Two remarkable books from the writings of
Paul Brunton Realizing Soul
From Intuition to an Inspired Life “Paul Brunton’s laser-sharp eye directs us back to . . . the Divine Self.” –Mooji Features insights into life’s deepest purpose from www.paulbruntondailynote.se, a popular website where inspiring selections from Paul Brunton’s writings are read aloud in numerous languages daily. 6 x 9, 160 pages, paperback
The Short Path to Enlightenment Instructions for Immediate Awakening
“The true gift of this wonderful book is in how nuanced and subtle Paul Brunton understood these profound and transformational teachings and how directly he conveys them. Read this book as you would a scripture or a sutra and let it open your eyes to eternity.” —Adyashanti “This book is alive with supreme knowledge. May it support you in immediately and continually recognizing yourself.” —Gangaji This remarkably accessible book distills the essence of sudden-awakening teachings. 6 x 9, 160 pages, paperback
Larson Publications
Resources for spiritual independence and social relevance
http://larsonpublications.com
living wisdom
for health and well-being
Original Light
Practicing the Tao Te Ching
SNATAM KAUR
SOLALA TOWLER
VARIOUS AUTHORS
Kundalini Yoga’s core daily practices, taught by a luminary voice of the tradition. Includes two CDs with guided chants and practices.
A master teacher uncovers a wealth of spiritual practices within Taoism’s essential text.
Nineteen leading teachers offer insights and practices for embracing our fundamental worthiness.
HARDCOVER • 292 PAGES 978-1-62203-597-7
PAPERBACK • 320 PAGES 978-1-62203-603-5
PAPERBACK • 208 PAGES 978-1-62203-467-3
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The Self-Acceptance Project
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MAY THE UNIVERSE TICKLE YOU. . . BEAUTIFULLY. . .
I BRANCHES
OF LIGHT News & Reviews from
Banyen Books and Sound ISSUE 48 Spring-Summer-Fall 2016
JUST HEARD that our city Parks Board has just approved a new community garden in a park just a block east of Banyen! I’m excited that we’ll have more gardeners and friends and real food nearby. And speaking of gardens, of the way to the heart of wisdom, this haiku by Issa just about says it all:
Publisher ~ Editor Kolin Lymworth
Design Laura Duncan Good Look Graphics laura@goodlookgraphics.com
Cover Fiona Gamiet Articulate Design fionagamiet@codacom.com
On the Cover Pottery by Chip Clawson Tiger Lily and Fresh Kale from the Garden
The Banyen Folk General Manager: Tanis Phillips Purchasing: Marina Gingrich & Anusha Fernando (books +) Karen McMahon & Nick Nolet (music, arts, tools, gifts, gems, beauties) Receiving & Shipping: Lynn Russell & Dylan Phillips Accounting: Melora Jaune & Jenny Chu Events, Publicity & E-News: Jacob Steele Web & Community Connections: Alethea Lymworth In the Store, at Your Service: Cynthia Champagne, Christina Cupit, Michael Galloway, Bokudo Holy, Carly Laughlin, Ingrid Jensen, Jeanine LeDuc, Alethea Lymworth, Lisa MacLean, Ross McKeachie, Dena Nishizaki, Tom Oakley, Rosemary Pulice, Samuel Romero, Levi Shulman, Joy Tan & Chris Turpin
Printed at International Web Express on Electrabrite newsprint with 25% recycled fibre (100% recycled web papers are elusive now)
Publication Mail Agreement # 40063300 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Banyen Books, 3608 West 4th Ave. Vancouver, BC V6R 1P1
To help make BRANCHES OF LIGHT possible, we welcome selected advertising and publisher support. Please direct inquiries to Kolin Lymworth (branches@banyen.com) at the above address. Fax 604-737-1636 Phone 604-629-2190
B RANCHES
OF
L IGHT
is published each Spring and Fall by
Banyen Books and Sound 3608 West 4th Avenue Vancouver, B.C. V6R 1P1 Canada
Books: 604-732-7912 Music, Gifts, Tickets: 604-737-8858 Mail Order: From Vancouver area call 604-732-7912 From outside the Vancouver area: 1-800-663-8442 e-mail: thefolks@banyen.com
Open Monday to Friday 10-9 Saturday 10-8 Sunday 11-7
The man pulling radishes pointed the way with a radish.
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Branches of Light features some 180+ reviews: a curated “cream of the crop” of latest releases across our fields at Banyen. The idea is to help you know about at least a few of the heartful and healing offerings/resources in our world right now. Browse by subject (see list at right) or search by author (index p.42), or just follow your intuitive nose and... discover! The many books (+ audio + video) here are just some of our new publications. At any time you can search our website and find them all—with descriptions, images, quotes... and you can order any of them if you wish. HIS ISSUE OF
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S YOU WILL SEE on page 6, Banyen now offers a spectrum of yoga and meditation supplies, tools, cushions, as well as natural fibre clothing. You can search the bestsellers of these on our website as well. Click on PRODUCTS at the top, and choices will appear, such as:
Books with CD or DVD Writing Journals, Sketch Books Spoken-Word on CD Multimedia Learning Kits Tarot & Oracle Cards Music CDs Videos on DVD Incense, Herbs, Essential Oils Chimes, Gongs & Singing Bowls Meditation & Yoga Supplies Candles Crystals & Prisms
And in the store you’ll find many more artful & magical things to attune & enthuse body and soul.
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ay this spring and summer bring you the thrilling breath of life and fond soul friendship. Let’s keep in touch : ) ) KL Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it. —Antonio Machado
HOW TO ORDER BY MAIL FROM BANYEN You can phone us toll-free, fax, mail, or email us. We can tell you on the spot what’s in stock and ready to ship today. You can also visit our website, banyen.com, “browse the shelves” and shop securely 24/7. ORDERING FROM BANYEN Call us (during store open hours). If you’re in greater Vancouver area call 604-732-7912. Or toll-free from U.S. or Canada (1-800-6638442), or email us (thefolks@banyen.com), or fax us (604--737-1636).
SHIPPING & HANDLING We will backorder to ship later any titles temporarily out of stock. At your request, we will ship your order C.O.D. within Canada only. It will cost you an additional $7.00. SHIPPING COSTS IN CANADA “Expedited and Insured”
RETURNS & DEFECTIVES If unhappy with your order, return it to us with a copy of your receipt, and we will give you a full merchandise refund. (Please note the exceptions below.) Returns must be received by us within 30 days of purchase date. Return a defective item with a clear ID of the defect within 30 days—we’ll gladly replace it with a new copy. Opened Audios, Videos, Tarot/Oracle sets and the like are returnable only if they are defective.
Basic Cost + Per Book/Item
Lower Mainland (Metro Vancouver & Lower and Central Fraser Valley) $5.50 + $1.50 per book B.C. & Western Canada (BC outside the Lower Mainland, AB, SK) $8.50 + $1.50 per book Eastern & Northern Canada $10.00 + $1.50 per book Canadian Orders over $89: Free Shipping Delivery Times: 2-5 business days in B.C., 5-7 days within Canada +3 days to outlying areas (Please contact us for Priority or Xpresspost rates.)
PAYMENTS & DISCOUNTS Credit-card payments best handle changing prices, currencies, taxes, and shipping costs. We also accept cheques (with your address & phone number on them), drawn on a Canadian bank, and bank or postal money orders. Orders from U.S.: payment by Visa, Mastercard, or money order in Canadian $. Discounts (non-cumulative): 10% on 5+ of same title, $250+ per order (before tax), or for seniors (65+). Public libraries, and prison, hospital & school libraries: 20%. No free shipping on discounted orders.
SHIPPING TO THE U.S.A. Regular (insured, 6-9 days): $14 + $2 per book (Please contact us for express rates.)
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Canadian ORDERS $89 AND UP (before taxes) GET FREE SHIPPING... A SAVING OF 12% BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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in this issue... 5 6 8 9 10 12 14 16 17 18 18 19 21 21 23 23 24 24 25 26 26 27 28 29 29 29 29 30 31 31 33 33 34 35 36 36 37 38 38 39 40 41 42
Banyen’s Events New Clothing & Yoga Supplies Music on CD Art & Creativity Poetry, Writing & Stories Yoga & Hindu Traditions Buddhism & Zen Tibetan Buddhism Taoism & Chi Energetics Healing Body Mind Healing Energies & Herbs Bodywork & Movement Food, Nutrition & Healing Inspiration & Self-Help Psychology & Therapy Jungian Psychology The Heart of Religion Meditation Western Teachers & Teachings Grieving & Dying Transpersonal Psychology Entheogens Shamanism & Ritual Native American Medicine Wicca & Magick Celtic Spirit Christian & Jewish Spirituality Sufism & Islam Astrology & Tarot Metaphysics & Philosophy Angels & Transmissions Work & Money Community / Ecology Eco-Philosophy Shelter & Eco-Design Gardening & Farming Nature as Teacher Conscious Evolution?! Brain/Mind & New Science Family & Parenting Relationships & Sex Women & Men Index of Authors & their titles
Our Banyen lotus by a review means that title is our “Editor’s Choice.” Please note: prices are subject to change without notice. With US/Canadian dollar exchange hiccuping lately, our prices have gone way up and just recently started to come down again. Thanks for your patience with changing prices.
( : The Banyen Online Store : )
Books, Music, Videos, Oracles, Events Over 28,000titles - with curated reviews - a “Little Alexandria” open all the time. We’re also now listing a sweet seleciton of our yoga & meditation supplies, incenses, herbs, candles, singing bowls, and calendars too.
banyen.com
Signup to receive “Blossoming ” our monthly e-news & events flash. Click “OUR LATEST REVIEWS” to see lots of new title reviews filtered by subject area.
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the haven
RETREATS, ADVANCES & EVENTS
on gabriola island
Discover the art of living well, together
AUTHORS FOR INDIES DAY
REST, PLAY, GROW
SAT, APRIL 30 I 2PM-5PM FREE @ BANYEN
THURS, MAY 5 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
Free Oracle Readings with The Journey Oracle’s creator, collagemaking with award-winning illustrator JULIE FLETT, & more.
DR. DEBORAH MACNAMARA of the Neufeld Institute presents a developmental-based understanding of working with children.
SHIVA & SHAKTI
NEAR-DEATH AWAKENING
SUJITH RAVINDRAN explores the mature masculine, the mature feminine, and their interplay in all of our relationships.
STEPHANIE BANKS launches A Soulful Awakening: One Woman’s Extraordinary Journey from Life to Death to a Soulful Awakening.
MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES
SHAMANIC BREATHWORK
Programs in self-responsible, relational living
for individuals, couples, children, teens and families
SUN, MAY 15 I 11:30AM-1PM FREE @ BANYEN
www.haven.ca info@haven.ca •1 800 222 9211
TUES, MAY 17 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
"...a profound and transformative learning space." – 2015 GUEST
HOLLYHOCK CA NA DA ’S LIF EL ON G LE AR NI NG CE NT RE
CORTES ISLAND & VANCOUVER, BC
hollyhock.ca
Free Catalogue 800.933.6339 Pick one up at Banyen Books & Sound
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WED, MAY 18 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
THURS, JUNE 9 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
MORRIS BERMAN launches a new political satire which has been compared to the works of Voltaire & Kurt Vonnegut.
LINDA STAR WOLF presents Shamanic Breathwork, an initiation for the soul. Plus a Retreat at Hollyhock June 11-14.
CLAUDIO NARANJO
BYRON KATIE INQUIRY
SUN, JUNE 12 I 7PM-9PM @ BRIDGE & ENRICH
SUN, JUNE 26 I 11:30AM-1PM FREE @ BANYEN
CLAUDIO NARANJO, legendary psychiatrist & Consciousness pioneer, offers a rare Vancouver Talk. Plus a Retreat on Cortes June 5-11.
TANIA FIERRO, Certified Facilitator, presents The Work of Byron Katie; profound tools for insight, compassion and liberation.
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BANYEN’S UPCOMING EVENTS
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ANGEL KYODO SENSEI
GENE KEYS
SUN, JUNE 19 I 11:30AM-1PM FREE @ BANYEN
PUBLIC DISCOURSE
THURS, JUNE 23 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
INSIGHT MEDITATION
ANGEL KYODO SENSEI presents on her book Being Black, hailed as “an act of love” by Alice Walker and “a classic” by Jack Kornfield.
PETER TONGUE presents an introduction to the Gene Keys, a tool for self-knowledge, which links the I Ching and our DNA.
JAMES HOGGAN, author & David Suzuki Foundation chair, explores the toxic state of public political discourse and how to clean it up.
STEVE ARMSTRONG, Dharma teacher, presents wisdom practices from the Insight Meditation tradition of Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw.
THE ART OF MONEY
OUR PRISTINE MIND
WED, JULY 27 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
SACRED SITES JOURNEY
TUES, AUG 16 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
THE RESONANT SELF
TUES, AUG 23 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
BARI TESSLER, author and financial therapist, launches The Art of Money: A Life-Changing Guide to Financial Happiness.
ORGYEN RINPOCHE, Tibetan Dzogchen Master, launches his new Shambhala Publications book, Our Pristine Mind.
SVETLANA MERITT launches Meet Me in the Underworld: How 77 Sacred Sites, 770 Cappuccinos, and 26,000 Miles Led Me to My Soul.
SARAH PEYTON, Family Constellations Facilitator & Nonviolent Communication Trainer, speaks on resonance, neuroplasticity, & self-compassion.
MY TREE LOVE
BEE HIVE WISDOM
THURS, SEPT 22 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
CYNTHIA ROSE – MEDIUM
FRI, SEPT 23 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
MYTHTELLER MARTIN SHAW
DAVID TRACEY, author of Vancouver Tree Book, explores our affinity for nature’s largest, oldest, and most beautiful living things.
MARK WINSTON presents from his Governor General’s Literary Award winning book Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive.
CYNTHIA ROSE, second generation evidential medium, will bring messages from Spirit and your deceased loved ones.
DR. MARTIN SHAW, internationally renowned mythteller, weaves stories from his new book Scatterlings. “A True Master.”– Robert Bly
TUES, JUNE 14 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
TUES, JULY 19 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
WED, AUG 24 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
THURS, JULY 14 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
SAT, SEPT 24 I 6-7:30PM FREE @ BANYEN
NEW EVENTS ARE ADDED ALL THE TIME!
SOUND HEALING
MATT KAHN & JULIE DITTMAR
BREAKING THE SPELL
SUN, SEPT 25 I 11:30AM-1PM FREE @ BANYEN
WED, OCT 12 I 6:30-8PM FREE @ BANYEN
FRI, OCT 14 & SAT, OCT 15 @ UNITY OF VANCOUVER
MATTHEW KOCEL, throat singer, healer, and musical visionary, presents a live sound healing event at Banyen.
NANCY MELLON, therapeutic storytelling pioneer, explores the theme of electronic addictions and the evolving human story.
MATT KAHN & JULIE DITTMAR, Intuitives and spiritual teachers, offer heart-centered wisdom based in Unity Consciousness.
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. . . To keep current with our newest events, and for full event details, visit www.banyen.com regularly and sign up for our monthly e-mail newsletter, Blossoming. You can also follow us on facebook & twitter.
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CLOTHING FOR EVERYDAY & YOUR PRACTICE
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his is a small sample of our clothing please come in or call for further information. Rythmatix – Portland
A study of “visual rhythms” in clothing. This dynamic line is hand printed and designed by artist Chris Wu. He is inspired by the language of graffiti with a deep focus on sacred geometry and organic structures.
Alchemy & Flying Heart Yoga – Roberts Creek
Ultra-soft, breathable, certified organic, cotton clothing with low impact dyes. This company proudly states that it “holds the highest environmental and fair labour standards.”
Rythmatix – Portland
Welcome to Rythmatix! A forward thinking clothing company that blends sacred geometry and natural images to create clothing designs with intention.
With a commitment to sustainability all our clothing and yoga products are eco-friendly.
Maha Devi - Squamish
MahaDevi means Great Goddess in Sanskrit, honouring all Goddess energy in creation and in us. The eclectic designs are inspired by summer festivals, dance, tribal circus and eco-fashion. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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Om Grown – Salt Spring Island
Comfortable, fun and fairly traded organic clothing from a family run company inspired by nature and yoga. F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
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Jade Yoga Mats
natural rubber mats in a variety of thickness for easy and sustainable use. No PVC, synthetic plastics or ozone depleting substances. Through partnership with Trees for the Future, JadeYoga plants a tree for every yoga mat sold. Jade Microfibre towels are soft, absorbent, lightweight and slip resistant. Through partnership with thewaterproject.org, Jade provides one month of clean drinking water for one person in the developing world for every towel sold. Jade Balsa Blocks are lightweight and strong, soft, but not spongy perfect to support your practice. No dyes or harmful fillers and finishes are used in these eco-friendly
YOGA PRODUCTS
blocks. Through our partnership with the Tropical Rainforest Coalition, Jade Yoga preserves 100 square feet of Ecuadoran rainforest with every block sold. Manduka eKO Yoga Mat offers unparalleled grip to perform even in the sweatiest of conditions. This eco-friendly yoga mat is made from biodegradable, nonAmazon harvested and sustainable-natural tree rubber. They come in an array of colours.
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S’well Water Bottles are double lined, drinks to stay cold for 24 hours and hot for 12, they can even hold carbonation. They are nontoxic, BPA free, non-leaching. A portion of S’well’s proceeds go to WaterAid in support of bring clean water to the world’s communities. Joy-a-Toes Bringing your feet to life. Canadian made from soft gel material toe separators support, realign, relax and stimulate.
Halfmoon Yoga Mat Spray, 100% natural lavender disinfectant. It cleans your mat without harsh chemicals and scents. Halfmoon Yoga Cotton Blankets are soft, organic with a natural weave. It is a warm and soothing choice for your yoga practice.
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vailable online under Meditation
Manduka Foam Block is over 50% recycled EVA foam, this lightweight yoga block provides unbeatable comfort, style and support. It is extremely durable.
Watuko Bandanas are eco-friendly multipurpose made from sustainable, soft bamboo fabric in an assortment of fun prints and solids. Active wear that wicks away moisture.
and Yoga Supplies, more
Manduka Yoga Strap is made from 100% natural cotton and was developed in India by Yoga Master B.K.S Iyengar.
Barefoot Yoga 10 lb. Sand Bags made of high-quality packcloth with an inner coating to prevent dust and sand from escaping.
Please call or come in
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colour selections may be available instore. for further assistance.
HM EU A SDI C E RF
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Music on CD CLASSICAL BEAUTY
by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
u Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique u Bach: Cantata no 208 u Bizet: Carmen, “Les Toreadors” u Delibes: Coppelia, Ballet Notturno
Dance/Dreaming Music
SHAMANIC TRANCE DANCE by Byron Metcalf
$20.25, CD. Music Design. 69 minutes
Here’s a beautifully sequenced and realized collection of relaxing classical essentials—some of the great soul-moving gems of Western classical music, all played by the renowned Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Included, in this order, are: u Pachelbel: Canon in D u Chopin: Nocturne for piano no 7 u Borodin: String Quartet, “Notturno” u Beethoven : Triple Concerto, Largo u Mozart: Concerto for Horn, Romanze u Tchaikovsky: Nutcracker, “Waltz of the Flowers” u Grieg : Peer Gynt, “Anitra’s Dance” u Vivaldi: The Four Seasons: “Autumn” u Beethoven: Sonata for piano no 8 in C minor, Op. 13 “Pathetique” u Mozart: The Magic Flute – Overture
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$23.75, CD. Sounds True. 1 hour
FOUR GREAT WINDS A Global Voyage into Sacred Song by Peia
$22.95, CD. Sounds True. 56 minutes
From high in the Andes Mountains to the rolling hills of Ireland, devotional song has carried listeners into wonder and connected us to the heart of Earth through the ages. On Four Great Winds, vocalist and composer Peia evokes that magic with nine tracks of universal spiritual power. And heartful melody! Peia’s voice illuminates these deeply reverential songs, inspired by the ecstatic music traditions of the Middle East, the Celts, Eastern Europe, India, the first people of North and South America, and more. Peia is a vocalist and composer who seeks
Piano Profundo
GREAT MYSTERY
by Desert Dwellers
$23.75, CD. Black Swan. 65 minutes
The Great Mystery is the first fully realized album of all original music that Treavor and Amani have produced together, even though it is the 8th full album in the Desert Dwellers catalog. The title of the album is derived from a Terrence McKenna quote, “Life is like a moment, we’re born out of a mystery, and we die into a mystery,” which is actually mixed into the music. The duo notes, “Life and Death are great mysteries and we felt that was a pretty amazing theme to go with.” The album also features a talented cast of collaborators including Rick Hunter playing oud, singer Megan Chandler, violinist Hannah Thiem, Ixchel Prisma, Anuradha Genrich and a host of others. It’s always been a dream to create an album that embodied many of the styles we resonate most with, and The Great Mystery is that album!... When it comes to electronic music we have always refused to be ‘genrefied’ and this album goes on the complete journey from our classic tribal downtempo grooves to tribal techno, psychedelic trance, dubstep and ambient, all under one unified sound.
HYMNS & DERVISHES
Music of G.I. Gurdjieff / T. de Hartmann by Frederic Chiu
Bringing the electronic music vibe to the yoga scene, and tribal grooves to the electronic dance scene, Desert Dwellers’ global sounds are the bridge between the worlds of dance and movement. Joining solid groove with sounds of serenity, their signature aesthetic feels as natural on the dance floor as it does after hours or on the mat. The result has been the prolific production of genre blending dance tracks and chill-out grooves.
$22.95, CD. Music Design. 65 minutes
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, Greek-Armenian mystic, writer, and composer, was active in his work in the early 20th century. He was widely known as a spiritual teacher and organized various schools to teach his methods in Europe. As part of his work as a mystic, he incorporated spiritual dance. To accompany these dances, he composed piano works along with the help of his “spiritual disciple,” Thomas de Hartmann. These pieces were written during what is referred to as his “second period.” Award-winning pianist Frederic Chiu plays these solo works giftedly. Gurdjieff/De Hartmann’s music is entirely original, inspired by Gurdjieff’s exposure to many sources of Middle-eastern and central European music, and amalgamated by his personal spiritual outlook, and shored up by De Hartmann’s impeccable Russian musican training.
to preserve the sacred song traditions of the world. Her soaring vocals reflect both classical opera conservatory training and mentorship with master musicians spanning the globe. As a song preserver Peia has gathered songs from ancient traditions that span across the globe. From the mountains of Bulgaria to the shores of Ireland, touching upon the wisdom and trials of the Native peoples of North and South America and preserving the enchantment of medieval chant and Indian raga. She has traveled extensively to uncover melodies wrinkled and wise with time, laboring faithfully to revive their language, stories and original essence. As she says, “May you walk in beauty, and remember your song.”
Through a carefully choreographed alternation of Dervish pieces with Western Hymns, the listener is gently guided back and forth between the East and the West, in and out of a state of hypnotic concentration created by the spare intensity of these works; through the tension and release of the unexpected changes in modes, one experiences an emotional inhale/exhale on a long timeline, an extended musical breathing.
LOVE
Solo Piano Improvisations and Compositions Inspired by LOVE by Peter Kater $22.25, CD. Mysterium. 72 minutes
MOMENTS OF GRACE
Peter Kater has been nominated for ten Grammy Awards, and his new album LOVE shows exactly why. When it comes to composition, Kater is a master. He has an ear for melody and his music reflects that, sweeping you away in graceful fantasias that find an equal balance between wistfulness and tenderness. With this release, Kater serenades listeners with a collection of songs inspired by simple, yet expansive notion of love. The selections, which include both compositions and improvisations, are performed entirely on solo piano. These songs blossom with rich undertones and bright, cascading melody lines that really capture the beauty and essence of romance. Possibly his most personal album to date (the liner notes include full descriptions of the inspiration behind each song); LOVE is the stuff of daydreams and amorous interludes.
Cello Meditations by Hans Christian
contemplative pieces for meditation, relaxation, and musical wonder. Also an excellent choice for massage and energy healing work. A few simple rules were applied while selecting this music. The pieces had to be performed live on solo cello, without any overdubs or other studio techniques. If you hear more than one cello, then you hear layers that were created through live looping. The music had to be uplifting, meditative, and very gentle, but not necessarily without mystery, and —despite its simplicity—it had to be able to carry the listener to a healing state… So, please accept my gift. Let the sounds penetrate your heart. Be gentle again, soft and innocent. Be a peacemaker, a lover of life, a mystic, and—above all else—a decent human being.
Also by Hans Christian is Undefended Heart.
$23.75, CD. Sounds True. 1 hour
The music of cellist and composer Hans Christian spans many worlds—from the timeless sanctum of France’s Chartres Cathedral, to devotional chant audiences, to spiritual and New Age listeners worldwide. What unifies all of his performances is the power to draw us into a space of stillness and musical reverence. Intended to evoke clarity, calm, and heartfulness, Moments of Grace merges his solo cello artistry with elevating rhythmic and harmonic layers to unfold a suite of
I have been playing the piano since I was 6 years old. There are very few things that are more natural to me than making music. In playing the piano I am able to express what is deep in my heart and soul , where words fall short and seem colorless in comparison . I am fortunate to have a recording studio in my home. Almost every time I sit at the piano to play, I press the record button just in case something “special” comes through . These improvisations and compositions were recorded over the last three years, in “the heat” of the moment . These are musical portraits of my heart , ripe with emotions , joy, complexities , excitement , pain and revelations of the various manifestations and landscapes of LOVE .
Among Peter Kater’s other beautiful CDs are Wind, Rock, Sea and Flame and The Meditation Music of Peter Kater.
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When indigenous shamans connect to the spirit world, they don’t always sit or lie still during their journeywork—they may dance and move with the spirits, and let their power animals dance through them. Today, ecstatic dancers and shamanic practitioners speak of being “transported” by music, carried away in body and soul to an expanded state of being. On Shamanic Trance Dance, world-class tribal drummer and shamanic practitioner Byron Metcalf masterfully blends the timeless indigenous sounds of drums, rattles, and didgeridoo with driving trance rhythms and contemporary tribal-electro grooves. The result is an organic and potent sound tapestry that impels you to move—freeing the mind, energizing the body, and opening your spirit to inspiration and transformation. More info: byronmetcalf.com.
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GOLDEN SPIRAL
by Dean Evenson & Scott Huckabay
$22.95. Soundings of the Planet. 65 min.
A harmonic, free flowing journey that opens the listener to the deeper places in the soul where healing can occur, Golden Spiral’s atmospheric arrangements, gentle swirls of energy and rolling rhythms make the music fine for yoga, sacred dance, relaxation and massage. Sound healing pioneer and flautist Dean
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M U S I C , C O LFOHUER A I NDGE & R FC R E A T I V I T Y
Evenson teams up with trance guitarist Scott Huckabay to create magic in this follow up to their award-winning album Harmonic Way. After 20 years and over a dozen collaborative albums together, Evenson and Huckabay continue to create tasty musical journeys through their sensitive interplay. They both share a passion for sacred geometry and tune into the divine proportions innate in the music they co-create. Phil Heaven, Soundings of the Planet’s longtime engineer and Dean Evenson’s right hand man adds his sonorous viola stylings. When music is improvised around a harmonic theme, it spirals around that central column of harmonics again and again. When music metaphorically spirals in the Golden Ratio, it becomes the Golden Spiral—beautiful and regenerative. ERF Alpha Frequencies and the Earth Resonance Frequency of 7.83 hertz are included to enhance brainwave synchronization for deeper relaxation. Beautiful.
KUNDALINI MORNING CHANTS Invoking the Energy of Creation by Jaya Lakshmi & Ananda
$23.75, CD. Sounds True. 69 minutes
Music and mantras have the power to evoke Kundalini, the sacred energy of creation within us. Jaya Lakshmi and Ananda offer an intimate acoustic album or morning mantras that draw upon their love and dedication to the Kundalini yoga practice. These chants are intended to uplift the energetic flow of the body and mind, and to welcome the loving embrace of the Divine. The first six mantras on this album are known collectively as the “Aquarian Sadhana.” These mantras were chosen and put into this particular sequence by Yogi Bhajan. Together, they form the cornerstone of Kundalini Yoga practice, and provide the focus for the 62-minute meditation in the quiet hours of the morning just before sunrise. Each mantra connects with and activates a particular facet of the soul, bringing healing, balance, and deep remembrance of one’s Sat Nam, or true nature… We offer our interpretation of the Aquarian Sadhana to be part of your morning practice—or to use whenever you would like to drop into the golden chain of consciousness, to deepen your divine awareness, and expand your peaceful bliss-nature.
For fans of devotional chant, Kundalini yoga practitioners, meditators—or anyone curious about this elevating music—Kundalini Morning Chants is a beautiful listening experience (you can enjoy as pure music) as well as a tool to actively engage with these powerful invocations (liner notes give full context, content and background for each mantra). We invite you to listen and sing along anytime. These mantras are beneficial at all hours of the day!
TIBETAN BOWL SOUND HEALING by Diane Mandle
$23.75, CD. Sounds True. 1 hour
The sound of Tibetan metal bowls has guided listeners into deep states of healing and meditation for centuries. Intended for meditation, massage, energy healing, journeying, or just relaxing, the singing bowls in this spacious acoustic recording are struck
and voiced in specific rhythmic patterns and tunings to create therapeutic sound harmonics. The result? A gentle, focusing attunement of brainwaves to frequencies that ease the body’s stress response. Tibetan Bowl Sound Healing uses these principles to weave a tapestry of toning vibrations that relax the sympathetic nervous system, allow the body to heal, and invite us into expanded states of consciousness. Rrecording additional tracks in the studio—including bells, cymbals, chimes, and voice—allowed me to create a multilayered symphony of sound with greath richness and depth… I created this album as a Sound Prayer.
Colouring the Goddesses
THE SHAKTI COLORING BOOK
Goddesses, Mandalas, and the Power of Sacred Geometry by Ekabhumi Charles Ellik $26.50, paper. Sounds True. 125 pages, 11x10, ringbound, b/w illustrations
Shakti is the pure feminine principle personified by the goddesses of the yoga tradition. The Shakti Coloring Book was created to help anyone begin to activate the transformational currents of this sacred energy in their own lives. Ekabhumi brings readers a serious yet thoroughly enjoyable spiritual practice in ink-and-paper form, including: u Twenty beautiful images of Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese goddesses with written descriptions and mantras of greeting u Twenty yantras and mandalas (mystical diagrams based on sacred geometry), one for each goddess and intended to expand and liberate consciousness u Dozens of pictures illustrating key principles to deepen your practice. In her foreword, Sally Kempton, author of Awakening Shakti, writes:
Diáne Mandle is a teacher, practitioner, and musician who works with clients through sound healing and energy balancing. She is a member of the Sound Healers Association and the Healing Music Organization.
Art & Creativity
I really want to encourage you to look at the drawings in this book as opportunities to open yourself to the living energies of the sacred archetypes they depict. Coloring these mandalas and deity drawings can be a profound spiritual practice, which can integrate the separated energies in your psyche and also connect you to their higher octaves. In other words, working with these drawings and mandalas can bring deity energies alive in you. As you meditate on the energies within the drawings, and work with the invocations that go with them, you’ll find yourself opening to aspects of yourself that you may not have known.
Boundless compassion. Unconditional love. Unshakable courage. These are just some of the empowering attributes you are invited to make manifest in your own life with The Shakti Coloring Book.
WIRED TO CREATE
For a full bibliography, attributions, notes, audio recordings of the invocations, and full-color examples of the yantras and mandalas, please see The Shakti Coloring Book page at my website: oneearthsacredarts.com
Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman & Carolyn Gregoire
BUDDHIST ART COLORING BOOK 2
$34.95, cloth. Putnam. 252 pages
Based on the authors wildly popular Huffington Post article “18 Things That Creative People Do Differently” (which generated 5 million views and 500,000 Facebook shares in one week), this well-researched and engaging book uncovers what we know about creativity, and what anyone can do to enhance this essential aspect of their lives and work. Filled with insights from the lives of well-known artists and visionaries, along with scientific findings and practical advice, this smart, lively and inspiring book reveals these creativity-sparking attributes and habits: u Daydreaming u Taking Time for Solitude u Seeking out New Experiences u Nurturing Emotional Sensitivity u Turning Challenges into Opportunities for Growth u Making Time for Play u Following Passions u Practicing Mindfulness u Listening to Intuition u Challenging the Status Quo u Achieving Mastery What Quiet did for introverts, Wired to Create will do for creative individuals, along with anyone who aspires to be one—that is, it will help them see themselves in a positive light and enhance their strengths, even though they are not always the most conventional ones. “The go-to book on creativity and genius. He puts together the newest scientific findings from the brain, from mental life, and from the messy world of emotion to whiz us to the cutting edge of the highest human accomplishments.” —Martin Seligman, author of Flourish “More than ever we need creativity in our BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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Buddhas, Deities, and Enlightened Masters from the Tibetan Tradition by Robert Beer $19.99, paper. Shambhala. 128 pages, 8x10, 50 coloring templates
Drawing on his brush paintings in The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs and other works, Robert Beer has selected 50 images meant to be used as templates for coloring. The book features figures spanning centuries of the tradition, including spiritual adventurers, rebellious saints, and enlightened Tantric masters. The detailed artwork is elegant and meaningful—drawing on Buddhist teachings to give each piece greater depth. This book pays homage to the bodhisattvas and buddhas, teachers, and deities within the Indo-Tibetan tradition, and the great range of practices, teachings, transmissions, and long retreats that many of these great masters undertook during the course of their lives. Engaging with the fifty illustrations here through coloring is an intimate and simple way to deepen one’s understanding of Buddhism and practice of mindfulness. The drawings here—all meticulously painted by hand with a small sable brush—alternate between qualities that are energizing and calming, and all relate to the state of being completely awakened. A concise description of each drawing introduces each figure and the important roles these great masters have fulfilled in the Buddhist tradition. lives and to answer the pressing challenges of our times. These authors paint a brilliant portrait of the many faces of creativity: a fusion of seemingly contradictory mental states that can be limpid and messy, wise and crazy, exhilarating and painful, spontaneous and yet arising from sustained training. Fascinating all the way.” —Matthieu Ricard, author of Altruism
EARTH & EROS
A Celebration in Words and Photographs compiled by Lorraine Anderson, with photographs by Bruce Hodge $26.95, paper. White Cloud. 136 pages, 8x9, colour photos
In the tradition of The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson and On the Loose by Terry and Renny Russell, Earth & Eros combines words and photographs to inspire readers to deepen their felt connection with the good Earth. The book awakens readers to the full force of eros—life force that connects us to our bodies, other humans, all living beings, and the Earth as a living being. Intended F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
as an antidote to an age obsessed by speed, screens, and machines, this book brings together previously published—and magnificently selected—prose and poetry with 25 fine art landscape photographs to explore the sacred erotic dimension of humans’ relationship to the Earth. You will find here poems and prose pieces that weave together images of the natural world with the language of desire. These words celebrate a sensuality that honors the earth and flesh as sacred… “our erotic embrace with the flesh of the world.” They acknowledge the erotic as a force of nature, channeled through the untamed land, the unpredictable elements, the unbridled emotions, the unruly body. The accompanying photographs reveal the sensual beauty of the planet we inhabit, our larger body. They call us to recognize
FF the deep, freely available wellspring of pleasure, satisfaction, and fullness we can drink from whenever we choose to pay attention. Simply by opening our senses and feeling ourselves to be part of the natural world around us, we can begin to heal, to regain wholeness, to take communion. —Lorraine Anderson, from the preface
The writings in Earth & Eros were chosen for their brevity, readability, beauty, and potency, and the photographs for their sensuality. Readers engage with writers such as David James Duncan, Hart Crane, Diane Ackerman, Sherman Alexie, D. H. Lawrence, Mary Oliver, and Pablo Neruda. Some of the pieces of writing are explicitly sexual, while others appreciate the sensuality of tree limbs, seeping water, mushrooms, and ferns. Earth and Eros is beautifully produced and a pleasure to hold and to look at, a book to read and reread slowly, out loud. To be in relation to everything around us, below us, earth, sky, bones, blood, flesh, is to see the world whole, even holy… The lightning we witness crack and charge a night sky in the desert is the same electricity we feel in ourselves whenever we dare to touch flesh, rock, body, and earth. —Terry Tempest Williams
THE WILD IN YOU
Voices from the Forest and the Sea by Lorna Crozier & Ian McAllister $24.95, cloth. Greystone. 72 pages, 8x8, colour photos
This gorgeous and stirring collection of photos and poems from photographer Ian McAllister and poet Lorna Crozier reveals how the wildness of the natural world is mirrored in the human heart. A testament to the miraculous beings with whom we share our planet and the places where they live, The Wild in You is a creative collaboration between a great nature photographers and one of North America’s most talented and critically acclaimed poets. Inspired by the majestic and savage beauty of McAllister’s photographs, Crozier translates the wild emotion of land and sea into the language of the human heart. Featuring over thirty beautiful full-size photographs of wolves, bears, sea lions, jellyfish, and other wild creatures paired with thirty original poems, The Wild in You challenges the reader to a deeper understanding of the connection between humans, animals, and our earth. “Each poem and photograph in this book honours the patch of Earth we have carved our home in; its squelch of mud, whale song, the berry balanced on a white bear’s tongue. Together, Crozier and McAllister crystallize an ecosystem as powerful as the grizzly bear and as fragile as a crane fly’s wing.” —Eliza Robertson, author of Wallflowers
Poetry, Writing & Stories MALA OF LOVE
108 Luminous Poems edited by Ravi Nathwani & Kate Vogt $28.00, cloth. New World Library. 158 pp.
From the editors of Mala of the Heart: 108 Sacred Poems comes another luminous
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THIS PRESENT MOMENT New Poems by Gary Snyder
New in Paperback
$21.50, paper. Counterpoint. 88 pages
For his first collection of new poems since his celebrated Danger on Peaks, published in 2004, Gary Snyder finds himself ranging over the planet. Journeys to the Dolomites, to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, from Paris and Tuscany to the shrine at Delphi, from Santa Fe to Sella Pass, Snyder lays out these poems as a map of the last decade. Placed side-by-side, they become a path and a trail of complexity and lyrical regard, a sort of riprap of the poet’s eighth decade. This present moment That lives on To become Long ago.
And in the mix are some of the most beautiful domestic poems of his great career, poems about his work as a homesteader and householder, as a father and husband, as a friend and neighbor. A centerpiece in this collection is a long poem about the death of his Gary Snyder & Allen Ginsberg beloved, Carole Koda, a rich poem of grief and sorrow, rare in its steady resolved focus on a dying wife. As a friend is quoted in one of these new poems: I met the other lately in the far back of a bar, musicians playing near the window and he sweetly told me “listen to that music. The self we hold so dear will soon be gone.”
Gary Snyder is one of the greatest North American poets of the last century, and This Present Moment, published on Snyder’s 85th birthday, shows his command, his broad range, and his remarkable courage.
THE ESSENTIAL GINSBERG
by Allen Ginsberg, edited by Michael Schumacher
$21.99, paper. HarperCollins. 420 pages
One of the Beat Generation’s most renowned poets and writers, Allen Ginsberg became internationally famous not only for his published works but for his beings and doings as a human rights activist who championed the sexual revolution, human rights, gay liberation, Buddhism and eastern religion, and the confrontation of societal norms—all before it became fashionable to do so. He was also a leader of war protesters, artists, Flower Power hippies, musicians, punks, and political radicals. Edited by Michael Schumacher, The Essential Ginsberg collects a mosaic of materials that displays the full range of Allen’s mental landscape. His most important poems, songs, essays, letters, journals, and interviews are displayed in chronological order. His poetic masterpieces, Howl and Kaddish, are presented here along with lesser-known and difficult to find songs and prose. Personal correspondence with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac is included as well as photographs—shot and captioned by Ginsberg himself—of his friends and fellow rogues William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, etc. Perhaps we’ve reached point in human or unhuman evolution where art of words is oldhat dinosaur futile, and must be left behind… A side effect of loss of dependence on words is the final break-up of my previously monotheistic memory-conception of one holy eternity, one God. Because all that conceptualization depends on the railroad track of language. And actual experience of consciousness is not nameable as One… Meanwhile I am carrying for the last few months a dose of mushroom pills which I have been too fearful to take. Waiting for a day to look into that, or be that, THING, again. And operating still on language.
