Emotional Clearing

January 3, 2000
Ruskan's background as a yoga teacher informs the best (and shortest) part of his first book: clear, detailed instructions for breath, meditation and yoga exercises. Originally self-published in 1993, the rest of this too-long tome offers a mix of familiar New Age thinking posing as psychotherapy. Ruskan espouses "self-therapy" based solely on his personal experience, recommending "accepting dualism" (i.e., taking the bad with the good) and "experiencing feelings" rather than expressing or suppressing them. His counseling method, called "integrative processing," promises the "clearing" of repressed emotions, prompting positive change in one's self, life and relationships. Ruskan adamantly opposes medications for depression and other disorders (a label he rejects) and condemns seeking the roots of emotional pain or self-defeating behaviors in childhood experiences; instead, he relies on astrology and past-lives speculation. Despite the subtitle's claim, there is nothing "groundbreaking" in either the vintage humanist practice of "getting in touch with your feelings" or the integration of Eastern practices and philosophies into Western thinking. At best, Ruskan provides some food for thought and useful exercises, at worst, some potentially dangerous advice for people with serious emotional problems. Agent, Diana Finch of Ellen Levine Literary Agency.