Customer Reviews

The Healer: Heart and Hearth

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In this personal and engaging book, Dr. Diamond considers the many elements that combine to produce an effective and long-lasting therapeutic relationship. Drawing on his own extensive experience as a holistic healer, Dr. Diamond discusses the role of the healer and that of the sufferer. He also looks in detail at setting up the best environment in which healing can take place.

I find Dr. Diamond's emphasis on the importance of a holistic approach to healing most valuable, and I welcome the philosophical context in which this book places that concept.

This book inspired me to have a new attitude toward my home -- and my life! It is written in a mix of prose and lovely poetry -- both of which are full of heart-warming thoughts. I also like the use of word origins to illuminate these thoughts.

At the start of The Healer: Heart and Hearth we are invited into a Sanctuary, "a holy place of refuge where you will feel safe and loved." The creator of this prose and poetry ensemble, the renowned holistic healer, Dr. John Diamond, states that it is there that we can at last become our true and deepest Self, with none other than he as our most intimate chaperon and envisioned mentor. In this prayerful and sensitively worded guide, he helps us on our spiritual journey through encouraging us to partake in strengthening visualization exercises, emphasizing that it is only on our discovery of the Belovedness of our own mothers that we can start to heal.

The Healer: Heart and Hearth is filled with Diamond's evocative and heartfelt poems, or aphorisms, most of which are no longer than five lines long. His diction is as natural and unforced as the milk that flows from the untroubled maternal breast. He eases our pain through his insight and empathy and he allows the close warmth of the relationship that he has with his reader to enable the latter to transcend the specific moment so as to become at one with the movement and eternal timeframe of the Universe. The sincerity of this esteemed wellness practitioner breaks down all of our defenses so that we feel accepted and comforted, able to aspire to become fully what we were originally intended to be.

Starting out with an exploration of what it means to him to be a holistic healer, Diamond then traces the etymology of such words as "hearth," "host," and "guest." By revealing how such words came into being and how they have come to mean what they do today, he familiarizes the reader with the world as he sees it. Not only that, but he also shows how he cuts to the core of the pivotal essence of life, so that all confusion is removed and the crux of our natural existence is laid bare.

Coming from a linguistic base, Diamond then moves on to discuss the aspirational and inspirational nature of music. The serenity and calmness of his voice is heard as a conduit by which we can aspire to explore the intensity of our own responses to our environs and beyond. Rapturously, we as readers are swayed into a state of blissful tranquility, in which we can start to heal ourselves. The wholeness of Diamond's approach transforms our twenty-first century tendency to be hypercritical of all that we read and see into a willingness to be elevated by both his poetry and his prose. Ultimately, then, we are able, without skepticism, to appreciate his idealization of the healer as standing "openhearted, arms outstretched." [Reviewer of [...]]

I've been a massage therapist and healer for 13 years. I now require each potential client to read this book and Music and Song, Mother and Love, both by John Diamond. I often recommend other books along the way, but these two books set the tone for all of the work we do together. Together with Facets of a Diamond: Reflections of a Healer, these books should be required reading for all healers and those who really want to support their own healing.