Why Meditation Matters in Your Connection with God
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Can meditation help enrich our spiritual experiences and deepen our understanding of God? Yes, it can, says psychiatrist and author of The God-Shaped Brain Timothy R. Jennings, M.D.
“When we practice biblical meditation, we exercise the brain circuits of reason, thoughtful contemplation, and admiration for God,” Dr. Jennings says. “We grapple with concepts beyond our current understanding, stretching our abilities, which develop ever-increasing, more complex brain circuitry. These higher cortical regions grow stronger, as does our wisdom and our capacity for self-governance and manifesting the fruits of the Spirit.”
In his new publication, Meditation: Biblical Method Versus Eastern Method, A Guide to a Bible-based Experience with God, Dr. Jennings documents the differences between biblical and Eastern meditation; describes divergent meditation methods and their impact on brain function and character outcomes; and demonstrates how readers can engage in healthy biblical meditation. Also included is a simple test to help readers determine which form of meditation they’re practicing.
Dr. Jennings describes Eastern meditation as a form of self-anesthesia that relieves transient emotional distress (like pain medication for an injury) without providing an actual cure for the problem.
Alternatively, biblical meditation is like surgery for the soul, he explains. It takes one through the valley of the shadow of death, removes the cause of the emotional distress and cures the problem, resulting in genuine peace for the soul.
The Bible tells us to meditate upon God’s word and God’s wonders in creation, and Meditation can help readers understand the practice of biblical meditation so they can heal their hearts and minds, and return to their oneness with God and with each other.
Author Timothy R. Jennings, M.D., is a board-certified psychiatrist, international speaker and founder of Come and Reason Ministries. He operates a private practice in Chattanooga and has successfully treated thousands of patients. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Life-Fellow of the Southern Psychiatric Association.
Dr. Jennings is also a prolific author whose books include The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life; Could It Be This Simple? A Biblical Model for Healing the Mind; The Aging Brain: Proven Steps to Prevent Dementia and Sharpen Your Mind; and The God-Shaped Heart: How Correctly Understanding God’s Love Transforms Us.
To download a free copy or to order a printed copy (while supplies last) of Meditation: Biblical Method Versus Eastern Method, or to learn more about Dr. Timothy R. Jennings and his approach to brain and body health, please visit: www.comeandreason.com.
Trish Stevens Helen Cook Senior Publicist Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 903.654.0938 Direct 281.333.3507 Office [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com
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“About Natalie is groundbreaking. It doesn’t preach or pretend to offer a panacea. Instead, it offers a refreshing, authentic look at one family’s struggle with addiction, easily the most powerful book published on the subject in the 21st century.” — Dr. Maryel McKinley PhD, Addictions Expert, Former Co-Host, “All Talk Recovery Radio,” Los Angeles, Ar-bitron rated No. 1 in Southern California
Like the band that played on as the Titanic sank, Christine Naman unpacked the groceries and made a meatloaf — the simple act of normalcy distracting her from an unthinkable reality: addiction was pulling her daughter under.
“Even with the picture of the situation coming more clearly into focus, I clung to denial like a kayaker who has been thrown from his boat would cling to a branch lying across the water,” Christine says. “It is amazing how deep into denial a person can go and how strongly they can hang onto it before reality smacks them around enough so that they let go.”
Christine traces her daughter’s years-long battle with addiction in About Natalie, a gripping, cautionary tale of how, in spite of a loving family and a comfortable life, a child can end up on the wrong path, meet the wrong people and get lost in the unthinkable.
About Natalie takes readers deep inside Christine’s emotional and mental turmoil as she grows into her new, unfortunate role as the parent of an addict. She steps on syringes left on the floor and wrestles one from the family dog’s mouth. She lives the nightmare of finding an unresponsive child on the floor and uses Narcan to revive her. She chases away a drug dealer and stays up all night waiting for her missing child to come home. She rejoices during periods of recovery and hope and is devastated during relapses. When her daughter suffers, Christine suffers right along with her.
Interwoven with Christine’s reflections are Natalie’s compelling poems that share her personal pain and the unvarnished truth of her struggle.
At its core, About Natalie is a story of fighting for — and right alongside — the ones we love, no matter how difficult the circumstances. It is a story of keeping the faith, battling hard and never giving up.
