By HARRIET P. GROSS / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Aleta St. James tells us in the introduction to her book, Life Shift: Let Go and Live Your Dream, "No dream is too big. You just have to become the person the dream challenges you to be."

Her lifetime dream was to become a mother. And wouldn't you take the advice of a woman who finally achieved her goal at the age of 57? (Or, in this case, would you want to run away as fast as possible?)

After working as a healer for a quarter-century, Ms. St. James hit the news last year when she was recognized as the oldest American woman ever to give birth to twins. Fulfilling her longtime dream inspired her to reach out to other women with this message: You can shift your behaviors and, when you do, transform your whole life.

She's convinced that in order to compete successfully with men in what remains in large part a man's world, women have adopted masculine traits while playing down their own feminine ones. She wants to bring into harmonic balance the positive qualities of each: male dynamism and female magnetism. Accessing these complementary energies is the first in a four-step program she provides for success in life.

Synthesizing an eclectic mix of methods and techniques from many sources – Hindu and Buddhist masters, bioenergetics and primal therapy among them – Ms. St. James assembles a "Life Shift Tool Kit" to help women realize their desired destinies. Packed into it are specifics on color, breathing, baths, visualization, mantras and prayers, with goal-oriented ways to use them. One such: a toxin-transforming tub experience drawn from her own visit to an Indian water temple.

Another: a weeklong exercise in consciousness, using a "purple ball of energy" to help banish negativity.

But there's no denying that bodies are important, too, as Ms. St. James the realist has acknowledged with the opening of her own age-fighting spa, Goddess Repair Shop, in New York City.

This book is as frankly feminine and realistic in acknowledging and dealing with the practicalities of love, romance and sex. And she tackles at the end that old, womanly bugaboo: "I don't deserve it" – whatever the "it" may be. A fabulous career? Lots of money? Or in-vitro twins to a single woman of a more-than-somewhat advanced childbearing age? "We all deserve to fulfill our dreams," she says. Whatever those dreams may be, "I open up to receive the abundance of the universe that is mine..."

Ms. St. James dedicates the book to Gian and Francesca, "the children I always wanted to have."

Life Shift engages with lively, first-person story snippets from the author's own life as introductions to every chapter, while easy-to-follow exercises are also easy to find, presented in attractive boxes throughout the text. And her cover photo at 57 teases, quite convincingly, that all things may indeed be possible!

Harriet P. Gross is a Dallas freelance writer.

E-mail harrietgross@sbcglobal.net

Life Shift: Let Go and Live Your Dream

Aleta St. James (A Simon & Schuster Fireside Book, $24)