Book Review: The Untethered Soul by Michael A Singer
I chose this book because a good friend recently recommended it to me. I have been dabbling with mindfulness and meditation for the past few years so this book seemed like it would be a good place to go with this journey. As I finish this book I’m having some very mixed emotions about it.
The book is about how to use your thoughts to help you live a happier, more fulfilled life. It’s actually a lot deeper than that, I just honestly don’t have the vocabulary or knowledge to explain exactly what this book has to offer.
The book is divided into 5 parts:
1: Awakening Consciousness
2: Experiencing Energy
3: Freeing Yourself
4: Going Beyond
5: Living Life
The first section was my favorite part of the book probably because it made the most sense to me. In this section Singer discusses how our mind is always talking to us and we need to learn to look at this voice from the outside. By doing this we can learn to ignore the voice or change the narrative that it is telling us. This is how I’ve been using what I got from this part of the book. I started a new phase in my Personal Training program last week. When this happens, I often look at the new program and the voice in my head starts to say, “you can’t do that exercise” “you’ll need to modify that exercise” and then there is always the occasional “what was Mike thinking when he gave me this exercise”. Last week I decided to change that voice into “Let’s try this exercise and see how I do”. I’m very happy to say that for the most part I could do the exercises that before I might have tried to figure out how to modify or even avoid. The other time of day that I’ve been focusing on quieting those voices is at night when I’m trying to fall asleep. Instead of giving into the nagging list of things that I didn’t get to and still need to finish, when I lie down at night, I now list the things I did get done during the day and then I think about one thing I’m grateful for and that has been helping me fall asleep and hopefully sleep a little better each night.
For the rest of the book though, I’m going to need to reread it with a study group. I think that I’m not quite where I need to be on my mindfulness journey to truly understand all that this book probably has to offer someone with more insight into their practice. I’m still in the “I love my Headspace app, and I occasionally do yoga” stage. So unfortunately, instead of being inspired by this book I found a lot of it leaving me with more questions than answers. There is a study guide that you can buy to go with the book so if I ever find a book group reading this book then maybe I’ll try it again with the guide.
I do think that there is an audience for this book and I think that some of our members are probably in that audience. I appreciated that this book helped me remember the importance of positive self-talk. It also reminded me the importance of being present in each moment.
Earlier this week I had to take my cat to the vet for an echocardiogram. One of the vet techs and I share a love for my cat but occasionally I feel like she is judging me when I bring Shadow in for random health issues. While I waited for Shadow to get finished with his test, I was reading “The Untethered Soul”. When the vet tech brought Shadow back to me, she told me how awesome he was and then she noticed I was reading this book. She told me she had just finished it and how much she loved it. Then she asked me if she could give me a hug. While she probably knew that I was stressed out about Shadow needing an echocardiogram, she had no way to know about a few other things that were weighing on my heart that day, so her hug was very welcomed. It also made me think that I really do need to give this book another chance cause any book that gets me hugs is okay with me.