 We have a tremendous amount of admiration for Judy Piatkus, who this year is celebrating 25 years of publishing. With great aplomb she manages the well-nigh impossible balancing act of combining warmth, sensitivity and an adherence to spiritual principles with the sort of down-to-earth business sense you can’t be without if you want to survive and thrive in the risky world of publishing. Here she tells the story of how she was drawn into the mind/ body/spirit field:
A coincidence?
I became interested in the mind, body and spirit area quite by chance. An editor who was working in our office suggested we publish The Power of Gems and Crystals by Soozi Holbeche. We commissioned the book and I read it before the introductory chapter describing Soozi's background had been added. I found it very interesting and it made me think about the world a little differently.
Around that time I was learning to play golf. One day I twisted too far during a lesson and pulled a muscle – or so I thought. The pain was gradually getting worse but as I had never suffered from any muscular pain – or indeed had any other major illness in my life – I just assumed that if I ignored it, it would go away. But one morning I woke up and could not get out of bed to walk the ten paces to the bathroom. I was shortly to find that I was suffering from a pinched sciatic nerve and that, even with the help of a very good osteopath, it was going to be some months before I would be able to walk again.
A major turning point
I knew Soozi Holbeche worked as a healer and I made an appointment to go and see her. But because I hadn’t seen the first chapter of her book, I did not know that she specialised in working with past lives. However, when I realised that I was expected to experience past life regression – even though I had not previously thought much at all about this area – I felt safe with Soozi and decided to go for it. All this took place eleven years ago. My past life regression with Soozi became a major turning point in my life. It was to be the beginning of a profound change in my character and it affected both my personal life and my professional life.
Soozi and I looked at three different lives that I had experienced and related what had gone on in them to what was going on in my present life at that time. I found the information fascinating, especially as it seemed that I had come upon it by chance. It was a glimpse into other worlds, a way of thinking about the past and about the future as part of a whole. It completely altered the way I saw my whole existence.
Later on, of course, I was to come to the realisation that it was no coincidence at all but the beginning of a profound waking-up experience for me.
Past lives
After my session with Soozi I began to read avidly about past lives and reincarnation and my reading led me down a whole range of different pathways. As a publisher, I had the opportunity to read all that was new in American publishing too. Together with my colleagues at Piatkus Books, and particularly with Gill Bailey, editorial director, we began to build a list in the mind, body and spirit area. We chose to publish the books that appealed to us personally, the ones that had a clear message and the ones by authors who we felt had integrity.
In the early 1990s if I had said to people that I had had past life regression and that I was interested in reincarnation, they would have thought I was very peculiar. Books such as Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss, which is about a medical doctor who hypnotises a patient and finds she is telling him about lives she has previously lived, and Saved by the Light by Dannion Brinkley, an account of Dannion’s near-death experience, contributed to the huge tide of change during the next few years. Now this whole subject area has shifted to become one of mainstream interest.
Inner world – outer experiences
I was also very influenced by Living Magically by Gill Edwards. Gill approached a few publishers with the proposal for this, her first book. We were very enthusiastic about it and published it in 1991. The idea that our inner world and the way we think influences our outer world and the kind of life we experience and the people we attract into it was a completely new way of thinking for me. The knowledge that the people and events that are in our lives are a mirror of our inner world is very powerful and I have seen over and over again how true it is.
Gill’s book has been one of the very few books that has profoundly transformed my life and the way I think about and experience it.
The new spirituality
Another book that resonated with me was Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore. This phenomenal bestseller resonated with people all over the world because it was the first major mass-market title to explore the experience of spirituality in everyday life. Previous books on this topic had not penetrated people's consciousness in the same way. In the early 1990s people were turning away from organised religion and looking for something to put in its place. The idea that spirituality could be part of your life without formal religious worship was a new and exciting thought for many people who were not finding what they needed within organised religion.
Matter and spirit are not separate
At Piatkus we were also attracted at a very early stage by the idea of feng shui. It made absolute sense to us that our environment affected our inner world. We commissioned The Feng Shui Kit at the very beginning of the surge of interest in this topic and it went on to sell thousands of copies. We were also delighted to publish Karen Kingston’s Creating Sacred Space With Feng Shui and the chapter on clearing clutter which later grew into her bestselling book, Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui has influenced me at a very deep level. I know that I will never be able to go for too long without clearing out my possessions on a regular basis. On an inner level it will never again feel right for me to neglect this. Clearing your clutter changes your energy both inside and outside very quickly.
In the mid-1990s there was also a huge shift in awareness and interest in health books and in what we are putting inside ourselves. The New Optimum Nutrition Bible by Patrick Holford has been a continuing big seller and has educated so many people all over the world to think differently about how they eat, how they buy and prepare food, and what they can do for themselves to lead a more healthy life, especially now they are living longer.
My all-time favourite
And my other all-time favourite health book is Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom by Christiane Northrup. This amazing book explains how our thoughts, emotions and feelings influence our physical bodies to manifest symptoms which reflect what is going on in our inner world. Christiane's experience as a gynaecologist has given her great insight into women's lives and this huge book offers new insights to me every time I re-read it or look up something I have not previously thought deeply about.
Guides and angels
Finally, I have to put in a word for angels and spirit guides. As I write this, I can feel it is still not quite okay at the present time to admit that we believe in them. It still feels private and personal. However, as I go through my life I feel much safer in the world because I believe at the most profound level that I am protected by my spirit guides and angels. Ask Your Angels by Alma Daniel, Timothy Wylie and Andrew Ramer was one of our first books to provide information about working with angels to enrich your life. It has certainly enriched mine. Psychic Protection by William Bloom has reminded me that there are all kinds of things I can do for myself to shield myself from negativity as I go about my daily life.
Hope for the future
The topics of health and mind, body and spirit have become mainstream and everyone has a view on how they feel about them and what they think. I believe that there is much more that is new and exciting to come in this subject area. These new ideas are currently gestating. The best books arise out of years of spiritual work and there are not that many of them. Over the next decade we at Piatkus hope to bring you some of the best.
Photographs © Cygnus Books 23-Nov-2006
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