Through Allen Ginsberg’s essays, journals, interviews, and letters, this definitive collection will help readers delve deeper into his truly visionary body of work. poetic gift to the lover in all of us. To collect Mala of Love, editors Nathwani and Vogt sifted through hundreds of diverse voices. They sought original writings or first translations and ultimately assembled a tribute to the love that is spiritual and corporeal, beyond words and begging to be described, and simultaneously directed at a beloved and at the very isness of love. Superbly researched, collected, and arranged, Mala of Love includes writings of Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi poets, as well as lay writers and songwriters, drawn from even operas, plays, folk tales, and love songs of the world. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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In these 108 poems, great poets, saints, sages, mystics, and artists across cultures give voice to the eternal presence of love. Together, the poems reveal a fuller story, inviting us to discover the inner essence of love within us. Over the ages, the number 108 has symbolized our hidden connections with the sacred. In Mala of Love, 108 poems, each one quite unique and gently floating on a page, reverberate with the mysteries of the human heart. That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me that it was the eager breath of summer seeking for its completion. I knew not then that it was so near, that is was mine, and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart. —Rabindranath Tagore
“A spectacular collection of poems that F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
trigger inspiration and a deep knowing of our true nature. A beautiful gift to the world!” —Lama Tsultrim Allione, author of Feeding Your Demons
POEMS THAT MAKE GROWN WOMEN CRY
100 Women On the Words that Move Them edited by Anthony & Ben Holden $34.00, cloth. Simon & Schuster. 320 pp.
The follow-up to Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, this collection features the poetry that has moved 100 grown women to tears—including personal, poignant introductions on why each selection means so much. In Poems That Make Grown Men Cry fatherand-son team Anthony and Ben Holden remind us that you don’t have to be an academic or a postgraduate in creative writing to be moved by verse. Now British writer (Anthony) and movie producer (Ben) reunite with Amnesty International to share Poems That Make Grown Women Cry. From Tina Brown to Judi Dench to Karen Joy Fowler to Erica Jong, Joyce Carol Oates to Francine Prose, Sarah Waters and Germaine Greer to Carol Ann Duffy, this collection delivers private insight into the souls of women whose writing, acting, and thinking are admired around the world. Their selections include classics by visionaries, such as Lord Bryon, Emily Dickenson, and Walt Whitman, as well as contemporary works by masters, including Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, and Adrienne Rich. Each of the one hundred works features an introduction that is as powerful as the poems themselves. This collection represents a stunning variety of aesthetic sensibilities and the full spectrum of human emotion. It also reminds us how poetry can touch minds and hearts, and how easily it will do so for all readers who open their heart’s perception even just a little.
THEN COME BACK
The Lost Neruda by Pablo Neruda, translated by Forrest Gander $32.50, cloth. Copper Canyon. 160 pages, 28 colour images
Pablo Neruda’s lost poems—recently discovered in his archive to the delight of readers and scholars—comprise this remarkable and essential volume. Originally composed on napkins, playbills, receipts, and notebooks, Neruda’s lost poems are full of eros and heartache, complex wordplay and deep wonder. Presented with the Spanish text, full-color reproductions of handwritten poems, and dynamic English translations, Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda simultaneously completes and advances the oeuvre of the world’s most beloved poet. Crossing the sky I near the red ray of your hair. Of earth and wheat I am and as I close-in your fire kindles itself inside me and the rocks and flour ignite. That’s why my heart expands and rises
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STEALING SUGAR FROM THE CASTLE Selected & New Poems by Robert Bly
$24.95, paper. Norton. 400 pages
Sent out, as Hafez said, naked on the roads!
Selected from throughout Robert Bly’s monumental body of work from 1950 through the present, Stealing Sugar from the Castle represents the culmination of an astonishing career in American letters. Bly has long been the voice of transcendentalism and meditative mysticism for his generation. Influenced by Emerson and Thoreau, inspired by spiritual traditions from Sufism to Gnosticism, his vision is “oracular” (Antioch Review). From the rich, earthy simplicity of Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962) to the wild yet intricately formal ghazals of My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy (2005) and the striking richness and authority of Talking into the Ear of a Donkey (2011), Bly’s poetry is spiritual yet worldly, celebrating the uncanny beauty of the everyday. Here is a poet moved by the mysteries of the world around him, speaking the language of images in a voice brilliant and bold. IT’S NOT TO WORRY Don’t worry, friends. This night of drinking will not Keep you from your wedding. Each of us has been
LIKE THE NEW MOON, I WILL LIVE MY LIFE by Robert Bly
$25.50, paper. White Pine. 218 pages
The Chinese-influenced strain of Robert Bly’s work with its room for movement, spontaneity, and openness is celebrated in Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life and most amply showcased in its over one hundred and fifty poems. The poems, collected from out-of-print books, chapbooks, and uncollected work spanning fifty years, form a companion to his recent Stealing Sugar From The Castle: New and Selected Poems.
When your privacy is beginning over, How beautiful the things are that you did not notice before! A few sweetclover plants Along the road to Bellingham, Culvert ends poking out of driveways,
ROBERT BLY: A THOUSAND YEARS OF JOY a film by Haydn Reiss
$34.95, Zinc Films. 110 minutes
New on DVD
Poet Robert Bly stands out even among the celebrated, revolutionary generation of American artists who burst forth in the 1950s; A Thousand Years of Joy charts Bly’s singular path from farmer’s son on a wintry Minnesota farm to radical anti-Vietnam War activist to wild man of the 1990’s men’s movement. The bespectacled, white-haired Bly is every inch the politically and spiritually engaged mystic, seeking each moment’s fervid heart as well as the eternal, intuitive bedrock beneath our cultivated ideologies and “personas.” He was one of the first to translate Pablo Neruda, Rumi and other ecstatic Sufi poets, and his work with Joseph Campbell— exploring the metaphorical, psychological terrain of myth and ritual—led to the unexpected culture phenomenon of his book Iron John. A confounding whirling dervish, Bly’s life embodies the
into bread for your mouth to devour, and my blood is wine poured for you. You and I are the land with its fruit. Bread, fire, blood and wine make up the earthly love that sears us.
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. “The earliest poem in the collection dates to 1956, and several are love poems, a form Neruda was famous for.” —The New York Times
AGAINST THE POLLUTION OF THE I On the Gifts of Blindness, the Power of Poetry, and the Urgency of Awareness by Jacques Lusseyran $23.00, paper. New World Library. 146 pp
Despite being blinded as a child, Jacques Lusseyran went on to help form a key unit of the French Resistance—and survive the Nazis’ Buchenwald concentration camp. He wrote about these experiences in his inspir-
JOURNEY TO THE FUTURE
Robert Bly, the Poet
New in Paperback
You’ve been putting sumptuous images in poems For years, hoping they will keep you warm, But they don’t. You’re still naked on the roads! People used to believe that only the heavy drinkers Were badly dressed. Now all of us Are wandering around naked on the roads! Some of our old teachers used to wear vests With gold chains and watch fobs. Now look At them: all of them are naked on the roads! The wild Italians like St. Francis had a sense Of it—take a year off, get rid of your clothes, Pick up a stick and go naked on the roads! Sometimes it’s good to fail and be stupid. If Hafez hadn’t been stupid, he wouldn’t have had The joy of being naked on the roads!
“Here is the essential Robert Bly, ‘a man in love with the setting stars,’ a dark transcendentalist, a troublemaker, a mourner who keeps seeing the walls splashed with blood, a singer of boundless mysteries, imagination’s keeper, a witness to joy. He has been lighting up American poetry for more than sixty years.” —Edward Hirsch Wooden corncribs, slowly falling, What no one loves, no one rushes towards or shouts about, What lives like the new moon, And the wind Blowing against the rumps of grazing cows. Telephone wires stretched across water, A drowning sailor standing at the foot of his mother’s bed, Grandfathers and grandsons sitting together.
Robert Bly is one of the most influential poets, translators, and editors of his generation. “Robert Bly changed the course of poetry in America by opening it up to the imagination and the deep-image aesthetic, he is dedicated to reintegrating poetry with life-daily life, the life of the body, spiritual and political life.” —Huffington Post quest for personal honesty and shared truth. Filmed over four years, the film features Louise Erdrich, Donald Hall, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Garrison Keillor, James Lenfestey, Philip Levine, Michael Meade, Mark Rylance, Martin Shaw, Martin Sheen, Gary Snyder, Tracy K. Smith, Gioia Timpanelli, Lewis Hyde, Martin Prechtel, Roger Bonair-Agard, and other luminaries from the world of culture. “Robert is mercurial, no matter what you think you know about him, he will surprise you again and again. Bly’s metamorphosis from Midwestern farm boy to global troubadour, and all the troublemaking and gift-giving in between, is what keeps drawing me back to him as a subject.” —Haydn Reiss Bly’s prolific output has nourished the North American cultural landscape for over half a century and influenced countless generations of writers and thinkers. Director Haydn Reiss has made a series of documentaries on poets that have aired on PBS, including Every War Has Two Losers (about William Stafford) and the award-winning Rumi: Poet of the Heart.
ing memoir, And There Was Light. In this remarkable collection of essays, Against the Pollution of the I, Lusseyran writes of how blindness enabled him to discover aspects of the world that he would not otherwise have known. The I he speaks of is but another name
transcended his most difficult experiences, his writings give triumphant voice to the human ability to see beyond sight and act with unexpected heroism. But I also remember that this work of the I, slow and arduous though it may be and subject to all the pitfalls of the mind and of the senses, is yet the most charged with hope of any that we are able to undertake. And I know that I am not alone in my love of it, nor in my determination to take it up.
for the mysterious, fragile, central vitality— the light, life, and love that we are when we attend and open the possibility of a true inner life. He sees this I under attack from every side. He would have us wake up. —Chrisopher Bamford (introduction)
In “Poetry in Buchenwald,” he describes the unexpected nourishment he and his fellow prisoners found in poetry. In “What One Sees Without Eyes” he describes a divine inner light available to all. Just as Lusseyran BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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“In this luminous book, Lusseyran demonstrates once again his place among the illustrious sightless sages…. Clear and insightful prose inspires the reader to look beyond the limitations of the senses, as Lusseyran speaks of an inner seeing, reminiscent of the finer works of Martin Buber and Viktor Frankl... The clarity of the writing, and the force of both grim and exalted experience behind the words, carry an extraordinary authority and wisdom.” — Publishers Weekly F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
A Better World is Possible by Guy Dauncey
$27.95, paper. Agio. 424 pages
Scientists, activists and politicians are enthusiastic in praise for Guy Dauncey’s new ecotopian novelof-ideas, Journey To The Future. From Elizabeth May, NDP MP Murray Rankin and UK Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, to activists Tzeporah Berman, Angela Bischoff and Bill McKibben, and scientists David Suzuki, Andrew Weaver and Elisabet Sahtouris, the endorsements for Dauncey’s new book are united: Journey To The Future is a realistically hopeful gamechanger that must be widely read. In this heartening ecotopian novel, young protagonist Patrick Wu visits a future world— Vancouver in 2032—brimming with innovation and hope, where the climate crisis is being tackled, the solar revolution is underway and a new cooperative economy is taking shape. But enormous danger still lurks. It’s a race. A race between the expanding reach of our empathy as it stretches across the world, bringing love and intelligent cooperation for the good of all, and the clutching fear or tribal distrust, made more powerful by modern technology. Which will win?
This “novel” is really an imagining of better ways for humans to live together on earth— things we already know and can do— and it has appendixes on themes/practices/ resources. Over 900 footnotes (a wealth of existing ideas/practices/innovations) plus a study guide and list of organizations active for change are at www.journeytothefuture.ca David R. Boyd, co-chair of Vancouver’s Greenest City initiative, says Journey to the Future is “an imaginative tour de force, blending science, philosophy and fiction into a delightful story about how we can and must change the world.” “This brilliant book shows solutions to the climate crisis that offer a future rich in opportunity and joy.” —David Suzuki
RED-ROBED PRIESTESS
A Novel by Elizabeth Cunningham
$23.95, paper. Monkfish. 350 pages
After a life of passion and adventure that has brought her through slavery to the Resurrection garden, through the controversies of the Early Church to a hermit cave in southern gaul, Maeve, the Celtic Mary Magdalen, returns to the Holy Isles accompanied by Sarah, her daughter with Jesus. Their mission: to find Maeve’s firstborn child, stolen from her by the druids more than forty years ago. Since then, Maeve’s homeland has suffered its own trials—Roman invasion and occupation. The Celtic tribes to the east and south are under direct rule, and the Romans are determined to rout the resistance of the western tribes, resistance fueled by the druids of Mona.
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W R I T I N GF H DE OA WD N ETRHFE B O N E S
Natalie Goldberg’s Writing
Ruth Ozeki’s On Time
THE GREAT SPRING
A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING
$29.95, cloth. Shambhala. 206 pages
$20.00, paper. Penguin. 422 pages
Writing, Zen and This Zigzag Life by Natalie Goldberg
A Novel by Ruth Ozeki
What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing anecdotally on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive—experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The “great spring” of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again—the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example. It also refers to enlightenment: obstructions shatter, pain cracks open, previously resisted truth releases, an acceptance of transiency flows through. Natalie Goldberg shares the moments that have sprung from her own life of writing, teaching, and Zen practice—moments of searching, wandering, zigzagging, losing, and leaping where she has found herself and her voice. In these pages, we watch as Natalie “makes positive effort for the good” one of the guiding rules of her writing life—and we see that if we can stay attentive in our lives, even in the middle of the ruins, “we can hear the sound of a songbird in a Paris chestnut tree. Whether we know if the song comes from inside us or out doesn’t matter.” You’ll be enthralled, from the first page to the last. Vivid, lucid storytelling! Thirteen of the 22 essays in The Great Spring have been previously published (often in a different form). Those publications include Yoga Journal, Shambhala Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. “Natalie Goldberg is one of the world’s most beloved writing teachers, a mentor who has inspired millions to take up the pen and write. Here, in The Great Spring, a collection of her best short essays on food, family, writing, painting, meditation, travel, love, loss, death, and enlightenment, she follows her own sage counsel, writing her way toward an understanding of what it is to be fully alive.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox— possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future. Full of Ozeki’s signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home. Ruth Ozeki, an American Japanese and a longtime Zen Ruth Ozeki practitioner, evokes the mysteries of time, how layers of time blend together, how time hurries by and slows down. It’s about our time, this big time we are all living in, this time of tsunamis, climate change, species extinction, undeclared war, Internet technology. And it’s about this time right now, this moment of hearing a crow calling on a branch, a moment that’s gone already. This book is large and full of heart. It asks the important questions. What does it really mean to be a human being? To be alive and know you’re going to die? What’s moving is the way Ozeki explores intimate human relationships, and how people manage to love each other in the midst of their suffering. The central relationships of the novel are nuanced, changing, heart-wrenching, and fiercely loving: between Nao and her father, between Nao and her greatgrandmother Jiko, between Jiko and her kamikaze pilot son, and between Ruth and Oliver. Ozeki writes courageously about what is clearly her own nonfictional marriage. The relationship at the very center of the book is that between Ruth and Nao, who reflect and love each other without ever meeting. They help each other discover themselves as time beings, alive in time. They help each other—and me, too—wake up to the present moment. (with help from Susan Moon’s review in Tricycle)
WRITING DOWN THE BONES
Freeing the Writer Within, 30th Anniversary Edition by Natalie Goldberg $19.50, paper. Shambhala. 198 pages
First published in 1986 and now with a new preface, an afterword (an interview with her, actually), and commentary by the author, this pioneering classic—the all-time bestselling writer’s handbook—has encouraged writers and would-be writers to live deeply and express clearly, and to take the leap into writing creatively and well. Goldberg offers suggestions, skillful teachings, and solid advice on many aspects of the writer’s craft: u on writing from “first thoughts” (keep your mind moving, don’t cross out, just get it on paper) u on listening (writing is ninety percent listening; the deeper you listen, the better you write) u on using verbs (verbs provide the energy of the sentence) u on overcoming doubts (doubt is torture; don’t listen to it). She shares the story of how her studies with her Zen Master, Katagiri Roshi, and beat icon Allen Ginsberg awakened her to writing as a creative and spiritual practice. From writing wherever we are now... to working fearlessly through obstacles... to writing from the body, Goldberg explains her methods that have helped new writers get started, and seasoned writers keep going. In her afterword Goldberg muses on her journey as a writer. She discusses topics such as discipline, talent versus effort, writing and meditation, the relationship between place and writing, and reasons why people do not write. The advice in Writing Down the Bones will inspire anyone who writes—or who longs to.
THE FACE: A TIME CODE by Ruth Ozeki
$9.99, paper. Simon & Schuster. 140 pp.
What did your face look like before your parents were born? In The Face: A Time Code, bestselling author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki recounts, in moment-to-moment detail, a profound encounter with memory and the mirror. According to ancient Zen tradition, your face before your parents were born is your original face. Who are you? What is your true self? What is your identity before or beyond the dualistic distinctions, like father/mother and good/evil, that come to define us? With these questions in mind, Ozeki challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording her thoughts, and noticing every possible detail. Those solitary hours open up a lifetime’s worth of meditations on race, aging, family, death, the body, self doubt, and, finally, acceptance. In this lyrical short memoir, Ozeki calls on her experience of growing up in the wake of World War II as a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian American; of having a public face as an author; of studying the intricate art of the Japanese Noh mask; of being ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest; and of her own and her parents’ aging, to paint a rich, intimate and utterly unique portrait of a life as told through a face.
It’s the practice here in Bones that is the foundation, sustaining and building my writing voice, that keeps me honest, teaches me how to endure the hard times and how to drop below discursive thinking, to taste the real meat of our minds and the life around us… Writing a book is a fine and fleeting thing. We need to have a larger vision. Think of writing as a lifetime relationship… Writing lets us drop our edge and merge with everything.
00:00:00 I’ve put the mirror on the altar where the Buddha used to be. Laptop’s just below it… How much proximity can I tolerate? How is the lighting? Flattering? Unflattering? Does it matter?... No need to look at the computer screen. Just face and me, facing off in the mirror.
Natalie Goldberg is a poet, teacher, writer and painter who has been a student of Buddhism for over 30 years. Among her other books are Wild Mind, The True Secret of Writing, and Living Color (a book of her wild, colourful paintings).
Just before she crosses the channel from Gaul to Britain, Maeve encounters a man she mistakes for Jesus’s ghost. This familiar stranger is equally haunted, and the two are drawn into a moonstruck liaison that will entwine their lives in “an impossible Celtic knot.” For unbeknownst to Maeve at the time, he is none other than General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the newly-appointed Roman Governor of Britain. Maeve keeps this troubling tryst a secret even after she finds her long-lost daughter Boudica, the fierce and charismatic queen of the Iceni tribe. Druid-trained in her youth, Boudica married the Iceni king, hoping to rally him to a rebellion for which he has no stomach. Now estranged from her
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Yoga & Hindu Traditions THE GREAT WORK OF YOUR LIFE A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling by Stephen Cope
New in Paperback
$21.00, paper. Bantam. 304 pages
The director of the Institute for Extraordinary Living at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health explores the dharma—vocation or calling—of a number of both illustrious and ordinary individuals. “Yogis insist that every single human being has a unique vocation,” writes Cope. Turning to the BhagaF SPRING - SUMMER 2016
vad Gita—a twothousand-year-old allegory about the path to dharma, told through a timeless dialogue between the fabled archer, Arjuna, and his divine mentor, Krishna—the author realized the difficulty in penetrating even its first piece of advice: “Discern, name, and then embrace your own dharma.” For some, their dharma is a ready and apparent gift, but others struggle long and hard to hear
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that piece of inner music, that passion. Cope illustrates dharma through telling examples, drawing portraits of important historical characters and twining them with glimpses into the lives of everyday people he knows. He tells stories of Walt Whitman’s wartime nursing, “a calling for which he didn’t even know he was searching,” and many more. His point is that seeking is all and that dharma will allow you to bear life’s suffering. “You only get yourself when you lose yourself to some great work,” he writes. The Great Work of Your Life describes this process of unlocking the unique “genius” in every person, taking readers on a stepby-step tour of the Gita, highlighting wellknown lives that embody its central principles—including Jane Goodall, Gandhi, Marion Woodman, Susan B. Anthony, John Keats, Harriet Tubman, and Beethoven. He also includes fascinating everyday stories about following the path of dharma, which illustrate the practicality of these classic yogic teachings today. “One rarely thinks of a dharma book as a page-turner, but this one is indeed that. This is a great read and a great revitalizing breath of fresh air.” —Sylvia Boorstein, of Happiness is an Inside Job
“Essential for those new to yoga and inspiring for the seasoned practitioner and yoga teacher.” —Patricia Walden, author of The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health
ORIGINAL LIGHT
The Morning Practice of Kundalini Yoga by Snatam Kaur
Book & CD
THE ART OF ATTENTION
$37.50, paper. Sounds True. 220 pages, 8x11, French flaps, colour photos
$37.50, Sounds True. 278-page hardcover, b/w illustrations + 2 Audio-CDs
The Kundalini Yoga tradition speaks of a call to the Divine that awakens “the Original Light of the soul.” In gatherings across the globe, Snatam Kaur and her fellow musicians have shared that radiance through sacred chants. With Original Light, she guides us into the heart of the path, with the Aquarian Sadhana as a foundation to understand the tradition’s daily principles, morning practices, and sacred chanting experiences.
Yoga begins with physical well-being. But it can also transport us—through meditation, self-awareness, and movement—into a lifelong exploration of presence, elegance, and deeper life purpose. With Art of Attention, Elena Brower and Erica Jago show us the way. Distilled from their acclaimed workshops and training programs, this multifaceted book can be used as: u A step-by-step workshop for merging movement mindfulness with traditional yoga u A “tool kit” of asanas, meditations, self-inquiry questions, and healing practices for creating your own daily spiritual practice u An uplifting source of visual beauty and wisdom teachings for inner reflection and elevation For students and teachers at every level, this one-of-a-kind resource takes us further into yoga—and the art of living—with clarity, creativity, wonder, and depth. This compilation of practices is inspired by several traditions of Hatha yoga, yoga philosophy, Fourth Way teachings, and the Handel Method. Each sequence points us toward the inner work of listening, respecting, trusting, and healing. Practice is distilled into three elemental aspects. Sankalpa explains the intention for the practice. The Three Wave Sequence introduces a specific opening into your body through the progression of postures. And the Awakening pages conclude and close your practice. Pages at the end of each chapter invite your practice notes, intentions, and sequences.
This beautiful, experiential book includes contributions from MC YOGI, Gabrielle Bernstein, Donna Karan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Christy Turlington Burns, and others inspired by Elena and Erica’s work. “Can a book be a sanctuary? With Art of Attention, Erica and Elena have manifested an interactive portal to somatic consciousness, inner beauty, and self-reckoning. It stirs the heart, mind, and body to actively introvert and attend to the deepest layers of being.” —Jill Miller, Anatomy and Movement Specialist
THE YOGA OF AWAKENING: MYSTIC FLOW
Transforming Your Practice into Love and Service by Seane Corn New on DVD
Seane Corn’s Yoga of Awakening DVD series guides us into the deeper dimensions of yoga, offering in-depth training for discovering our vast potential for greater consciousness and connection. In this third volume, Mystic Flow, she bridges our physical-mental and emotional-energetic worlds with the realm of spirit. The psychic-symbolic realm of timeless nature, she teaches, is our connection to God, to creation, and to our own divinity. When we bring this dimension into yoga, our practice becomes an offering and an embodied prayer. We align ourselves for fulfillment, love, and service in the world. This program includes a beginner’s practice, four intermediate practices (for internal and external work), and an advanced practice. Each includes personal intention and prayer, and then progresses into movement, restoration, mindful reflection, and meditation. The other titles in this series are: u The Yoga of Awakening: Body-Mind Flow u The Yoga of Awakening: Chakra Flow.
YOGA OF THE SUBTLE BODY
A Guide to the Physical and Energetic Anatomy of Yoga by Tias Little $24.95, paper. Shambhala. 240 pages, 7x9, b/w illustrations
Yoga of the Subtle Body unites practical somatic concepts and wisdom teachings in this guide to the anatomy of the physical, mental, emotional, and subtle bodies. Tias Little is a master teacher, and he brings his precise instruction to the wisdom teachings and philosophy of hatha yoga. He offers us a guided tour of the body’s structure and physical anatomy, then uses this new structural awareness as grounds for exploring the subtle body. In a meaningful and pragmatic way, the book maps the connection between the body and the rich symbolism that pervades the yogic imagination, including the chakras, nadis, and koshas. We come to see how the (yoga) body cannot be seen apart from the psycho-spiritual forces that animate it. Further, Tias offers readers clear, illuminated instruction for yoga, pranayama, and meditation techniques that apply these body-mind principles. This book is essential reading for all serious students and teachers of yoga. Each chapter focuses on one of the eight key energetic/anatomy centers of the body: feet/base, pelvis, sacrum, belly, diaphragm, heart/lungs, throat, and crown. The book is organized literally from the ground up, and figuratively from physically basic to conceptual/subtle. Each chapter has a list of poses for activating and applying the lessons, guided meditations, and excerpts from yogic texts. These practical exercises allow readers to immediately integrate the chapter’s lessons into their practice.
CHANTING MANTRAS WITH DEVA PREMAL & MITEN A 21-Day Immersion in the Power of Sacred Sound by Deva Premal & Miten New on $69.95, 5 CDs. Sounds True. CD 5 hours, 22 minutes + 12-page study guide
Here’s a lovingly shaped invitation to experience the power and joy of mantra practice, from the radiant couple Deva Premal and Miten, whose mantra-hearted music CDs have been so popular. Mantras, the sacred chants of India, offer us a way to illuminate our lives, heal, and open a space of peace and stillness within. On Chanting Mantras with Deva Premal & Miten, two luminaries of India’s devotional music tradition invite us to awaken that energy with their first audio learning program. Every day for 21 days, you’ll learn a traditional mantra. Deva and Miten explore the meaning of each mantra and its unique properties, including detailed instruction on how to engage and work with them. Then they chant the mantra in an uplifting session for you to chant or listen to in participation. The mantras here include: Om ~ Inner Peace ~ New Beginnings ~ I Am Love ~ Protection ~ From Darkness to Light ~ Liberation ~ Wholeness ~ Abundance ~ Inner Guru ~ Reverence ~ Perfecting Wisdom ~ Happiness ~ Buddha Nature ~ Healing ~ Medicine Buddha ~ Supreme Love Made Manifest ~ Compassion in Action ~ The Jewel in the Lotus ~ Tantra-Mantra ~ Enlightenment ~ and Celebration (concluding session) Whether you’re a fan of yoga, devotional singing, or the music of these two beloved voices, here is a great way to begin or enrich your own daily mantra practice.
Kundalini, the universal life force, is a natural and limitless source of physical health, stillness, joy, energetic strength, and loving connection with others and all of creation. Original Light was written for those seeking a compassionate and supportive guide to creating a vibrant and sustainable daily spiritual practice. Here, Snatam shares with honesty and gentle humor her own stories, challenges, “aha” moments, and many practical pointers gained from her lifelong journey. Readers first explore the philosophy and foundational principles of Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan, and then learn the five morning practices of the Aquarian Sadhana, including: u The Wake-Up Routine—establishing a sacred space, bathing and purification, healthy diet and elimination guide lines, and more
Mantras provide a potent tool for bringing greater awareness and light into our lives, a space of centering, moment to moment.
Included is a complete booklet of the mantras with translations and helpful descriptions. (Previously released as the downloadable audio program 21-Day Mantra Meditation Journey with Deva Premal & Miten) BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
Yoga, Attention & the Subtle Body A Yoga Practice Workbook for Movement as Meditation by Elena Brower & Erica Jago
Seane Corn & Deva Premal $41.95, 2 DVDs. Sounds True. 6 hours, 30 minutes
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u Jap Ji—from 15th-century founder of
the Sikh tradition, Guru Nanak, this sacred recitation is both a map and a direct expression of our union with the Divine u Kundalini Yoga Kriyas—nine energizing posture and movement sets for creating a somatic space for your spirit u Aquarian Sadhana Mantras—seven devotional chants as the sun rises to open the doors of liberation and experience bliss and ecstasy through sacred sound u Gateway to Divinity—the closing transition stage that integrates your own spiritual tradition and helps you to focus your energies and set your intentions for the day ahead. Useful for those of all faiths, Original Light includes two CDs of guided chants and practices with Snatam Kaur.
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LETTERS FROM THE YOGA MASTERS
Teachings Revealed through Correspondence from Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Swami Sivananda, and Others by Marion Mugs McConnell New in $29.95, paper. North Atlantic. Paperback 360 pages, 85 b/w images
Containing a treasure trove of previously unavailable material, this intimate and insightful account of the life of Dr. Harry Dickman, referred to by Swami Sivananda as “the yogi of the west,” features more than fifty years of correspondence between Dickman and wellknown yoga masters such as Swami Sivananda, Ramana Maharshi, Paramhansa Yogananda, and almost one hundred others. Marion (Mugs) McConnell, Dickman’s student, has created a brilliant and loving tribute to her teacher, who founded the Latvian Yoga Society in the early 1930s and later spread his knowledge in the U.S. with the blessings of Paramhansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi. Offering a broad range of information on yoga history, theory, and techniques from a variety of different paths Letters from the Yoga Masters also presents detailed teachings about pranayama, mudras, diet, and much more, all interwoven with stories and personal anecdotes that support the techniques. The book contains facsimiles of the personal, handwritten letters from the greatest yoga masters of our time to Dickman, who was teaching yoga in displaced persons camps after World War II. McConnell explores Dickman’s relationship with his correspondents, who regarded him as a highly advanced teacher. The instruction they convey is rich, detailed, and warm, and includes meditation and breathing techniques not widely available until now. Images supplement the text, and McConnell provides additional absorbing stories about Jesus as a yogi, astral beings, and ashram life. McConnell’s account of her own experience as Dickman’s student further illustrates how yoga was transmitted from student to teacher and brings to light the warmth of the personal bond between them. Taken together, the rare correspondence and personal chronicles that make up Letters from the Yoga Masters offer an unparalleled glimpse into the life of a yogi, the development of yoga in the West, and the ways that spiritual wealth is disseminated across generations. Mugs McConnell lives near Creston, British Columbia.
Buddhism AFTER BUDDHISM
Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age by Stephen Batchelor $39.95, cloth. Yale. 382 pages
Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha’s teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and
philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose long survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing. “In this remarkable book, Stephen Batchelor transcends Buddhist dogma to surface a vision of the dharma that goes right to the heart of our contemporary global culture. Through diligent scholarship and years of practice, the author sheds new and revelatory light on the dharma. This is a must-read for all students of Buddhism.” —Joan Halifix, Abbot, Upaya Zen Zenter “Brilliant, illuminating, and thought provoking, After Buddhism deserves the ultimate compliment for a work of this kind: it is useful. In probing the ancient scriptures for a Buddha we can relate to, Batchelor makes his dharma come thrillingly alive.” —Mark Epstein, author of Thoughts without a Thinker Other books by Stephen Batchelor include Buddhism without Beliefs and Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.
THE VOW-POWERED LIFE A Simple Method for Living with Purpose by Jan Chozen Bays
$19.50, paper. Shambhala. 174 pages
A vow is like a GPS system for your life. When taken on mindfully it can be a source of surprising wisdom and powerful energy, enabling you to accomplish things you never dreamed possible. It can have profound effects even beyond the original intention—and it can even live on after you’re gone. A vow can be as small as the aspiration to smile at someone at least once every day, or it can be as big as marriage; it can be as personal as deciding to be mindful whenever you pick up the phone, or it can be as universal as a commitment to save all sentient beings. But whatever its inspiration, when it’s done with conscious intention a vow becomes a conduit for the energy of your life. A vow can be deeply spiritual, utterly ordinary, or both. Zen teacher Jan Chozen Bays looks to traditional Buddhist teachings to show the power of vows—and then applies that teaching broadly to the many vows we make. She shows that if we work BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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Joseph Goldstein & Tara Brach
MINDFULNESS
New in Paperback
A Practical Guide to Awakening by Joseph Goldstein
$27.95, paper. Sounds True. 457 pages
Joseph Goldstein, a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, is one of the honoured pioneers in bringing the heart of the Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. As Stephen Levine has said, “America is damn lucky there is a Joseph. He has shepherded Western Buddhism in his ever-expanding teachings.” Mindfulness is Joseph’s longhoped-for, in-depth book. In a way, he’s “written the book” on mindfulness! The mind contains the seeds of its own awakening—seeds that we can cultivate to bring forth the fruits of a life lived consciously. With Mindfulness, Joseph Goldstein shares the wisdom of his four decades of teaching and practice in a book that will serve as a lifelong companion for anyone committed to mindful living and the realization of inner freedom. Goldstein’s source teaching is the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha’s legendary discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness that became the basis for the many types of Vipassana (or insight meditation) found today. Exquisite in detail yet wholly accessible and relevant for the modern student, Mindfulness takes us through a profound study of: u Ardency, clear knowing, mindfulness, and concentration—how to develop these four qualities of mind essential for walking the path wisely u The Satipatthana refrain—how deeply contemplating the four foundations of mindfulness opens us to bare knowing and continuity of mindfulness u Mindfulness of the body, including the breath, postures, activities, and physical characteristics u Mindfulness of feelings—how the experience of our sense perceptions influences our inner and outer worlds Mindfulness of mind—learning to recognize skillful and unskillful states of mind and thought u Mindfulness of dhammas (or categories of experience), including the Five Hindrances, the Six Sense Spheres, the Seven Factors of Awakening, and much more. “There is a wealth of meaning and nuance in the experience of mindfulness that can enrich our lives in unimagined ways,” writes Goldstein. In Mindfulness are the tools to inspire you to mine these riches for yourself. Also by Joseph Goldstein: One Dharma.
TRUE REFUGE
Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart by Tara Brach
New in Paperback
$21.00, paper. Bantam. 290 pages
When life-threatening illness, family conflict, faltering relationships, old trauma, obsessive thinking, overwhelming emotion, or inevitable losses arise, we easily react with fear and confusion, falling back on timeworn strategies: anger, self-judgment, and addictive behaviors. Though these old, conditioned attempts to control our life may offer fleeting relief, ultimately they leave us feeling isolated and mired in pain. There is another way. Beneath the turbulence of our thoughts and emotions exists a profound stillness, a silent awareness capable of limitless love. Tara Brach, mindfulness meditation teacher and author of Radical Acceptance, calls this awareness our true refuge, because it is available to every one of us, at any moment, no exceptions. In True Refuge, Brach offers a practical guide to finding our inner sanctuary of peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty. Based on a fresh interpretation of the three classic Buddhist gateways to freedom—truth, love, and awareness—True Refuge shows us the way not just to heal our suffering, but also to cultivate our capacity for genuine happiness. Through spiritual teachings, guided meditations, and inspirational stories of people who discovered loving presence during times of great struggle, Brach invites us to connect more deeply Tara Brach with our own inner life, one another, and the world around us. Presence creates a boundless sanctuary where there’s room for everything in my life— even the illness that keeps me from surfing the waves. This book is filled with stories of people discovering presence in the midst of crisis and confusion. It also explores some of the greatest challenges I myself have faced... I hope some of these stories connect to the heart of your own situation. Through them, we’ll explore the forces that draw us away from presence, and why we so often pursue false refuges. I also suggest many different practices—some ancient, some new, some specifically supported by modern neuroscience—that have reliably opened me and many others to presence. These include one of the most practical, in-the-trenches mindfulness meditations I’ve worked with in years. Called RAIN (an acronym for the four steps of the process), it helps you address many difficult emotions on the spot and can be personalized to almost any situation.
True Refuge reminds us of our own innate intelligence and goodness, making possible an enduring trust in ourselves and our lives. We realize that what we seek is within us, and “no matter how challenging the situation, there is always a way to take refuge in a healing and liberating presence.” “This is a special book, lovely, loving, wise, and helpful. It is like having a sage and caring friend sit with you, offering comfort, insight, and guidance for your own true journey home.” —Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart Also by Tara Brach are CD sets: Finding True Refuge (3 CDs), Meditations for Emotional Healing (2CDs), Radical Self-Acceptance (3CD
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F F with vows consciously, they set us in the direction of achieving our goals, both temporal and spiritual. In this guide to the vow-directed life, Jan Chozen Bays provides a wealth of practical exercises to use for formulating and implementing vows of your own and for using them to navigate your life with honesty and compassion. The word vow represents the actual power of a bundle of energy purposely formed, aimed, and propelled through time. This book unfolds a broader meaning of the word vow than you’ll find in the dictionary. We look at the taking of a vow as the engine that drives human aspiration, advancement, and accomplishment. We look at each human life as a connected series of vow-led journeys, whether those journeys are short jaunts or lifelong voyages… Perhaps we should call vows “the reason you get out of bed in the morning.”
“A vow is a pledge or promise to bring direction and intention into our lives. Yet, how are we to discover the distinctive direction and purpose of our lives? As a physician and Zen teacher—a healer of both the body and soul—Jan Bays offers deep insight for discovering the true gifts we want to bring to our unique life. This gem of a book awakens our capacity for vow-empowered living.”— Duane Elgin, author of Voluntary Simplicity
KINDFULNESS
by Ajahn Brahm
$11.99, paper. Wisdom. 170 pages
Here Ajahn Brahm introduces a new kind of meditation: kindfulness. Kindfulness is the cause of relaxation. It brings ease to the body, to the mind, and to the world. Kindfulness allows healing to happen. So don’t just be mindful, be kindful.
With his trademark knack for telling engaging stories paired with step-by-step anyone-can-doit instructions, Ajahn Brahm brings alive and makes accessible powerful tools for transformation. This slim, beautifully designed volume is a Quick Start guide for living a life of joy and compassion. Through stories and direct instruction, I’ll introduce you to kindfulness and teach you a powerful method of being kindfully present to what I call “the beautiful breath.” This practice unfolds gradually over time, and I’ll talk in detail about each of the five stages through which that happens—and the subtle ways we can practice awareness more and more kindfully in each stage. Meeting the beautiful breath with a spirit of loving presence is a part of practicing kindfulness that strengthens our ability to look after ourselves—and by kindfully looking after our own minds, we become more able to become a kindful force for good in the world. Then we’ll turn our attention to kindful loving, the practice of opening wide the doors to our hearts. This practice also unfolds in five stages, and I’ll offer guidance for each one, as we gradually generate kindfulness in our hearts and c ultivate an ability to let it radiate, outward and unbounded, over the entire world.
Ajahn Brahm is the abbott and spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. Among his other books are Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? and Don’t Worry, Be Grumpy.
BHUEDAD D H IES R MFF
Insight: The Classic & the Current
MANUAL OF INSIGHT by Mahasi Sayadaw
$47.95, cloth. Wisdom. 696 pages
Translated into English for the first time by the Vipassana Metta Foundation Translation Committee headed by Steve Armstrong, A Manual of Insight is the magnum opus of Mahasi Sayadaw, a leader of the vipassana movement has swept through the Buddhist world over the last hundred years. The manual presents a comprehensive overview of the practice of insight meditation, including the foundational aspects of ethical self-discipline, understanding the philosophical framework for the practice, and developing basic concentration and mindfulness. It culminates with an in-depth exploration of the various types of insight and spiritual fruits that the practice yields. A Manual of Insight is a veritable Bible for any practitioner of vipassana. “A truly important work of one of the greatest contemporary masters, with rich detail and profound insight.” —Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart “Having ordained under Mahasi Sayadaw, I know him as one of the most influential Theravada Buddhist teachers of the 20th century. If your temperament is toward strong samadhi and precise noticing, this book will be an invaluable resource in progressing through the Stages of Insight.” —Rodney Smith, author of Awakening The Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw (1904-1982), U Sobhana Mahathera, was one of the most eminent meditation masters of modern times and a leader in the contemporary resurgence of Vipassana meditation. Placing himself under the guidance of Venerable U Narada Sayadaw and undertaking intensive training in Vipassana meditation, he mastered the technique and went on to popularize vipassana as a systematic practice beneficial for monks and layfolk alike. Thousands of people have been trained at his Thathana Yeiktha Meditation Centre in Yangon and many more have benefited from his clear-cut approach to meditation practice available through his voluminous writings and through the teachings abroad of his disciples, including Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Rodney Smith, and many others.
