Wendy Teasdill on Integrating Philosophy in Yoga Teaching and Practice

In this interview, Wendy Teasdill talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her book, Integrating Philosophy in Yoga Teaching and Practice: A Practical Guide.

“At the end of the day, I think we find our own path.” ~Wendy Teasdill

Wendy began her involvement with yoga to help her deal with her hepatitis, which required her to undertake a lifelong regimen of rest and proper diet. As she was an active person, she got into yoga through pranayama, which are specific breathing exercises intended to enable one to tap into, and accumulate, cosmic energy. 

Wendy then investigated Iyengar yoga, which is yoga developed, practiced and taught by a man named B. K. S. Iyengar, who had gotten into yoga to improve his own health. Iyengar yoga involves precise approaches to the asanas, long holds and a lot of discipline which reflected Iyengar’s own being a hard taskmaster. Wendy did get a lot of training and a firm foundation in yoga discipline and training, but when she got pregnant, Iyengar yoga didn’t entirely work for her, so she developed her own, personal style. This was because Iyengar yoga, like most yoga that were first brought to the West, were “very masculine,” as these were designed for male bodies, and not all of Iyengar yoga applied to female bodies, particularly pregnant female bodies. Wendy notes that people should follow Iyengar’s example, but to not necessarily all of the methods taught and develop their own, personal style.

Where yoga during pregnancy is concerned, Wendy notes that the more challenging poses shouldn’t be practiced. As an example, Wendy mentioned how the downward dog pose caused her to throw up, and why, and instead focused on doing the cat position instead. Wendy also mentioned that, due to the influx of progesterone in the pregnant female body, some challenging yoga poses might be easier to do, as the pregnant female’s body is more flexible. Wendy does not recommend that one do such challenging positions, as once the progesterone is gone, one could end up with overstretched and damaged ligaments and tendons, which could result in pelvic problems and vertebrae going “out of whack.”

Wendy has always liked writing throughout her life, so writing books seemed natural to her. She has written all her life, and writing books were as much for herself as these were for others. Where Integrating Philosophy in Yoga Teaching and Practice is concerned, Wendy hopes that all yoga practitioners can get something from it. The book itself contains the answers to the questions that she had when she started out in yoga, trying to make sense of the rationale and the philosophies behind it. Where the philosophies are concerned, Wendy focuses more on the philosophies defined in yoga itself, rather than Cartesian dualities which, she notes, are integrated into the structure of the English language. She points out that the mind-body connection is a recent concept in Western philosophy, whereas this could be thought of as being a part of one of yoga’s main philosophies, which is that “All Is One.” (The other main philosophy is the separation of the divine from the worldly.)

Wendy points out that the word “yoga” means, “to unite,” and that the poses that are associated with yoga weren’t originally part of the practice. These physical exercises became part of yoga practice later on, to the point of their becoming a dominant aspect of the practice, and are intended to help unify one’s mind, body and spirit. Wendy also notes that there are several different styles of, and so many approaches to, yoga, which are intended to suit different natures, and that creation, maintenance and destruction are the modes of nature, with each person having personality traits in each of these modes.

Where contemporary issues are concerned, Wendy believes that people can get insights and answers to questions, sometimes to the point where the questions disappear, and doing so requires practice. She points out that the questions asked are strongly influenced by one’s background, social conditioning, one’s friends and the media around, and that yoga takes one to a place where things are not conditional, enabling a different take, insight and approach. Yoga, Wendy remarks, enables one to find points of rapport rather than separation, and the information in the book enables one to get a stepping stone to understanding. Wendy then gives an example of how focusing on the pelvis can help one progress in one’s understanding.

“It’s an endless journey,” Wendy remarks where life is concerned. “We each have to make it for ourselves.”

Purchase from Amazon: 

Integrating Philosophy in Yoga Teaching and Practice: A Practical Guide by Wendy Teasdill

Isaac Prilleltensky on the Science Behind Laughter for Change, a Better Life, and Well-Being

In this interview, Isaac Prilleltensky talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his The Laughing Guide book series written with Ora Prilleltensky.



“Learning is an active endeavor.” ~Isaac Prilleltensky

Isaac Prilleltensky is presently the Vice-Provost for Institutional Culture at the University of Miami, and he took a sabbatical between assuming his present position and his previous position, the Dean of the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, to write out the Laughing Guide series with his wife, Ora Prilleltensky. His involvement with, and use of, humor has evolved over the course of time, developing from when he was asked to write speeches for certain celebrations to when he began using humor in his own profession. He and his wife, began a humor-based online research project to help people become happier and healthier. It was then that he began writing funny short stories and began having these published in newspapers and magazines, and it was from then that the trilogy series developed.

