Branches of light, Spring-Summer-Fall 2017 by Banyen Books & Sound

PERSONAL, SPIRITUAL, AND PLANETARY TRANSFORMATION northatlanticbooks.com BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

BE AWARE OF HOW YOU YOURSELF MIGHT BE A SEED

the humility, the ground, the place of vulnerability from which you can truly listen. The word humility comes from the Latin humus, which is earth, ground. Just as the seed needs earth to grow, humility is the soil for our own seed stories and the stories of all creation.” —from Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (see p.36). FIRST STEP IS TO FIND

BRANCHES

OF LIGHT News & Reviews from

Banyen Books and Sound

*ISSUE 50 ! * Spring-Summer-Fall 2017

Publisher ~ Editor Kolin Lymworth

Design Laura Duncan Good Look Graphics laura@goodlookgraphics.com

Cover Fiona Gamiet Articulate Design fionagamiet@codacom.com

On the Cover Honeybee ~ Batchelor’s Button ~ Spring!

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: Dylan Phillips & Lindsay Shaver Accounting: Melora Jaune & Jenny Chu Events, Publicity & E-News: Jacob Steele Web Wizard & Social Media: Alethea Lymworth In the Store, at Your Service: Liz Aboya, Cynthia Champagne, Michael Galloway, Bokudo Holy, Asha Isaacson, Alicja Kielbik, Carly Laughlin, Amanda-Lee Lorenz, Alethea Lymworth, Leanna Manning, Ross McKeachie, Tom Oakley, Samuel Romero, Janeesha Rosser Levi Shulman, Viti Spinelli, Angela Spooner, Chloe Traynor & 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

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

OW,

BANYEN IS AT another threshold. Our dear General Manager, Tanis Phillips, is retiring after 10 successful years at the tiller. We are in transition. We intend to continue offering the comprehensive and loving services Banyen’s been known for, for many years to come. And we thank Tanis on her way, with the sunlight of appreciation, blessingsfor-the-way ahead, and a slightly teary fare-thee-well. : ) )

in this issue... 5 6 8 9 10 11 13 15 16 18 19 19 20 21 22 23 23 23 26 27 28 29 30 30 31 31 32 33 33 34 34 36 36 36 38 38 38 40 41 42 42

a spectrum of yoga and meditation supplies, tools, cushions, as well as excellent natural fibre clothing, candles, crystals, smudge and incenses, altar statues, essential oils & aromatics, glowing salt lamps, musical instruments and sound healing tools, body care magic, artcards, jewelry, and much more. Some of it is on our website now. ANYEN NOW OFFERS

FRIENDS OF BANYEN, this issue of Branches of Light is Number 50—that means 25 years! For most of those years, every spring and fall, Michael Bertrand was both managing editor and great friend. He arranged with authors, publishers, designers, printers, mailers, and me, to “get it out” into the world. Michael has since retired. He is very fondly remembered... And the beat goes on... with this bouquet of strong, wonderful new books. We are honoured to be able to offer such a treasure of heart-and-soul teachings. Thank you for receiving it, and for supporting us these years. EAR

ay this springtime bring you new life in abundance and harmony. “In a dark time, the heart begins to see.” Thanks for life ~ let’s be in touch. ~Kolin

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.

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 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 28,000 titles - with curated reviews a “little alexandria” open all the time.

(Please contact us for express rates.)

SHIPPING OUTSIDE CANADA/U.S.A. Please contact us to enquire about the rates.

To avoid delays in filling your order...

Please don’t mail us a cheque until you have contacted us to confirm the amount...

and give us your mailing address !

Canadian orders $89 and up (before taxes) get free shipping... a saving of 12% BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Our Banyen lotus by a review means that title is our “Editor’s Choice.”

Basic Cost + Per Book/Item

Lower Mainland (Metro Vancouver & Lower and Central Fraser Valley) $6.00 + $1.50 per book B.C. & Western Canada (BC outside the Lower Mainland, AB, SK) $9.00 + $1.50 per book Eastern & Northern Canada $11.00 + $1.50 per book Canadian Orders over $89: Free Shipping

Banyen’s Events Chimes & Singing Bowls Music, Art & Creativity Poetry, Writing & Stories Yoga & Hindu Traditions Buddhism & Zen Tibetan Buddhism Flowing with the Tao BodyMind Healing Healing Energies & Herbs Bodywork & Movement Food & Nutrition Inspiration & Self-Help Psychology & Dreamwork Jungian Psychology Mythology Meditation Western Teachers & Teachings Dying & Grieving Transpersonal Psychology Entheogens Shamanism & Ritual Native Medicine Wicca & Magick Christian & Jewish Sufism & Islam Astrology & Tarot Metaphysics & Philosophy Transmissions & Revelations Business, Work & Money Ecology, Community, Politics Eco-Philosophy Earth Energies & Eco-Design Gardening & Permaculture Nature as Teacher & Healer Conscious Evolution ? ! Science, Brain/Mind & Gaia Family, Parenting & Youth Relationships & Sex Women & Men Some (More) Unusual New Books

43 Index of Authors & their titles

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.

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

we’re also now listing a sweet selection 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.

RETIREMENT ANNOUNCEMENT

ith much appreciation I announce the retirement of Banyen’s General Manager, Tanis Phillips. Effective June 30, Tanis will pass on the reins of Banyen’s management after ten strong years in the role. With her devotion, acumen and coordination (honed over 17 Tanis in front of her recent poster project years at Banyen with the last 10 on Valentine’s Day as General Manager), Tanis brought Banyen to unprecedented levels of stability, coherence, fairness, and clarity. It’s been a remarkable achievement in Banyen’s 47 years, and has really helped us make it through tough years. I would say we all are sad to lose her steady, utterly dependable caring for “the Banyen garden.” Yet her forward-looking fostering of clear teams, roles, and procedures is a foundation that will support us moving forward into our new era. Her energy, honesty, and principled kindness in the heat of the fires of keeping a business going in this world will be missed. So, from all of us at Banyen—and I would say all of us in the larger community which Banyen serves—thank you, Tanis. Well done! And blessings aplenty on your way.

A Division of The Georgetown Group Limited

Feed Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Enrich Your Soul

Sincerely, Kolin Lymworth, Banyen’s founder/owner. April 19, 2017

the haven on gabriola island

Discover the art of living well, together

Programs in self-responsible, relational living

for individuals, couples, children, teens and families

www.haven.ca info@haven.ca •1 800 222 9211 BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

SOME OF OUR UPCOMING EVENTS

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

CHIMES FOR THE HOME & GARDEN

23 22

24 25

14 15 13

33 32

Magical Mystery Space Odyssey, 55in. 028375227013––––– $237.00

Crystal Meditation Black, 16in. 028375236213––––––– $27.95

Seafoam Green, 24in.

Crystal, 12in.

028375007110––––––– $34.95

Peace Bronze, 16in. 028375209019––––––– $34.95

Pachelbel Cannon Silver, 32in.

028375233816––––––– $61.00

Earth Bronze, 37in.

028375132812––––––

$63.00

Bali Silver, 25in.

028375062911––––––

$70.00

Earth Silver, 37in.

028375003013–––––––$67.00

Rainforest Green, 32in.

9780100909588–––––

$70.00

Seafoam Green, 37in. 028375227112–––––

Little Gregorian, 13in.

028375229017––––––

$70.00

Pluto Silver, 27in.

$106.00

Crystal Meditation Silver, 16in. 028375216918––––––– $27.95

Mozart, 40in. Amazing Grace Memorial Urn, 24in. 028375226016––––––

Ireland, 25in.

$70.00

Rose Quartz, 12in.

028375143313––––––– $91.00

$84.00

Turquoise, 12in. 028375197910–––––––

Turquoise, 26in. 028375154715––––––

Jade, 12in.

028375182916–––––––

Gem Drop Prism, 10in. 028375218219–––––––

Amethyst, 12in.

028375182718–––––––

$13.95

Chakra Chime, 16in. 028375201914––––––– $27.95 BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Piccolo, 7in.

$13.95 $13.95

$70.00

028375197514–––––––

028375062614––––––– $41.95 028375233618––––––

028375197019–––––––

028375036516––––––

Temple Bells, Trio

6928500170600–––––– $37.95

Glass Bell Indigo, 4in. 6928500175100–––––– $37.95

Glass Bell Teal, 8in. 6928500173700–––––

$70.00

Glass Bell Teal, 4in.

$13.95

Koshi Aqua Water, 6.25in.

$13.95 $7.95

$53.00

028375035212––––––– $37.95

Windbell Dragonfly, 20in.

028375097715––––––– $27.95

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Glass Bell Purple, 4in.

$13.95

028375016419––––––––

Temple Bells, Quintet

6928500169000–––––– $37.95 9789000157723–––––

$98.00

Koshi Aria Air, 6.25in. 9789000157716–––––

$98.00

Koshi Ignis Fire, 6.25in. 9789000162550–––––

$98.00

Koshi Terra Earth, 6.25in. 9789000162567–––––

$98.00

Bamboo, 14in. 9789000090877–––––––

$9.95

SOUNDS FOR THE SPIRIT & MEDITATION

Zenergy Chimes

39 42

ounds from gongs and chimes are often used in meditation and healing. They redirect the mind to center and promote mindfulness of an individual or a group, raising group consciousness and a sense of oneness. Chimes have also been used to clear stuck and unwanted dense energy allowing flow to occur. Zenergy chimes are an effective tool with meditation, healing or in a yoga practice. They are also a wonderful way to introduce a class, workshop or meeting and they have often been used as musical instruments.

40 Zenergy Duo 028375076710––––––– $22.95

Zenergy Quintet

028375184217––––––

$53.00

Zenergy Solo 028375227211–––––––

Zenergy Solo Mini

$13.95

9789000140534–––––– $10.95

Zenergy Trio 028375076819––––––– $34.95

44 43

Singing Meditation Bowls

hese meditational singing bowls come from the Himalayas and are used as a gong or toned, while you move mallet steadily around the rim. The bowls are traditionally made of seven metals, one for each 48 of the planets: gold, silver, mercury, copper, 45 iron, tin & lead. The actual proportions of different 49 metals vary in each bowl, and not all bowls are made of all seven. The traditional Tibetan bowl is said to have more silver & tin, while Nepalese bowls have a golden glow. They were hand-beaten historically but are now often cast mechanically. These bowls are used for meditation, yoga, healing, sound massage, sound therapy, and chakra balancing. Temple Gong Etched, 8in. 9789000187690––––

$150.00

Fountain Water Bell with Copper Bowl, 16in. 028375086719––––– $250.00

Crown Chakra Boxset 4in. 9789000135455–––––

$56.00

9789000187706–––––

$56.00

Hand Hammered, 5in. Hand Hammered, 4in

9789000151585–––––

$85.00

9789000151578––––– $113.00

Hand Etched, Small

9789000154746–––––

$60.00

9789000151554––––––$76.00

Hand Etched, Medium

9789000151592–––––

52 51

Machine Etched Large

9789000154753–––––$112.00

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Machine Etched Medium

$56.00

Machine Etched Small

Heart Chakra Boxset 4in. 9789000181995–––––

Root Chakra Boxset 4in.

$72.00

9789000151547–––– $100.00

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

(This is only a small selection of our Bowls & Chimes. All bowls come with a wooden mallet. Colour, size and design may vary)

Art, Creativity & Music SACRED GEOMETRY OF NATURE Journey on the Path of the Divine by Francene Hart $43.95, cloth. Bear & Company. 210 pages, 8x11, colour throughout

Every one of us possesses the potential to receive visionary experiences and integrate them into our lives. Artists become visionaries by cultivating their instinctive creative spark and sharing their profound visions with the world. In this lavishly illustrated memoir, including more than 80 full-color reproductions of her intricate watercolor paintings and the stories behind them, Francene Hart recounts the evolution of her art from formative influences to her masterful integrations of Nature, Spirit, and Sacred Geometry. Opening with her early work on mandalas and her explorations of the work of Joseph Campbell and C. G. Jung, Hart explains how her first works of art were in response to the solitary life she led in the forest, where she

CREATING IN BEAUTY

discovered the hidden order of Nature. She reveals how she learned to center her artistic explorations on the intelligence of the heart rather than the intellect, utilizing the wisdom and imagery of Sacred Geometry, reverence for the natural environment, and the interconnectedness between all things as her inspirations. She describes the shamanic lessons that accompanied her discoveries and shaped her understanding of sacred relationships with the self, others, and Mother Earth. She explores how to tap into the energies provided by spirit guides and power animals, like Jaguar, Raven, Octopus, and Dolphin, and explains her profound affinity for the ocean, including her discovery of water consciousness in Hawaii. Offering chronicles of her inspiring travels and transformational encounters around the world, Hart shares her experiences at sacred sites in the Amazon, Central America, Egypt, England, Scotland, Paris, Cambodia, and the Himalayas and how these places influenced her art. Exploring what is revealed as inspiration arises, Spirit informs, and vision is transformed into art, Francene Harts journey offers a window into the secret order of Nature, the power of sacred symbols for evolving consciousness, and a visionary artistic path that blends the mathematical rigors of sacred geometry and the numinous.

Music and Words

JUST BEING AT THE PIANO by Mildred Portney Chase

$19.95, paper. DeVorss. 98 pages

Harmony begins in the Soul, long before the first note is played… There are many approaches to piano theory. They range from the simple technique of reading music and touching the keys, to playing-by-ear, but few have taken the inner path that begins in the soul. Mildred Portney Chase merged her piano lessons with the discipline of mindful Buddhist practice and created an experience that evokes not just music for the pleasure of the listener, but a journey that leads the student to a world of calm and peacefulness flowing from the soul out into the universe… ever-evolving day-by-day within the musician’s heart. Just being—at the piano— egoless— is to each time seek to reach that place where the only thing that exists is the sound and moving toward the sound. The music on the page that was outside of you is now within you, and moves through you; you are a channel for the music, and play from the center of your being… You are at one with yourself and the act, and feel as if the playing has already happened and you are effortlessly releasing it. The music is in your hands, in the air, in the room, the music is everywhere, and the whole universe is contained in the experience of playing.

SACRED GEOMETRY COLORING BOOK by Francene Hart

$18.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 96 pages, 8x11, b/w illus.

Drawing on the imagery from her popular Sacred Geometry Oracle Deck and Sacred Geometry Cards for the Visionary Path, this coloring book contains 45 illustrations of Hart’s renowned Sacred Geometry paintings and drawings. Each piece is accompanied by a brief yet insightful commen-

WIRED TO CREATE

tary explaining the meaning behind the symbols and animals shown and offering inspiration to open your awareness to how these shapes influence our reality and tune your energies. From dolphins and dragonflies, the elements and

Creativities

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman & Carolyn Gregoire $23.00, paper. Putnam. 288 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 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

LET THE ELEPHANTS RUN

Unlock Your Creativity and Change Everything by David Usher

“Just Being at the Piano works toward developing the musician’s sensory awareness of the sound, of the touch, of what the entire body is experiencing, so that each tone may sing.” —Lee Strasberg

$22.95, paper. Anansi. 256 pages.

At David Ushers company, CloudID Creativity Labs, there is a sign on the wall that reads: “Dream big, let the elephants run!” The words are a reminder for us to hold a place in our minds for creativity, where big ideas can form and our imagination can run free. Based on his wildly popular speaking engagements, Let the Elephants Run shows us how to reignite creativity whether in the head office, the home office or the artists studio. Creativity is in everyone’s DNA, not a select few. We all start our lives as creative beings but for many that spark becomes lost over time. How do we jump-start creativity process as adults? What does it means to be a creative person? How do we follow through with our ideas and turn them into tangible outcomes? Usher empowers readers to achieve more “aha” moments through two cornerstone principles of creativity: freedom and structure. Using a mix of personal anecdotes and professional examples from the worlds of industry, technology, science, music, and art, he shows us that creativity is not magic; it is a learnable skill that any person or business can master. The dynamic full-colour design includes photographs, artwork and illustrations, as well as action pages to help readers start cultivating the habit of documenting their ideas for future execution. Let the Elephants Run is the essential guidebook to reigniting and nurturing our creativity in accessible and productive ways. “Go ahead, write in this book. I dare you. David’s writing will change you, possibly forever.” — Seth Godin “Let the Elephants Run is a wake-up call for sleeping synapses, and an ode to our natural curiosity and imagination. The reader is invited to dare, to reflect, and to play.” — Gillian Ferrabee, Director of Cirque Du Soleil Creative Lab “This book is an enthralling exploration of the creative process that will both fascinate and challenge you. David’s insightful take on how to both unleash and control one’s own creativity is particularly relevant in today’s world.” — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

WORDS WITHOUT MUSIC A Memoir by Philip Glass

$23.50, paper. Norton. 418 pages, b/w photos

Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical music. Yet in Words Without Music, his critically acclaimed memoir, he creates an entirely new and unexpected voice, that of a born storyteller and an acutely insightful chronicler, whose behind-the-scenes recollections allow readers to experience those moments of creative fusion when life so magically merged with art. From his childhood in Baltimore to his student days in Chicago and at Juilliard, to his first journey to Paris and a life-changing trip to India, Glass movingly recalls his early mentors, while reconstructing the places that helped shape his creative consciousness. Whether describing working as an unlicensed plumber in gritty 1970s New York or composing Satyagraha, Glass breaks across genres and re-creates, here in words, the thrill that results from artistic creation. Words Without Music ultimately affirms the power of music to change the world. My father was self-taught, but he ended up having a very refined and rich knowledge of classical, chamber, and contemporary music. Typically he would come home and have dinner, and then sit in his armchair and listen to music until almost midnight. I caught on to this very early, and I would go and listen with him.

“No matter your opinion of Glass’ music, you will like Glass the man… Aspiring musicians and artists will learn much from Glass, as will general readers, musical or not, who will discover an artistic life exceptionally well lived.” —Booklist

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

S O U N D ‘N’ P O E M , S O M E T I M E S B R I L L I A N T

celestial bodies, to the power of the torus, labyrinths, and the Flower of Life, this coloring book will lead you on a contemplative journey into the interconnected realms of Sacred Geometry, Nature, and Spirit while supporting your sense of wholeness and joy.

Poems as Windows

POEMS THAT MAKE GROWN WOMEN CRY 100 Women on the Words that Move Them edited by Anthony & Ben Holden $25.00, paper. Scribner. 330 pages, flaps

THE SEVEN SECRETS OF SOUND HEALING

Incluides Free Audio Download by Jonathan Goldman

$16.99, paper. Hay House. 164 pages

In this revised edition of The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing , sound healing pioneer Jonathan Goldman, shows how sound/resonance/ tone can be used to heal and transform, breaking down scientific principles and studies into accessible, understandable, and applicable wisdoms and techniques. Through practical information and exercises, you’ll see how the amazing power of sound can function as personal vibrational therapy for the enhancement of your mind, body, and spirit. Goldman provides a basic understanding of the principles of using sound as a healing modality and how it may be used to restore balance. Through exploration of a variety of ancient and modern techniques, you will be equipped with a practical application of knowledge that will assist you in leading a more harmonious life. The seven secrets he articulates are: Everything Is Vibration Intent Is Powerful We Are All Unique Vibratory Beings Silence is Golden Our Voice Is the Most Healing Instrument There are Many Notes in a Scale Sound Can Change the World

Goldman’s guided meditations and exercises in his free audio download are specifically designed to enhance your relaxation and healing, helping to bring the seven core secrets of sound healing into your heart and home. Among Goldman’s other books (he also has a number of CDs) are The Divine Name, Healing Sounds and Chakra Frequencies.

Poetry, Writing & Stories A SMALL PORCH

Sabbath Poems 2014 and 2015 together with “The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation” by Wendell Berry $24.50, paper. Counterpoint. 158 pages

More than 35 years ago, when the weather allowed, Wendell Berry began spending his sabbaths outdoors, walking and wandering around familiar territory, seeking a deep intimacy only time could provide. These walks arranged themselves into poems and each year since he has completed a sequence dated by the year of its composition. Recently the lot was published in a collection, This Day, the Sabbath Poems 1979-2013. This new sequence for the following 2 years is one of the richest yet. This group provides a virtual syllabus for all of Mr. Berry’s cultural and agricultural work in concentrated form. Many of these poems are drawn from

New in Paperback

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, father-and-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. Late Fragment And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself Beloved on the earth. —Raymond Carver

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 100 works features an introduction that is often 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.

TEN WINDOWS

between our human minds and the mind of Nature or the mind of God. To ignore or defy that division, wishing to be as gods,.. is characteristic of a kind of science that is at once romantic and industrial, ever in search of new worlds to conquer. From its work, I fear, we can expect only a continuing spillover of violence, to the world and to ourselves. But a scientist who knows that the boundary exists and accepts, even welcomes, its existence, who knows that the boundary has a human side and elects to stay on it, is a scientist of a kind opposed to the would-be masters of the universe. A poet, too, can choose the human side of that boundary… If we can talk of limits and of scale, we can slack off our obsession with quantities and immensities and take up the study of form: of the forms of Nature’s work, of the forms by which our work might be adapted to hers. We may then become capable of the hope, I caught years ago from our friend John Todd, for “Elegant solutions predicated upon the uniqueness of place.”

A new collection of Wendell Berry poems is always an occasion of joyful celebration and this one is especially so.

SOMETIMES BRILLIANT

The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History by Larry Brilliant $34.99, cloth. HarperCollins. 416 pages, colour photos

How Great Poems Transform the World by Jane Hirshfield $25.00, paper. Knopf. 308 pages, illus.

“Poetry,” Jane Hirshfield has said, “is language that foments revolutions of being.” In ten eloquent and highly original explorations, she unfolds some of the ways this is done—by the inclusion of hiddenness, paradox, and surprise; by a perennial awareness of the place of uncertainty in our lives; by language’s own acts of discovery; by the powers of image, statement, music, and feeling to enlarge in every direction. Basho wanted to renovate human vision by putting what he saw into a bare handful of mostly ordinary words, and he wanted to renovate language by what he asked it to see.