WHEN AWARENESS BECOMES NATURAL
A Guide to Cultivating Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Sayadaw U Tejaniya $23.50, paper. Shambhala. 192 pages
This is the first popular book from a Southeast Asian Buddhist monk-teacher who is becoming prominent worldwide, particularly in the Insight Meditation community. Meditation is great—but it’s not what Buddhist practice is all about. That’s the message of this engaging and funny Burmese Buddhist monk, and it’s a message that is finding a significant following among Westerners. Sayadaw U Tejaniya teaches how to bring awareness to any sort of activity in order to discover deep insight and liberation from suffering. It works in sitting meditation, but it works just as well when sorting the laundry or doing data entry. My teachings are nothing new. They are, as always, based on the four foundations of mindfulness: awareness of the body, awareness of feelings and sensations, awareness of mind, and understanding of dhamma or nature, i.e., mind and matter. These four foundations are as explained in the Buddha’s discourse on mindfulness, the Satipathana sutta. How I offer these teachings is a reflection of my life and practice and the way in which they are presented is to accommodate the way in which modern yogis live their lives.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya is a Burmese monk in the lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw who teaches meditation at Shwe Oo Min Forest Meditation Center in Yangon. A refreshingly regular guy, he learned to practice mindfulness in the rough-and-tumble world of the Theingyi Zay Bazaar, where he worked in his family’s textile business. He didn’t become a monk until he was forty.
FINDING FREEDOM IN ILLNESS
A Guide to Cultivating Deep Well-Being through Mindfulness and Self-Compassion by Peter Fernando $24.95, paper. Shambhala. 222 pages
“Let your illness be your spiritual teacher!” Say that to someone who’s struggled for years with, say, rheumatoid arthritis, and be prepared for an eyeroll (at best). To Peter Fernando’s credit, he makes that statement, and no such impulse arises. We believe him because he’s been there himself and because he backs up the statements with his own real experiences and with real wisdom from the Buddhist teachings. Peter starts by defusing the pernicious belief that anyone is somehow responsible for their illness: You’re not “wrong” for being sick. Then, having gotten past self-blame, one can begin to learn self-kindness. From BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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there, one moves to mindfulness practices and cultivating body awareness—even if body awareness is distasteful when the body is in pain or isn’t behaving the way you like. Further topics include getting intimate with dark emotions (fear, despair, the scary future, frustration, grief, etc.), learning equanimity (rejoicing in the good fortune of those who don’t share your suffering), cultivating healthy relationships in the midst of everything, and practical advice for living with pain. Each chapter comes with one or more practices or guided meditations for putting the teachings into practice. Most important, you will learn how to access the liberating power of here-and-now awareness and to bring it to bear on your experience of sickness, pain, or disability. This awareness, which never leaves, us, is the source of true well-being. “It is rare when a subject as difficult as illness is so thoroughly embodied that it becomes a gateway to the sacred. It is also exceptional when someone has the wisdom and skill to navigate the reader through that same portal. Peter Fernando’s book does F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
both with such clarity and skill that it leaves the reader determined to use his/her whole life for the same purpose.” —Rodney Smith, author of Awakening: A Paradigm Shift of the Heart “But it’s not just for ‘sick people’: we are all of the nature to sicken, and by taking that into account, we can develop a practice for the ‘bad’ times as well as the ‘good.’”— Ajahn Sucitto, author of Turning the Wheel of Truth
YOU ARE NOT YOUR FAULT AND OTHER REVELATIONS The Collected Wit and Wisdom of Wes “Scoop” Nisker by Wes “Scoop” Nisker
$23.95, paper. Counterpoint. 272 pages
Wes “Scoop” Nisker is an award-winning broadcast journalist and commentator, a renowned Buddhist meditation teacher, a popular author and a captivating performer/comedian. In You are Not Your Fault and Other Revelations, Wes draws on his diverse experiences delivering a collection that brims with the insight, humor and wisdom he is famous for. Compiling for the first time, Wes’ best known essays as well as a selection of recent and never before published work, Wes takes readers on both a cultural journey (a tour through the sixties, through the modern environmental movement, the surge of Buddhism to the West) and a more personal one, exploring the motivation behind humanity’s search for spiritual enlightenment. Surprisingly thoughtful and funny at the same time, Nisker offers good medicine here. An entire generation of listeners recognizes Wes’ voice from listening to KSAN San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, and they will find the same wise, irreverent, thoughtful, funny voice in these pages. Wes Nisker is among the teachers at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. Among his other books are Buddha’s Nature and The Essential Crazy Wisdom. He also has a DVD of his standup cosmic reflection/comedy called Crazy Wisdom Saves the World Again.
SILENCE
The Power of Quiet in a World of Noise by Thich Nhat Hanh
New in Paperback
$19.99, paper. HarperCollins. 240 pages
The Zen master and one of the world’s most beloved teachers returns with a concise, practical guide to understanding and developing our most powerful inner resource— silence—to help us find happiness, purpose, and peace. How apt it seems that this book Silence arrives as Thay himself is in deep silence recovering from a major stroke. Many people embark on a seemingly futile search for happiness, running as if there is somewhere else to get to, when the world they live in is full of wonder. To be alive is a miracle. Beauty calls to us every day, yet we rarely are in the position to listen. To hear the call of beauty and respond to it, we need silence.
Silence shows us how to find and maintain our equanimity amid the barrage of noise in our world. Thich Nhat Hanh guides us on a
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F DHISM Z E N & TF IH B EETAAD N EBRU D
Zen WHAT IS ZEN?
u Will I have an enlightenment experience? u What is the law of karma in a nutshell? u What do Zen Buddhists say about rebirth? u How do you recognize a good, solid Zen teacher?
Plain Talk for a Beginner’s Mind by Norman Fischer & Susan Moon $20.95, paper. Shambhala. 187 pages
This unique introduction to Zen teaching and practice takes the remarkably accessible form of question-and-answer—making it a most useful reference for looking things up. But whether you’re a neophyte or a seasoned practitioner, you’ll want to read the whole thing. The questioner (Susan Moon) and the answerer (Norman Fischer) are old friends (both of them in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind), each with a unique gift for articulation, and their friendly conversation covers not only the basics but a range of issues unique to Zen in North America in the twenty-first century, including: u What is zazen and how do you do it? u Where did Zen start and where did it come from?
This collaborative effort has a playful tone: Susan asks a question on our behalf, Norman answers it, and then Sue challenges him. By the time you get through their conversations, you’ll have a good basic education in Zen ‘What is Zen?’ is a perplexing question, one I’m frequently asked, and one I ask myself, again and again. Norman Fischer and Sue Moon’s conversation is a wonderful, profound, affectionate, and immensely readable answer to this perplexing and ultimately unanswerable question. What Is Zen? is a book I know I’ll return to again and again, whenever the question arises.”—Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being and various key English translations), providing a deeper understanding of the history and etymology of the elusive words than is generally available to the nonspecialist, yet with a clear emphasis on the relevance of the text to practice. It includes a fresh, modern translation of the text, “The Sutra on the Heart of Realizing Wisdom Beyond Wisdom,” by the author and Roshi Joan Halifax.
THE HEART SUTRA
A Comprehensive Guide to the Classic of Mahayana Buddhism by Kazuaki Tanahashi $23.50, paper. Shambhala. 268 pages
This is an illuminating in-depth study of one of the most well-known and recited of all the Buddhist texts. The first-century classic Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra may be the best known of all the Buddhist Scriptures. It’s a key Zen text, chanted daily by many, but is studied extensively in the Tibetan tradition too. In just about thirty-five lines, it expresses the truth of impermanence and the release of suffering that results from the understanding of that truth with a breathtaking economy of language. Kazuaki Tanahashi’s guide to the Heart Sutra is the result of a life spent working with it and living it. He outlines the history and meaning and then analyzes the text line by line in its various forms (Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Mongolian,
Being free of attainment, those who help all to awaken abide in the realization of wisdom beyond wisdom and live with an unhindered mind. Without hindrance, the mind has no fear. Free from confusion, those who lead all to liberation embody profound serenity.
“A masterwork of loving and meticulous scholarship, Kaz hanahashi’s Heart Sutra is a living, breathing, deeply personal celebration of a beloved text, which all readers—Buddhists and non-buddhists, newcomers to the teaching and seasoned scholars alike—will cherish throughout time.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being
DON’T BE A JERK
For curious readers worried that Dogen’s teachings are too philosophically opaque, Don’t Be a Jerk is hilarious, understandable, and wise.
And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japans’ Greatest Zen Master by Brad Warner $23.50, paper. New World Library. 306 pp
The Shobogenzo (The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) is a revered 800-year-old Zen Buddhism classic written by the Japanese monk Eihei Dogen. Despite the timeless wisdom of his teachings, many consider the book difficult to understand and daunting to read. In Don’t Be a Jerk, Zen priest and author Brad Warner, through accessible paraphrasing and incisive commentary, applies Dogen’s teachings to modern times. While Warner is sometimes irreverent—and always entertaining—he is also an astute scholar who sees very modern psychological concepts in Dogen, as well as wisdom on things like feminism and reincarnation. Finally, and most provocatively, Warner shows Dogen offering a “Middle Way” between the currently raging debate between science and religion. path to cultivate calm even in the most chaotic places. This gift of silence doesn’t require hours upon hours of silent meditation or an existing practice of any kind. Through careful breathing and mindfulness techniques he teaches us how to become truly present in the moment, to recognize the beauty surrounding us, and to find harmony. With mindfulness comes stillness—and the silence we need to come back to ourselves and discover who we are and what we truly want, the keys to happiness and well-being. Mindfulness gives you the inner space and quietness that allow you to look deeply, to find out who you are and what you want to do with your life. You won’t feel the need to make yourself run after meaningless pursuits anymore… If you can be here, if you can be free, then you can be happy right here and right now. You don’t have to run anymore. The practice of mindfulness is very simple. You stop, you breathe, and you still your mind… All the wonders of life are already here. They’re calling you. If you can listen to them, you will be able to stop running.
I hope this book will make Dogen accessible to people who aren’t Zen nerds or scholars of ancient Buddhist philosophy… We owe a great debt to the scholars who did the hard work of making Dogen accessible to Western people steeped in Buddhist lore, But I feel like the time is right to present Dogen to everybody else… He has writing for ordinary people like us… He did not leave us a set of doctrines and beliefs he thought we should hold. Rather, he left us a body of writings that try to capture what is essential to all human beings, regardless of what they believe or where they come from or what their personal story might be. He asks us to focus on that instead of focusing on things of lesser value and importance.
Among Brad Warner’s other books are Sit Down and Shut Up and Hardcore Zen.
What you need, what we all need, is silence. Stop the noise in your mind in order for the wondrous sounds of life to be heard. Then you can begin to live your life authentically and deeply.
Tibetan Buddhism ALTRUISM
The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World by Matthieu Ricard $23.99, paper. Little, Brown. 864 pages
New in Paperback
Here the author of the international bestseller Happiness (Ricard is a Tibetan Buddhist monk who some say is the “happiest person in the world”) makes a passionate, beautifully inclusive case for altruism—and why we need it now more than ever. In Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, Matthieu Ricard demonstrated that true happiness is not tied to fleeting moments or sensations, but is an enduring state of soul rooted in mindfulness BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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and compassion for others. Now he turns his lens from the personal to the global, with a rousing argument that altruism—genuine concern for the well-being of others—could be the saving grace of the 21st century. It is, he believes, the vital thread that can answer the main challenges of our time: the economy in the short term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and environment in the long term. Ricard’s message has been taken up by major economists and thinkers, including Dennis Snower, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and George Soros. Ricard makes a robust and passionMatthieu Ricard ate case for cultivatF SPRING - SUMMER 2016
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ing altruistic love and compassion as the best means for simultaneously benefitting ourselves and our society. As Arianna Huffington wrote, it’s “a truly compelling global vision for the 21st century.” And as Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote, “This remarkable book… will blow your mind and inspire you.” “Altruism is just what is needed to bring hope to those depressed by the violence, war, selfishness and corruption that surround us today. Matthieu Ricard provides convincing evidence based on both careful research and personal experience that altruism is an integral part of our nature with the desire to help others not only present in small children, but also in many animals. Altruism addresses how these qualities can be cultivated and enhanced in the individual and how a more altruistic society is not only possible but essential if we care about the future. Matthieu, thank you for writing this book.” —Jane Goodall, UN Messenger of Peace Also by Matthieu Ricard is Why Meditate?
A FEARLESS HEART
How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives New in by Thupten Jinpa Paperback $22.00, paper. Knopf.
In this extraordinary book, the longtime English translator of His Holiness the Dalai Lama seeks to redefine compassion as something we can all grasp, and to reposition it in our lives and in our society as something we want to do—not just something we should do. By presenting a systematic training of our mind and heart, this book maps the way to making compassion our basic stance, the very anchor of a happier, less stressful, more fulfilling life and a more stable and peaceful world. Perhaps counterintuitively, compassion makes us more optimistic, because although it is focused on suffering, it is an energized state concerned with the ultimately positive wish for the end of suffering as well as the possibility of doing something about it.
Based on the landmark course in compassion training Jinpa helped create at Stanford Medical School, A Fearless Heart shows us how we actually fear compassion. We worry that if we are too compassionate with others we will be taken advantage of, and if we are too compassionate with ourselves we will turn into slackers. Using science, insights from both classical Buddhist and western psychology, and stories both from others and from his own extraordinary life, Jinpa shows us how to train our compassion muscle to ease depression and change/bless/enjoy our world. We were born at the mercy of someone else’s care. We grew up and survived into adulthood because we received care from others. Even at the height of our autonomy as adults, the presence or absence of others’ affection powerfully defines our happiness or misery. This is human nature—we’re vulnerable, and it’s a good thing. A fearless heart embraces this fundamental truth of our human condition. We can develop the courage to see and be more compassionately in the world, to live our lives with our hearts wide open to the pain—and joy—of being human on this planet.
“Brilliantly clear and heartfelt, a potentially life-changing work offering inspiring training. Personally moving, eminently practical, and visionary in scope.” —Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart
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T H E D H FA R HM E AA A D NE DR TF H E T A O Tao is a way of deep reflection and learning from nature, considered the highest teacher. It shows us how to follow the energy flows within the heavens, the earth, and our own bodies.
Shambhala Teachings
NATURAL BRAVERY
Fear and Fearlessness as a Direct Path of Awakening by Gaylon Ferguson $21.95, paper. Shambhala. 252 pages
Increasingly, we seem to live in a culture of fear, amid threats of terrorism, violence, environmental disasters, and distrust in our leaders. Fear and groundlessness are pervasive, but according to Shambhala Buddhist teacher Gaylon Ferguson, it is the very potency of this fear that makes it such a powerful tool for personal and cultural transformation. Natural Bravery offers wise and pointed teachings for helping us to look at fear with immediacy and courage, and to engage with it as a path to transform ourselves—and the world. Walking this path, we learn to cultivate fearlessness and to connect more deeply with others and with the natural world.
With lucid instruction and deep insight, Towler distills a lifetime’s study to guide you through meditations, movement and breathing practices, subtle energy exercises, and inner reflections—all to help you to embody “the Way” in every aspect of your life.
The most pressing question on the spiritual path becomes this: in our homes and workplaces, neighbourhoods and bioregions, are we expressing wakefulness or weakness, cowardice or courage?... We are the artists of our lives and of our collective destiny, co-creating a disastrous or healthy future: it’s up to us. May all our innate seeds of natural bravery flower as communities of compassionate courage.
I recommend reading each verse and trying to understand it on your own first…
These teachings really work. Gaylon Ferguson presents traditional Buddhist teachings to show that the fear that so often wreaks havoc on us is in fact quite insubstantial— and it’s mostly something we create ourselves. If we can learn to see that, it becomes pretty simple to un-create it, and we also discover that there’s a natural fearlessness in us that goes far deeper than fear. With this natural bravery as our foundation, we can live our own lives more effectively and also be a better help and comfort to others. “In Natural Bravery, Gaylon Ferguson has honed the Shambhala teachings into an insightful expedition on which we discover fear to be a gift of our own basic goodness. By engaging in these contemplations, we can empower ourselves to move from fear to fearlessness in every aspect of our lives.”—Sakyong Mipham, author of The Shambhala Principle
Integrating Body and Emotion in the Cosmic Flow by Mantak Chia & Joyce Thom $23.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 274 pages, colour illustrations throughout
$32.45, paper. Shambhala. 352 pages
At the beginning of a North American teaching career that would span seventeen years, the meditation master Chögyam Trungpa conducted five pivotal seminars covering various dharmic topics. The transcripts from these seminars are collected here so that readers can experience them right at home. Comprising twenty-six talks in total, each one followed by a Q&A, Glimpses of the Profound is sure to provoke glimpses of all kinds: glimpses that inspire you to look further, glimpses that give you confidence, glimpses that upset the apple cart, glimpses that open your heart, glimpses that undermine falsity, glimpses that awaken you to your boundless potential. This book was originally published as four separate volumes by Vajradhatu Publications. Judith Lief has written a new introduction. Chogyam Trungpa (1939-1987)—meditation master, teacher, and artist—was the founder of Naropa University and Shambhala Training and is the author of several books, including Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and Meditation in Action.
$21.95, paper. Shambhala. 208 pages
Dzigar Kongtrul is the man who is Pema Chödron’s teacher. Though tonglen and lojong are ancient practices, it has been Pema more than anyone else who has popularized them in our own time. This further exploration of them shows this teacher’s gift for making Tibetan Buddhist wisdom completely comprehensible to Western minds and hearts. He’s insightful and sometimes funny, and he uses examples everyone can relate to. Dzigar Kongtrul’s lively and accessible presentation of the Tibetan training method known as lojong (mind training) focuses on what he considers the heart of that practice: tonglen, the practice of exchanging self for other, for taking in others’ pain and suffering and sending out kindness, ease, and consolation. It’s a powerful method for developing compassion of the most tranformative kind—we could call it indus-
trial-strength kindness—and its supreme expression is found in the classic text The Great Path of Awakening by Jamgon Kongtrl. This book is Dzigar Kongtrl’s commentary on that beloved text, based on a series of talks he gave on it. It includes his fresh translation of the Great Path, and it is full of his characteristic humor as well as his skill in translating esoteric concepts into terms that not only are easily understood but that speak directly to the heart.
Taoism & Chi Energetics PRACTICING THE TAO TE CHING 81 Steps of the Way by Solala Towler
$23.50, paper. Sounds True. 306 pages
Most people think of the Tao Te Ching as a book on philosophy or a treatise on leadership. Yet there is a little-known treasure hidden within the familiar passages of Lao Tzu’s work: step-by-step practical guidance for the spiritual journey. With Practicing the Tao Te Ching, renowned teacher Solala Towler reveals a new facet to this spiritual classic, offering accessible practice instructions paired with each of the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
Solala Towler is editor of The Empty Vessel, a widely respected journal of Taoist philosophy and practice. He teaches qigong and sound healing, and is also the author of the book, The Tao of Intimacy and Ecstasy
Mantak Chia
Four Short Works by Chogyam Trungpa
A Guide to the Compassionate Life by Dzigar Kongtrul
Next, read and contemplate the commentary. I have brought together materials from several Taoist masters and teachers in order to make each chapter clear and easy to understand. Then, read the practice. When you feel ready to engage it, be sure to closely follow my instructions. Many of the practices have physical or energetic aspects that need to be done precisely; others are to use whenever a particular situation arises; and some give guidance on how to live a life of balance and clarity… Another way to work with the Tao Te Ching is to use it as a divination tool, as people have been doing for thousands of years. You can do the same with this book.
CRANIOSACRAL CHI KUNG
GLIMPSES OF THE PROFOUND
THE INTELLIGENT HEART
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Exploring the connections between Western craniosacral therapy and Chi Kung, Taoist master Mantak Chia and craniosacral instructor Joyce Thom detail movement exercises, breathwork practices, self-massage techniques, and focused meditations from Taoist and other wisdom traditions to release and harmonize the flow of energy in the body and optimize our potential for physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The authors link the craniosacral rhythm—the gentle flow of cerebrospinal fluid from the head (cranium) to the tailbone (sacrum)—and the flow of chi throughout the body, circulated by the pumps of the three tan tiens. They explain how these subtle energetic flows indicate the harmony or disharmony of the whole person and are greatly affected by physical traumas, chronic tensions, and unresolved emotions. For example, the psoas muscle, known in Taoism as the muscle of the Soul, connects the spine to the legs and is the first muscle to contract when anger or fear triggers our fight-or-flight response. Often a storehouse of subconscious stressors, this muscle’s sensitivity is connected to many common ailments like back pain. Providing step-by-step illustrated exercise instructions, the authors explain how to identify and unwind energetic blockages and emotional and physiological knots. They explore emotional intelligence exercises for tuning in to our hearts so we can listen to our bodies’ messages and learn to relieve related emotional burdens. They also reveal how to activate the cranial, respiratory/cardiac, and sacral pumps of the three tan tiens to optimize the body’s energetic flow and explain how, when our energy is flowing freely, we can enter the Cosmic Flow—a state of calm well-being and extraordinary creativity where we find ourselves truly at one with the universe. Among Mantak Chia’s other books are Healing Light of the Tao and Chi Self-Massage.
SEALING OF THE FIVE SENSES
Advanced Practices for Becoming a Taoist Immortal by Mantak Chia & William Wei $22.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 160 pages, colour photos & illustrations
In ancient times, the Sealing of the Five Senses involved both Taoist Inner Alchemy and physical sealing of the sensory organs to prepare the master for extended periods of astral travel and meditation, during which he would remain completely motionless for years at a time! In modern times, physical sealing of the senses with wax is no longer required; however, in order to accumulate profound energy and gather cosmic light for the immortal spirit body one must stop the energy losses that occur through the senses. In this guide to energetic sealing of the senses, Master Mantak Chia and William Wei reveal the 9 inner alchemy formulas for the Sealing of the Five Senses practice, including strengthening the senses, connecting the senses to the organs, activating the Thrusting Channels, and harnessing the energies of the Big Dipper and the North Star. They explain how to stop energy losses through the five senses and transmute warm chi into energy for the immortal spirit body. The authors explore the importance of proper diet and eating habits in this practice, providing striking examples of World War II concentration camp survivors who were able to obtain energy from chewing water. Revealing the benefits of Sealing the Five Senses for non-Immortals, the authors explain how abuse of the senses leads to energy loss and degradation, for example, listening too much hurts the mind and crying too much harms your blood. They show how sealing the senses allows one to create the Crystal Room cauldron, where fire and water energy can couple to generate a superior essence used to achieve greater awareness and steam all the body’s major organ systems. An advanced practice for those who have mastered the three Kan and Li practices, the Sealing of the Five Senses is the final step on the Taoist path to Immortality.
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Healing Body Mind THE GOOD GUT
Taking Control of Your Weight, Your Mood, and Your LongTerm Health by Justin & Erica Sonnenburg, with Andrew Weil New in $23.00, paper. Penguin. Paperback 320 pages
Stanford’s Justin and Erica Sonnenburg are pioneers in the most exciting and potentially transformative field in the entire realm of human health and wellness, the study of the relationship between our bodies and the trillions of organisms representing thousands of species to which our bodies play host, the microbes that we collectively call the microbiota. The microbiota interacts with our bodies in a number of powerful ways; the Sonnenburgs argue that it determines in no small part whether were sick or healthy, fit or obese, sunny or moody. The microbiota has always been with us, and in fact has coevolved with humans, entwining its functions with ours so deeply, the Sonnenburgs show us, humans are really composite organisms having both microbial and human parts. But now, they argue, because of changes to diet, antibiotic over-use, and over-sterilization, our gut microbiota is facing a mass extinction event, which is causing our bodies to go haywire, and may be behind the mysterious spike in some of our most troubling modern afflictions, from food allergies to autism, cancer to depression. It doesn’t have to be this way. The Good Gut offers a new plan for health that focuses on how to nourish your microbiota, including recipes and a menu plan. In this groundbreaking work, the Sonnenburgs show how we can keep our microbiota off the endangered species list and how we can strengthen the community that inhabits our gut and thereby improve our own health. How to do so is a very individual question, and the answer changes as you age. Should you take probiotic dietary supplements? Do they work? Which ones are most effective? What about fermented foods, so prominent in the diets of East Asians? (I believe we should be making and eating more of them.) This book tells you how to tackle all of these questions. —from the foreword by Andrew Weil, MD
In this important and timely investigation, the Sonnenburgs look at safe alternatives to antibiotics; dietary and lifestyle choices to encourage microbial health; the management of the aging microbiota; and the nourishment of your own individual microbiome.
THE FEAR CURE
Cultivating Courage as Medicine for the Body, Mind and Soul by Lissa Rankin $16.99, paper. Hay House. 336 pages
In The Fear Cure, the physician and author of Mind Over Medicine presents a breakthrough understanding of how fear literally makes us sick—and how cultivating courage can help us chart a path back to wellness and an authentic, soul-centered life. Not many people in the medical world are talking about how being afraid can make us sick— but the truth is that fear, left untreated, becomes a serious risk factor for conditions
from heart disease to diabetes to cancer. Now Lissa Rankin, M.D., explains why we need to heal ourselves from the fear that puts our health at risk—and shows us how fear can ultimately cure us by opening our eyes to all that needs healing in our lives. Drawing on peer-reviewed studies and powerful true stories, The Fear Cure charts a path back to wellness and wholeness on every level. We learn: u How a fearful thought translates into physiological changes that predispose us to illness u How to tell true fear (the kind that arises from a genuine threat) from false fear (which triggers stress responses that undermine health) u How to tune in to the voice of courage inside—our “Inner Pilot Light” u How to reshape our relationship to uncertainty so that it’s no longer something to dread, but a doorway to new possibilities u What our fears can teach us about who we really are. At the intersection of science and spirituality, The Fear Cure identifies the Four Fearful Assumptions that lie at the root of all fears—from the sense that we’re alone in the universe to the belief that we can’t handle losing what we love—and shifts them into Four Courage-Cultivating Truths that pave our way to not only physical well-being, but deep awakening. Using exercises from a wide range of mind-body practices and spiritual traditions, Dr. Rankin teaches us how to map our own courage-cultivating journey.
QUANTUM HEALING
Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine, Revised & Updated by Deepak Chopra $21.00, paper. Bantam. 344 pages
Inspired by the unexplained recovery of patients in his own practice who had been given just a few months to live, Dr. Chopra began his search for answers. After returning to his native India to explore humanity’s most ancient healing tradition, Ayurveda, he combined those insights with Western medicine, neuroscience, and physics. What he discovered—a “network of intelligence” in the human body with the potential to defeat cancer, heart disease, even aging itself— forms the basis of Quantum Healing. In this new edition, adding the latest scientific research as well as expanded thoughts on the connection between body and mind, Dr. Chopra once again offers a fascinating intellectual journey and a deeply moving chronicle of hope and healing. If asked for an exact definition of quantum healing, I would say this: quantum healing is the ability of one mode of consciousness (the mind) to spontaneously correct the mistakes of another mode of consciousness (the body). It is a completely self-enclosed process. If pressed for a shorter definition, I would say simply that quantum healing makes peace. When consciousness is fragmented, it starts a way of the mind-body system. This war lies behind many diseases, giving rise to what modern medicine calls their psychosomatic component. The rishis might call it “the fear born of duality,” and they would consider it not a component but the chief cause of all illness.
Healing Energies, Healing Herbs THE BOOK OF HO’OPONOPONO The Hawaiian Practice of Forgiveness and Healing by Luc Bodin
$17.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 160 pages, b/w illustrations
Based on an ancestral Hawaiian shamanic ritual, the healing practice of Ho’oponopono teaches you to cleanse your consciousness of negative memories, unconscious fears, and dysfunctional programming and grant yourself forgiveness, peace, and love. The process is deceptively simple—first you must recognize your own responsibility for creating the events in your life, then you are ready to apply the mantra of Ho’oponopono: I’m sorry, Forgive me, Thank you, I love you. Repeated several times over a dedicated interval, the negativity is replaced with inner peace, love, and harmony—and, as the stories in this book show, sometimes even miracles take place. In this step-by-step guide, the authors explain how to apply Ho’oponopono to traumatic past events, destructive thought patterns, family dynamics, daily annoyances, or any other disagreeable event in your life, from traffic jams to relationship breakups. Drawing on quantum physics and epigenetics, they explore how Ho’oponopono works—how thoughts and consciousness can affect the expression of your DNA, the materialization of your goals, and the behavior of those around you. They explain how negative thought patterns and memories unconsciously guide your life and draw more negativity to you, perpetuating the cycle of bad events and clouding your recollection of the past. By apologizing to yourself, your memory, and the event in question, you can forgive yourself, heal your memories, and cleanse your perceptions. By reconciling with yourself, you open your heart to love for your experiences, yourself, and others and bring harmony to your mind, body, and the world around you.
LLEWELLYN’S COMPLETE BOOK OF CHAKRAS
Your Definitive Source for Energy Center Knowledge for Health, Happiness, and Spiritual Evolution by Cyndi Dale $45.95, paper. Llewellyn. 960 pages, 8x10, colour & b/w illustrations
“Deepak Chopra illuminates our true innate capacity for healing, growth, and evolution. With the wisdom of an experienced BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
doctor, girded by science, he guides us to reclaim our natural power towards thriving. Chopra’s work is paradigm-changing for medicine and helpful beyond measure for every human being seeking to evolve, flourish, and know our true nature.”—Lisa Miller, Ph.D., author of The Spiritual Child and director of clinical psychology, Columbia University, Teachers College
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Powerful centers of subtle energy situated along our spine from root to crown, the chakras have fascinated us humans for thousands of years. With this mammoth work on subtle energetics, you can discover what chakras are and how they work; explore how to work with chakras for personal growth and healing; and learn how our underF SPRING - SUMMER 2016
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standing of chakras has transformed through history and across culture. In Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Chakras, Cyndi Dale, one of the world’s foremost writers on chakras and energy healing, presents the most comprehensive, practical, and readable guide ever written on the topic. Lively and accessible, this definitive encyclopedia explores the science, history, practices, and structures of subtle energy systems, with chakras as the center point, distilling and synthesizing 12,000 years of cross-cultural knowledge. It features full-colour illustrations, plus a wealth of exercises that you can use to directly experience chakra healing and clearing. This book shows you how to use subtle energy for healing, attracting what you need, obtaining guidance, and expanding your consciousness. Among Cyndi Dale’s other books are Energetic Boundaries and The Subtle Body Practice Manual.
HOW TO USE A PENDULUM FOR DOWSING AND DIVINATION
Answer questions, find lost objects, heal body and mind, and more by Ronald Bonewitz Multimedia & Lilian Verner-Bonds Learning Kit
$32.95. Weiser. 160-page book, fold-out chart, and metal pendulum with chain
Anyone can learn to use a pendulum. This powerful tool brings together the left and right sides of the brain and acts as an antenna, helping you tune into your intuition and pick up on energies and vibrations emitted by people, objects, and places. Crammed with practical exercises, dowsing charts, and maps, all accompanied by easy-to-follow instructions, this pack includes everything you need to get started. Follow the simple exercises to discover how to interpret the movements of the pendulum and your yes and no responses; then begin to experiment with a whole host of applications. Answer questions, make decisions, predict events, find your ideal partner or job, locate lost objects, search for missing people or pets, uncover hidden treasure or archaeological remains, detect water, dowse over maps, improve health, balance chakras, and more. Whether using your pendulum just for fun or as a tool to seek guidance in your life, you’ll be amazed at the results. This unique kit includes a 160-page book, fold-out dowsing charts, and a real pendulum with a metal chain.
NATURAL REMEDIES FOR LOW TESTOSTERONE
How to Enhance Male Sexual Health and Energy by Stephen Harrod Buhner $17.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 179 pp.
Refreshingly informative, this book shows how to maintain optimum testosterone levels for the male body through the use of herbs, nutritional supplements, and diet. It contains the most up-to-date natural treatments for impotence, infertility, and pros-
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REIKI FOR LIFE
Energy Healing
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Herbal Savvy
THE HERBAL APOTHECARY
The Complete Guide to Reiki Practice for Levels 1, 2 & 3 by Penelope Quest
100 Medicinal Herbs and How to Use Them by JJ Pursell
$23.00, paper. Tarcher. 400 pages
$35.95, paper. Timber. 292 pages, 7x9, colour photos
This is an expanded and updated edition of a strong-selling Reiki classic from Penelope Quest, an internationally renowned authority on this increasingly popular energy healing practice. Quest’s seminal guide, originally written in 2010, has been fully updated and includes teachings from American Reiki Master William Lee Rand, who recently developed a new form of Reiki called Holy Fire Reiki. An exciting and comprehensive handbook, Reiki for Life contains everything readers need to know about the healing art of Reiki, including basic routines, details about the power and potential of each level, special techniques for enhancing Reiki practice, and helpful direction on the use of Reiki toward spiritual growth. Quest also compares the origins and development of Reiki in the West and the East, revealing methods specific to the original Japanese Reiki tradition. Suitable for beginners, experienced practitioners, and teachers alike, this book: u Explains what Reiki is and how it works u Gives detailed instruction in First and Second Degree techniques u Illustrates how to perform Reiki on yourself, as well as on others u Advises on how to become a Reiki Master/teacher u Includes special advanced methods for working with Reiki. Complete with illustrations and a useful section of resources, Reiki for Life is a musthave for the tens of thousands of Western seekers ready to learn about this fast-growing healing practice. Also by Penelope Quest are Self-Healing with Reiki and Living Reiki Healing Cards.
Plant-based medicines offer many healing possibilities for the body, mind, and spirit. In this holistic guide, naturopath J. J. Pursell of Portland’s The Herb Shoppe provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to medicinal plants, explaining how they work and how to use them safely. Incorporating traditional wisdom and scientific information, The Herbal Apothecary includes advice on growing and foraging for healing plants and recommendations for plantbased formulations to fight common ailments, like muscle strain, anxiety, and insomnia. An A-Z of 100 herbs highlights each plant’s medicinal uses. Herbal treatments are organized by condition. Step-by-step instructions show you how to make your own teas, salves, capsules, tinctures, and other essential herbal remedies. Whether you want to treat a wound or fight the common cold, taking charge of your health and well-being begins here. One thing most herbal professionals do agree about is that herbs serve particular functions when they are consumed: u Herbs help the body eliminate waste… u Herbs promote healing… u Herbs increase overall energy in the body… As an herbalist turned biochemist, turned naturopathic physician, I am a gatherer of information. This book is my attempt to share some of what I’ve learned about herbs. I think its components will help you understand herbal medicine in a philosophical, scientific, and traditional way. By weaving in anatomy, plant descriptions, and herbal treatment ideas, I have provided information that I hope will help you view this dynamic system from a holistic perspective to gain a clear understanding of how and when to use plants as medicine.
GENTLE ENERGY TOUCH
“Well-researched and exceptionally well-written, The Herbal Apothecary is a brilliant addition to any herbal library.” —Rosemary Gladstar, author of Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide.
$24.95, paper. Conari. 240 pages, photos
SECRET MEDICINES FROM YOUR GARDEN
The Beginner’s Guide to Hands-On Healing by Barbara Savin Imagine being able to utilize the power of your mind for the purpose of healing with Universal Energy—just by asking. Gentle Energy Touch, a form of energy medicine pioneered by Barbara Savin, does just that by using intention to begin the healing process of an individual. In Gentle Energy Touch readers will learn some of Savin’s basic, hands-on techniques for assisting the body’s natural ability to heal itself. The beauty of the Gentle Energy Touch approach is that while it can produce results on its own, it also complements all medical treatments and modalities, often shortening treatment and speeding healing. It is particularly effective for pain management and has also been used successfully to treat depression and anxiety, skin problems, heart disease, even cancer, mitigating the nastiest side effects of conventional treatment and generally helping the body marshal its own resources for getting well.
Plants for Healing, Spirituality & Magic by Ellen Evert Hopman $23.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 336 pages, b/w & colour illustrations
Weaving together ancient wisdom, mystical folklore, and modern plant research, master herbalist Ellen Evert Hopman explores the many uses of flowers, trees, common weeds, and ornamental plants for food, medicine, spiritual growth, and magical rituals. She reveals the herbal lore surrounding each plant, drawing on traditional knowledge and remedies from around the world, including Native American, Celtic, and Egyptian traditions. She includes recipes throughout so you can make medicines from wild and domesticated plants easily found in yards, forests, meadows, and hedgerows, and she discusses what to plant to ensure you have leaves, berries, and flowers all year. The author reveals how to quickly intuit an unknown plant’s properties using the signatures of plants—universal indications and contraindications based on the form, color, and location of a plant. She includes an in-depth section on honey and Bee Medicine, allowing you to appreciate the labors of these plant-dependent insects. Exploring the magical role of herbs in ancient ritual, Hopman provides recipes for Egyptian temple incense and their sacred medicine known as Kyphi or Kaphet, used to purify the body, banish insomnia, and promote vivid dreaming. She explores shamanic Plant Spirit and Animal Spirit Medicine as well as herbal astrology. She also explains the triangle formula-making system of her herbal mentor William LeSassier to help you develop custom herbal remedies tailored to a person’s unique strengths and weaknesses. Showing how to easily incorporate wild plants into your life to receive their healing benefits throughout the seasons, Hopman reveals and celebrates the bounty our Mother Nature is providing.
Healing is accomplished by starting from a place of unconditional love for yourself. This is important because your ability to heal will be diminished if you hold judgments or limited expectations. As this energy flows through a person’s energy field, it becomes charged with positive energy, thereby raising the vibratory level within the body.
Gentle Energy Touch includes simple explanations of the chakras and auras and how energy moves—and gets stuck—in the body, and then guides readers through an energy healing session including discussion of inviting in Universal Energy, the various ideal hands-on positions for different ailments, and a closing and grounding at the end. Numerous exercises demonstrate the effects of Gentle Energy Touch, and more than 50 photographs show readers the proper positioning for hands-on healing. “I have sent countless friends to Barbara, and I am thrilled that she can share her gifts with you through this book.” —Pat Benatar, 4-time Grammy winner tate disease. The recognition of andropause, the middle-age stage in male development comparable to women’s menopause, is hampered by the lack of a clear outward manifestation of the chemistry and physiology specific to aging men. Men are still capable of reproduction well into and beyond middle age. Yet a man’s sexual desire and potency varies, often according to his testosterone level. Recent studies show that the lowered testosterone levels endemic in aging men—a gradual drop that is quite normal—are being exacerbated by environmental agents. Testosterone-blocking estrogen agents are present in insecticides, industrial materials, pharmaceuticals, and foods. Men are daily inundated with a cocktail of estrogen agents that alter the fine balance of testosterone
that makes them male. But as recent medical research has revealed, testosterone replacement therapy with Low T drugs is not a good option because of the increased risk of cardiovascular problems, such as heart attack and stroke, and because the body can become dependent on pharmaceutical testosterone and stop producing any on its own. In this updated edition of The Natural Testosterone Plan, Stephen Harrod Buhner shows why men need help to maintain their testosterone levels as they age and explains how naturally occurring phytoandrogens— plant medicines that contain male hormones—can safely remedy the depletion exerted by the environment. Buhner details how each phytoandrogen works, when its use is indicated, and the most appropriate method of application, providing all men with safe, natural, and effective means of maintaining optimum testosterone levels well into old age. Among Buhner’s many other books are The Secret Teachings of Plants and Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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Bodywork & Somatics THE CONCISE BOOK OF MUSCLES 3rd Edition by Chris Jarmey & John Sharkey
$41.95, paper. North Atlantic. 244 pages, 8x11, 300 colour illustrations
Updated with the latest human anatomy and biomechanics research, the third edition of this authoritative, best-selling book offers a comprehensive introduction to emerging explanations of new models of living motion and human architecture. Detailed, full-color anatomical drawings and clear, succinct text identify all the major mus-
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cles, showing the origin, insertion, action, and innervation of each muscle. Designed to make complex topics easily accessible to medical students and anyone interested in anatomy and movement, The Concise Book of Muscles is a quick, information-packed, and user-friendly guide to this rapidly-growing and important field. A clear, simple guide for students of anatomy as well as an excellent resource for athletes, massage therapists, and anyone interested in the workings of the human body, this user-friendly book is organized around six muscle groups. They include muscles of the face, head, and neck; the trunk; the shoulder and upper arm; the forearm and hand; the hip and thigh; and the leg and foot. Each of the groups is given a distinctive colour to make it easy to identify, and each muscle is shown in its relationship to the skeleton. Each gets a complete profile, including origin/insertion, action of the muscle, which nerve controls it, movements that use it, and exercises
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Body Wisdom Skills
Movement and Touch
THE HANDBOOK OF BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY & SOMATIC PSYCHOLOGY
AGING BACKWARDS
10 Years Younger and 10 Years Lighter in 30 Minutes a Day by Miranda Esmonde-White $24.95, paper. Random House. 288 pages, 7x9, colour photos
edited by Gustl Marlock & Halko Weiss
New in Paperback
$128.99, cloth. North Atlantic. 950 pages, 8x10, b/w illustrations
The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology provides a comprehensive overview of body-centered psychotherapies, which stress the centrality of the body to overcoming psychological distress, trauma, and mental illness. Psychologists and therapists are increasingly incorporating these somatic or body-oriented therapies into their practices, making mind-body connections that enable them to provide better care for their clients. Designed as a standard text for somatic psychology courses, The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology contains 100 cutting-edge essays and studies by respected professionals from around the world on such topics as the historical roots of Body Psychotherapy; the role of the body in developmental psychology; EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and other specific techniques; the therapeutic relationship in Body Psychotherapy; and much more, as well as helpful case studies and essays on the use of Body Psychotherapy for specific disorders. This anthology will be indispensible for students of clinical and counseling psychology, somatic psychology, and various forms of body-based therapy (including dance and movement therapies), and is also an essential reference work for most practicing psychotherapists, regardless of their therapeutic orientation. “Without being able to relate to one’s body as the container of one’s self-experience, true integration, empowerment, and thus healing is not possible. Only when we are able to quiet down, get in touch with ourselves, and master our inner physical experiences, can we regain the capacity to use our normal resources, as well as speech and language, to convey to others what we feel, know, and ‘remember.’ Body Psychotherapy helps with both these processes. I can therefore strongly recommend this handbook.” —from the foreword by Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain, and Body in the Transformation of Trauma
This ground-breaking guide, from Montreal-based stretch and bio-mechanics trainer Miranda Esmonde-White, helps us understand how aging happens in our cells and how to maintain and repair those cells—and roll back joint pain and muscle loss at any age—through gentle, scientifically designed “anti-aerobics” workouts based on Classical Stretch and Essentrics, developed by the author and star of PBS’s Classical Stretch series. It’s never too late to slow down, or even reverse, the effects of aging. The human body is designed to function for the full length of its life—and with gentle, full-body flexibility and strengthening exercises we can look and feel tremendous, vibrant and active at any age, and well into our senior years. After all, the body is the world’s most efficient self-healing machine. And yet, remarkably, many of us neglect the single most important system in the body—the one that makes all the others work—our muscles. The old adage of “use it or lose it” is true, but Miranda’s fitness and anti-aging breakthrough has come from understanding that how you use it is all-important. You need to strengthen and stretch all 650 muscles in the body in a balanced way that enhances overall strength, posture, cardiovascular health and mobility; eliminates joint pain; and burns calories. This book tells why and shows how, in “The Eight Age-Reversing Workouts,” with step-by-step photos and clear descriptions that explain the finer points. The typical message we get as we age is that we can move less and should take it easy—exactly the wrong advice. Surprisingly, fitness enthusiasts often do as much harm to their bodies as people living sedentary lives. Ligaments are virtually ignored by most exercises routines and yet joint health is essential in order to remain active. With Aging Backwards we can slow or prevent the onset of many afflictions, and often reverse their symptoms. I will explain how the ESSENTRICS technique not only reconnects you with your body’s innate strength and grace on a daily basis but also reconnects you with the joyful pleasure of movement in every aspect of your life, increasing your energy, smoothing and firming your skin, and bringing a sparkle back into your eyes.