The series combines humor with science and aims to enable people to have healthier and happier lives. The book sprang from Isaac’s realization that he most likely had enough original material for a book, which he and his wife (whom he refers to as his “secret weapon,” because of she not only is a psychologist - one whom Isaac admits is probably better than he is - but is also “super knowledgeable”) wrote out. The publisher who reviewed the initial book said that it needed to be split into two, which they did, and it was while they were working on the second book that Isaac realized that the second book was getting too big, so he split that book into two, resulting in the present trilogy.

The books’ approach is a mix of humor and science, and Isaac points out that people learn better when they do so in an environment where humor is present, as they become more creative, their defenses are lowered and they solve problems better. Isaac points to the substantial body of research on positive emotions - which is what humor falls under - which indicates that positive emotions create a positive spiral of positivity. The lack of feeling defensive helps out, as people who are so involved don’t need to worry about coming across as inferior, thus freeing up mental energy; and the freer one feels, the smarter one becomes, creating connections amongst things that one would have not made in another environment. Laughter also releases endorphins, which means that humor links the psychological with the physiological.

Isaac also points out research which indicates that the best way to learn is to be open-minded - broadening one’s horizons - which requires one to suspend judgement on the way the world is, which removes one’s own biases and enables one to see things differently. He also notes research where humor can reduce the intensity of pain felt by individuals as well as their allergic reactions, as laughter boosts the immune system. He remarks on the active components which members and participants in laughing groups get, namely:

1. positive emotions;
2. positive physiological reactions induced by laughter, as laughing is a form of physical exercise; and
3. the social element of creating affiliative bonds - a social glue that binds people together.

Isaac remarks that a precondition for doing such things as doing one’s work well or for reaching higher levels of excellence is psychological safety.  Research conducted on psychological safety in organizations indicates that, in organizations where people feel afraid or threatened interpersonally, organizations don’t function as well as an organization where psychological safety is present. He then points out that the best way for kids to learn is in a classroom where psychological safety is present, an environment where they can have fun and learn through active engagement by problem solving, rather than rote, threats and punishment. (Learning quote)

Change, Isaac remarks, isn’t always drastic, dramatic or traumatic, but can be doable, gradual and feasible. He advocates the “small win” strategy, where one breaks down one’s ultimate goal into small goals they can feel good about and which are achievable, and he notes that this is just one of several scientific-based methods for managing change. Another method is to anticipate barriers and create backup plans, as a way to implement what one intends, and gives an example in his life where he and his wife reduced their sugar and meat intake. As a summary, Isaac remarks that change is doable when it is done gradually, when barriers are anticipated, to reinforce new behaviors and to get social support from the people around oneself. “Change is a team effort,” he adds, and notes that change can be accomplished if it is demystified, so that it is doable, viable and gradual.

Isaac notes that humor is one tool for one to look at one’s present life, and that, if one can laugh at oneself, then that is the first step in changing oneself, so that one can then explore what is and what isn’t going well in one’s life. Creating a better life, Isaac says, starts with examining one’s life, one’s relationships and one’s surroundings, as the environment one lives in, and the people around oneself are vital to creating the better life one desires. “The environment, the people around us,” he notes, “can make us exceedingly happy or thoroughly miserable.”

Where the books are concerned, Isaac notes that these enable readers to explore various ways to lead happy and healthy lives, as there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to living a happy life, since different people have different desires. He also recommends that people become good listeners as, by doing so, one can create long-term positive relationships.

Purchase from Amazon: The Laughing Guide book series by Isaac Prilleltensky.

The Laughing Guide to Well-Being: Using Humor and Science to Become Happier and Healthier

The Laughing Guide to Change: Using Humor and Science to Master Your Behavior, Emotions, and Thoughts

The Laughing Guide to a Better Life: Using Humor and Science to Improve Yourself, Your Relationships and Your Surroundings

Michael Wall (PhD) on His Book about Aliens, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel

In this interview, Dr. Michael Wall talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, OUT THERE: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (for the Cosmically Curious).



