how our brains work, applied to a wide range of data from the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt to modern stories reported in newspapers, have helped the Barbers deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time. Myth is in fact a quite reasonable way to convey important messages orally over many generations--although reasoning back to the original events is possible only under rather specific conditions. Our oldest written records date to 5,200 years ago, but we have been speaking and mythmaking for perhaps 100,000. This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching us about human storytelling.

A brand-new book from the award-winning SUNDAY TIMES journalist Brian Appleyard. Simplicity has become a brand and a cult. People want simple lives and simple solutions. And now our technology wants us to be simpler, to be 'machine readable'. From telephone call trees that simplify us into a series of 'options' to social networks that reduce us to our purchases and preferences, we are deluged with propaganda urging us to abandon our irreducibly complex selves. At the same time, scientists tell us we are 'simply' the products of evolution, nothing more than our genes. Brain scanners have inspired neuroscientists to claim they are close to cracking the problem of the human mind. 'Human equivalent' computers are being designed that, we are told, will do our thinking for us. Humans are being simplified out of existence. It is time, says Bryan Appleyard, to resist, and to reclaim the full depth of human experience. We are, he argues, naturally complex creatures, we are only ever at home in complexity. Through art and literature we see ourselves in ways that machines never can. He makes an impassioned plea for the voices of art to be heard before those of the technocrats. Part memoir, part reportage, part cultural analysis, THE BRAIN IS WIDER THAN THE SKY is a dire warning about what we may become and a lyrical evocation of what humans can be. For the brain is indeed wider than the sky.

Go beyond simplified self-help practices to harness the scientific principles of synchronicity and flow—so you can live better, work smarter, and find purpose in your life. When we align with circumstance, circumstance aligns with us. Using a cutting-edge scientific theory of synchronicity, Sky Nelson-Isaacs presents a model for living “in the flow”—a state of optimal functioning, creative thinking, and seemingly effortless productivity. Nelson-Isaacs explains how our choices create meaning, translating current and original ideas from theoretical physics and quantum mechanics into accessible, actionable steps that we can all take to live lives in better alignment with who we are and who we want to be. By turns encouraging and empowering, Living in Flow helps us develop an informed relationship to meaning-making and purposefulness in our lives. From this we can align ourselves more effectively within our personal, professional, and community relationships to live more in flow.