Meeting summary for Book Club - Into the Magic Shop (Intro Session) (10/02/2024)

Link to Zoom Recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E0e3vWijfMkAWXjd7Oy4PoL_WyGkNHaZ/view?usp=sharing

Link to Pacing Guide & Reading Questions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q-gvlLg8BBNoAgh5zW2H4G2mmmoyBP5IXrHt1Lhubqo/edit?usp=drive_link

Quick Meeting Recap: In the first session of the Sacred Awe Parent Student book club, Ashley and Kristie introduced the book and its optional resources, emphasizing its adaptability to different learning styles and its focus on mindfulness, transformation, and skill mastery. The next meeting was scheduled for the 30th to discuss the book further and the Vault workshop structure which will begin in January.

Next steps

• Ashley and Kristie to upload the pacing guide and other resources to the website under the "Book Clubs" and "Parent Student Book Club" sections.

• All participants to read "Into the Magic Shop" by James Doty before the next meeting on the 30th.

• All participants to prepare for discussion of the book, including reflections on mindfulness techniques and personal experiences, at the next meeting.

Book Summary: The 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.