The SHN #30: 2023- A Year In Review

Books, Health, Spirituality, and More!

Author

Joe Burt
December 28, 2023

The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it.

Henri Nouwen

Welcome back to The Synergetic Health Newsletter! 

In this year in review edition, I’ll give the breakdown of the books I’ve read, my diet and exercise year, the path of spirituality I’ve been on, and much more!

🚀 2023 See ‘ya!

First of all, thank you to everyone who continues to open and read these letters, I appreciate you!

I’ve crossed the 6-month mark of the newsletter and I have no plans on slowing down. It’s the largest and longest creative endeavor I’ve undertaken and it’s been a lot of fun for me.

I hope everyone has a great holiday season and start to their 2024. As always, if anyone is keen to chat on any of the things I write about, I’m always down!

📚 Books

I had a prolific reading year. Here is an almost complete list of the books I’ve read this year with links to the Amazon page and a Google doc with my notes, if applicable.

I have to give a shoutout to my beloved IKEA reading chair, thriftbooks which is an incredible online used book store, the Austin library for offering a great selection of e-books for Kindle use and, of course, Amazon.

⭐ If it made my top 5 for the year

$100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No by Alex Hormozi (Amazon, My Notes)
The Art of Listening to the Body: Biological Decoding by Angeles Wolder Helling (Amazon, My Notes)
The Art of Meditation by Joel Goldsmith (Amazon, My Notes)
The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred by Phil Cousineau (Amazon, My Notes)
Ask the Dust by John Fante (Amazon)
The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda (Amazon)
⭐ Awake: It’s Your Turn by Angelo Dilullo (Amazon, My Notes)
The Awakened Mind: Biofeedback and the Development of Higher States of Awareness by C. Maxwell Cade (Amazon, My Notes)
Awakening Intuition by Frances Vaughan (Amazon, My Notes)
Becoming an Empowered Projector: Thrive with Wisdom and Guidance from Human Design by Evelyn Levenson (Amazon, My Notes)
Being Aware of Being Aware by Rupert Spira (Amazon, My Notes)
Beyond the Known: Realization: A Channeled Text by Paul Selig (Amazon, My Notes)
The Body Code: Unlocking Your Body’s Ability to Heal Itself by Bradley Nelson (Amazon)
Complete Works of H. Emilie Cady by H. Emilie Cady (Amazon, My Notes)
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (Amazon, My Notes)
Cutting Through Spiritual Minimalism by Chogyam Trungpa (Amazon, My Notes)
The Divine Romance: Collected Talks and Essays by Paramahansa Yogananda (Amazon, My Notes)
⭐The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment by Adyashanti (Amazon, My Notes)
The Essenes: Children of the Light by Stuart Wilson (Amazon)
Esoteric Cosmology by Rudolf Steiner (Amazon)
Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier by Kevin Kelly (Amazon, My Notes)
Fatal Conveniences: The Toxic Products and Harmful Habits That Are Making You Sick— and the Simple Changes That Will Save Your Health by Darin Olien (Amazon, My Notes)
Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World by Benny Lewis (Amazon, My Notes)
German New Medicine Experiences in Practice: An Introduction to the Medical Discoveries of Dr. Ryke Geerd by Dr. Katherine Willow (Amazon, My Notes)
Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness by Mark Epstein (Amazon, My Notes)
The High-Performance Mind: Mastering Brainwaves for Insight, Healing, and Creativity by Anna Wise (Amazon, My Notes)
⭐ The Infinite Way by Joel Goldsmith (Amazon, My Notes)
Kundalini, Evolution, and Enlightenment by John White (Amazon, My Notes)
Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddesu Golas (Amazon, My Notes)
Life Force: How New Breakthroughs in Precision Medicine Can Transform the Quality of Your Life & Those You Love by Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis (Amazon, My Notes)
Living Now by Joel Goldsmith (Amazon, My Notes)
Matrix Reimprinting using EFT: Rewrite Your Past, Transform Your Future by Karl Dawson (Amazon, My Notes)
The Mystical Christ: Religion as a Spiritual Experience by Manly P. Hall (Amazon, My Notes)
The Mystical I by Joel Goldsmith (Amazon, My Notes)
The Mystical Secrets of Medicine vs. Sorcery: The Untold Story of Ayahuasca by Hamilton Souther (Amazon)
Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill (Amazon, My Notes)
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz (Amazon, My Notes)
No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth by Ken Wilber (Amazon, My Notes)
Online Business for Spiritual Visionaries: Sharing Inner Wisdom as a Successful Entrepreneur by Jeff Carreira (Amazon, My Notes)
Optimize Your Health With Therapeutic Peptides: Extend Your Life by Becoming More Muscular, Leaner, Smarter, Injury-Free, and Younger by Jay Campbell (Amazon)
Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia (Amazon, My Notes)
Overcoming the World by Kapil Gupta (Amazon)
The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story for Work and Life by Paul Millerd (Amazon, My Notes)
⭐ Perfect Brilliant Stillness by David Carse (Read for Free)
The Physics of God: How the Deepest Theories of Science Explain Religion and How the Deepest Truths of Religion Explain Science by Joseph Selbie (Amazon, My Notes)
Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj by Ramesh Balsekar (Amazon, My Notes)
Pouring Concrete: A Zen Path to the Kingdom of God by Robert Harwood (Amazon, My Notes)
The Power of Eight: Harnessing the Miraculous Energies of a Small Group to Heal Others, Your Life, and the World by Lynne McTaggart (Amazon, My Notes)
The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle (Amazon, My Notes)
Qigong: Essence of the Healing Dance by Garri Garripoli (Amazon)
Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe by Dean Radin (Amazon, My Notes)
Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind by Jamie Wheal (Amazon, My Notes)
Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra (Amazon, My Notes)
Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering by Wesley Wildman (Amazon, My Notes)
Travel Light: Spiritual Minimalism to Live a More Fulfilled Life by Light Watkins (Amazon, My Notes)
To Have or To Be? by Erich Fromm (Amazon, My Notes)
The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society by Carl Jung (Amazon, My Notes)
Universal Consciousness is Profoundly Personal: Finding Lasting Happiness in Self-Awareness by Harri Aalto (Amazon)
⭐ Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts (Amazon, My Notes)
Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives by Dan Millman (Amazon, My Notes)
Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety by Alan Watts (Amazon, My Notes)
The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello by Anthony de Mello (Amazon)
You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships by Richard Schwartz (Amazon)
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki (Amazon, My Notes)

