A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life: Self Expression and Spiritual Practice for Those Who Have Time for Neither (Paperback)

by Nina Wise (Author) "It is our nature to be free and it is our nature to express that freedom, spontaneously and without hesitation, through song, and dance, and..." (more)
Key Phrases: San Francisco, Thich Nhat Hanh, Big Sur (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"This book is wise, passionate and delight-full. As a teacher and performer, and now as an author, Nina Wise shows us how to bring creativity, spirituality, and joy into our day-to-day lives. I have found this book, like its author, a pleasure to know?provocative and creatively stimulating. I recommend it to anyone who wants to enliven and lighten up their lives."
?Lama Surya Das

"An empowering, joyful, and celebratory guide to a fuller life. Creativity is enhanced when we learn to play, dare to break the rules, dance, sing, laugh. Nina Wise is wise indeed! She teaches us to expand our senses and to connect body and soul while having fun. This wonderful book could change my life...."?Isabel Allende

"Nine Wise joins great talent with spiritual understanding. No one else I know so intimately joins the sublime and the absurd, surface and depth, the high and the low. Her range is enormous."?Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones

"Nina Wise invites us to join the dance of life in an artful world?to respond to all of life's offerings including the difficult ones with our birthright of creative expression. She shows us how our own capacity for expression can lift us out of our confusion, afford us greater understanding, and allow us to respond to our suffering with deeper compassion."
?Sylvia Boorstein, author of It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness
-- Review

Review
"This book is wise, passionate and delight-full. As a teacher and performer, and now as an author, Nina Wise shows us how to bring creativity, spirituality, and joy into our day-to-day lives. I have found this book, like its author, a pleasure to know–provocative and creatively stimulating. I recommend it to anyone who wants to enliven and lighten up their lives."
–Lama Surya Das

"An empowering, joyful, and celebratory guide to a fuller life. Creativity is enhanced when we learn to play, dare to break the rules, dance, sing, laugh. Nina Wise is wise indeed! She teaches us to expand our senses and to connect body and soul while having fun. This wonderful book could change my life...."–Isabel Allende

"Nine Wise joins great talent with spiritual understanding. No one else I know so intimately joins the sublime and the absurd, surface and depth, the high and the low. Her range is enormous."–Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones

"Nina Wise invites us to join the dance of life in an artful world–to respond to all of life's offerings including the difficult ones with our birthright of creative expression. She shows us how our own capacity for expression can lift us out of our confusion, afford us greater understanding, and allow us to respond to our suffering with deeper compassion."
–Sylvia Boorstein, author of It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness


See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (May 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767910079
• ISBN-13: 978-0767910071
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #205,333 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and funny, July 9, 2002

By A Customer

Nina Wise subtitles her wonderful book, "Self-expression and spritual practice
for those who have time for neither." And she could have added, for those who
don't habitually shop at the Self-Improvement section of the store. I had my
qualms but I had first heard the author's name from an impeccable source so I
carried on and bought it. I quickly realised this wasn't Buddhism Lite or
Self-Realization in Five Minutes a Day. Nina Wise has spent thirty years
performing and leading workshops in improvisation. She brings decades of
experience in an art whose principal act is a requirement, as she describes it
elsewhere, to "(find) words for the story the body wants to tell" and where
"nothing in the psyche feels prepared, ready, secure-the stroll from backstage
to centerstage is an act of faith." It is a scary description and her courage
and commitment are everywhere evident. In this brilliant book we get the
benefits of that commitment as she offers dozens of ten-minute "practices"
drawn from every area of the arts -- singing, drawing, writing, role-playing,
dancing --- wonderful hints that invite us to play: to play with the senses;
play with our sense of self, with our life-history; play with friends, with
lovers, with strangers; play with pain and sickness and bereavement, with loss
and disappointment, anger and frustration, play with happiness. They remind
us to take ten minutes NOW to play, but to play with attention, as adults, to
wake up. She shows that unlocking creativity and self-expression has the
widest consequences: "We are not who we think we are --- we are not what we
do, we are not our age ... our gender or sexual preference ... where we live
... or what religion we were born into or went on to practice ... not our skin
color .. not our bodies ... not our thoughts." Many people have said this but
not many have offered such creative, witty, down-to-earth help to discovering
it for ourselves. And in between we are treated to illustrations from her own
life as daughter, lover, teacher, performer: at home by her dying mother or
wrapped in a "Tantric embrace" round her suitcase on an overnight train trip
in India, the range is enormous. She is deadly serious, serious but never
solemn. "All the great sages I have had the fortune to meet have had a
twinkle in their eyes ... their lightness of being is contagious. In their
presence I too break into a smile that would glow in the dark." Well, that
smile glows all over the page here. This is anything but a ponderous tome and
the opposite of some self-indulgent, feel-good exercise. It is sad, funny,
tough, moving, uproarious, witty, lyrical, passionately articulate and, yes
(I'm not the first to say it) wise. Go ahead, do yourself a favour: sing to
the cat, make art in the yard, throw a hat party, read this book.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flawed but VERY meaningful, October 20, 2003

By	Anteek Geek "the-anteek-geek" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

I was very skeptical of this book (how can you not be with a name like that), but it ended up proving to be a meaningful read. It's not profound in it's concept: the author simply gives you inner "permission" to act on your impulses and emotions. These suggestions are constuctive and sneak into your thinking throughout your day. It's the kind of book that is not jaw dropping when your done, it's meaning trickles slowly and frees you a little.
The author did make you feel great but my only concern is that it made her feel greater. Some passages bordered on bragging but still made you feel as though you also had something to contribute. This book proved me wrong, all in all, and is worth giving a shot.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review from Body & Soul (formerly New Age Magazine), May 02, May 28, 2002

By A Customer

(from an article by Caren Goldman): Nina Wise shows us that we don't need a crowbar to cram creativity--an "inborn aspect of being alive"--into our overbooked lives. Wise, a recipient of National Endowment for the Arts grants and an award-winning performance artist (see NinaWise.com), believes that we find the keys to a creative life when we give ourselves permission to allow whatever arises "to gain expression." Using her brief creativity exercises, we can step into the realm of our spiritual natures and onto playful and profound paths to creative self-expression--in 10 minutes or less. One simple practice that can be done almost anywhere invites us to "doodle" or improvise with our voices, like scat singers...."Solutions to both technical and emotional knots arise when we soften our minds and our hearts, when we relax," Wise adds...Ultimately, readers who follow Wise's advice will develop the freedom to experience a big, new, free, happy and unusual life and feel more alive in the process.--Body & Soul, May 2002