ACCESSING THE HEALING POWER OF THE VAGUS NERVE
Self-Help Exercises for Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, and Autism by Stanley Rosenberg
THE TOUCH REMEDY
$32.49, paper. North Atlantic. 224 pages, 30 b/w illustrations
Hand-On Solutions to De-Stress Your Life by Michelle Ebbin
Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve is a practical guide to understanding the cranial nerves as the key to our psychological and physical wellbeing. Drawing from the polyvagal theory of Steven Porges—one of the biggest new developments in human neurobiology—Rosenberg explains in easy-to-understand terms how the vagus nerve, in particular, has a strong role in determining our psychological and emotional state, especially when it comes to how we relate and react to other people. By understanding the physiology of the autonomic nervous system and practicing simple exercises to restore proper vagal functioning, we can learn how to improve our emotional state within minutes. Those suffering from anxiety, depression, panic, and trauma will find much that is useful here, as well as those with physical ailments such as chronic pain and digestive problems. Additionally, because the vagus nerve is a key regulator of social interaction, therapy for proper vagal functioning has great potential for helping those with autism spectrum disorders. Following a detailed explanation of the cranial nerves, the polyvagal theory, and how craniosacral therapy can assist with restoring proper neuroception, Rosenberg provides self-help exercises to test ventral vagal function and to improve the function of the cranial nerves. A separate chapter addresses how we might rethink common psychological problems via vagal theory, including anxiety, panic, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as autism, ADHD, and more. Rosenberg also includes case studies throughout from his twenty years of experience as a craniosacral therapist.
$31.00, paper. HarperCollins. 246 pages, 7x9, b/w photos
Human beings are wired for touch. Touch is critical to our physical and mental health. And for centuries, cultures around the globe have employed touch as a powerful force for healing. Yet North America is an increasingly touch-deprived, high-stress culture, and we are paying for it with our wellbeing. This book shows not only what we’re missing, but many ways to “be in touch.” Science proves that we all have a fundamental need to touch and be touched. Truth be told, we could all use an extra hug, or better yet a soothing foot massage, every now and then. With The Touch Remedy I aim to promote awareness of the important role that simple, daily touch plays in leading happy, healthy lives—and to empower you to take your well-being quite literally into your own hands… With the touch remedies in this book, you really can transform your life and the lives of those around you, for just as stress is contagious, touch can be contagious too, making you and everyone around you happier, healthier, and more connected. I invite you to start your own touch revolution with a compassionate call to action: Inspire and cultivate more touch in the world.
Touch therapist Michelle Ebbin demonstrates how the ancient—yet only effective in the living present—wisdom of touch can change your life, calm your growls and gripes, and feed your sense of connection. A fresh, contemporary approach which draws on a unique combination of ancient wisdom and cutting edge research, The Touch Remedy offers proven touch therapy solutions to calm and heal every member of the family, from babies to grandparents to pets. Demystifying time-tested touch therapy techniques such as Acupressure, Reflexology, Cranial Sacral Therapy, among others, Ebbin shares her invaluable insight and provides clear, step-by-step remedies, accompanied by full-colour photos, to relieve a range of physical and emotional stressors, from back pain and headache to anxiety. Her solutions are quick, taking only two-to-three minutes each, and easy, requiring only three steps, and most of the remedies can be done anytime, anywhere, even on the go. In addition, Ebbin shows how touch therapy offers powerful strategies to improve intimacy in relationships, bond with your children, and improve communication through touch. and stretches that strengthen it. Previous books on this subject have shown muscles as flat images. The Concise Book of Muscles takes readers “inside” the muscles, explaining their mechanics and function in words and pictures. Illustrated with realistic three-dimensional drawings with a handy lie-flat binding. Chris Jarmey taught anatomy, shiatsu, qigong, and bodywork therapy throughout Europe. He is author of Acupressure for Common Ailments, Concise Book of the Moving Body, and other books.
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When we change our emotional state from one of pain and confusion to one of wellbeing and feeling safe, we feel better, think more clearly, and have better interactions with others. The healing power of the vagus nerve removes negative feelings blocking our true potential; by restoring vagal functioning, we can naturally shift our behavior to get the most out of life.
FUNCTIONAL ANATOMY OF THE PILATES CORE
An Illustrated Guide to a Safe and Effective Core Training Program by Evan Osar, Bussard $38.95, paper. North Atlantic. 174 pages, 8x10, colour photos
This book is the first to illustrate the essential connection between the functional anatomy of the body’s core and its application during Pilates’ fundamental core exerBRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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cises. Focusing on the inherent potential of the human body to stabilize and move, Dr. Evan Osar and Marylee Bussard combine the most current research around core stabilization with six fundamental Pilates principles to offer simple, easy-to-use strategies for relieving discomfort and improving pain-free movement. With more than 290 full-color illustrations, F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
Functional Anatomy of the Pilates Core provides both Pilates practitioners and professional teachers with a comprehensive understanding of how the core functions and how stabilization helps promote health and proper movement patterns through the development of balanced muscles, joint alignment, and core control. The authors apply current research on neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to reorganize itself by developing new neuronal connections, and on the function of fascia, the matrix-like connective tissue of the body, to explain the six fundamental principles of Pilates—Centering, Concentration, Control, Precision, Breath, and Flow. They show how to avoid muscle imbalances, chronic tightness,
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and pain by incorporating the principles of functional anatomy during exercise. Readers learn how to: u Achieve the alignment, breathing, and control required for developing optimal posture and movement u Alleviate non-optimal habits that relate to common postural dysfunction, muscle imbalances, and chronic tightness u Integrate the fundamental Pilates exercises in order to develop a more stable core and eliminate the risks of common injuries while accomplishing one’s health and fitness goals.
Food & Nutrition THE POWER OF PULSES
Saving the World with Peas, Beans, Chickpeas, Favas and Lentils by Dan Jason, with Hilary Malone & Alison Malone Eathorne $24.95, paper. Douglas & McIntyre. 192 pages, 8x10, colour photos
An inspiring do-it-yourself guide to growing and eating pulses—a versatile, nutritious and highly sustainable crop that includes beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils and favas. For those who are committed to increasing self-reliance and supporting locally available food sources, pulses are an often-overlooked source of ethical protein. Dan Jason, owner of Salt Spring Seeds, is a long-time advocate of pulses as a healthy and environmentally responsible alternative to meat and tofu. In The Power of Pulses, Jason provides tips on how North American home gardeners can grow and save their own delicious, vividly hued heirloom beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils and favas. As well as being incredibly versatile in the kitchen, pulses are also rich in fibre, high in vitamin B, gluten-free and remarkably low on the glycemic index—contributing to good health and helping to reduce the risk of diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses. Who knew that garden-grown pulses have an unforgettable fresh taste and creamy texture? And who knew that wherever they grow, these drought-resistant, super-easy dynamos pump nitrogen into the soil, leaving it healthier and more fertile than before? It’s no wonder then that the United Nations’ General Assembly has named 2016 the International Year of Pulses. Thanks to their durability, ultra-light ecological footprint and long-lasting benefits to the earth, these hardy, bountiful and remarkably nourishing ancient crops are now lauded as the food of the future.
In The Power of Pulses, foodie-sister team Hilary Malone and Alison Malone Eathorne collaborate with Jason to create 40+ vegetarian recipes featuring fresh and inventive uses for the garden’s bounty, including Broad Bean Succotash with Fresh Ricotta & Poached Eggs on Toast, Crispy Chickpea Power Bowl with Kale, Quinoa and Dukkah Crunch and even Black Bean Brownies with Espresso Ganache. Vibrantly illustrated, this inviting garden-to-kitchen volume will inspire readers to harness the power of pulses!
SIMPLE RECIPES FOR JOY
New in Paperback
More than 200 Delicious Vegan Recipes by Sharon Gannon
$39.00, paper. Avery. 352 pages, 8x10, colour photos
Here is a beautiful offering of vegan recipes and food wisdom from the world-renowned founder of the Jivamukti yoga method. Since 1984, Jivamukti’s dedicated instructors and message of kindness have inspired a global revolution. In 2006, Sharon Gannon and David Life opened the Jivamuktea Café to complement their yoga school as a living expression of how compassionate spiritual activism can be put to practical use. A vegan diet requires three hundred gallons of water per day; a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day… Veganism and yoga are natural partners… The term asana actually means how one connects or relates to the Earth… The fact is that animals who are raised for food are slaves. Making kind choices when it comes to the food we eat is one of the most basic ways to begin to ensure our own happiness and freedom… The delicious recipes in this book will not only help you create tasty meals but will help you start your own radical movement of peaceful, joyful coexistence with all of life. —from the introduction
Thousands of customers have become devoted fans of Gannon’s cruelty-free burritos, chocolate mousse, and flower salads. Now, for the first time, Gannon presents the secrets behind the café’s amazing menu—and also showcases her own home cooking, with recipes she’s been making for family and friends for decades, including dishes like Creamy Wild Mushroom Soup, Rosemary Seitan, and Sharon’s Cajun-Mexican-inspired Jambalaya. Stalwart vegans—as well as the millions of vegetarians and omnivores who eat vegan part-time for its health and environmental benefits—will enjoy Gannon’s accessible, delicious, and spirited recipes in this book.
THE EVERYDAY AYURVEDA COOKBOOK
A Seasonal Guide to Eating and Living Well —with over 100 Recipes for Simple, Healing Foods by Kate O’Donnell $38.95, paper. Shambhala. 276 pages, 7x9, colour photos
Eat delicious seasonal food, balance the body, and heal the gut with simplified, traditional Ayurvedic wisdom. Even the simplest Ayurveda practices complement Western medicine because of their focus on righting imbalance before it creates disease. Keeping digestion on track is the key to health in Ayurveda, and eating natural, homemade foods in accordance with personal constitution and changes in environment is often all that is needed to bring a body back into balance. The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook inspires yogis and nonyogis alike to get into the kitchen and explore this time-honored system of seasonal eating for health and nourishment. Ditching processed food and learning to eat well at home are the first steps you can take to relieving imbalance. The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook removes many of the obstacles by showing you how straightforward and accessible preparing your own delicious, seasonal meals can be. Season by season, learn how the changing weather and qualities in your environment both mirror and influence your body and appetite. Lifestyle advice on meal planning, self-care regimens, and how to ensure health during the change of seasons is included throughout. And the no-fuss recipes will get you eager to cook. To expand your cooking repertoire, you’ll also learn foundational “everyday” recipes that can be adapted to any season and any dosha: once you understand the blueprint of a basic dish, you can recreate it in your kitchen year-round, using seasonal produce, grains, and flavors for health and nourishment. Kate O’Donnell is an ashtanga yoga teacher and an Ayurvedic Yoga Specialist.
Inspiration & Self-Help THE SIMPLE ROAD
A Handbook for the Contemporary Seeker by Obadiah Harris $20.95, paper. Tarcher. 168 pages
This elegant, concise guide by the founder of the University of Philosophical Research distills a lifetime of spiritual seeking into one beautiful blueprint for inner growth. When you grow exhausted with all of today’s spiritual programs, axioms, seminars, and techniques; when you feel fatigued from searching and cannot find a way forward; when it seems that years of seeking have netted so little throw yourself upon the essential truths in this book. It can be lifesaving. —Mitch Horowitz, from the introduction
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Harris has studied the spiritual path, holding ministerial pulpits in traditions ranging from Pentecostalism to New Thought, and directing programs in continuing education, community-outreach, and distance-learning at universities. He has worked with the ideas and legacies of spiritual icons ranging from Manly P. Hall, author of the landmark The Secret Teachings of All Ages, to Ernest Holmes, founder of the Science of Mind movement, America’s most successful and intellectually rigorous New Thought congregation. As a scholar and seeker, Harris has traversed and helped shape broad swaths of our modern spiritual landscape. Now, he distills the insights he has found—all of them potent, powerful, and, above all, useful—in The Simple Road. This concise book is a spiritual GPS that guides the earnest seeker past dead-ends and switchbacks to locate the path that most intimately and directly connect us with the Source of all life. The methods and ideas in this book can help rescue you from a crisis and provide a daily source of practice. This brave work addresses head-on topics that are often shunned or ignored in works of “proper” theology, including the question F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
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of physical healing by spiritual means—a topic treated with deepest seriousness—and with the existence of hostile forces that test us on the spiritual path. The Simple Road is balm for parched souls. Whatever tradition you belong to, or if you belong to no one tradition, The Simple Road helps you locate the thread of universality that runs through all faiths, and leads you to practices, prayers, methods, and parables that lift your daily journey to a higher, better place.
THE FOUR PURPOSES OF LIFE
Finding Meaning and Direction in a Changing World by Dan Millman New in $19.95, paper. New World Library. Paperback 144 pages, French flaps
In his first work of new teachings in 12 years, teacher Dan Millman (The Way of the Peaceful Warrior) faces life’s fundamental questions: Why am I here? What am I meant to do? What Millman comes to understand is the primary human need for direction and purpose. Here, in his wonderfully straightforward and relatable way, he shares fresh, realistic techniques anyone can use to learn, find, fulfill, and attend to their four-fold life purpose. Writing with special consideration for those in transition or at a crossroads, such as graduation, raising a family, health challenges, career upheaval, or impending retirement, Millman simply and beautifully addresses everything from intuition to sexuality, making money to the meaning of service, predestination to paying attention to the present. The result is an extraordinarily lucid guide to nothing less than life and how to live it. When my seeking ended and my practice began, I came to understand that what we all need, even more than a happy feeling, is a clear purpose—a meaningful goal or mission that connects us with other human beings. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, this fundamental need for purpose and direction may be as important to our psychological growth as eating is to our biological survival.
The Four Purposes of Life provides insights and answers to help bring your life into sharper focus. He helps us understand that we are here to fulfill four fundamental purposes: Learning Life’s Lessons; Finding Your Career and Calling; Fulfilling Your Hidden Life Path; and Attending to This Arising Moment. Millman distills decades of exploration and experience into a concise map of what we’re here to accomplish on our life’s journey. Among Dan Millman’s other books are The Life You Were Born to Live and The Laws of Spirit.
LIVING AN INSPIRED LIFE Your Ultimate Calling by Wayne Dyer
$15.99, paper. Hay House. 272 pages
Living an Inspired Life is a “rebranding” of Wayne Dyer’s classic book, Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling. There’s a voice in the universe calling each of us to remember our purpose—our reason for being here now, in this world of impermanence. The voice whispers, shouts, and sings to us that this experience of being in form, in space and time, knowing life and death, has meaning. The voice, writes popular “inspirit-er” Wayne Dyer, author of The Power of
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VITAL SIGNS
“Life Loves You”: Louise Hay
Discovering and Sustaining Your Passion for Life by Gregg Levoy
LIFE LOVES YOU
7 Spiritual Practices to Heal Your Life by Louise Hay & Robert Holden
$24.95, paper. Putnam. 492 pages
$12.99, paper. Hay House. 236 pages
New in Paperback
In this exuberant book, Gregg Levoy, author of Callings, explores how you can cultivate not just a specific passion, but passion as a mindset—a stance—that helps bring vitality to all your engagements, from work and relationships to creativity and spiritual life. Vital Signs examines the endless, yet endlessly fruitful, tug-of-war between passion and security in our lives, the wild in us and the tame, our natural selves and our conditioned selves, and shows us how to stay engaged with the world and resist the downward-pulling forces that can drain our aliveness. Vital Signs also encourages inquiry into our dis-passion—where we’re numb, depressed, stuck and bored in our lives—so that we can rework these tendencies in ourselves and claim our rightful inheritance of vitality. In this book you’ll learn that:
Here self-help icon Louise Hay teams up with happiness expert Robert Holden to present seven practical experiments that give you firsthand experience that the world works in your favor. Life loves you and you have the power within you to create a life you love. “Life loves you” is one of Louise Hay’s best-loved affirmations. It is the heart thought that represents her life and her work. Together, Louise and Robert look at what life loves you really means—that life doesn’t just happen to you; it happens for you. In a series of intimate and candid conversations, they dig deep into the power of love, the benevolent nature of reality, the friendly universe, and the heart of who we really are. Life Loves You is filled with inspiring stories and helpful meditations, prayers, and exercises. Louise Hay Louise and Robert present a practical vision based on seven spiritual practices: u Looking in the Mirror: practicing the how of self-love. Practice 1: Letting Life Love You u Affirming Your Life: healing the ego’s basic fear. Practice 2: 10 Dots u Following Your Joy: trusting your inner guidance. Practice 3: My Affirmation Board u Forgiving the Past: reclaiming your original innocence. Practice 4: The Forgiveness Scale u Being Grateful Now: cultivating basic trust. Practice 5: Daily Gratitude u Learning to Receive: being undefended and open. Practice 6: A Receiving Journal u Healing the Future: choosing love over fear. Practice 7: Blessing the World.
Passion can be cultivated. Turned on as well as turned off. And this happens most
At the deepest level, our purpose in life is to be a loving mirror to the world. Our goal is not just to let life love us but also to love life back. We are here to love the world. If each of us did this just a little bit more, the world would not be such a fearful place… We hope and pray that our work supports you all the more in letting life love you and in being a loving presence in this world.
THE ART OF LIVING
LIFE LOVES YOU CARDS
readily at the level of the gesture and the moment, not the five-year plan. Passion is in the risk. In the willingness to step from the sidelines onto the playing field. Passion breeds passion and disinterest breeds disinterest. If you lack passion in your life, your other relationships—your partnerships, friendships, communities, classrooms, corporations and congregations—will be denied that energy.
Drawing from centuries of history, art, science, psychology and philosophy, as well as in-depth interviews with people who rediscovered and reignited passion in their own lives, Vital Signs offers an expansive menu of possibilities for how to claim and reclaim your passion, and will help you maintain a keen awareness of where the pulse is and a determination to plug into that place. Each chapter in Vital Signs is a core sample, an intimate biography of one of the strategies you can employ to gain or regain passion—including the search for wonder and awe, the quest for novelty, the urge toward self-expression, the hunger to reconnect with inner and outer wildness, the desire to keep passion alive in your relationships, and the role that risk-taking plays in the ripening of passion.
“Levoy offers us a thrilling new map to the vital core of all our becomings. To read this book and follow its principles is to stop boring God!”
—Jean Houston, author of The Wizard of Us
Bob Proctor
by Bob Proctor, with Sandra Gallagher
by Louise Hay and Robert Holden
$20.95, paper. Tarcher/Penguin. 228 pages
$16.99. Hay House. 52-card deck in a box
The Art of Living presents transcripts from legendary business speaker and mentor Bob Proctor’s most popular workshop—Matrixx—and brings this wisdom to a wider audience in book form. With this book, the reader will become a student of Bob Proctor’s, as he teaches lessons and presents jewels of wisdom on living an extraordinary life. Readers will marvel at Proctor’s miraculous way of disseminating his decades of business wisdom into easy-to-understand parables, and learn lessons on what our creative faculties are and how to use them, why we need to unlearn most of the false beliefs we’ve been indoctrinated with our whole lives, and how our intellects have the ability not only to put us ahead in life, but also to be our biggest detriment. Among many other invaluable lessons contained herein, as a new student of Bob’s, readers will learn: u How to obtain whatever it is that’s desired in life u How to erase negative thought patterns and retrain the brain for success u How to arrange work for maximum effectiveness.
Like Louise Hay’s perennial best-sellers, Power Thought Cards and Wisdom Cards, the Life Loves You Cards contain affirmations that plant seeds for personal growth and transformation. Created by Louise Hay and Robert Holden, co-authors of Life Loves You: 7 Spiritual Practices to Heal Your Life, the cards, like their book, explore the deeper meaning and practical application of Louise’s signature affirmation, “Life loves you.” Each of the 52 cards contains an affirmation to practice on one side and on the other, an inspiring message to encourage self-inquiry and positive action. Among the affirmations: I dedicate today to love I live in a friendly universe I trust that life wants the best for me I listen to the wisdom of my body I choose to live with ease I follow my joy. As an example, the card for the affirmation “Life loves you” contains the following explanatory text on the reverse side:
Bob is the last living teacher with a direct link to the great lineage of Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale… Bob truly believes we must understand who we are, why we are doing what we are doing and how to change what we are doing if we are not satisfied with our results. Proctor is a master at teaching just that… The lessons that you require to achieve any result you want are locked up between the covers of this book. What he shares is truly the art of living. As you turn the page imagine that you are walking right into one of Bob Proctor’s classes. —Sandra Gallagher, from the preface
Life loves us all. Look at yourself in a mirror. Breathe in and say, “Life loves me.” As you breathe out, smile. Repeat ten times.
The card deck is designed to be consulted in many different ways: as an oracle, perhaps, or a focus for the day or week, or to provide guidance on a specific issue. However the cards are used, the authors say, they all demonstrate the transforming power of love.
THOUGHTS ARE THINGS Intention and many other books, is that of inspiration, which is within each of us. In Living an Inspired Life, Wayne Dyer describes how we’ve chosen to enter this world of particles and form. From our place of origin, in ways that we don’t readily comprehend now, we knew what we were coming here to accomplish, and we participated in setting this life process in motion. So why not think this same way? Why put the responsibility or blame on any one or any thing that’s not a part of us? On Earth
Turning Your Ideas into Realities by Bob Proctor & Greg S. Reid
we have the capacity of volition—we can choose—so let’s assume that we had the same capacity when we resided in the spiritual realm.
$21.95, paper. Tarcher.195 pages
We chose our physical body, and we chose the parents we needed for the trip. It doesn’t seem too great a stretch to move into the idea that we chose this life in concert with our Source.
Each chapter is filled with specifics for living an inspired life. From a very personal viewpoint, Dyer offers us a blueprint through the world “inspiration, your ultimate calling.” The personal nature of this book is a deliberate choice. I discovered as I went along that, in order to write about such a deeply felt subject as inspiration, I needed to convey what I felt as authentically as possible… By writing from my heart, I’ve been able to keep the flavor or inspiration alive here in these pages. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
Thoughts Are Things is a wonderful, motivational text from two acclaimed public speakers and accomplished authors. What mind-set determines whether or not a person will be successful? Do successful people think differently from those who never reach their potential? How can we change our thoughts so that the result of every thought—the offspring of thought—sets us up to win rather than lose? Bob Proctor and Greg S. Reid, authorized by the Napoleon Hill Foundation, delve deeply into the science and psychology of thought, and how thinking is vitally important to a meaningful, successful life. In their interviews with neuroscientists, cardiologists, spiritual teachers, and business leaders, the authors show how we can think to live! As you discover these leaders, hear their stories, and draw inspiration from their accomplishments, remember this: What they’ve done, you can do, too. You don’t have to look outside of yourself to find the power to do so. You already possess it. It is the power of thought… the power of your mind. To unleash it, you simply need to believe and act.
So… begin. Begin now. In the words of my great inspiration and mentor, Napoleon Hill, “Do not wait. The time will never be ‘just right.’”
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Psychology & Therapy
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Self-Acceptance & Letting Go
IT DIDN’T START WITH YOU
THE SELF-ACCEPTANCE PROJECT
$37.00, cloth. Knopf. 256 pages
$23.75, paper. Sounds True. 190 pages
How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn Here’s a groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies passed down in families over generations. A pioneer in this field, director of the Family Constellation Institute, and creator of the Core Language Approach, Mark Wolynn focuses on identifying and breaking inherited family patterns. It Didn’t Start with You is an accessible, pragmatic, and prescriptive guide to the method with which Wolynn has helped thousands of people reclaim their lives. The book includes moving stories, the latest research, and extensive material on the Core Language Approach and how to map out family patterns to achieve greater insight into our lives. Inherited family trauma is currently an area of growing interest as science increasingly explores what we know intuitively: that the effects of trauma can pass from one generation to the next, and that the answers to some of our greatest life problems often lie not within our own story, but in the experiences of our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and extended family. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on in those in the present. And while inherited physical traits are easily discernible, this emotional legacy is often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language. “Wolynn brings a unique, valuable, and grounded voice to this work.” —California Institute of Integral Studies
TRAUMA ESSENTIALS The Go-To Guide by Babette Rothschild
$23.00, paper. Norton. 256 pages
Since 1980, when PTSD first appeared as a diagnostic category, the number of people seeking trauma therapy has grown exponentially. Victims of traumatic events seek treatment for their often debilitating symptoms. Here, a leading trauma specialist and best-selling psychotherapy author presents for consumers the wide range of trauma treatments available and gives readers tools to choose a treatment plan or assess whether their treatment plan is working. Medications and associated conditions such as anxiety and panic disorders are also discussed. Trauma Essentials presents the most necessary and relevant information in a compact and accessible format, serving both as a review for therapists and a straightforward, easy-to-use guide for patients. Topics covered include definitions and symptoms, accepted treatments, physiological explanations, and treatment evaluation strategies, all written in Babette Rothschild’s characteristically accessible style. Also by her are 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery and The Body Remembers.
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How to Be Kind & Compassionate Toward Yourself in Any Situation edited by Tami Simon
Here’s another anthology brought together by Tami Simon of Sounds True. (Her earlier excellent anthology, Darkness Before Dawn, is on redefining the journey through depression.) Even after years of spiritual practice, self-improvement, or therapy, many of us still have trouble with one essential challenge: self-acceptance. How do we stop from constantly judging ourselves as inadequate, finding fault with our bodies, or being plagued by our inner critics? The Self-Acceptance Project was created to help us find a solution. In this collection of essays, contemporary luminaries in spirituality, psychology, and creativity offer insights and teachings for truly embracing who we are—no matter what our circumstances. Among the contributors to this book are Tara Brach, Karla McLaren, Jay Earley, Harville Hendrix, Kristin Neff, Judith Blackstone, Jeff Foster, Geneen Roth, Mark Nepo, Rich Hanson, Kelly McGonigal, Robert Augustus Masters, and Sharon Salzberg. Sometimes there is great intelligence in allowing yourself to actually feel worse right now, rather than scrambling to feel better immediately. To be curious about your symptoms rather than immediately rushing to get rid of them, remove them, numb them; for your symptoms may just be parts of you longing for love. —Jeff Foster
Why is it often so much easier to feel compassion and forgiveness toward others than toward ourselves? Where do our self-critical voices come from? Can we be motivated to grow and excel while still accepting ourselves as we are? In these 20 offerings, some of today’s most trusted teachers share valuable practices and techniques for building confidence, transforming our relationships with our inner critics, and cultivating kindness and compassion toward ourselves on a consistent basis. Kindness is like a force—and it’s a skill… because kindness is a question of training our attention… The core competencies we need to start developing this skill of self-kindness are: u Mindfulness: Know what you’re feeling u Wisdom: Step back from what you’re feeling so you have some perspective
u Intention: Be open to experimenting and having little adventures of consciousness. —Sharon Salzberg
Sounds True also offers a free video event series on Self-Acceptance at live.soundstrue.com/selfacceptance
THE ECSTASY OF LETTING GO Surrender Practices to Empower Your Life by Judith Orloff
New on CD
$27.95, 2 CDs. Sounds True. 2 hours.
We often think “surrender” means defeat—yet Dr. Judith Orloff has learned that surrender can be the key to a powerful, effective, joyous way of being. Surrender allows us to let go of our compulsion to over-think, doubt our intuition, and hold back from our complete experience of living. With The Ecstasy of Letting Go, she presents a practice-based audio to help us apply the insights of her book The Ecstasy of Surrender to our everyday lives. In these two audio sessions, Dr. Orloff offers essential insights and guided practices for: u Releasing fear and judgment to build authentic self-esteem u Receiving clear intuitive and emotional signals u Enhancing relationships and attracting your soul mate u Discovering your destiny—surrender as a path to success
Our fear of losing control of life is based on the belief (is it true?) that we are in control. As Orloff reveals, Letting go of this illusion leads us naturally to a state of joy—and into an ecstatic connection with ourselves, the natural world, and each other.
Join this renowned teacher for step-by-step guidance in the transformative art of surrendering to the flow of life with The Ecstasy of Letting Go. Among Judith Orloff’s other books are Emotional Freedom and Positive Energy.
Jungian Psychology CARE OF THE SOUL (25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION)
A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore
$19.99, paper. HarperCollins. 352 pages
With a new introduction by the author and additional material, this 25th anniversary edition of Thomas Moore’s bestselling book Care of the Soul presents readers with BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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a contemplative approach to thinking about daily life— everyday activities, events, problems and creative opportunities—and a therapeutic lifestyle is proposed that focuses on looking more deeply into emotional problems and learning how to sense sacredness in F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
even ordinary things. Basing his writing on the ancient model of “care of the soul” which provided a religious context for viewing the everyday events of life, Jungian therapist, musician, and philosopher Thomas Moore brings “care of the soul” into the 21st century—on the street, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, at work. Promising to deepen and broaden the reader’s perspective on his or her own life experiences, Moore draws on his own life as a therapist practicing “care of the soul,” as well as his studies of the world’s religions and his work in music and art, to create this inspirational guide that examines the connections between spirituality and the problems of individuals and society. “This book just may help you give up the futile quest for salvation and get down to the possible task of taking care of your soul. A modest, and therefore marvelous, book about the life of the spirit.” —Sam Keen, author of Fire in the Belly “Years pass; I get to read a lot of psychology but the sincerity, intelligence and style— so beautifully clean—of Tom Moore’s Care of the Soul truly moved me. The book’s got strength and class and soul, and I suspect it may last longer than psychology itself.” — James Hillman, author of Re-Visioning Psychology and other books.
THE QUOTABLE JUNG
by C.G. Jung, edited by Judith Harris $39.95, cloth. Princeton. 400 pages
In seeking to establish an interdisciplinary science of analytical psychology, C. G. Jung (1875–1961) studied psychiatry, religion, mysticism, literature, physics, biology, education, and criminology. He introduced the concepts of extraversion and introversion, and terms such as complex, archetype, individuation, and the collective unconscious. He stressed the primacy of finding meaning in our lives. The Quotable Jung is the single most comprehensive collection of Jung quotations ever assembled. It is the essential introduction for anyone new to Jung and the Jungian tradition. It will also inspire those familiar with Jung to view him in an entirely new way. The Quotable Jung presents hundreds of the most representative selections from the vast array of Jung’s books, essays, correspondence, lectures, seminars, and interviews, as well as the celebrated Red Book, in which Jung describes his own fearsome confrontation with the unconscious. Organized thematically, this collection covers such topics as the psyche, the symbolic life, dreams, the analytic process, good and evil, creativity, alchemical transformation, death and rebirth, the problem of the opposites, and more. The quotations are arranged so that the reader can follow the thread of Jung’s thought on these topics while gaining an invaluable perspective on his writings as a whole. Succinct and accessible, The Quotable Jung also features a preface by Judith Harris and a detailed chronology of Jung’s life and work. “An ideal resource for anyone seeking to find Jung’s most fertile ideas succinctly and powerfully stated.” —John Beebe, author of Integrity in Depth Judith Harris is President of the Philemon Foundation and a Jungian analyst in private practice in Toronto. Also by her is Jung and Yoga: The Psyche-Body Connection.
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F H E A D JUNG, GOD-IN-THE-WORLD & EMINDFULNESS R F FOR ALL
POCKET JUNG
Pithy Excerpts from the Work of C.G. Jung with Informed Commentaries by Daryl Sharp $25.00, paper. Inner City. 124 pages
Daryl Sharp, Toronto Jungian analyst and publisher of Inner City Books, has written many useful and even charming tomes, among them Who Am I, Really?, Digesting Jung, and Jung Uncorked. In this book, Pocket Jung, he says “I revert to my earlier love of explicating Jung’s essays, interweaving Logos and my own whimsical Eros commentaries. Some passages may be familiar to readers, like a loved painting with a few added brush-strokes here and there.” Pocket Jung is written for the general reader who may not be acquainted with Jung’s own writings, many of which, intended for the specialist, are not easily understood by those who lack the technical knowledge that would enable them to appreciate the value and significance of Jung’s researches. Such knowledge is particularly necessary for an understanding of the alchemical research that occupied so much of his time and energy during the last twenty years of his life. I have not attempted to make an exhaustive resume of Jung’s approach to psychic reality. Rather I have tried to set forth here some of the basic ideas on which his school of psychology rests. The material of these chapters was originally presented over the years to an intelligent group of men and women in Columbus, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto, who were not very familiar with Jung. I hope that this relatively simple presentation may also meet the needs of a wider public. My intention has been to capture the richness of Jung’s thoughts and stimulate the reader to know more about Jung’s work and school of depth psychology. Jung’s primary aim was to raise the individual’s level of consciousness, so that she or he not be prey to unknown psychic forces, and that is my aim too. The cover of this book is deliberately bland, so you can carry it around without anyone knowing you are discovering yourself.
The Heart of Religion GROUNDED
Finding God in the World: A Spiritual Revolution by Diana Butler Bass
$33.50, cloth. HarperCollins. 322 pages
This lyrical, mystical book mines the multiple treasures of panentheism, which means “everything in God, and God in everything.” It stresses the presence of God in the world right around us and has no room for a threetiered universe with a transcendent God taking care of all things from a command center in Heaven. Panentheism encourages us to find
the sacred in all of life. Seeing the divine presence in ourselves, our neighbors, nature, animals, plants, and things is what Bass calls the “language of divine nearness” She notes: The most significant story in the history of religion at this time is not a decline in Western religion, a rejection of religious institutions, or the growth of religious extremism; rather, it is a changed conception of God, a rebirthing of faith from the ground up.
Bass begins her explorations with chapters on three of the four classical elements: dirt, water, and sky. With great elan she helps us marvel at the mysteries of the dimensions discovered when we look for God in the world. Take off your shoes and walk barefoot in the grass; get your hands dirty in the garden; give thanks for the water you drink every day; clean up a watershed; let the stars dazzle you; rejoice in the air that you breath. In a section titled “Human Geography,” Bass salutes the bounties of cherishing your home, searching for your ancestral roots, honoring the ways in which you can make the most of the great web of belonging, following in the footsteps of John Wesley and developing “holy habits,” reaping the benefits of home repair as a spiritual exercise, searching out neighbors and collaborating with them in the mending of the world, practicing hospitality toward strangers, and opening your hearts and minds to the art of sacred cosmopolitanism (“an awareness of the connections we share with God and others here on earth”). Panentheism is replacing the “Grandfather in the sky” image of God familiar from old-time religion, and also going beyond the “God is within me and is me” idea promoted in New Age circles. Bass has made an important contribution by beautifully explaining a broader and more inclusive understanding of God that can be embraced by the spiritually independents (“spiritual but not religious”) and also by those rooted in one of the world’s religions. Indeed, Bass suggests that the best place to begin finding God in the world is to start in your synagogue, mosque, temple, or church. She ends her book with the following words: It is time for the church to wake up. There is nothing worse than sleeping through a revolution.
LOOKING AT MINDFULNESS
$27.00, paper. Putnam. 304 pages, colour illustrations
New in Paperback
Looking at Mindfulness is a uniquely beautiful book. With stunning simplicity, French psychiatrist and longtime meditator Christophe André offers twenty-five lessons in mindfulness and meditation, each accompanied by an extraordinary painting. From explaining what it means to live conscientiously to giving useful tips for everyday situations, each of his insights is an enduring source of quiet contemplation, enabling us to still our minds and become calmly aware of “the richness of the present.” Whether exploring acceptance, freedom, happiness or love, Looking at Mindfulness shows us how to approach our lives as living works of art. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
Beautifully illustrated in colour throughout, André curates a collection of classic and esoteric works, from Rembrandt to Hopper to Magritte, providing a lucid commentary on the inner workings of each painting—as he describes the dynamic on the canvas, he turns to the reader’s own reactions, exploring the connection between what we see and what we feel. The paintings are a visual and tangible first step to understanding mindfulness and the benefits of living in the moment.
selves and outside in the world, each of us can make immediate, meaningful and permanent changes in our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others.
From paying attention to our breath to accepting unhappiness as a part of life rather than a personal shortcoming, Looking at Mindfulness reminds us to stop rushing through the present and to embrace the things we deem ordinary as important and fulfilling. It challenges us to stop and use our senses—the only five tools we really need—and acknowledge the world around us and within us. Gently and thoughtfully, it reminds us to take notice, to digest, and to reflect. Beautifully written, wonderfully accessible, Looking at Mindfulness delivers practical steps and a comprehensive understanding of the practice and meaning of mindfulness and meditation. André brings clarity to what it means to live mindfully and how we can make a more conscious effort to do so in our daily lives.
Growing Up Mindful GROWING UP MINDFUL
Essential Practices to Help Children, Teens, and Families Find Balance, Calm, and Resilience by Christopher Willard $23.50, paper. Sounds True. 240 pages
The American Psychological Association’s 2014 survey on stress made an alarming discovery: Our teens are now the most stressedout age group. Growing Up Mindful shows parents and professionals alike how to model and teach the skills of mindfulness that will empower our youth for the rest of their lives with greater self-awareness, resiliency, and confidence. While many adults now understand how mindfulness practice helps us alleviate the stress and anxiety of our busy modern lives, getting a typical teenager on board is another story. Dr. Christopher Willard, also author of Child’s Mind, draws on his work with hundreds of young children, tweens, and teens—along with countless hours training parents, teachers, and other counselors—to make the principles and practices of mindfulness accessible, entertaining, and cool for people of all ages and interests. Mindfulness and compassion practices go radically against this cultural conditioning by emphasizing checking in—rather than checking out. Over time, kids learn to tolerate their experiences, whether they are comfortable or not, and come to see that everything in the range of human experience, pleasant or unpleasant, loved or loathed, eventually passes. Over time, through the lens of mindfulness, they may even become curious about their experience, their triggers, and their automatic responses. Teaching children to check in with, rather than check out of, their experience builds emotional intelligence, leading to happier kids and families. And the benefits can go viral through communities, leading to happier classrooms, schools, hospitals, and mental health clinics—and ultimately, to a happier, more compassionate future for humanity.
