Books by Jost Sauer
Jost’s internationally published books span two fields — lifestyle transformation and addiction recovery — and in both, his work is genuinely pioneering. The Chi Cycle didn’t exist as a lifestyle before Jost created it. His approach to addiction recovery — founded on what you got right on drugs instead of what went wrong — has no equivalent in the field. Readers consistently say that there is nothing else like these books. Over 40 years of practice, research and real-world experience went into these pages. They are practical, unputdownable, and written to change how you live — not just how you think
Chi cycle lifestyle books
The book that started it all.
It began as a magazine column called “Where’s My Chi?”, taking readers hour by hour through the 24-hour cycle. The response was so strong Allen & Unwin commissioned the book. Jost was the first to take the chi cycle — an ancient and forgotten diagnostic tool — and create a lifestyle from it that anyone could follow. Each part of the day is linked to an activity, an emotion and even a mantra, all built around one disarming question: what if the secret to more energy, better sleep and a better mood was simply doing things at the right time?
One reader: “So many health books focus on food, but this book looks at the big picture.”
Published by Allen & Unwin.
The one for when something isn’t right.
A decade on from The Perfect Day Plan, Jost had spent those years refining the chi cycle in practice — teaching it, testing it, using it with thousands of clients. This book works backwards from how you feel. Fatigue, insomnia, digestion, the 3pm crash, waking at 2am: nearly 200 everyday symptoms, each traced back to the organ whose time you’re working against. What makes it unlike any other health book is the cast. Every organ arrives as a character with a personality and a job — the Cleaner, the Peacemaker, the Builder, the Emperor. That’s not a gimmick. Classical Taoist medicine described the organs exactly this way, with the heart as the Emperor and every other organ in service to it. Jost commissioned the characters for this book, and they exist nowhere else.
Self-published, 2019. The Taoist organ clock, brought to life.
The fully illustrated edition, published in four languages.
When UK publisher Welbeck took Clock On To Health for international publication, they commissioned a design team and made something new from it — a fully illustrated edition, closer to a beautiful reference book than a health manual. Every organ, every hour, every habit drawn so you can take it in at a glance. The illustrations do real work here: readers keep this on the desk or the bedside table rather than on a shelf.
Published by Welbeck (now Hachette) in English, German, Italian and Estonian.
Addiction, recovery & beyond
A raw, honest and compelling journey through addiction, recovery, and transformation.
Eight years in the making, this is Jost’s first book — part memoir, part revelation. It traces his own path from teenage drug use through speed addiction, anarchy and alcoholism to a completely different understanding of what it means to feel good. Described as ‘Lao-Tzu meets Hunter S. Thompson,’ it’s a page-turner that readers often finish in a single sitting. You’ll laugh, you’ll wince, and you won’t ever think about addiction the same way again.”
*Also published internationally in Serbian
Jost’s second book on addiction goes where Higher and Higher couldn’t. It tackles his own period of psychosis, confronts the darkest aspects of drug use, and presents a step-by-step approach to genuine repair — body, mind and spirit. Drawing on decades of case histories spanning ice, speed, alcohol and everything in between, this is the practical handbook. One reader called it ‘the best, freshest book on the subject I have ever read. I will be buying copies and getting them to schools and prisons.”
A radical, myth-busting approach to addiction and recovery.
What if recovery isn’t about admitting you have a problem but acknowledging you have a solution? This is Jost’s most radical book: a recovery model built not on what went wrong with drugs, but what went right. It condenses 20 years of research into a direct, no-nonsense entertaining guide for people who don’t consider themselves diseased, don’t want to be ‘normal,’ but do want an extraordinary life after addiction. No guilt, no shame, no judgement
