Customer Reviews

Meditations In My Favourite Places In Southern Africa: A Travelogue For Inner And Outer Jounries

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This book has several things going for it.

1. Beautiful black and white photos of the places the author visited in Southern Africa.

2. The Author uses vivid word pictures. I have quoted one of them for you.

Page 7: "I hear a splash behind me and turn just in time to see a sititunga antelope with gentle frightened eyes and white brushed streaks on the brown fur of his ears, dive into the water."

3. Seven different meditations (to work with each chakra)

4. A great description of the chakras so you can determine if your chakras are functioning properly or not.

5. Pages 97-104; The author provides travel information should you wish to travel to Southern Africa

I only have one complaint with the book. On page 74; the author associates the Pituitarity gland with the 6th chakra when the Pituitary is associated with the 7th chakra.

Please comtact me via E-Mail if you have questions or comments; Two Bears.

Wah doh Ogedoda (we give thanks Great Spirit)

With the media committed to focusing on the negative side of everything, it would be no surprise to learn that the majority of the people in the US have no idea of the beauty that is integral to the region of southern Africa. Author Gail Evans wants to change that, but her little travel book offers more than just sightseeing.

Ms. Evans has selected seven of her favorite spots in that vast nation and created short essays describing their wonders. She then takes her journey a step further, tying the external to the eternal as she uses the symbolism each place has for her to create a meditation exercise. Thus, we not only join her in appreciating the natural beauty she describes but can follow her inward journey as well. Hence, her subtitle: "A Travelogue for Inner and Outer Journeys."

This is an excellent study guide for beginners in the art of meditation for several reasons. First, there are Ms. Evans's clear, concise discussions of the method and purposes of each exercise. Second, however, the places she's chosen to use as the focus for each one are of the kind that can be found almost anywhere. So, even those who can't travel to Africa may be able to somewhat duplicate the sites described somewhere near their own place of residence.

MEDITATIONS IN MY FAVORITE PLACES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA is an excellent book to give as a gift or to tuck into your suitcase as you set off on vacation. Ms. Evans has a gift for painting vivid pictures with an economy of words, and she communicates her delight in the joys of nature with crystal clarity. And for those who may actually be able to take a trip to the places she's been, there is a long list of web addresses that provide more information.

So, whether your travels are internal or external, this slender book is an excellent choice as a guide. My only complaint was that it suffered a bit from mediocre copyediting, but not enough to spoil the trip

In this book, Evans describes the various regions of southern Africa with great skill. From the cooler west coast to the perpetual summer of the east coast, you find yourself figuratively transported to places of great natural beauty. Until I read this book, I had no idea that the climate of southern Africa was so varied. Once the area is described, the author then presents a form of mediation where the main thought is different for each location. Since I am not a practitioner of this form of meditation, I have no proper frame of reference to comment on those sections.
While I have never been to southern Africa, the thought has crossed my mind on occasion, and after reading this book, the urge to do so has increased. It is obviously a very beautiful place, and in this book it is described with words that clearly speak of that beauty.

The "journeys" which Evans describes with compelling eloquence occur both in the physical world and within the human soul. Almost all of her readers can experience Southern Africa only vicariously by reading books, examining photographs, and viewing films. However, all of her readers can (if they wish) be inspired by her self-explorations to embark on their own. In this context, it may seem somewhat paradoxical that through meditation, a person transcends the unsurpassed natural beauty of Southern Africa. In fact, as Evans explains, there is no paradox at all. On the contrary, only through meditation can one fully understand and appreciate the essential unity of the physical and spiritual realms. Consider this excerpt from the final chapter in which Evans suggests that there are few differences between "the most highly enlightened beings" and the Bushmen of the Kalahari:

"Both have no need for possessions and are detached from the material world. Both need very little clothing. Both eat very frugally, so frugally in fact that any other person on such a diet would become ill and starve to death. Both have highly developed intuitive powers and psychic abilities. Both very often have out of body experiences. The Bushmen through their dance rituals, the enlightened through meditation. Both have perceptive abilities that cross time and space. Both very often can predict their own time of death. It is a well-known fact that when a Bushman decides to die, he simply sits down and does so. Both are as wise as serpents, as gentle as doves. And so, the beginning and the end become at one and we regain the freedom and purity of heart and mind that we once had."

I include this excerpt for two reasons. First, it describes what could be at least a spiritual destination for many of those who read this book. Evans explains what various "journeys" require and suggests how to experience the greatest personal development while embarked on them. Second, for many who roam the aisles in book stores or who note the extensive cross references which Amazon.com provides, this book may not attract their attention. (I learned of it only by chance.) My hope is that this excerpt will encourage them to purchase the book and thus allow Evans to help them to discover their own "favorite places," wherever they reveal themselves to be.