Closely reading poems by Dickinson, Basho, Szymborska, Cavafy, Heaney, Bishop, and Komunyakaa, among many others, Hirshfield reveals how poetry’s world-making takes place: word by charged word. By expanding what is imaginable and sayable, Hirshfield proposes, poems expand what is possible. Ten Windows restores us at every turn to a more precise, sensuous, and deepened experience of our shared humanity and of the seemingly limitless ways that knowledge is both summoned and forged. On a branch floating downriver, a cricket singing. —Issa

“In 20 or 30 years, this book may be remembered as one of the great common-readers on the pleasures of poetry… This thrilling work of immense value is truly an important book on one of the most important subjects: poetry. However, like a strong drink (or a great poem) it probably isn’t to be taken in a single gulp. It may even seem a little intoxicating, but drink.”—Library Journal “With precision and passion, Hirshfield elucidates poetry’s “musical shapeliness,” “creative intention,” embrace of uncertainty, and how poetry engenders a profound “unlatching.” She draws stirring examples from Shakespeare, Hopkins, Whitman, Auden, Milosz and others, and illuminates the power of haiku in her affecting in-depth profile of the Japanese poet Basho. Hirshfield writes brilliantly of paradox in poetry, of what poets and stand-up comics have in common, and how poetry “counters isolation and meaninglessness.” The profound pleasure Hirshfield takes in delineating poetry’s efficacy makes for a beautifully enlightening volume. —Booklist the view from a small porch in the woods, a place of stillness and reflection, a vantage point “of the one/life of the forest composed/of uncountable lives in countless/ years each life coherent itself within/ the coherence, the great composure,/of all.” Our very fields are flowing, earth burdening the waters. To be made thus new, the place must be made less. And we who walk upon it as it is being made BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

submit ourselves to making by it as we have made it, its history and ours made day by day the same.

And… these beautiful poems come together, in this volume, with “The Presence of Nature in the Natural World: A Long Conversation,” which is a new essay by Wendell Berry. There is a boundary that may move somewhat, but can never be removed, between what we know and what we don’t,

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

This is the long-awaited story of Dr. Larry Brilliant—a rivetting, entertaining, and inspiring memoir whose heartfully told tales illuminate some of the watershed events of a generation and many of the legendary people who defined it. When a powerful mystic steps on the hand of a radical young hippie doctor from Detroit, it changes lives and the world. Sometimes Brilliant is the adventures of Larry Brilliant, a philosopher, mystic, hippie, doctor, groundbreaking tech innovator, and key player in the eradication of one of the worst pandemics in human history. His story, of what happens when love, compassion and determination meet the right circumstances to effect positive change, is the kind that keeps hope and the sense of possibility alive. After sitting at the feet of Martin Luther King at the University of Michigan in 1963, Larry Brilliant was swept up into the civil rights movement, marching and protesting across America and Europe. As a radical young doctor he followed the hippie trail from London over the Khyber Pass with his wife Girija, Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm commune to India. There, he found himself in a Himalayan ashram wondering whether he had stumbled into a cult. Instead, one of India’s greatest spiritual teachers, Neem Karoli Baba, opened Larry’s heart and told him his destiny was to work for the World Health Organization to help eradicate killer smallpox. He would never have believed he would become a key player in eliminating a 10,000-year-old disease that killed more than half a billion people in the 20th century alone. Brilliant’s unlikely trajectory, chronicled in Sometimes Brilliant, has brought him into close proximity with political leaders, spiritual masters, cultural heroes, and titans of technology around the world—from the Grateful Dead to Mikhail Gorbachev, from Ram Dass, the Dalai Lama, Lama Govinda,

WRITING AS YOGA

Yoga & the Hindu Traditions

Writing as Healing THE GREAT SPRING

Writing, Zen and This Zigzag Life by Natalie Goldberg

$22.95, paper. Shambhala. 224 pages

YOGA FAQ

New in Paperback

Almost Everything You Need to Know about Yoga—from Asanas to Yamas by Richard Rosen

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

$23.95, paper. Shambhala. 246 pages

Here are knowledgeable, concise and readable answers to the most commonly asked questions about yoga, and illuminating little-known facts and esoteric aspects of the philosophy and practice—by renowned yogi Richard Rosen. This collection of questions and answers explains the nuts and bolts of yoga philosophy and practice in a completely clear and readable way. Richard Rosen is known for his engaging teaching and writing style and in this book he gives pithy, accessible explanations of key aspects of the tradition, such as: u Yoga’s main texts, including Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutra, among others u Yamas and niyamas u The subtle body--what it means and what it looks like in practice u The evolution of asanas u Pranayama u Mudras and bandhas And much more. Rosen also writes about the origins of yoga and questions whether it’s a religion, a practice, or a science; explains the symbolism of frequently recurring numbers in the yoga tradition; gives the proper pronunciation of commonly mispronounced Sanskrit words; and looks at some of the more esoteric aspects of the tradition. This mix of essential concepts and intriguing little-known facts will delight those who are new to the practice as well as experienced practitioners. “Richard Rosen has crafted a delightful book that equally showcases both his academic knowledge about yoga and his gentle sense of humor. Yoga FAQ is a clear resource that helps us to formulate and understand our big questions about yoga and spiritual practice. I felt as if I was tucking into the personal story of Mr. Rosen’s own journey studying yoga—and the trip was intriguing and fun. Highly recommended for all levels of students and especially for yoga teachers.” —Judith Lasater, author of Yoga Body

THE STORY YOU NEED TO TELL

Writing to Heal from Trauma, Illness or Loss by Sandra Marinella $23.00, paper. New World Library. 290 pp

Informed by the author’s years of teaching writing and researching its healing properties, The Story You Need to Tell is a practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling through writing. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing our own stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. Marinella also shares her own experience of using journal and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and post-partum depression. Each of the techniques, prompts, and exercises she presents work to “unravel the knot inside and to make sense of loss.” Based on a profound understanding of how “in our sadness and pain we can be remade,” this is the kind of storytelling—and the kind of book—that can change and perhaps even save a life. In 2012 when she faced breast cancer, Sandra turned her focus from teaching to writing as a way of healing. She began volunteering with veterans and cancer patients. As she watched writing help them to transform their lives, she discovered her new passion—sharing the power of their stories and the methods they used to heal their lives. After writing The Story You Need to Tell, Sandra founded the Story You Need to Tell Project at www.storyyoutell.com. Here individuals who want to write or tell their stories can discover life-changing stories and learn the healing power of reworking and editing their personal life stories. Untold stories don’t go away; they morph into volatile emotions, into flashbacks and anxiety, into behaviors we don’t understand in ourselves, things we wish we didn’t do… Untold stories cause ruptures in relationships, ill health, and spiritual or religious crisis…

CHAIR YOGA

So maybe you’re not a writer. You don’t have to ever show anyone this writing, and it will still work on your heart and mind to reorganize your life… So maybe it’s scary to think of putting your life-breaking moments into words. This book provides you with a safety net. So maybe with a little help you’re ready to live a more resilient story.

You can dance on one leg.

You can get through a crisis.

You can survive grief.

Sit, Stretch, and Strengthen Your Way to a Happier, Healthier You by Kristin McGee $23.99, paper. HarperCollins. 272 pges, 7x9, b/w photos

That is the promise this book makes to you. Now make yourself a promise–to tell the story you have to tell! —from the foreword by Christina Baldwin, author of Storycatcher

and Karmapa to Steve Jobs and the founders of Google, Salesforce, Facebook, Microsoft and eBay and Presidents Carter, Clinton, Bush and Obama. Anchored by the engrossing account of the heroic efforts of the extraordinary people involved in smallpox eradication in India, this is a riveting and fascinating epidemiological adventure, an honest reckoning of an entire generation, and a deeply moving spiritual memoir. It is a

testament to faith, love, service, and what it means to engage with life’s most important questions in pursuit of a better, more brilliant existence. “Truly magnificent. Sometimes Brilliant mixes a gripping story, a primer on compassionate service, and a guide to purpose-driven social action into a can’t-stop-reading narrative, one we need more than ever.” —Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

From celebrity yoga instructor Kristin McGee comes this fun, accessible guide to 100 yoga poses and exercises that can be done in your chair and take just minutes a day. For the majority of us living a sedentary lifestyle (from the card-carrying couch potatoes to the reputed 86% of North American workers who sit all day at their job) comes a comprehensive guide to the most accessible form of yoga: Chair yoga! Desk-bound? You can do chair yoga! Have limited range of motion?

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

You can do chair yoga!

Never done yoga before? You can do

chair yoga!

Don’t own a pair of stretchy pants? You

can do chair yoga!

Own plenty of athleisure or loungewear, but haven’t moved much in weeks/months/ years? You can do chair yoga! Chair yoga is exactly what it sounds like: exercises you can do sitting down. In Chair Yoga, yoga instructor Kristin McGee takes you through 100 yoga poses and exercises that are easy enough for all levels and will help readers stay active, alert, and healthy. Divided into chapters organized by body part (say goodbye to back pain and hello to better posture), each exercise includes step-by-step instructions and easy-to-follow photos. Plus, bonus chapters on 5-, 10-, and 15-minute routines help readers put it all together and find the time to perform these exercises. Now with Chair Yoga, anyone can benefit from just a few moves a day—and garner the remarkable physical and mental health rewards. “Kristin’s classes strike a perfect balance of effort and letting go, seriousness and lightheartedness, movement and stillness.” —Ellie Krieger

ESSENTIAL KUNDALINI YOGA

An Invitation to Radiant Health, Unconditional Love, and the Awakening of Your Energetic Potential by Karena Virginia & Dharm Khalsa $34.95, paper. Sounds True. 330 pages, 8x11, b/w photos

For new and experienced students both, here is illustrated, practical guidance. Kundalini is a universal life force within each of us that, once awakened, holds the power to transform every facet of our lives. Kundalini yoga is the art and practice of activating this radiant energy. With Essential Kundalini Yoga, Karena Virginia and Dharm Khalsa present the core principles and practices of this revered tradition in an inviting and accessible guide. Kundalini yoga opens joyous space for connecting deeply with the energy states of our being. It brings vital health to the body and opens our consciousness to new potentials of awareness.

Created for the modern practitioner, this book offers clear, comprehensive instruction in the key insights and practices of kundalini yoga. From philosophy and lifestyle, to working with anatomy and physical asana, to activating our energy bodies, Essential Kundalini Yoga is a uniquely practical and indepth manual. Highlights include: u Gorgeous photos illuminating step-bystep instructions. u Detailed instructions, explanations, and illustrations for core kundalini practices—mantra, pranayama, bhanda, asana, kriya, meditation, and more. u Seven traditional kundalini yoga routines, including a pituitary gland series for intuition, yoga for the immune system, and detoxing for radiance. u Understand the science of the practice, including its effects on the glandular system, spine, nervous system, and skeleton. u Meditations, mantras, and yoga poses to

YOGA PRACTICE & BUDDHA DHARMA

activate each of the chakras and bring health to your energetic body. u Remedies for common emotional challenges—dealing with fear, shame, and depression, among others. u Kundalini secrets for getting better sleep, aging gracefully, enhancing fertility, cultivating vitality, and more. Rooted in tradition and infused with a sense of infinite possibility, Essential Kundalini Yoga is a joyful invitation to awaken the vital energy within and receive the gifts that emerge from connecting more deeply with your own potential for creativity, abundance, and joy. “This book gives practitioners of all levels the skills and confidence they need for a powerful, nurturing kundalini yoga practice.” —Seane Corn, teacher of the Yoga of Awakening DVD Series.

THE ART OF VINYASA

Buddhism THE BUDDHA BEFORE BUDDHISM Wisdom from the Early Teachings by Gil Fronsdal $24.95, paper. Shambhala. 180 pages

In the tradition of the best-selling Dhammapada: a translation with commentary of one of the earliest of the surviving Buddhist texts, which reveals the teachings to be remarkably simple and free of religious trappings. One of the earliest of all Buddhist texts, the Atthakavagga, or “Book of Eights,” is a remarkable document, not only because it comes from the earliest strain of the literature— before the Buddha, as the title suggests, came to be thought of as a “Buddhist”—but

Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga by Richard Freeman & Mary Taylor $33.00, paper. Shambhala. 325 pages, 8x11, b/w photos

The Art of Vinyasa takes a unique look at Ashtanga yoga as meditation in motion that produces profound inner change. Two of the most well-respected teachers of the Ashtanga style of yoga, Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, explore this rigorous practice not as a gymnastic feat, but as a meditative form. They reveal that doing the practice—and particularly the vinyasa, or the breath-synchonized movements—in such a deep and focused way allows practitioners to experience a profound awakening of the body and mind. It also develops an adaptable, flexible practice that can last a lifetime. Freeman and Taylor give an in-depth explanation of form, alignment, and anatomy, and how they work together in the practice. They also present a holistic approach to asana practice that includes an awareness of the subtle breath, and seamlessly merges yoga philosophy with practical technique. Unlike other books on Ashtanga, The Art of Vinyasa does not follow the linear pattern of the sequences of postures that are the hallmark of Ashtanga yoga. Instead, it interlinks the eight limbs—yama and niyama (ethical practices); asana (postures); pranayama (breathing); pratyahara (nongrasping of the senses); dharana (concentration); dhyana (meditation); and samadhi (harmony, insight)—and shows how to establish an internally rooted yoga practice. We explore the idea of vinyasa and yoga as relationship: sometimes joining, sometimes separating; interpenetrating, communicating, or merging together. Through practice, this sense of interconnectedness gradually becomes familiar within every field of experience… Though the struggle to balance rotations in our hip joints so we may sit effortlessly in Lotus Pose may seem important at times, it is clear that most important is relationship with others because that’s where the emotions—our ability to use and see through self-image and those things we value and that give life meaning—come into play. Half the world is given to us, but the other half is created by how we frame it.

The book is fully illustrated with fifty halftones by esteemed photographer and cinematographer Robert Muratore.

AFTER BUDDHISM

also because its approach to awakening is so simple and free of adherence to any kind of ideology. Instead the Atthakavagga points to a direct and simple approach for attaining peace without requiring the adherence to doctrine. The value of the teachings it contains is not in the profundity of their philosophy or in their authority as scripture; rather, the value is found in the results they bring to those who live by them. Instead of doctrines to be believed, the Book of Eights describes means or practices for realizing peace. Gil Fronsdal’s rigorous translation with commentary reveals the text to be of interest not only to Buddhists, but also to the ever-growing demographic of spiritual-but-not-religious, who seek a spiritual life outside the structures of religion. The person free of grasping Doesn’t depend on knowledge Or take sides when factions disagree,

Stephen Batchelor

Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age by Stephen Batchelor

New in Paperback

$23.95, paper. Yale. 400 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.

SECULAR BUDDHISM

Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World by Stephen Batchelor $36.95, cloth. Yale. 288 pages

As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream Western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition? Is there an ethical framework that can underpin and contextualize these practices in a rapidly changing world? In this collected volume of Stephen Batchelor’s writings on these themes, he explores the complex implications of Buddhism’s secularization. Ranging widely—from reincarnation, religious belief, and agnosticism to the role of the arts in Buddhist practice—he offers a detailed picture of contemporary Buddhism and its attempt to find a voice in the modern world. Stephen Batchelor is a teacher and scholar of Buddhism. He trained as a monk for ten years in traditional Buddhist communities and now presents a secular approach to Buddhist practice. The author of the bestselling Buddhism without Beliefs, he lives near Bordeaux, France.

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Or fall back on any kind of view… Free of craving before their death, Independent of past and future, Not making up anything in the present, They revere nothing… Not clinging to the future, Nor grieving the past, They see seclusion in the midst of sense contacts And are not guided by views.

“Gil Fronsdal’s fine translation allows us to hear how the Dharma may originally have been uttered as poetry in the solitude of forests.” —Stephen Batchelor, author of After Buddhism

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT

Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are by Jack Kornfield

$34.00, cloth. Simon & Schuster. 320 pp.

In his first major book in several years, mindfulness meditation teacher Jack Kornfield (author of A Path with Heart, Bringing Home the Dharma, etc.) invites us into a new awareness. Through his wise, warmhearted, poignant, often funny stories, with their Aha moments and O. Henry-like outcomes, Jack shows how we get stuck and how we can free ourselves, wherever we are and whatever our circumstances. Renowned for his mindfulness practices and meditations (he is a teacher of teachers), Jack provides these keys for opening gateways to immediate shifts in perspective and clarity of vision, allowing us to see how to change course, take action, or—when we shouldn’t act—just relax and trust. Each chapter presents a path to a different kind of freedom—freedom from fear, freedom to start over, to love, to be yourself, and to be happy—and guides you into an active process that engages your mind, heart, and spirit, awakens your spirit, and brings real joy, over and over again. Drawing from his own life as a son, brother, father, and partner, and on his forty years of face-toface teaching of thousands of people, Jack presents a stirring call to be here, in the power of the now, the present, as we work through life’s passages. His keys to life will help us find hope, clarity, relief from past disappointments and guilt, and the courage to go forward. “Like a brilliant star to guide us in these days of darkness Jack Kornfield’s new book appears just at the right moment. It reminds us that there is No Time Like the Present—no matter how dark—to rescue threatened values—freedom, love, joy—within us and in the world around us. Like Rabbi Hillel, Jack challenges us: ‘If not now, when?’”— Brother David Steindl-Rast, co-founder, Gratefulness.org “With its incomparable blend of deep wisdom, evocative stories, and powerful meditations, No Time Like the Present is the fruit of a lifetime of spiritual teaching. Jack Kornfield’s message is, we don’t have to wait. Love, peace, freedom… it’s all available right here, in this very heart.” —Tara Brach, author of True Refuge “A consommé of goodness, heart, laughter, tears, and breath, nourishing and delicious. Rich in hope and deep wisdom for these revved up, rattling times.” — Anne Lamott author of Grace (Eventually)

CURRENT BUDDHIST TEACHERS

Thich Nhat Hahn’s Awake

Kindness & the Divine Abodes

LOVING-KINDNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH

THE ART OF LIVING

The Practice of Metta by Ghante Gunaratana

by Thich Nhat Hanh

$31.99, cloth. HarperCollins. 224 pages

$22.95, paper. Wisdom. 142 pages

One of the most revered spiritual leaders in the world today teaches how to find nirvana—how to live most deeply and peacefully every day. Many people believe nirvana is a state of nonbeing that can only be reached through death or “extinction of self.” In The Art of Living, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh dispels this dangerous misconception, and teaches us how to enjoy enlightenment in this life without losing ourselves.

The bestselling author of Mindfulness in Plain English invites us to explore the joyful benefits of living with loving-kindness. With his signature clarity and warmth, Bhante Gunaratana shares with us how we can cultivate loving-kindness to live a life of joyful harmony with others. (We might suggest that this practice is the essence of what the world needs right now.) To clear greed, hatred and delusion from the field of our consciousness and allow our basic nature to arise, we need only allow good wishes to flow. The Buddha offered us some tools with which to do that… The Buddha taught us to start the practice by sending loving-friendliness to ourselves. Then do the same for those closest to us, and work outward from our own circle of friends until we can project a flow of metta to those we don’t like at all, and finally to all beings. You can practice anytime. I recommend doing this meditation right after waking up and again at bedtime. Practicing metta helps you live on an even keel, sleep well, and wake up energized. As loving-friendliness develops, your thoughts, words, and deeds become more meaningful, truthful, pleasant, and beneficial to yourself and others.

We need our bodies to touch nirvana—to experience it with our feet, our eyes, our hands. That is the reality of no birth and no death, no afflictions, no burning, the extinction of the flames. The Buddha himself has said, “My teaching is not about nonbeing. My teaching is to overcome the notion of being and nonbeing.”

In The Art of Living, Thich Nhat Hanh explores two essential questions: What happens when we are still alive? What happens when we die? As he ultimately shows, if you can answer the first question, the answer to the second comes easily. Based on the last full talks he gave before his sudden stroke and hospitalization, this thought-provoking book is filled with simple meditations and practices that focus on recognizing our interconnectedness with those around us, as well as with nonliving beings and the entire cosmos. Arranged in short sections around a few common themes, these teachings offer opportunities and inspiration for being fully alive in the present moment—consciousness that allows us to face aging, dying, and the unknown with curiosity and joy and without fear.

Through personal anecdotes, step-by-step meditations, conversational renderings of the Buddha’s words in the suttas, and transformative insights into how we live in and relate to the world, we learn that peace here and now is possible—within ourselves and in all our relationships. Bhante G speaks directly to how we can cultivate loving-kindness to find emotional clarity, overcome anger, and become more peaceful—both on and off the meditation cushion. “Clear and thoughtful. Ghante Gunaratana delights the reader who is interested in better understanding the traditional texts, and also offers beautiful stories from his own life that illustrate the power and benefits of metta practice. There’s something here for everyone.” —Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness

With powerful mindfulness, concentration, and insight, we can live deeply every moment of our daily lives and touch our enlightened nature. When we become aware of our cosmic body, of our God body, of our nirvana body, then we are no longer afraid of birth and death, being and nonbeing. That is nirvana, the pinnacle of the Buddha’s teaching and practice.

BOUNDLESS HEART

THE OTHER SHORE

$22.95, paper. Shambhala. 146 pages

$17.95, paper. Parallax. 160 pages

A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Buddha’s Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity by Christina Feldman

In 2014 Thich Nhat Hanh completed a profound and beautiful new English translation of the Prajñaparamita Heart Sutra, one of the most important and well-known sutras in Buddhism. The Heart Sutra is Buddhism in a nutshell, containing only 632 characters in the traditional Chinese translation. It is recited daily in Mahayana temples and practice centers throughout the world. This new translation came about because Thich Nhat Hanh believes that whoever originally compiled the Heart Sutra was not sufficiently skillful with his use of language to capture the intention of the Buddha’s teachings—and has resulted in fundamental misunderstandings of the central tenets of Buddhism for almost 2,000 years. In The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries, Thich Nhat Hanh provides the new translation with commentaries based on his interpretation. Revealing the Buddha’s original intention and insight makes clear what it means to transcend duality and pairs of opposites, such as birth and death, and to touch the ultimate reality and the wisdom of nondiscrimination. Thay offers subtle and profound teachings on non-duality and the letting go of all preconceived notions so that one remains open to all the wonders of life. The commentary is one of the most simple, clear, concise, and understandable treatments of this very important Buddhist sutra.

Presented by a prominent Insight Meditation teacher, this course in the Buddhist practice of the brahma viharas, or “heavenly abodes,” offers detailed instructions from the Buddhist tradition in cultivating mindfulness. These four sublime qualities can be cultivated through practice and lead to a life lived with wisdom and love. Also known as the “four immeasurables,” they aremetta, karuna, mudita, and uppekha, or kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. The brahma viharas show us a way to live in this world that is guided by the ennobling qualities of the heart that heal and liberate wherever they touch. The Buddha said he taught out of compassion for the suffering of the world. In cultivating the brahma viharas, we widen the circle of our concern and care, understanding we can be intentional participants in the healing and awakening of our world.

