Vibrant You

Books That Changed My Life: Top Reads for 2024 to Become the Happiest, Healthiest, Most Vibrant You

January 08, 2024 Bindi Stables Episode 41
Books That Changed My Life: Top Reads for 2024 to Become the Happiest, Healthiest, Most Vibrant You
Vibrant You
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Vibrant You
Books That Changed My Life: Top Reads for 2024 to Become the Happiest, Healthiest, Most Vibrant You
Jan 08, 2024 Episode 41
Bindi Stables

In today's episode, let's explore a treasure trove of life-changing reads that have profoundly influenced my life and are geared to uplift yours in 2024. If you've followed my passion for books, you'll understand how tough it was to select just a few. Yet, I've rounded up the top 22 books across diverse categories just for you!

Covering mind optimization, body health, spirituality, relationships, personal growth, self-healing, and women's health, these books hold invaluable wisdom that has shaped my path—and undoubtedly will shape yours too!

In this episode you'll learn:

• Discover the top 21 transformative books spanning mind optimization, body health, spirituality, relationships, personal growth, self-healing, and women's health.

• Gain insights into how these reads have deeply impacted my life and can profoundly influence yours in 2024.

• Explore the essence of each book category, offering wisdom and guidance applicable to modern life.

Links:

8 Pillars to Vibrant Health (and Where to Focus for YOUR Optimal Wellness)!

Book Recommendations:

Mind Optimization:
1. Happier Now by Nataly Kogan
2. Atomic Habits by James Clear
3. Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

Physical Health & Wellbeing:
1. The Rain Barrel Effect by Dr. Stephen Cabral
2. Ayurvedic Healing by David Frawley
3. Medical Medium by Anthony William

Spirituality:
1. The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer
2. Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch
3. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Relationships:
1. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
2. Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
3. True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh

Personal Growth for Women:
1. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
2. A Woman's Guide to Power Unbound by Kasia Urbaniak
3. Awakening Shakti by Sally Kempton

Healing:
1. You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
2. The Body Keeps Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
3. How To Do The Work by Dr. Nicole Lepera

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

I’d love to connect with you on IG: www.instagram.com/bindistables

Visit my website for more resources and ways to work with me:
www.bindistables.com

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In today's episode, let's explore a treasure trove of life-changing reads that have profoundly influenced my life and are geared to uplift yours in 2024. If you've followed my passion for books, you'll understand how tough it was to select just a few. Yet, I've rounded up the top 22 books across diverse categories just for you!

Covering mind optimization, body health, spirituality, relationships, personal growth, self-healing, and women's health, these books hold invaluable wisdom that has shaped my path—and undoubtedly will shape yours too!

In this episode you'll learn:

• Discover the top 21 transformative books spanning mind optimization, body health, spirituality, relationships, personal growth, self-healing, and women's health.

• Gain insights into how these reads have deeply impacted my life and can profoundly influence yours in 2024.

• Explore the essence of each book category, offering wisdom and guidance applicable to modern life.

Links:

8 Pillars to Vibrant Health (and Where to Focus for YOUR Optimal Wellness)!

Book Recommendations:

Mind Optimization:
1. Happier Now by Nataly Kogan
2. Atomic Habits by James Clear
3. Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh

Physical Health & Wellbeing:
1. The Rain Barrel Effect by Dr. Stephen Cabral
2. Ayurvedic Healing by David Frawley
3. Medical Medium by Anthony William

Spirituality:
1. The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer
2. Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch
3. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

Relationships:
1. The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
2. Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg
3. True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh

Personal Growth for Women:
1. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
2. A Woman's Guide to Power Unbound by Kasia Urbaniak
3. Awakening Shakti by Sally Kempton

Healing:
1. You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay
2. The Body Keeps Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
3. How To Do The Work by Dr. Nicole Lepera

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

I’d love to connect with you on IG: www.instagram.com/bindistables

Visit my website for more resources and ways to work with me:
www.bindistables.com

Bindi:

