I’m going to save you a long rambling build up and just get straight to it: below is a list of the most ponderous/favourite books I read during the past year or so. Any of these would be great additions to your reading list for 2022.
Not all books mentioned are new, however, I would like to believe that all are timeless — each of these has an important message that I connected with: whether it’s plunging into the finitude of my time here on Earth (and using the short amount of time I have on this planet as an anti-morbid antidote to death by living my days through stepping into each new epoch of the present moment with grace and gratitude) or the scientific and researched benefits of adopting an elimination (meat-based) diet to heal the body & mind from the inside out.
Book 1: Breath by James Nester
The nose is the silent warrior: the gatekeeper of our bodies, pharmacist to our minds, and weather vane to our emotions.
Humans “rust” as well. As the cells in our bodies lose the ability to attract oxygen, Szent-Györgyi wrote, electrons within them will slow and stop freely interchanging with other cells, resulting in unregulated and abnormal growth. Tissues will begin “rusting” in much the same way as other materials. But we don’t call this “tissue rust.” We call it cancer. And this helps explain why cancers develop and thrive in environments of low oxygen.28 The best way to keep tissues in the body healthy was to mimic the reactions that evolved in early aerobic life on Earth—specifically, to flood our bodies with a constant presence of that “strong electron acceptor”: oxygen. Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.
This book has had a huge impact on me this year. I first heard about it in 2019 when it was first released. I resisted the idea that simply breathing properly could have a massive influence on the quality of my life. I happened to be suffering from a multitude of health problems a few years back, including mould toxicity which dramatically influenced how I was breathing.
At the time I was healing myself from the inside out with a meat-based/animal-based diet (see book 4 below). Eliminating almost all plants from my diet worked wonders for my mental/physical well-being, but I still felt like I was missing that ‘6th gear’ when I trained – I struggled to tap into that savage that I knew was laying dormant in me during the last 2 minutes of an AMRAP.
I was stubborn in thinking that a proper diet — mainly: a meat-based ultra-low-carb diet where animal-based foods (red meat, chicken, dairy) make up the majority of your calories — was the only solution to healing myself.
But I was wrong. In fact, I now consider there to be three fundamental aspects to the healing modality: meat ( proper diet), movement (physical fitness) and mindfulness (self-awareness). These three pillars of being a Spiritual Savage informs my art these days. Breathing properly falls perfectly into the “movement” modality. To breath well is to live well, sleep well and move well.
What I got out of it
The biggest takeaway from the book was the importance of breathing through the nostrils as much as possible throughout the day. For this reason, I now am that guy who tapes his mouth shut at night using 3M micropore tape. Mouth taping is shown to have a number of benefits, but the basic premise is the tapes ability to prevent your mouth from opening so that you are forced to breathe through your nose at night – counterintuitively this relaxes you and acts as a natural air filter for your body. Breathing through your nose produces a calming effect on the nervous system which gives you stable energy throughout the day (or at least I have found that to be the case).
Get Breath by James Nester book here: https://amzn.to/3GXRvid
Book 2: Stop Fixing Yourself by Anthony De Mello
Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing—but absolutely nothing of the world—can make you happy. The moment you see that, you will stop moving from one job to another, one friend or lover to another, one place, one spiritual technique, one guru to another. None of these things can give you a single minute of happiness. They can only offer you a temporary thrill, a pleasure, that initially grows in intensity then turns into pain if you lose them and boredom if you keep them.
There is not a single moment in your life when you do not have everything that you need to be happy. Think about that for a minute. The reason you are unhappy is that you are focusing on what you do not have rather than on what you have right now.
You don’t see persons and things as they are; you see them as you are.
Most self-help books focus on the concept that you are fundamentally broken and you need their book, idea or philosophy to be whole again. De Mello shits on all self-improvement texts like it was his job. And it was his job. I’ve mentioned it many times before, but I love his work and I consider him a spiritual savage. I gained a profound sense of relief like the 20lbs CrossFit weight vest I’d been carrying my entire life had been thrown off, and finally, I can feel the power to weight ratio of my spirit powering me through life.
What I got out of it
All is well.
You are enough.
Enough said.
Get Stop Fixing Yourself by Anthony De Mello book here: https://amzn.to/3qUlJgH
Book 3: Recapture the Rapture by Jamie Wheal
Regardless of which branch we enter through—whether it’s deep healing, powerful inspiration, or committed connection, this three-legged process is more or less how living gets done. Life is irreducibly tragic—we know that much. That’s where healing becomes so essential—it gives us a chance to patch our bones and mend as we go onward. But occasionally, it’s undeniably magic—and that’s easier to forget. That’s what inspiration does: It reminds us that there’s beauty and perfection around us, if we only remember where to look. When we find ourselves whipsawed between those two poles, we have to laugh together at the Full Catastrophe that is our mortal lives. Then it’s Comic too. That’s what connection does—it gives us a chance to share the burden and absurdity of life with others.
