Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the extraordinary things that can happen when we harness the power of both the brain and the heart

Growing up in the high desert of California, Jim Doty was poor, with an alcoholic father and a mother chronically depressed and paralyzed by a stroke. Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Her final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart.

Doty would go on to put Ruth's practices to work with extraordinary results--power and wealth that he could only imagine as a twelve-year-old, riding his orange Sting-Ray bike. But he neglects Ruth's most important lesson, to keep his heart open, with disastrous results--until he has the opportunity to make a spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him. Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop shows us how we can fundamentally change our lives by first changing our brains and our hearts.

ISBN-13: 9780399183645

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Publication Date: 02-14-2017

Pages: 288

Product Dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

James R. Doty, M.D., is a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University and the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), where he researches the neuroscience of compassion and altruism. He is also a philanthropist funding health clinics throughout the world and has endowed scholarships and chairs at multiple universities. He serves on the board of a number of nonprofits, including the Charter for Compassion International and the Dalai Lama Foundation.

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The day I noticed my thumb was missing began like any other day the summer before I started eighth grade. I spent my days riding my bicycle around town, even though sometimes it was so hot the metal on my handlebars felt like a stove top. I could always taste the dust in my mouth—gritty and weedy like the rabbit brush and cacti that battled the desert sun and heat to survive. My family had little money, and I was often hungry. I didn’t like being hungry. I didn’t like being poor.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Into the Magic Shop"
by .
Copyright © 2017 James R. Doty.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Beautiful Things 1

Part 1 Into the Magic Shop

1 Real Magic 13

2 A Body at Rest 25

3 Thinking About Thinking 57

4 Growing Pains 81

5 Three Wishes 107

Part 2 The Mysteries of the Brain

6 Apply Yourself 133

7 Unacceptable 153

8 It's Not Brain Surgery 177

9 The Sultan of Nothing 205

Part 3 The Secrets of the Heart

10 Giving Up 221

11 The Alphabet of the Heart 235

12 Manifesting Compassion 251

13 The Face of God 267

Acknowledgments 275

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