The book features dozens of exercises to incorporate mindfulness into daily life (in class, extracurricular activities, among peers), specific meditations and movement practices, compassion training, and more.
Meditation 25 Paintings to Change the Way You Live by Christophe Andre
So we have stopped, we have sat down and closed our eyes. Not to sleep, not to rest, but to understand. We need to understand what we feel and put some order into the chaos that is simply the world’s echo within ourselves. We must understand that there are two paths: the path of intelligence (acting, intervening, kneading reality with our will, lucidity and effort) and the path of experience (welcoming naked reality and allowing it to cover, inhabit and imbue us, in a movement of intensely attentive letting go).
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The last thing I want to do is to make mindfulness another chore or something to add to the overbooked lives of families and teachers. For that reason, chapter 11 includes dozens of practices that take less than a minute. This book also includes ways to bring mindfulness to what you and your kids are already doing, including eating, walking, playing sports, making art, and even using technology… Experiment with all the practices in this book, even if they don’t seem like your thing. Some will resonate for you; some won’t. I encourage you to be a little bit brave and a little bit vulnerable… In practicing mindfulness, within our-
PRACTICES FOR GROWING UP MINDFUL Guided Meditations and Simple Exercises for Children, Teens, and Families by Christopher Willard $34.95, 3 CDs. Sounds True. 3 hours
New on CD
We do our best when we’re relaxed, confident, and capable. Teenagers and children are no different. Practices for Growing Up Mindful offers parents, educators, counselors, and caregivers a series of exercises and meditations for cultivating the skills and attitudes that will empower us—and our children—to handle the increasing stress of modern life in wise and healthy ways. With this audio companion to his new book, Growing Up Mindful, Dr. Willard brings us the tools he has found the most effective in his work with children, teens, and parents, and as a leader in training and teaching educators, psychotherapists, and other caregivers. Christopher Willard, who teaches at Harvard, specializes in bringing mindfulness into education and psychotherapy. He is also the author of Child’s Mind.
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THE MEDITATOR’S DILEMMA
An Innovative Approach to Overcoming Obstacles and Revitalizing Your Practice by Bill Morgan $23.50, paper. Shambhala. 192 pages
When practiced regularly, meditation naturally deepens self-awareness and leads to spiritual insight. And yet in our hyper, instant-gratification culture, most people miss those powerful outcomes because it’s hard to commit to a long-term practice. Despite the increasing popularity of mindfulness and its documented mental health benefits, the silent majority of meditators struggle to maintain a regular practice. In fact, research indicates that more than fifty percent of meditators give up on the practice. Through time-tested teachings and exercises, The Meditator’s Dilemma shows you how to deepen your meditation practice while cultivating ease and delight—for both beginners and longtime practitioners. The Meditator’s Dilemma, written by a psychologist with forty years’ experience practicing and teaching meditation, confronts this problem and its causes and provides specific, accessible techniques and exercises that greatly enhance everyday meditation practice. Bill Morgan’s teachings and guided meditation exercises are designed to generate the all-too-missing delight and enjoyment in meditation. The concept of the “holding environment,” central to positive outcome in psychotherapy, is the raison d’etre for these techniques. In psychotherapy, the holding environment comprises the trusting, secure, empathic milieu created by the caring therapist. An indirect benefit of these techniques is the capacity to create a nurturing safe space in any relational context: with a mentor, in a conversation with a dear friend, or in a beautiful natural setting. When we are in a holding environment, we feel alive, connected, and relaxed. The Meditator’s Dilemma teaches Western meditators to cultivate an internal holding environment that results in an attitude of relaxed curiosity and exploration toward their meditation practice, leading to greater success and staying power.
“A very helpful book for anyone who wants to meditate. He has a knack for articulating particular ways to support the Western mind in approaching meditation practice.” —Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness
Western Spiritual Teachers & Teachings REALIZING SOUL
From Intuition to An Inspired Life by Paul Brunton $18.95, paper. Larson. 158 pages
Realizing Soul is a uniquely inspiring resource for people of any age feeling “Is this all there is? Shouldn’t there be something more?” It’s about connecting with—and staying connected with—that intangible (yet undeniable) “something more” that makes struggles worthwhile when it’s there, and successes hollow when it’s not. It’s about how to be consciously what we unconsciously know we really are.
Matt Kahn on Big Love
WHATEVER ARISES, LOVE THAT
A Love Revolution That Begins with You by Matt Kahn $27.95, cloth. Sounds True. 206 pages
There are four simple words that point the way toward freedom and fulfillment: whatever arises, love that. This is the life-changing teaching that Matt Kahn has been sharing with countless students around the world (including more than a million YouTube followers). Whatever Arises, Love That presents the first book by this highly regarded teacher. It brings readers fresh and often startling insights into topics including: reuniting with vulnerability as the first step in finding true inner peace; the vital role of surrender throughout the spiritual journey; the essential purpose of relaxing the overstimulated nervous system; identifying the four types of ego; uncovering the hidden gifts in life’s most challenging situations; reuniting the mind and heart to discover the joy of liberation; and more. The willingness on my part to trust inevitably led to an even greater life-changing encounter for me with the Archangels and Ascended Masters, who had guided me throughout my life… In Matt Kahn celebration of a journey that has brought me so far in order to serve the blossoming of your potential, I openly share some of my most ground-breaking experiences and insights throughout the course of this book… * You will hear me speak about your heart is a variety of ways. Whether talked about as your true innocent nature, your inner child, or your deepest sense of vulnerability, I am pointing your attention to the animated intelligence residing at the core of your being… There are also many interactive experiences included in this book to help you anchor and integrate the energy you are receiving… As love bring us together for an adventure, countless incarnations in the making, I intuitively draw on the insights from many past lifetimes to offer you the most integrated spiritual path. With every step forward, you will become rooted in the profound wisdom of four auspicious words: whatever arises, love that.
Writes Kahn, “The deepest invitation in any moment is to heal the root of human suffering and celebrate the Spirit in all by opening your heart to its absolute potential. In a world of endless questions, love is the only answer.”
WHATEVER ARISES LOVE THAT COURSE
Insights and Practices to Open the Heart and Live As Love by Matt Kahn $112.00, 9 CDs. Sounds True. 10 hours
There is a loving intelligence at the core of your being that can lead you to the fulfillment of your highest destiny. Four words hold the secret to accessing it: whatever arises, love that. With his first full-length audio-learning course, Matt Kahn invites you to join him for a twelve-part journey that explores how profoundly your life transforms when you surrender to the love of your true divine nature. Whatever Arises, Love That brings you powerful insights for the evolution of your journey. Kahn says of this work, Since receiving the insights to offer loving what arises as the foundational core of my teachings, I began to see people at every level of spiritual development heal old wounds, release lingering conditioning, and unravel so much fear, frustration, and confusion to reveal the Truth of their eternal nature in the most direct and heart-centered way. Soon, a ‘Love Revolution’ was created on a global scale, where personal differences were set aside to unite families, neighbors, communities, and countries in the importance of awakening unconditional love for the well-being of all.
Whatever Arises, Love That gives you the opportunity to realize the incredible power you have by remembering that you always deserve “more love, not less.” Program Highlights: u Discover the first step in finding true inner peace u Explore the essential role of surrender throughout the spiritual journey u Unravel the patterns of ego with compassion and ease u Reunite the mind and heart as a doorway into spiritual evolution u Master the vital skill of conscious communication to uplift every relationship and encounter u More than ten hours of teachings and practices to transform your life through unconditional love. This newest compilation of Paul Brunton’s reliably informative and inspirational work consists of selections arranged in the following sections: The Mystery The Ego Illusion The Gentle Voice of the Overself Foretaste of the Ego-free Life Born Again The Inner Voyage The Wonder of Grace Toward a Brighter Future. The selections have been made from BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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paulbruntondailynote.se, a popular website for which inspiring new excerpts from the encyclopedic The Notebooks of Paul Brunton are read aloud by native speakers in sixteen languages every day of the year. We must understand that heaven and hell are deep inside the heart and not places to which we go. * Even during the longest dark night of the soul, the Overself is not a whit less close to him than it was when it revealed its presence amid ecstasy and joy.
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* You may recognize the voice of wisdom when having to make a decision by the fact that it proceeds out of deep inner calm, out of utter tranquility, whereas impulse is frequently born in exaggerated enthusiasm or undue excitement.
Paul Brunton (1898-1981) is widely esteemed for creatively integrating the world’s sacred teachings into a practical, satisfying vision of spiritual life for our times. As one reviewer wrote, he “can stand beside Merton, Huxley, Suzuki, Watts, and Radhakrishnan.” Brunton wrote many books, among them The Hidden Wisdom Beyond Yoga and The Wisdom of the Overself. His 16 volumes of Notebooks were written in his last years.
BEING TRUE
What Matters Most in Work, Life, and Love by Tami Simon
New on CD
$41.95, 4 CDs. Sounds True. 4 hours
Sounds True listeners and followers of the Insights at the Edge podcast series have heard Tami introducing and interviewing the top spiritual teachers in the world—and now, we finally have the opportunity to hear directly from Tami Simon herself. With Being True, Tami shares the most important lessons from her own journey about living in accordance with our inner imperatives in work, life, and love. Is there a trustworthy source of guidance that can help us navigate the spiritual journey, our vocational path, and our relationships—even when they come into conflict? I believe we all have an inner compass that points us where we need to go, if we have the courage and self-awareness to follow it.
In this intimate four-session audio, she reveals her essential principles for honoring our values within a competitive marketplace, meeting challenges with vulnerability, cultivating the tenacity to overcome hardship, and accessing the inner voice of integrity and wisdom that enables us to “be true.” She also offers some hard-won insights entrepreneurs and conscious business professionals will find fascinating. Two strong anthologies edited by Tami Simon are Darkness Before Dawn (on depression) and The Self-Acceptance Project. Tami Simon founded Sounds True in 1985. She is a lifelong meditator and senior teacher of “Meditating with the Body,” as taught by Reginald Ray.
ENLIGHTENED RELATIONSHIPS
The Ultimate Training Ground for Practicing Presence by Eckhart Tolle New on $27.95, 2 CDs. CD Sounds True. 2 hours
If you really want to know how spiritually awake you are, spend time around other people. For each of our relationships—from the brief interaction with the barista to our bonds with lifelong partners or family members reflect back to us our predominant state of consciousness. On Enlightened Relationships, Eckhart Tolle offers an insightful two-session program
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for bringing the transformational power of presence into this often challenging yet deeply rewarding area of our lives, often soberly referred to as “the hardest spiritual practice.” Session one explores the arising of a new consciousness on the planet, and how more and more of us are beginning to experience a shift from an egoic, thought-based identity to the realization of what Eckhart calls our essential “Being” nature. Session two offers a practical look at how this emerging awareness impacts our relationships, as well as the steps we can take to welcome “the vertical dimension” of space and stillness as the source of true connection and harmonious relationships. Among Eckhart Tolle’s books are The Power of Now and A New Earth. He also has many audio and video programs available.
HEALING THE CORE WOUND OF UNWORTHINESS The gift of Redemptive Love by Adyashanti $28.95, 2 CDs. Sounds True. 2 hours, 13 minutes
New on CD
“So many of us hold a deep belief that we were born unworthy,” reflects Adyashanti, “inadequate, unlovable, and alone.” But what if, in truth, we weren’t put here to pay penance, change our karma, or “fix” ourselves? What if we chose to be here because we so loved the world that we poured ourselves into it—to make it whole again, to restore “the hidden divinity amid the disaster?” With Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness, we’re invited to entertain that possibility. Even after years of meditation, Adyashanti felt an enduring sense of self-disappointment and failure. And he sensed it in nearly everyone he met—even among the most confident, successful, and outwardly happy people who’d been working on themselves for years. Then healing came to him in a profound experience of “redemptive love,” a reunion with the deepest ground of being. It is a gift offered to all of us—without struggle or the need to earn it. In essence, it says to us: This is how I love you. And this is how you shall love all things and all beings. Join this lucid teacher and author on this audio program as he offers insights, meditations, and questions to help you bring your own self-created suffering into awareness, receive unconditional grace, reunite with all that arises, and bring it into every dimension of your life. Highlights: u Identifying the unconscious cultural and personal stories at the core of shame and unworthiness u How love enters us through the cracks of crisis, loss, and despair u “Allow yourself to run out of time right now”—how the urgency of mortality awakens grace u “I don’t know”—a simple contemplation for expanding into the Unknown u What to do if you believe you’ve committed the absolutely unforgivable u Guided practices for restoring wholeness and inviting love’s redemption. Among Adyashanti’s many books are Resurrecting Jesus and Falling into Grace.
Grieving & Dying YOU CAN HEAL YOUR HEART
Finding Peace After a Breakup, Divorce, or Death by Louise Hay & David Kessler $14.99, paper. Hay House. 182 pages
In You Can Heal Your Heart, self-help luminary Louise Hay and renowned grief and loss expert David Kessler, the protegé of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, have come together to start a conversation on healing grief. This remarkable book discusses the emotions that occur when a relationship leaves you brokenhearted, a marriage ends in divorce, or a loved one dies. It will also foster awareness and compassion, providing you with the courage to face many other types of losses and challenges, such as saying good-bye to a beloved pet, losing your job, coming to terms with a life-threatening illness or disease, and much more. We’re all beautiful losers, and “losing” will happen to us in so many different ways in our lives. So let’s get good at it, welcome the truths of it, and live more vibrantly through our losses. We’re sure you know how to end a relationship. You know how to end a marriage. You even know how to end a life. But do you know how to complete a relationship or a marriage? Do you know how to complete a life? This is another aspect we hope to teach you as we journey together. There are unexpected gifts to be found in life after loss.
With a perfect blend of Louise’s teachings and affirmations on personal growth and transformation and David’s many years of working with those in grief, this empowering book will inspire an extraordinary new way of thinking, bringing hope and fresh insights into your life and even your current and future relationships. You will not only learn how to help heal your grief, but you will also discover that, yes, you can heal your heart. Among Louise Hay’s many other titles are You Can Heal Your Life and All is Well.
LEANING INTO LOVE
A Spiritual Journey through Grief by Elaine Mansfield $16.95, paper. Larson. 174 pages
“I’ll find a way to be all right,” Elaine promised Vic, her dying husband and best friend of 42 years. Leaving the hospital after he passed, she had no idea how. Her uplifting story of love, hope, determination, and triumph is a gift to the half million North American women who lose spouses each year. Leaning into Love captures the heart—from the extraordinary closeness of Elaine’s marriage to how she and Vic transform their struggle with cancer and despair into a conscious relationship with mortality. After Vic’s death, Elaine leans into her ongoing love as grief leads her through overwhelming emotional and spiritual depths on a journey beyond their time together into her new life. Inwardly, Vic is always with me, in some ways more strongly than just after his death. Now he is a constant heart presence. He is my inner husband, as long as my attachment doesn’t stop me from living—and it doesn’t. Instead, his closeness makes me live with more courage, joy, and curiosity… I build my new life on the supportive foundation we created and the person I became during our life together. My daily spiritual practice continues to be meditation, kindness, and the search for beauty and love wherever I find it. I do not forget how fragile this life is.
“Not only a touching and courageous memoir about love, illness, death, and grief, Elaine Mansfield’s Leaning into Love is a manual for healing that offers us the emotional and spiritual tools needed to grow and even flourish through life’s deepest crises.” — Dale Borglum, Living/Dying Project “…heart breaking and healing at the same time. It is a spiritual as well as an emotional journey, a good companion, a beautifully written story of a woman’s journey through bereavement.” —Lama Tsultrim Allione, author, Feeding Your Demons
YOGA FOR GRIEF AND LOSS
Poses - Meditation - Devotion -Self-Reflextion - Selfless Acts - Ritual by Karla Helbert
$24.95, paper. Singing Dragon. 318 pages, 7x9, b/w photos
Just as grief is an experience that affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually, yoga sustains and strengthens us in all of these areas. Containing nearly 100 expressive and experiential exercises, Yoga for Grief and Loss is a profound and practical guide through the branches of yoga— Jnana, Bhakti, Tantra, Karma, Raja and Hatha, helping us integrate these practices, as well as our own experiences of loss, into everyday life, moving us closer to harmony and wholeness. Through postures, meditations, mindfulness, breath work, chant, journaling, the creation of personal rituals and more, we are helped to lovingly find our own unique paths through grief and loss toward peace and connection to the true goal of yoga— unity of body, mind and spirit. We are shown how to begin and sustain a personal practice, both on and off the yoga mat, which helps us to cope with and move through grief on multiple levels. Expressive and experiential exercises are included. “What a treasure! This is the book that my heart longed for when my own child died and I cast about for something to both acknowledge and bless the transformational fire sweeping through the landscape of my soul. With deeply grounded wisdom, Karla Helbert simultaneously affirms the unmitigated pain of losing someone we love and offer trustworthy tools to help us navigate the wilderness of loss. By engaging the ancient systems of yoga, we are guided to embrace our grief as the sacred state it is and allow ourselves to connect with the Love that ‘yokes’ us together for all time.” —Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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Transpersonal Psychology SACRED TRICKERY AND THE WAY OF KINDNESS The Radical Wisdom of Jodo by Alejandro Jodorowsky
$22.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 186 pp.
Known for his surrealist films, his unique approach to tarot, his symbolic comics, and his shamanic therapeutic method of psychomagic, Alejandro Jodorowsky has accomplished an extraordinary amount in his more than 80 years. In this book, we get an intimate look into the inner workings of the cult figure of Jodo. What is revealed is a man who has evolved since his groundbreaking films of the 1970s, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, a man who has grown from a sacred trickster, a shaman of psychomagic, into a brilliant spiritual maverick of the 21st century. We get to see Jodo’s own reflections on the rich tapestry of his remarkable life, including the initiatory failure of the Dune film project, which combined the talents of a multitude of creative greats, including Moebius, Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, and H. R. Giger. We learn about Jodo’s years with Marcel Marceau and with great masters such as Ejo Takata, whose Zen training featured strenuous physical and mental ordeals; the sorceress Pachita, who performed psychic surgery on Jodo; and the mysterious Carlos Castaneda, whose sacred trickery reveals how intentions matter more than notions of true and false. Discussing the Way of Kindness that he now follows, Jodo reveals how intentionally practicing small acts of generosity and goodness can have a profound effect on your spirit, infusing life with a wealth of happiness. Included are contributions from friends and students of Jodorowsky on their experiences with him, including his son Adan Jodorowsky. From sacred trickery to the path of kindness, Jodo’s radical wisdom discerns the timeless within the immediate and gauges the everyday by the measure of eternity. I am certain of one thing: whatever the many and sometimes disturbing facets of his personality, Jodorowsky is a good man, kind and brilliant, driven by generous intentions. —Gilles Farcet, from the introduction
BOOKS OF THE DEAD by Stanislav Grof
$16.00, paper. Thames & Hudson. 128 pages, 7x9, colour photos
From a pioneer in consciousness studies comes this beautiful visual volume in the Art and Imagination Series. The art of dying and the posthumous journey of the soul have been described and depicted in many cultures. “Dying before dying,” or practice in dying, has been sought throughout history, not just to
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overcome fear and give help at the moment of death, but to renew and upgrade the quality of our life. Stanislav Grof considers some of the most striking and important of the so-called “books of the dead:” ancient Egyptian funerary texts; the Tibetan Bardo Thödol; Maya and Aztec myths of the death and rebirth of the Hero Twins and the Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl. From Europe come Christian visions of the soul’s journey, the danses macabres, and imagery of mortal decay that recalls Tibetan practices. The colour images are deeply evocative. These “books of the dead” seem to be accurate descriptions of the experiential territories traversed in non-ordinary states of consciousness. They are often based on countless personal experiences and on many centuries of careful observations. Experiential confrontation and knowledge of the realms they describe is a matter of extreme relevance, since the degree to which we become familiar and comfortable with them can have far-reaching consequences for the quality of our life, as well as for the way we die.
Among Stan Grof’s many other books are Holotropic Breathwork and The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death.
YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK The Egoless Path to Self-Esteem and Generous Love by David Richo
$20.95, paper. Shambhala. 175 pages
A healthy ego is necessary to achieving our goals, to building healthy relationships, and to leading a satisfying and meaningful life. But an ego that gets too big—that becomes egotism—can actually inhibit all those wonderful possibilities. In this luminous guide, David Richo offers wisdom from psychology, myth, and spiritual traditions to show us how to let go of the kind of ego
that causes suffering for ourselves and others. As a wonderful result, we gain self-confidence and find new ways to love too. It’s not a matter of getting rid of ego but of seeing through it. When we learn to do that, Dave says, we’ll discover the core of indestructible goodness in our enlightened nature. Then, when we see “big ego” expressed in ourselves or others, we begin to regard it with compassion rather than disdain. We are truly, Dave shows, not what we think but much, much more. Our work is to tame our ego, not to kill it off… We want neither to eliminate it nor to hold on to it; we simply want to be free of its grip and out of its clutches. If we learn to do that, we can then take all that ego has gathered and gained to puff itself up and we can reinvest that into healthy self-esteem and generous love… When this happens we finally emerge from the shame that built that fortress in which we were condemned to hide.
“How we relate to our ego—the sense of ‘I’—determines our suffering and our freedom. David Richo does a brilliant job unpacking the unhealthy versions if ego that confine us. Through psychological and Buddhist wisdom teachings and a range of powerful practices and meditations, we are guided beyond the identity of separate self to the loving awareness that is our deepest essence.” — Tara Brach, author of True Refuge “David Richo uses concepts from neuroscience, psychology, and Buddhism to show us how to make a friend of our ego, that oddly obstreperous, often tyrannical— but ultimately useful—chimera.”—Norman Fischer, author of Training in Compassion
Ken Wilber: Integral Meditation
Entheogens SACRED KNOWLEDGE
Psychedelics and Religious Experiences by William Richards $38.50, cloth. Columbia. 244 pages
Sacred Knowledge is the first well-documented, sophisticated account of the effect of psychedelics on biological processes, human consciousness, and revelatory religious experiences. Based on nearly three decades of legal research with volunteers, Bill Richards argues that, if used responsibly and legally, psychedelics have the potential to assuage suffering and constructively affect the quality of human life. While contributing to social and political debates over the responsible integration of psychedelic substances into modern society, his book serves as an invaluable resource for readers who, whether spontaneously or with the facilitation of psychedelics, have encountered meaningful, inspiring, or even disturbing states of consciousness and seek clarity about their experiences. Testing the limits of language and conceptual frameworks, Richards makes the most of experiential phenomena that stretch our conception of reality, advancing new frontiers in the study of belief, spiritual awakening, psychiatric treatment, and social well-being. His findings enrich humanities and scientific scholarship, expanding work in philosophy, anthropology, theology, and religious studies and bringing depth to research in mental health, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology. These exalted states of consciousness, once so rare and difficult to study, can now be fairly reliably accessed, and hence can be carefully and respectfully investigated… Page by page he unfolds his vision of the wondrous depths of the psyche and the equally wondrous underlying beauty of this world—a vision that, in his case, is not simply lofty yet unsubstantiated metaphysical speculation, but rather buttressed by the compelling and detailed accounts of the experiences and insights of his patients and research volunteers (as well as by narratives of his own generously offered and lucidly written experiences). This text also offers calm and sober advice on how to deal with psychosomatic distress while taking psychedelic substances; how (when taking these substances) to maximize the potential for safely receiving a psychologically and spiritually transformative mystical experience; how to best integrate these profound experiences into one’s daily life; how these substances can potentially give meaning to both daily life and the experience of dying; how psychedelics can help survivors to cope with the grief associated with the death of a loved one; and finally, the rather astonishing potential of these substances to deal with various severe addictions as well as clinical depression. —from the Foreword by G. William Barnard
“A seminal work that will become required reading for anyone seriously interested in either religious experience or psychedelic research. There has not been a book in this area as valuable since William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, more than a century ago.’ —James Fadiman, author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys William A. Richards is a clinical psychologist at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center with formal training in theology and comparative religion. Earlier in his career, he pursued psychedelic research at Spring Grove Hospital Center and the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore.
INTEGRAL MEDITATION
FRONTIERS OF PSYCHEDELIC CONSCIOUSNESS
$21.95, paper. Shambhala. 234 pages
$22.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 274 pages, b/w photos
Conversations with Albert Hofmann, Stanislav Grof, Rick Strassman, Jeremy Narby, Simon Posford, and Others by David Jay Brown
Mindfulness as a Path to Grow Up, Wake Up, and Show Up in Your Life by Ken Wilber Prepare to encounter your mind in a radically new way as Ken Wilber introduces Integral Mindfulness, a meditative approach based on Integral Theory and Practice. This leading-edge technique combines, for the first time in history, the ancient paths of meditation and mindfulness—or Waking Up—with modern research into psychological development and human evolution— Growing Up—resulting in a complete and powerfully effective method of personal transformation. Integral Meditation focuses attention on the inner “maps” we use to navigate life—in relationships, at work and study, in play, in just about everything we do. Mindfulness is used to unearth these unconscious maps, then uproot them so that we can substitute happier and healthier perspectives. With experiential exercises, guided meditation instructions, and tools to identify the individual’s own greatest potential, this book points the way to realizing our Supreme Identity—and to finding the reason why each of us has come into being: to embody and express in the world our unique perspective of Spirit.
After many decades of repression, there are now more than a dozen government-approved clinical studies with psychedelics taking place around the globe, and more coming. So… what does the future hold for psychedelic research and the expansion of consciousness? In this brilliantly curated collection of interviews with pioneers in psychedelic thought, David Jay Brown explores the future of mind-altering drugs, hallucinogenic plants, and the evolution of human consciousness. The accomplished scientists, artists, and thinkers interviewed in the book include LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann, psychologist Stanislav Grof, DMT researcher Rick Strassman, anthropologist Jeremy Narby, MAPS founder Rick Doblin, ethnobotanist Dennis McKenna, psychologist Charles Tart, researcher James Fadiman, pioneer Ralph Metzner, and musician Simon Posford from Shpongle, as well as many others. Demonstrating deep knowledge of his interviewees work, Brown elicits profound reflections from them as well as their considered opinions on the future of psychedelic drug medical research, God and the afterlife, LSD and mysticism, DMT research and non-human entity contact, problem-solving and psychedelics, ayahuasca and DNA, psilocybin and the religious experience, MDMA and PTSD, releasing the fear of death, the tryptamine dimension, the therapeutic potential of salvia, and the intersections between psychedelics and creativity, ecology, paranormal phenomena, and alternate realities. In each interview we discover how these influential minds were inspired by their use of entheogens. We see how psychedelics have the potential to help us survive/thrive as a species, not only by their therapeutic benefits but also by revealing our sacred connection to the biosphere and by prompting people to begin on the path of spiritual evolution.
Most people think that what they see “out there” is really out there, and that the same world is available for everybody—all that have to do is look. But what developmental studies unmistakably show is that, at each level of our development, we actually see and feel and interpret the world in dramatically different ways. Each stage of our development has its own grammar, its own structure, its own map… Let’s look at these as an entrée into applying Integral Meditation to your personal development, because they will be part
Beginning with as little as fifteen to thirty minutes of daily sessions, the meditator can gradually expand from there by slowly adding significant aspects of the practice. Meditation instructions and step-by-step guided contemplations are given in detail. Readers learn how to create a graph to track progress and discover natural strengths and potentials. The book also offers Wilber’s brilliant recommended readings and resources to facilitate further study. Among Ken Wilber’s books are Integral Life Practice and Integral Psychology.
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Because creativity lies at the heart of solving every problem that we currently face as a species, this is one of the primary reasons why I believe so strongly in the psychedelic drug research that’s going on today and so faithfully support the leading-edge organizations that work to make it happen.
Also by David Jay Brown is The New Science of Psychedelics.
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Shamanism & Ritual ONE SPIRIT MEDICINE Ancient Ways to Ultimate Wellness by Alberto Villoldo
New in Paperback
$15.99, paper. Hay House. 240 pages
When things are really bad, we bring in oncologists to address cancer, neurologists to repair the brain, psychologists to help us understand our family of origin. But this is a fragmented approach to health. To truly heal, we need to return to the original wellness discovered by shamans millennia ago: One Spirit Medicine. Through One Spirit Medicine, the shamans found that they could grow a new body that allowed them to live in extraordinary health. They learned how to switch off the “death clock” inside every cell, and turn on the “immortality” genes that reside in password-protected regions of our DNA. Cancer, dementia, and heart disease were rare. The shamans of old were truly masters of prevention.
You do not have to be gravely ill to root out physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering and restore balance to your life. Using the principles and practices offered in these pages, you can feel better in a few days and begin to clear your mind and heal your brain in a week. And in just six weeks you can be well on your way to a new body that heals rapidly and ages gracefully, and a brain that supports you in forging a profound connection with Spirit and experiencing a renewed sense of purpose in life. One Spirit Medicine can give you all that, just as it gave it to me.
This is another compelling reason to attend carefully to the health of the gut-brain, where our serotonin is manufactured.
TEACHINGS OF THE PEYOTE SHAMANS The Five Points of Attention by James Endredy
$20.50, paper. Inner Traditions. 181 pp.
Drawing on more than 25 years of experience as a medical anthropologist—as well as his own journey back from the edge of death—shamanic teacher Alberto Villoldo shows you how to detoxify the brain and gut with superfoods; techniques for working with our luminous energy fields to heal your body; and how to follow the ancient path of the medicine wheel to shed disempowering stories from the past and pave the way for rebirth. Clearly, DMT plays an important role in attaining the states of consciousness associated with One Spirit Medicine. I believe that nature designed the brain to allow serotonin to be turned into DMT by the pineal gland, granting us access to higher consciousness and direct perception of our interconnectedness with all creation.
other gringo into the mountains to one of the Huichols’ ceremonial centers, and they were both caught. After trial and punishment, Endredy was invited to stay within the sacred lands for the festivities he had illegally intruded upon and found his initiation into the Huichol shamanic tradition had begun. Sharing his intimate conversations and journeys with the shaman he calls Peyote Jesus, the author explains how Huichol belief revolves around the five sacred directions, the five sacred sites, and the five points of attention. As Peyote Jesus explains, the five points of attention refer to dividing your awareness yet staying focused on your inner
Trance Journeys TRANCE JOURNEYS OF THE HUNTER GATHERERS Ecstatic Practices to Reconnect with the Great Mother and Heal the Earth by Nicholas Brink $21.95, paper. Bear & Company. 272 pages, 36 b/w illustrations
Early humans ran with the animals, lived with the animals, and were one with the wild symphony of the natural world—a time fondly remembered as the Garden of Eden, or Idunn as it is known in Norse mythology. But as humanity shifted from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of farming and cities, embracing the modern worldview of man’s superiority over nature, we began ignoring our innate connection with the Earth. Now we are waking up to what we’ve lost, yearning to heal our relationship with the Earth and rekindle the oneness with nature that we naturally enjoyed as children. Drawing on the work of Felicitas Goodman, Thomas Berry, Ervin Laszlo, and other important voices calling for recognition of our connection with all life, author Nicholas Brink shows how ecstatic trance can return us to profound union with our Great Mother, the Earth. He details the specific healing and spiritual powers of trance postures and rituals from a variety of hunter-gatherer societies, including ancient Celtic, Norse, Native American, and South American traditions. He explains how the shamanic techniques of ecstatic trance allow us to access waking-dreamlike visions where we can connect with animal spirit guides, the six directions, and the seasons and discover ways to help heal the Earth. We can shape-shift to see through the eyes of each species of flora and fauna, interacting with life-forms in the skies, on land, in the seas, and underground, as well as journey to the realm of the dead to meet our ancestors. Sharing personal trance experiences of healing, spiritual connection, and divination, Brink shows how these practices enable us to create personal rituals to maintain oneness with all life. He reveals the spiritual power of being one with your environment and experiencing the spirits of everything around you. And, as we reconnect with the spirit of the Earth, we can once again experience the world not only as alive but also enchanted. Nicholas Brink is a psychologist and a certified teacher of ecstatic trance with the Cuyamungue Institute.
Shamans of Mongolia & Siberia
SIBERIAN SHAMANISM
The Shanar Ritual of the Buryats by Virlana Tkacz, with Sayan Zhambalov $23.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 208 pages, 7x10, colour photos
Near the radiant blue waters of Lake Baikal, in the lands where Mongolia, Siberia, and China meet, live the Buryats, an indigenous people little known to the Western world. After seventy years of religious persecution by the Soviet government, they can again pursue their traditional spiritual practices, a unique blend of Tibetan Buddhism and shamanism. There are two distinct shamanic paths in the Buryat tradition: Black shamanism, which draws power from the earth, and White shamanism, which draws power from the sky. In the Buryat Aga region, Black and White shamans conduct rituals together, for the Buryats believe that they are the children of the Swan Mother, descendants of heaven who can unite both sides in harmony. Providing an intimate account of one of the Buryats’ most important shamanic rituals, this book documents a complete Shanar, the ceremony in which a new shaman first contacts his ancestral spirits and receives his power. Through dozens of colour photographs, the authors detail the preparations of the sacred grounds, ritual objects, and colorful costumes, including the orgay, or shamans’ horns, and vividly illustrate the dynamic motions of the shamans as the spirits enter them. Readers experience the intensity of ancient ritual as the initiate struggles through the rites, encountering unexpected resistance from the spirit world, and the elder shamans uncover ancient grievances that must be addressed before the Shanar can be completed successfully. Interwoven with beautiful translations of Buryat ceremonial songs and chants, this unprecedented view of one of the world’s oldest shamanic traditions allows readers to witness extraordinary forces at work in a ritual that culminates in a cleansing blessing from the heavens themselves.
BEOWULF’S ECSTATIC TRANCE MAGIC
Accessing the Archaic Powers of the Universal Mind by Nicholas Brink $21.95, paper. Bear & Company. 256 pages, b/w illustrations
SKY SHAMANS OF MONGOLIA
Using the altered state of ecstatic trance to access the memories of the Universal Mind, Nicholas Brink takes us back to ancient Scandinavia, to the time of the epic of Beowulf, the oldest piece of literature written in the English language. Sharing his ecstatic trance techniques along the way, his journey allows us to re-experience the life and shamanic practices of Queen Wealhtheow, the wife of King Hrothgar, the king rescued by Beowulf from the torment of the monster Grendel. Revealing a hidden side to the epic of Beowulf, Brink details how Grendel respected and would not harm Queen Wealhtheow and her teacher Vanadisdottir, a priestess of the goddess Freyja, for they practiced the ancient magic of the earlier hunter-gatherer era when the Great Mother Earth was worshipped. In the time of the queen the peaceful and compassionate traditions of this era were becoming forgotten, succumbing to settlements, kingdoms, and territorial disputes. We gain first-person experience of Wealhtheow and Vanadisdottir’s veneration of the Great Mother and the ancient magic of the early Nordic people as practiced by the seiorkers, seers, and spirit travelers, the shamans of the time. These practices include divination through the goddess Freyr, contacting Bear spirits, and spirit journeying to various realms. As we experience our own time of transition and turmoil much like that of Beowulf’s time, Nicholas Brink reveals how the original magic of our ancestors, as practiced by Queen Wealhtheow, provides a blueprint for our emergence from the warlike nature of the past into a time of peace and compassion for our Great Mother Earth. Also by Nicholas Brink are The Power of Ecstatic Trance and Baldr’s Magic.
Meetinghs with Remarkable Healers by Kevin Turner $33.00, paper. North Atlantic. 176 pages, 16-page colour insert
Part travelogue, part experiential spiritual memoir, Kevin Turner takes us to visit with authentic shamans in the steppes and urban centers of modern-day Mongolia. Along the way, the author, a practicing shaman himself, tells of spontaneous medical diagnoses, all-night shamanic ceremonies, and miraculous healings, all welling from a rich culture in which divination, soul-retrieval, and spirit de-possession are a part of everyday life. Shamanism, described in the 1950s by Mircea Eliade as archaic techniques of ecstasy,” is alive and well in Mongolia as a means of accessing “nonordinary realities” and the spirit world. After centuries of suppression by Buddhist and then Communist political powers, it is exploding in popularity in Mongolia. Turner gives compelling accounts of healings and rituals he witnesses among Darkhad, Buryat, and Khalkh shamans, and goes on to provide us with his insights into a universal shamanism, principles that lie at the heart of shamanic traditions worldwide. This astounding, inspiring book will appeal to shamans and shamanic therapists, students of Mongolian culture and comparative religion, and fans of off-grid travel memoirs.` Kevin Turner is the director for Asia of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies founded by Michael Harner. He teaches Core Shamanism internationally. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
Taking place in the heart of the Huichol homeland in western Mexico, this book offers a rare in-depth look at the inner workings of Huichol shamanism, which is permeated with the use of the sacred peyote cactus. Outsiders are almost never allowed access to Huichol sacred sites and ceremonies; however, James Endredy, after years of friendship with Huichol families, earned the privilege nearly by accident. Swayed by persistent pleading, he agreed to take an-
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F H E HEALERS, WICCANS, MAGICIANS, A D E R F CELTS, RABBIS
self. This is not a normal state of consciousness for most people, yet when we maintain these points of attention, we discover our true essence and move closer to God. Endredy undergoes dozens of spiritual journeys with peyote as he makes the pilgrimages to the five sacred Huichol sites with Peyote Jesus. He is shocked by his vision of the Virgin Mary while under peyote’s guidance and learns of the deep relationship—strictly on Huichol terms-—between their cosmology, Gnosticism, and Christianity, especially Jesus Christ. Providing an inside look at the major ceremonies and peyote rituals of the Huichol, this unexpectedly powerful book reveals the Huichol worldview, their beliefs in the afterlife, and their spiritual work on behalf of all of humanity. “…will carry you along a river of learning into new realms of thinking, of being, and of exploring who and what we areally are… It just takes cleaning the lens of perception to see and know the deeper dimensions of reality. James and his teachers have been there. Now you can glimpse it as well.” — Tom Pinkson, author, The Shamanic Wisdom of the Huichol
Native American Medicine THE MAKING OF A HEALER Teachings of My Oneida Grandmother by Russell FourEagles
$25.50, paper. Quest. 245 pages
Once Oneida healer Russell FourEagles (Atuneyute Keya) went to see his friend Bob, whom doctors had declared incurably paralyzed following a stroke. Within minutes of FourEagles’ attention, Bob was kicking the covers off the bed. “This stuff is amazing. You should write a book,” Bob later encouraged. And here it is. FourEagles’ grandparents escaped the reservation-school education that obliterated Native American culture, preserving the healing abilities that can be traced in an unbroken lineage back two hundred grandmothers. In The Making of a Healer, he openly shares his knowledge in an effort to keep the old wisdom and practices from being forgotten. Recounting sacred Oneida myths and cosmology, he describes the healing powers of the Fire Ceremony, energy exchange, and humor; discusses natural remedies; and explains how he healed himself from post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in the Vietnam War. I know nothing of writing or how to do it. I can’t spell for sour beans, but with the help of spell checker and some of the friends I have made over the years, as you see, the book got done.
“A heartfelt man, a clear and loving elder, an ancient tradition, the goodness of Mother Earth, and powerful faith in the Creator: all create a wonderful teaching to serve you well no matter what your lineage. Highly recommended!” —Brooke Medicine Eagle, author of The Last Ghost Dance “Russell FourEagles beautifully honors his grandmother’s timeless wisdom and wealth of ceremonies to assist in our healing. His inspiring personal stories touched me deeply. Powerful and brilliant!” —Sandra Ingerman, author of Medicine for the Earth
THE PATH OF THE SACRED PIPE
Journey of Love, Power, and Healing by Jay Cleve $24.95, paper. Quest.150 pages
In these days of global crisis, thoughtful seekers increasingly turn to Native Americans for healing wisdom. “The Sacred Pipe is the medicine,” says Jay Cleve in this informative and practical guide to a key practice of Native American spirituality. Cleve shows how the Pipe can facilitate transformation on both the personal and planetary levels. He explains its use in rituals such as the sweat lodge, the vision quest, and the sun dance and in relation to the Medicine Wheel. He also provides practical information on obtaining and caring for a Pipe and on preparing for and performing the Pipe ceremony. Seers and sages, past and present, are predicting a time of a world shift and a need to move into a larger mind—transforming and raising consciousness to align with the radical shift, expansion, and evolution of earth energies. And how better to help ease and facilitate this transition than performing the Sacred Pipe ceremony? This ceremony, perhaps more than any other, helps humans connect with, bless and heal the earth. The pipe ceremony is a heart-centered, Mother Earth honoring ritual to help heal the earth and humankind and to facilitate our transition into a New World Age.