Welcome to the Vibrant you podcast. I'm your host, bindi Stables, and here we talk all things wellness and vibrant living. You'll learn about integrative health, functional medicine, holistic biohacking and enjoy raw and real conversations on personal growth, mindset and motivation. Optimize your body and mind and become the happiest, the healthiest, most vibrant. You Enjoy the show. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Vibrant you. Happy New Year. This is our second episode of 2024 so far and I just want to say thank you so much for being here. This is now our second year of Vibrant you and, yeah, I'm just so thrilled and so honored that you show up every single week and tune into these episodes and I'm just so grateful for you listening, you being so committed to your growth, your health, your wellness, to being the happiest, healthiest, most vibrant you, and for sharing all of these episodes. Every download, every time you share this episode, every time that you rate or review or subscribe, it really does make such a huge difference and helps grow and evolve this podcast and get these episodes and this knowledge into more people's ears and hearts, and that just means the absolute world to me. So there's some fun and exciting changes coming up to the podcast in 2024 and one of my personal New Year's intentions or visions is I love this podcast so much and I love showing up every single week and sharing this information, this knowledge, with you, and I'm really excited that 2024 is going to be a year of collaboration for me and we have some really exciting podcast guests coming up in 2024. So the vision for the podcast moving forward is to do a combination of both solo episodes, like what you're more familiar hearing from me, and interviews with guest experts in different fields everything from holistic health and well-being, women's health, different therapies to optimize your health and well-being, to personal development and inner healing, and just amazing conversations with amazing people. So if there's anything that you'd love to hear more of in 2024, do reach out. I love to hear your feedback, I love to hear your insights and takeaways and, yeah, if there's anything that you desire to hear more of, please let me know. It's so fun and so exciting. I love creating and curating these episodes just for you. So thank you so much.

Bindi:

So today, you guys, we are getting into something I'm so excited about. We're talking about books, so I'm going to be sharing with you the top books that have changed my life, the best reads that you can really start to incorporate for 2024. So if you know me, you know that I love books. I have read thousands of books in my life, like literally thousands, and it was nearly impossible to try to summarize the top recommendations of books that I have for you, because there are simply far too many. So what I've done is I've included, for today, my top 21. I was aiming for five, you guys. It was impossible. So we have the top 21 books, which is basically the top three books in different areas or categories. So we have the top three books for mind optimization, body and health, the top three books for spirituality, for relationships, for personal growth, self healing and women's health. So I'm so excited to share this with you.

Bindi:

I have not included all of the amazing textbooks that I've read on different integrative and functional medicine categories, and I've not included the really ancient spiritual texts that have completely changed my life. So, if you're familiar with my story at all, I used to. For a good five years of my life I lived bouncing between ashrams and sacred sites and traveling around the world, spending a lot of time with my teacher, my guru, in India, and basically lived as a part-time monk for months out of the year and spent months in total silence and meditating 10 to 12 hours a day. So naturally, in that chapter of my life I read all of the ancient spiritual texts. So what I've done today is I've chosen the books that are maybe a little bit more accessible and relatable for modern life, that really hold the essence of the knowledge of some of these textbooks that are a little bit more like not so fun to read, or spiritual texts that are maybe like yeah, kind of like require us to like sit in a nasham and like meditate on the teachings less than just like listening to a quick audio book or having a light to read before bed. And I'm going to share with you the top books that have changed my life, and I trust that they will change yours too. So let's get right into it.

Bindi:

Okay, the first category of books is mind and mind optimization. So the first book I want to recommend is a book called Happier Now by Natalie Kogan, and this book is all about how to stop chasing perfectionism and how to embrace everyday moments, even the difficult ones. It's such a sweet book. It really helps us understand the mind more deeply, how to just be with life, what it actually means to be happy and how to find more joy in simple life moments For me. I actually read this in the beginning of the pandemic, when the world was insane, and it was just such a nice gentle, light and practical reminder of the little moments, the sweetness that exists underneath the surface of everyday life moments and experiences, and how to let life touch us more deeply. So Happier Now, by Natalie Kogan.