Bestselling author Christine Pisera Naman is a wife to a beautiful man named Peter and a mother to three fantastic kids named Jason, Natalie and Trevor. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, which she does poorly; painting, again poorly; and volunteering at her local hospital, which she hopes she does well. She is the author of the Faces of Hope series of books that are now housed in the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City. Her other works include Caterpillar Kisses, Christmas Lights, The Novena and The Believers. About Natalie is her heart poured onto paper.
She hopes that by sharing her family’s difficult story she can bring understanding and knowledge to those who do not know the problem firsthand as well as provide comfort to those who know the nightmare of addiction all too well.
About Natalie Publisher: HCI Books Release Date: May 2021 ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-2385-0 (Paperback) ISBN-13: 978-0-7573-2386-7 (ePub) Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Lindsey Mach Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
20 Tenets to Help Women Lead Purposeful, Successful Lives Revealed in The Woman Code Morning Joe Host & Author of Know Your Value, Mika Brzezinski, Pens Foreword
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The pandemic forced everyone to pivot and re-prioritize, and for many women, that meant putting themselves last. Now, more than ever, women need to know their value, recognize their worth and fill their own cups first.
“Women are the soul of what keeps the world going. We keep our families, our companies, our communities and our nations intact,” explains Sophia A. Nelson, acclaimed journalist and author of The Woman Code: 20 Powerful Keys to Unlock Your Life (April 2021, Health Communications).
Named one of the most inspirational books by Woman’s Day in 2015-2017, this transformative book is updated with new insights about the profound economic and societal shifts that have changed our world since the pandemic. Nelson guides women through living out a powerful life Code that will lead them to purposeful, meaningful and authentically successful lives.
Every woman lives by a Code, whether she realizes it or not. It informs how she treats herself and others and how far she is willing to go in order to find success. Nelson calls on women to examine whether the Code they’re living by is truly helping them create the lives they desire. A senior columnist for USA Today and a frequent commentator on CNN, Nelson reveals 20 powerful Codes including:
● Know Your Value ● Be Resilient ● Choose Your Thoughts and Words Wisely ● Lift Other Women as You Climb ● Practice Love, Laughter, Loyalty
With life quotes from philosophers and poets, mystics and her maternal grandmother, plus her experience as a Black woman rising through the ranks of a male-dominated news industry, The Woman Code is an essential tool of transformation for women to enjoy in reading groups, retreats and Bible study groups. It will help women honor themselves while navigating the demands of work, home, family and friendship no matter what their age or stage in life.
About the Author Sophia A. Nelson is an award-winning American author and journalist who appears regularly on CNN’s Inside Politics and Newsroom as a legal and political analyst. She is an adjunct professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.
Nelson covered former First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House from 2010–2012. The author appears frequently on CNN and has been a contributor to MSNBC, NBC, Fox News, the BBC, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer and the Today show. She writes for The Huffington Post Healthy Living and The Daily Beast. She has also contributed to USA Today, Essence, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post. She is the author of The Woman Code, Black Woman Redefined, and E Pluribus ONE.
The Home Stretch Poignantly Captures Midlife Moments of Reckoning
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While no two journeys are ever exactly the same, many of us will one day retire from a career that defines us, become a caregiver to a parent and contemplate our own mortality. How we navigate these changes depends largely on our ability to make sense of life’s complicated path and to find forgiveness for others while we still have the chance.
From award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston comes The Home Stretch, a powerful coming-of-age story for grownups that poignantly captures the complex crises that often accompany middle age and the unresolved emotions that surface when our past and present selves collide.
The Home Stretch is presented through the voice of everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself) who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. Raised in a religious cult, Bill’s unconventional upbringing and strained relationship with his father inform his life experiences and underwrite his formidable urge, from a young age, to simply escape this life altogether.
Bill struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts, and embarks upon a career navigating the rough waters of the Pacific on a tugboat. His tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for Bill’s fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him.
Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.
Johnston’s thoroughly absorbing, reality-based story offers candid glimpses into life-defining moments of reckoning that many of us will have to face head-on. The Home Stretch serves as a stark reminder that the peace we hope for as we age is often shoved aside to make room for another crisis, but it is also an ultimately inspiring tale woven with themes of forgiveness and survival.
Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, he worked on tugboats for 22 years, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch (book two in a planned trilogy) is his back story.
Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book.
The Home Stretch Publisher: Black Heron Press ISBN-10: 1936364344 ISBN-13: 978-1936364343 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold
Trish Stevens Patricia Marks Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
Resilience Without Regrets: Acclaimed Physician on Finding Miracles and Facing Adversity
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Many people reach the end of their lives wishing they could change the past. Turning back the clock is impossible, but Dr. Harley Rotbart’s new book, No Regrets Living, offers sage guidance to help us better appreciate what we have in our lives, and take greater pride in what we’ve done with our lives — without spending precious time and energy wishing things had turned out differently.
In No Regrets Living, Dr. Rotbart describes the seven keys to a life of wonder and contentment: Belief, Discovery, Healing, Appreciation, Acceptance, Seeking and Growth, and how to cultivate each in your life. Woven into the timeless message of the book are especially timely observations on the COVID-19 pandemic from Dr. Rotbart’s expert perspective as an infectious diseases physician, including coping mechanisms and paths for going forward as individuals and as a society.
Dr. Rotbart is a man of science who also believes in, and “collects,” miracles. No Regrets Living is the much-awaited follow-up to his previous book, Miracles We Have Seen – America’s Leading Physicians Share Stories They Can’t Forget. In this new work, Dr. Rotbart reconciles science and faith from his unique perspective as physician, scientist, heart surgery patient and child of a Holocaust survivor.
“I have a simple definition of a miracle,” Dr. Rotbart says. “Miracles are objects and events in nature and in our lives that cannot be fully explained or re-created. Yes, like the unimaginable true stories written by physicians in the Miracles We Have Seen book, but I believe the inside of the living human beings I have seen in the operating room and the tiniest of human cells I have seen under a microscope in my laboratory are equally miraculous and unexplainable. And you needn’t go to medical school or use a microscope to appreciate the ubiquity of miracles. They are all around us — we only need to open our eyes and hearts to recognize them.”
A nationally renowned infectious disease specialist, Dr. Rotbart is also a pediatrician, parenting expert, speaker and educator. He is Professor and Vice Chair Emeritus of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and author of more than 175 medical and scientific publications, and five previous books for general audiences: Miracles We Have Seen; 940 Saturdays; No Regrets Parenting; Germ Proof Your Kids; and The On Deck Circle of Life.
To learn more, please visit www.harleyrotbart.com, or connect with the author on Facebook (HarleyRotbartMd) or Twitter (@HarleyRotbart).
No Regrets Living: 7 Keys to a Life of Wonder and Contentment Publisher: Health Communications, Inc. Release Date: March 16, 2021 ISBN-10: 0757323944 ISBN-13: 978-0757323942 Available from Amazon.com
Trish Stevens Lindsey Mach Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
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Your veterinarian chose to dedicate his or her life to the altruistic pursuit of tending to the health and lives of pets. What you may not have considered is that the health and life of your veterinarian also needs protecting: he or she is nearly four times more likely to die by suicide than someone among the general population. But there are ways you can help.
Sandy Weaver, author of the groundbreaking new book Happy Vet Happy Pet: Caring for Your Pet’s Caregiver, is on a mission to ease the lives of veterinarians, one client’s heart at a time.
“I’ve known for years, as have those in the veterinary field, that there was an issue with suicide and veterinarians,” Sandy says. “Then in early 2019, the CDC report on veterinary suicide was published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, and what had been anecdotal became data: male veterinarians are 2.1 times more likely, and female veterinarians are 3.5 times more likely, to complete suicide than their non-veterinarian peers.”
Happy Vet Happy Pet is a distillation of Sandy’s research into neuroscience, neuroplasticity and positive psychology mixed with data from the CDC report. The result is an impactful approach that weaves easy-to-understand science with stories that touch the minds and the hearts of pet owners — empowering them to be part of the solution.
Chapters dive deep into topics all pet owners should understand, including:
The heart, mind and life of a person who decides to become a veterinarian;
The very human, very vulnerable person behind the scrubs;
The ways clients unknowingly mistreat their pets’ caregivers;
Three simple rules to follow to help your veterinary team; and
What to do if you feel that someone near you is facing suicidal desperation.
