It’s Friday night in the run-up to a concert.  Tutti night, when the chorus and orchestra get together for the first time to prepare for a concert on Sunday.  Even though I know there won’t be much down-time in this particular rehearsal, I have my book with me in the hope that I might be able to continue my reading.  Part-way through the rehearsal one of my colleagues leans over and asks to take a look.  I send the book down the row, marking a page I think might be of particular interest.  I don’t see it for the remainder of the rehearsal.  When it comes back she comments:  “It should be essential reading”.

The book’s author, Caroline Myss, is – it seems to me – an extraordinary woman who has become what is known as a “medical intuitive”.  With very little information about the individuals concerned, Myss found she could diagnose illnesses and pinpoint the causes of those illnesses and the energetic or spiritual challenges faced by the individuals concerned.  It wasn’t always that way.  In the preface to her book she charts her transition from newspaper journalist to theology student to founder of Stillpoint publishing company to medical intuitive.  This latter is not something she sought out.  Her initial experiences in this area left her confused and a little scared and it was a while before she met C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D and began to support her intuitive abilities with an intensive study with him of the physical anatomy of the human body.

In her book, Anatomy of the Spirit:  The Seven Stages of Power and Healing, Myss sets out to teach the reader the language of energy with which she works, offering a summation of her fourteen years of research into anatomy and intuition, body and mind, spirit and power.  She draws on a number of spiritual traditions including the Hinda chakra, the Christian sacraments and the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life to present a new view of how the body and spirit work together.  In reading Myss’ book, I was fascinated by the model she outlines, charting the energetic content of each chakra, its location, its energy connection to the emotional/mental body, primary fears, primary strengths, sacred truths and more.  This is a map of the spiritual challenges we face in our lives in which Myss also shares many stories from her work which illustrate the implications of embracing – or not – those essential human challenges.

For those already familiar with the world of energy and comfortable with the language of the spirit, Myss’ book is a fascinating read and a reference to return to again and again.  At the same time, Myss’ book is not only for the spiritual seeker.  In the often more guarded language of the business world, Myss is addressing aspects of what is often called emotional intelligence.  Many books for example, (including Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards and more recently Daniel Pink’s Drive:  The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) highlight research findings which demonstrate unequivocally that we give our best performance when we are driven by our own intrinsic motivation rather than by external punishment and reward.  In the language of the spirit this is about our intuition and inner guidance – something Myss covers amply throughout this book.

As I read what I have written so far, I also think of the need for leaders to be able to uderstand themselves, to understand others and to understand the context in which they work – the organisational and wider culture.  I think of how often my own work as executive coach supports individuals in facing the very challenges Myss outlines in this book:  what would it mean for leaders to be able to support themselves and others in the same way?  Myss’ book offers powerful and intriguing insights for the leader from the world of (as it has become known) alternative medicine.