“Space is really, really big.” ~Dr. Michael Wall

Mike had always wanted to write a book, and working with space.com gave him an opportunity to have a front-row seat to the present endeavors of space exploration. As he remarks, we are presently gathering data and conducting actual explorations which would enable us human beings to get a better idea of what might be out beyond the Earth, rather than just letting our imaginations give us those ideas. Mike points out that some of the richest men on Earth are funding efforts to create sustainable manned space travel, such as Elon Musk wanting to create a human colony on Mars.

Mike admits that he got interested in what was out there during the camping trips he took as a kid, when he could see the stars in a dark night sky, and he relates that, with all the stars in the galaxies of the universe, there is likely to be life beyond the Earth.

Where the image of Powehi, the black hole photographed in M87 in April 2019, is concerned, Mike remarks that the visible part of the image is the boundary of the event horizon, as not even light can escape a black hole’s gravitational pull. The silhouette of the black hole is the fuzzy darkness in the middle of the circle of light, and given that it took light from Powehi 55 million years to get to the Earth, it’s not surprising that the image is, as a lot have complained, fuzzy. Mike notes that scientific theories on relativity and on black holes can now be tested using Powehi, and that Einstein’s theories on gravity and general relativity are proven correct.

The most likely form of life humans would run across, Mike opines, would be single-celled, microbial in nature as, based on our own history, microbes have existed alone on Earth for some three billion years before multicellular life appeared. Mike notes that this apparently indicates that there is a hurdle between microbial and multicellular life, which means that multicellular life, while possible, would likely be rarer than microbial life.

Mike notes that it is possible for highly technological civilizations might exist, but we humans would need to overlap in time with the other civilization we would like to get in touch with. It is also likewise possible that a technological civilization does exist, but the vastness of space means that two technological civilizations connecting with each other would be challenging.

Life on other worlds does not necessary have to rely on the same kind of chemistry of life on Earth, but Mike notes that carbon is commonplace throughout the universe and works well with liquid water, which is why carbon-water based life is probably the most common kind of life in the universe. That said, silicon has similar chemical properties as carbon, which means that silicon-based life forms might exist. Mike also notes that there are presently unproven, but presently possible, theories that life on Earth could have started by organic substances which were brought to the Earth by the rocks and dust that fell to it (panspermia).

At present, human space travel is on “an upward trend,” according to Mike, due mainly to privately funded efforts, rather than efforts funded by the United States government, which are at the mercy of political whims. Propulsion for space travel will, for the next decade or two, be based on rockets, and Mike notes that some other possibilities to get up to high speeds for interstellar travel would be engines powered by fusion reactions as well as by energy sails which would get energy from either the sun or an Earth-based laser.

Antimatter is essentially a “bizarre version” of the matter we humans are used to, like positrons, which are positively charged particles which have the same mass as electrons, and are thus the antimatter equivalent of an electron. When an antimatter particle meets its matter counterpart, an explosion takes place, releasing energy in a 100% conversion from mass to energy. This makes for a powerful energy source, but large amounts of antimatter are difficult to create, and the antimatter itself has to be trapped in a magnetic field so that it can’t touch any matter.

Multiple universes can exist, and Mike notes that most theoretical physicists believe that these do exist, with our own universe just being one of these. The other universes also do not have to look like ours, as they can exist with more dimensions than we are used to, and universes where magic is more prevalent than physics can likewise be possible. Where our own universe is concerned, Mike points out that present theories of the universe, based on our observations, indicate that the universe is likely to be infinite; and if our own universe is infinite, so, too, might those other, alternate universes. An infinite universe also presumes that whatever one can think up can come into being, such as an imaginary creature, and that there could also be alternate versions of everyone who has existed on earth, although these would exist far away; and the possibilities increase with multiple universes.

Where the universe’s final end is concerned, based on present observation, there isn’t enough mass in the universe to slow down the present state of acceleration that is being observed; indeed, the universe is still expanding, according to such observations. Without the necessary mass to slow the expansion of the universe, matter will eventually tear apart until only subatomic particles will exist in an environment that is near absolute zero.

Mike hopes OUT THERE gets across to people the sense that something big is happening in science and exploration, and he hopes that people can connect with the wonder and the energy that is present in today’s space exploration efforts. He believes that it will take ten to fifteen years before we can get answers to some of the questions we have been asking for a long time now.

Purchase from Amazon: OUT THERE: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (for the Cosmically Curious) by Dr. Michael Wall

Janny Hammer and Albert Drosof's Guide to Punctuation (for writers, teachers & students)

In this interview, Jenny Hammer talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her book, Albert Drosoph’s Field Guide to Punctuation: For the Observant, the Dismissive, the Curious, the Confused.



