One of my favorite features of reading Kindle books is the ability to collect the highlights I marked, using a finger tip when I was reading a book. The best version of the feature that I have found is in the Kindle reader itself. I make highlights of the text and then to the Go To tab, where I have two choices, Contents and Notes. The notes show the text I have highlighted, a link to the part of the book where that highlight is found and a couple of buttons to share the highlight (with Goodreads, a sort of reading club space run by Amazon) and a button to delete that highlight.
The best part of the feature seems to be available only in the Kindle ereader itself. It gives the option of sending the whole file of highlights to my email. If you have seen a volume recently used by a student, one that is bristling with sticky note markers, you can imagine the work saved by the software collecting the highlights and sending them to me in a single document. I got my first Kindle book in 2008. Back then, I read "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain" by John Ratey, MD. I just checked. I have a file on comments from reading then and it shows some remarks that mattered and seemed worthwhile. I just now sent that file to myself.
My highlights from back then include these passages:
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 104
Psychologist and distance runner Keith Johnsgard found that conducting CBT in the context of exercise has particularly powerful results. In his book Conquering Depression and Anxiety through Exercise, he explains how he uses running as a mode of cognitive restructuring to treat agoraphobia. After several rapport-building sessions, he accompanies patients to an empty mall parking lot in the early morning and has them do a series of sprints. Nobody else is around, and they feel safe in his presence. He has already determined how far they can sprint before coming to
Highlight (Yellow) | Page 105
This approach fits into a broader concept highlighted by New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, a renowned fear expert. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, LeDoux and coauthor Jack Gorman published an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry titled, "A Call to Action: Overcoming Anxiety through Active Coping." Essentially, active coping means doing something in response to whatever danger or problem is causing anxiety rather than passively worrying about it. It doesn't specifically imply physical activity, but certainly exercise qualifies as a mode of active coping. And as it turns out, movement may not be an incidental aspect of active coping.