Bindi:

Okay, book number two for mental optimization is Atomic Habits by James Clear. This is such an important book. It's all about changing your habits to change your life. So it's so much more than just adopting a better morning routine. Or, of course, this time year everyone's talking about New Year's resolutions and goals. But Atomic Habits really helps us not only change our goals and our habits, but how to change our identity at the deepest level, to really be or become the person that does the things that are needed to experience the life that we truly desire. So the whole theme is about changing our habits to get 1% better every single day. It has helped me so much to adopt healthier habits that are in far greater service to my overall well-being and really helping me become more of the person that I truly desire to be and how I choose to show up in the world. So love that book. Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Bindi:

Okay, the third book is one of my favorites. This is a book I read so long ago. It's called Peace Is Every Step by Tick Knot Hun. Tick Knot Hun is such a beautiful being. He's actually left the body recently. He was a Zen Buddhist master. He's done remarkable work in the world and this book is really about the path of mindfulness in everyday life. So if you've ever read any work of Tick Knot Hun or listened to him speak, there's such a just, it's so beautiful, it's so soft, it's so tender, so gentle and so practical, right so many of the spiritual teachers that I've met or seen or followed or studied with at some stage. It's like such complicated, like seeking enlightenment. You have to meditate 17,000 hours, you know, and this is really more like how to live moment to moment. It's a practical guide to living with more presence and it really helps us learn how to touch life more fully by being aware, by being mindful. This book has helped me to feel so much more alive, not from doing more exciting things or traveling more or becoming anything more, simply by knowing how to let life touch me and how to experience the beauty and the bliss that's already available and already experienced in the present moment. It's about enlightenment not being something to achieve later. It's right here, right now, in every step. Hence the name. Peace is every step by Tignut hun.

Bindi:

Okay, those are my top three books for mind and mental optimization. Let's get into body and health. So if there's three books that you were to read to really optimize your physical health and well being in 2024, it's these three. So the first book is called the rain barrel effect by Dr Stephen Cabral. So Stephen Cabral is actually my mentor. He's quite possibly the best integrative health, functional medicine, holistic health practitioner out there and this is a book that I recommend for everyone. I honestly buy copies of this book for everyone. I gift it to everyone that I love and care about because it's just so good.

Bindi:

And inside of this book, dr Cabral goes over the de stress protocols. This is a protocol that he's created, de stress. It stands for everything from diet to exercise, supplement, toxin removal, rest and so on, and I've actually created a whole podcast episode on this methodology that he's created, the de stress protocol, and I will link that episode up in the show notes. It's so good. It's like where to focus your time and your energy to really optimize your health and what areas of your health are maybe flourishing maybe your diet and your nutrition's really on your own top of it there, but your rest and relaxation, you know you can really optimize that area. So the episode is called the eight pillars to vibrant health and where to focus for your optimal wellness. So I'll link that up in the show notes. You can have a listen to that methodology and read the book as well.

Bindi:

So, yeah, this book is not only going to help you learn what creates dis ease or imbalance in the body, but the exact steps to reverse that and all of the keys that you need to live a long and happy and healthy life. It's truly life changing and the best part is that he actually gives his book away for free. This is just the mission of this man. He obviously cares so much about the health and healing of the world, and so I believe you can get it on his website for free. You just pay the shipping. So I will link up to that in the show notes as well If you want to get a free copy of his book. Just pay the shipping, okay.

Bindi:

The second book for health optimization is a classic. It is so good and will change completely your relationship to understanding health and wellbeing and balance. And that is I or Vita healing, by Dr David Frawley. So it's a comprehensive guide on Ayurvedic health and wellbeing. Dr David Frawley is also a mentor of mine. He's actually the only Western Ayurvedic teacher that I've had. The rest were all Indian and studied directly in India. I studied with him in the American Institute of Vedic studies several years ago and fun fact is, dr David Frawley and I also have almost an identical birth chart, which is so inspiring and I'm such a fan girl and it was so fun. I went to a Vedic astrologer who was actually also a student of him and she shared with me that she's like wow, your birth chart looks so familiar. Wait a sec. And she looked up his birth chart and is like oh, yeah, of course, you're so meant to be a student. It's like written in the stars. So, yeah, we have almost the same birth chart. We're both like super Virgo. I think I have like five planets in Virgo. So the health and healing sphere is really where I'm meant to be doing all my work.