“Small things make a big difference.” ~Jenny Hammer

Albert Drosoph’s Field Guide to Punctuation was actually inspired by a children’s book which Jenny wrote but, as of this interview, has not yet been published. Albert Drosoph is a character in that book who raises punctuation marks in a bavarium and whom the protagonist, Arden Everest, encountered. The Field Guide itself springs from Jenny’s years of teaching English and from her seeing English grammar guides which were difficult for the ordinary person to understand. The Field Guide is thus an attempt to introduce punctuation to the average person in a way that is helpful and understandable.

The layout of the book is similar to that of a nature field guide, with fictional descriptions of scientific taxonomy (species, family, etc.) followed by sections which describe the field, range and other characteristics of the punctuation mark being described. That said, the format is intended to allow the reader to understand how to best use the punctuation mark in question by correlating such things as where it should be used to where it would, were it an animal that exists in the field.

Jenny remarked that, in classical Greek, there were no spaces given between words and, in Roman times, all letters were capitalized, with language being predominantly spoken rather than written. Punctuation marks were originally used to tell a reader where to pause, with Aristophenes of Alexandria being one of the first to extensively use punctuation marks for such a purpose. The use of punctuation marks was solidified with the invention of the printing press, as this standardized punctuation marks so that people, wherever they were, would understand what it was that they were reading.

Where everyday usage is concerned, Jenny notes that missing punctuation marks result in legal lawsuits which can amount to the millions of dollars. For the average person, punctuation marks clarify what people mean, and she gave examples of both the impact of punctuation marks in the legal and everyday realms. Social media messaging, Jenny notes, is what she calls “emotional splats” and “fast writing / language / English,” which is analogous to fast food, as those who write such messages don’t think things out before doing so. The result are messages which can be misunderstood, even if emoticons are used. Where the latter are concerned, Jenny believes that these can be useful in conveying emotion but that these may not be needed if people thought before they wrote.

Jenny has noted that punctuation marks have evolved over time, and their history is included in the Field Guide. One of the most surprising things she learned while researching were the histories of some of the punctuation marks as well as some of the fun aspects of punctuation marks that she had discovered. She also noted that a new punctuation mark, the ddolos—which is named after Dolos, the Greek god of deception—is being brought out into the world to indicate statements which are lies, and gave an example where such might be used.

Researching the histories of the punctuation marks was one of the most fun things she experienced while writing the book, while getting correct the Latin terminology for the taxonomy of punctuation marks was challenging for her, as she needed to refer this several times to people who knew Latin. She would recommend those involved in writing to work with the comma and use these properly, as well as the difference between “its” and “it’s.” She also recommends that people be more observant with what they read and write. She also notes that it’s important for people to focus on ideas and supporting these with facts, as writing out something without thinking it through is essentially pointless.

Purchase from Amazon: Albert Drosoph’s Field Guide to Punctuation: For the Observant, the Dismissive, the Curious, the Confused by Jenny Hammer

Dr. Michael S Scheeringa on A Parent's Guide to PTSD in Youth

In this interview, Dr. Michael Scheeringa talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, They’ll Never Be the Same: A Parent’s Guide to PTSD in Youth.



“Parents, it’s up to you.” ~Dr. Michael Scheeringa

As a young, newly-trained doctor, Michael was interested in preventing child abuse, but found that field to be too ambitious to tackle, so he went into research into the effect of trauma on children - post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in other words. He accumulated a lot of information from his research and clinical work had been spending time speaking about the matter to his colleagues as well as leading training workshops on the matter, but he felt that the word wasn’t going out as quickly as he felt it should. He thus wrote They’ll Never Be the Same in an attempt to let parents and the ordinary person know the symptoms and effects of PTSD on children.

Michael notes that PTSD springs from experiences which children consider to be life-threatening, rather than experiences which are stressful but don’t get up to the intensity of being life-threatening. The events are sudden, unexpected, sheer moments of panic, which can take place during such events as natural disasters, attacks by dogs (for young children), witnessing domestic violence and the like. That said, he agreed that not everybody reacts the same way to the same situation, due to the difference in the way children perceive things, with one child being in a car accident and getting traumatized and another child in the same accident not being traumatized, and he infers the possibility that this could be due to the way each individual’s brain is wired. Michael notes that, where the issue of being separated from parents is concerned, such an event isn’t necessarily life-threatening, although it is stressful, unless it’s done in a very frightening way.

