Customer Reviews

Learning to Breathe: One Woman's Journey of Spirit and Survival

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Author Alison Wright's book "Learning to Breathe: One Women's Journey of Spirit and Survival" is more than just a personal story - it speaks of the greater self and our ability to find courage and power within. I was truly touched by reading her inspiring story. She takes what happens to her and moves past the pains and the potential hardships and learns something much greater about her own self.

The reader is taken along on this spiritual journey of discovery. Alison is able to communicate her experiences not only in the physical sense of what was happening but also from a point of view that allows the reader to fully sense what she was feeling and thinking. The real story is her inner journey and that is what makes her work so much more powerful.

I bought this book for my older sister to read as a birthday gift and will gift other women in my life with copies as well. I feel that women need to see and read about strong courageous women; and to me, Alison Wright truly represents what a true hero is. She faced her pain and fears and through her will power and determination she met her future dreams with success.

This book is both inspirational and entertaining and will be hard to put down. I read it though in one sitting because I wanted to know the full story and how she came out. The book earns The American Authors Association's highest book rating of FIVE STARS. This book also gets my personal endorsement and fullest recommendations. This book is no doubt one of the top 10 best inspirational books of the last decade.

I was excited to read this book, having an interest both in adventurous women and Buddhism, however, I have to agree with Publishers Weekly that harder editing would have helped.
I was surprised to read that, during Wright's visit to Wat Pa Ban Tat monastery in Thailand described on pages 93-4, a Thai monk would call Wright a 'bodhisattva.' Thai monks belong to the Theravada tradition that uses the term `bodhisattva' to refer only to the past lives of the Buddha, such as those recounted in the Jataka tales. This is a major distinciton between the Theravada and Mahayana traditions. In the Tibetan Mahahyana tradition, however, that Wright is familiar with, both monastics and lay practitioners are referred to as `bodhisattvas' once they have taken vows to deliver all beings.
Another instance that surprised me occurs on page 209. Wright throws out, "Next stop Uganda, to white-water raft the Zambezi River, in hair-raising class five rapids." The Zambezi certainly doesn't flow anywhere near Uganda. It rises in Zambia about 690 miles southwest of Uganda, and flows south through Angola and Zambia to the border with Zimbabwe, and then east to Mozambique and finally to the Indian Ocean.
Wright is a gifted photgrapher dedicated to humanitarian issues. Her story of determination and courage deserved better editing in general. It is often presented in a style that seemed like a rush from here to there in the pursuit of physical recovery. I wished for more of her insights and development as a Buddhist practitioner, especially on her development of lovingkindness on the path of a bodhisattva.

This inspiring memoir could have been so much better if the author or her editor knew how to spell, knew the difference between too and two; knew the difference between whose and who's, the difference between better and best, etc. Strange also was her description -- in the third-to-last page of the book -- of finally learning about the death of Alan Guy. And then five pages later, in her Acknowledgments, writing: (Alan, please call me. I still owe you a beer.) Sloppy stories, incorrect geography, incomplete references. Her story of physical survival deserves better.

Feeling a little low, a little defeated, down on your luck? Read this woman's miraculous story of survival and you'll wonder what you were whining about. I couldn't put it down, I read it straight through. It's a prime example of how the human body is fragile and tough in equal parts, and how spirit can transcend the physical. I was making my way through a very trying illness when I read this book and it inspired me to keep pushing.

"Learning to Breathe" is a memoir by San Francisco-based photojournalist Alison Wright who flat-lined while on the operating table following a horrendous bus crash in Laos. Her doctors told her she should be dead, would never walk normally again, and recommended she put away her cameras and do something else with her life. Ms. Wright responded by climbing Africa's tallest peak, Mt. Kilimanjaro, and publishing several photo books.

At one point, Ms Wright recalls someone asking, "What are you willing to give up to find what you are looking for?"

What indeed!

I so enjoyed this book...every second of it and I was so sad when I finished it. I cannot believe that Alison Wright had the strength to get through all she did. I would highly recommend it to all women and possibly some adventuresome men.

When photojournalist Alison Wright celebrated the Millenium with champagne and her fun-loving friends in Northern Thailand, she had no premonition that less than two days later she would be lying torn, broken, bleeding, and close to death on the side of a road in Laos.
This book is about her almost accidental survival from a horrific bus accident, her struggle to win her way back to life, and her eventual return to the high-flying career that took her all over the world, from the North Pole to the South, the bottom of the ocean to Tibet, and always with her camera to record the essential message of what it means to be human.
Her book is a compulsive read, interweaving the glamorous episodes of her life as a National Geographic and UNICEF photographer -- meeting Richard Gere, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi and other world leaders -- with the painstaking business of her recovery. Every step of the way we feel we are with her, unable to put her book down, taking it in with a single gulp -- from the frightened Laotian boy doctor trying to stitch up her lacerated arm with an upholstery needle and thread, to the diffcult tests she put herself through afterwards, some of them impossibly brave.
Our attention is a given, our admiration is wholehearted. Like her many friends, we can only wonder what she is made of? What drives a person to defy every threat and toss eight out of her nine lives away in order to bring back pictures of humankind that may make the world care just a little more?
We can only guess, in this profoundly personal account, by glimpsing the world through her own eyes. The spiritual side of her voyage is present -- she is a committed Buddhist and a meditator -- but it is personal courage that dominates the book. I will give copies to the people I know will enjoy it and only wish that perhaps it had some more of her photographs -- there are certainly some good ones -- and that another, fuller edition lies ahead and gets the attention it truly deserves.

Amazing memoir/travelogue by the author who survived a near-fatal bus crash in Laos. I enjoyed her well written account of healing through the spirit-mind-body connection. I also enjoyed reading about Nepal, Tibet, Buddhism and The Dalai Lama.

As a photographer, this book really appeals to me but it's much more than a book about a photo-journalist and her travels around the world. It's an incredible survival story. The book is fast moving, interesting, and very hard to set down once you start reading. I highly recommend this book!

This book by Ms. Wright is by far the best story of survival I have read to date. The actual crash is but a small slice of her incredible journey from the road to recovery.