An apprentice to Sun Bear and the Bear Tribe for many years, Jay Cleve has received extensive training in the Sacred Pipe, sweat lodge, medicine wheel and other aspects of Native spirituality.
Wicca & Magick TAKING SACRED BACK
The Complete Guide to Designing & Sharing Group Rituals by Nels & Judy Linde $26.50, paper. Llewellyn. 360 pages, 7x9, b/w photos, diagrams
Whether you’re designing a group ritual for fifty people or five hundred, Taking Sacred Back will help you define your intent, create an outline, and bring your ritual to life. Join authors Nels Linde and Judith Olson-Linde as they explore creative and unique ideas for all the stages of ritual— entering into the liminal, making the space sacred, engaging the subconscious of all attendees, creating awe and wonder, raising and directing energy, and ending the ritual. Discover advice on hardware and prop-making (and tips on using props effectively); scaling up or scaling down for larger or smaller groups; and lists of books, websites, CDs, and other useful resources. Complete with examples of rituals the authors have conducted as well as problem-solving advice, Taking Sacred Back is a rich, evocative and visually helpful resource guide for all ritualists or folks who seek meaningful community traditions as BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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participation in conventional religions continues to decline. Nels and Judy Linde have been guest ritual leaders/weavers at Pagan Spirit Gathering, Heartland, and Sacred Harvest Festival, among others.
THE COMPLETE BOOK OF AQUARIAN MAGIC
by Marian Green, with a foreword by Judika Illes $25.50, paper. Weiser. 285 pages
Here in one volume are two classic practical guides from elder Marian Green for modern witches: Magic for the Aquarian Age and Experiments in Aquarian Magic. Magic for the Aquarian Age is a contemporary manual that unwraps the secret of the inner you, the submerged part of yourself that has the power to completely transform your life. Filled with techniques for getting ready to practice the magical art, it is a textbook that is adapted to contemporary needs. It also includes exercises and techniques designed to awaken perceptions and senses that have been blunted by modern life. “...an absolute gem of a book, written by one of England’s foremost authorities on occultism.” --Insight Experiments in Aquarian Magic is a guide that draws on the ageless store of magical knowledge so that you can make use of its power and life expanding techniques. Included here is information about vision journeys, healing, creating a magic temple, time travel, talismanic magic, and much more. Magic is a matter of experience and reality. It is a combination of inner skills everyone can develop, given time, dedication, practice, and the application of universal laws of nature. There are a number of magical exercises that have to be tried; there are the patterns upon which a personalized ritual can be built; there are notes on symbolism, divination, and equipment to be studied and fitted into your own life pattern… Each of us is different, so each can apply these techniques, master the arts as an individual; and although the skills, methods, and symbols are as old as the hills, they are still relevant if they are applied in the ways of the modern world. All the necessary keys are available to you in these pages.
With Green as your guide and with perseverance and reverence to all powers and life-forces you encounter, the door to magical experience will open for you.
Celtic Spirit TENDING BRIGID’S FLAME
Awaken to the Celtic Goddess of Hearth, Temple, and Forge by Lunaea Weatherstone $20.95, paper. Llewellyn. 258 pages, b/w illustrations
Brigid is worshiped worldwide—and especially in Ireland—as a source of inspiration, protection, and blessing. In Tending Brigid’s Flame, Lunaea Weatherstone presents the beloved Celtic goddess as a true soul-friend for women today, exploring her legends and lore, attributes and allies, holidays, symbols, and sacred places. Filled with rituals, exercises, and meditations, Tending Brigid’s Flame shows how to welcome Brigid into your F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
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home and make sacred all the activities of everyday life, from food magic to faery traditions, and from scrying to personal healing. Using the symbolism of fires that burn in hearth, temple, and forge, this breathtaking book sends you on a journey through the transformative power of one of the world’s most revered goddesses. Brigid crosses the borders of theology, appealing to those who worship in both grove and church, circle and convent… Celtic spirituality is very much an earthly path, connected to the daily and seasonal cycle of time, as well as the timeless of poetry, creativity, and magic. The supernatural and the mystical have never been lost. The Celtic tradition honors many deities, both local spirits of a particular place and those who bless a wider realm of universal understanding. Of these holy ones, Brigid shines brightest. Her influence is invoked to bless all aspects of life, from midwifery to metalcraft. I am a priestess and flamekeeper vowed to Brigid. The purpose of this book is to present her as a fiery force in the world today, specifically as in inspiration in the lives of women.
With illuminating reflections from nineteen wisewoman devotees of Brigid, this book shares ways in which Brigid transforms and inspires through craft and creativity, healing of body and spirit, the power of words, and tempering your skills into personal excellence. It is my hope that you will know Brigid not only as a goddess to be worshiped but as an anam cara, a soul friend.
Christian & Jewish Spirituality HEALING WITH GOD’S LOVE Kabbalah’s Hidden Secrets by Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer, with Peggy Bagley $19.95, paper. Larson. 270 pages
In 1972 Douglas Goldhamer was healed, through prayers a Kabbalistic Rabbi taught him, of a crippling case of Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome. Since then he has devoted his life to demonstrating how anyone can access those same deep healing energies—which he calls God’s loving immanence, or Feminine Presence. He has prayed successfully with people with diabetes, many kinds of cancer, heart ailments, kidney or back or eye problems, arthritis, depression, HIV, hepatitis, mental health issues and much more. Healing with God’s Love synergizes Kabbalistic wisdom and the spirit of Now. Goldhamer’s healing experience, scholarship, deep faith, and entertaining style make powerful healing prayers and intentions accessible to readers from all walks of life. You need to actually feel love and compassion during your healing meditative practices. Without love, all the technical knowledge won’t work.
With engaging stories and a style suitable
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F I F CHRISTIAN HT EY ,ASDU EF IRS M & ISLAM Shia sources, and from legal, theological, and mystical texts, The Study Quran conveys the enduring spiritual power of the Quran and offers a thorough scholarly understanding of this holy text. Beautifully packaged with a rich, attractive two-color layout, this magnificent volume includes essays by 15 contributors, maps, useful notes and annotations in an easy-to-read two-column format, a timeline of historical events, and helpful indices. With The Study Quran, both scholars and lay readers can explore the deeper spiritual meaning of the Quran, examine the grammar of difficult sections, and explore legal and ritual teachings, ethics, theology, sacred history, and the importance of various passages in Muslim life. With an introduction by its general editor, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, here is a nearly 2,000page, continuous discussion of the entire Quran that provides a comprehensive picture of how this sacred work has been read by Muslims for over 1,400 years.
Matthew Fox
SINS OF THE SPIRIT, BLESSINGS OF THE FLESH Transforming Evil in Soul and Society by Matthew Fox $24.95, paper. North Atlantic. 396 pages
Visionary theologian and author Matthew Fox challenges traditional perceptions of good and evil by offering a new theology that lays the groundwork for a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In a revised edition with a luminous foreword by Deepak Chopra and a new preface that brings the book up to date with the cataclysmic events of the new millennium, this book illustrates how, contrary to mainstream church doctrine, flesh is the grounding of spirit, and our culture has concentrated far too much on transgressions of the flesh while failing to take into account the sins of the spirit. What is Evil about? Can we tame it or steer its energies differently?
Artfully weaving together the wisdom of East and West, Fox considers Thomas Aquinas’s definition of sin as “misdirected love” and discusses the parallels between the Eastern teachings of the seven chakras and the Western teachings of the seven capital sins. He invites us to change the way we think about sin and places our capacity for evil in the fuller context of the natural beauty of our physical world, the complex texture of our emotional lives, and the splendid depths of our spiritual center. Fox explains how the chakras teach us to direct the love-energies we all possess and proposes seven positive precepts for living a full and spirited life. He asserts that we can combat and transform evil through love, generosity, letting go, and creativity. Crafting a blueprint for social change, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh points the way toward a deeper and more compassionate way to live while eloquently revealing the means to confront evil both within and without. Matthew Fox was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years. Among his other books are Confessions of a Post-Denominational Priest and Meister Eckhart: Mystic Warrior.
The Quran contains above all a doctrine about the nature of reality on all its levels, from Absolute Reality Itself, that is, the One God, to the reality of creation both macrocosmic and microcosmic… The Quran also deals fully with the nature of human beings. It teaches us who we are, why we were created and placed here on earth, what our goal in life is… The Sacred Text deals with every aspect of human concern, from the deepest intellectual questions and the most lofty spiritual issues to the mundane matters of ordinary life. It is at once therapeutic and didactic… As the living Word of God, it is the ubiquitous companion of Muslims from the cradle to the grave and provides the spiritual and religious space within which they are born, breathe, live, and die.
THE WAY TO GOD
Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey by Matthew Fox $26.50, paper. New World Library. 288 pp
This unique reflection was prompted by an invitation Matthew Fox received to speak on the centennial of Thomas Merton’s birth. Fox says that much of the trouble he’s gotten into—such as being excommunicated in 1993 from the Dominican Order by Cardinal Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict)—was because of Thomas Merton, who sent Fox to Paris to complete a doctoral program in philosophy. Fox found that Merton’s journals, poetry, and religious writings revealed a deeply ecumenical philosophy and a contemplative life experience similar to that of Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century mystic/theologian who inspired Fox’s own “creation spirituality.” It is little surprise to find Fox and Merton to be kindred spirits, but the intersections Fox finds with Eckhart are intellectually profound, spiritually enlightening, and delightfully engaging. A Way to God is personal and intellectual, semi-biographical and autobiographical. It creates a methodology for understanding the vast and deep contributions that Merton made to the history of spirituality by demonstrating Merton’s teachings by way of the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Cosmic Christ, the divine feminine, eco-justice, and other themes common in Merton’s, Eckhart’s, and Fox’s theologies. Readers will rediscover the beauty of Merton’s writing and the depth of Merton’s thinking, but they will also discover new dimensions of his nature-based mysticism and prophetic perspective as they view him through the lens of Creation Spirituality.
“One of this ambitious project’s greatest strengths is the breadth and variety of exegetical sources and methods that inform the commentary throughout—most impressive.” —John Renard, Professor of Medieval Islam at Saint Louis University
ISLAMIC MYSTICAL POETRY
Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi edited with translations by Mahmood Jamal
This book is in part a thank you to Thomas Merton and an acknowledgement of my debt to him... I offer it also as an outreach to others, monastic or not, who may not be familiar with the Creation Spirituality tradition, which has not only marked my life and work, but, I am now certain, did the same for Merton in the last decade of his life. Many times over the last 47 years—in the face of culture’s rapid leaps and profound evolutions—I have lamented Merton’s untimely death, asking myself the question many others have no doubt asked as well” “What would Merton say?” and “What would Merton do?”
for all faiths, Rabbi Goldhamer leads us step by step through many powerful healing meditations, intentions, prayers, visualizations, and blessings. These Kabbalistic meditation are consciously designed to connect the divine in us with the divine in the world in ways that open spiritual blockages and effect healing. When we consciously unite the male and female Divine energies, we embrace what the great healing Kabbalists taught again and again—something most often spoken of today as mindfulness. The Kabbalists, in doing their healing, highlighted the importance of embracing the present moment, recognizing the Divinity within this very moment. This idea of uniting the Male and Female aspects of God is a key principle, possible the single most important secret we are trying to teach here.
$20.00, paper. Penguin. 336 pages
Sufism is the mystical dimension of Islam and poetry has ever been the most powerful vehicle for conveying Sufi ideas. Islamic Mystical Poetry includes a selection of poetry ranging from the ninth to the twentieth century, representing the peak of Islamic mystical writing.
Sufism & Islam THE STUDY QURAN
A New Translation and Commentary edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr & others $74.99, cloth. HarperCollins. 2048 pages, ribbon marker
This new, accessible and accurate translation of the Quran offers a meticulous analysis of its theological, metaphysical, historical, and geographical teachings and backgrounds, and includes extensive study notes, special introductions by experts in the field, and is edited by a top modern Islamic scholar, respected in both the West and the Islamic world. Drawn from a wide range of traditional Islamic commentaries, including Sunni and BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaaba and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Qur’an. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith. —Mohyuddin Ibn ‘Arabi
Geographically covering most of the Is-
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lamic world, the selection include poems from the greatest of the greats: Rabia Basri, Mansur Hallaj, Ansari of Heart, Sanai Bhaznavi, Fariduddin Attar, Inb ‘Arabi, Jalalluddin Rumi, Mahmud Shabistari, Sultan Veled, Yunus Emre, Amir Khusrow, Hafiz, Kabir, Jami, Sarmad, Bulleh Shah, and a number of others. With titles like “The Face of Beauty,” “The Heart is a River,” “I am so Drunk,” and “The Moon Shines in My Body,” these poems have resonated down the centuries with many hearts. Reflecting both private devotional love and the attempt to attain union with God and become absorbed into the Divine, many poems in this edition are imbued with the symbols and metaphors that unfold the central ideas of Sufism: the Lover, the Beloved, the Win and the Tavern; while others are more personal, echoing the poet’s battle to leave earthly love behind. The fire of the rose’s cheek Burnt the nightingale’s heart; The laughing flame Tormented the devoted moth… The Sufi that yesterday Was ranting against wine and cup, Took a sip last night Got drunk and became wise!
—Hafiz
These translations capture the passion of the original poetry and are accompanied by an introduction on Sufism and the common themes, including suggested further readings.
A TREASURY OF SUFI WISDOM The Path of Unity edited by Peter Samsel
$27.95, paper. World Wisdom. 248 pages
At the very heart of Islam lies the spiritual way of Sufism. Far removed from the negative portrayal of Islam in the headlines, Sufism is rooted in the harmonious qualities of peace, love, beauty, and wisdom. Its primary focus is to return human beings to unity with God. This select treasury of Sufi wisdom includes nearly 400 short sayings from as many as 100 of the greatest Sufi saints and sages in history, covering a vast span of 1,400 years. It includes notable sayings from wellknown figures such as Rabiah, al-Hallaj, Junayd, al-Ghazali, Ibn al-Farid, Ibn Arabi, Rumi, and Ahmad al-Alawi. Also featured are over 150 verses from the Koran and the Hadith (Prophetic sayings), which form the foundational sources of this esoteric form of Islam. Whether expressing itself in pithy paradoxical aphorisms, extended intellectual instruction, or rapturous mystical poetry, this compendium of Sufi wisdom will illuminate the spiritual travelers way of return to God. Peter Samsel, an independent scholar interested in metaphysics, science, symbolism, and art, has edited this paperback, which includes a foreword by the well-known Sufi scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Samsel calls the Path of Unity “the thread of return that runs through the Sufi tradition.” The quotes are mostly short passages from a wide range of resources, including aphorisms, poetry, table talks, letters of guidance, lives of saints, and texts of spiritual instruction. Let’s say the name God all the time. Let’s see what my Lord does. Let’s travel the Way always. Let’s see what my Lord does.
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Just when you least expect it, suddenly the veil is lifted. The remedy arrives in time. Let’s see what the Lord does. What did Yunus do? What did he do? He found a straight Path, held the hand of a guide. Let’s see what the Lord does.
— Yunus Emre Leave aside your self and come! — Bayazid al-Bistami They move as God causes them to move, and their words are the words of God which roll upon their tongues, and their sight is the sight of God who has entered their eyes. — Dhu’l Nun al-Misri
Astrology & Tarot ESSENTIAL ASTROLOGY
Everything You Need to Know to Interpret Your Natal Chart by Amy Herring $28.95, paper. Llewellyn. 408 pages
Your natal chart is a tool to help you build your path in life. It’s a map to consult when you are feeling lost or when you want to explore the deepest parts of your true self. Join astrologer Amy Herring as she shares simple, stepby-step instructions to reading your natal chart in a way that provides profound insight into your inner workings. Essential Astrology reveals the meanings of the signs, planets, houses, and aspects, showing you the vital details of interpreting natal charts with skill. Astrology is a symbolic language for the heart and soul. With this book, you will discover how to apply the deepest layers of astrological wisdom to questions about relationships, careers, and everything that’s most important in your life. This comprehensive guide provides you with practical tools to understand your inner workings and enrich your knowledge and application of astrology. Herring offers historical and astronomical aspects of astrology, tips and techniques for chart interpretation, and more. “I cannot think of a better gift to offer any astrological beginner than Amy Herring’s Essential Astrology. Her approach is modern in that it is oriented to psycho-spiritual development and to making wise and responsible choices in life… In short, she writes without ego, helpfully, with the needs of the reader always in focus.” —Steven Forrest, author of The Inner Sky “Amy Herring’s Essential Astrology is clear, comprehensive, yet rich in detail and easy to understand. It will awaken the beginner and inspire the expert. A joy to read.” —Virginia Bell, astrology writer for The Huffington Post
THE BOOK OF NEPTUNE by Stephen Forrest
$34.95, paper. Seven Paws. 398 pages
Evolutionary astrologer Steven Forrest has given us a number of seminal astrology texts, among them The Inner Sky and The Book of Pluto. Now he’s written the book on Neptune. Neptune marks the border between the conventional planets and deep space. It is the window through which you peer into your own mystical vastness—and through which that luminous vastness peers back. This mys-
Tarot by Jodorowsky
THE WAY OF TAROT
The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards by Alejandro Jodorowsky & Marianne Costa $36.00, paper. Inner Traditions. 520 pages, 8-pages colour, 500 b/w illustrations
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s profound study of the Tarot, which began in the early 1950s, reveals it to be far more than a simple divination system. The Tarot is first and foremost a powerful instrument of self-knowledge and a representation of the structure of the soul. The Way of Tarot shows that the entire deck is structured like a temple, or a mandala, which is both an image of the world and a representation of the divine. The authors use the sacred art of the original Marseilles Tarot—created during a time of religious tolerance in the 11th century—to reconnect with the roots of the Tarot’s Western esoteric wisdom. They explain that the Tarot is a “nomadic cathedral” whose parts—the 78 cards or “arcana”—should always be viewed with an awareness of the whole structure. This understanding is essential to fully grasp the Tarot’s hermetic symbolism. The authors explore the secret associations behind the hierarchy of the cards and the correspondences between the suits and energies within human beings. Each description of the Major Arcana includes key word summaries, symbolic meanings, traditional interpretations, and a section where the card speaks for itself. Jodorowsky and Costa then take the art of reading the Tarot to a depth never before possible. Using their work with Tarology, a new psychological approach that uses the symbolism and optical language of the Tarot to create a mirror image of the personality, they offer a powerful tool of self-realization, creativity, and healing. Alejandro Jodorowsky is a filmmaker who made the legendary El Topo and The Holy Mountain. He’s also a psychotherapist and author of many books, including Psychomagic and The Dance of Reality.
TAROT DE MARSEILLE BY JODOROWSKY
by Alejandro Jodorowsky, illustrated by Phillipe Camoin $45.95. Llewellyn. 78-card deck + guidebook in a box
Based on years of research with the goal of creating the definitive Tarot de Marseille, this deck is a labor of love that possesses fine details and the passionate workmanship of Phillipe Camoin—last heir to the centuries-old legacy of Marseillan cardmakers—and acclaimed artist and tarotist Alejandro Jodorowsky. Influenced most heavily by the deck of Nicolas Conver first printed in 1760, this premium deck is a treasure for readers and collectors. See also Jodorowsky’s magnificent book, The Way of Tarot, which uses the imagery of this deck in its in-depth work.
terious window has forever hypnotized humanity. Some of us—those who have truly cleaned the glass—are the precious mystics who light our paths. Others, flooded by imagery pouring up from the depths, are the treasured artists who inspire us. Legions more, overwhelmed by their own minds, have sought refuge, disappearing into whiskey bottles and video screens. In this powerful, practical book, best-selling astrologer Steven Forrest unveils a priceless secret buried in your own natal chart. As you come to understand Neptune’s place in your life, a treasure map emerges—one that reveals your best pathway into higher states of consciousness, while warning you about delusions custom-designed to con you into squandering your own soul. Underlying every word is the core notion that everyone is different—that one-size-fits-all spiritual practices can only take us so far. In a nutshell, The Book of Neptune helps you clean the windowpane that stands between you and your own ultimate divinity. Includes full descriptions of Neptune in each sign and house, Neptune in aspect to each major planet in the natal chart, and Neptune transits. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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Metaphysics & Philosophy SPIRITUAL BALANCING
A Guidebook for Living in the Light by Diana Burney
$23.99, paper. North Atlantic. 282 pages
This guide to spiritual empowerment provides a spiritual approach to the psychology of everyday living by offering practical strategies and step-by-step methods for clearing out negative psychic energy. Addressing topics such as spirit interference, spirit possession, and spirit attachment, Diana Burney—who has helped thousands worldwide refocus energies for positive results—shares timeless lessons and basic techniques for psychic protection and spiritual cleansing. Those who feel stuck energetically, emotionally, mentally, or financially will learn tools for healing and self-empowerment that will help them release impediments and accelerate their spiritual journey. In these difficult times, Spiritual Balancing provides answers for readers at all levels of spiritual growth as they seek to establish and maintain equilibrium in body, mind, and spirit.
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In this book I include exercises, techniques, and methods to ward off any negative energy attempting to dissuade you from your life’s mission. Also included are practices to raise your vibratory rate as the Earth raises Hers… By implementing the vibration-
al-shifting and life-transforming tools in this book, you can become spiritually empowered and thus connect to the
higher Light and power of your heart and soul. May the Light of the Universe follow you throughout your spiritual journey.
Contents include chapters on: Moving Forward Spiritually How to Cope With the Ascension Process Elimination of Barriers Clearing Your Living Space Spiritual Protection Violet Fire Spiritual Power Tools Spiritual Ecology Divine Guidance The Empowerment of Meditation Toward Energy Mastery Energy Matrix of Chakras Awakening Divine Blueprint Spiritual Growth Exercises Earth Healings.
I AM NOT I
by Jacob Needleman
$19.50, paper. North Atlantic. 120 pages
Seeking to reconcile the split between our inner child and our adult self, Jacob Needleman follows the ancient spiritual tradition of engaging in a conversation between a guiding wisdom figure and a seeker to address the trauma and to offer an initiation to a younger self, an initiation he feels is missing from our culture. The time-honored dialogue form is rendered more contemporary by being cast as a screenplay and, as the conversation between the 80-year-old author and his younger selves unfolds, an ambiguity emerges as to whether this is strictly the authors internal dialogue or whether the younger self may be nurturing a rebirth of the author. On one level, I am not I brings younger readers (teenagers and young adults) face to face with powerful spiritual and philosophical ideas. But as the book progresses, the dialogue delves into questions and insights that carry astonishing new hope and vision for every man and woman, challenging our culture’s accepted, and often toxic, ideas about humanity’s place in a living universe. This is an intensely emotional exchange between guide and seeker toward ever deepening mystic insights. The ego knew it would someday disintegrate and die, but it also knew that its real hidden heart, the I-ness hidden behind and within itself, could never die and was never born: it was both outside and inside of time. So that was at least a beginning “taste” of the sacred reconciling marriage between eternity and time, being and nothingness, spirit and matter!
Jacob Needleman, through his many books such as Lost Christianity, The Heart of Philosophy, and Money and the Meaning of Life, has done much to make philosophy come alive for us. I am not I is a unique multi-leveled evocation of the search for and dimensions of truth. The screenplay format adds yet another potential to this unique book, which embodies in a beautifully personal way the love of wisdom—the essence of “philosophy.”
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F H ESOUL ESOTERIC TEACHERS, A D ERECORDS, R F PAST LIVES
Past Lives and the Soul
SECRET TEACHERS OF THE WESTERN WORLD
SEEKING JORDAN
by Gary Lachman
How I Learned the Truth about Death and the Invisible Universe by Matthew McKay
$25.95, paper. Putnam. 510 pages
This epic study unveils the esoteric masters who have covertly impacted the intellectual development of the West, from Pythagoras and Zoroaster to the little-known modern icons Jean Gebser and Schwaller de Lubicz. Running alongside the mainstream of Western intellectual history there is another current which, in a very real sense, should take pride of place, but which for the last few centuries has occupied a shadowy, inferior position, somewhere underground. This “other” stream forms the subject of Gary Lachman’s epic history and analysis, The Secret Teachers of the Western World. In this clarifying, accessible, and fascinating study, the acclaimed historian explores the Western esoteric tradition—a thought movement with ancient roots and modern expressions, which, in a broad sense, regards the cosmos as a living, spiritual, meaningful being and humankind as having a unique obligation and responsibility in it. This is in stark contrast to much of modern science, which sees the universe as a meaningless flow of matter and energy, and human beings as pointless accidents within it. The historical roots of our counter tradition, as Lachman explores, have their beginning in Alexandria around the time of Christ. It was then that we find the first written accounts of the ancient tradition, which had earlier been passed on orally. Here, in this remarkable city, filled with teachers, philosophers, and mystics from Egypt, Greece, Asia, and other parts of the world, in a multi-cultural, multi-faith, and pluralistic society much like our own, a synthesis took place, a creative blending of different ideas and visions, which gave the hidden tradition the eclectic character it retains today. We can see the history of our esoteric tradition as roughly forming three parts: Part One: After looking back at the earliest roots of the esoteric tradition in the mysteries of ancient Egypt and Greece, the historical narrative opens in Alexandria in the first centuries of the Christian era. Over the following centuries, it traces our other tradition through such agents as the Hermeticists, Kabbalists; Gnostics; Neoplatonists; and early Church fathers, among many others. Part One examines the reemergence of the lost Hermetic books in the Renaissance and their powerful influence on the emerging modern mind. Part Two begins with the fall of Hermeticism in the late Renaissance and the beginning of what we can call the esoteric counterculture. In 1614, the same year that the Hermetic teachings fell from grace, a strange document in Kassel, Germany announced the existence of a mysterious spiritual fraternity: the Rosicrucians. This second part charts the impact of the Rosicrucians and the many esoteric currents that followed, such as the Romance movement and the European occult revival of the late nineteenth century, including Madame Blavatsky and the opening of the western mind to the wisdom of the East, and the fin-de-sicle occultism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Finally, Part Three chronicles the rise of modern esotericism, as seen in the work of teachers such as Rudolf Steiner, Gurdjieff, Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, Aleister Crowley, R. A Schwaller de Lubicz, and many others. It traces the influence that they and other modern teachers have had on mainstream western culture. Central in this part is the life and work of C.G. Jung, perhaps the most important figure in the development of modern spirituality. The book looks at the occult revival of the mystic sixties and our own New Age, and how this itself has given birth to a more critical, rigorous investigation of the ancient wisdom, and to the spread of Gnostic (The Matrix) and Hermetic (Harry Potter) ideas in popular culture. With many detours and dead ends, we now seem to be slowly moving into a watershed, in which it has become clear that the dominant, left-brain, reductionist view, once so liberating and exciting, has run out of steam, and the promise of that muchsought-after paradigm change seems possible. We may be on the brink of a revival and culminating moment of the esoteric intellectual tradition of the West. Among Gary Lachman’s other books are Jung the Mystic and Rudolf Steiner.
HEALING THROUGH THE AKASHIC RECORDS
Using the Power of Your Sacred Wounds to Discover Your Soul’s Perfection by Linda Howe $22.25, paper. Sounds True. 264 pages
With her book How to Read the Akashic Records, Linda Howe helped thousands of people access valuable information in the Akashic Records— an energetic archive of every individual’s soul and its journey. Now with Healing Through the Akashic Records, she shares her insights on how we can all use this powerful resource to help heal our sacred wounds, transforming our relationship with the limiting patterns and behaviors that interfere with our ability to experience our
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$28.00, cloth. New World Library. 148 pp.
If you have lost someone you deeply love, or have become strongly aware of your mortality, it’s hard to avoid wondering about life after death, the existence of God, notions of heaven and hell, and why we are here in the first place. The murder of Matthew McKay’s son, Jordan, sent him on a journey in search of ways to communicate with his son despite fears and uncertainty. Here he recounts his efforts —including past-life and between-life hypnotic regressions, a technique called induced after-death communication, channeled writing, and more. McKay ultimately learned how to reach his son. In this book he provides extraordinary revelations—direct from Jordan—about the soul’s life after death, how karma works, why we incarnate, why there is so much pain in the world, the single force that connects us, and our future as souls. Unlike many books about after-death communication, near-death experiences, and past-life memories, this is a book for those who do not believe yet yearn to know what happens after death. Pain is the path to truth. It refracts light to reveal things not otherwise seen. In the heart of pain is a moment when the universe, and our place within it, becomes more visible. This is a story of entering that moment, of listening to what pain teaches… I am not a psychic or a medium; I am not clairaudient. I am, rather, a psychologist with a deep love of science. I am a researcher who conducts randomized, controlled trials. I’d never expected to take this journey. But as I have learned, in the heart of pain exist things I’d never imagined.
In addition to being riveting reading, Seeking Jordan is a unique heart-, soul-, and mind-stirring reflection on the issues each of us will ultimately face. The book includes a foreword by Ralph Metzner. Matthew McKay, founder of New Harbinger Publishers, has been clinical director of Haight-Ashbury Psychological Services for 25 years. Among his many psychology books are Thoughts & Feelings and Self-Esteem.
THE PAST LIFE PERSPECTIVE
Discovering Your True Nature Across Multiple Lifetimes by Ann Barham $34.00, cloth. Simon & Schuster. 256 pp.
The Past Life Perspective is an insightful and practical look into the power of past life regression therapy to unlock a healing pathway that can help you resolve enduring personal issues and answer questions about your purpose on this earth. In this fascinating, intimate glimpse into past life regression therapy, licensed therapist Ann Barham invites us into her office as she helps her clients mine their unconscious memories for the key past life experiences that can provide specific guidance for their current situations. No longer simply the stuff of new age practitioners, past life regression therapy is a powerful tool that can improve your understanding of your personal challenges and deepen your connection with the world around you. Barham demystifies this intriguing phenomenon, sharing her clients astounding stories, each a clue to the profound influence the personalities of the past have on our thoughts and actions today.
true potential and divine nature. With dozens of reflection exercises and practices, this one-of-a-kind book will help you discover your soul’s immutable perfection. Although our healing work takes place in the spiritual realm, this process involves clarifying our difficulties, gaining insights into them, and arriving at real-world solutions that we can bring into our everyday lives.
Many of us crave the healing insights and feelings of eternal love that survivors of near-death experiences speak of. Through past life therapy, people are able to experience prior lifetimes all the way through their deaths, answering essential questions about human existence.
Using Howe’s unique three-step process that she gleaned over the past 20 years of working in the Records, you’ll learn how to tap into this infinite resource to gain a soul-level perspective on your wounds, and unlock their potential for growth by exploring: u How to access the Akashic Records using the Pathway Prayer Process u Tips for identifying your primary sacred wound—the hurtful event, person, or circumstance that is holding you back u Strategies for liberating you from old ideas and limiting patterns u Tools for making choices aligned with your most authentic self for your highest good BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
In past-life therapy we regress clients (to regress means to go or move backward) to the time and place where the original activating event occurred. This can be achieved through hypnosis, guided imagery, or other states of deep relaxation where memories that are normally unconscious can be accessed… Typically, the therapist guides the client through the significant events of the lifetime, through the death experience, and then a “life review.” This is where the purpose of that lifetime, the lessons learned, and decisions made are examined from a higher, spiritual perspective. We particularly look at what is most important about that prior life in terms of the client’s current personality and situation. Re-experiencing the key events of a past-life and reprocessing the impact helps to bring closure to the events of that lifetime. This enables us to move forward more freely in the present… Even if one believes these “memories” are not true past-life experiences, they function as symbolic stories and are equally as effective in resolving current issues.
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u Three ways to activate the “Ascension
Matrix” to help you realize your hopes and dreams
Governed by the principles of ‘judge not, fear not, resist not,’ the Akashic Records provide a safe and ideal environment for our spiritual healing.
In using the Records to connect with our innermost Selves, teaches Linda, we can move through the healing process more quickly and effectively. Now available in paperback, here is a profound guide for anyone looking to free themselves from limiting patterns and move towards a life of increased joy and self-worth. F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
THE UNION OF ISIS AND THOTH Magic and Initiatory Practices of Ancient Egypt by Normandi Ellis & Nicki Scully $21.95, paper. Bear & Company. 296 pages, b/w illustrations
Deep within each of us lives a primal memory of a time when the natural world was recognized as divine and our temples were built from sacred materials enlivened through magic. Temples were not places you visited once a week; they were centers of community, divine work, healing, and wisdom, places where Heaven and Earth meet. This union of Heaven and Earth—the
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F L ISIS, ANGE HS E&A M D IENRD FF U L W O R K
sacred temple—is also a union of Thoth and Isis: the Egyptian god of wisdom and the creative cosmic force and the Egyptian goddess of civilizing knowledge. Their relationship established the celestial teachings on Earth, for Thoth taught Isis all the mysteries and magic she knows and Isis acted as Thoth’s instrument to deliver the teachings in a form humanity could use. In this initiatic guide to temple building on the spiritual and physical planes, Normandi Ellis and Nicki Scully explain how to create a communal spiritual structure for connecting with the ancient Egyptian pantheon as well as how to consecrate yourself and become a vessel suitable for divine wisdom and a home for your personal gods. The authors detail the construction, shamanic visioning, and ritual consecration of a Moon Temple dedicated to Thoth. They explore teachings that help you develop relationships with the Egyptian neteru and realize your place within the family of the Egyptian pantheon. They guide you as you create your inner heart temple, the adytum, a safe place in which to receive guidance and access your higher spiritual bodies and oracular gifts. They provide shamanic journeys and initiations on ascension, shamanic death and renewal, soul retrieval and healing, multidimensional realities, and more. Many of my students meet a variety of Egyptian gods and goddesses in the invisible realms when they do shamanic practices… They have much to teach us about reconnecting with the power and laws of nature… The Union of Isis and Thoth will take you through the process and rituals required for building and dedicating your adytum, your spiritual inner heart temple, the building of which is the main purpose of this book. — Sandra Ingerman, for the foreword
“This excellent book with beautiful photos and illustrations offers their shared path for housing the divine in the world, amazingly in a pure and simple text that comes from very high places.” —Barbara hand Clow, authr of Revelations of the Ruby Crystal
Angels & Transmissions THE BOOK OF MASTERY
The Mastery Trilogy: Book 1 by Paul Selig
$21.00, paper. Tarcher. 368 pages
The channeled literature of Paul Selig —who receives clairaudient dictation from unseen intellects called the Guides —has quickly become the most important and celebrated expression of channeling since A Course In Miracles rose to prominence in the 1970s. Seligs three previous books -- I Am the Word, The Book of Love and Creation, and The Book of Knowing and Worth -- have won a growing following around the world for their depth, intimacy, and psychological insight. Now, Selig embarks upon an extraordinary new trilogy on the Teachings of Mastery with his inaugural volume: The Book of Mastery. Now we teach you in frequency as well, which means the language that we use is informed with vibration that will work with the reader to attune her to the tenets and
ANGELS
compassionate.
Angels
The Definitive Guide to Angels from Around the World by Marie-Ange Faugérolas $28.50, paper. Tarcher. 544 pages, 7x9
Angels appear in every major world religion—from Christianity to Judaism, Islam to the Native American Thunderbirds. This book is a celebration of all the world’s divine messengers and a definitive resource containing all of the knowledge collected about these awe-inspiring beings. Rigorously researched, Angels is packed with knowledge about these protectors and guides, including: u who (or what) angels are, their duties to the people of earth, their appearance, and their origins u prayers for invoking your guardian angel and chasing away negative emotions u the many rituals that will help you call on angels to help transform your life and guide, protect, and steer you toward love and success… and much more. The angels belong to another dimension where they move simply with energy. Angels do not have bodies; they don’t need them. Their energy is so powerful that they can appear to us using any shape they desire in order to inspire goodness and bliss in us. The human energy doesn’t have a very high frequency. Every prayer, every ritual helps to enhance our own energy for us to call on the angels. Energy is the path that leads to the angels. We can increase this energy thanks to rituals, ceremonies, prayers, meditation, visualizations, or just our honest desire to grow… This book was written with the angels’ pen and the author’s heart. Let the celestial messengers offer all their goodwill and guide you toward love, happiness, and success!
This tome of ancient and modern angel wisdom, from a French-Canadian woman who “came into the world with a special connection with the angels and the beautiful mission to spread out their powerful message of love, light, and peace” offers a perspective on a world we could only have previously imagined, as well as practical tools to bring more love, light, and energy into our lives.
PROOF OF ANGELS
The Definitive Book on the Reality of Angels and the Surprising Role They Play in Each of Our Lives by Ptolemy Tompkins & Tyler Beddoes $21.99, paper. Scribner. 190 pages
From the collaborator of the bestseller Proof of Heaven comes a book proving angels are real, all around us, and interacting in our lives every day. Angels tell us that behind the illusory world of the everyday, there lurks not simply nothing, not a terrible aching void, such as the one that so many people of unsure faith today struggle so hard not to think about, but another, deeper architecture. That realm of deeper architecture is where the angel comes from and where it returns when it is done visiting us. This, and no other is the real and lasting world.
In March 2015, people worldwide were captivated by news reports of the dramatic rescue of an eighteen month old girl, Lily Groesbeck, who’d somehow survived fourteen hours in an overturned car partially submerged in an icy-cold Utah river after her mother apparently lost control of the vehicle. A voice the four responding officers assumed was the child’s mother still trapped inside spurred them on: Help me, help me. Yet, once the two victims were recovered, it was clear that the voice could not have come from Lily’s mother: she’d died on impact. Author Ptolemy Tompkins, with the help of Tyler Beddoes, one of the responding officers who helped rescue Lily, explain this modern-day miracle and the existence of angels in our world. Proof of Angels weaves real-life stories into a rich narrative, exploring the history, nature, and significance of angels in our lives. With an introduction by Colleen Hughes, the editor-in-chief of Angels on Earth magazine, Proof of Angels proves that the barrier between the spiritual and the scientific is less certain than we often think. Not only does Tompkins offer a highly entertaining look into a universally fascinating topic, but he also delivers a fresh and deeply reassuring message: we are not alone. the vibratory field of the action of this text. And the action of this text, as we have said, is to lead you up the mountain and claim your mastery.
Work & Money MINDFUL WORK
The Book of Mastery provides a deeply practical prescription for heightening your abilities, aptitudes, and sense of personal excellence. The Guides’ teachings go much further, however, instructing you how to improve life for others and, ultimately, for global humanity. As the Guides themselves put it: We will tell you this: No one who reads these books will be left unchanged. They will be like molecular systems that reinvigorate and realign and reclaim the reader to themselves in their worth, in their identity and, beyond that, in their physical realm. Underline physical realm if you like. Because the physical realm that we teach in is about to go back to the stone ages unless you all get it together. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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How Meditation is Changing Business from the Inside Out by David Gelles
$20.95, paper. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 304 pages
Business leaders around the world are discovering how meditation may be the key to fostering a happier, more productive workplace. Many North American companies, including some of our largest—such as General Mills, Ford, Target, and Google—have built extensive programs to foster mindful practices among their workers. It can transform not only the way we do our work, but the very work we do. And while it is a practice that can improve our lives, it is also a way of being—attentive, courteous, curious, conscientious, and
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Mindful Work is the first book to explain—with real stories—how all sorts of businesses and any kind of worker can benefit from meditation, yoga, and other mindful techniques. Mindfulness lowers stress, increases mental focus, and alleviates depression among workers. It has also benefited companies that have adopted it—from the millions of dollars Aetna has saved in health-care costs to the ways Patagonia has combined leadership in its market with a pervasively mindful outlook. Mindful Work offers an eye-opening tour through this new landscape, and goes beyond other books on the subject by providing evidence for the practical benefits of mindfulness and showing readers how to become more mindful themselves. Dissenters say that “McMindfulness” is being subverted and unethically used in the service of big company profits… Mindfulness has been around forever and in this new incarnation is likely to stick around… From confabs celebrating mindfulness and technology to a raft of workplace programs teaching meditation in the office, the San Francisco Bay Area is home to the largest concentration of mindful workers in the world. Together, they are hacking corporate cultures to embrace concentration, retooling their algorithms with loving-kindness in mind, and trying to make compassion as commonplace as coding… they are setting a precedent that is likely to be followed by much of the rest of the world.