Many people are familiar with metta, or lovingkindness, meditation, which has become very popular in the last couple decades. But, according to Christina Feldman, to focus on that quality-—delightful as it is—is to leave the practice somewhat unbalanced. The four qualities in fact help and balance each other in a way that enhances them all. Christina presents teachings on the brahma viharas along with simple practices that can lead to a life infused with kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, and to a way of being that promotes those qualities in the world at large.

All phenomena are products of interdependent co-arising; this is the main point of the prajaparamita teaching.

In this fragile life, so easily broken and riven by affliction, we come to see that it is only kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity that make sense. As the Buddha put it, “Whether standing, sitting, walking or lying down we abide in kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. There is no more noble way to live in this world.” This is the essence of a liberated heart, rooted in unshakeable kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

NOURISHING INTIMACY Cultivating Trust, Understanding, and Love in All Our Relationships by Tara Brach

New on CD

$67.00, 5 CDs. Sounds True. 5.5 hours

Why is it often so hard to truly connect with others, even those we care most about? “Our capacity to engage fully in relationship starts with becoming more awake and aware within ourselves,” says Tara Brach. With Nourishing Intimacy, this renowned mindfulness and heartfulness meditation teacher offers a treasury of tools and insights for cultivating self-compassion, overcoming inner obstacles, and fostering authentic communication.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation and commentary are the fruit of his more than sixty years of monastic study and practice. He describes the sutra as “a precious gift to us, the gift of fearlessness.” An earlier translation was published as The Heart of Understanding.

Recorded at a live two-day event, this training brings you Tara’s special blend of storytelling, tender guidance, and potent meditations for applying mindfulness and loving-kindness to our relationships, including: u Dissolving the illusion of separation that keeps us isolated u Awakening from the belief that we are unworthy of love u How we can manage reactivity during crisis and address the true needs underneath our surface conflicts u Practicing forgiveness, healing from past relationship trauma, breaking stuck patterns in conflict, and much more. When we are grounded in compassionate awareness, we can stay heart-to-heart with another, even when we don’t see eye-to-eye.

Here she offers a gentle and practical guide for building healthy, openhearted relationships with Nourishing Intimacy. Among Tara Brach’s books are True Refuge and Radical Acceptance. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are… “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is... Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.

“Exquisite teaching... as sweet and simple and powerful as it gets. Strongly recommended to one and all.” —Inquiring Mind

GRASSROOTS ZEN

Community and Practice in the Twenty-First Century by Perle Besserman & Manfred Steger $21.99, paper. Monkfish. 189 pages

Grassroots Zen offers a study of how one Zen group returned to an ancient Chinese tradition of community meditation practice without a leader or hierarchy. It outlines an authentic, ‘grassroots’ approach, urging people from all walks of life to come together in meditation and the study of dharma. Married university professors Manfred Steger and Perle Besserman (aka Perle Epstein) (The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism) studied first under the cultural F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

weight of Japanese Zen, then with the light-footed lay master Robert Aitken. As Westerners, they found the freedom from tradition liberating. In this book, we’ll be exploring the issues confronting today’s Grassroots Zen practitioners. Taking a “hands-on” approach, we’ll show how the social, professional, and psychological concerns of ordinary people can provide opportunities for spiritual awakening. Using the metaphor of a “grassy field” for today’s Western “egalitarian community of

F socially mobile members who place less emphasis on transmission and hierarchy than on individual responsibility, we will focus on the interplay between the “field” (the Zen community), the single “grass root” (the individual practitioner), and the dimensions of “time, space, motion, and aspiration” (the world)… The present moment is the root of it all. Sad or happy, moving or at rest, the moment provides endless opportunities for cultivating awareness. Each root in our grassy field, each moment, is filled with all the nutrients we need. Going to the root, becoming one with the moment, we discover that life is perfect as it is. We are, at last, at home in the world.

“Future generations may come to see the publication of Grassroots Zen as a pivotal in the emergence of a uniquely American Zen.” —Rami Shapiro, Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity “Steger and Besserman offer something quite different, and quite welcome... a Zen that comes to terms with, and ultimately transcends, the hierarchical, sexist, otherworldly, and pseudo-militaristic overtones of the Zen tradition.” —Library Journal

THE ZEN OF YOU & ME

A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone by Diane Musho Hamilton

$17.50, paper. Shambhala. 194 pages

Here’s a mini-course in how to deal with interpersonal conflict—from a Zen perspective. With her book, her hugely popular online courses, and her workshops at venues throughout the US and the world, Diane Musho Hamilton is one of the most highly visible of experts on conflict management—with good reason: her methods, which combine Zen wisdom with principles from Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and her own extensive experience in conflict resolution, really work. This book encourages us to open a conversation about difference. It is based on the assumption that the harmony that includes our differences is deeper and more durable than the one that doesn’t. The book is written for those in relationships of all kinds: lovers and friends, married couples, coworkers and their managers, leaders and team members, teachers and students, parents and young people—anyone who is in a relationship, one that is “good as far as it goes,” with the wish that by including our differences, we may deepen to a place of genuine unity.

In this book, she turns her attention to one of the main places conflict manifests: in intimate relationships. She provides a very practical guide to navigating conflict in love and to coming to satisfying outcomes where both partners feel heard and have their needs honored. The book can be thought of as a kind of relationship “first aid kit,” but also as something all couples should read in order to foster a harmonious and respectful loving relationship. Differences have to be worked with, acknowledged, soothed, integrated… So the trick is to discover the sameness that pervades and includes our differences and unity in the details of our everyday life.

“We are constantly in relationship with others, and here Diane Hamilton has offered us a playbook to insure that every one of those relationships become more fluid,

Z E N , K A R M A , T I B E T & T H E BODY joyful, and harmonious. Read this book! It will masterfully help you on a journey to greater love and acceptance.” —Lodro Rinzler, author of Love Hurts “Excellent medicine for today’s ills.” — Pat Enkyo O’Hara, author of Most Intimate Also by Diane Musho Hamilton is Everything is Workable.

Tibetan Buddhism GOOD KARMA

How to Create the Causes of Happiness and Avoid the Causes of Suffering by Thubten Chodron $22.99, paper. Shambhala. 256 pages

Training the mind in the habit of happiness—here is enlightening commentary on a classic Tibetan Buddhist teaching poem by a popular modern teaching nun. Lojong, or “mind-training” is a practice that has gained astonishing popularly in recent years—because it works in transforming hearts and minds. Here is a presentation of lojong teachings that predates the “slogan” practice with which people have become so familiar through the books of Pema Chödrön and others, and that is every bit as powerful for imbuing the mind with intelligence and the heart with compassion. It is Thubten Chodron’s commentary on a Tibetan poem with the imposing title “Wheel of Sharp Weapons.” It is, as the title of this book indicates, an explanation of how karma works in our lives. But in explaining how to create good karma and avoid the negative effects of bad karma, it shows us how to live our lives with kindness and honesty—which makes things better not only for ourselves, but also for everyone else in the world. It shows, clearly and practically, how to eliminate the causes of anxiety, fear, and depression and to create the causes of joyful liberation for oneself and all others. Constructive and destructive actions are principally differentiated based on the motivation with which they were done… The results of our actions are determined principally by our motivation, not by what others think or say about us. Being a spiritual practitioner requires complete sincerity and self-honesty.

“Thubten Chodron’s commentary on Dharmarakshita’s Wheel of Sharp Weapons is a crash course on transforming pain and suffering into power tools for liberation.” —Chade-Meng Tan, author of Search Inside Yourself.

COMING HOME TO TIBET

A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Belonging by Ttsering Wangmo Dhompa $24.95, paper. Shambhala. 290 pages

In this compelling, poetic memoir of love, loss, and longing, a daughter’s pilgrimage to her mother’s native Tibet becomes a journey of homecoming and self-discovery. In this beautifully written memoir, a daughter travels to her mother’s Tibetan homeland and finds both her own deep connections to her heritage and a people trying to maintain its cultural BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Reggie Ray in the Body THE AWAKENING BODY

Somatic Meditation for Discovering Our Deepest Life by Reginald Ray $22.95, paper. Shambhala. 181 pages

What would it be like to experience our life directly, truly and completely, and to live it as it actually is? Before we die, wouldn’t it be worth knowing this human existence of ours in its fullest possible measure and extent? For many of us, life consists almost entirely of what we know conceptually through the mediation of the linear, conceptualizing mentality of our left brain. The mainstream Western world view privileges thinking over direct experience; and this fuels the increasingly disembodied, disconnected lives of so many of us today. Reggie Ray, a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition, offers six fundamental body-based meditation practices that connect us back to the literal reality of our body and our most elemental experience of being human. The true richness of our life is in the raw and rugged reality of a fully present and embodied human life. The “Six Core Somatic Processes” are: Ten Points, Earth Descent, Yin Breathing, Coming into the Central Channel, Whole Body Breathing and Rooting, and Twelvefold Lower-Belly Breathing. The practices can be done seated or lying down. Reggie includes modified practices that can be done when falling asleep at night, or in the midst of insomnia. These practices allow us to bypass the mental fabrications that keep us from experiencing our world and lead us directly to the richness of living a fully present, embodied human life. The somatic teachings of this lineage hold that true enlightenment is only attainable by not separating ourselves and withdrawing from our life, our body, our emotions and relationships, from the totality of this rugged, gritty human incarnation of ours. Quite to the contrary, for this lineage, the only way to reach complete realization is in and through our completely embodied human existence.

The book includes links to free online audio recordings of the guided meditations at shambhala.com/theawakeningbody. “The Awakening Body is a vital resource for practitioners of all movement disciplines to plumb the depth of their somatic interior. I think this book will be a tremendous resource for those wanting to yoke to their innermost breath and pulse in order to become clear sentient beings, wide awake in the world.” —Tias Little, author of Yoga of the Subtle Body

SOMATIC DESCENT

Experiencing the Ultimate Intelligence of the Body by Reginald Ray

New on CD

$175.00, 13 CDs. Sounds True. 13 hours.

Most of us sense that our bodies contain uncommon intelligence—we “feel it in our bones” or notice it in our “gut instincts.” But is there something far vaster here waiting to be experienced? With Somatic Descent, you are invited to tune into the natural wisdom of your body, refine and amplify it, and explore it deeply. In this program, pioneering teacher Reggie Ray presents a fascinating audio program on this rich dimension of Tibetan Buddhism: how to go beyond the veil of the thinking mind to tap the wondrous yet wholly trustworthy domain of your body. For those who’ve worked with basic breath and body-based meditations, this course will be a revelation: step-by-step guidance into some of the most transformative and powerful experiences charted by Buddhism’s vast maps of consciousness. Drawing on decades of teaching and scholarship, Reggie Ray shares a 13-CD curriculum of practices and insights to access the deepest knowing enfolded in the Soma, the landscape of your physical body and the source of immediate and greatest fulfillment. With him, you will learn: how your body is a field of infinite wisdom, the origins of somatic descent practices and how they transform us on both the neurological and non-physical levels, many meditations for connecting with and embracing the Soma, and how to integrate these profound changes into your daily life. Highlights include: u Your body as the field of infinite knowing u How to explore the wisdom of the Soma u Yin Breathing, Connecting with the Earth, and many other guided practices u Requesting and receiving wisdom from your body u Supplicating the soma u Extending your practice to daily life. Among Reggie Ray’s books are Touching Enlightenment and The Awakening Body. integrity despite Chinese occupation. After her mother dies in a car accident in India, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa decides to take a handful of her ashes back to her homeland in Tibet. Her mother left Tibet in her youth as a refugee and lived in exile the rest of her life, always yearning to return home. When the author arrives at the foothills of her mother’s ancestral home in a nomadic village in East Tibet, she realizes that she had been preparing for this homecoming her whole life. Coming Home to Tibet is Dhompa’s evocaF SPRING - SUMMER 2017

tive tribute to her mother, and a homeland that she knew little about. Dhompa’s story is interlaced with poetic prose describing the land, people, and spirit of the country as experienced by a refugee seeing her country for the first time. It’s an intriguing memoir and also an unusual inside view of life in contemporary Tibet, among ordinary people trying to negotiate the changes enforced on it by Chinese rule and modern society. “This is one of my favorite books.” —Norman Fischer, author of What is Zen?

A GUIDED TOUR OF HELL

TIBETAN BUDDHISM

Shambhala Gems

A Graphic Memoir by Samuel Bercholz, illustrated by Pema Namdol Thaye $33.95, cloth. Shambhala. 150 pages, 8x11, colour illustrations

Here’s a very different kind of near-death experience than we usually hear of. Take a trip through the realms of hell with a man whose temporary visitor’s pass gave him a horrifying—and enlightening—preview of its torments. This true account of Sam Bercholz’s near-death experience has more in common with Dante’s Inferno than it does with any of the popular feel-good stories of what happens when we die. In the aftermath of heart surgery, Sam, a longtime Buddhist practitioner and teacher, is surprised to find himself in the lowest realms of karmic rebirth, where he is sent, it turns out, to gain insight into human suffering. Under the guidance of a luminous being, Sam’s encounters with a series of hell-beings trapped in repetitious rounds of misery and delusion reveal to him how an individual’s own habits of fiery hatred and icy disdain, of grasping desire and nihilistic ennui, are the source of horrific agonies that pound consciousness for seemingly endless cycles of time.

THE COMPASSION BOOK

teachings for awakening the heart by Pema Chodron $19.95, paper. Shambhala. 125 pages, 4x6, French flaps

This newly designed reissue of Pema Chodron’s Always Maintain a Joyful Mind features everyday inspiration drawn from the classic Buddhist practice of lojong and instructive commentaries by Pema for making the lojong teachings a practical part of everyday life. 53. Don’t vacillate. Commentary: If you train in awakening compassion only some of the time, it will slow down the process of giving birth to certainty. Wholeheartedly train in keeping your heart and mind open to everyone.

This uniquely accessible presentation of lojong, one of Tibetan

MILAREPA

Lessons from the Life & Songs of Tibet’s Great Yogi by Chogyam Trungpa, edited by Judith Lief $25.95, paper. Shambhala. 286 pages

Drawn from teachings he gave in the early 1970s, renowned meditation master Chogyam Trungpa retells the stories and realization songs of Tibet’s best-known and most-beloved religious figure—and reveals how they relate to our everyday lives. Milarepa went from being the worst kind of malevolent sorcerer to a devoted and ascetic Buddhist practitioner to a completely enlightened being all in a single lifetime. The story of Milarepa (1052-1135) is a tale of such extreme and powerful transformation that it might seem far removed from our own less dramatic lives—But Chogyam Trungpa shows otherwise. This collection of his teachings on the life and songs of the great Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint reveals how Milarepas’s difficulties can be a source of guidance and inspiration for anyone—and it shows what devoted and diligent practice can achieve. Trungpa retells colorful stories of Milarepa’s life, highlighting his struggles, his awakening, and his teachings. Through these stories Trungpa reveals the history, traditions, and principles that

LOVE HURTS

Buddhist Advice for the Heartbroken by Lodro Rinzler $16.95, paper. Shambhala. 144 pages

Here’s Buddhist-inspired advice for working through romantic breakups and other painful emotional periods—by the best-selling author of The Buddha Walks into a Bar. I think the only way we can get through our heartbreak is to sit in the middle of that terrible, devastating, world-changing experience. This book will tell you how to do that… Ideally in this book there is something for each of the many forms that heartbreak may take, offered with the aim that you will go to where you need to go and find a resource to help you out.

Buddhism has a lot to say about suffer-

Comforted by the compassion of a winged goddess and sustained by the kindness of his Buddhist teachers, Sam eventually emerges from his ordeal with renewed faith that even the worst hell contains the seed of wakefulness. His story is offered, along with the modernist illustrations of a master of Tibetan sacred arts, in order to share what can be learned about awakening from our own self-created hells and helping others to find relief and liberation from theirs. Sam’s tale (with Thaye’s viscerally brooding paintings) is a harrowing and vivid account, framed with cogent explications of “The Wheel of Life—and Beyond:” Buddhist teachings on Samsara, Karma, Wrong Views and Extremism, and the Six Realms (Realm of the Gods, Realm of the Jealous Gods, Human Realm, Animal Realm, Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, and Hell Realm). “Graphically illustrates the naked consequences of the destructive side of our attitudes and actions.” —Tulku Thondup, author of The Healing Power of Mind “This book is an astonishingly generous offering: a tour of hell, guided with love… a love that destroys illusion to leave the reader in a state of discomfiting wakefulness.” —Susan Piver, Start Here Now Buddhism’s most renowned practices, gets at the heart of compassion as only Pema Chodron can. Featuring the 59 pithy lojong slogans and Pema’s commentary for everyday practice on each facing page, The Compassion Book will serve as a go-to handbook for anyone seeking to instill more love and joy in their lives. In addition, the book will offer readers access to a 45-minute audio download on the related meditation practice of tonglen (“sending and taking”) taught by Pema. 24. Change your attitude, but remain neutral. Commentary: Work on reversing your caught-up, self-important attitude and remain relaxed in this process. Instead of always being caught in a prison of self-absorption, look out and express gentleness to all things. Then just relax.

Among Pema Chodron’s many books and audio-books are When Things Fall Apart and Don’t Bite the Hook.

formed the background for Milarepa’s journey, including teachings from the mahamudra tradition from which the realization songs arose. Trungpa also illuminates the meaning of many of Milarepa’s remarkable songs, always coming back to relevance of Milarepa’s life to practitioners today. It is a delight to be bringing Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings on Milarepa and his songs into print. In spite of the great distance between the two in time, place, and circumstances, when I listened to these seminars, I felt as if Trungpa Rinpoche and Milarepa were present together, conspiring to do whatever it took to bring the dharma to life. In the fierceness of their dedication, their fearlessness, and their freedom from conventionality, both could be called crazy. —Judith Lief

“In his trademark insightful and inspiring voice, Vidyadhara Trungpa Rinpoche here offers a true feast of wisdom nectar that distills the life and lineage of Milarepa, the greatest master of Tibet, to illuminate how we can transmute our lives into pure dharma. This volume is captivating, poetic, contemplative, and enlightening—all in one.”—Tulku Thondup, author of The Heart of Unconditional Love

ing—and there are likely few times we suffer more intensely than when we break up with a romantic partner. It feels like you may never recover sometimes. But Lodro Rinzler has wonderfully good news for those suffering heartbreak: the 2,500-year-old teachings of the Buddha are the ultimate antidote for emotional pain. And you don’t need to be a Buddhist for them to apply to you. In this short and compact first-aid kit for a broken heart, he walks you through the cause and cure of suffering, with much practical advice for self-care as you work to survive a breakup. The wisdom he presents applies to any kind of emotional suffering. It’s a great, BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

practical offering of consolation for someone you know who’s going through a tough time, and for yourself when you’re looking for the light at the end of the tunnel in your own situation. The next time someone close to me dies (as I know they will) or a breakup occurs (as I fear it might) or I get knocked on my ass by some other form of heartbreak (as is the nature of life) I will have trained to open my heart and give myself the space and care needed to accommodate this loss. But that will happen only if I stick to the training of really caring for each smaller heartbreak that comes my way.

“One of the best first-aid kits I’ve seen. Lodro offers the heartbroken much realistic comfort, but also insight that will be useful not only for navigating their own way in the sea of painful emotions, but for being F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

a source of consolation to others.” —David Richo, author of How to Be an Adult in Relationships

EMOTIONAL RESCUE

How to Work with Your Emotions to Transform Hurt and Confusion into Energy That Empowers You by Dzogchen Ponlop $20.00, paper. Penguin. 252 pages

Emotions bring colour and meaning to our lives, but they can also put us on an exhausting rollercoaster ride that takes us to blissful peak states, the depths of delusion and despair, and everything in between. It is only by learning to relate to our emotions skillfully that we benefit from their richness and glean wisdom, rather than letting them control us. Emotions get their power from a simple but deep-seated source: our lack of self-knowledge. When we bring awareness to our experience of emotions, something truly amazing happens—they lose their power to make us miserable. In this book, Rinpoche leads us through the three steps of his Emotional Rescue Plan. Mindful Gap is the practice of creating a safe distance between you and your emotions, which gives you the psychological space to work with their energy. Clear Seeing involves recognizing the bigger picture. Last, Letting Go is the practice of releasing stressful physical and emotional energy through exercise, relaxation, and awareness. With each step, we become increasingly familiar with the inner workings of our emotions, seeing straight to the heart of anger, fear, passion, jealousy, and pride. With time and practice, instead of leading us astray, our emotions become our guide towards living a more compassionate, creative, and fulfilling life. The purpose of the book is to introduce certain methods for working with emotions so that gradually, step by step, we can move from being victims to partners to creative collaborators with these profound energies. While you won’t find these methods in the Buddhist sutras—the discourses of the Buddha that form the body of his teachings—I think the Buddha would recognize his instructions in them.

“Emotions can tangle and trip us up with no understanding of their wild chaotic possibility. In this important book Ponlop teaches us step-by-step how to unwind emotions and use their energy and power. We no longer have to be at the mercy of anger, delusion, desire, and aggression. Happy he wrote this book.” —Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones “The three-step process for emotional rescue is a superb modern-day expression of traditional teachings. Its instructions, well practiced, will be liberating.” —Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Love

THE REVOLUTIONARY LIFE OF FREDA BEDI

British Feminist, Indian Nationalist, Buddhist Nun by Vicki Mackenzie $22.95, paper. Shambhala. 186 pages

A fascinating biography of Freda Bedi, an English woman who broke all the rules of gender, race, and religious background to become both a revolutionary in the fight for Indian independence and then a Buddhist icon. Freda Bedi (1911-1977) was one of the

BUDDHISM & THE TAO

about Buddhism in the West. For this book, she traced Bedi’s footsteps and conducted many in-depth interviews with those who knew her, including friends, family, government officials, lamas, and nuns. She also drew heavily from Bedi’s own writings, diaries, and recordings—all provided by Bedi’s family—and the book includes many photographs.

