Sane New World: Taming the Mind

Hiya, this is Heather, today I'm posting about a non-fiction book for a change! 

Author: Ruby Wax

Published: June 2013

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

My rating: 5/5

I purchased this book in the charming Welsh town of Hay-on-Wye whilst on holiday last year. For those unfamiliar with the place, it is home to around 38 bookshops so naturally my parents and I were drawn (much to the dismay of my brother, who I think would rather have gone to the cinema and seen terrible book-to-film adaptations). 

The books that are worthy of five stars are the ones that change your perspective on the world for a minute. I think this is quite possibly the first non-fiction book to have had that affect on me, making me honestly believe that every second of life is so beautifully significant. The book is dedicated to ‘taming the mind’ through gaining a basic understanding of how the mind works. The idea is that if you can learn to comprehend how emotions are provoked, to an extent you may also control them.

“Gloria Gaynor was wrong when she sang, ‘I am what I am’. She will have to change those lyrics but it won’t be so easy to dance to. What rhymes with neuroplasticity?”

Wax writes in a style that both entertains and educates, whilst also bearing on some of her own personal challenges. Her honesty is refreshing and relatable most of the time, at many points I have been tempted to retrieve a pencil and circle lines with the caption ‘LOL’ and ‘#sotrue’, but have refrained due to the fact that when rereading the novel I do not want to cringe at my commentary.

The book is divided into five sections; the first two sections talk about humanity and mental disorders like depression, the next is basic neuroscience, then the last two show you how to master your own thoughts. I found the third section so interesting that I worried I might forget it later and wrote five pages of notes on it, creating my own dictionary of neuroscience. When I reached the fourth section, I realised how ridiculously pointless this was – I am not being tested on the content of the novel and I will be able to refer to bits of the novel later on – then read the remainder of the book like a normal person would. The highlight of the novel was a method of mindfulness whereby Wax instructed that the reader should put a piece of chocolate on their tongue and spend time noticing the texture, taste sensations, how the mouth moves to chew it etc. The technique aimed to remind the reader that they are often in autopilot mode and do not think about how they are doing something, I sometimes appear at school and ponder what actually happened during the weekend because I honestly cannot recall, then get stuck in the clouds thinking about how to spell ‘May’ and boom, it’s June and I have achieved nothing with my life. I also appreciated being told to eat chocolate, that’s always a benefit of any book.

I’d recommend this book to literally anyone (okay, maybe not anyone, my cat would struggle with it). The book has eight and a bit pages devoted to showing evidence that mindfulness works and can significantly weaken depression, OCD, anxiety and tons of other mental disorders that one in four of us suffer from. A few people I’ve mentioned the book to have shuddered at the word ‘neuroscience’ and ‘psychology’ and even ‘brain’… I really don’t get the ‘brain’ reaction; a guy in Arthur was nicknamed Brain and he was hardly daunting. Wax explains everything so clearly that even I got what she was on about. For instance, at one point she details how the somatosensory cortex has a map of body parts in order of sensitivity by saying; “It’s as if your body parts are getting bigger plots if they’re used; genitals and tongue the size of Texas, armpit is Chattanooga.” I actually have a list of quotes from the book, but that’d make this review way too long for anyone to bother looking at, so I’ll end it here.

I do hope that you liked the review and will consider buying the book sometime. If anyone has any other suggestions for books to read, or views on the book then please do comment them below!