Bindi:

Anyways, this book, ayurveda healing shares the principles and the philosophy of Ayurveda. Ayurveda is the oldest medical science known to humankind. It's more than 5000 years old and it's known as the science of life. So it really breaks down the philosophy of health and well being. It pulls away all of the complications, all of the noise when it comes to health and well being and really breaks it down to its fundamentals of what health is and what diseases and really simplifies it. So if you've ever thought about learning more about Ayurveda and the original kind of form of health and well being, this is the book and it shares actually the Ayurvedic treatment of many common diseases. So it's a really practical guide. You kind of just like flip through. If you have a common cold, you look it up in the book and, okay, what kind of Ayurvedic treatments or advice would be helpful in this case? Everything from the common cold to like cancer. You know, you can just look things up and get some insight on what's happening in the body and an Ayurvedic or really holistic approach to healing.

Bindi:

Okay, the third book in body and health is Medical Medium by Anthony William. So Medical Medium if you've never heard of him. He is such an interesting guy. He's a chronic illness expert and he's written many books, and what he really does is that he reveals the deeper causes of chronic symptoms and conditions and diseases that often medical communities and even modern science continue to misunderstand or struggle to understand at all. Now, the cool thing about Anthony William, the Medical Medium, is that he was born with a gift of communicating with what he calls the spirit of compassion, and all of this knowledge is based on his conversations with the spirit of compassion. It's really a healing wisdom that's so far ahead of its time and the knowledge that he shares. It's fascinating to see some of what he shares intuitively and what all of his books are based on, how modern science is only now starting to validate and confirm a lot of the things that he shares to be true. So he's not a medical expert. He and he has helped millions of people across the world heal from chronic disease. He is way ahead of our time when it comes to this knowledge and he's worked with so many celebrities, from the Rock to Adam Sandler's wife, sylvester Stallone, tony Robbins, gwyneth Potrow yeah, so he has just so many success stories. He's not a medical practitioner, so I always take things with a grain of salt, but when I'm reading his books I'm like I know that to be true, like as a practitioner myself. There's so many things that I just agree with and a perspective that is really fresh. Yeah, I'm so excited for science to continue to confirm and affirm a lot of the things that he shares to be true. So, yeah, so many people are having like insane healings with his protocols and his books. So definitely want to check out Medical Medium by Anthony William.

Bindi:

Let's get into spiritual Spirituality. So the top three books. There are so many spiritual texts out there that I've read, like Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras and, oh my gosh, there's too many to possibly have all here. But what I've chosen is three that are maybe a little bit more practical, a little bit more modern day, a little bit more accessible, that you could like read before bed and not have to sit in silence in an ashram for three months to like contemplate the deeper meaning. So the first is my most favorite book of all time. It is called the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Love him so much.

Bindi:

What I love about this book. I read it so many years ago. It was one of the the first books that I ever read on my spiritual journey and reading it, I've read it several times. It's one of those books that you just come back to again and again, and every time it's wisdom sinks in a little bit deeper, you learn or realize another level of what he's sharing and it's really like what I've come to realize of kind of like reading this book before living in India and doing the whole like part-time monk life, is that a lot of what he shares is actually ancient Vedic knowledge in a more modern language. So, instead of using all the fancy Sanskrit and words like language that kind of like is over our head or feels outdated, he's really done a powerful job of making it accessible and using examples of like modern day life that you and I face. The main thing that I really learned from this book is how true it is that I am not my mind, and how experiences of life get stuck in us, right so experiences that get stuck and cause triggers, or what he calls samskaras, and how to navigate them, how to let go of those experiences, how to be more free, how to free your mind. Yeah, it's such a good read and I highly recommend this book to everyone the Untethered Soul.