Rather than trying to tame or transcend our bodies, as Aristotle and Augustine might have encouraged, we can learn to inhabit them fully, and without apology.
Although Jamie’s style of writing might not be receptive to all readers — he kind of gets a little…Mark Mansony(?), at times — but, he is a brilliant conveyer of cosmic intelligence and flow.
What I got out of it
We're meaning-making primates living on a rock that sucks us into it's centre hurling through space: fear nothing. Tap back into the part of yourself that may have been lost; tap back into your animal flesh and inhabit yourself fully in the present. According to Wheal, the three areas we should focus our finite human time on are: Ecstasis (peak experience and awe), Catharsis (deep healing and integration), and Communitas (profound connection with others).
Get Recapture the Rapture by Jamie Wheal book: https://amzn.to/3GQuOwm
Book 4: Carnivore Cure by Judy Cho
Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts can impede you from having optimal health. It’s time to let go of the notion that we must incorporate fruits and vegetables for our mind, body, and soul. These very foods may be the reason for your chronic health ailments. In fact, limit buying from the produce section.
Meat has the most nutrients and provides the most absorbable form of nutrition when compared with any plant-based food. Additionally, no essential vitamins or minerals are missing from the animal kingdom.
If you understand that the body is a collection of atoms, then so too is the brain. Mental health and nutrition are closely related. You must feed the body with nutrient-dense foods to have a fighting chance in this struggle we all call life.
A meat-based diet – one that consists primarily of animal-based food sources (meat, eggs, dairy and seafood) with the exclusion of most plant-based foods, which contain all sorts of phytotoxins that affect the gut if eaten regularly or cooked/prepared wrongly – has been my go-to diet for the past few years. This is not a fad. I've been on a keto/carnivore diet for nearly 9 years now. I lost 90lbs in 2014 and have not looked back since. You can read more on my healing journey here.
I'm always up for arming myself with extra knowledge – Judy has consistently shelled out valuable, non-dogmatic/biased scientific-backed content on the benefits of a meat-based carnivore diet. Follow Judy on Instagram, she posts valuable content on the science/research of a meat-based diet.
What I got out of it
You don't have to move to Costa Rica and live off of organ supplements or grass-fed meat to make this a way of life. Just focus on meat first. Try removing all plants from your diet for a period of time (I recommend at least 3 months, but it could be as little as 2-3 weeks), make meat a part of every meal and watch your body & mind transform. #MeatHeals.
Get Carnivore Cure by Judy Cho book: https://amzn.to/3H7i8RK
Book 5: Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
if you’re procrastinating on something because you’re worried you won’t do a good enough job, you can relax – because judged by the flawless standards of your imagination, you definitely won’t do a good enough job. So you might as well make a start.
As long as you believe that the real meaning of life lies somewhere off in the future – that one day all your efforts will pay off in a golden era of happiness, free of all problems – you get to avoid facing the unpalatable reality that your life isn’t leading towards some moment of truth that hasn’t yet arrived. Our obsession with extracting the greatest future value out of our time blinds us to the reality that, in fact, the moment of truth is always now – that life is nothing but a succession of present moments, culminating in death, and that you’ll probably never get to a point where you feel you have things in perfect working order. And that therefore you had better stop postponing the ‘real meaning’ of your existence into the future, and throw yourself into life now.
We often enter different domains of our lives through less than ideal – or at the very least, rather interesting – doors. I came to the self-help realm by losing a shit ton of fat myself in 2014. That initial self-improvement stint gave me a narcissistic taste of what it felt like to be appreciated and loved.
I kind of got addicted to the idea of working on myself as result, and I felt that If I was not "being productive" I was not worthy of my rent here on earth.
Oliver Burkeman's book, Four Thousand Weeks, is not a book. It is a psychedelic disguised as a book. It has fundamentally changed my view on time and its misrepresentation in the modern world as this resource we need to use.
What I got out of it
When we face our finitude with pure acceptance we can step into the void with clarity knowing we are flashes in the night of existence, and the coffee you have with your mother in the morning reminiscing on the road trips you've enjoyed over the years before you depart to Amsterdam is just as – if not more – important than the other, 'big things': the awards, recognitions, paychecks, weddings…
Accept the fact that choosing to do one thing is a decision to sacrifice not doing something else. Accept your FOMO and do what you were going to do anyway. Because in the end, we will all be dead soon so you may as well enjoy every single moment.
Get Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman book: https://amzn.to/3fSugtY
Did you enjoy this? Each week I send out a short email to a couple of hundred people with a quote or two I’m contemplating, thoughts on books I’ve read, the latest content on my YouTube channel and anything else that I think you’d enjoy. The goal is to ‘prime’ your subconscious for the week ahead.