Teach Us to Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing - Softcover

Parks, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846553997 ISBN 13: 9781846553998

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2010

Synopsis

'Just when the medical profession had given up on me and I on it, just when I seemed to be walled up in a life sentence of chronic pain, someone proposed a bizarre way out: sit still, they said, and breathe...'

TEACH US TO SIT STILL is the visceral, thought-provoking and improbably entertaining story of Tim Parks' quest to overcome ill health. Bedevilled by a crippling condition which nobody could explain or relieve, he confronts hard truths about the relationship between the mind and the body, the hectic modern world and his life as a writer.

Following a fruitless journey through the conventional medical system he finds solace in an improbable prescription of breathing exercises that eventually leads him to take up meditation. This was the very last place Parks expected or wanted to find answers; anything New Age simply wasn't his scene. Meantime, he is drawn to consider the effects of illness on the work of other writers, the role of religions in shaping our sense of self, and the influence of sport and art in our attitudes to health and well-being.

Most of us will fall ill at some point; few will describe that journey with the same verve, insight and radiant intelligence as Tim Parks.

Captivating and inspiring, TEACH US TO SIT STILL is an intensely personal - and brutally honest - story for our times.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME TRUST BOOK PRIZE FOR MEDICINE IN LITERATURE

About this title

Review:

“Tim Parks has written an intensely personal response to a confrontation with that most dreaded of terrors: the indications of a potentially fatal medical condition. Parks gives a clear-sighted, thoughtful and strangely moving account of his own experiences, and brings to them an uncommon blend of wit, lightly-worn scholarship, and heartbreaking candour. A remarkable book.”--Miranda Seymour

"a cool, sceptical observer of the human condition... Teach Us to Sit Still deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness"--J M Coetzee

“A mystery story written with extraordinary nerve and eloquence, Teach Us To Sit Still traces the contradictions in the author’s character and his attempt to bring body and mind together and escape from a seriously debilitating condition. The result is harrowing, mordant, and unforgettable.”--David Shields

“This is a startlingly brave book – embarrassing health problems don’t usually make comfortable friendships with philosophy, art and history, seasoned with a dash of Buddhist meditation. But since Tim Parks writes so wonderfully well and is so genuinely clever it works. It works very well indeed. Sensible, lyrical, wide ranging, generous hearted and in places very touching."--Sarah Maitland

“A brilliantly clear book on matters that are still far from clear to us.”--George Szirtes

“A searingly honest, viscerally vivid, darkly comic self-examination of the connections between writing, personality and health. Once I started reading it, I didn’t want to stop.”--David Lodge

"(it) made me laugh; it made me cry; and it made me seriously think about taking up Vispassana meditation"--The Times

"Parks writes wonderfully well about his body as he is reluctantly reconciled to its existence alongside his mind."--Daily Express

"Parks is an excellent writer, capable of writing wittily and with great beauty about the near indefinable."--Seven (Sunday Telegraph)

"funny, painful and quietly profound book"--The Scotsman

From the Author:

As the author, I feel I should say a word in response to a misunderstanding that has arisen in one or two of the reviews. This book does not pretend to be a work of medical research nor to offer a solution to everyone's chronic pain problems. I describe my only dealings with chronic pain and an approach that eventually and much to my surprise released me from this pain. I do not believe that approach will work for everyone. What is generalising about the book is its discussion of our attitudes to mind and body, the way the medical profession approaches them, the way we respond, and so on. This quite simply because my condition forced me to reflect on these things.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvill Secker
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1846553997
• ISBN 13: 9781846553998
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352