Bindi:

The next book that just feels like an important Bible when it comes to spirituality, modern day spirituality is a book called Conversations with God by Neil Donald Walsh. This is by far one of the most important books that I've ever read. It is literally this man's conversation or dialogue with God. So what happened was is this man? One day he was crossing all of this hardship and he literally found himself writing down a question and literally feeling like the sensation of his hand moving and God speaking back to him or writing back to him. And he entered into this dialogue. For I'm not sure if it was days, weeks, however long this dialogue went on for, but he himself would propose a question and he would find his pen moving, as though God was speaking back to him.

Bindi:

And what I love so much about this book, it's not religious. It's more for the person that is spiritual but not religious, a way of connecting to God, or spirit or life, you know, as an aspect of our own self, something that we can connect with, we can hear, we can relate to, we can touch and feel. What I love most about it is that it's such a reminder that God lives in all of us and that we can hear God and we can speak to God. And I know that this word God is so charged. You know, and I know, growing up in a really Christian or religious household, I went through this whole process of God, no God and kind of landing in this really what I feel to be a really beautiful space, that is, in beautiful relationship with God, not as any one which form, but as an aspect of my own self, the embodiment of all things, with no name, no form, but, yeah, just changing relationship to God. But I must say that what this book really inspired is in me is that I can talk to God and God is not this like big concept that is separate from myself, that I can just, you know, worship or pray to in proximity, but that I can actually like talk with and relate to.

Bindi:

And so this book, what it inspired in me, is that I literally one day was having a really hard time and I took myself up to Northwest Bali, to the one of my favorite beaches up there. It's super remote and I literally spent four hours in a cave on the coast of Northwest Bali one day and I just started talking to God and I pulled out my journal and I was like, hey, if this guy can talk with God, he's not like a monk, he's not, he's not a priest, he's not like in any like eligible state to talk to God in the way that modern society would, you know, propose. He's kind of like a normal guy, kind of like me, and I literally sat for four hours in this cave and talked to God and I had my journal and I would ask a question and just so fluidly, I felt just this, this um presence, this knowing, this intuition, whatever you want to call it, this insight, literally writing back through my hand, and I couldn't even keep up with the amount of knowledge and wisdom that was coming through. And I was just writing and literally I wrote 30 pages that day, or God wrote 30 pages that day. Whatever you, whatever tickles your fancy, and it was such a reminder that this is possible for all of us. Whether you want to call that a conversation between you and God or a conversation between your subconscious mind and your conscious mind, the left hemisphere of your brain and the right hemisphere of your brain, whatever it is, it's a powerful experience. Through this book, I found myself laughing and crying and it just, this book really feels like a book that will lovingly hold your hand and walk you through life's ups and downs, explaining along the way that, the why, the how things happen in our lives and the way out or the way through everything in life that puzzles or troubles us. It's a new way of connecting with God, even if you aren't religious. And, um, yeah, this book is a true treasure. Conversations with God.

Bindi:

Okay, the third book for spirituality for me is A New Earth. By never been able to say this right, is it Eckhart Tolle or Eckhart Tolle? I don't know how to say it, guys, forgive me. A New Earth. This is again one of the first books that I ever read, far more than a decade ago, and A New Earth feels like a spiritual handbook that teaches us how to live in the present moment, how to find inner peace by really transforming our mind, changing our consciousness to create a more fulfilling life, by really letting go of so much of the identity that we hold that keeps us caged in and boxed in to certain ways of being, and really sets us free. So that's a practical little spiritual handbook for us all.

Bindi:

So those are the top three spirituality books. Let's get into relationships. So top three books for relationships, number one is the Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. This feels like a must read for anyone in relationship right, and not just romantic relationships. This is game changing your relationship with your kids, your friends, your colleagues, even and this book really talks about that love is a universal language but we all have different dialects and it helps break down, you know, through this man. I think he was a therapist or a counselor, maybe a marriage counselor, I'm not sure what his position is but basically, through his, however many decades of work, he came to find that there are five primary love languages or dialects of this universal language called love, of ways that people give and receive love, or like to give and receive. And what he would find is that in relationships, one person would be speaking one love language and the other would be speaking another one, and both people would feel like you don't love me, you don't care about me, and the other person's like what do you mean? I do this, this, this, this, how do you, what do you think? I don't love you. And what it does is helps us to understand, first and foremost, our love language and then the language of the other person and how we can fulfill and love each other best. So the five love languages from acts of service to quality time, to words of affirmation, physical gifts and physical touch. So, gifts and physical touch to know what your love language is, learn your partners and, yeah, you're going to find all of the ways to fill your love tank together. So that's the five love languages.

