Customer Reviews

Healthy Pleasures

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Ornstein and Sobel write an entirely readable book about an important topic. Everyone knows that we need to exercise and eat right to be healthy. But not everyone knows that many of the things we ENJOY are healthy. And enjoyment ITSELF is healthy!

The authors go into great detail about the different ways you can enhance your health and enjoyment and they cite research to back up what they're saying. Indulge yourself in pleasure: Music, good scents, good flavors, optimism, naps, fun, pets, good friends, etc. These are some of the healthiest things you can do.

If you are interested in maintaining or improving your health AND interested in having a good time along the way, this is the book for you. I'm the author of the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works, and I'm an expert on what is effective and what is not. The ideas and research behind this book are important and valuable and very much worth reading.

This might be my favorite mind/body book. Through scientific research, it proves that pleasure is good for you, purpose, meaning, fun and laughter are good for you. In other words, the better your life, the better your health is likely to be. And the harder your life, the more health problems you are likely to have.

This is a profoundly healing message. It tells us not to be hard on ourselves, or on others. Not to blame ourselves or set up hundreds of hoops to jump through. That's not the way to be healthy or happy. Make your life easier and better, and good health is likely (though not guaranteed) to follow.

I have used this approach in my life with multiple sclerosis, my health coaching practice and my wellness workshops for years now with wonderful results. My book, The Art of Getting Well: Maximizing Health When You Have a Chronic Illness, puts Sobel and Ornstein's research into practice. I remain a big fan of Healthy Pleasures

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Healthy Pleasures written by Robert Ornstein and David Sobel is a book about the medical benefits of pleasure, that is longer, healthier life.

The book is divided up into three parts and each of those has chapters relative to the topic. Healthy Pleasures proposes a new approach to the way women and men manage their health. This book is a readers guide through the maze of myths and misconceptions that stand in the way of health.

In the book the reader will find scores of practical suggestions, based on recent scientific discoveries, on how to live in a way that enriches, rather than just maintains, health: ways to mobilize positive beliefs, expectations, and emotions... from cognitive therapy, relaxation training, and successful behavior modification practices.

Because people are naturally drawn by the pleasure principle to many of the things which promote health, this makes the book easy to follow. The emphasis of this book is the importance of pleasing rather than punishing ourselves... food, drink, rest, work, sunrises and sunsets, too... in a refreshing affectionate light found in the brain's pleasure centers.

I am currently re-reading this interesting book after a recent discussion involving studies -- among other things this book debunks 'medical terrorism' in which studies are used to frighten people unnecessarily. (The authors strongly encourage us to look more closely at the size and scope of studies before applying them to ourselves)

However, the book covers many more topics in emphasizing the importance of pleasure, including a focus on Work that makes and keeps us slaves to industry while cutting us off from significant others in our lives.

The authors aren't proponents of hedonism, but suggest that if we buy into conventional wisdom, we miss out on the joy life has to offer without any real improvement in our health or longevity.

The authors make an airtight case for a pleasurable life being healthy. This book will make you feel good, emotionally AND physically.

Great,usefull,open minded,with energy and ideas. Healthy Pleasures is the healthy pleasure of living without fighting with oneself.

Great,usefull,open minded,with energy and ideas. Healthy Pleasures is the healthy pleasure of living without fighting with oneself.

It is regrettable that people are often led to believe that pleasure is a negative thing. This is because many people have grown up thinking that silly -- even harmful -- behavior such as getting drunk is pleasurable when the next day's hangover clearly shows that it is not. As the authors point out the real pleasures of life -- which they discuss in this book -- are actually good for people. Read this book and learn how to have healthy pleasures which make life more pleasant as well as more healthy.

Pleasure as the root of all evil (too often equated with sex) has been converted from its true purpose as the only motivation and incentive that spurs people to action. The power of pleasure has quite simply been highjacked and converted into the exact opposite of its intended purpose to elevate mankind into achieving the impossible - whatever that impossible happens to be. Long recognized by founders of America by including the possible of impossibilities into the preamble of America's Declaration of Independence to properly document their perspective, and their newfound knowledge emerging from the tyranny of Kings and Queens, they set in motion the philosophy upon which American capitalism and entrepreneurship seeks to preserve that delicate relationship between man and the enjoyment of his life - spiritual, mental and physical - and at least, in theory, the same for women. Practice turns out to be much more elusive than planned despite the Constitutional protections because of our lack of consideration for each other of the fine boundaries that separate one from another in that sometimes elusive pursuit that is by definition individually selective, and guarantees that his life will be meaningful, important and happy secure in the natural rights defined as his privilege to define for himself what gives him pleasure - the expression of his free will nurtured within that promise of a free nation, America.