Free ebooks about health and wellbeing

Wanterfall.com, the home of Wanterfall eBooks, exists for the sole purpose of making available a series of free ebooks and articles about human health and wellbeing, with special attention to emotions, communication and personal and spiritual growth. The new Articles section will also include a series of articles on Travel Health, with information about how to stay well while travelling in interesting countries, and also after returning home.

The first book, "Wanterfall", draws on both eastern philosophy and western psychology to build a simple and practical model for the understanding and healing of the many powerful emotions of everyday life. Because emotions have such a strong effect on the mind, this book is of great relevance to students of philosophy and meditation, as well as people struggling with grief, regardless of its cause - and also those who would simply like to live a happier and more fulfilled life.

The second book, "Notes on Communication", introduces the basic principles of information interchange and provides a simple approach to improving interpersonal skills. It shows how both verbal communication (speech and text) and non-verbal communication ("body language") can improve many aspects of life, if used skilfully - or make it worse, if used poorly. Either way, "you cannot NOT communicate"!

The articles will cover a wide range of subjects, including Travel Health, Pain Management, Hospice and Palliative Care, Self-Help Techniques, Living with Mental Illness, Philosophy, Meditation and Humour.

You can read the books online if you wish (entry is via the links at the bottom of this page) but they are easier to navigate as ebooks in PDF format. The latter include comprehensive Contents and Index tables, as well as hyperlinked bookmarks for every heading and subheading.

All ebooks from wanterfall.com are completely free - you pay no money, no registration is required, there are no advertisements and you will receive no unsolicited email. You are also free to copy, transmit, distribute or adapt any of the content, with attribution, as explained on the Copyright Page.

You might like to read a little about the books and their author, below, and then browse through the books using the online reading links at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, you can go straight to the Downloads Page to get your free ebooks for offline reading. (Adobe Reader® for reading PDF files is also available there if needed.)

There is also a new section of the site where articles about health, wellbeing, happiness and personal growth will be added as they become available.

About "Wanterfall"

We all experience emotions – and the experience is not always pleasant. Being sensitive by nature, we are inevitably vulnerable to these feelings. But must we be helpless? What exactly are emotions, anyway? Where do they come from, how many are there, are they any use to us – and, if we don't like their effects, is there any way to get rid of them?

Drawing on a variety of sources including western psychology and eastern philosophy, as well as the experiences of a long and varied medical career, the author describes a simple and practical model which can be used to understand, and potentially to relieve, the emotional distresses of everyday life.

The book is both a subjective exploration of, and a practical guide to dealing with, the emotional aspects of human experience. However, it is not a form of therapy, and the techniques described in it should not be practised during the course of a mental illness. Mental illness requires medical treatment – whereas this book mainly offers mental exercise.

The elements of the model described have always existed, but they are presented here in a way which the author considers potentially useful to a wide audience. A single underlying cause for our many emotions is suggested. Their complex effects on daily life are then discussed in detail, and simple techniques for their exploration and resolution are described.

This book is written for anyone who would like to understand the human mind better – or who would simply like a happier and calmer life. However, it certainly does not guarantee either result. Nor does it pretend to explain life's underlying mysteries – which words cannot, in any case, effectively address.

On the other hand, a better understanding and fuller resolution of emotions allows a clearer view of the mental landscape. That might well lead to a more peaceful and joyful life. But it would be an optional extra – bought with your own hard work.

[Links for online reading are at the bottom of the page]

About "Notes on Communication"

Why would you bother to read a book about something so obvious and routine as the exchange of information? Perhaps because, obvious or not, this is one of the most important things we ever do. In a very real sense, it is the interpersonal equivalent of breathing. Just as the physical life of any individual depends on breathing, the interactive life of any number of people, from a couple to a country, depends on communication.

Another way in which it is like breathing is that we often take it for granted. Indeed, we ignore some aspects almost completely. In the case of breathing, that only matters in certain specific circumstances. Most of the time, we breathe fairly well without thinking about it at all. However, when it comes to communication, it is best not to leave too much to chance.

To ignore some aspects of this vital activity is to wear interpersonal blinkers. Blinkers allow you to see ahead, but there is a very real risk of bumping into – or even falling off – unnoticed things which are right beside you. Especially (though by no means only) if you work with people, such haphazard interpersonal navigation is simply not good enough.

No prior knowledge about the process of information interchange is assumed in this little book, and the emphasis is on the practical things which I have found most helpful during my medical career. As a result, some aspects are not addressed at all. Those that are included are discussed from a personal perspective, but I have not proposed any entirely new theories or methods.

Despite their brevity, I think these notes provide a basic understanding of the principles and practices which enable good verbal and non-verbal communication. I therefore hope that readers will find them not only interesting, but also of practical value in their personal and professional relationships.

[Links for online reading are at the bottom of the page]

About the Author

Dr Coates was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1946, and studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He entered General (Child & Family) Practice in 1971, working in various parts of Australia and England before settling in Sydney, Australia in 1977.

His interests in western psychology and eastern philosophy brought him into contact with psychiatrist and thanatologist Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1979, and he subsequently spent a year studying at her training centre in California.

Returning to Sydney in 1981, he spent the next twelve years working in the field of palliative medicine. During those years, he directed new departments of palliative care in two Sydney teaching hospitals, attended a number of hospices, ran a community palliative care service and was a founding vice-president of the Palliative Care Association of NSW.

His ideas about emotional health and interpersonal communication, while certainly not new, have been considerably influenced by this work with dying patients and their loved ones, and also by his later work in geriatric community care in inner suburban Sydney.

At the beginning of 2007, Dr Coates decided to close his medical practice in order to devote the majority of his time to writing. The first result of that decision was the book "Wanterfall", and the second was "Notes on Communication". Various other topics are currently in draft form, and will be made available via wanterfall.com as they are completed.

These publications, incidentally, are quite deliberately written in Australian English (no, that is not an oxymoron). This may explain the occasional linguistic surprise, as you read them.