Book therapy

There is a lot of buzz at the moment about meditation, yet meditation does not necessarily mean going to a class, sitting upright on a cushion for an hour, and forcing our minds to be “empty” and to “think of nothing”. This is actually very hard to do, and reserved to the elite few who have had the patience and the perseverance to go through years of training and practice. Also, the goal is not necessarily to empty our minds of everything, just of anxious, obsessive thoughts that do us no good. And this can be much more easily done if we fill up our minds with something else. Cooking, gardening, knitting and any sort of manual work obliges us to concentrate on what we are doing at the very instant, and so there is simply no room for anxious thoughts to spoil the moment.

Yet, a very interesting form of meditation is reading. Reading forces us to transport our minds and imagination elsewhere then on our bills, taxes, family disagreements and fears about a hypothetical future which will probably never happen anyway. Whilst reading, the mind can rest, precisely because it is occupied elsewhere. When the mind is creatively employed instead of “empty” (as many new-age fads would like us to believe) meditation happens naturally, without us having to force things or “train” our minds to obedience.

Interestingly, there is an entire courant of psychotherapy called “book therapy” developed precisely around this idea. But there is a simple way to reap the benefits of book therapy instantaneously. This consists of getting a cup of tea and snuggling up on the sofa with a good book.

A great choice of reading in a confortable setting, in Montpellier, can be found at Le Bookshop : besides an impressive bilingual book collection, they have a great choice of drinks and cakes, as well as various book club and language exchange activities.