Be Yourself: The Art of Relaxation

by Israel Regardie

Drawing on his work as a chiropractor and psychotherapist Regardie saw the devastating effects that tension and stress had on his patients minds and bodies. He shares his extensive knowledge about the body/mind in this work, and helps the reader to reconnect the body with the mind as he/she learns to relax and harmonize these “two” seeming warring entities."Be yourself!" When you relax you are more nearly yourself than at any other time. You will come to realize what you are and what your innate abilities are. By means of the imagination utilized during this state of quiet, you will learn how to make them explicit and how to make them manifest themselves."

58 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 26, 2018

About the author

Israel Regardie (born Francis Israel Regudy) was considered by many to be the last living Adept of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. At an early age, Regardie worked as Aleister Crowley's personal secretary. In addition to his extensive writings, Regardie practiced as a chiropractor and as a neo-Reichian therapist. He taught psychiatry at the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and contributed articles to many psychology magazines.

Reviews

[Victoria Maxwell]

This book is essentially just Regardie going through the process of how he relaxes his clients and why it's so important that we learn how to do this ourselves. There are some great examples in here, visualisations and processes to help the relaxation process. It's very short, reads like a paper or a talk that was given. Interesting read but I don't know that I took a huge amount away from it more than just that being able to relax the body is much more important than most of us realise, but then again, that was a pretty powerful take away! If you are holding a lot of tension in the body this may be a useful read for you!

[James Ward]

Israel Regardie outlines how the majority of us hold stress in our bodies in the form of unnecessary muscular tension and sets out to provide potential remedies to this issue.

The book points out that surplus energy can be made available when the body is more often in a state of deep relaxation. This energy can be put to use to develop mental acuity.

Regardie provides a series of useful and practical pointers on how to relax more deeply and even directly promote positive activation of various parts of the body.
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“Remember, always, that pressure will only hurt if you resist it. The more tense you are, the more pain is felt from the pressure”

[David dharma]

Ok, but not great

The book shows the importance relaxation and proper rest, but little else. The exercises are a useful test, but this really needs to be paired with a good meditation book or instructor.
Even the most dedicated Regardie fans could skip this one without missing out on much.

[Z]

Practical and concise guide to relaxing the body and mind.
Easy to immediately put the intro exercises into practice--immensely worthwhile to spend more time on the latter ones.