New from The Dalai Lama

THE HEART OF MEDITATION

Discovering Innermost Awareness by The Dalai Lama, translated by Jeffrey Hopkins $22.95, paper. Shambhala. 168 pages

In The Heart of Meditation, His Holiness the Dalai Lama provides intimate details on an advanced meditation practice called Dzogchen using a visionary poem by the 19th-century saint Patrul Rinpoche, author of the Buddhist classic Words of My Perfect Teacher. The heart of meditation—the thing that brings it alive—is compassion. Without that essential foundation, other practices are pointless. Fortunately, the mind can be trained in compassion, and the mind thus trained with the qualities of love, empathy, kindness, and respect for others is ready for the practice of the Great Completeness (Dzogchen), which is considered the pinnacle of spiritual practice in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. His Holiness the Dalai Lama here teaches the Great Completeness simply but thoroughly, using as his reference a visionary poem by the nineteenth-century master Patrul Rinpoche to show that insight can never be separated from compassion. Through practice of the Great Completeness, we can access our innermost awareness and live our lives in a way that acknowledges it and manifests it. The wisdom and compassion that arise from such insight are critical, His Holiness teaches, not only to individual progress in meditation but to our collective progress toward peace in the world.

Taoism & Ch’i CULTIVATING QI

The Root of Energy, Vitality, and Spirit by David Clippinger $24.95, paper. Singing Dragon. 208 pages, b/w illustrations

How can Qi offer you the means, tools and will to live a life of balance? Explaining what Qi is, where it comes from, how we use it, and how we can cultivate it in order to achieve wholeness and balance, this much-needed book combines knowledge and practice to explore all aspects of Qi, including its modern, everyday implications. The book not only covers the history of Qi, but also demystifies the vital philosophies and practices surrounding it. Filled with valuable information on how to recognize and cultivate Qi in order to increase your energetic capacity and return to a more efficient physical, emotional, and psychological state, it also illustrates Qi’s central importance in meditation, Taiji, Qigong, and other Internal Arts practices that focus upon its vitality. The author also offers instruction on a number of methods for opening the energy gates of the body to cultivate Qi. “This book succinctly pulls together the many threads about Qi, and weaves a brocade valuable to the beginner and advanced practitioner alike.” —Deng Ming-Dao, author of Scholar Warrior. David Clippinger directs the Still Mountain T’ai Chi and Chi Kung school in Pittsburgh.

To develop spiritual qualities such as love, compassion, and altruism to their fullest, meditation is needed. At present, our minds are too scattered, and once the mind is scattered, its force is limited. If we channel it, then, like water, it becomes forceful.

The Dalai Lama deftly connects how training the mind in compassion for other beings is directly related to—and in fact a prerequisite for—the very pinnacle of Buddhist meditation. While accessible to a beginner, he leads the reader in very fine detail on how to identify innermost awareness—who we really are—how to maintain contact with this awareness, and how to release oneself from the endless stream of our thoughts to let this awareness, always present, become consistently apparent.

BUDDHISM

One Teacher, Many Traditions by the Dalai Lama & Thubten Chodron $24.95, paper. Wisdom. 352 pages

New in Paperback

Explore the common ground underlying the diverse expressions of the Buddha’s teachings with two of Tibetan Buddhism’s bestselling authors. Buddhism is practiced by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, from Tibetan caves to Tokyo temples to redwood retreats. To an outside viewer, it might be hard to see what they all have in common. In Buddhism, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and American Buddhist nun Thubten Chodron map out with clarity the convergences and the divergences between the two major strains of Buddhism—the Mahayana traditions of Central and East Asia and the Theravada traditions of South and Southeast Asia. Especially deep consideration is given to the foundational Indian traditions and their respective treatment of such central tenets as the four noble truths, the practice of meditation, the meaning of nirvana, and enlightenment. We “come and see” the experience of peace the moment greed is abandoned. We “come and see” the experience of peace the moment hatred is abandoned. We must build up this habit to “come and see” what is really happening within us without pointing our finger at others. We do not preserve and promote the Buddhist traditions for its sake alone. Rather, we preserve the teaching of the Buddha handed down from generation to generation because they relieve suffering and promote happiness… Buddhism is all its forms draws the world’s attention for its peaceful existence with other religions. Following this central message of the Buddha, every one of us should be a messenger of peace. This is our common bond. —Bhante Helepola Gunaratana, from the foreword

THE PATH

What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life by Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh $22.00, paper. Simon & Schuster. 202 pp

For the first time, an award-winning Harvard professor shares his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how ancient ideas—like the fallacy of the authentic self—can guide you on the path to a good life today. Why is a course on ancient Chinese philosophers one of the most popular at Harvard? Because it challenges all our modern assumptions about what it takes to flourish. Astonishing teachings emerged two thousand years ago through the work of a succession of Chinese sages (such as Confucius, Mendius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Xunzi) exploring how humans can understand and improve themselves and their society. And what are these counterintuitive ideas? u Transformation comes not from looking within for a true self, but from creating conditions that produce new possibilities. u Good relationships come not from being sincere and authentic, but from the rituals we perform within them. u A good life emerges not from planning it out, but through training ourselves to respond well to small moments. u Influence comes not from wielding power but from holding back. u Excellence comes from what we choose to do, not our natural abilities. Etc.! In other words, The Path opens the mind and upends much that we are told about how to lead a good life. Its most radical idea is that there is no path to follow in the first place— just a journey we create anew at every moment by seeing and doing things differently. With its spirited, convincing vision, really useful new insights can be gleaned from this book on how to approach life’s multifarious situations with both heart and head. If we understand that the stuff that is us has always been a part of the flux and transformation of the cosmos and always will be, then we no longer need to fear death; we become free to fully embrace life. We do away with the last of the distinctions that limit our experience of the world.

The authors seek harmony and greater understanding among Buddhist traditions worldwide, illuminating the rich benefits of respectful dialogue and the many ways that Buddhists of all stripes share a common heritage and common goals. The Dalai Lama and Thubten Chodron have carefully fashioned a remarkable, comprehensive book of teachings in Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions. most remarkable and iconoclastic figures in Buddhism’s movement to the West. Born in England, educated at Oxford, and married to a Sikh, she became a major force both in shaping modern-day Buddhism and Indian history. In her life she had many roles—political freedom fighter, spiritual seeker, scholar, professor, journalist, author, social worker, wife, and mother of four children (one of whom is a well-known actor). Vicki MacKenzie’s lively biography captures what a trailblazer Bedi was in both the

secular and spiritual realms. She studied meditation with Burmese meditation masters. She was the first English woman to be accepted by Gandhi into his elite band of Satyagrahi, delivering rousing speeches to thousands of Indians urging them to revolt, and then was imprisoned for subversion. She was asked by Nehru to help resettle Tibetan refugees, and she aided the Dalai Lama when he went into exile. Bedi established a school for young Tibetan lamas and also a nunnery, which still exists, to provide nuns equal religious opportunities. She was also the first woman, of any nationality, to receive the full Bikshuni ordination, making her the highest-ranking Tibetan Buddhist nun in India. MacKenzie, a well-known journalist in Britain, has forty years of experience writing BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. —from Stephen Mitchell’s version of the Tao Te Ching F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

David Hinton’s Chinese Classics THE FOUR CHINESE CLASSICS

Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, Mencius translated and with commentary by David Hinton

$35.95, paper. Counterpoint. 575 pages, b/w illustrations

The books collected in this volume represent the first time since the mid-nineteenth century that the four seminal masterworks of ancient Chinese thought have been translated as a unified series by a single translator. Hinton’s award-winning experience translating a wide range of ancient Chinese poets makes these books sing in English as never before. But these new versions are not only inviting and immensely readable, they also apply much-needed consistency to key philosophical terms in these texts, lending structural links and philosophical rigor heretofore unavailable in English. Breathing new life into these originary classics, Hinton’s new translations will stand as the definitive texts for our era. Perhaps the most broadly influential spiritual text in human history, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching is the source of Taoist philosophy, which eventually developed into Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism. Equally

EXISTENCE

A Story by David Hinton

$24.95, paper. Shambhala. 132 pages, b/w & colour illustrations

The meaning of life—as expressed in a single Chinese landscape painting: a new work of meditative philosophy by the renowned translator of the Chinese classics. Join David Hinton on an exploration of the entire nature of reality—an ambitious project for such a compact book, and even more amazing when you see that this cosmic journey happens all within the exploration of a single Chinese landscape painting. The painting called Peaceful-Distance Pavilion by Shih-t’ao (1642-1707) is, like other paintings in that genre, mostly space: one tiny figure, accompanied by an attendant, looks out over a vast landscape of mountains and clouds. But start looking into that space and, with the right guidance, what you end up seeing is profound. David Hinton is the perfect guide. He uses his knowledge of Chinese philosophy, poetry, art, language, and writing system to illuminate this painting’s message, which is ultimately the story

I CHING

The Book of Change: A New Translation by David Hinton $18.00, paper. Farrar, Straus. 160 pages

In a radically new translation and interpretation of the I Ching, David Hinton strips this ancient Chinese masterwork of the usual apparatus and discovers a deeply poetic and philosophical text. Teasing out an elegant vision of the cosmos as ever-changing yet harmonious, Hinton reveals the seed from which Chinese philosophy, poetry, and painting grew. Although it was and is widely used for divination, the I Ching is also a book of poetic philosophy, deeply valued by artists and intellectuals, and Hinton’s translation restores it to its original lyrical form. Previous translations have rendered the I Ching as

BodyMind Healing THE SACRED MEDICINE CUPBOARD A Holistic Guide and Journal for Caring for Your Family Naturally by Anni Daulter, Jessica Booth & Jessica Smithson $28.99, paper. North Atlantic. 432 pages, colour photos

An inspirational guide for holistic family wellness, Sacred Medicine Cupboard presents seasonal insights, practical knowledge, recipes, projects, and journal prompts for a sacred medicine practice—broken down into 36 chapters. Beautifully designed, with an abundance of colour photos, this book cultivates skills and tools for readers navigating an increasingly complicated world. Organized by topic of the week, such as Awakening, Blossom, Spicy, Glow, and Rest, Sacred Medicine Cupboard provides a treasury of

influential in the social sphere, Confucius’ Analects is the source of social wisdom in China. The Chuang Tzu is the wild and wacky prose complement to the Tao Te Ching. And with its philosophical story-telling, the Mencius adds depth and complexity to Confucius’ vision. Something planted so deep it’s never rooted up, Something held so tight it’s never stolen away: Children and grandchildren will pay it homage always. Cultivated in yourself It makes Integrity real. Cultivated in your family It makes Integrity plentiful. Cultivated in your village It makes Integrity enduring. Cultivated in your nation It makes Integrity abundant. Cultivated in all beneath heaven It makes Integrity all-encompassing. —from Tao Te Ching, Verse 54

of the glorious dance between nothing and everything, between emptiness and existence. It’s an enthralling journey that can change the way you look at the world, a journey for which David is a wise and eloquent guide. We gaze out as if it were sight seeing for the first time, gaze with no expectations at all about the nature of consciousness and reality, wanting to see them as they are in and of themselves, free of all our tenuous human stories about them, our ideas and beliefs. This is, in a sense, the moment portrayed in the painting, and in it we encounter a revelation altogether unexpected and unimaginable: existence!

“A pellucid gem of a book—I couldn’t put it down. Through the vision of a single, inexhaustible painting—whose depth opens onto the mysteries of meditation, calligraphy, poetry, and existence itself—Hinton gradually discloses for us the whole vast and fathomless landscape of Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) spirituality. At first we gaze wonder-struck into the many-mountained distance; soon we find ourselves immersed; and then we dissolve into the ch’i-mist drifting up the forested slopes.” —David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous a divination text full of arcane language and extensive commentary. Though informative, these versions rarely hint at the work’s philosophical heart, let alone its literary beauty. Here, Hinton translates only the original strata of the text, revealing a fully formed work of literature in its own right. The result is full of wild imagery, fables, aphorisms, and stories. Acclaimed for the eloquence of his many translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy, Hinton has reinvented the I Ching as an exciting contemporary text at once primal and postmodern. “[The I Ching is] the only thing that is amazingly true, period… You don’t have to believe anything to read it, because besides being a great book to believe in, it’s also very fantastic poetry.” —Bob Dylan

tools—from medicinal teas and elixirs to sacred practices to creative projects—to nurture and rejuvenate the entire family, along with journaling spaces at the end of each section to write, reflect, and develop a way of life rooted in peace and natural health. Anni Daulter has teamed up with Jessica Booth and Jessica Smithson, who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience. They share a commitment to encouraging mothers to practice their own skills, listen to their innate knowing, and explore redefining what health and wellbeing mean for their family. The practical tips and creative ideas presented here put readers back in touch with simple time-tested practices that bring BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

wholeness and wellbeing out of the cupboard. Medicine, they show, can be a welltimed hug, a reassuring hand, or a thoughtfully prepared meal. Echoing the core tenets of the Sacred Living Movement, this book reveals the power and insight we possess when our body, mind, and soul communicate in harmony. Basic Rules for Honoring Nature u Always ask the plant before you take anything from it. u Tell the plant what you are using it for—especially if you are making medicine. Be clear about the job at hand. u Please do not take all of the plant; for example, leave some elderberries for the birds and critters who depend on that sustenance during winter. And the plant itself needs seeds to grow its next generation. u Always say “thank you” to the plants you harvest from, to keep in right relationship with nature and Mother Earth.

Other beautiful books by Anni Daulter are Sacred Pregnancy and Sacred Motherhood. F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

GUT

The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders

$19.95, paper. Greystone. 270 pages, illus

This cheeky up-close and personal guide to the secrets and science of our digestive system reflects the huge research now into our gut’s microbiome, as well as the intense investigations of the links between the gut and the brain. What an extraordinary organ the gut is. It accounts for twothirds of our immune system, extracts energy from sandwiches and vegetarian sausages, and produces more than twenty unique hormones.

For too long, the gut has been the body’s most ignored and least appreciated organ, but it turns out that it’s responsible for more than just dirty work: our gut is at the core of who we are. Gut, an international bestseller, gives the alimentary canal its long-overdue moment in the spotlight. With quirky charm, rising science star Giulia Enders explains the gut’s magic, answering questions like: Why does acid reflux happen? What’s really up with gluten and lactose intolerance? How does the gut affect obesity and mood? Communication between the gut and the brain is one of the fastest-growing areas of medical research—on par with stem-cell research. Our gut reactions, we learn, are intimately connected with our physical and mental well-being. Enders’s beguiling manifesto will make you finally listen to those butterflies in your stomach: they’re trying to tell you something important. I can’t offer any panaceas, and keeping your gut healthy is not a miracle cure for everything, but what I can do is to show, in an entertaining way, why the gut is so fascinating, what exciting new research is currently underway, and how we can use this new knowledge to improve our daily lives.

“Our gastrointestinal tract is not only the body’s most under-appreciated organ, but ‘the brain’s most important adviser.’” —The Guardian

THE SCIENCE OF PLANETARY SIGNATURES IN MEDICINE

Restoring the Cosmic Foundations of Healing by Jennifer Gehl & Marc Micozzi $24.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 250 pages, b/w illustrations

This comprehensive guide to the cosmic influences that underlie reveals how ones astrological chart has implications for personal health and healing. When we look at the vast and intricate cosmos—galaxies, planets, organisms, organs, cells, molecules, atoms—there is a fundamental order, a music or harmony of the spheres. Our cells reflect the images of galaxies seen through our telescopes. We are the microcosm, reflecting the macrocosm of the heavens. Our ancestors understood these patterns and connections between humanity and the universe and developed spiritual and healing traditions in line with these cosmic truths. Yet in the 19th century, knowledge of these connections was set aside as medical science sought to create the one size fits all approaches to healing that dominate modern medicine today.

F In this comprehensive exploration of the celestial influences that underlie health and healing, Jennifer Gehl, with Marc Micozzi, examines how ancient and modern traditions of healing interconnect through the doctrine of signatures, “As above, so below.” She reveals how ones celestial nature—the arrangement of the cosmos at the moment of birth—has implications for personal health and how each sign of the zodiac corresponds to parts of the body, the chakras, and specific plants, herbs, colors, and emotions. She explains how sound re-arranges forms according to the principles of harmony, leveraging not only the human self-regulating capacity to restore health but also that of the Earth to restore balance and harmony. Also explored are the recurrence of geometric forms in nature and how to apply this knowledge in sound healing and medical astrology. Many books have been written on astrology and on herbal medicine, with only a few touching upon the correspondences between them. This book is inspired by the Hermetic principle “As above, so below,” “As within, so without,” as well as Hippocrates’ quote: A physician without a knowledge of the cosmos should not call himself a physician. There is one common flow, one common breathing. All things are in sympathy.”

Weaving together the threads of ancient science and spirit that formed the original tapestry of medicine, Gehl explains how to restore the cosmic foundations of healing for personal, planetary, and universal health and wellbeing.

THE TELOMERE EFFECT

A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer by Elizabeth Blackburn & Elissa Epel $36.50, cloth. Grand Central Publishing. 398 pages, b/w illustrations

Why do some sixty-year-olds look and feel like forty-year-olds and some forty-year-olds look and feel like sixtyyear-olds? While many factors contribute to aging and illness, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn discovered a biological indicator called telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes telomeres, which protect our genetic heritage. Drs. Blackburn and Epel’s research shows that the length and health of one’s telomeres are a biological underpinning of the mind-body connection. They and other scientists have found that changes we can make to our daily habits can protect our telomeres and increase our health spans (the number of years we remain healthy, active, and disease-free). The Telomere Effect reveals how Blackburn and Epel’s findings, together with research from colleagues around the world, cumulatively show that sleep quality, exercise, aspects of diet, and even certain chemicals profoundly affect our telomeres, and that chronic stress, negative thoughts, strained relationships, and even the wrong neighborhoods can eat away at them. Drawing from this scientific body of knowledge, they share lists of foods and suggest amounts and types of exercise that are healthy for our telomeres, mind tricks you can use to protect yourself from stress, and information about how to protect your children against developing shorter telomeres, from pregnancy through adolescence. And they describe how we can improve our health spans at the community level, with neighborhoods characterized by trust, green spaces, and safe streets.

HEALING ARTS

Ayurveda & Chinese Medicine CHINESE HOLISTIC MEDICINE IN YOUR DAILY LIFE

Motion Sickness, Asthma, Flu, Menstrual Disorders, Abscesses, Hemorrhoids, Dry Skin, Hepatitis, Allergies, Fatigue, Bronchitis, Morning Sickness, Hernia, Poor Appetite, Prostatitis, Eczema, High Blood Pressure, Nausea, Hives.

Combine Acupressure, Herbal Remedies & Qigong for Integrated Natural Healing by Steven Cardoza $28.95, paper. Llewellyn. 406 pages, 7x9, b/w illustrations

With a self-care approach for treating specific ailments and enhancing wellness, this book shares the foundational concepts of Chinese medicine and shows you how to integrate acupressure, herbalism, Qigong, diet, and lifestyle so that you can achieve optimal health outcomes. The ancient wisdom and practical techniques in this guide will help prevent the onset of disease, improve your day-to-day wellness, and promote longevity. Chinese medical physician and longtime Qigong practitioner Steven Cardoza provides integrated healing prescriptions for dozens of common conditions, including: Pain, Insomnia, Arthritis, Common Cold, Headache, Poor Memory, Angina, Impotence,

THE WAY OF THE FIVE SEASONS

Living with the Five Elements for Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Harmony by John Kirkwood $34.95, paper. Singing Dragon. 380 pages, 7x9, b/w illustrations

Here is a comprehensive and practical guide to using the Five Element model in your daily life in ways that can improve your physical health, foster mental ease and clarity, create more emotional balance, and bring you closer to spirit. Having introduced the philosophical and practical principles of the Five Elements, the author invites you to “live the book,” immersing yourself in the many aspects of each Element during its corresponding season. He offers a range of methods of doing this, including activities such as movement, cooking, gardening, journaling, visualization, meditation, dialogue and self-acupressure. In working with each Element, he explores the three levels or expressions of human life—the physical (structures, organs, tissues and systems),

Chinese medicine is holistic, taking the state of the whole person—body, mind, emotions, and spirit—into account instead of just the apparent disease. Western biomedical diagnosis is often of limited help in determining a patient’s condition from a Chinese medical perspective, since the biomedically defined disease is just one collection of symptoms among many that may define the particular pattern(s) of disharmony affecting the person. Accordingly, ten people with the same Western diagnosis may be treated in ten different ways with Chinese medicine… This book will provide you with both a new, more complete understanding of Chinese medicine as well as many integrated tools and practices you can incorporate into your daily life.

Also by Steven Cardoza is Chinese Healing Exercises. the psycho-emotional (thoughts, beliefs, self-images, emotions and reactions), and the spirit. Detailed information is provided on each Element’s specific attributes, associations, resonances and gifts, and anatomical illustrations are included for further guidance. An invaluable reference book for practitioners and students of Chinese Medicine who hope to become better practitioners to others, the book also provides the means to become a practitioner to yourself. “The author blends Five Element theory and the modern psycho-spiritual wisdom of the Diamond Approach into valuable advice for staying healthy during the seasons. He presents activities, diet and contemplations that enhance specific aspects of body/mind/spirit—what the author calls Soul—for each element. This is a warm, insightful and excellent book.” —Ronald Davis, author of Qigong Through the Seasons John Kirkwood has been working, living and playing with the Five Elements for over 30 years.

AYURVEDA LIFESTYLE WISDOM

A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy by Acharya Shunya $33.50, paper. Sounds True. 356 pages, b/w illustrations

Ayurveda teaches us that true health is our birthright, and that by artfully adapting to the rhythms of nature, we can bring ourselves back into balance and experience optimal well-being. Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom is a groundbreaking work within the field of holistic health and traditional yoga, written by internationally renowned Ayurvedic healer, teacher, and scholar Acharya Shunya. Raised in a distinguished lineage of Vedic mystics and healers, Shunya learned the ancient art of Ayurveda directly from her grandfather, a well-known healer in Northern India. Here, she presents both an engaging narrative of her unique education, as well as a complete encyclopedia of Ayurvedic practices, recipes, and knowledge.

u u

You deserve health. When you follow Ayurvedic injunctions on right living, eating, thinking, sex, exercise, sleep, and leisure, you will be living a lifestyle that is resonant with Nature’s intelligence.

Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom maintains the integrity of Ayurveda’s traditional teachings while showing us how to integrate them into our modern lifestyles. Through her in-depth teachings, we learn to live “A revolutionary set of findings that can transform the way we live our lives, shaping the very health of our cells by how we use our minds.”—Daniel Siegel, author of Mind “Gives us… with exactly the practical level of detail we need, the long and the short of a new science revealing that how we live our lives, both inwardly and outwardly, individually and collectively, impinges significantly on our health, our well-being, and even our longevity. Mindfulness is a key ingredient, and importantly, issues of poverty and social justice are shown to clearly come into play as well. This book is an invaluable, rigorously authentic, and at its core, exceedingly compassionate and wise contribution to our underBRANCHES OF LIGHT F

in a way that supports our greatest health through daily ritual, nourishing food, spiritual practice, and self-care. Highlights include: u Detailed instructions for a nourishing daily routine, organized by time of day and aligned with seasonal changes u Clear, accessible guidance in the basic principles of Ayurveda, as transmitted through an uninterrupted lineage of Ayurvedic healers u Dozens of traditional recipes, along with advice for structuring your meals according to the season, your constitution, and your unique health needs A treasury of lifestyle teachings and wellness practices— meditation and pranayama, exercise and yoga, connecting with nature, rituals for self-care and pleasure, daily cleansing routines, and working with the doshas (energetic body types) Beauty routines and rituals, including recipes for homemade scrubs, oil blends, gargles, and more How modern lifestyles contribute to chronic disease, and how to restore vital health through Ayurveda Experience greater physical energy, more joy, better sleep, increased sexual pleasure, improved digestion, stronger immunity, and many other benefits in mind, body, and soul

I invite you to make every day a health-protecting and health-reclaiming day, simply by the art with which it is lived. I remember my teacher Baba telling me that “a well-lived day is medicine unto itself.”

standing of health and well-being.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living

YOUR POWER TO HEAL

Resolving Psychological Barriers to Your Physical Health by Henry Grayson

$22.75, paper. Sounds True. 249 pages

The greatest medical breakthrough in recent years isn’t the creation of a new drug or treatment—it’s the discovery of how much your mind affects your health. With Your Power to Heal, Dr. Henry Grayson offers a treasury of techniques and insights to help you harness the mindbody connection. F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

When we can identify and change the inner voices that keep us feeling powerless, we can go beyond treating just symptoms or relying on doctors to fix us. We have far greater potential to heal than we realize.

In this practical guidebook, Dr. Grayson presents life-changing insights and effective tools anyone can use, including: u The new physics of healing—the ever-ex-

F panding body of research that reveals our untapped capacity for self-healing u Simple tips to nip many symptoms in the bud as they start u Self-assessment questionnaires to help you locate and change subconscious beliefs and disturbances u The Emotional Freedom Technique for resolving trauma and restoring your vitality u Thought Field Therapy to clear the blockages in your body’s energy system that are impeding health u Why therapy, diets, and exercise regimens often fail—and how to make them succeed. You don’t need years of meditation practice to use your mind to improve your health. Your Power to Heal is an invaluable resource offering tested, practical tools for anyone dealing with physical illness to help you identify your unconscious barriers to healing; relieve pain, stress, and anxiety; make any treatment or medication more effective; and start taking charge of your health today. Henry Grayson is founder of the Synergetic Therapy Institute.

Healing Energies, Healing Herbs CLEAR HOME, CLEAR HEART

Learn to Clear the Energy of People and Places by Jean Haner $16.99, paper. Hay House. 220 pages, b/w illustrations

Have you ever entered a room and it just didn’t feel right, yet you couldn’t explain why? Do you sense a natural comfort with some people but are immediately stressed by others? The truth is that we’re all influenced far more than we realize by the invisible energy of the people and places around us. This, along with difficult experiences in your past that still weigh you down, can keep you from being a creative force in your life. Clearing is a gentle but powerful way to release the old stress you’re still carrying from your life history, as well as transform how you’re affected by the energy around you each day. Many people experience immediate shifts in their energy during a clearing, and significant change often unfolds in the days and weeks afterward. In fact, clearing has even been described as “accelerated meditation” because it can lead to a sense of calm and happiness that typically results only after years of a mindfulness practice. In this simple, elegant guide, Jean Haner teaches you, in easy-to-follow steps, how to clear your own energy or that of any person, as well as bring harmony to the energy of the spaces you inhabit, so you can reclaim your vitality and joy, and open up infinite new possibilities in life. Healers, intuitives, energy workers, highly sensitive people, and anyone who just wants to optimize their energy and live their best life will find this to be vital training. Jean refines energy clearing to its pure essence—the power of the compassionate heart. “Jean Haner is a brilliant intuitive who had to learn in the laboratory of her own body what she teaches here in Clear Home, Clear Heart —and you will be the beneficiary. Many more people are challenged by the energies around them than is generally recognized. This book is a gem, helping you to not only become aware of these energies but

HERBS, ENERGIES, CHAKRAS also know what to do about them. And I am so relieved that I can recommend this book to body workers and healers who often ‘pick up’ energy from their clients.” — Donna Eden, author of Energy Medicine

Awakening the Chakras

AWAKENING THE CHAKRAS

The Seven Energy Centers in Your Daily Life by Victor & Kooch Daniels, with Pieter Weltevrede $24.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 256 pages, 7x9, colour illustrations

WOMEN HEALERS OF THE WORLD

The Traditions, History, and Geography of Herbal Medicine New in by Holly Bellebuono Paperback $29.99, paper. Skyhorse. 278 pages, 9x9, colour photos

This intimate and inspiring book opens up the world of herbal medicine to those interested in learning about the history of these techniques and approaches. Women Healers of the World shares with readers an extraordinary variety of healing plants from around the world that have inspired today’s alternative medicine, as well as the stories, challenges, and triumphs of remarkable women healers from past and present—all of whom promote the use of medicinal herbs. Through this book, herbalist and author Holly Bellebuono aims to educate readers about sixteen plant-based world healing traditions and thirty women who have practiced them. Bellebuono also explores the geography, history, and medical heritage of twenty countries where these traditions originated. With thorough knowledge of the uses and effects of these healing traditions, readers can then move on to featured recipes for herbal remedies they can make in their home kitchens. Following Bellebuono’s instructions, readers will produce remedies such as soothing lip balms, wound pastes, witch hazel liniment, face masks, arthritis oils, relaxing bath salts, and revitalizing teas. More than simply a glorious full-color world tour, this tribute to women herbalists and their traditions passes on Holly`s knowledge and love of plants to another generation of plant lovers, healers, and green enthusiasts. Also author of The Essential Herbal for Natural Health, Holly Bellebuono trains and certifies students, teaches pharmacology and formulary, and is a leading presenter at workshops and retreats. She is founder of Vineyard Herbs Teas and Apothercary.

RESONANCE EFFECT

How Frequency Specific Microcurrent is Changing Medicine by Carolyn McMakin $22.99, paper. North Atlantic. 248 pages, b/w illustrations

The Resonance Effect is both the author’s story of her inspirational journey of having the courage to find her true calling and an account of the development a remarkable newly rediscovered treatment, frequency specific microcurrent (FSM), that takes advantage of the body’s ability to respond to frequencies in order to heal a number of chronic conditions. Carolyn McMakin, a chiropractor specializing in fibromyalgia and myofascial pain, BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

By understanding the chakras, you can better understand the ways you interact with the world around you and the energetic roots of your inner being. Offering an in-depth guide to this powerful ancient yogic science, authors Victor Daniels, Kooch N. Daniels, and Pieter Weltevrede—all longtime students of the late tantric scholar, philosopher, and temple artist Sri Harish Johari—explain the essence of each of the 7 chakras and provide practical tools to work with these energetic wheels of light. Revealing how each chakra is connected with specific patterns of thinking, feeling, sensing, and acting, the authors explore how the chakras offer a vertical map of consciousness beginning with the root chakra at the base of the spine and ascending to the crown chakra on top of the head. They provide dynamic meditations, mantras, and other methods to work with the chakras. You will learn how to enhance each chakra’s positive features and transform the difficult ones. You will discover the complementary ways they affect each other, the gifts and strengths each can bestow, and the psychological causes of potential imbalances within them. Coauthor Pieter Weltevrede provides visual portrayals of traditional images of the chakras and their deities, explaining the spiritual secrets embedded in each. Sharing profound insights from their studies with Harish Johari, the authors also include chakra wisdom from other gurus they have studied with such as Guruji Pilot Baba and Mataji Narmada Puri. Indian philosophy puts creation in a cyclic form, not in a linear one. It tells us where we come from and where we are going. Chakras are a story of the elements (earth, water, fire, air, and void) that are connected to our world of sensory perception. It tells us how the sense organs originated, and how we can find our way back to what is beyond the senses.

Offering practical wisdom for help in daily life and freedom from the tethers of your past, chakra work provides a powerful way to hear your inner self more deeply and a systematic path for activating higher levels of consciousness.

LOVE HAS SEVEN COLORS

Heart-Centered Practices for the Energy Centers by Jack Angelo $18.95, paper. Bear & Company. 160 pp.

Each of us has a light body connecting the spiritual, emotional, and physical levels of our being. When we live in a heart-centered way and choose love as the basis for our actions rather than fear, each of the 7 energy centers of the light body opens to the wisdom of our souls and radiates with a different color, making us walking rainbows of unconditional love and soul guidance. Presenting the Inner Circle Teachings on heart-centeredness from the ancient mystery schools, energy medicine healer Jack Angelo explains how unconditional love positively affects our subtle energy system and allows our 7 energy centers to form the full rainbow of connection between our hearts, minds, and souls. Describing the location and color of each energy center and the ways they can affect our physical, emotional, and mental well-being, he shows how the 7 energy centers control the flow of energy to and from the multiple levels of our being and process the energies generated by specific life issues. Providing 29 breathing, relaxation, meditation, and visualization exercises, the author explores how to open each energy center to the intelligence of the heart and retrain the mind to approach life with love instead of fear. He explains the role of the heart center in healing and how to balance the masculine intelligence of the mind with the feminine intelligence of the heart. Once the energies of these two polarities are balanced, we become truly heart-centered, radiating the seven colors of love and following the wisdom of our soul to discover the spiritual reality of our sacred self. Also by Jack Angelo are The Spiritual Healing of Mary Magdalene and Self-Healing with Breathwork.

describes her experience using a two-channel microcurrent device that has achieved astounding results that have changed medicine and created new possibilities for suffering patients over the past twenty years. Nerve pain, fibromyalgia, diabetic neuropathies, muscle pain, athletic performance, injury repair, joint pain, low back pain, neck pain, kidney stone pain, the kidney stones themselves, liver disease, diabetic wounds, brain and spinal cord injuries, PTSD, depression, shingles, asthma, ovarian cysts, abdominal adhesions, and scarring all respond to specific frequencies. McMakin explains that results are predictable, reproducible, and teachable—all without side effects—offering hope and healing to millions of people. McMakin tells the story of how thousands of patients with conditions that did not respond to other medical therapies recovered from F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

pain and disability through the non-invasive treatment that she developed. McMakin includes case histories that illustrate the efficacy of the treatment and shares the specific frequencies that each condition requires so that patients direct their own treatments. “This book will resonate with patients, care providers, and anyone who has a loved one suffering pain or health issues. Harmonic resonances, vibrations, oscillations, and frequencies are the vocabulary of a universal language that is FSM. Witnessing for myself the therapeutic effects of frequency specific microcurrent, on humans and horses, I became an ardent supporter of this science-based work. This book is as good a read as any Harry Potter novel, but it’s not magic. It’s science.” —John Sharkey, clinical anatomist, exercise physiologist, neuromuscular therapist, and author of Healing through Trigger Point Therapy

BODYWORK & NUTRITION

Herbs & Wild Medicine

that their clients suffer from, providing immediate pain relief as well as reducing the strains that may contribute to the patient’s ongoing aches and pains, leading to rapid, effective, and lasting pain relief. James Earls and Thomas Meyers argue that approaching the fascia requires “a different eye, a different touch, and tissue-specific techniques.” Thomas Myers is the author of Anatomy Trains and coauthor of The Concise Book of the Moving Body; he is currently a leading figure in the bodywork community.

SOME USEFUL WILD PLANTS

A Foraging Guide to Food and Medicine From Nature by Dan Jason $16.95, paper. Harbour. 186 pages, line drawings

With over forty years since its original printing, this bestselling guide still remains a trusted and much-consulted reference for those interested in identifying, foraging and growing wild plants for food and medicine. Now Some Useful Wild Plants is back in print for a new generation of foragers and herbalists. Some Useful Wild Plants contains sections on useful herbs, trees, berries and seaweeds, as well as commentary on avoiding poisonous species. Pick the young tender leaves of orach, salsify and miner’s lettuce for a delicious and vitamin-rich spring salad or stir-fry. Concoct a cherry bark and licorice fern syrup to soothe a sore throat. Repel insects naturally using sage oil or vanilla leaf. From alder to yarrow, each featured plant has useful descriptors for identification and details on how to harvest, as well as how the plant is traditionally used for medicine by First Nations, pioneers and contemporary herbalists. Clear line drawings are provided to assist foragers in accurate identification. Directions are included for the preparation of ointments, salves, poultices, compresses and tinctures. Dan Jason also addresses sustainability when foraging to ensure that harvesting supports the continuous growth of the plant and the natural environment. Compact and informative, Some Useful Wild Plants is easily tucked into a day pack, good for taking along on any nature outing, and will inspire a new level of appreciation for all Mother Nature has to offer. Dan Jason is founder of Salt Spring Seeds. He also wrote The Power of Pulses.

Food & Nutrition THE CHINA STUDY

Revised and Expanded Edition: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-Term Health by T. Colin Campbell Here’s the updated and expanded edition of the bestseller that changed millions of lives. More than thirty years ago, nutrition researcher T. Colin Campbell and his team at Cornell, in partnership with teams in China and England, embarked upon the China Study, the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease. In 2005, Colin and his son Tom, now a physician, shared those findings with the world in The China Study, hailed as one of the most important books about diet and health ever written. This exhaustive presentation of the findings from the China Study—which examines more than 350 variables of health and nutrition with surveys from 6,500 adults in more than 2,500 counties across China and Taiwan—conclusively demonstrates the link between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Herbal Productrs, Nutritional Supplements, and Natural Therapies for 500 Health Conditions by Steven Horne & Thomas Easley $33.00, paper. North Atlantic. 496 pages

Based on decades of clinical experience by two professional herbalists, this comprehensive, practical reference equips readers with a wealth of information that empowers them to use natural remedies to treat 500 different health problems. Unlike guides that simply list natural therapies for various ailments, this book helps readers understand the root cause of problems so that they can focus on regaining their health rather than just relieving their symptoms. The authors impart dozens of basic, holistic health-building strategies based on a model called “The Disease Tree” that conveys the four root causes of disease, the six imbalances in biological terrain, and supporting the eleven body systems. They link 500 health problems to more than 200 single herbs, 50 nutritional supplements, and 1000 herbal formulas, with information that enables users to select the appropriate treatment for their own particular condition. Cross references, lists of complementary therapies, instructions on how to read and understand labels, suggestions for further education, and information on sourcing products from a wealth of suppliers make this an essential reference for anyone hoping to regain health the natural way. The natural remedies found in this book are available at a fraction of the cost of many established medical treatments, and without serious side effects of a number of prescribed medications. All major brands of herbs and supplements are covered here, and can be purchased locally at local health food stores or online. “The single most comprehensive textbook on modern Western herbal medicine that I have seen.” —Matthew Wood, author of The Book of Herbal Wisdom

FASCIAL RELEASE FOR STRUCTURAL BALANCE

Revised Edition by Thomas Myers & James Earls $46.00, paper. North Atlantic. 312 pages, 8x11, colour illustrations

The treatment of pain through manipulation of fascia or trigger points—tender knots in the muscles—is a hot topic within the bodywork community. Some 85% of localized pain has been shown to be muscular in origin, and fascial and myofascial release techniques like those shown in this book are extremely effective. This thoroughly revised edition of the authoritative reference Fascial Release for Structural Balance brings the book up to date with all of the most current

People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored. From the initial experimental animal studies on animal protein effects to this massive human study on dietary patterns, the findings proved to be consistent. The health implications of consuming either animal or plant-based nutrients were remarkably different.

research on the role of fascia and myofascia in the body, and how treatment affects it. This edition takes advantage of more sophisticated testing to explore in greater detail the relationship between anatomical structure and function, making it an even more essential guide. Offering a detailed introduction to structural anatomy and fascial release therapy, including postural analysis, complete technique descriptions, and the art of proper assessment of a patient through “bodyreading,” the book features 150 color photographs that clearly demonstrate each technique. The authors, both respected bodywork professionals, give any bodywork practitioner using manual therapy—including physiotherapists, osteopaths, chiropractors, myofascial and trigger point therapists, and massage therapists— the information they need to deliver effective treatments and create long-lasting, systemic change in clients’ shape and structure. Fascia, the soft tissue surrounding muscles, bones, and organs, plays a crucial role in supporting the body. By learning to intelligently manipulate it, a bodyworker or therapist can help with many chronic conditions BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Referred to as the “Grand Prix of epidemiology” by the New York Times, this study reveals the dramatic effect proper nutrition can have on reducing and reversing these ailments as well as obesity and calls into question the practices of many of the current dietary programs, such as the Atkins diet, that enjoy widespread popularity in the Western world. Heart disease, diabetes and obesity can be reversed by a healthy diet. Other research shows that various cancers, autoimmune diseases, bone health, kidney health, vision and brain disorders in old age (like cognitive dysfunction and Alzhei-

mer’s) are convincingly influenced by diet. Most importantly, the diet that has time and again been shown to reverse and/or prevent these diseases is the same whole food, plant-based diet that I had found to promote optimal health in my laboratory research and in the China Study. The findings are consistent.

Featuring brand new content, this heavily expanded edition includes the latest undeniable evidence of the power of a plant-based diet, plus updated information about the changing medical system and how patients stand to benefit from a surging interest in plant-based nutrition. The China Study: Revised and Expanded Edition presents a clear and concise message of hope as it dispels a multitude of health myths and misinformation.

THE ART OF PLANT-BASED CHEESEMAKING

$24.99, paper. Benbella. 417 pages

THE MODERN HERBAL MEDICINE REFERENCE GUIDE

Bodywork

How to Craft Real, Culture, Non-Dairy Cheese by Karen McAthy $29.99, paper. New Society. 128 pages, 7x9, colour photos

As plant-based, dairy-free diets continue to expand in popularity for health and ethical reasons, cheese often becomes the “last hurdle.” Much of what passes for non-diary “cheese” lacks the quality and depth of authentic, cultured cheese. Yet for aspiring DIY plant-based cheesemakers, much of the knowledge of this new craft is scattered in isolated kitchens, and there’s no real reliable guidance to what works, what doesn’t, and why, when making real, cultured plantbased cheese. This book aims to change all that and bring this new craft into the kitchens of the world. Written by a pioneering plant-based cheesemaker who draws deep from the well of experience, The Art of Plant-based Cheesemaking is a clear, highly practical guide that extends traditional cheesemaking methods into the realm of plant-based media as a substitute for dairy. Coverage includes: u Understanding culturing and fermentation u Essential ingredients and equipment for crafting plant-based cheese u Plant and nut-based media and how to make them u How to create and train plant-based cultures u Delicious recipes for quick cheeses u Advanced recipes for cultured and aged cheeses u Resources for sourcing equipment and cultures. Packed with step-by-step recipes, straightforward processes, and encouraging experimentation, this book makes plant-based cheesemaking accessible for beginners and serious foodies alike. Simply everything you need to make delicious non-dairy cheese right at home.

Lesson Plan The lost bird remembers how to sing as it splashes in a puddle and forgets how to fly. This was the teacher’s answer to his student’s complaints about living on Earth. —Mark Nepo, from The Way Under the Way

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

IN MY KITCHEN

FOOD & INSPIRATION

May the Divine be invited into every part of life!

Vegetarian Cookbooks

“In a marketplace filled with lackluster spirituality books, this book sparkles with truth. Through touching personal stories, potent insights and holy humor, Tosha Silver reminds us that the only way to truly live is hand in hand, heart to heart, and hip bump to hip bump with the Divine.” —Sera Beak, author of Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic’s Love Story

A Collection of New and Favorite Vegetarian Recipes by Deborah Madison $42.50, cloth. Ten Speed. 296 pages, 8x10, colour photos

From the foremost authority on vegetarian cooking (she founded Greens Restaurant in SF, run by Zen Center) comes a carefully curated and updated collection of 100 favorite and most inspired recipes, reflecting how Deborah Madison loves to cook now. These recipes from her vast repertoire are all pared down to the key ingredients needed to achieve delicious, nuanced flavor, with simplified preparations. In My Kitchen is a vegetable-forward cookbook organized alphabetically and featuring recipes like Roasted Jerusalem Artichoke Soup with Sunflower Sprouts; Fennel Shaved with Tarragon and Walnuts; and Olive Oil, Almond, and Blood Orange Cake. With dozens of tips for building onto, scaling back, and creating menus around, Deborah’s recipes have a modular quality that makes them particularly easy to use. Great for both weeknight dinners and special occasions, this book will delight longtime fans and newcomers to Madison—and anyone who loves fresh, flavorful cooking. Filled with Deborah’s writerly, evocative prose, this book is not just the go-to kitchen reference for vegetable-focused cooking, but also a book with which to curl up and enjoy reading. Lavish photographs, too.

TEARS TO TRIUMPH

The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment by Marianne Williamson

The beloved teacher and author of A Return to Love and other books, Marianne Williamson argues that our desire to avoid pain is actually detrimental to our lives, disconnecting us from our deepest emotions and preventing true healing and spiritual transcendence. In Tears to Triumph, she argues that we—as a culture and as individuals— have learned to avoid facing pain, and so we avoid our growth. Here she helps us rediscover religious principles for dealing with and transcending our suffering.

Among Deborah Madison’s books are The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Vegetable Literacy.