Gail Evans takes us on seven journeys to places of wonder & beauty in her native Southern Africa, as well as seven inner journeys, to places of healing & consciousness within our everyday living.

In describing her visits to the Okavango Delta, the Kruger National Park, the Karoo District, the Hogsback hills, the Coastlines, Sterkfontein & Sentinel, this author fills our minds with the fabled sights & animals of Africa, & her passion for exploration.

In the meditations at the end of each journey, she gifts us with insights into ways to perceive our spiritual adventure & health. By describing & explaining the system of chakras, she teaches us how to meditate & how this practice can bring peace & contentment wherein we find ourselves.

Gail Evans' writing is ebullient & endearing, technical errors notwithstanding. I, for one, am so glad I have read her MEDITATIONS IN MY FAVOURITE PLACES because now, when I travel, I have a deeper experience of what my eyes see. As I live with the stresses of ordinary life, my heart has been engaged, & I now have lessons on how to maintain the health of my soul.

In "Meditations", Gail Evans paints word pictures that seemingly come alive; beautiful images of some of southern Africa's most famous sites. Devoting a chapter to each site she ends the chapter with a meditaion. By holding the image in mind while engaging in the meditation, we are allowed to internalize it and claim it as our own. A unigue spiritual experience. Thank you, Gail....

As I started reading Meditations in My Favourite Places in Southern Africa, I felt a tremor run through me as if Id stepped into an African Dreamtime. Her words weave the colors and smells of special places in Southern Africa in a way that is so profoundly spiritual and yet at the same time very grounded. Its a realistic guide to time out in some of the most beautiful places this continent has to offer where she gently shows us how to connect with both ourselves and nature at its best. By the time I reluctantly read the final chapter I felt that I'd inwardly traveled to these places with the writer and all that remains now is to go out and experience them for myself. To sum it up, this is a unique and long overdue book on finding ourselves both physically and on a Soul level in this beautiful land.

Fil Van Den Bos: Cover Designer for "Time Trials," and "Meditations In My Favourite Places In Southern Africa."

This is a meditation guide, not a travelogue, per se, though the back of the book has useful links to travel information for Southern Africa. Author Evans does give the reader a sort of literary "slide show" through some of Southern Africa's most lovely sights, but she wrote the book for the purpose of combining her favorite places with help for meditating. Her meditation involves the Indian Chakra system, which can be represented as seven areas on the body from tip of the spine to over the top of the head. Each Chakra (wheel) is associated with a color, physiological system, and psychological balance. For example the first chakra is associated with the color red, can be characterized as "holding" or "containing" and when balanced, is living "with" nature, not trying to dominate or control it. There's a lot more to it, and that isn't in this book. This is a short, sweetly written book with nature imagery to help your inner visualization.

The Chakra system may be foreign to some readers--but it is another way of looking at the interconnectivity of the physical, the emotional and the spiritual world, that triune system that makes up our selves and how we fit into the world. It is related to the Chinese Traditional Medicine system of Earth-Wind-Fire-Metal-Water, and the Christian mind-body-soul. If you are not open to alternative philosophies, the Chakra parts of this book will be lost on you. So if you eschew New Age anything, you will not enjoy this book. While I have a lot of doubts about most New Age philosophies, the Hindu Chakra system interests me greatly in how it relates to Western philosophy and other Eastern disciplines, such as the Chinese as previously mentioned.

If you paint as a form of meditation, there is another book that makes a good companion for this; "Making Pearls" by Jeanne Carbonetti. Gail Evan's "Meditations" is very, very helpful in using the "Making Pearls" book by Carbonetti, which has you do a 7-painting series based on chakras to find your creative center. I was having difficulty understanding the chakra colors I was supposed to paint. Now I have a guide to expand on them and I will complete my series of paintings (strangely enough, I got this book right after I decided to do a chakra painting series--a pleasant instance of synchronicity.) I really found something valuable in "Meditations in my Favorite Places in Southern Africa" and it will be on my bookshelf next to the other art and creativity books.

Gail Evan's Meditations In My Favorite Places In Southern Africa is both a spiritual meditation and a wonderfully panoramic description of the natural beauty of Southern Africa written with a especial appeal for the armchair traveler. Individual chapters bring the reader along with Gail on several grand journeys, enhanced with seven meditations offered to calm the soul and enrich one's spiritual life. Meditations In My Favorite Places In Southern Africa is a unique and wondrous, deftly written and highly accessible Southern African experience.

Vivid and colourful images that capture the essence of Africa. The dust, heat and grassland plains. Forests and misty mountains. Endless beaches and sun drenched blue seas. Gail Evans has captured them all. And like the smell of meat and wood smoke to the hungry traveller, the readers senses are primed for the meditations that accompany each magnificent location