Happy Vet Happy Pet shares Sandy’s unique point of view that it takes a village to save a veterinarian. “Making pet owners mindful of how their behavior impacts their veterinarian mobilizes the village to help solve the problem,” she adds.
This book will change your relationship with your veterinarian and their team forever. And what you learn in this book could save your veterinarian’s life.
Author Sandy Weaver is an expert speaker, trainer, mastermind facilitator and lover of all things dog.
As the Program Director of the Center for Workplace Happiness, Sandy creates the training programs, workshops, mastermind groups and keynotes that help people lead happier, more successful lives. She is also a citizen-scientist in the fields of neuroscience, neuroplasticity and positive psychology. In 2019, she took the resilience tools and strategies she’d been teaching to general audiences and crafted programs specifically for veterinary teams. Her goal is to touch the life of every veterinarian and technician in a way that helps them avoid the pain and despair that comes with an inability to manage stress.
Now in her 40th year of Siberian Husky ownership, Sandy is a passionate advocate for veterinarians and their teams and an ongoing donor to Not One More Vet.
The Home Stretch: Uplifting Coming of Age Story Explores Complex Themes of Mortality and Forgiveness
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The diagnosis of leukemia at age 43 laid bare a brief flirtation with escape for Bill Smith. After all, he had battled depression and suicidal thoughts from a young age; mortality was really nothing new for him to grapple with. To put it bluntly, for Bill Smith, the end had always been in view. But that life-defining moment — that brief descent into darkness — triggered a profound fight for survival.
The Home Stretch, from award-winning author Wayne M. Johnston, features everyman Bill Smith (loosely based on Johnston himself), who, throughout his life, is confronted with extraordinary circumstances. His is a coming of age story in which the peace that allegedly comes with maturity is often shunted aside to make room for yet another crisis. It is also an uplifting story in its candid, reality-based portrait of a man struggling to find personal integrity through challenging conditions.
From an early age, Bill grapples with depression. Raised in a religious cult, he cannot reconcile his own experience with the worldview of his parents, and although he’s bound to them by love and obligation, he rejects their beliefs. His father’s palpable disappointment in Bill leads him to contemplate suicide and to provoke his father into a confrontation with a surprising outcome that would redefine their relationship and alter the course of both of their lives.
Given to a physical, adventurous life, Bill becomes the chief engineer on a seagoing tugboat, and his tales of weathering gale-force winds and violent storms at sea provide metaphorical undercurrents for his fraught relationship with his father, his failed early marriage, his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s and his own battle with leukemia, which he is told will kill him. Just when Bill has come to believe he has put the worst of it to rest, he learns something more about his father that opens everything up again, except this time, Bill’s sister is the victim.
The Home Stretch is a poignant, ultimately inspiring coming of age story that weaves themes of mortality and forgiveness through life-defining moments of reckoning that many adults have to face head-on and learn to overcome.
Wayne M. Johnston taught English, Creative Writing and Publications at La Conner High School for 19 years. Prior to that, for 22 years he worked on tugboats, usually as chief engineer, towing freight barges between Canadian and West Coast American ports. In 2011, he won the Soundings Review First Publication Award for his essay, “Sailing,” and has published other essays locally. For his debut novel, North Fork, he drew from years of experience reading student journals to reproduce the way kids voice serious matters to a trusted adult. The Home Stretch is book two in a planned trilogy. North Fork was released in 2016 as a YA novel. The story is told through the voices of three 17-year-olds as journal entries for their English class. Bill Smith, the protagonist in The Home Stretch, is their English teacher, and The Home Stretch is his back story.
Johnston lives with his wife, Sally, on Fidalgo Island in Washington State where he is working on another book length project. Connect with the author on Facebook (
The Home Stretch Publisher: Black Heron Press ISBN-10: 1936364344 ISBN-13: 978-1936364343 Available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Target.com and anywhere books are sold
Trish Stevens Vicky Rockwell Ascot Media Group, Inc. Post Office Box 2394 Friendswood, TX 77549 [email protected] www.ascotmedia.com 281.333.3507 Phone