Bindi:

Okay, the next book maybe this is the most important relationship book I've ever read. It's called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. This was a game changer, I think. Yeah, this is the number one book I have for relationships, because so much of relating is communication, and not just with our words but with our bodies. So nonviolent communication is not just a guide on how to not speak violently, because me, of all people, I would say like I would identify as someone that is like, really not violent, and I wouldn't have considered that the ways that I was communicating were violent in any way. So I kind of like didn't really care for the book. You know, when I first got it I was like I don't really need this, but a friend recommended it. As I started to read it, I started to learn all of the ways that my ways of communicating were actually a little bit violent in a way or a way that caused harm, and not so much in what I was saying, but more in what I was not saying, the things that I was avoiding to say, and actually the conflict or the disharmony that that was creating.

Bindi:

So, nonviolent communication I actually use this with my clients every single day, like I'm a certified mindset coach and we do a lot of like mental work. Of course, I first and foremost an integrative health practitioner, but so much of our health and well-being lies in our mindset, our state of consciousness, our, you know, state of well-being in every area of our life, not just our physical health but our relationships as well. So an NVC or nonviolent communication, breaks down methodology for communicating into four basic parts of understanding the situation or the data of a situation, understanding your feelings, your needs and your requests, to be able to communicate in a way that fulfills each other's needs and desires. And this guy has done incredible work in just mediation and you know he's done things between, like Israel and Pakistan, negotiating, helping find common ground. He's done, yeah, incredible work in the world and these principles you know. You read the stories in there of how this nonviolent communication has saved lives, changed lives. The stories are just so, so powerful. Everybody has to read this book.

Bindi:

Okay, the third book for relationships is again a book by Tick-Not Han, because I adore him and it's called True Love. This is the shortest, sweetest book that you'll read. You'll read it in one sitting. I literally read it the first time in a hammock in the summer in Canada, while eating a peach, and I feel like that's a pretty accurate representation of how the book feels. You're going to feel like a warm summer day, hanging in a rainbow colored hammock while eating a very sweet peach. So again, he's this Buddhist monk and really speaks of love in such a beautiful way. And of course, he was monastic, right, so he didn't have a partner, he was celibate, but speaks of love and connection in such a beautiful way, of attuning our awareness to the other person and truly being present, and that the greatest gift or the greatest love that we can give is our true, genuine presence. So, yeah, really sweet one to read.

Bindi:

Okay, the next category personal growth. So these are specifically geared more towards women. So the first book is Untamed, by Glennon Doyle. Every woman needs to read this. It is a book for women to stop pleasing and to start living. So Glennon Doyle I love her. She's so amazing. Love all her podcasts, love her social media, everything that she shares, and love just her realness and her honesty. I feel like everybody wants to be just like best friends with Glennon Doyle.

Bindi:

That feels like the vibe really talks about the good girl archetype and how to break free from that narrative. She talks about, like, this societal thing where we've just been told that the epitome of being a woman is to be selfless, to be good, to be nice, and how to really break free from that narrative, to find who we were before the world told us who to be, how to reclaim those parts of us. This book is hilarious, it's witty, it's wildly relatable and I, literally from just the first chapter, had tears in my eyes after the first few pages. If you've read this book, you know what I'm talking about Tabatha the cheetah. If you haven't read it yet, I'm not going to spoil it for you, you have to read the book. But yeah, just such a wild relatability of like oh my god, I am Tabatha the cheetah and every woman in all of existence is Tabatha and we need to untame ourselves and free ourselves from the societal conditioning of the good girl. Yeah, find our wild. That's book number one, untamed.