Some of the myths that Michael points out about childhood PTSD are:

• “Young children don’t remember what happened to them.” This is not true. Children as young as three can suffer from PTSD, and they will remember the traumatic event as they grow older.
• “Kids grow out of it.” This doesn’t happen, so it is best to get help for the child as soon as possible - immediately, as much as possible, within a month at most.
• “The parent - particularly the mother - is to blame.” This isn’t the case, and Michael points out that parents - particularly mothers - were blamed for autism in the 1950s, as they were blamed for schizophrenia in the 1960s. Granted, some parents might be using their children to get doctors to doing something which might not be proper or legitimate, and Michael does admit that therapists and clinicians are exposed, during their training, to populations which skew towards such behavior, but he also says that, in his experience, parents don’t lie where their children’s welfare is concerned.

Michael remarks that parents can tell if a child suffers PTSD by seeing a sudden change in a child’s behavior. PTSD is the only psychological disorder which manifests itself immediately, so something like a child being happy and expressive one day and literally withdrawn the next day is a symptom of PTSD. He also notes that there are twenty different diagnostic indicators for PTSD, which fall into three types:

1. Re-experiencing - nightmares, thoughts that barge in.
2. Avoidance and numbing - losing interest in things they previously liked.
3. Increased arousal - difficulty sleeping and concentration, exaggerated startle responses (“jumpy”).

Therapies for PTSD will never enable the child to totally heal. The best that can be done is to enable the child to live with the event, similar to how people would live with diabetes or chronic back pain, for the rest of their life. That said, such therapies will enable those who are successfully treated to live out their live productively.

Michael remarks that psychotherapy is the first line of treatment for PTSD, as it has the best long-lasting effect. There are different types of psychotherapy for PTSD, and one of these, which Michael recommends and uses, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is a form of evidence-based treatment, which means that the therapy has been tested in randomized clinical trials and has been shown to work, unlike other therapies which have not been clinically tested at all. CBT consists of twelve to fifteen weekly sessions, with the patient learning new coping strategies at the start of the process, after which they need to start talking about their trauma in a gentle, guided way to enable them to gain mastery of the negative feelings they have about the event. Michael notes that up to 75% of his patients have had success with CBT, and the other 25% need help in addition to CBT, such as through medication.

Michael estimates that 90% of all children with PTSD aren’t so diagnosed, as most clinicians nowadays aren’t trained to recognize PTSD in children. For the moment, it is now up to the parents to seek help for their children by finding their own assessments, such as those on Michael’s website, and then looking around for therapists who can help them out. Some of the questions Michael recommends parents to ask, to find the right kind of therapist, are:

• Do you use evidence-based therapy?
• Have you seen a child like mine, with PTSD, before?
• How many cases have you treated?
• Have you treated children who are my child’s age?
• What kind of psychotherapy do you plan to use?

He also says that parents should switch therapists if the therapist they are working with doesn’t seem to be effective.

On the subject of studies conducted on brains of people who suffered PTSD, Michael remarks that the present conventional wisdom is that those peoples’ brains have suffered changes due to PTSD but notes that most of this wisdom is based on studies which didn’t have a reference image of the brain prior to PTSD and those images after the event which triggered PTSD took place. He notes that some newer studies, which do use “before and after” imaging, indicate that the brain structure didn’t change before and after the event took place, and that it is likely that some people are more vulnerable to PTSD than others because of the way their brain is structured.

Purchase from Amazon: They’ll Never Be the Same: A Parent’s Guide to PTSD in Youth by Dr. Michael Scheeringa

Robert Thorson and The Guide to Walden Pond (All You Need to Know)

In this interview, Professor Robert Thorson talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about his book, The Guide to Walden Pond: An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape, and Literature of One of America’s Most Iconic Places.



“There’s nothing selfish about starting from within and defining your relationships in an outward direction.” ~Robert Thorson

Robert Thorson had become enamored of writer Henry David Thoreau, author of the book, Walden, while he was in college. Within a year of moving from Alaska to New England, he finally visited Walden Pond, the centerpoint of Thoreau’s book, and dropped a stone from his former home, marking the start of his relationship with the famous lake. Thor, as he prefers to be called, has been running field trips at Walden Pond since 2004, and it was in the summer of 2017, during the bicentennial celebrations of Thoreau’s birthday, that he turned a student handout into a pamphlet. When his wife found out, she told him to go ahead and write a guide, which was something that surprised Thor since there was no guide at all despite the fact that the pond received around half a million visitors annually. Although Thor has written scholarly books, writing a guide wasn’t on his “to do” list, and while he does admit that The Guide to Walden Pond is a guidebook, complete with images and descriptions, it also has various essays within.