🥗🏋🏽 Diet and Exercise

For me, 2023 was a year of experimenting.

I successfully used Renaissance Periodization’s Diet App and exercise programs to gain ~12lbs of mostly lean mass and also to cut back down ~5lbs from there. Reaching a target body composition is absolutely doable if you have the right plan of action.

There are health benefits to doing your best to maintain/grow muscle mass and decrease fat mass, no matter how old. you are. In addition, using tools like linked above give you an idea of how to scientifically approach the matter.

You don’t have to do it forever but it’s a great idea to both track your dietary intake as well as follow a specific exercise/strength training. If nothing else, it will teach you about caloric content of foods and the basic structure for developing a sound plan for the gym.

It can be empowering to understand that you have the ability to achieve the bodily aesthetic you desire, effort required 🙂 

In the latter half of the year I devoted more of my time to understanding the function of circadian biology on human health as well as experimenting with the teachings of Ray Peat and the bioenergetic approach to health.

I wrote about those extensively throughout the year.

I continue to follow, to the best of my ability, a “bioenergetic” diet down here in South America, and I’m both enjoying the foods and feeling great. I remain open to changing my mind while I continue to experiment with these inputs.

I made a commitment to myself to average over 10,000 steps a day this year. This actually was a lot harder than I thought and required serious dedication. A few sub 3,000 step days can really set you back so consistency is king here.

This comes out to ~4.5 miles a day, 1,642 miles in the year. Or around 63 marathons. One marathon every 5.8 days. Not bad!

There is one downside, however. I became a bit too obsessed with constantly checking my progress. It took up a lot of mental space to always be thinking about how many steps I’ve taken.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep the same goal for 2024 or just commit to walking without the baggage of tracking obsessively.