Bindi:

The next book is a women's guide to power, unbound by is it Cassia Urbaniac? I'm not sure. I'll link all these up in the show notes, but I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce her name. This is a current read, so I'm currently going through this book. Some friends and I are reading it together, loving it so far. So this woman, cassia, she spent 17 years. She's such a cool story. She spent 17 years studying to become a Taoist nun while simultaneously working as a successful dominatrix. So a whole lot of polarity there and really learning and studying the dynamics of power from both a Taoist nun perspective and a dominatrix perspective. Okay, so this really feels like the ultimate guide to owning our power as women and mastering how to use it in a healthy and balanced and successful way. So it really feels like a practical guide of how to stand on our power, how to find our voice and how to use it well.

Bindi:

And then the third book I'll share with you on personal growth for women is Awakening Shakti by Sally Kempton. So Sally Kempton is also such a beautiful teacher. She also, I think, just left the body. Recently she's passed. But this book Awakening Shakti, has been one that I've come to again and again and again. So it's quite a spiritual flavor to it, a bit of a Hindu or Vedic flavor, so you have to be open for that.

Bindi:

But this is a book on feminine embodiment. It's a practical guide for how to activate the different flavors or currents of the divine feminine present in every single woman and how it shows up in every aspect of our life. So it talks about the different goddesses of the Vedic tradition, so Saraswati and Lakshmi and Durga and Sita and Kali. You know all of these goddesses of the Vedic tradition and how all of them are aspects of our own divine being as women and how inside of us we all have an inner Kali, we all have an inner Durga, we all have an inner Saraswati, and how we can connect to those different flavors of the divine feminine in us and activate those qualities in different parts of our life to bring more health, better boundaries, deeper creativity, more abundance, more success in our work. And it's just so beautiful. I've also listened to it on audiobook and yeah, it was like a book through the pandemic as well that I would listen to an audiobook every day listen to on my motorbike driving through the rice fields of Bali and, yeah, it's just so beautiful. So if you feel interested or curious about the goddess, archetypes, to connect more deeply to your feminine energy and really practically connect to those qualities without needing to like sit on your knees or worship or pray to a Hindu deity, it's a really practical guide to finding those aspects, those archetypes, within ourselves. So beautiful.

Bindi:

Okay, next category you guys, let's get into healing. So, healing top three books. Number one you Can Heal your Life by Louise Hay. This was one of the first books that I read on my healing journey. It talks about the mind body connection and shares about the emotional roots in disease and symptoms called the psychosomatics, how our emotional states manifest as physical symptoms in the body. So I've actually created a whole podcast episode on this, the spiritual meaning behind your physical symptoms. So I will link that up in the show notes. It kind of shares a little bit of this work from Louise Hay. Yeah, it's really beautiful. You can kind of like look up the symptoms that you might be facing and some possible emotional or energetic root causes of what might be contributing to that. It's really powerful to help us heal on all levels of being.

Bindi:

Book number two in healing is the body keeps score by Bessel van der oh no, these names are hard to say. So this book is really the brain, mind and body on the healing of trauma. So this book shares that trauma is a fact of life and shows how trauma literally reshapes our body and our brain. It compromises our capacity for pleasure, for self control, for trust, for felt sense of safety in life. And it really shares new ways of recovering from trauma by activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. So how to rewire our brain from trauma. So the body keeps score. It's so good, so important.

Bindi:

The next book I'll share is how to do the work by Dr Nicole Lepera. So she is the holistic psychologist. This book, right here, is really a practical guide to healing our bodies and minds. It's the physical, psychological, the spiritual aspects of ourselves and how those three really intersect. Yeah, it's really powerful to understand the mind-body connection. She talks again a lot about the definition of trauma, not just as what she calls big-tea trauma, as in you know somebody like a war veteran coming home from war, or you know a victim of sexual assault, or you know these more like big-tea traumas that we would all recognize in life as being traumatic, but also the little-tea traumas, right of your mom forgetting to pick you up from dance class one day and that you felt scared and alone and abandoned, and how those experiences are still held in our nervous system, not allowing us to feel fully free or fully safe in life, and how to break free from that. So how to do the work, total workbook, love it.

