Thinking Body, Dancing Mind : Taosports for Extraordinary Performance in Athletics, Business, and Life
Author: Chungliang Al Huang, Jerry Lynch
List Price: $16.95
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ISBN: 0553373781
Publisher: Bantam (01 May, 1994)
Sales Rank: 49,072
Average Customer Rating: 3.86 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Fabulous!
I am in graduate school for Sports Psychology and this book hits at the heart of what works for athletes. This is an Eastern-thinking text, so if you do not agree with that philosophy, you will not like this book.
Not only can this book be a reference for the athlete, it is also a reference book for living. I love this book.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Important Tool for Committed Athletes
This book addresses most of the stumbling blocks many athletes encounter in their quest for excellence. It then suggests specific guidelines for achieving not only performance excellence but also an internal sense of calm and satisfaction with the effort and accomplishment.
The format is succinct and easily used as a reference when specific concepts need to be reviewed. It is not a deeply theoretical book. Rather, it is a very practical and, in my experience, highly effective friend. It has totally changed my approach to my sport (and to my life) with wonderful results.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Not for the advanced...
This IS a book for novices. True Taoists would just have a copy of the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching and draw their own answers through introspection of these two primary documents. While I had hoped that this book would provide something of substance, the whole of the book can literally be summed up with, "Visualize how you want things to be and it will be so. Center. Take five easy breathes. Act as if and it will be so." The authors say this in EVERY chapter and with every chapter being template formatted to this mantra it gets VERY repetitive and exhausting. I cannot believe they got 300 pages out of the same text...I also have trouble believing that the worldclass athletes alluded to within this book are so undisciplined that they need the simple affirmations provided to open their eyes to their true potential, especially martial artists. The affirmations provided get so much to the point of comedy that it is best to ignore them as you push through the book. (They reminded me of the Saturday Night Live skit, "I'm okay and I like me.")
This is a New Age book, not an enlightening text. (Though I acknowledge that once you decide to become enlightened, you are.) If you are an advanced athlete who understands even the basics of Taoism and how it can be applied to ALL ASPECTS of your life, this IS NOT a book for you.
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