Besides the step counting, I feel like I’ve done a lot better not being so emotional about my health and fitness. I used to think I’d turn into a twig if I missed a couple days of working out or turn into a marshmallow if I ate that dessert.

I still make the healthy decision most of the time but I’m less concerned if I don’t.

👤 Personal Profiles

In many of my newsletters this year, I highlighted someone interesting to me and wrote about them.

🎙️ Podcasts

My podcast habit stayed strong throughout 2023. Read my lengthy podcast issue which talks about my addiction and my recommended listens.

✨ Spirituality

The tagline of The Synergetic Health Newsletter is “Exploring the convergence of mind, body, spirit.”

For me, this year has been one marked by a deep exploration of self, or spirit, or source, or God, whatever you want to call it.

This has included countless books, meditation sessions, fasting experiments, psychedelic trips, listening to podcast interviews, practicing the presence of God, discussions with friends and mentors, energy healing, prayer, listening to YouTube lectures, sound healing, a 5-day meditation retreat, and I’m sure much more I can’t remember at the moment.

If there is a "goal" in this odyssey, it is the quest to unearth your authentic self—the one that persists after shedding the constraints of identity, beliefs, preferences, and the like.

As I’ve written, this path is unique to everyone and can be assisted by all sorts of things— meditation, moment-to-moment awareness, healing modalities, reading spiritual literature, substances, breathwork, and more.

The rewards of embarking on such a journey are manifold—diminished stress levels, reduced reactivity, heightened inner peace and serenity, decreased materialistic inclinations, alleviated fears encompassing mortality, diminished episodes of anxiety and depression, an enhanced ability to empathize with all perspectives, lowered insecurity, an inclination to find humor in every situation, a reduced tendency to objectify and judge others, a decreased willingness to act against one's true nature, and the list goes on.

In essence, you reclaim your life.

The individual who once felt energetically and mentally besieged when their identity faced a challenge—be it a sports fan, a friend, a family member, an employee, a religious adherent, a provider, or a political supporter—no longer succumbs as profoundly to external circumstances.

Those once adhesive identities lose their grip on your state of being, ushering in a profound sense of liberation.

This transformation doesn't render you inert; rather, it grants you a heightened ability to navigate the turbulent waves of experience, offering a tranquil vantage point for clear-sighted decision-making and effective action.

I find myself somewhere beyond the starting line on this quest but nowhere near its ending.

I’m looking forward to where this deepening exploration will continue to take me, and I encourage you to reflect on whether you’ve dedicated sufficient time to unraveling the answer to the question, “Who Are You, Really?”

🛫 Travel and Spanish

I recently gave the update on my Latin America travels and my daily habit of learning Spanish through the online learning platform, Baselang.

✂️ What Made The Cut

I wanted to write about some of the habits, behaviors, supplements, practices I’ve added or dropped this past year. Instead, I’ll write what sort of things I’ve managed to bring with me on an open-ended trip to Latin America:

Blood Flow Restriction Bands (BFR): These are excellent for travel and allow you to get a quality workout in without much, or any, equipment. I use the BStrong brand.

Blue-Light Blocking Glasses: I travel with both a yellow lens and orange lens pair of glasses which reduce or eliminate blue blight from screens. Like clockwork I’ll have my orange lens glasses on at least 1-2 hours before sleep.

Chi Palm Device: Of all the “biohacking” tools I had back in Austin, this small handheld device is the one that made the cut.

Reading: I’ve moved my consumption from real books to Kindle, where having a library card can give you access to a huge collection of e-books for free. An easy-to-use highlight tool allows me to continue saving key points from each book.

Sunlight Exposure: I make it a habit to be outside as much as I can, especially first thing in the morning, around midday to get UV, and around sunset for the red light.

Walking: Like mentioned above, I continued my 10k/day habit on the road.

Finally, here are some links to some of the topics I’ve written about here you may have missed or want to revisit:

📅 My Scheduling Page: Go here to book a 15-minute free call to chat about my awareness coaching and energy healing services.

✔️ That will do it for this time! Hopefully you got some value out of it. If you have any questions/comments/things you’d like to learn more about please don’t hesitate to reach out.

🔗 If you know anyone who loves learning about these types of topics, send them this link!

📰 To read all past newsletters, go here.