PEACE & PARSNIPS

Adventurous Vegan Cooking for Everyone by Lee Watson $33.50, paper. The Experiment. 324 pages, 8x11, colour photos

A life of spiritual triumph is not one in which we never fall into a deep, dark val-

Chef Lee Watson was once, in his own words, “the mightiest nose-to-tail carnivore of them all.” But four years ago, he went completely vegan—and today, he’s an easygoing evangelist for peaceful, plant-full eating. Now, Peace & Parsnips captures 200 of Lee’s extraordinarily creative recipes, all “rooted” in his love of life and his many travels—from the streets of Mexico and the food bazaars of Turkey to the French countryside, the shores of Spain, the spice markets of India and beyond. Twelve chapters burst with gorgeous photos (200 in all), tempting us with Lee’s recipes—all meat-free, dairyfree and egg-free, and many gluten-free. Get set to savour: u Breakfast: Plantain Breakfast Burrito with Pico de Gallo u Smoothies, Juices & Hot Drinks: Healthy Hot Chocolate u Soups: Zen Noodle Broth u Salads: Fennel, Walnut & Celeriac Salad with Caesar-ish Dressing u Sides: Turkish-Style Spinach with Creamy Tofu Ricotta u Nibbles, Dips & Small Plates: Shiitake Tempura with Wasabi Mayo u Big Plates: Parsnip & Walnut Rumbledethumps with Baked Beans u Curries: Roasted Almond & Kohlrabi Koftas with Tomato & Ginger Masala u Burgers & More: Portobello Pecan Burgers with Roasted Pumpkin Wedges u Baked & Stuffed: Mexican “Pastor” Pie u Sweet Treats: Blueberry & Macadamia Cheesecake; Dark Chocolate & Beet Brownies u Sauces, Dressings, Toppers & other Extras: Smoky Chipotle & Cauliflower Cheese Sauce; Tofu & Herb Feta! Lee’s thoughtful, enthusiastic advice makes it easier than you think (and great fun) to create satisfying meals from an inspiring array of seasonal fruits, fresh vegetables and easy-to-find staples. This is food that explodes with flavour, colour and texture—and will delight and nourish everyone.

CHANGE ME PRAYERS The Hidden Power of Spiritual Surrender by Tosha Silver

New in Paperback

$22.00, paper. Scribner. 272 pages

From the author of the bestseller Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead, here’s a thoughtful collection of prayers and stories to help you actively invite the Divine into your life. Change me Divine Beloved into one who can give and receive freely and be a clear vessel for your Light.

In this sequel to the delightfully profound Outrageous Openness, Tosha Silver, with her

ley; it is one I which, if and when we do fall, we’ve learned how to get ourselves out of it. We need emotional muscles in order to rise up emotionally, just as we need physical muscles in order to rise up physically. And developing those muscles takes work. It is the work of enlightenment, the inner world of the soul.

Instead of allowing ourselves to embrace and learn from our hurt, we’ve come to numb it, medicate it, dismiss it, or otherwise divert our attention so that we never have to face it. In not acknowledging our suffering, we actually prolong it and ultimately limit our personal growth and opportunity for enlightenment. As Marianne makes clear, true healing and transcendence can only come when we finally face our pain and wrestle with what it has to teach us. Written with warm compassion and wisdom, Tears to Triumph offers us a supported, powerful way forward: into and through the pain, to a deeper awareness of our feelings, our lives, and our true selves. “The darkness has no power before the light within your heart. Be patient. Give it time, if it needs time.” On an internal level, the great religions of the world have always led to miracles. On an external level, they have as often led to violence and destruction. That must change, and will change, as more people come to recognize the mystical truths, the inner gold, that lie within them all. The greatest opportunity for humanity’s survival in the twenty-first century lies not in widening our external horizons, but in deepening our internal ones. That applies to us personally, and it applies to us collectively.

Among Marianne Williamson’s other books are A Year of Miracles and The Law of Divine Compensation.

Soul Friends SOUL FRIENDS

The Transforming Power of Deep Human Connection by Stephen Cope

$25.99, cloth. Hay House. 346 pages

As a Senior Scholar-in-Residence for over 25 years at the renowned Kripalu Center, Stephen Cope has spent decades investigating—and writing about—the integration of body, mind, and spirit and the rich complexity of our relationships with others, and with ourselves. Perhaps the central truth that arises from his work is this: human beings are universally wired for one thing—vital connection with one another. Soul Friends invites us on a richly engaging journey into the connectivity of the human psyche, the study of which has fascinated scholars, philosophers, and thinkers for centuries. Cope seamlessly blends science, scholarship, and storytelling, drawing on his own life as well as the histories of famous figures—from Eleanor Roosevelt to Charles Darwin to Queen Victoria—whose formative relationships shed light on the nature of friendship itself. It is the central premise of this book that there are six forms of human connection that we must have in order to grow, to thrive, to develop, and to live fully. Much of our spiritual, psychological, and even physical growth takes place in the context of, and as a result of, these special relationships. And I believe that through recognizing and understanding the nature of these connections, we can more skillfully shape who we become.

characteristic wit and charm, shows how to—and invites you to—transform yourself from the inside out. Covering a variety of topics—from work to finances to self-worth— Change Me Prayers reveals how to truly surrender to a Divine plan in the most joyous and uplifting way. At its heart, Change Me Prayers is a spiritual guide which offers prayers to the Divine that can change someone into a person open to receive bountiful blessings in everyday life. Anyone can use these powerful prayers to leave the old limited self behind. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

New in Paperback

$19.99, paper. HarperCollins. 256 pages

Your food may not taste as good to you as it does to those to whom you’re serving it. If so, it’s most likely because you’ve been inhaling it for a while so its flavors are no longer vivid and new. But that doesn’t mean that others are faking their praise… Don’t apologize because you feel your food is lacking. If you do that, you just take away the pleasure of others. In my experience, this can be a hard lesson to learn, yet I feel it’s the most important one, and one I’m still learning.

Inspiration & Self-Help

The six mechanisms of transformation, then, as I have described them, are: 1. Containment 4. Mirroring 2. Twinship 5. Mystic resonance 3. Adversity 6. Conscious partnership.

Integrating wisdom learned from practice, meditation, intensive study, and life experience, Cope takes a fresh eye to the idea of connectivity and the human spirit. The journey to our most vital, fulfilled selves certainly requires us to look and feel within. But in order to truly thrive as human beings, we must make the most of who we are in relation to one another. Unsparingly honest, deeply wise, and irresistibly readable, Soul Friends is a rare gem of a book. Most of us will have many friends throughout our lifetimes—friends of all shapes, sizes, and callings. Many of these are wonderful, meaningful friendships. Some are difficult. But some magic few of these are connections that have gone right to our soul. These five or seven or ten friendships have been powerful keys to determining who we have become and who we will become… These are the people I call Soul Friends.

“For centuries, writers interested in the soul have reflected on friendship as the foundation of all love. Stephen Cope’s contribution is penetrating, subtle, and beautiful… A very special book.” —Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Psychology, Therapy & Dreams PATHWAYS TO POSSIBILITY

Transforming Our Relationship with Ourselves, Each Other, New in and the World Paperback by Rosamund Zander $23.00, paper. Penguin. 272 pages

In this powerful and inspiring book, family systems therapist and executive coach Rosamund Stone Zander invites readers to shed the childhood stories that hold us back, and enter a realm of true maturity and fulfillment,

PSYCHOLOGY

where limitless growth becomes possible. As children, we develop stories about how the world works, most of which get improved upon and amended over time. But some do not, even as we mature in other ways. Opinionated, self-centered and fear-driven, these child stories are the source of the behavioral and emotional patterns that hold us back. When we learn to identify and rewrite these stories,

Healing Trauma, New or Old

IT DIDN’T START WITH YOU How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle by Mark Wolynn

New in Paperback

$23.00, paper. Knopf. 256 pages

Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. 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. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood. As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch. “It Didn’t Start with You takes us a big step forward, advancing the fields of trauma therapy, mindfulness applications, and human understanding. It is a bold, creative, and compassionate work.” —Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness “Wolynn brings a unique, valuable, and grounded voice to this work.” —California Institute of Integral Studies

we can do remarkable, even magical things. Zander shows us that life is a story we tell ourselves, and that we have the power to change that story. She illuminates how breaking old patterns and telling a new story can transform not just our own lives, but also our relationships with others—whether in a marriage, a classroom, or a business. Finally, she demonstrates how, with this new understanding of ourselves and our place within an interconnected world, we can take powerful action in the collective interest, and gain a sense of deep connection to the universe.

only the joyousness of play. The promise of this section is great: if we engage fully, we are likely to discover facets of reality we have never before experienced, and become occasional conduits for rare moments of perfect attunement with life.

This galvanizing book expands our notions of “how much we can grow and change, whether we can change others and even affect the world at large, and how much freedom and joy we can experience.” Stimulating and profound, it is the perfect companion to her beloved first book, The Art of Possibility.

Having rewritten our own stories in an adult voice, we avoid the common trap of being advice givers (at best) and meddlers (at worst) and we become natural agents for their transformation. We learn to connect with others on an energetic level that creates a synergy for realizing our collective dreams…

DREAMWORKING

The final section of the book presents a series of “games” that will usher the reader into this new territory of possibility and connection. These belong to the category author/philosopher James Carse dubbed “infinite games,” open-ended engagements with no winners or losers; games that offer

Dreams are trying to guide us, but how do we understand what they are saying? Dreamworking provides a practical, five-step process for connecting your dreams to your life, helping you understand the profound requests, invitations, and “glimpses” that come while

How to Listen to the Inner Guidance of Your Dreams by Christopher Sowton $22.95, paper. Llewellyn. 408 pages

Brené Brown’s Rising Strong

RISING STRONG

How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown

New in Paperback

$24.00, paper. Random House. 352 pages

Social scientist Brené Brown has ignited a global conversation on courage, vulnerability, shame, and worthiness. Her pioneering work uncovered a profound truth: Vulnerability—the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome—is the only path to more love, belonging, creativity, and joy. The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall… The truth is that falling hurts. The dare is to keep being brave and feel your way back up.

The author of bestsellers Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection tells us what it takes to get back up, and how owning our stories of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak gives us the power to write a daring new ending. It’s Rising Strong. As a grounded theory researcher, Brown has listened as a range of people—from leaders in Fortune 500 companies and the military to artists, couples in long-term relationships, teachers, and parents—shared their stories of being brave, falling, and getting back up. She asked herself, What do these people with strong and loving relationships, leaders nurturing creativity, artists pushing innovation, and clergy walking with people through faith and mystery have in common? The answer was clear: They recognize the power of emotion and they’re not afraid to lean in to discomfort. Walking into our stories of hurt can feel dangerous. But the process of regaining our footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Our stories of struggle can be big ones, like the loss of a job or the end of a relationship, or smaller ones, like a conflict with a friend or colleague. Regardless of magnitude or circumstance, the rising strong process is the same: We reckon with our emotions and get curious about what we’re feeling; we rumble with our stories until we get to a place of truth; and we live this process, every day, until it becomes a practice and creates nothing short of a revolution in our lives. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness. It’s the process, Brown writes, that teaches us the most about who we are.

MEDITATIONS FOR HEALING TRAUMA

Mindfulness Skills to Ease Post-Traumatic Stress by Louanne Davis $23.95, paper. New Harbinger. 220 pages

Post-traumatic stress isn’t your fault. Many people suffer traumatic events—which shock you to the core—and which can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This evidence-based book delivers easy-to-use mindfulness skills that can be used as needed to alleviate symptoms and promote healing. Some people heal naturally after they experience a traumatic event, but some trauma lasts and can develop into PTSD, with symptoms like depression, anxiety, panic, flashbacks, difficulty sleeping, or losing interest in life. You may find yourself on the sidelines, disengaged from your own life, with little sense of who you are and how to relate to others. The body, heart, and mind are all profoundly affected by trauma; in this way it can live on, causing a serious disconnect and a state of imbalance in which you’re always in survival mode. How do you move on? This book is designed to target the most common symptoms of post-traumatic stress and PTSD, providing mindfulness-based practices to help relieve your symptoms and increase self-compassion. Offering meditations for reconnection with your body, heart, mind, and life, this guide presents a unique, evidence-based way to heal the disconnects and help you re-engage. Instead of getting stuck reliving your trauma or worrying about it happening again, these mindful meditations will ground you in the present moment and enable you to better cope with unpleasant thoughts and feelings as they arise—and then let them go.

RISING STRONG AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE by Brené Brown

$33.50, 3 CDs. Sounds True. 3 hours

New on CD

With her previous bestsellers, Dr. Brené Brown helped us realize that vulnerability is the birthplace for trust, belonging, joy, creativity, and love. Yet a willingness to be vulnerable means accepting that life will sometimes knock us down. Where do we find the strength to get back up? In her research for her breakthrough book Rising Strong, Bren discovered a key factor. Without exception, she says, the concept of spirituality emerged from the data as a critical component of overcoming struggle. On Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice, Brené offers an in-depth exploration of this critical and oft-misunderstood aspect of wholehearted living. Here she defines spirituality as something not reliant on religion, theology, or dogma—rather, it is a belief in our interconnectedness and in a loving force greater than ourselves. Whether you access the sacred through traditional worship, solitary meditation, communion with nature, or creative pursuits, one thing is clear: rising strong after falling is a spiritual practice that brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives. This audio program presents Brené Brown at her best—communicating with a live audience as seen by millions on her phenomenally popular TED talks.

You will begin to reconnect with your body, heart, and mind in a way that helps heal what was disrupted by trauma. This book will guide you and help you to strengthen and grow your inborn mindfulness ability.

Following the beautifully simple guidelines and “tips for practice” in Meditations for Healing Trauma will help you cultivate a wise mind and heart for regaining peace and well-being in the present moment—anytime, anyplace. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

F you sleep. Join Dr. Christopher Sowton (a Toronto naturopath and psychotherapist) as he shares five-steps to receiving the inner guidance of our dreams: Catch, Amplify, Orient, Connect, Respond. You will also notice that the dreams are reported in the present tense, not the past tense. This is also something I encourage you to practice with your own dreamwork. Keeping the dream “in the present” will help you when you re-enter the dreamscape to work with it and explore new possible directions. It fosters a sense that you are working with a living thing, a work in progress, not just a static record of something that happened in the past.

With hands-on tips and techniques, dozens of examples from the author’s psychotherapy practice, and guidance for working with twelve common dream motifs, this book shows how to facilitate dreamwork for psychological and spiritual transformation. From my years of personal experience in group therapy… I learned that we all have sub-personalities or parts, and that each of these parts has its own desires and its own agenda. I observed again and again how the parts of a person appear in his or her dreams, usually cloaked in the guise of a seemingly external figure. I began to appreciate how important dream role-playing is and how easily it lends itself to the pursuit of self-awareness and personal growth.

“Christopher Sowton has presented a book that is not only thoroughly original but incredibly comprehensive in both its width and its depth. If you apply the method so well articulated in Dreamworking, your life may never be the same again—and you will celebrate the change!” —Stanley Krippner, PhD, co-author of Extraordinary Dreams

SOLITUDE

A Singular Life in a Crowded World by Michael Harris $32.00, cloth. Doubleday. 288 pages

Governor General’s Award winner Michael Harris explores the profound emotional and intellectual benefits of solitude, and how we may achieve it in our fast-paced world. The capacity to be alone—properly alone—is one of life’s subtlest skills. Real solitude is a contented and productive state that garners tangible rewards: it allows us to reflect and recharge, improving our relationships with ourselves and, paradoxically, with others. Today, the zeitgeist embraces sharing like never before. Fueled by our dependence on online and social media, we have created an ecosystem of obsessive distraction that dangerously undervalues solitude. Many of us now lead lives of strangely crowded loneliness—we are ever-connected, but only shallowly so. Award winning author Michael Harris examines why our experience of solitude has become so impoverished, and how we may grow to love it again in the frenzy of our digital landscape. Solitude is an optimistic and encouraging story about discovering true quiet inside the city, inside the crowd, inside our busy and urbane lives. Harris guides readers away from a life of ceaseless pings toward a state of measured connectivity, one

DREAMS, EMPATHY & JUNG

that balances solitude and companionship.

THE EMPATH’S SURVIVAL GUIDE Life Strategies for Sensitive People by Judith Orloff

$30.95, cloth. Sounds True. 262 pages

What is the difference between having empathy and being an empath?

Having empathy means our heart goes out to another person in joy or pain. But for empaths it goes much further. We actually feel others’ emotions, energy, and physical symptoms in our own bodies, without the usual defenses that most people have.

With The Empath’s Survival Guide, intuitive psychiatrist and empath Judith Orloff offers a resource to help sensitive people develop healthy coping mechanisms in our high-stimulus world—while fully embracing the empath’s gifts of intuition, compassion, creativity, and spiritual connection. This practical, empowering, and loving book was created to support empaths and anyone who wants to develop their sensitivities to become more caring people in an often-insensitive world. It helps sensitive people through their unique challenges—and helps their loved ones better understand the needs and gifts of the sensitive people in their lives.

In this book Dr. Orloff offers crucial practices, including: u Self-assessment exercises to help you identify your empath type u Tools for protecting yourself from sensory overload, exhaustion, addictions, and compassion fatigue while replenishing your vital energy u Simple and effective strategies to stop absorbing stress and physical symptoms from others and protect yourself from narcissists and other energy vampires u How to find the right work and create relationships that nourish you u How to navigate intimate relationships without feeling overwhelmed u Guidance for parenting and raising empathic children u Awakening the empath’s gift of intuition, and deepening your spiritual connection to all living beings. For any sensitive person who’s been told to “grow a thick skin,” here is an invaluable resource for staying fully open while building resilience, exploring your gifts of depth and compassion, and feeling welcome and valued by a world that desperately needs what you have to offer. “Reading Judith’s book is like having a very savvy sister who teaches you the insider skills of how to deal with this perplexing and amazing talent of extreme sensitivity… This book is packed with practical hints for embracing sensitivity and turning it into a gift.” —Lorin Roche, author of The Radiance Sutras Among Judith Orloff’s other books are Emotional Freedom and The Power of Surrender.

Rich with true stories about the life-changing power of solitude, and interwoven with reporting from the world’s foremost brain researchers, psychologists and tech entrepreneurs, Solitude is a beautiful and prescriptive statement on the benefits of being alone. Also by Michael Harris is The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We`ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection.

WHY WON’T YOU APOLOGIZE?

Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts by Harriet Lerner $33.00, cloth. Scribner. 195 pages

The renowned psychologist and author of The Dance of Anger sheds new light on the two most important words in the English language—I’m sorry—and offers a unique perspective on the challenge of healing broken connections and restoring trust. Dr. Harriet Lerner has been studying apologies—and why some people won’t give them—for more than two decades. Now she offers compelling stories and solid theory that bring home how much the simple apology matters and what is required for healing when the hurt we’ve inflicted (or received) is far from simple. Readers will learn how to craft a deeply meaningful “I’m sorry” and avoid apologies that only deepen the original injury. Why Won’t You Apologize? also addresses the compelling needs of the injured party—the one who has been hurt by someone who won’t apologize, tell the truth, or feel BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

remorse. Lerner explains what drives both the non-apologizer and the over-apologizer, as well as why the people who do the worst things are the least able to own up. She helps the injured person resist pressure to forgive too easily and challenges the popular notion that forgiveness is the only path to peace of mind. With her trademark humor and wit, Lerner offers a joyful and sanity-saving guide to setting things right. Lead with your heart and not your attack dog. It’s difficult and it’s worth it. The courage to apologize, and the wisdom and clarity to do so wisely and well, is at the heart of effective leadership, coupledom, parenting, friendship, personal integrity, and what we call love. It’s hard to imagine what matters more than that.

“If you want to know why Harriet Lerner is one of my great heroes, Why Won’t You Apologize? is the answer. This book is a game changer.” —Brené Brown, author of Rising Strong “Harriet Lerner is one hell of a wise woman. She draws you in with deft and engaging prose, and then changes your life with her rigorous intelligence and her deeply human advice. I promise that you will never see ‘the apology’ in quite the same way.” —Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity

Jungian Psychology THE ORDER-DISORDER PARADOX Understanding the Hidden Side of Change in Self and Society by Nathan Schwartz-Salant

$20.95, paper. North Atlantic. 176 pages

Increasing order in a system also creates disorder: this seemingly paradoxical idea has deep roots in early cultures throughout the world, but it has been largely lost in our modern lives as we push for increasing systematization in our world and in our perF SPRING - SUMMER 2017

sonal lives. Drawing on nearly five decades of research as well as forty-five years working as a psychoanalyst, Nathan SchwartzSalant explains that, in a world where vast amounts of order are being created through the growing success of science and technology, the concomitant disorder is having devastating effects upon relationships, society, and the environment. As a Jungian analyst with training in the physical sciences, Schwartz-Salant is uniquely qualified to explore scientific conceptions of energy, information, and entropy alongside their mythical antecedents. He analyzes the possible effects of created disorder, including its negative consequences for the creator of the preceding order as well as its potentially transformative functions. With many examples of the interaction of order and disorder in everyday life and psychotherapy, The Order-Disorder Paradox makes new inroads into our understanding of the wide-ranging consequences of the order we create and its effects on others and the environment. “Drawing on a vast array of sources and a lifetime’s experience, Nathan SchwartzSalant reveals a great truth hidden at the heart of the world’s authentic mystical traditions: that all new order also creates disorder. This extraordinary work is a must-read for all those who want to understand the rhythms of life and the meanings of our contemporary chaos.” —Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism “This long-awaited book comes at just the right time—not only for psychotherapists, who will benefit greatly from its clinical insights, but also for scholars of politics and culture. This is a deeply thought-out work, the fruit of many years of reflection and patient observation.” —Murray Stein, author of Soul: Treatment and Recovery

CHANGE THE STORY OF YOUR HEALTH Using Shamanic and Jungian Techniques for Healing by Carl Greer

$23.95, paper. Findhorn. 220 pages

The story of our health (in its fullest sense) is more in our control than we might think, according to clinical psychologist, Jungian analyst, and shamanic practitioner Carl Greer. We can not only reframe our experiences but actually experience less stress, greater well-being, and even better physical health than it might appear if we are willing to identify our health story and begin rewriting it. Through journaling exercises and expanded-awareness practices, many of which involve working with and in nature, and which are influenced by Jungian and shamanic traditions, anyone can tap into hidden resources for healing and work with them effectively. Whether gaining insights and balancing energies outdoors, dialoguing and interacting with the earth or a river or lake, or working with dreams, an inner healer, or a symbol encountered on a shamanic journey, readers will find they are able to learn why they have struggled to

MYTH, MEDITATION & TEACHERS

change their habits and will be empowered to experience greater wellness within a satisfying health story. Change the Story of Your Health focuses on four key chapters of a person’s health story: u Eating and drinking and weight u Movement/exercise, flexibility, balance, stamina, and strength u Sexuality, body image and acceptance, and changes due to midlife hormonal shifts (commonly known as menopause and andropause) u Management of an acute ailment or symptoms of a chronic condition. It also helps readers revise their health stories as their health changes as a result of aging or unexpected challenges. Gaining insights into their health, letting go of what is standing in the way of optimal health and well-being, and bringing in what is needed to make a preferred new health story a reality—all are possible when readers take on the challenge of Change the Story of Your Health and begin using the practices regularly. “You will be inspired and feel motivated by the techniques he shares including journeying, dialoguing, chakra clearing, and engaging and partnering with earth, air, water, and fire to release old worn-out stories. This book will open myriad possibilities for you to discover and work with your inner healer.” —Sandra Ingerman, author of Soul Retrieval Also by Carl Greer is Change Your Story, Change Your Life. Visit carlgreer.com.