“Brimming with insights and backed up with solid research, Mindful Work takes us to the front lines of a revolution that is transforming the business world.” —Arianna Huffington
THE ART OF MONEY
A Life-changing Guide to Financial Happiness by Bari Tessler
$29.95, cloth. Parallax. 256 pages
This is the book your money-savvy best friend, therapist, and accountant would write if they could. It’s the book about money for people who don’t even want to think about money, until that inevitable day comes when we all realize we must come to terms with this thing called money. Everyone has pain and challenges, strengths and dreams about money, and many of us mix profound shame into that relationship. In The Art of Money, Bari Tessler offers an integrative approach that creates the real possibility of “money healing,” using our relationship with money as a gateway to self-awareness and a training ground for compassion, confidence, and self-worth. I have re–examined that toxic and unhelpful idea that “money isn’t spiritual” and learned, instead, to honor money as a bridge between heaven and earth. I have worked with concepts of value, worth, and right livelihood, in profound and practical ways. I have broken through one money ceiling after the next… I have made my money practices my own, through body–
F based mindfulness, dark chocolate, creativity, and playfulness… And I have become a seasoned guide through the emotional, practical, and psycho–spiritual facets of this thing we call money.
Tessler’s gentle techniques weave together emotional depth, big picture visioning, and refreshingly accessible, nitty-gritty money practices that will help anyone transform their relationship with money and, in so doing, transform their life. As Bari writes, “When we dare to speak the truth about money, amazing healing begins.” Bari’s integrative approach to deep money work weaves together emotional healing and real-world practices within the context of each individual’s unique life story. She honors money as a gateway to self-awareness, a path of mindfulness, a bridge between our inner and outer worlds. Her approach is gentle, un-shaming, and playful. “You will create beautiful, creative, meaningful practices and rituals around money.” You’ll certainly find some of my favorite tools, tips, and practices. But I know that creating profound, sustainable change in your money relationship asks us to go far deeper than following someone else’s list of “top ten ways to get your credit card debt under control.” That’s why I won’t define financial maturity, success, or ease for you . Instead, I invite you to define these for yourself, and light a loving path towards them for you to walk.
T FH H E EC A OM DM EO R NF S
Bees, Biopiracy, and the Carbon Bubble
MORE THAN HONEY
The Survival of Bees and the Future of Our World by Markus Imhoof & Claus-Peter Lieckfeld
I’M RIGHT AND YOU’RE AN IDIOT The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up by James Hoggan $19.95, paper. New Society. 288 pages
Clearing the air—reclaiming public discourse in a polluted public square. The most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. It is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems. In I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, author and David Suzuki Foundation chair James Hoggan grapples with this critical issue, conducting interviews with outstanding thinkers from the Himalaya to the House of Lords. Drawing on the wisdom of such notables as Thich Nhat Hanh, Noam Chomsky, and the Dalai Lama, his comprehensive analysis explores: u How trust is undermined and misinformation thrives in today’s public dialogue u Why facts alone fail the manipulation of language and the silencing of dissent u The importance of reframing our arguments with empathy and values to create compelling narratives and spur action. Our species’ greatest survival strategy has always been foresight and the ability to leverage our intelligence to overcome adversity. For too long now this capacity has been threatened by the sorry state of our public discourse. Focusing on proven techniques to foster more powerful and effective communication, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot will appeal to readers looking for both deep insights and practical advice.
our relationship to and reliance on bees while exposing the human behaviors contributing to the decline of the bee population—a decline that could ultimately contribute directly to a world food problem. Illustrated with jaw-droppingly detailed photos of bees, More Than Honey is a fascinating, accessible overview of a species that is inextricably tied to our survival.
$22.95, paper. Greystone. 160 pages, 7x9, colour photos
A wonderfully thorough immersion in the world of bees and beekeeping. More Than Honey leaves one with reverence for this six-legged miracle, and profound concern about the future it faces. This is a fascinating look at the increasingly perilous world of the honeybee—based on an award-winning documentary, More Than Honey (also available from Banyen). The saying goes that without bees, humankind would only survive for four more years; these crucial pollinators are, indeed, worth more than honey. In More Than Honey, Marcus Imhoof and Claus-Peter Lieckfeld examine the history and current status of
BIOPIRACY
The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge by Vandana Shiva $19.50, paper. North Atlantic. 160 pages
Genetic engineering and the cloning of organisms are the ultimate expression of the commercialization of science and the commodification of nature. Life itself is being colonized, according to renowned environmentalist Vandana Shiva. The resistance to this biopiracy, she argues, is the struggle to conserve both cultural and biological diversity. As the land, forests, oceans, and atmosphere have already been colonized, eroded, and
THE CARBON BUBBLE
Community / Ecology
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What Happens to us When It Bursts by Jeff Rubin $22.00, paper. Ballantine. 320 pages
For a decade, the vision of Canada’s future as an energy superpower has driven the country’s political agenda, as well as the fast-paced development of Alberta’s oil sands and the push for more pipelines like Keystone XL across the continent to bring that bitumen to market. Anyone who objects to pipelines and tanker-train traffic, north or south of the US border, is labeled a dreamer, or worse—an environmentalist: someone who puts the health of the planet ahead of corporate earnings. In The Carbon Bubble, Rubin compellingly shows how an economic vision that rests on oil is dead wrong. Changes in energy markets in the US—where domestic production is booming while demand for oil is shrinking—are quickly turning the oil dream
WHY I WALK
Taking a Step in the Right Direction by Kevin Klinkenberg $14.95, paper. New Society. 166 pages, b/w photos, charts
A recent survey shows that members of Gen Y are walking 37 percent more than they were a decade ago, biking 122 percent more and taking public transit 100 percent more. Still, the legacy of the car culture persists. Raised on the notion that driving equals freedom, too many of us just don’t realize that a personally rewarding alternative even exists. A few years ago, author Kevin Klinkenberg moved to Savannah, GA from Kansas City, MO. In large part, he chose his new home because he was seeking a truly walkable place to live. In Why I Walk, Kevin goes beyond the typical arguments against suburbia, showing how walking on a daily basis actively benefits: u His finances u His sense of personal freedom u His social life u His health. The majority of us still cling to the belief that a house in the suburbs, with good schools, low crime and easy parking is the BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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Some beekeepers are also seeking alternatives to conventional beekeeping in order to focus on their natural living habits and reproductive practices. There is hope that in this way bee colonies can be invigorated and then use their own strengths to better come to terms with damaging environmental factors that can affect tended bees which are completely dependent on human beings for support. After all, bees have survived on this planet without human support for at least 80 million years.
polluted, corporations are now looking for new colonies to exploit and invade for further accumulation—in Shiva’s view, the interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants, and animals. Featuring a new introduction by the author, this edition of Biopiracy is a learned, clear, and passionately stated objection to the ways in which Western businesses are being allowed to expropriate natural processes and traditional forms of knowledge. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, and a tireless crusader for evonomic, food, and gender justice. Among her many other books are Earth Democracy and Soil Not Oil.
into an economic nightmare. Like U.S. coal stocks, the share values of oil-sands producers have been drastically reduced by falling fuel prices and are increasingly exposed to the world’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Rubin argues that there is a lifeline to a better future. The very climate change that will leave much of the country’s carbon unburnable could at the same time make some of Canada’s other resource assets more valuable: its water and its land. In tomorrow’s economy, he argues, Canada won’t be an energy superpower, but it has the makings of one of the world’s great breadbaskets, as everything from the corn belt to viniculture heads to higher latitudes. And in the global climate that the world’s carbon emissions are inexorably creating, growing food will soon be a lot more valuable than mining bitumen.
Dream. But those who aspire to suburbia’s white picket fences and grassy yards must typically endure exorbitant transportation costs and excruciating, gridlocked commutes. Why I Walk is the fascinating story of one man’s decision to reject this notion and everything it entails, one step at a time. By focusing directly on the real, measurable advantages of choosing to be a pedestrian, Why I Walk makes a convincing case for ending our love affair with the automobile. This highly readable, first-person narrative handily provides the answer to the pressing question, “Why do I walk”? Why? Because getting there is twice the fun. It’s no mystery why places such as Paris and Rome evoke romantic ideals in our hearts. These places touch us because we experience them slowly. The charm of the streets, the plazas and the architecture work wonders because we walk by them and notice. It’s a world built for beauty and the experience of life at a slower pace… I could devote this entire book to a discussion of the environmental benefits of walking and walkable places.
A PATH APPEARS
Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn $20.95, paper. Ballantine. 382 pages, b/w photos
With scrupulous research and on-the-
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ground reporting, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, explore how altruism affects us, what are the markers for success, and how to avoid the pitfalls. In their recounting of astonishing stories from the front lines of social progress (you will be moved and gratified at the scope of real people caring strategically in our world), we see the compelling, inspiring truth of how real people have changed the world, underscoring that one person can make a difference. A Path Appears offers practical, results-driven advice on how best each of us can give and reveals the lasting benefits we gain in return. Kristof and WuDunn know better than most how many urgent challenges communities around the world face today. Here they offer a timely beacon of hope for our collective future. “Readers are likely to… find themselves willing to do something in the world, unconcerned by questions of scale, but instead, to simply become more engaged, and in that, alive.” —Boston Globe
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F I COMMUN HT EY ,A EDAER R T HF & S O I L
Aliveness & the Wild Soul
CHASING THE SCREAM The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johan Hari
THE BIOLOGY OF WONDER
New in Paperback
Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science by Andreas Weber, with preface by David Abram
$24.00, paper. Bloomsbury. 400 pages
$21.95, paper. New Society. 365 pages
So… what is life? In The Biology of Wonder, German biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber reframes this fundamental mystery by arguing that all living beings, like humans, are not biological machines, but living, creative agents fueled by meaning and expression. Weber proposes a new approach—the development of a “poetic ecology”—which intimately attaches our species to every being and underpins the entire range of human experience. He argues that feelings and emotions, far from being superfluous to the study of organisms, are the very foundation of life. The schism between us and the natural world is arguably the root cause of most of the environmental catastrophes unraveling around us. Until we come to terms with the depths of our alienation, we will continue to fail to understand that what happens to nature also happens to us. In his preface, “From Enlightenment to Enlivenment,” David Abram writes:
It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, thirty-thousand-mile journey into the war on drugs. What he found is that people all over the world have begun to recognize three startling truths: Drugs are not what we think they are. Addiction is not what we think it is. And the drug war has very different motives to the ones we have seen on our TV screens for so long. In Chasing the Scream, Hari reveals his discoveries entirely through the stories of people across the world whose lives have been transformed by this war. They range from a transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn searching for her mother, to a teenage hit-man in Mexico searching for a way out. It begins with Hari’s discovery that at the birth of the drug war, Billie Holiday was stalked and killed by the man who launched this crusade—and it ends with the story of a brave doctor who has led his country (Portugal) to decriminalize every drug, from cannabis to crack, with remarkable results—which the world is watching. Chasing the Scream lays bare what we really have been chasing in our century of drug war—in our hunger for drugs, and in our attempt to destroy them. This book will challenge and change how you think about one of the most controversial—and consequential—questions of our time.
The chapters herein pulse with wonder and are shadowed with ache; the pages are thick with fresh insights and often suffused with a kind of careless beauty… Weber’s richly detailed contribution toward a more mature natural science opens a new and largely unfamiliar way… His First Law of Desire affirms that all living bodies are necessarily bodies of feeling… His Second Law of Desire is that the wish to live is palpable and visible in the living body of each being… and Weber’s Third Law of Desire he articulates as follows: “Only in the mirror of other life can we understand our own lives. Only in the eyes of the other can we become ourselves. We need the regard of the most unknown. The animal’s regard… Only it can unlock the depths in ourselves that otherwise would be sealed forever.”… Although it would be impossible to consciously pinpoint and assess each of the many subtle relational ingredients of a genuinely healthy ecosystem, Weber suggest that the felt experience of beauty may be our most reliable gauge for recognizing such health.
If we think like this, the question we need to answer with our drug policy shifts. It is no longer: How do we stop addiction through threats and force, and scare people away from drugs in the first place? It becomes: How do we start to rebuild a society where we don’t feel so alone and afraid, and where we can form healthier bonds?
“Hari talks to cops, dealers, convicts, addicts, scientists, and politicians from New York to Juarez to Amsterdam, assembling stories from all corners of what he calls a ‘global battlefield.’ Their combined testimony forms a convincing brief that drug prohibition may have spawned as much crime, violence, and heartache as drug use ever did.” —Boston Globe “Chasing the Scream is beautifully wrought: lively, humorous, and poignant. And it’s a compelling case for why the drug war must end, yesterday.” —Norman Stamper, former chief, Seattle Police
THE EARTH WANTS YOU by Reverend Billy
$19.95, paper. City Lights. 120 pages
Here’s a preacher’s exhortation, an activist’s primer, inspired visions, and a call to arms for a wild, creative, Earth-led cultural revolution. Brothers and Sisters! We are fast approaching a time when our “normal” way of life will no longer be possible. Our old life will disappear like the coastal cities and the black rhinoceros, casualties of climate change. Civic life in the time of climate chaos—floods, fire, drought, and superstorms—will require intensive policing and social control. Governing bodies will transform and democracy will fall by the wayside; the banks and the power stations will be heavily defended; whole populations will be incarcerated. While this might seem like dystopian fiction, it’s actually a description of life as it’s lived in much of the world now, and will become the norm unless we can stop it. When the ocean is pouringin through the door, will we find the will to act before we drown? This book is a call for action as extreme as the weather. It’s meant to radicalize those who didn’t think the climate crisis would require any risky personal commitment. The Earth revolution is upon us, and it must be as wild and as unpredictable as life on Earth itself! Earth-a-lujah!
Reverend Billy and his choir of singing activists are on the front lines of creative direct action, and here they offer up a distillation of the passion, the inspiration, and the hopes for love and survival that fuel their work. In a mix of essays, polemics, surrealist scenarios, and news flashes from the frontlines, Reverend Billy answers the question, “What are we to do?” with a resounding chorus of “Take Action NOW!”
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The implications of Biology of Wonder for our understanding of the commons are profound. If feeling is never invisible, and shapes and manifests itself everywhere in nature, then the commons may be the best way for us to rediscover our aliveness. The deeper the connections in the system become, the more creative niches it will afford for its individual members.
This book demonstrates and validates the essence of our deep experience. By reconciling science with meaning, expression and emotion, The Biology of Wonder brings us to a crucial understanding of our place in the framework of life.
Eco-Philosophy (Deep Ecology)
RECLAIMING THE WILD SOUL
How Earth’s Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness by May Reynolds Thompson $22.50, paper. White Cloud. 158 pages, b/w illustrations
THE ETIQUETTE OF FREEDOM
Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and “The Practice of the Wild” by Gary Snyder New in & Jim Harrison Paperback $26.95, paper. Counterpoint. 160 pages, b/w photos
Gary Snyder here joins his old friend, novelist Jim Harrison, to discuss their loves and lives and what has become of them throughout the years. Set amidst the natural beauty of the Santa Lucia Mountains, their conversations—harnessing their ideas of all that is wild, sacred and intimate in this world—move from the admission that Snyder’s mother was a devout atheist to his personal accounts of his initiation into Zen Buddhist culture, being literally dangled by the ankles over a cliff. After years of living in Japan, Snyder returns to build a farmhouse in the remote foothills of the Sierras, a homestead he calls Kitkitdizze. For all of the depth in these conversations, Jim Harrison and Gary Snyder are humorous and friendly, and with the artfully interspersed dialogue from old friends and loves like Scott Slovic, Michael McClure, Jack Shoemaker, and Joanne Kyger, the discussion reaches a level of not only the personal, but the global, redefining our idea of the Beat Generation and challenging the future directions of the environmental movement and its association with “Deep Ecology.” BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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This is a lovely and lyrical tribute to the natural world and its role in our lives as a spiritual teacher. Thompson is a facilitator of poetry and journal therapy and life coach dedicated to bringing forth the Wild Soul Story. She maintains there are five major landscapes in our lives, each with special qualities to give us. They are deserts, forests, ocean and rivers, mountains, and grasslands. With literary flair, Thompson probes these natural wonders as aspects of our deeper, wilder selves. Where the inner and outer worlds meet we discover our own true nature mirrored in the Earth’s wild beauty and fierce challenges. A powerful archetypal model for transformation, the “soulscapes” return us to a primal terrain rich in knowing, healing, and wholeness. To guide our path, each soulscape offers up wisdom in the form of soul qualities the modern world often undervalues and even undermines. We see how forests help us make peace with uncertainty, how rivers and oceans reveal the power of flow, how mountains inspire our highest purpose, how grasslands teach us about giving back, and how deserts model simplicity and silence. We can experience the desert in the cracks and creases of our skin, in the thirst on our tongues, in the dry fear that catches at our throats, in the loneliness that grips us amid a busy street or bustling day, in the dust rising to meet us at the end of the road.
Reclaiming the Wild Soul is packed with insights, spiritual practices, and journal exercises, including exploring the uniqueness of trees, learning to stand still like them, sensing the depth of the ocean and then plumbing your depths, setting your feet on grass and savoring the sensations, making use of ancient stones, and letting mountains speak to the power that is within us to shape our world into what we really value. Weaving personal story with poetry, imagery, and explorations, Reclaiming the Wild Soul is simultaneously self-help and a courageous call to action. It is written for all those disillusioned with our hyper-paced, high-tech world, who decry what we are doing to the Earth, who feel the tug of their own wild souls longing for discovery and mystery—a new, yet ancient, way of being human.
EARTH ACUPUNCTURE
Healing the Living Landscape by Gail Rex $19.50, paper. Bear & Company. 196 pages, b/w illustrations
After experiencing a powerful vision of the nuclear power plant near her home and its toxic effects on the Hudson River, acupuncturist Gail Rex was inspired to help
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heal the river and surrounding lands but was unsure how to begin. Soon after, at a workshop with Cherokee-wisdom teacher Venerable Dhyani Ywahoo, she discovered the answer: she could treat the landscape just as she treated her patients--by taking its pulses and treating the points of stagnant energy and pollution with acupuncture. Tracing her journey from initial vision
F and pulse taking to building a stone circle to open a major energy meridian of the Hudson, the author reveals how our rivers, valleys, and forests are capable of illness and healing just like a living being. She explains simple practices for attuning with the living landscape and responding appropriately to the messages and images received from the Earth’s intelligence. By making offerings of thanks and asking the lands permission before every interaction, Gail Rex demonstrates the power of right relationship in action. Drawing upon the principles of Chinese medicine and her work with Native American shamanic traditions, Rex shows how the landscape itself reveals both its imbalances and the opportunities for treatment. Using a broad range of diagnostic tools—including direct observation, principles of feng shui, listening to pulses, and working with maps—she demonstrates ways of identifying the master points of the surrounding landscape. She then explores different methods of Earth acupuncture treatment, including building stone circles, planting crystals, and working with wooden and copper-rod needles to treat these specific points and restore energy balance. Offering not only a proactive method for healing the environment, Rex also reveals how to communicate with the rivers, mountains, trees, and rocks that surround us, allowing each of us to develop an authentic spiritual relationship with the living body of the Earth.
THE YIN AND YANG OF CLIMATE CRISIS Healing Personal, Cultural, and Ecological Imbalance with Chinese Medicine by Brendan Kelly $23.50, paper. North Atlantic. 228 pages
The first book marrying western environmentalism with Chinese medicine, The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis illustrates the many ways that our personal well-being and climate health are vitally connected. Brendan Kelly demonstrates that crises such as melting ice caps, dying forests, and devastating floods are symptoms of deeper issues, both within us as individuals and within our culture. Informed by Kelly’s experience as a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, this passionate discussion reveals that the current life-threatening severity of climate change speaks to the level of imbalance that exists in the people and institutions responsible for the crisis. Considering issues such as loss of life from increasingly severe storms, stress on farmers from rapidly changing weather, and increasing rates of disease, this book goes on to present hopeful, deep-reaching personal and societal remedies to treat the underlying causes of climate change and to restore our own health. The warming and destabilization of the climate mirrors our own personal imbal-
E A R TFHH&E A E CDOE- D R EFS I G N Shelter & Eco-Design ESSENTIAL HEMPCRETE CONSTRUCTION The Complete Step-by-Step Guide by Chris Magwood $34.95, paper. New Society. 96 pages, 8x11, 60 b/w illustrations
Hempcrete is a versatile, energy-efficient natural insulation material, useful for walls, roofs and floors. Made from the inner stem of the hemp plant mixed with a lime-based binder, it is a very strong, lightweight and breathable alternative to manufactured insulations. Essential Hempcrete Construction is a fully illustrated practical guide to this affordable, renewable method, from procurement to finishing. Going well beyond the scope of many natural building books, this indispensable manual includes a complete introduction to hempcrete, packed with all the information you need to determine whether it’s the right choice for your project. It covers: u Material specifications, testing and building code references and climate data u Detail drawings for design reference u Tool lists, and complete step-by-step instructions for mixing and placing hempcrete u Finishing and maintenance techniques u Budgeting and labor estimates u Additional resources. Essential Hempcrete Construction is part of New Society’s Sustainable Building Essentials Series. Series editors Chris Magwood and Jen Feigin have scoured the world of sustainable building to bring you the techniques and systems that deliver measureable benefits in terms of greater energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact. Written by the world’s leading sustainable builders, designers and engineers, these succinct, user-friendly handbooks are indispensable tools for any project where accurate and reliable information are key to success. Also by Chris Magwood: Essential Prefab Straw Bale Construction and Making Better Buildings.
THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP
The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo $19.99, cloth. Ten Speed. 224 pages
Marie Kondo is a Japanese cleaning consultant whose book is a huge bestseller. She has taken the subject of decluttering and made it totally fresh with her practical suggestions and style. Human beings can only truly cherish a limited number of things at one time. As I am both lazy and forgetful, I can’t take proper care of too many things. That is why I want to cherish properly the things I love, and that is why I have insisted on tidying for so much of my life.
Her spiritual approach to tidying up: In a two-minute ritual she kneels on the floor in the center of the client’s house and connects with the place in her mind. She asks for help in creating a more cheerful and efficient space and then ends the ritual with a bow. In essence, tidying ought to be the act of restoring balance among people, their possessions, and the house they live in.
She feels that the art of decluttering is “a special send-off for those things that will be departing,” and part of the process should be “a ceremony to launch them on a new journey.” Think of the emotion invested in sending off a son or daughter to college. Here is a chance to express your gratitude to your clothes, memorabilia, and papers which have spent many years in your company. As you touch them it is pleasurable to remember the role they have played in the story of your life. One of the homework assignments Kondo gives clients is an exercise to express their appreciation for their belongings. You might thank your boots for keeping your feet warm and dry on cold winter day. Or perhaps you could praise your computer at night for enabling you to accomplish so much during the past ten hours. Equally important is to realize that most possessions have a special place where they belong; they need to be returned there for a rest. Kondo refers fondly to rituals she learned at Shinto shrines. In this spiritual milieu there is a reverence and respect for everything, which is seen as alive and connected to everything else. Kondo firmly believes that serious tidying up cannot be done in baby steps of 15 minutes daily or throwing out a few things every day. Her philosophy is to do it all at once. Kondo’s criteria for tossing or keeping something is, “Does it spark joy in you or not?” There are many other tips in this helpful book but we are recommending it because of the spiritual practices it offers for use in the home and with possessions. Also by Marie Kondo are: Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up and Life-Changing Magic: a Journal to Spark Joy Every Day. ances, as well as the imbalances in our country and our culture. Just as the planet is rapidly warming and destabilizing, we as individuals are dramatically and unsustainably overstimulated… BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
What is the remedy for the sickness of climate change?... Even a symptom that is as severe and wide-reaching as climate change has a set of remedies that can address it through treating its underlying causes.
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F The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis blends the external focus of environmentalism (western science, policy issues, regulations) with the internal focus of Chinese medicine (personal health, balancing Qi, diet) to present a holistic view of our interrelationship with the planet. Kelly provides a deeper look at how we’ve gotten to this place of climate destabilization and ways to treat both the symptoms and their root causes. Looking through the lens of Chinese medicine, we are better able to understand that the severity of climate destabilization speaks to deeper philosophical and spiritual issues and provides an opportunity to address our own personal and collective imbalances. With far-reaching perceptions, Kelly encourages us to translate the reality of our warming planet into an opportunity to ask bigger and deeper questions, including who we are, what we’re here to do, and what promotes health and healing.
Gardening & Self-Reliance TREES FOR GARDENS, ORCHARDS AND PERMACULTURE by Martin Crawford
$51.95, paper. Permanent Publications. 228 pages, 8x11, colour photos
Are you wondering which productive trees to plant in your garden? Or are you planning a forest garden? Perhaps you are planting an orchard but want a greater diversity of useful trees than is typical? Or you’d like to know what unusual fruit trees you can use? The answers to all these questions can be found in master forest gardener Martin Crawford’s book. Crawford has researched and experimented with tree crops for twenty-five years and has selected over one hundred of the best trees producing fruits, nuts, edible leaves, and other useful products that can be grown in Europe and North America. Each of the trees or tree groups includes details of: u Origin and history u Description and uses u Varieties/cultivars u Cultivation, pests, and diseases u Related species u European and North American suppliers u Color photos with every entry. The appendices make choosing trees for your situation easy, with lists of suitable trees for specific situations, plus flowcharts to guide you. If you want to know about and make use of the large diversity of tree crops that are available in temperate and continental climates, then this book—by an internationally acknowledged expert—is both fascinating and essential reading.
ONE-STRAW REVOLUTIONARY The Philosophy and Work of Masanobu Fukuoka by Larry Korn
$27.95, paper. Chelsea Green. 224 pages, colour photos
One-Straw Revolutionary is the first book to offer an intimate look at the philosophy and work of one of natural farming’s most influential practitioners—Japanese farmer/philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka. Mr. Fukuoka (1913-2008) wrote the book The One-Straw Revolution (1978), a manifesto
F on the importance of no-till agriculture that requires no machinery, no chemicals, no prepared compost, and very little weeding or pruning. When it was first published, the book presented a radical challenge to the global systems that supply the world’s food. The One-Straw Revolution, edited by Korn and Wendell Berry, established Fukuoka as a leading voice in the fight against conventional industrial agriculture. In The One-Straw Revolutionary, Larry Korn distills his experience of more than thirty-five years of study with Mr. Fukuoka, living and working on his farm on Shikoku Island, and traveling with him to the United States on two six-week visits. The book follows the author on his travels from one back-to-the-land commune to another in the countryside of 1970s Japan, a journey that eventually led him to Mr. Fukuoka’s natural farm. Korn’s description offers a rare, inside look at Mr. Fukuoka’s life. Readers will delight in this personal insight into one of the world’s leading agricultural thinkers. One-Straw Revolutionary is a compelling memoir rich with anecdote. In addition to giving his personal thoughts about natural farming, Korn broadens the discussion by pointing out natural farming’s kinship with the ways of indigenous cultures and traditional Japanese farming. At the same time, he clearly distinguishes natural farming from other forms of agriculture, including scientific and organic agriculture and permaculture. And he explains how natural farming can be used practically in areas other than agriculture, including personal development. “A profound sharing of the essential philosophy of natural farming translated through the friendship between Larry Korn and Masanobu Fukuoka. Larry’s engaging story offers wise insights into authentic practices that honor the community of all life. I deeply resonate with both the author’s perspectives and Fukuoka’s clear understanding of a revolutionary pathway for creating abundance by honoring the natural patterns of our earth.” —Katrina Blair, author of The Wild Wisdom of Weeds Also edited by Larry Korn is Fukuoka`s last book, Sowing Seeds in the Desert: Natural Farming, Global Restoration, and Ultimate Food Security.
GROWING VEGETABLES WEST OF THE CASCADES,
The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening, 35th Anniversary Edition by Steve Solomon & Marina McShane $24.95, paper. Sasquatch. 512 pages, 7x9, b/w illustrations
In this updated 7th edition of his Pacific Northwest classic, gardening guru Steve Solomon shows us how anyone turning the soil west of the Cascade Mountains—from British Columbia to northern California—can successfully grow a bountiful crop, without using chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Growing
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Indoor Greens Gardening
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Nature as Teacher
MICROGREENS
THE ROOFTOP GROWING GUIDE
$19.95, paper. Firefly Books. 120 pages, 8x10, colour photos
$30.00, paper. Ten Speed. 244 pages, 7x9, French flaps, colour photos
How to Grow Nature’s Own Superfood, 2nd Edition by Fionna Hill
How to Transform Your Roof into a Vegetable Garden or Farm by Annie Novak
Fionna’s enthusiasm for microgreens, “plants raised from seed that are larger than sprouts and smaller than ‘baby’ salad greens,” infects you as you read her well-written and comprehensive introduction to the “superfood” you can grow on your windowsill in a week. A New Zealand-based floral designer, Hill explains how to plant, raise, and harvest crops of delicious and highly nutritious microgreens. The book is informative and accessible, delivering all you need to know about the ultimate in local eating—making a meal of houseplants. It is nicely illustrated as well, with tantalizing photographs of microgreens at every stage, from seed to planting to plate. And there are more than a dozen recipes included here along with the chapters on plant care, growing and preparing the 30 most popular microgreens, including amaranth, mustard, rocket, arugula, beet, kale, radish, wheatgrass, shungiku, mizuna, and basil. Plus a special chapter has tips on helping children to grow microgreens. Comprehensive instructions explain which containers and growing media to use, how to prepare and sow the seeds, when and how to harvest and how best to store the bounty. A useful weight and measures conversion chart is also here.
YEAR ROUND INDOOR SALAD GARDENING How to Grow Nutrient-Dense, Soil-Sprouted Greens in Less Than 10 Days by Peter Burke $41.95, paper. Chelsea Green. 192 pages, 7x10, colour photos
Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening offers good news: with nothing more than a cupboard and a windowsill, you can grow all the fresh salad greens you need for the winter months (or throughout the entire year) with no lights, no pumps, and no greenhouse. This is the Low-Tech, No-Grow-Lights Approach. Longtime gardener Peter Burke was tired of the growing season ending with the first frost, but due to his busy work schedule and family life, didn’t have the time or interest in high-input grow lights or greenhouses. Most techniques for growing what are commonly referred to as microgreens left him feeling overwhelmed and uninterested. There had to be a simpler way to grow greens for his family indoors. After some research and diligent experimenting, Burke discovered he was right—there was a way! And it was even easier than he ever could have hoped, and the greens more nutrient packed. He didn’t even need a south-facing window, and he already had most of the needed supplies just sitting in his pantry. The result: healthy, homegrown salad greens at a fraction of the cost of buying them at the market. The secret: start them in the dark. Growing Soil Sprouts—Burke’s own term for sprouted seeds grown in soil as opposed to in jars—employs a method that encourages a long stem without expansive roots, and provides delicious salad greens in just seven to ten days, way earlier than any other method, with much less work. Indeed, of all the ways to grow immature greens, this is the easiest and most productive technique. Forget about grow lights and heat lamps! This book is a revolutionary and inviting guide for both first-time and experienced gardeners in rural or urban environments. All you need is a windowsill or two. In fact, Burke has grown up to six pounds of greens per day using just the windowsills in his kitchen! Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening offers detailed step-by-step instructions to mastering this method (hint: it’s impossible not to succeed, it’s so easy!), tools and accessories to have on hand, seeds and greens varieties, soil and compost, trays and planters, shelving, harvest and storage, recipes, scaling up to serve local markets, and much more. Vegetables West of the Cascades evolved from a self-published pamphlet to the master guide to organic vegetable gardening. Completely revised from cover to cover, this is the 35th anniversary edition, thoroughly updated. It includes a new formula for complete organic fertilizer and how to tweak it for a variety of different soil conditions, how-to sections for herbs and ornamental plants, and new organization for better usability. Solomon, founder of Territorial Seed Company, provides comprehensive and authoritative advice on how to select, cultivate, and harvest the vegetables best suited to the region. If we adjust to our climate, we can grow fresh food year round… We now have the knowledge to make full use of the climate. We have regional seed companies whose ethics and quality are world-class. And you have this book…
Learn how to create rich, nutritious soil that plants love, make fertilizer-strength BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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compost, plan a 12-month harvest, grow the crops you want—beets, kales, lettuces, tomatoes, and much more, conserve water, obtain the best seeds, produce healthy bedding plants from select seedlings, and control pests without resorting to chemicals. The book features basic info on soils, composting, chemical-free fertilizing, efficient water usage, and planning, but it is also filled with up-to-date tips on seed sources and new growing and cultivation techniques. Featuring an Earth-friendly focus on organic gardening practices, the book helps readers acquire a foundation of master-gardening knowledge that they can use to organize and plan their own gardens however they want. Also by Steve Solomon are Gardening When It Counts and The Intelligent Gardener. He also provides free downloads of the best out-of-print books about improving human health with better farming methods (the real and rare classics) at soilandhealth.org. F SPRING - SUMMER 2016
Tapping into the expanding market for rooftop farming and green roofs, this is the first stylish, easy-touse book for urban gardeners interested in utilizing their roof space for growing food. As more people experiment with growing their own food in urban and suburban areas, farms and edible gardens are popping up on rooftops all over. But there can be challenges, as rooftop spaces have their own unique set of rules for soil maintenance, watering, crop management, installation, and more. Author Annie Novak co-founded North America’s first fully landscaped green roof farm, and her expertise shines in The Rooftop Growing Guide, the first book for a general audience on how to make an edible rooftop garden thrive. Novak has visited and interviewed rooftop farmers and gardeners across the country, so her advice works no matter where you live. With sample crop plans, case studies from around the country, and notes on harvesting, fertilizing, and much more—filled with useful illustrations and photos of how-to—The Rooftop Growing Guide provides inspiration and practical advice for a new generation of urban farmers and gardeners. Throughout this book you will hear from professionals and green thumbs who generously offered their stories and tips for best practices in the growing field of edible rooftop gardening and the new frontier of rooftop farming. More: www.RooftopGrowingGuide.com.
BECOMING NATURE
Learning the Language of Wild Animals and Plants by Tamarack Song
$21.95, paper. Bear & Company. 288 pages, 60 b/w illustrations
Animals and plants are in constant communication with the world around them. To join the conversation, we need only to connect with our primal mind and recognize that we, too, are Nature. Once in this state, we can communicate with animals as effortlessly as talking with friends. The songs of birds and the calls of animals start to make sense. We begin to see the reasons for their actions and discover that we can feel what they feel. We can sense the hidden animals around us, then get close enough to look into their eyes and touch them. Immersed in Nature, we are no Tamarack longer intruders, but fellow Song beings moving in symphony with the Dance of Life. In this guide to becoming one with Nature, Tamarack Song provides step-by-step
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instructions for reawakening the innate sensory and intuitive abilities that our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied upon--abilities imprinted in our DNA yet long forgotten. Through exercises and experiential stories, the author guides us to immerse ourselves in Nature at the deepest levels of perception, which allows us to sense the surrounding world and the living beings in it as extensions of our own awareness. He details how to open our minds and hearts to listen and communicate in the wordless language of wild animals and plants. He explains how to hone our imagining skill so we can transform into the animal we are seeking, along with becoming invisible by entering the silence of Nature. He shows how to approach a wild animal on her own terms, which erases her fear and shyness. Allowing us to feel the blind yearning of a vixen Fox in heat and the terror of a Squirrel fleeing a Pine Marten, the practices in this book strip away everything that separates us from the animals. They enable us to restore our kinship with the natural world, strengthen our spiritual relationships with the animals who share our planet, and discover the true essence of the wild within us. Tamarack Song has spent his life studying the world’s aboriginal peoples, apprenticing to elders, and learning traditional earth skills. Another book by him is Entering the Mind of the Tracker.
Conscious Evolution?! TECHGNOSIS
Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis
$25.95, paper. North Atlantic. 424 pages
How does our fascination with technology intersect with the visionary imagination? I n Te c h G n o s i s — a cult classic of media studies, here revised—Erik Davis argues that mystical and esoteric impulses have in fact always permeated (and sometimes inspired) technological communication. A pioneer in scholarly discussions of the occult side of technology, Erik Davis has been called “the father of network mysticism” by Dazed Digital and compared to Marshall McLuhan by Howard Rheingold. TechGnosis opens with a discussion of two technologies that are foundations of modern digital communication: the technology of writing (and its connections to the hermetic tradition) and the technology of electricity (which is deeply infused with mystical and alchemical ideas). Davis proceeds to draw connections between such seemingly disparate things as online role-playing games and religious and occult practices; virtual reality and ancient gnostic mythology; programming languages and channeled texts. The final chapters address both apocalyptic and utopian dreams of the future of technology, providing historical context as well as new models for how to think and feel our way through an amazing, confusing, and disturbing time. This new edition features a new afterword reflecting on surveillance; the current tech bubble; the growth of superheroes, horror, and other “uncanny cultures” online; the growing backlash against technology; and the need to revitalize the cosmic imagination.
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Neurosculpting & Brain-gain ies. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia with simple approaches anyone can use.
THE BRAIN’S WAY OF HEALING
Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity by Norman Doidge
New in Paperback $24.00, paper. Penguin. 432 pages In The Brain That Changes Itself, Toronto-based psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge engagingly described the most important breakthrough in our understanding of the brain in four hundred years: the discovery that the brain can change its own structure and function in response to mental experience—what we call neuroplasticity. His revolutionary new book, The Brain’s Way of Healing shows, for the first time, how the amazing process of neuroplastic healing really works. Now in an expanded paperback edition, with an afterword describing new approaches to concussion, traumatic brain injury, dystonia, spinal cord injuries, learning disorders, and more. Doidge describes natural, non-invasive avenues into the brain provided by the forms of energy around us—light, sound, vibration, movement—which pass through our senses and our bodies to awaken the brain’s own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Doidge explores cases where patients alleviated years of chronic pain or recovered from debilitating strokes or accidents; children on the autistic spectrum or with learning disorders normalizing; symptoms of multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons disease, and cerebral palsy radically improved, and other near-miracle recover-
NEUROSCULPTING
A Whole-Brain Approach to Heal Trauma, Rewrite Limiting Beliefs, and Find Wholeness by Lisa Wimberger $23.50, paper. Sounds True. 238 pages
The synthesis of meditation and modern neuroscience has sparked a revolution—more than ever, we can use specific practices to create positive, lasting changes in our brains. Lisa Wimberger experienced the power of neuroplasticity firsthand. When conventional medicine offered no answers for her deadly seizures, she created her own regimen of meditation and life practices to heal herself. Today, Lisa has successfully taught her Neurosculpting method to veterans, first responders, and clients in the most stressful occupations. With Neurosculpting, she brings readers a complete guide to this life-changing process, featuring transformative insights and techniques for: u Engaging the mind-body connection to shape our neural pathways with positive choices and intentions u Disarming stress triggers, healing trauma, rewriting limiting beliefs, and liberating yourself from unhealthy habits
The body abounds with neurons, the gut alone having 100 million… In terms of the way it functions, the brain is always linked to the body and, through the senses, to the world outside. Neuroplasticians have learned to use these avenues from the body to the brain to facilitate healing. Thus, while a person who has had a stroke may not be able to use his foot because the brain is damaged, moving the foot can, at times, awaken dormant circuits in the injured brain. The body and mind become partners in the healing of the brain, and because these approaches are so noninvasive, side effects are exceedingly rare… What follow are stories of people who have transformed their brains, recovered lost parts of themselves, or discovered capacities within that they never knew they had. But the true marvel is less the techniques than the way that, through millions of years, the brain has evolved, with sophisticated neuroplastic abilities and a mind that can direct its own unique restorative process of growth.
For centuries it was believed that the brain’s complexity prevented recovery from damage or disease. The Brain’s Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing. As he did so lucidly in The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge uses astonishing, moving human stories to present cutting-edge science with practical real-world applications, and principles that everyone can apply to improve their brain’s performance and health. u Whole-brained meditation—bringing your brain’s
left and right hemispheres into harmony to awaken your full potential u Integrating lifestyle, diet, exercise, and spiritual practice to create the ideal environment for healing and happiness u Putting it all together—practical guidance for personalizing your own approach to Neurosculpting. If you could learn to squeeze the vibrancy and beauty out of each moment of your life, would you say yes to a practice that could get you there?
With an engaging, layman-friendly style that encompasses cutting-edge neuroscience and our human capacity for hope, free will, love, and spirituality, she offers a well-organized, very accessible (for various temperaments) guide for taking charge of our health, happiness, and personal growth. Each chapter ends with a Putting It All Together exercise as a way to bring this information into your day-to-day life. Also by Lisa Wimberger is Neurosculpting for Stress Relief (2CDs which provide many guided meditations and practices from the book).