Henry David Thoreau was one of the first main exponents of the American environmental movement. His book, Walden, which took nine years, seven drafts and two bursts of writing to complete, was the starting point for a lot of American nature writing. Thoreau contemplated about a sense of place and belonging, rather than of travel and adventure, and is known for such books as Civil Disobedience. He was an influence on such people as Mahatma Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy and Martin Luther King.

Walden Pond, which is really a lake, is around a mile or so south of the village center of Concord, Massachusetts, which is now a suburb of Boston. Concord itself is known to historically be the place where American transcendentalism began in the mid-19th century. Walden Pond itself is just one small lake in a chain of lakes in the area. As a lake, The Pond is deep and 62 acres in a woodland area at the center of a state reservation (actually a state park). In Thoreau’s time, access to the lake was done via railroad and was somewhat difficult; today, access is east through roads. There were was such a glut of visitors to Walden Pond in Thoreau’s time, both from the United States and internationally, that consequently, the number of visitors was limited by authorities in the 1970s to maintain it in the spirit of Thoreau.

For visitors, Walden Pond is the subject of Thoreau’s famous book about a place, Walden, but for Thoreau, it was a small and otherwise ordinary lake where he could get distance himself from normal, hurried life; a place where he could write, relax and contemplate. The lake’s shape, from his viewpoint, reflected such attributes of Thoreau such as simplicity, resilience, purity and symmetry, and became, to him, a source of inspiration. Thoreau could also see the sun rise from his house by the Pond, which served as a metaphor for rebirth. As for his house, it was a small one-room cabin and was reached by a carriage road, within easy walking access to other human settlements nearby. Thoreau had a lot of visitors to his house during his stay there, with as many as thirty guests at any one time, and held organized meetings there.

Thor noted that four things made The Guide to Walden Pond special. Writing was one of these aspects, given the process by which the book was written, involving a gestation on the various aspects of human social relationships - the relationship between human and nature and what he read of the works of such people as Charles Darwin and Alexander Humboldt. Landscape - that of Walden Pond itself - was another aspect, given its depth and appearance. Solitude was also offered by his location, as he could remove himself from society to a place where he was at a “tension point” between Nature and human society.

Thor remarked that a lot of those who read the book would be “armchair ##s,” who would visit the Pond through the book, while there would be those who would both visit the Pond and read the book. Thor started out with the northeast sector, where the parking area and visitor’s center are, and which is all modern, as is the entire eastern side of Walden Pond. It is the western part of the pond which approximates the environment that Thoreau resided in, particularly the northwestern part of the pond, whose landscape remains authentic to Thoreau’s day. The tradition of leaving a token at the site of Thoreau’s house began in 1872 by a Mrs. Adams and has been continued ever since. The southwestern part of the lake is where the Pond has three coves of interest, and offers an opportunity to reflect on different aspects of Walden Pond’s history. The western end of Walden Pond is also where the original access, by railway, was, as well as a Victorian-era amusement park, which was started in 1886 and burned down in 1902. The southeastern sector of the lake affords a quiet, reflective walk as well as a view of both the natural and the modern landscape, before returning to the real world, which could provide some reflection to visitors on the changes that have happened.

Thor notes that, although Walden Pond is within twenty miles of a major city, it is still completely surrounded by large trees, which isn’t common for lakes closely sited near urban areas. Although one would think that the environs around the pond are untouched, Thor notes that these have all been affected by the hand of man at some previous time. Thor noted a study done on the Pond based on sediment core work since 1979, which showed that the microorganisms within are being affected by human pollution and are changing due to climate warming. He also noted that people go to Walden Pond not just for a pilgrimage but also for such activities as swimming in the lake and training for triathlons.

To those who are seeking some relief from the hectic, daily life, Thor recommends disconnecting and then looking inside oneself and “explore the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of your own consciousness,” as Thoreau once stated, after which one can spread oneself out to the world around, regardless of what others think. Thor then noted that Thoreau reflected on the telegraph, which was a new technology of his day, and expressed concerned about the costs of technology itself, which is reflected in a line in Walden: “Men have become tools of their tools.”

Purchase from Amazon: The Guide to Walden Pond: An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape, and Literature of One of America’s Most Iconic Places by Robert Thorson