Mythology TOUCHING THE SOUL OF THE WORLD An Evening with Mythologist and Storyteller Michael Meade New on at Bastyr University, Seattle DVD by Michael Meade $26.95, DVD. Mosaic. 118 minutes

In this inspiring event, recorded at Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington on November 11, 2015, Michael Meade weaves story, myth and poetry to talk about how the modern world suffers from a loss of soul and a lack of the meaningful narratives needed to orient life and reveal psyche’s hidden resources. His palpable and potent magic includes an engrossing story (animatedly told whilst drumming) that he uses to unpack significant “gold” for us at this time. He offers that soul is the missing ingredient, the light inside the darkness, the inner quintessence that holds things together within us and holds us together with the realms of both culture and nature. This is a classic Michael Meade teaching offering, and in the form of film, it’s something many of us could easily enjoy and learn with. Mr. Meade is one of the great hidden treasures in our culture, whose hard-won soul-work with men, returning vets, contemporary wanderers, and at-risk youth has continued over many years to sweeten the world. Among Michael Meade’s books are Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul and his newest, The Genius Myth.

THE MYTHIC JOURNEY

Use, Myths, Fairy Tales, and Folklore to Explain Life’s Mysteries by Liz Greene & Juliet Sharman-Burke $24.95, paper. Weiser. 240 pages

“Myth is the original self-help psychology.” Greek gods, Norse heroes, Polynesian

tricksters, and Native American warriors— they all embody lessons for us. Since the beginning of time, human beings have relied on myths, fairy tales, and fables to evoke and explain life’s mysteries. Bringing a fresh perspective to these age-old tales, Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke reveal how seekers today can find comfort and support in the legends and lore of the past. The Mythic Journey explores the psychological themes of many mythical traditions, recounting stories from Greco-Roman, Hebraic, Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, and various Eastern civilizations. More than 50 myths are beautifully retold, and each is followed by a psychological overview explaining how we can apply the story to our own lives. The Mythic Journey is a handbook for human life, guiding readers from the conflicts of family and childhood, through problems of love, intimacy, and ambition, and ultimately “ending with death as the final mythic journey. Each part of the book can be read and reread independently of the others; but as a whole, the book takes the reader on a journey through the major rites of passage of a human life.” The purpose of this book is to show you how mythic stories and imagery can bring relief from internal conflicts and help you to discover greater depth, richness and meaning in life. One of the great healing functions of myth is to show us that we are not alone with our feelings, fears, conflicts and aspirations.

We discover that true self-knowledge comes through facing life’s challenges with courage and strength; “that beauty, talent, power, and wealth bring their own forms of suffering; and that in the darkness of loneliness, failure, and loss, we have always discovered light and new hope.”

Meditation GROUNDED AND FREE

Meditations for Embracing All of Life by Elena Brower

New on CD

$26.95, 2 CDs. Sounds True. 2.5 hours

“Inner and outer change often happen through direct action,” reflects yoga and meditation teacher Elena Brower, “but to engage with life fully, we must also be able to listen deeply and receive.” With Grounded and Free, you will learn how to use receptivity and tenderness to nurture roots of stability and centeredness that will serve you through your most challenging trials and storms. This immersive audio program includes two sessions: Grounded—practices for cultivating listening, attentiveness, compassion, and the ability to be vulnerable and responsive. Free—helps you to identify the emotions and beliefs that may be limiting you, and meditations to hold and balance them with intention, kindness, and courage. “What we are most afraid of is the gateway to our freedom.” Here, you are invited to enter that realm with courage and kindness—to evolve and embrace the full wonder of your life. Also by Elena Brower is the beautiful yoga workbook, Art of Attention. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

JOY ON DEMAND

The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within by Chade-Meng Tan

$18.50, paper. HarperCollins. 230 pges, b/w illustrations, cartoons

A nimble follow-up to Tan’s bestselling Search Inside Yourself shows us how to cultivate joy within the context of our fast-paced lives and explains why it is critical to creativity, innovation, confidence, and ultimately success in every arena. In Joy on Demand, Chade-Meng Tan shows that you don’t need to meditate for hours, days, months or years to achieve lasting joy—you can actually get consistent access to it in as little as fifteen seconds. Explaining joy and meditation as complementary things that naturally reinforce each other, Meng explains how these two skills form a virtuous cycle, and once put into motion, become a solid practice that can be sustained in daily life. In this book, we will explore this relationship and ways to initiate the turning of this powerful, joyful, virtuous cycle. It is through this cycle that we eventually arrive where the masters of happiness are, where every moment is the happiest of our lives because we always have joy on demand.

For many years, meditation has been taught and practiced in cultures where almost all meditators practice full-time for years, resulting in training programs optimized for practitioners with lots of free time and not much else to do but develop profound mastery over the mind. Seeing a disconnect between the traditional practice and the modern world, the bestselling author and Google’s “Jolly Good Fellow” has developed a program, through “wise laziness,” to help readers meditate more efficiently and effectively. Meng shares the three pillars of joy (inner peace, insight, and happiness), why joy is the secret is to success, and demonstrates the practical tools anyone can use to cultivate it on demand. Happiness was not something that came naturally to me—it was a skill I had to learn… I started meditating because I was miserable enough to try anything… To meditate, you just need to have a mind. To practice meditation is to practice with our mind, to get better at doing certain things with it, such as experiencing joy… Happiness is trainable, one joyful moment at a time.

Western Spiritual Teachers & Teachings THE ALCHEMY OF FREEDOM The Philosophers’ Stone and the Secrets of Existence by A.H. Almaas

$24.95, paper. Shambhala. 198 pages

Well-known spiritual teacher A. H. Almaas, originator of the Diamond Approach, here uses the metaphor of the mysterious philosopher’s stone to discuss a tremendous liberating power that leads to endless enlightenment. For millennia alchemists sought the philosophers’ stone, the miracle substance believed to be the key to all the secrets of existence. The quest F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

was fueled by some of the prime questions of human existence: What am I? Why am I here? How has this world come to be? A. H. Almaas shows that the tremendous liberating power of the mysterious philosophers’ stone is closer to us than we realize. In fact, it is the true nature of all reality—in all times and all places, without being limited to being anything in particular. Through the philosophers’ stone, real transformation can happen, our consciousness can become free, and we can open to all the possibilities of reality. This place of not-seeking and not-finding is like coming full circle back to the simplicity of human life. We are simply human beings living normal lives, but now expressing the qualities of true nature— sensitivity and love and awareness, compassion and appreciation, recognizing the preciousness of life and the preciousness of human beings and the preciousness of our environment and the preciousness of all beings. We seek until we don’t need to. We keep finding and finding until we realize the point is not a matter of finding anything in particular, because it is all reality.

Almaas discusses the factors that are involved in igniting the catalytic property of the philosophers’ stone and then begins to unpack the properties of true nature when it is free of constraints. Finally, we are left with the revelation that true nature is endlessly knowable, and yet nothing we can know or say about it exhausts its mystery and power. The result is a new understanding of what liberation and practice are—and a view of what it’s like when seeking ceases and life becomes a process of continual discovery. We begin to appreciate that the freedom of reality expressed in the complete and fulfilled life all human beings seek—and few find—is actually the simplicity of the ordinary. “The inconceivable voidness’s compassionate clearlight way seems to unfold him as its oracular mirror. A great gift of a book!” —Robert Thurman Among Almaas’s books are The Unfolding Now and Runaway Realization.

VASTER THAN SKY, GREATER THAN SPACE

What You Are Before You Became by Mooji

$22.95, paper. Sounds True. 254 pages

What if all that you believe yourself to be—your body, mind, emotions, and conditioning—is actually what you are not? What if this is merely a self-portrait shaped by false identification, habit, and assumptions? In ever-growing gatherings worldwide, the revered teacher Mooji has opened the eyes of thousands through his rare ability to shine light on the ineffable with uncommon clarity, humour, and warmth. With Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space—a book compiled from his living dialogues and arranged by subject—Mooji uses deep inquiry, insights, wisdom teachings, and parables to inspire and compel us to discover our true nature as pure awareness. By offering direct pointings to Truth while addressing the common challenges that arise in our daily lives, Mooji reveals the timeless, boundless love and freedom that is the natural perfume of who we truly are. We feel that the sense of ourselves as the doer of actions must be in place in order for things to get done. However, when we are quiet—meaning when we don’t engage with thought activity and instead rest in the natural sense of being—we quickly discov-

CONTEMPORARY TEACHERS & TEACHINGS

er that the vital force expresses by itself, and it does so spontaneously, without any intention whatsoever. If you truly give this a chance, you will experience the beauty and harmony of life when you are rooted in being rather than in doing.

Mooji is a direct disciple in the lineage of the great Advaita Vedanta master Poonjaji and the great sage Sri Ramana Maharshi. From the first encounter, his presence compels people to question their very nature and existence. He combines wit and wisdom in a way that will appeal to fans of Gangaji, Ram Dass, and Adyashanti. In the spirit of the times, Mooji has a strong online fan base and social media platform!: Mooji.org.

THE LEAP

The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening by Steve Taylor, with a foreword by Eckhart Tolle

$22.95, paper. New World Library. 292 pages

Many assume that enlightenment, or “awakening” as the author terms it, is out of the ordinary and extremely rare— the result of arduous effort— such as fasting, long deep meditation or yoga practice, travel to holy places, encounters with teachers thought to be enlightened themselves. But here— in a book in New World Library’s Eckhart Tolle editions series— Steve Taylor shows that ordinary people— from all walks of life and every age and place—can and do regularly experience awakening. Taylor seeks out the common features of these diverse experiences. His resulting cross-cultural investigation of spirituality, belief, and human psychology shows how spiritual awakening—a shift into a more expansive and harmonious state of being —can be both recognized and cultivated. How is it triggered and experienced? How do people feel in the midst? How are their relationships and goals affected? This book describes how I came to learn that spiritual awakening is far from uncommon. It describes how I came to learn that it doesn’t just happen to Eastern sages but to seemingly ordinary people in all walks of life. It describes how, after a number of encounters with ordinary awakened people, I began to study spiritual awakening as a psychologist… I began to see [awakening] as a particular state of mind and being that could be interpreted in terms of spiritual traditions but didn’t necessarily belong to them…. The shift into wakefulness most often occurs—according to my research—outside these traditions.

Because the qualities of experience Taylor describes are at once unique to those who experience them and ordinarily available to one and all, this is a rare work that both describes and inspires. The term Leap has both an individual and a collective meaning. On an individual level, it refers to the shift out of an ordinary state of being into the more expansive higher-functioning state of wakefulness… Also , we’re speaking of an evolutionary leap. We examine the evidence that this collective Leap is already underway and suggest that what we know as wakefulness could be the next phase in the evolution of consciousness on our planet.

Also by Steve Taylor: Waking from Sleep.

Jeff Foster’s Here

THE DEEPEST ACCEPTANCE Radical Awakening in Ordinary Life by Jeff Foster

New in Paperback

$21.50, paper. Sounds True. 304 pages

How can we bring an effortless yes to this moment? How do we stop running from “the mess of life”—our predicaments, our frustrations, our pain, even our search for liberation—and start flowing with all of it, as it is? In small venues throughout the UK and Europe, a young teacher named Jeff Foster is quietly awakening a new generation of spiritual inquirers to the experience of abiding presence and peace in our ever-shifting world. His informal gatherings, blogs, and “kitchen-table video posts” have created a rising tide of interest in his teachings. I teach one thing and one thing only: a deep and fearless acceptance of whatever comes your way. This is not passive surrender or cold detachment, but an intelligent and creative emergence into the mystery of the moment.

With The Deepest Acceptance, Jeff Foster invites us to discover the ocean of who we are: an awareness that has already allowed every wave of emotion and experience to arrive. While Jeff delightfully admits the irony of writing a book to convey something that is be-

yond words to teach, here he confirms his ability to guide us in unexpected new ways to a space of absolute acceptance and joy—no matter what’s happening in our lives. Candid, thoughtful, humorous—and deeply compassionate toward those searching for a way out of suffering—this refreshingly ordinary guy inspires us to stop trying to “do” acceptance. Remember, feeling something “all the time” is simply not possible in the ocean that you are… Pain is never a thing in your body. It’s always much more alive that than… you find a dance of present-moment sensations, shapes, textures, temperatures, which, in the end, you cannot put into words… Simply relax all descriptions, and explore from there. Without the story, do you really have any way of knowing what pain is? And we can go even further: without the story, do you really have any way of knowing what sensations actually are?... Everything is made of what you are.

“The Deepest Acceptance is the story of a merciful awareness, which offers us the heart’s inborn destination we were born to discover. Love is the highest form of acceptance. Judgment is the mechanics of non-acceptance.”—Stephen Levine, author of A Year to Live. Also by Jeff Foster is The Way of Rest. More info: lifewithoutacentre.com.

In addition, several renowned teachers book The Way of Rest. Here, Jeff presents two hours of teachings and meditations that help us to meet Meditations ourselves—and everything else—right now, just as for Embracing Everything we are. by Jeff Foster Welcome medicine for both new seekers and more $26.95, 2 CDs. Sounds True. 2 hours experienced travelers along the spiritual path, these The heart can hold everything—our joys and our inviting sessions are meant to offer inspiration and a sorrows, our victories and our failures, our deepreturn to peace with each listening. Guided practices est fears and longings. “The heart is an unlimited include a grounding breath meditation, a meditation room,” teaches Jeff Foster. “Embrace is all it knows.” on sense perceptions, a meditation on presence, and The Courage to Love brings listeners an audio-learna body-scan exercise. ing program to complement the insights in his recent

and Back to Sanity.

THE COURAGE TO LOVE

SACRED AS YOU ARE

Depression as a Call to Spiritual Awakening by Jeff Foster

New on CD

$26.95, 2 CDs. Sounds True. 2 hours

Many classical stories of spiritual awakening involve a passage through extreme darkness—or what’s known as depression today. Jeff Foster’s story is no different. “Life brought me to my knees in order to shock me into asking the most profound questions,” he explains. “Depression made me surrender and begin again.”

THE GRACE IN LIVING

Recognize It, Trust It, Abide in It by Kathleen Dowling Singh $24.95, paper. Wisdom. 282 pages

Author Kathleen Dowling Singh (who also wrote The Grace in Dying and The Grace in Dying) presents an opportunity to view and reflect upon our lives in a new way—as an already unfolding awakening. The Grace in Living offers not only a deep, contemplative read, it invites the reader into engaging in the exercise of spiritual biography. Spiritual biography allows us to recognize the ever-presence of grace in our lives. Recognizing it, we can begin to trust it and, then, consciously abide in it as we continue our journey of endlessly deepening realization. The Grace in Living provides a view of four stages of the spiritual path as well as instructions for understanding our own unique awakening journey. The four stages are: First Quarter: From Tasting to Hunger Second Quarter: From Seeking to the End of Seeking Third Quarter: Healing into Maturity Fourth Quarter: Ripening BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Sacred As You Are brings listeners two audio sessions to help us find freedom from identification with the past and future, embrace the full range of our feelings and experiences, and reconnect with the healing power of the present moment. Jeff Foster shares from his own awakened experience a way out of seeking fulfillment in the future and into the miracle of “all this, here and now.” Among his books are The Deepest Acceptance and Extraordinary Absence.

from across wisdom traditions share their spiritual biography for inspiration and as illustration of the process. Among them are Rodney Smith (principal teacher at Seattle Insight Meditation Society), Cynthia Bourgeault (principal teacher at The Contemplative Society), and Llewellyn VaughanLee (founder, The Golden Sufi Center). Others featured in this book are Sherry Ruth Anderson, Prakash Mackay, and Ellen Kympton. I suggest you spend some time with the first part, that you read it contemplatively. It provides a context for understanding the progression of a spiritual journey and, perhaps, some new ways of looking at the ordinariness and accessibility of awakening. It is not written for forward movement—point building on point. It’s written for deeper movement, into our own longing, our own essence. Reading it contemplatively will allow you to notice where your own depths resonate. The second part of the book, the awakening stories of others, offers a rarely shared intimacy with the inner experiences of waking up. In conversations with me, deeply respected spiritual teachers and longtime practitioners shared their reflections of their own journeys… Their sharings are filled with wisdom and offer a great many moments worthy of pause and reflection.

This book—along with your contemplaF SPRING - SUMMER 2017

tion/creation of your own spiritual biography, which is a “participatory” third part of the book—offers both encouragement and the wisdom of a radically new view of your life. “An instruction manual for opening our hearts to a richer, more joyful life. It’s difficult to imagine anyone who wouldn’t benefit from this luminous book.” —Larry Dossey, author of One Mind

PRESENCE, VOLUME 2

The Intimacy of All Experience by Rupert Spira

$28.95, paper. New Harbinger. 192 pages

These essays by Rupert Spira are both timeless and contemporary: potent and revelatory expressions of non-dual understanding in a way that is free of cultural baggage and that is accessible and relevant to us ordinary folks. All that is known is experiencing, and experiencing is not divided into one part (an inside self) that experiences and another part (an outside object, other, or world) that is experienced. Experiencing is seamless and intimate, made

SPIRITUAL TEACHERS

Scott Kiloby’s Here Too THE UNFINDABLE INQUIRY

One Simple Tool to Overcome Feelings of Unworthiness & Find Inner Peace by Scott Kiloby $23.95, paper. Non-Duality. 210 pages

This book presents the Unfindable Inquiry, the central tool of the Living Inquiries approach to non-dual self-inquiry—a process author Scott Kiloby developed to help us overcome our false sense of separation and the all-toocommon, deep-seated belief that we’re not good enough. With this powerful blend of psychology and spirituality, you’ll come to understand that the separate, deficient self cannot be found. What you’ll find instead is a profound sense of peace. Many of us carry an ingrained belief that we’re somehow inadequate and that we’re separate and alone, which can lead to a general dissatisfaction with life, conflicts with others, and an estrangement from ourselves that causes us to look outward for what we feel is lacking. When we look outside rather than looking within, it’s easy to find ways to confirm our false beliefs about ourselves. With the Living Inquiries, you’ll be able to see your mistaken belief in “my” core deficient self and realize the essential oneness that exists in the here and now. Starting with the Boomerang

NATURAL REST FOR ADDICTION

A Radical Approach to Recovery Through Mindfulness and Awareness by Scott Kiloby $23.95, paper. New Harbinger. 224 pages

Freedom from addiction is available in the one place that’s the most difficult for an addict (and let’s face it, we’re all addicts in one way or another) to be—the present moment. In Natural Rest for Addiction, non-duality teacher and addiction specialist Scott Kiloby offers his Natural Rest program for finding recovery from substance abuse—and addictions of all kinds—through the mindful practice of Resting Presence. If you struggle with alcoholism, drug dependency, or some other form of addiction, you know all too well the urges and cravings that drive your habit. Addiction tells you that something is wrong, that you need something outside of yourself to make you well, something to fill the sense of deficiency you carry inside. These feelings are often tied to deep emotional trauma, anxiety, depression, or pain held in the body that has never fully been acknowledged. But what if you could learn to relax into awareness and

THE ART OF FINDING YOURSELF

Live Bravely and Awaken to Your True Nature by Fiona Robertson, with foreword by Scott Kiloby $23.95, paper. Non-Duality. 105 pages

In The Art of Finding Yourself , author Fiona Robertson— senior facilitator and of Scott Kiloby’s Living Inquiries method of self-inquiry and exploration—reflects on her own experience of discovering and living with this life-changing process. The Living Inquiries invite you on an inner journey to examine and dispel the stories that make you feel separate, inadequate, or otherwise wrong. With this book, you’ll begin to learn how to deal with “the stuff of life” both before and after that false sense of self and separation has faded. Our identities are built on the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences, other people, and the world, and on the beliefs that we’re truly separate beings and that there’s something wrong with us—the roots of all suffering. But when you have the courage to really inquire, you discover that your story is not the whole truth, your self-image is not real, and even your woundedness is not what

of knowing or awareness alone. This intimacy, in which there is no room for selves, objects, or others, is love itself. It lies at the heart of all experience, completely available under all circumstances. * The apparent self tries to relieve the suffering in the world, without realizing that the suffering it is trying to relieve is inherent in and created by its view of itself as a separate inside entity, amongst many others, in an outside world. The separate, inside self does not suffer. It is the activity of suffering. This imaginary self cannot cure the problem because it, with all of its projects, is the problem. However, the separate self is only a problem from its own imaginary point of view. Without this separate self there is

Inquiry and the Panorama Inquiry, two self-inquisitive processes of the Living Inquiries, you’ll learn to identify and explore the stories you tell yourself that underlie the challenges and disharmony you experience. Then, once you’ve cracked the foundation of the false deficient self, you’ll use the Unfindable Inquiry and one simple question— Is that you? —to reveal that you are not who or what you’ve taken yourself to be. No matter what it is you struggle with—anxiety, depression, relationships, trauma, addiction—it’s likely that painful self-judgments, and the belief that you’re separate from the world around you, are at the root of your suffering. With The Unfindable Inquiry , you’ll discover how to finally be free from your false sense of self and separation, and experience a more fulfilling life. As you use the inquiries, the mind clears. Thoughts, when they arise, are quieter and more transparent. You no longer mistake them for who or what you are. As the mind clears, the heart area begins to open on its own. You feel emotions more immediately, as soon as they arise, with no need to label them or identify with them. Remember, though, that using the inquiries is not about achieving self-improvement, gaining enlightenment, or creating a better version of your core story. Selflessness is seen to be your natural state, and relationship is no longer a source of suffering, seeking, or conflict.

accept the difficult thoughts, emotions, and sensations that make you feel like you need to do something—anything—to change your experience? This book will guide you, step by step, into the natural, open, peaceful awareness that is available to you at all times. Using the mindfulness-based Natural Rest program for recovery, you’ll learn how to tap into this present-moment awareness throughout the day, relieving yourself of worries about the future or past by allowing your thoughts and feelings to come and go as they are, without grasping at or trying to control them. You’ll also learn about the Living Inquiries, a process of self-inquiry developed by Scott Kiloby to target the beliefs, trauma, compulsions, and triggers that keep you trapped in the cycle of suffering and seeking. At the heart of addiction is a constant, desperate desire to alter what you’re feeling, to escape from the here and now, to find relief. With Natural Rest for Addiction, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the complex issues that underlie addictive behavior and learn how to find peace, freedom, and well-being in the present, one moment at a time. you thought it was. All that’s left is truth: you are not the person you’ve taken yourself to be, and you’re certainly not alone. With the Living Inquiries, you have an effective, structured method for realizing that you are not separate or deficient. In The Art of Finding Yourself , Robertson shares how her own sense of suffering—especially the deep, painful belief that there was something wrong with her—led her to the Living Inquiries, and what this self-inquisitive process looks like in real life. In reflecting on her own personal journey, she helps you explore and unravel the stories that keep you feeling isolated and not good enough. “Living the inquiries” means approaching life without protecting your story, defending your self-image, or hiding from your deepest pain. It’s living with no added analysis, interpretation, judgment, or theorizing, and it can transform your life!