NEUROSCULPTING FOR NEW HABITS
u How the brain forms habits and why it retains un-
Brain-Changing Practices to End Self-Defeating Behaviors and Create Healthy Ones New on by Lisa Wimberger CD $28.95, 2 CDs. Sounds True. 2 hours
What is the number one factor for determining career success and personal fulfillment? The answer isn’t genius, willpower, or passion—it’s habit. “The human brain is a champion for forming habits,” teaches Lisa Wimberger. “Yet that essential quality can also get us stuck in self-sabotaging patterns.” With Neurosculpting for New Habits, this dynamic teacher brings you two hourlong audio sessions of scientific insights and highly effective practices for rewiring your brain to promote healthy, self-empowering behaviors, including:
ing healthy habits
u Intention, focus, action, and repetition—four
steps for mastering habits, with mindfulness-based meditations for each step. Advances in neuroscience have transformed our understanding of the way our brain acquires and reinforces habits. Lisa Wimberger’s Neurosculpting® uses proven techniques to consciously direct your brain’s natural processes for learning and changing. Join her to learn this powerful approach for breaking unwanted behaviors— and instilling the habits that serve you in creating the life you choose. More: neurosculptinginstitute.com.
Science & Cosmology
Contents:
u imagining technologies u the alchemical fire u the gnostic infonaut u techgnosis, american-style u the spiritual cyborg u a most enchanting machine u cyberspace: the virtual craft u the alien call u datapocalypse u third mind from the sun u the path is a network.
LIFE
The Leading Edge of Evolutionary Biology, Genetics, Anthropology, and Environmental Science edited by John Brockman $19.99, paper. HarperCollins. 370 pages
The newest addition to John Brockman’s Edge.org series explores life itself, bringing together the world’s leading biologists, geneticists, and evolutionary theorists—including Richard Dawkins, Edward O. Wilson, J. Craig Venter, and Freeman Dyson. Scientists’ understanding of life is progressing more rapidly than at any point in human history, from the extraordinary decoding of DNA to the controversial emergence of bio-
I have always been a fan of the “middle way”… Like the warm crackles of vinyl, or the cosmic squiggles of a wild modular synth, or the animal glow of an actual Polaroid, the resonant frequencies of a less networked—and more ensouled—world still illuminate all my relations. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
healthy ones
u The crucial role of managing stress when creat-
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technology. Featuring pioneering biologists, geneticists, physicists, and science writers, Life explains just how far we’ve come—and takes a brilliantly educated guess at where we’re heading. Richard Dawkins and J. Craig Venter compare genes to digital information, and sketch the frontiers of genomic research. Edward O. Wilson reveals what ants can teach us about building a superorganism—and, in turn, about how cells build
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an organism. Elsewhere, David Haig reports new findings on how mothers and fathers individually influence the human genome, while Kary Mullis covers cutting edge treatments for dangerous viruses. And there’s much more in this fascinating volume. Life is the fifth volume in The Best of
Edge series, following Mind, Culture,
Thinking, and Universe. Here we present eighteen pieces from the pages of Edge.org, an online salon consisting of interviews, commissioned essays, and transcribed talks, many of them accompanied with streaming video and available, gratis, to the general public… Life—and particularly intelligent life— has been called an “emergent” phenomenon. But has it fully emerged? Now that we are a party to its “emergence,” what are the opportunities before us, and what are our responsibilities with regard to a continuing and partly man-made evolution on this planet?
We may never have all the answers. But the thinkers collected in Life are asking questions that will keep us dreaming for generations.
A GOD THAT COULD BE REAL Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet by Nancy Ellen Abrams
$24.00, paper. Beacon. 164 pages
Here’s a paradigm-shifting blend for agnostic, spiritual-but-not-religious, and scientifically minded readers. Many people are fed up with the way traditional religion alienates them: too easily it can perpetuate conflict, vilify science, and undermine reason. Nancy Abrams, a philosopher of science, lawyer, and lifelong atheist, is among them. And yet, when she turned to the recovery community to face a personal struggle, she found that imagining a higher power gave her a new freedom. Intellectually, this was quite surprising. Meanwhile her husband, astrophysicist Joel Primack, was helping create a new theory of the universe based on dark matter and dark energy. She wondered, Could anything actually exist in this universe that is worthy of the name God? In A God That Could Be Real, Abrams explores a radically new way of thinking about God. She dismantles several common assumptions about God and shows why an omniscient, omnipotent God that created the universe and plans what happens is incompatible with science, but that this doesn’t preclude a God that can comfort and empower us. From this new perspective we can start, if we choose, to experience our unbreakable blood bond with Earth and with our grandparent, the cosmos. If we rethink God in light of this new knowledge, it may help us humans to find the wisdom and bravery we need to face our future together. What I have learned is this: Having no spiritual life at all is like never really falling in love. Developing a spiritual bond with a fantasy is like falling in love with someone who will never love you back. But developing a spiritual bond with the real universe is like falling in love with someone who is already in love with you. That’s where God is.
Moving away from traditional arguments for God, Abrams finds something worthy of the name God in the new science of emergence. God, she argues, is an emergent phenomenon that arises from the staggering
complexity of humanity’s collective aspirations and is in dialogue with every individual. This God did not create the universe—it created the meaning of the universe. It’s not universal—it’s planetary. It can’t change the world, but it helps us change the world. A God that could be real, Abrams shows us, is what humanity needs to inspire us to collectively cooperate to protect our warming planet and create a long-term civilization.
Family & Parenting THE HAPPY KID HANDBOOK How to Raise Joyful Children in a Stressful World by Katie Hurley
$21.95, paper. Putnam. 302 pages
Parenting today has gotten too complicated. It’s never been the easiest job in the world, but with all the parenting advice parents are met with, it’s hard not to become bewildered. It seems that in the past it was a good deal simpler. You made sure there was dinner on the table and the kids got to school on time and no one set anything on fire, and you called it a success. But today everybody has a different method for dealing with the madness--attachment parenting, free-range parenting, mindful parenting. And who is to say one is more right or better than another? How do you choose? The truth is that whatever drumbeat you march to, all parents would agree that we just want our kids to be happy. It seems like a no-brainer, right? But in the face of all the many parenting theories out there, happiness feels like it has become incidental. That’s where The Happy Kid Handbook by child and adolescent psychotherapist and
parenting expert Katie Hurley comes in. She shows parents how happiness is the key to raising confident, capable children. Did you know that happy kids enjoy better school performance, are more successful when it comes to making and keeping friends, and boast better health overall? It’s true… It’s time to focus on raising happy kids. It’s time to build our kids up, give them the tools to lead with happiness, and make sure that they know how to jump through the hoops along the way (should those hoops arise). And it’s long past time to slow down, get back to the business of kids being kids, and put the small stuff into perspective.
Happiness is about parenting the individual, because not every child is the same, and not every child will respond to parenting the same way. By exploring the differences among introverts, extroverts, and everything in between, this definitive guide to parenting offers parents the specific strategies they need to meet their child exactly where he or she needs to be met from a social-emotional perspective. A back-to-basics guide to parenting, The Happy Kid Handbook will enrich and enthuse any parent hoping to be the best parent they can be.
GIRLS RISING
A Guide to Nurturing a Confident and Soulful Adolescent by Urana Jackson
$21.95, paper. Parallax. 160 pages
Young people are hungry and capable of engaging in meaningful explorations of themselves and the world around them. Adolescent girls especially have a deep desire and capacity to know themselves and explore their own spirituality. Girls Rising is a workbook of activities designed for educators, mental health clinicians, youth workers, parents, and, in some cases, peer educators working with girls ages 13 to 17 that provides a process for them to explore and
Yoga With Kids
GOOD MORNING YOGA
a pose-by-pose wake up story by Mariam Gates, illustrated by Sarah Jane Hinder
develop their emotional, social, and spiritual selves. The curriculum in this guidebook is based on my seventeen years of experience working with adolescent girls and supporting their social–emotional learning; it is intended to provide parents, educators, psychotherapists, and any other adult working with adolescent girls a set of social–emotional lessons and activities to aid young women in a meaningful process of self–actualization. In a step–by–step process intended to engage teenage girls from a deeply creative and exploratory space, the curriculum incorporates writing, media, music, role-playing, and art processes, in addition to significant focus on group dialogue and interaction.
Jackson’s guide offers teenage girls a unique opportunity to engage with their changing selves and their environment from a deeply soulful and creative place. Informed by various psychological theories and practices including Relational Cultural Psychology, Humanistic Psychology, Depth Psychology, Expressive Arts, Cognitive/Behavioral and Gestalt therapies, the curriculum is divided into four themes based on the developmental needs and issues of adolescent girls: 1) self–awareness / self–esteem (Looks Within), 2) empathy and communication (Empathetic Attunement), 3) social awareness and connection (Necessary Action), and 4) mindfulness and existential exploration (Sacred Living)…. While I believe that life itself, through its lexicon of experiences and lessons, is truly the most powerful force in transforming adolescents into young adults, this curriculum is an attempt to respond explicitly and proactively to the needs and the capacity of our young girls, to their right to a healthy and meaningful transition into adulthood.
TEACH BREATHE LEARN
Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom by Meena Srinivasan $23.95, paper. Parallax. 222 pages
$24.95, cloth. Sounds True. 36 pages, 8x10, colour photos
Yoga helps children learn how to focus, relax, and both self-monitor and self-soothe. Good Morning Yoga instills these four skills and more, enabling children to jumpstart the day with energy and excitement—and meet the adventures that come with mindfulness and perspective. The authors’ previous book, Good Night Yoga, tells the story of the world retiring for the evening—and a new generation of readers has fallen in love with the relaxing sequences and beautiful pictures that lead them to dreamland. Good Morning Yoga weaves gentle exercises with a heartwarming narrative and wonderful illustrations to empower children to manage the energies that visit throughout the day—from the fiery volcano to the mountain quiet and still. Good Morning Yoga concludes with a visualization for kids to set intentions for the day.
GOOD NIGHT YOGA
a pose-by-pose bedtime story by Mariam Gates, illustrated by Sarah Jane Hinder $24.95, cloth. Sounds True. 36 pages, 8x10, colour illustrations
Kids love yoga—and it’s great for them. For parents and caregivers looking for a fun and effective new routine for bedtime, innovative educator Mariam Gates presents Good Night Yoga, a playful yet wholly practical book for preparing for sleep. This beautifully illustrated, full-color book tells the story of the natural world as it closes down for the night, while teaching children a simple flow of yoga postures inspired by their favorite characters from nature. Moving from “Sun Breath” to “Cloud Gathering” to “Ladybug & Butterfly” and more, readers learn techniques for self-soothing, relaxing the body and mind, focusing attention, and other skills that will support restful sleep and improve overall confidence and well-being.
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Meena Srinivasan began teaching in order to touch lives, but with the demands of covering her curriculum and supervising children she all but forgot her aspiration. During a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, Meena learned for the first time about mindfulness. In Teach, Breathe, Learn, Srinivasan highlights how mindfulness can be an effective tool in the classroom. What makes this book unique is Srinivasan’s perspective as a classroom teacher, wrestling daily with the conditions about which she writes. Each chapter begins with a personal narrative concerning a challenge Srinivasan faced during the school day and how a specific mindfulness practice helped. Testimonials from students, colleagues, and parents appear in each chapter, along with a mindfulness practice. Part 1 helps teachers develop compassion and shift from “reacting” to “responding” to demands. Part 2 offers techniques for cultivating loving-kindness and seeing students, colleagues, and parents as oneself. The author shares what research says about the effects of mindfulness practice on academic, social, and emotional learning.
F The last section of the book introduces the complete curriculum teachers can use to incorporate mindfulness into their classroom, replete with lesson plans, PowerPoint diagrams, handouts, and homework assignments. In this guide you hold lessons learned, lessons taught, and reflections from my students and teaching colleagues. While my mindfulness teaching has been influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh and others from various traditions, the contents of this book are designed for anyone and everyone who wants to work with children more effectively and joyfully.
In his foreword, Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “The practices and curriculum in this book are the very foundations of creating true peace in the world. They are a powerful peace education that our students, educators, families and society desperately need. I am deeply pleased that such a resource will now be available for educators and caregivers.”
Relationships & Sex THE MAN’S GUIDE TO WOMEN
Scientifically Proven Secrets from the “Love Lab” About What Women Really Want by John Gottman, Julie Gottman, Douglas Abrams & Rachel Abrams $26.99, cloth. Rodale. 210 pages
A great “philosopher” once said “Trying to understand women is like trying to smell
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the color nine.” But the fact is, men can understand women to their great benefit. All they need is the right teacher. And arguably there is no better teacher than John Gottman, renowned relationships researcher and author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. His new book, written with his psychologist wife Julie Gottman, and Doug Abrams and Rachel Abrams, MD, is based on 40 years of scientific study, much of it gleaned from the Gottmans’ popular couples workshops and the “love lab” at the University of Washington. It’s written primarily for men because new research suggests that it is the man in a relationship who wields the most influence to make it great or screw it up beyond repair. The Man’s Guide to Women offers science-based answers to the question: what do women really want in a man? The book explains the hallmarks/traits/habits of manhood that most women find attractive, and helps men hone those skills. The number one thing women look for is simply this: trustworthiness. What trustworthiness looks like in dating and mating is this:
ENERGIES OF LOVE
Invisible Keys to a Fulfilling Partnership by Donna Eden & David Feinstein
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Relationship Guides / Local Teachers TAO TANTRIC ARTS FOR WOMEN
Cultivating Sexual Energy, Love, and Spirit by Minke De Vos $23.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 352 pages, 94 b/w illustrations
Through the Taoist tantric arts, women can experience the full flowering of their sexual energy. Rooted in Chinese energy medicine, Universal Healing Tao practices, and ancient Taoist traditions from the Yellow Emperor and his three female advisors, these practices honor and celebrate each stage of a woman’s life and allow women to awaken their genuine feminine sexuality—receptive, soft, sensitive, intuitive, and creative—rather than the masculine approach that focuses on strength, endurance, and control. In this comprehensive guide to Taoist tantric arts for women, author Minke de Vos reveals how to channel natural sexual energy to evolve the Divine within and heal deep-rooted negative emotions and traumas related to sexuality. She explores techniques from the Universal Healing Tao system, such as the Inner Smile and Ovarian Breathing, to cleanse the uterus of negative emotions and fill your creative center with compassionate vibrations. Minke also offers sexual energy practices to prevent chronic conditions like cancer, depression, and osteoporosis and heal issues related to PMS, menopause, and libido. She explains how to experience the three different kinds of female orgasm and provides detailed, illustrated instructions for exercises such as breast self-massage for emotional transformation and jade-egg yoni yoga to strengthen the pelvic floor and stimulate inner flexing and articulation. She offers evocative meditations to connect with the Goddess within and embrace the innate sexiness at each stage of life. Including solo and partner practices for conscious energy exchange and intimacy building, Minke de Vos’s detailed guide to cultivating female sexual energy allows you to ease the passage through the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause; harmonize your relationships; and merge your inner male and female energies into wholeness. Minke de Vos has been practicing Qigong for over 30 years and is the founder of Silent Ground retreats. She lives in Vancouver, B.C.
MEET ME IN HARD-TO-LOVE PLACES
The Heart and Science of Relationship Success by Eric Bowers
New in Paperback The authors of Energy Medicine and Energy Medicine for Women present a complete program for using energy medicine to heal and strengthen romantic relationships.
$25.00, paper. Tarcher. 380 pages, 7x9, b/w illustrations
$22.95, paper. Eric Bowers. 208 pages
Why is it that intimate relationships give us the most exquisite and magical moments of our lives but also some of the most painful and heartbreaking experiences we endure? How is it possible that the meeting of two hearts brings out the best and worst of us? Meet Me in Hard-to-Love Places offers a clear and beautiful map for the wonderful, difficult and bewildering world of intimate relationships. Eric Bowers draws from Attachment Theory, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Nonviolent Communication, and his own explorations of hard-to-love places to explain why relationships fall apart and to give you the blueprint, building blocks, and inspiration from which to create a new foundation for love. Meet Me In Hard-to-Love Places is a book that outlines the foundational ideas and principles of Attachment Theory, Interpersonal Neurobiology and Nonviolent Communication in ways that are very accessible to the reader. The stories and poems interspersed throughout the book help make the information personal, engaging and quite inspiring. Bowers is a Vancouver-based therapist and musician. His book is substantially nourishing, easily relatable with Eric’s own stories of where the relationship rubber hits the road.
The 21st century has ushered in a brave new world for couples. Just as the challenges are unprecedented, unimagined tools for meeting those challenges are emerging. This book presents, in our experience, many of the best of those tools.
A relationship begins with the meeting of two unique energies. This union of energies, though invisible, determines the way you communicate, fight, love, and want to be loved. The authors draw on the real-life experiences of couples who have attended their popular Energies of Love workshops, as well as their own experience as husband and wife, to show how an understanding of your energy system and that of your partner can help you build a more harmonious bond. We all have different ways of making sense of the world Donna Eden around us, but when faced with conflict, especially with those we care most about, we tend to revert to one of four En& David Feinstein ergetic Stress Styles: u Visuals are extremely passionate and inspire others to care about the things they care about, but in moments of conflict, their take on the situation can overshadow what is actually occurring, undermining their ability to empathize with their partner.
The most important relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself. Listening for and following your deepest truth is one of the key ingredients for that relationship to thrive. Healing your wounds opens the path to deeper and more skilful listening… Often my inner work goes deeper and is more transformative when I receive support from a skilful therapist or empathy buddy.
u Kinesthetics are generous, compassionate, and accepting of other people, but their
Included at the end is a chapter of relationship practices and processes designed to enrich all of your relationships, as well as a chapter of practical tips for building successful relationships. An Appendix listing Needs and Feelings is also helpful. “Eric’s courage, vulnerability and hard-won wisdom are a testament to the depths and edges he has explored in relationships.” —Dave Wali Waugh, author of Evolving Soulfully
caring nature pulls them in too many directions. They try to meet others needs at the expense of their own, which can cause mounting resentment.
u Digitals are rational and principled and have a gift for quickly understanding com-
plex situations, but they can become closed to other perspectives and feelings.
u Tonals have a gift for understanding others and their dilemmas, but during moments
of conflict, their ability to read between the lines can morph into hearing what was never said, felt, or thought.
According to the authors, the strongest relationships are those in which the two parties feel that they are partners on a shared spiritual journey. By helping you better understand your own unique energy system, as well as that of your partner, you will be able to recognize your strengths as a couple—and avoid the pitfalls. The Energies of Love serves as a powerful resource for anyone who wishes to build a rich partnership while maintaining the spark that keeps a relationship exciting.
You are who you say you are and you do what you say you are going to do. It’s about reliability, accountability, and showing up just as you are (but with good hygiene).
Organized in sections, “Understanding a Woman,” “Dating a Woman,” “Romancing a Woman,” “Making Love to a Woman,” “Living with a Woman,” and “Loving a Woman for a Lifetime,” the guidance in this book comes from real-life research and real-life relationships—some bad, some good enough, and some great.
The teaching of this book is to bring ourselves to a loving resonance, discovering strategies and practices of loving that then can become daily practice, constant application. This may be the most important learning of them all, the one that may hold the greatest good for life on this planet—learning how to commit to the choice of loving. —Jean Houston, from the foreword
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Now it’s time for men to roll up their sleeves and understand what it is women want and need from them, how best to provide it, and what it takes to be in a happy, loving relationship with a woman for a lifetime. In this book, we will show you the secrets of attraction, of dating, of mating, and of day-to-day living with a woman. We will map her body and decode her body language.
A surprisingly “on” guide, written in a friendly and often funny voice, The Man’s Guide to Women is just that.
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Women & Men MOODY BITCHES
The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having, and What’s Really Making You Crazy by Julie Holland $22.00, paper. Penguin. 360 pages
This guide for women of all ages shows their natural moodiness is a strength, not a weakness. As women, we learn from early on that our moods are a problem, an annoyance to be stuffed away. But our bodies are wiser than we imagine. Moods are a finely tuned feedback system that allows us to be more empathic, intuitive, and aware of our own capabilities. Yet millions of women are medicating away their emotions with psychiatric drugs whose effects are more far-reaching than most of us realize. And even if we don’t pop a pill, women everywhere are numbing their emotions with food, alcohol, and a host of addictive behaviors that deny the wisdom of our bodies and keep us from addressing the real issues we face. Psychiatrist Julie Holland knows there is a better way. In Moody Bitches, she shares insider information about the drugs we’re being offered and the direct link between food and mood, and she offers practical advice on sex, exercise, and sleep strategies, as well as some surprisingly effective natural therapies. In the tradition of Our Bodies, Our Selves, this groundbreaking guide offers women key information on how to live better, and be more balanced, at every stage of life. Once we begin to listen to our bodies and align with our moodiness, we can take action. That action might be to try a natural remedy when you had relied on a prescription. It might be to reappraise all that you ask of yourself in your many roles as a woman. The answer for each of us will be unique. But all of us need to stop and listen when we get bitchy. Embracing our moods will, in the end, make us happier. We need to begin anew, to realign with our bodies and learn how to treat them right. It’s time to embody the wisdom inherent in nature, and in our natural animal selves. Moody Bitches will show you the way, giving you the tools you need to take care of yourself.
“Finally, an evidence-based guide to health for women, by a woman, that speaks to the mind, body, and spirit of womanhood. An invaluable manual for moody bitches and essential reading for anyone who knows one.” —Andrew Weil MD, author of Spontaneous Happiness
and strength that being female is. In Part 1 of the book, she leads readers back through history to revisit the reverence for women that every ancient culture possessed. From the dawn of pre-history, women were perceived as holy, sacred, and divine incarnations of the Great Mother Goddess. Powerful figures full of strength, wisdom, and leadership, women were the keepers of the human race, from which all life flowed. In Part 2, Starr retells in mesmerizing narrative seven of the greatest goddess myths from ancient cultures around the world: Ancient Egypt, Africa, India, Tibet, Ancient Greece, Lakota, and the Judeo-Christian Bible. Each myth presents a quality that modern women can restore back into their lives: Lilith (Power), Yemaya (Creativity), Tara (Stillness), Radha (Passion), Kassandra (Voice), White Buffalo Calf Woman (Wisdom), and Eve (Awakening). Accompanying each myth are anointing, bathing and lunar rituals, instructions for altars, invocations, meditations, and more to deepen their connection to their own inner goddess. In Part 3, Starr shows women how to integrate the teachings of The Divine Feminine into everyday life, honoring the sacredness of their body and how to be in energetic, feminine balance. The book offers fresh, new ways for women to embrace their ancient and sacred traditions. It uplifts the spirit of any woman from young womanhood to her elder, wise-woman years. Also available is the You Are Woman, You Are Divine Companion Journal.
Become the Woman You are Meant to Be by HeatherAsh Amara
The Modern Man’s Ultimate Guide to Purpose, Passion and Power by David Wagner
$25.95, paper. Hierophant. 160 pages.
$26.95, cloth. Watkins. 264 pages
David Wagner is a long-haired, Harley Davidson-riding meditation teacher, father, and men’s group leader with a giant ambition: to make men feel happy about being men again. Many men today are suffering a kind of quiet, desperate lost-ness. They’re not exactly in crisis. They’re able to hold it together, make a decent salary, take care of their responsibilities, stay out of trouble, and keep it all more or less together, but are they truly happy and living their full potential?
YOU ARE WOMAN, YOU ARE DIVINE
$33.50, paper. 1. 336 pages, 7x9, b/w illustrations
This poetic, beautifully designed, and magically potent book will entice women of all ages to explore and activate their relationship with the divine, feminine and most sacred part of themselves―the goddess within. In You Are Woman, You Are Divine, Back to the Goddess founder Renée Starr takes women on an empowering journey, offering ancient wisdom in a fresh, modern way to help woman reclaim all the beauty, grace,
This work is changing the game for men. It’s saving marriages and saving lives and helping all kinds of men get their shit together and get happy and free… I’m not going to tell you what it means to be a better man, but I am going to guide you through the questions and examinations that will help you figure out what that means for you. The book is somewhat systematic… Every section has some ideas and material as well as questions for reflection and exercises to take the material deeper.æ
WARRIOR GODDESS TRAINING
BACKBONE
Coming in the rich tradition that stretches from Robert Bly’s classic, Iron John, and
The Modern Woman’s Journey Back to The Goddess by Renée Starr
Nick Offerman’s Paddle Your Own Canoe (with a detour through Howard Stern’s Private Parts), Backbone is destined to reignite the conversation about what it means to be a man today. Backbone is a practical, step-by-step guide to help men know themselves deeply, root out weaknesses, enhance strengths, and upgrade their experience of life. Combining no-nonsense wisdom with brutally honest exercises to help men to: u Find their purpose and be on track with their vision u Access and hone their spiritual and emotional intelligence u Get free from unhelpful beliefs, patterns, and habits u Live a powerful, passion-filled life. This book is born from the many conversations Wagner’s had with the men he meets on the road, along with his own personal journey as a man and father. The Wild Man is the antidote to the “mild man”—that modern day male creature that has forgotten what he has inside and has given up his power. He lacks passion and purpose. There is a Wild Man and a Mild Man in every modern male. Wherever you are and however you relate to manhood and masculinity, Wagner invites you to wholeheartedly join in the conversation.
This is a book that teaches women to see themselves as perfect just the way they are; to resist society’s insistence that they seek value, wholeness, and love through something outside themselves, such as a husband, children, boyfriend, career, or a spiritual path. Author HeatherAsh Amara has a message for women struggling to find themselves under these false ideals: If you don’t love and honor yourself with every fibre of your being, if you struggle with owning your power and passion, then it is time for an inner revolution! It is time to claim your Warrior Goddess energy. Amara challenges women to be “warrior goddesses;” to be a woman who:
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u Ventures out to find herself u Combats fear and doubt u Reclaims her power and vibrancy u Demonstrates her strength of compas-
sion and fierce love. Drawing on the wisdom from Buddhism, Toltec wisdom, and ancient earth-based goddess spirituality, Amara combines them all with the goal of helping women become empowered, authentic, and free. Let’s begin by taking a moment to connect to all women around the world. Tap into the love of our female ancestors. Breathing in, draw in the strength and wisdom of the abundance of Warrior Goddess kick-ass females throughout the ages. Breathing out, release old ways of being to make space for your intuition, insight, and loving fierceness to emerge.
Also included here are personal stories, rituals, and exercises that encourage readers to begin their own journey towards becoming warrior goddesses. This is an essential tool for women interested in self-empowerment. Also by HeatherAsh Amara, founder of the Toltec Center of Creative Intent, are Warrior Goddess Training: Companion Workbook and The Warrior Goddess Training Program (6 CDs).
WARRIOR GODDESS MEDITATIONS Ten Guided Practices for Claiming Your Authentic Wisdom and Power by HeatherAsh Amara New on $29.95, 2 CDs. Sounds True. CD 2 hours, 18 minutes.
I am whole. I am powerful. I am divine. “When you say these words,” asks HeatherAsh Amara, “do you feel the weight of self-judgment and doubt? Or do you feel their truth ringing in your bones?” Warrior Goddess Meditations takes us step by step into the process of transformation using the tools taught in her acclaimed book. Ideal on its own or as a reading companion, this program covers 10 guided practices for fully embracing our feminine power: Committing to Yourself Aligning with Life Purifying your Vessel Grounding your Being and Freeing your Past Energizing your Sexuality and Creativity Claiming your strength and Will Opening your Heart Speaking Your Truth Embodying your Wisdom Choosing your Path. Whether you’re new to the Warrior Goddess path or a longtime student, this audio experience will give you an abundance of ways to identify the beliefs that constrain you and reclaim your energies of fierce love, compassion, vulnerability, and authenticity. Also by HeathAshAmara is The Toltec Path of Transformation.
Then I laughed in the dark of my heart, I did exult Like a sudden chuckling of music. I bade her eyes Meet mine... In the dark of her eyes
And did you get what
My heart was fierce to make her laughter rise.
you wanted from this life, even so?
Till her dark deeps shook with convulsive thrills,
I did.
and the dark
And what did you want?
Of her spirit wavered like water thrilled with light;
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
And my heart leaped up in longing to plunge its stark
beloved on the earth. — Raymond Carver, Late Fragment
Fervour within the pool of her twilight, Within her spacious soul, to grope in delight. — D.H. Lawrence, from Snap-Dragon
BRANCHES OF LIGHT F
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F T I N D E X O F AU HHEOARD S E&RTFH E I R T I T L E S
F
Abrams, Nancy Ellen.
Crozier, Lorna.
Hay, Louise.
Lusseyran, Jacques.
Rothschild, Babette.
A God That Could Be Real. . . . 39
The Wild in You. . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Against the Pollution of the I. . . 11
Trauma Essentials. . . . . . . . . . . 23
Adyashanti.
Cunningham, Elizabeth.
Magwood, Chris.
Royal Philharmonic.
Healing the Core Wound of Unworthiness . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Red-Robed Priestess . . . . . . . . . 11
• Life Loves You. . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 • Life Loves You Cards . . . . . . . 22 • You Can Heal Your Heart. . . . 26
Essential Hempcrete Construction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Classical Beauty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Amara, HeatherAsh.
Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Chakras . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Mandle, Diane.
The Carbon Bubble . . . . . . . . . 34
• Warrior Goddess Meditations. . 41 • Warrior Goddess Training. . . 41
Anderson, Lorraine. Earth & Eros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Andre, Christophe. Looking at Mindfulness . . . . . . 24
Barham, Ann. The Past Life Perspective . . . . . 32
Bass, Diana Butler. Grounded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Batchelor, Stephen. After Buddhism. . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Bays, Jan Chozen. The Vow-Powered Life . . . . . . . 14
Beer, Robert. Buddhist Art Coloring Book 2. . 9
Bly, Robert. • Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life . . . . . . . . . 11 • Stealing Sugar From the Castle . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Bodin, Luc. The Book of Ho’oponopono . . 18
Bonewitz, Ronald. How to Use a Pendulum for Dowsing and Divination. . . . . . 18
Bowers, Eric.
Dale, Cyndi.
Helbert, Karla. Yoga for Grief and Loss. . . . . . . 26
Herring, Amy.
Tibetan Bowl Sound Healing. . . 9
Essential Astrology. . . . . . . . . . . 31
Dauncey, Guy. Journey to the Future. . . . . . . . 11
Hill, Fionna.
Davis, Erik.
Microgreens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Leaning into Love. . . . . . . . . . . 26
Hoggan, James.
De Vos, Minke.
I’m Right and You’re an Idiot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy & Somatic Psychology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Holden, Anthony & Ben.
McConnell, Marion Mugs.
Poems That Make Grown Women Cry. . . . . . . . . . 10
Letters from the Yoga Masters. . 14
Holland, Julie.
Seeking Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Tao Tantric Arts for Women. . . 40
Desert Dwellers. Great Mystery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Doidge, Norman. The Brain’s Way of Healing . . . 38
Dyer, Wayne. Living an Inspired Life. . . . . . . 21
Ebbin, Michelle. The Touch Remedy. . . . . . . . . . 20
Eden, Donna.
Moody Bitches. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Hopman, Ellen Evert. Secret Medicines from Your Garden. . . . . . . . . . . 19
Howe, Linda.
Energies of Love. . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Healing Through the Akashic Records . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Ellik, Ekabhumi Charles.
Hurley, Katie.
The Shakti Coloring Book . . . . . 9
Ellis, Normandi. The Union of Isis and Thoth. . . 32
Endredy, James. Teachings of the Peyote Shamans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Esmonde-White, Miranda. Aging Backwards. . . . . . . . . . . . 20
The Happy Kid Handbook. . . . 39
Imhoof, Markus. More Than Honey. . . . . . . . . . . 34
Jackson, Urana. Girls Rising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Jamal, Mahmood. Islamic Mystical Poetry. . . . . . . 30
Jarmey, Chris.
Evenson, Dean. Golden Spiral 8
The Concise Book of Muscles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Brach, Tara.
FaugÈrolas, Marie-Ange.
Jason, Dan.
True Refuge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Angels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Brahm, Ajahn.
Ferguson, Gaylon.
Kindfulness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Natural Bravery. . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Brink, Nicholas.
Fernando, Peter.
Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Finding Freedom in Illness. . . . 15
Brink, Nicholas.
What Is Zen? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Trance Journeys of the Hunter Gatherers . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Forrest, Stephen.
Brockman, John.
FourEagles, Russell.
Brower, Elena. The Art of Attention. . . . . . . . . 13
Brown, David Jay. Frontiers of Psychedelic Consciousness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Fischer, Norman.
The Book of Neptune. . . . . . . . 31 The Making of a Healer. . . . . . 29
Fox, Matthew.
The Power of Pulses . . . . . . . . . 21
Jinpa, Thupten. A Fearless Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Jodorowsky, Alejandro. • Sacred Trickery and the Way of Kindness. . . . . . . . 26 • Tarot De Marseille by Jodorowsky. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 • The Way of Tarot . . . . . . . . . . 31 The Quotable Jung. . . . . . . . . . 23
Kahn, Matt.
• Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh. . . . . . . 30 • The Way to God . . . . . . . . . . . 30
• Whatever Arises Love That Course. . . . . . . . . . 25 • Whatever Arises, Love That. . 25
Gannon, Sharon.
Kater, Peter.
Simple Recipes for Joy . . . . . . . 21
Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Realizing Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Gates, Mariam.
Kaufman, Scott Barry.
Natural Remedies for Low Testosterone. . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Burke, Peter. Year Round Indoor Salad Gardening. . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Burney, Diana. Spiritual Balancing. . . . . . . . . . 31
Chia, Mantak. • Craniosacral Chi Kung. . . . . . 17
• Sealing of the Five Senses . . . 17 Chiu, Frederic.
• Good Morning Yoga. . . . . . . . 39 • Good Night Yoga . . . . . . . . . . 39
Wired to Create. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Gelles, David.
Original Light. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Mindful Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Kelly, Brendan.
Ginsberg, Allen.
The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
The Essential Ginsberg. . . . . . . 10
Goldberg, Natalie. • Writing Down the Bones . . . . 12 • The Great Spring. . . . . . . . . . 12
Goldhamer, Rabbi Douglas. Healing with God’s Love. . . . . . 29
McKay, Matthew. Metcalf, Byron. Shamanic Trance Dance. . . . . . . 8
Millman, Dan. The Four Purposes of Life . . . . 21
Moore, Thomas. Care of the Soul (25th Anniversary Edition). . . . 23
Morgan, Bill. The Meditator’s Dilemma. . . . . 25
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. The Study Quran. . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Nathwani, Ravi. Mala of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Needleman, Jacob. I Am Not I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Neruda, Pablo. Then Come Back. . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Nisker, Wes “Scoop”. You Are Not Your Fault and Other Revelations . . . . . . . 15
Novak, Annie. The Rooftop Growing Guide. . . 37
O’Donnell, Kate. The Everyday Ayurveda Cookbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Orloff, Judith. The Ecstasy of Letting Go. . . . . 23
Osar, Evan.
Jung, C.G.
Brunton, Paul. Buhner, Stephen Harrod.
Marlock, Gustl.
TechGnosis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Meet Me In Hard-to-Love Places. . . . . . . . . . 40
Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Mansfield, Elaine.
Kaur, Snatam.
Klinkenberg, Kevin. Why I Walk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Kondo, Marie. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. . . . . . . . . 36
Functional Anatomy of the Pilates Core. . . . . . . . . . . 20
Ozeki, Ruth. A Tale for the Time Being . . . . 12
Ozeki, Ruth.
Samsel, Peter. A Treasury of Sufi Wisdom. . . . 30
Savin, Barbara. Gentle Energy Touch . . . . . . . . 19
Sayadaw, Mahasi. Manual of Insight . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Selig, Paul. The Book of Mastery. . . . . . . . . 33
Sharp, Daryl. Pocket Jung. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Shiva, Vandana. Biopiracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Simon, Tami. • Being True . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 • The Self-Acceptance Project. . 23
Snyder, Gary. • This Present Moment. . . . . . . 10 • The Etiquette of Freedom. . . 35
Solomon, Steve. Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, 35th Anniversary. . . . 37
Song, Tamarack. Becoming Nature . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Sonnenburg, Justin & Erica. The Good Gut. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Srinivasan, Meena. Teach Breathe Learn. . . . . . . . . 39
Starr, Renée. You Are Woman, You Are Divine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Tanahashi, Kazuaki. The Heart Sutra. . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Tejaniya, Sayadaw U. When Awareness Becomes Natural. . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Tessler, Bari. The Art of Money . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Thompson, May Reynolds. Reclaiming the Wild Soul. . . . . 35
Tkacz, Virlana. Siberian Shamanism. . . . . . . . . 28
Tolle, Eckhart. Enlightened Relationships. . . . 25
The Face: A Time Code . . . . . . 12
Tompkins, Ptolemy.
Peia.
Proof of Angels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Four Great Winds . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Towler, Solala.
Premal, Deva.
Practicing the Tao Te Ching. . . 17
Chanting Mantras with Deva Premal & Miten . . . . . . . . 13
Trungpa, Chogyam.
Proctor, Bob.
Turner, Kevin.
• Thoughts Are Things. . . . . . . 22 • The Art of Living . . . . . . . . . . 22
Pursell, JJ. The Herbal Apothecary . . . . . . 19
Quest, Penelope. Reiki For Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Rankin, Lissa. The Fear Cure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Kongtrul, Dzigar.
Rubin, Jeff.
Glimpses of the Profound. . . . . 17 Sky Shamans of Mongolia. . . . . 28
Villoldo, Alberto. One Spirit Medicine. . . . . . . . . 28
Wagner, David. Backbone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Warner, Brad. Don’t Be a Jerk . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Weatherstone, Lunaea.
Hymns & Dervishes. . . . . . . . . . . 8
Goldstein, Joseph.
The Intelligent Heart. . . . . . . . 17
Reiss, Haydn.
Chopra, Deepak.
Mindfulness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Korn, Larry.
Quantum Healing. . . . . . . . . . . 18
Gottman, John.
One-Straw Revolutionary . . . . . 36
Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Christian, Hans.
The Man’s Guide to Women. . . 40
Kristof, Nicholas.
Reverend Billy.
The Biology of Wonder 35
Moments of Grace. . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Green, Marian
A Path Appear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
The Earth Wants YOU. . . . . . . . 35
Wilber, Ken.
Cleve, Jay.
The Complete Book of Aquarian Magic. . . . . . . . . . . 29
Lachman, Gary.
Rex, Gail.
Integral Meditation. . . . . . . . . . 27
Secret Teachers of the Western World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Earth Acupuncture. . . . . . . . . . 35
Willard, Christopher.
Ricard, Matthieu.
Grof, Stanislav.
Lakshmi, Jaya.
Altruism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Books of the Dead. . . . . . . . . . . 26
Kundalini Morning Chants. . . . . 9
Richards, William.
• Growing Up Mindful . . . . . . . 24 • Practices for Growing Up Mindful. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Hanh, Thich Nhat.
Levoy, Gregg.
Sacred Knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . 27
Wimberger, Lisa.
Silence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Vital Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Richo, David.
Hari, Johan.
Linde, Nels & Judy.
You are Not What You Think. . . 27
Chasing the Scream . . . . . . . . . 35
Taking Sacred Back. . . . . . . . . . 29
Rosenberg, Stanley.
• Neurosculpting. . . . . . . . . . . . 38 • Neurosculpting For New Habits. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Harris, Obadiah.
Little, Tias.
The Simple Road. . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Yoga of the Subtle Body . . . . . . 13
Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve . . . . . . . . . . 20
The Path of the Sacred Pipe. . . 29
Cope, Stephen. The Great Work of Your Life. . . 12
Corn, Seane. The Yoga of Awakening: Mystic Flow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Crawford, Martin. Trees for Gardens, Orchards and Permaculture. . . 36
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Tending Brigid’s Flame. . . . . . . 29
Weber, Andreas.
Wolynn, Mark. It Didn’t Start With You . . . . . . 23
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI Paramahansa Yogananda’s soul-stirring journey of love and enlightenment.
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Not “Revelation”—‘tis—that waits, But our unfurnished eyes— —Emily Dickinson
sailing downstream on a branch, ants singing & dancing —Gary Gach
He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy. But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sun rise. —William Blake
When the bottom of a barrel busts open this vast earth seems even wider When one’s life line snaps asunder a green lake turns crystal clear What can be better than to grasp a pinch of snow from a blazing furnace & sprinkle it throughout all human life like travelers’ lamps brightening their night —Da-hui Zhong-gao. Translated by Gary Gach
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