Bindi:

And then the final one I'll share here is it Didn't Start With you, by Mark Woollan, so it Didn't Start With you, is really a groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies that are passed down in our lineage. So it's fascinating to see how intergenerational family experiences, what happened to our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents, the experiences that they had, you know, and the traumas that they faced, and how that's actually passed down, not just emotionally or energetically, but actually in our DNA. What I love most about this book, though, it's not just about oh, you've inherited your family trauma and now you have to heal all this or you're going to pass it on to your kids, and you're a horrible person, you know, and don't have kids if you still have trauma, because you'll just pass it on to them and they'll be screwed for life. What I love about it, though, is that not only is trauma passed down from generation to generation, but so is resilience, and this is where we can also really tap into the resilience of our family lineage and to heal things from a different place than maybe just like a more victim, like I just inherited this and there's nothing I can do about it place.

Bindi:

So those are the books on the final category. This is for women. We're getting into women's health. There are three books I have for you. Number one, in the flow, by Alyssa Vitti so in the flow, is a comprehensive guide to understanding and optimizing your female hormone cycles. So I love this book. It's so practical. It shares insights on how to improve your productivity, your mood, your relationships, your work, your overall health through the art of menstrual cycle sinking and how we can really unlock our hormonal advantage as women through understanding our menstrual cycle more deeply and attuning the different activities, how we eat, how we live to those cycles of our hormones to really optimize our productivity, our mood and really live at our best. So that's in the flow by Alyssa Vitti. The next one is the path of practice, by Brie Maya Tiwari. So she's amazing.

Bindi:

She is one of the world's only like, really well known female experts on the ancient tradition of Ayurveda. Right my teacher in India. She was female, but most people a lot of the teachers are men, so it's really great to have a female perspective. Her story is pretty cool. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of 23, and she was only given two months left to live. Her doctor's advice was basically die painlessly with a lot of morphine belt. She said no, I'm not doing that against her doctor's advice. She went out in the middle of winter. She left her career as a popular fashion designer in New York City and she started several months of intensive meditation and holistic nutrition alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Miraculously, by spring her health and vitality had been completely restored, inspired by all these visions and dreams that she had of her family and her ancestors. After that she became a student of India's tradition of the Vedic knowledge and Ayurveda and, yeah, she restored her health.

Bindi:

And now she teaches and shares in this particular book the wisdom and the practices of Ayurveda to help heal emotionally, spiritually and physically as well from a very feminine perspective. So the path of practice and the last book for you this is the final one for women's health is Womb Wisdom by Padma Ayan Prakasha. So as women, of course, we can store a lot of emotions in our bodies, in our cells and especially in our womb actually, and this book right here really helps us to let go of any just lineage stored emotions or things that we're holding onto in our body, so we can fully step into our feminine power. So it's such an epic book, especially if you have any issues just with your menstrual cycle or with pregnancy, or endometriosis, pcos, anything like this, or you simply want to connect more deeply to your femininity, to your body, into your womb space, to unlock creativity or just more pleasure, more joy and abundance in life. It's also a book that I highly recommend. Before having children, this is a really beautiful one to connect more deeply to the wisdom of your womb. So that is all for today, you guys.

Bindi:

Thank you so much for listening. These are my top books that have completely changed my life. I hope that you'll have a read. I would love to hear over on Instagram what books of these have you read, what are your top books, and is there any of the books that I shared here today that you are going to buy and you're going to have a read through. I'd love to hear your top takeaways. So that's all for today, my loves. I'm sending you so much love. I'll see you back for another episode real soon, take care. Thanks so much for listening. If you loved today's episode, please spread the love by subscribing and leaving a review. Or if there's someone in your life that you think could benefit from this conversation, please share this episode with them. I would love to hear from you over on Instagram at Bindi Stables, or visit my website, bindestablescom, to connect and work with me. Thank you so much again for being here and I'm celebrating you in this journey of becoming the happiest, the healthiest, most vibrant you.

Optimize Mind and Body Health Books
Practical and Accessible Spiritual Books
Top Books for Spirituality and Growth
Books on Healing Trauma, Women's Health