Pittwater Life November 2020 Issue

Books
Books
Love
Clancy
Richard Glover
ABC Books
$29.99
Have you ever wondered
what your dog really
thinks about their life
with us humans? In this
hilariously funny new
book from Richard Glover
we get a rare insight.
After Richard’s beloved
dog of 13 years Darcy dies
the family brings home
Clancy. Not only is Clancy
a cheeky Kelpie but also
quite the letter writer
and the book features
a selection of the dog’s
letters back home to his
‘Mum and Dad’.
As a puppy we
learn about Clancy’s
bewilderment at the
goings in his household –
especially the behaviour
of ‘the man’. Why do they
think I enjoy car rides?
Why when they have a full
fridge of food do they not
feed me more? Why does
the man keep fussing
over yellow patches in the
lawn?
At the end of each
Clancy letter, ‘The Man’,
has his right of reply
ensuring the record is
‘accurate’.
This is another gem
from Richard Glover.
Michael Armstrong
Beachside Bookshop
Focus on
meditation an
enlightening
revelation
In the midst of a global mental health
crisis, Northern Beaches-based journalist
Shannon Harvey recruited a team of
scientists to put mindful meditation to the
test. Her acclaimed documentary and book
My Year of Living Mindfully are out now.
Interview by Lisa Offord
Q: When and why did you begin writing?
I studied journalism at UTS and later got my
first job as a TV and radio journalist with
the ABC in my early 20s. I hoped to become
a foreign correspondent, but when I was
24 I was diagnosed with an autoimmune
disease (originally thought to be lupus, now
diagnosed as Sjogren’s disease) and my
life took another path. I now make feature
documentaries, write books, and present
podcasts which are all about
finding evidence-backed
solutions to the chronic
illness epidemic.
Q: What inspired you to
write My Year of Living
Mindfully?
I’d like to say this whole
thing started when I decided
to tackle a big problem: the
global mental health crisis.
But although that would have
been a worthy motive for any
unshrinking journalist, the
truth is, the inspiration for
My Year of Living Mindfully
was also very personal. I’d
just had my second child
and although I wasn’t in the midst of a fullblown
mental health episode, I was struggling
in my attempt to dance the work/life twostep.
Even more troubling though, was my
insomnia. One or two nights a week I was
plagued with rumination and unable to sleep.
With a family history of mental illness and
addiction, I went in search of something that
I could do (and something that I could teach
my kids) that didn’t require expensive trips
to a therapist or having to take medication.
I was after a kind of evidence-based mental
fitness training, like the brain’s equivalent
of a 30-minute workout or the mind’s daily
serving of five fruit and vegetables.
Q: What did you learn?
After my year-long self-experiment to see
what would happen if I meditated every day,
it’s now clear to me why mindfulness has
earned a multi-decade record in modern
medicine and healthcare, and why it’s now
finding its way into education, business,
social justice, and politics. At a time when
275 million around the world suffer from
anxiety, when one in five of us live in the
grip of chronic pain, and every 40 seconds,
someone, somewhere, takes their own life, it’s
pretty clear that the current
mainstream strategies we
have in place to support
psychological wellbeing are
not working. Mindfulness
is no panacea, but in all its
simplicity and complexity,
high-quality mindfulness
training is an adjunct that
complements the best of
whatever else is available.
Q: Any interesting
feedback?
Among other things, people
who have seen the film
and read the book tell me
how motivated they are to
start mindfulness training
and how relieved they are to know that the
training was (and still is) difficult for me. I
think it’s good to be honest and to bust the
myth that mindfulness training is easy and
always relaxing. Just like learning any new
worthwhile skill, mindfulness training can
be hard work, especially at the start. I’m not
suggesting that mindfulness training is a
replacement for the best of evidence-based
psychology, psychiatry or pharmacology. It’s
an adjunct that, with the help of qualified
teachers, we can do every day for ourselves
to keep mentally fit and prepare for whatever
life will throw at us.
* Published by Hachette Australia, My Year
of Living Mindfully is available where all
good books are sold.
50 NOVEMBER 2020
The Local Voice Since 1991