The BTM Book Report: ‘Into the Magic Shop’

In Into the Magic Shop, Dr. James R. Doty offers a memoir with specific advice related to mindset, relaxation, visualization, and reaching your potential. Rather than offering psychology advice rooted in science (although some of that is included, as the author was a world-renowned neurosurgeon and researcher), the book offers insight by way of narrating the author’s childhood interactions with Ruth, a kindly older woman who shows him “magic.”

Over the course of the first few chapters, we learn Ruth’s four tricks: relaxing the body, taming the mind, opening the heart, and clarifying your intent. The second half of the book shares lessons learned from using these tools, including the failures and mistakes along the way. He shares his rise to wealth, his fall from it, and how he recovered using the same “magic” he first learned as a child.

In the early chapters outlining the mental tricks and the story of how he learned them, there is also a summary of each one. Unfortunately, the website listed in the book as a resource for audio recordings of the exercises is currently not functional.

The first trick introduced in the book is a progressive relaxation exercise in which you focus on your breathing and relaxing different parts of the body in sequence. Starting in a seated position, the author recounts the story of learning to relax his feet and toes, then his lower legs, working his way up to his head. Early on, he says it took a lot of practice, but eventually he could do this quickly, while standing up, and even while operating on a patient.

Once relaxed, the second trick is about quieting the negative thoughts in your head. In this section, the author learns several different methods, from simple awareness (mindfulness meditation) to focusing on a candle flame to using a chant or mantra to help drown out the chatter. The author draws a parallel to a DJ playing music in your head, and taming the mind is about learning to turn that music off.

Opening the heart is the trick Dr. Doty admits he struggled with most as a child, and he really only improved this skill much later in his life. It is essentially an exercise in sending positive vibes into the world, with loving feelings ...