Turn On Your Inner Light
By Debbie Eisenstadt Mandel 

     I don't usually review fitness books, but Turn On Your Inner Light is no ordinary fitness book, focusing on pumping up the muscles or trimming down the fat. This is about how physical fitness caters to the mind and soul as much as to the body.

      Have you ever been afraid? Author Debbie Eisenstadt Mandel offers an exercise regime for fear. Have you ever felt pain? There's a fitness plan for that, too. Ever been too busy to exercise? You guessed it, there's a special plan just for you. Need patience? Want intimacy? Been through trauma? Want to love yourself more? There is a fitness plan specially designed for each of these and dozens more situations.

     Each fitness plan includes mind/body prescriptions that focus on such non-fitness solutions as eliminating clutter, diet, breathing, mental images and outside activities. Each prescription is followed by a meditation to reach into the soul. Finally, a series of physical exercises follows, including detailed explanations with diagrams.

      The book is imaginative and well-written, and even inspiring in a number of places - definitely a success for this first-time author. Even if a reader does not follow the fitness regime, the introductions to each fitness plan make for good self-help reading. The text is punctuated with subtly humorous cartoons, making the reading more pleasant.

     If fitness is the missing link in your personal development plan, then Turn On Your Inner Light might be the missing book in your collection.