With this book, you’ll discover what it means to realize you are not the separate self you thought you were, and find engaging, insightful reflections on how to move forward in life using the transformative Living Inquiries.

no world, no humanity, no others, as they are normally conceived, to save. In fact, there is no problem. Ironically, it is this understanding that is truly humane and compassionate, that truly helps the world. Of course, the separate self is often offended when it hears this because its own imaginary identity is being exposed. We may even feel frustration or anger when we hear this. But this frustration is a gift from our true self or aware Presence to itself, because it reveals the seed of separation. It is this seed that flourishes as all the various forms of suffering.

Also by Rupert Spira is Presence, Volume 1: The Art of Peace and Happiness. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

THE TRANSPARENCY OF THINGS

Contemplating the Nature of Experience by Rupert Spira $27.95, paper. New Harbinger. 243 pages

The purpose of The Transparency of Things is to look clearly and simply at the nature of experience, without any attempt to change it. A series of contemplations leads us gently but directly to see that our essential nature is neither a body nor a mind. It is the conscious Presence that is aware of this current experience. As such, it is nothing that can be experienced as an object, and yet it is undeniably present. However, these contemplations go much further than this. As we take our stand knowingly as this conscious Presence that we alF SPRING - SUMMER 2017

ways already are, and reconsider the objects of the body, mind, and world, we find that they do not simply appear to this Presence; they appear within it. And further exploration reveals that they do not simply appear within this Presence but as this Presence. Finally, we are led to see that it is in fact this very Presence that takes the shape of our experience from moment to moment while always remaining only itself. We see that our experience is and has only ever been one seamless totality, with no separate entities, objects, or parts anywhere to be found. “In The Transparency of Things, Rupert Spira not only distils the essence of this inquiry into everyday language; he does so without reference to any metaphysics or esoteric doctrines. He appeals only to our direct experience, encouraging the reader to dive into the personal investigation of what it means to be aware. If you do, you will find yourself tasting the realization enjoyed by the awakened ones throughout the ages.” — Peter Russell, author of From Science to God

THE USER’S GUIDE TO SPIRITUAL TEACHERS Open Your Heart, Discern the Truth, Practice Wisely by Scott Edelstein

$21.95, paper. Wisdom. 160 pages, 4x6

The User’s Guide to Spiritual Teachers is a necessary book for anyone who has, or wants to have, a spiritual teacher—regardless of faith or tradition. This book addresses concerns that many of us have on the spiritual path, including how to find a spiritual teacher, how to manage expectations about what they can do, and pitfalls to look out for. Edelstein offers valuable perspectives that will be useful to spiritual teachers and students of any tradition, as well as teachers-in-training and the institutional leadership of spiritual communities and practice centers. When, on occasion, I become emphatic, it’s to stress the seriousness of what I have to say… Here is my most vital advice for learning from any spiritual teacher. Show up; pay close attention to what you see and hear; then test it all against what your heart, mind, and gut tell you. This mindful discernment is the single most important skill for navigating any student-teacher relationship—as well as the turbulent waters of life in general.

Spiritual teachers of all traditions will themselves find this book incredibly useful as they reflect on how they benefit their students or may be overstepping their boundaries and actually creating harm. This is your place to look for information, inspiration, sanity, and words of caution. This timely little book offers chapters on Expectations, Assumption, and Misconceptions; Relating to Your Teacher; Red Flags and Warning Signs; Some FAQs; Life Balance; Spiritual Community; Saying Goodbye, and more. “Belongs in the hands of every new spiritual seeker.” —Pat Enkyo O’Hara, abbot of Village Zendo in NY.

JP SEARS, ALAN WATTS, AND DYING

Scott Edelstein is “simply someone who has been in several long-term student-teacher relationships; who has closely observed many other such relationships; who has interacted with many spiritual teachers off duty; and who is able to write about student-teacher relationships honestly and, I hope articulately.”

HOW TO BE ULTRA SPIRITUAL

12 1/2 Steps to Spiritual Superiority by JP Sears

$22.95, paper. Sounds True. 251 pages, b/w illustrations $54.00, 7 CDs. 7 hours, 53 minutes (unabridged)

Welcome to the Glorious Grandeur of Ultra Spirituality… JP Sears is an emotional healing coach, curious student of life, a satirist known for his YouTube channel, AwakenwithJP. com. In case you haven’t noticed, the New Age has become the Old Age. But don’t recycle your crystals just yet! His Enlightenedness JP Sears is ushering in the Newer Age, blinding us with the dawn-like brilliance that is Ultra Spirituality. How to Be Ultra Spiritual presents Ultra Spiritual JP’s none-of-akind guidance, so you can better yourself through teachings on: u Competitive spirituality—the Ultra Spiritual foundation that the rest of your Ultra Spiritual path rests on u Why burying your feelings alive makes you thrive u Dreaming up your awakening—how to engineer your carefully contrived spiritual narrative u Rigidly yogic yoga—the moisture-filled cloud formation that drops rain upon your river so your flow can flow u Following the light to the greener spiritual pastures of veganism u He-ness, financial levity, deathliness, and other qualities of the quality guru u Mindfullessness—all of the fullness of mindfulness with none of the mind u Merciless meditation—the most effective way to become more meditative (and, duh, more spiritual) u Accessing the forces of critical nonjudgment u Using plant spirit medicine to experience a degree of enlightenment that you aren’t enlightened enough to experience without the spirit who lives inside its particular vegetation u Humbleness, and how to employ it in the most superior sense of the word. With How to Be Ultra Spiritual, His Enlightenedness JP Sears brings the heart and soul of ancient spirituality back to life with a progressive aggression, replacing the diluted uselessness of modern spirituality with the waaay more spiritual wisdom of Ultra Spirituality. See if you can keep up . . . “Loaded with Laugh-Out-Loud humor… an intelligent exploration of the spiritual delusions many fall prey to. Enjoy JP’s perceptive underlying insights while you laugh beyond all understanding.” —Tony Robbins

Dying & Grieving GRIEF IS A JOURNEY

Finding Your Path through Loss by Kennth Doka

$22.00, paper. Atria Books. 292 pages

In this volume of rare sensitivity and penetrating understanding, Dr. Kenneth Doka

Alan Watts: Just So OUT OF YOUR MIND

Impermanence by Any Name.

Ticksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide-and-Seek by Alan Watts $22.95, paper. Sounds True. 176 pages

In order to come to your senses, Alan Watts often said, you sometimes need to go out of your mind. Perhaps more than any other teacher in the West, this former Anglican priest and self-described spiritual entertainer was responsible for igniting the passion of countless wisdom seekers for the spiritual and philosophical delights of Asia and India. For the first time in print, Out of Your Mind brings readers some of Watts’ pinnacle teachings for expanding our awareness and appreciation of the Great Game unfolding all around us. Born from recordings of Alan Watts captivating live presentations, this new book captures the true scope of this incomparable teacher in action. Follow this brilliant and lively thinker down the cosmic rabbit hole. Some chapter topics are: Cosmological Models of the World The Eternal Transaction Levels of Perception The Web as Trap The Web as Play Attachment and Control Hypnosis and Habituation Harmonious Dissolution Nonduality in Action A Great Doubt Hindu Cosmology

by Alan Watts

$21.00, paper. New World. 192 pages

Before he became a counterculture hero, Alan Watts was known as an incisive scholar of Eastern and Western psychology and philosophy. In this 1963 classic, Watts demonstrates his deep understanding of both Western (Freudian/Jungian) psychotherapy and Eastern spiritual philosophies. Throughout his career, he examined the problem of humans in a seemingly hostile universe in ways that questioned the social norms and the illusions that bind and constrict modern people. Making a groundbreaking synthesis, Watts asserted that the powerful insights of Freud and Jung—which had, indeed, brought psychiatry close to the edge of liberation—could, if melded with the hitherto secret wisdom of the Eastern traditions, free humans from the battle with the self. If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Tao-

JUST SO

An Odyssey Into the Cosmic Web of Connection, Play, and True Pleasure by Alan Watts New on CD

Alan Watts (1915-1973, alanwatts.org) has inspired generations of spiritual seekers and, through his books and recordings, continues to enthrall new readers and listeners to this day.

If you were God, what kind of universe would you create? A perfect one free of suffering and drama? Or one filled with surprise and delight?

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Eastern spiritual philosophies sparked in the West profound new ways of perceiving ourselves and the mysteries of reality. And from his first radio talks and live seminars of that era, Alan Watts was at the forefront—engaging, inspiring, and delighting listeners of all ages and beliefs. With Just So, Watts illuminates three often-overlooked yet essential universals: connection, play, and pleasure. This exceptional collection includes three complementary seminars: u The Cosmic Network–on the interconnected web of the personal and the infinite u Ecological Awareness—reflections on how humanity and nature evolve through discovery and “purposeless” play explores a new, compassionate way to grieve, explaining that grief is not an illness to get over but an individual and ongoing journey. There is no one-size-fits-all way to cope with loss. The vital bonds that we form with those we love in life continue long after death in very different ways. Grief Is a JourBRANCHES OF LIGHT F

For those both new and familiar with Alan Watts, this book invites us to delve into his favorite pathways out of the trap of conventional awareness, including: The art of the “controlled accident”—what happens when you stop taking your life so seriously and start enjoying it with complete sincerity How we come to believe “the myth of myself”—that we are skin-encapsulated egos separate from the world around us—and how to transcend that illusion Unconventional and refreshing insights into the deeper principles of Buddhism, Hinduism, Western philosophy, Christianity, and quite a bit more! Alan Watts (1915-1973) wrote many books, among them The Wisdom of Insecurity and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. ism, Vedanta and yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy.

PSYCHOTHERAPY EAST AND WEST

$135.00, 12 CDs. Sounds True. 10 hours, 32 minutes

This is the nature of change. If you resist it, you have dukkha. You have frustration and suffering. But on the other hand, if you understand change, you don’t cling to it and you let it flow. Then it’s no problem—it becomes positively beautiful… There’s a Chinese poem that says, “The wind drops, but the petals keep falling. The bird calls, and the mountain becomes more mysterious.” Isn’t that strange? There’s no wind anymore, yet petals are dropping and the bird in the canyon cries, and that one sound in the mountains brings out the silence with a wallop. Slight impermanences bring out change, and they give you this very strange sense—yugen, the mystery of change.

This synthesis is as powerful now as it was then—and is ripe for revival.

The ways of liberation make it very clear that life is not going anywhere, because it is already there. In other words, it is playing, and those who do not play with it have simply missed the point… The liberative artist plays the part of Orpheus by living in the mode of music instead of the mode of language. His entire activity is dancing, rhythm for its own sake, and in this way he becomes a vortex which draws others into its pattern. He charms their attention from then to now, absorbing them into a rhythm in which survival ceases to be the criterion of value. It is by this attraction, and not by direction or commandment, that he is sought out as a teacher in the way of liberation… The high art, the upaya, of a true bodhisattva is possible only for one who has gone beyond all need for self-justification; for so long as there is something to prove, some ax to grind, there is no dance.

u The Pursuit of Pleasure—how a true materialism

connects us fully through our senses with others and to the natural flow of the cosmos. Along the way, you’ll explore many other themes, at turns humorous, prophetic, and more relevant today than ever. What unfolds is a liberating view of life that arises from possibility and the unpredictable—perfect and “just so” not in spite of its messy imperfections, but because of them. This is vintage Alan at his lucid, droll, delightfully turned-on best. Highlights: u “The Which of which there is no whicher”—or, how modern life separates us from truly living, and how to find our way back u The emergent, self-organizing, “no-one-in-charge” intelligence of nature u On taking yourself not too seriously, but more sincerely u Discovering your place in the great flow of boundless and interconnected being u The subtle art of authentic and fully felt pleasure u Dancing versus plowing your way to fulfillment, and more. Among Alan Watts’s many books are The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, The Wisdom of Insecurity and The Joyous Cosmology.

ney is the first book to overturn prevailing, often judgmental, ideas about grief and replace them with a hopeful, inclusive, personalized, and research-backed approach. New science and studies upend the dominant but incorrect view that grief proceeds by stages. F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Dr. Doka helps us realize that our experiences following a death are far more individual and much less predictable than the conventional five stages model would have us believe. Common patterns of experiencing and expressing grief still prevail, yet many other life changes accompany a pri-

FRANK OSTASESKI, RALPH METZNER, KEN WILBER

mary loss. For example, the deaths of parents, even for adults, modify family patterns, change relationships, and alter old family rituals. While the experience of loss is universal, the reactions to that loss are as distinct and individual as you are. Everyone grieves each individual loss in a unique way.

Unique to this book, Dr. Doka also explains how to cope with disenfranchised grief—the types of loss that are not so readily recognized or supported by society. These include the death of ex-spouses, as well as non-fatal losses such as divorce, the end of a friendship, job loss, or infertility. In addition, he considers losses that might be stigmatized, including death by suicide or from disease or self-destructive behaviors such as smoking or alcoholism. And finally, Grief is a Journey reminds us that, though strange and painful, grief provides significant opportunities for growth of soul and character that, looking back, we can know were essential.

THE FIVE INVITATIONS

Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski

$38.99, cloth. Picador. 288 pages

Pioneering Zen Hospice caregiver Frank Ostaseski’s stirring book, The Five Invitations, is an exhilarating meditation on the meaning of life and how maintaining an ever-present awareness of death can bring us closer to our truest selves. He dedicates the book to his mentor, Stephen Levine, and begins the book with this: Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight, helping us to discover what matters most. And the good news is we don’t have to wait until the end of our lives to realize the wisdom that death has to offer.

In his thirty-plus years as a companion to the dying, Frank Ostaseski has sat on the precipice of death with more than a thousand people. A renowned teacher of compassionate caregiving and the co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, Ostaseski has distilled the lessons gleaned over the course of his career into The Five Invitations : a powerful and inspiring exploration of the essential wisdom dying has to impart to all of us. The Five Invitations: u Don’t wait u Welcome everything, push away nothing u Bring your whole self to the experience u Find a place of rest in the middle of things u Cultivate a don’t know mind will, if lived, show us how death can be the guide we need to wake up fully to our lives. They are five mutually supportive principles, permeated with love. They have served me as reliable guides for coping with death. And, as it turns out, they are equally relevant guides to living a life of integrity… I think of these as five bottomless practices that can be continually explored and deepened. They have little value as theories. To be understood, they have to be lived into and realized through action.

These five invitations can be understood as best practices for anyone coping with loss

or navigating any sort of transition or crisis; they guide us toward appreciating life’s preciousness. Rachel Naomi Remen in her foreword: The great depth of experience he brings to this book can only be accumulated by those who are fearless, who have found their way to stillness and presence, who possess an ability to connect to the heart and soul of others, and who are blessed with the gift of story for sharing the road traveled. The Five Invitations is filled with stories so profound that they function as a compass, a way to travel an unknown road to a desired destination. Many of the true stories in this book can be read as parables, wisdom stories that enable us all to live more purposefully and wisely in many diverse circumstances… This book is not someone’s ideas or beliefs about what the experience of dying is and means. It is a sharing of deep experience by a superbly aware observer. It invites you to grow your eyes… I am reminded that death, like love, is intimate, and that intimacy is the condition of the deepest learning.

Ken Wilber’s Back

THE RELIGION OF TOMORROW

A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions —More Inclusive, More Comprehensive, More Complete by Ken Wilber $53.95, cloth. Shambhala. 778 pages

As the world’s religions increasingly lose followers, Integral philosopher Ken Wilber asks how humanity can evolve future religions that have discarded their dying forms, while retaining the changeless truths upon which they were founded. Exoteric religions have lost influence primarily because their myths are simply untenable to many people today. The only hope lies in the “inner teachings” of the great traditions, the goal of which is an Awakening to the Ultimate Reality that is every being’s True Nature. But for these traditions to attract and inspire modern men and women, they must incorporate the extraordinary number of scientific truths learned about human nature in just the past 100 years—about the mind and brain, emotions, and the growth of consciousness—that the ancients were simply unaware of and thus unable to include in their meditative systems. Using Buddhism as an example, Wilber demonstrates how his comprehensive Integral Approach—which is already being applied to several world religions—can avert a “cultural disaster of unparalleled proportions”—the utter neglect of the glorious upper reaches of human potential by the materialistic postmodern worldview. This is humanity’s one and only discovery of something that, once experienced, individuals almost unanimously claim to be an ultimate Reality, an Absolute Truth, the most real and most certain experience that they have ever had. This is the precious jewel that we must not let perish… This is the Truth that we must not let die.

Transpersonal Psychology

In his final “Conclusion: The Evolution of Nonduality,” he writes:

THE ECOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS The Alchemy of Personal, Collective, and Planetary Transformation by Ralph Metzner $41.95, paper. New Harbinger. 642 pages, b/w illustrations

Who are we, really? In The Ecology of Consciousness, an elder/pioneer in the field of consciousness studies—well known for his groundbreaking psychedelic research with Ram Dass and Timothy Leary at Harvard in the early 1960s—presents an expansive work culminating decades of experiential research in Eastern philosophy, shamanism, and more—to guide you along the path of true consciousness and transformation. In presenting this work, I want to express my gratitude and appreciation to the fellow explorers, students, and friends with whom I have had the privilege of collaboratively exploring these realms of consciousness that go far beyond what our modern worldview regards as real or possible.

Questions surrounding consciousness have intrigued humankind throughout time, and have been addressed through a wide range of perspectives and traditions. From age-old philosophies to New Age spirituality, consciousness—and its various forms—has been the topic of much contemplation. This unique book is a comprehensive exploration that covers a wide range of disciplines and subjects within the framework of psycho-spiritual and consciousness studies. The Ecology of Consciousness revives ancient alchemic knowledge, spiritual traditions, and thoughtful theories about consciousness—drawing on ancient Eastern philosophy, shamanism, mythology, and other sources, and covering topics such as personal growth and reincarnation—to give you an expansive foundation for self-inquiry and transformation. This book will give you a deeper understanding of consciousness, show you how to access your own spiritual intelligence, teach you about shamanic, alchemic, and divinatory traditions and connect them to healBRANCHES OF LIGHT F

We will look back on this (and all previous) ages as being the Darker-than-Dark Ages, which was followed by the dawn of a new Light, a new world, a new man, a new woman, a new horizon altogether—as Spirit continues its unstoppable, undeniable, irrevocable evolution, dragging us with it… Take your seat as ever-present I AMness (opening onto Suchness), this present utterly obvious feeling of being you, and ride it into the future, bringing your own specific, unique, one-of-a-kind gifts and talents with you, therein to work on transmuting this earth into a radiant heaven of outrageous love and foolishly offered-everywhere kindness. Rest in both the timeless Being of your ever-present Self and the raging urgency of evolution’s unfolding Eros as it races through the world of Becoming, recognizing that your Being and Becoming, your Emptiness and Form, your Eternal Thusness and your temporal Eros, is Spirit’s own way of continuing to realize more and more of its own true Self and real Condition in and through the only vehicle it could ever use to do so: You.

Wilber’s most sweeping work since Sex, Ecology, Spirituality is an impassioned call for wholeness, inclusiveness, and unity in the religions of tomorrow.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING 20th Anniversary Edition by Ken Wilber

$25.95, paper. Shambhala. 352 pages

Ken Wilber’s illuminating career as freelance transpersonal philosopher began with his publication of The Spectrum of Consciousness (1975), which in effect married Freud and the Buddha. In many books since, he has described the path of human development—the evolution of consciousness—systematically, comprehensively—and brilliantly. A Brief History of Everything, Wilber’s accessible and entertaining

summary of his visionary ideas of the evolution of human consciousness and culture, has now been revised with 30 pages of new text and additional diagrams—and this 20th anniversary edition features a new afterword by Ken Wilber and Lana Wachowski.

This book is a friendly and accessible account of men and women’s places in a universe of sex, soul, and spirit. Wilber examines the course of evolution as the unfolding manifestation of Spirit, from matter to life to mind, including the higher stages of spiritual development where Spirit becomes conscious of itself. The author offers striking and original views of topics of current interest and controversy: gender wars, multiculturalism, and ecology and environmental ethics among them. The result is an extraordinary ride through the Kosmos. “I cannot imagine a better way to be introduced to Ken Wilber than this book. It brings the debate about evolution, consciousness, and our capacity for transformation to an entirely new level. More practically, it will save you many missteps and wrong turns on whatever wisdom path you choose to take... “Wilber serves in A Brief History of Everything as a demystifier and a debunker—a discerning critic of the teachers, techniques, ideas, and systems that promise routes to encompassing truth, but are more commonly incomplete, misleading, misguided, or distorted.”—Tony Schwartz, author of What Really Matters ing practices of today. With this consciousness-expanding book, you’ll explore the human life cycle from a spiritual perspective, reflect on your own personal journey, and discover which pathway guides your life purpose for your ultimate fulfillment, growth, and well-being. The seven parts of this book are: Transformations of Collective Consciousness: An Octave of World History from 1945 to 2001 Alchemical Divination: F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Accessing Your Spiritual Intelligence for Healing and Guidance MindSpace and TimeStream: Understanding and Navigating Your States of Consciousness The Life Cycle of the Human Soul: Incarnation—Conception—Birth— Death—Hereafter—Reincarnation The Six Worlds of Existence in Mahayana Buddhism The World Tree and the World Axis Octave Holoarchies: Divination Meditations.

ENTHEOGENS & PLANT TEACHERS

Some of the text in this book was previously published in a series of six small books, over the years 2008 to 2013. That text has been extensively revised, corrected, updated, and reorganized in Ecology of Consciousness. “Not since Virgil showed Dante around Hell and Purgatory have we had as gifted a guide as Ralph Metzner help us comprehend and appreciate the major realms of consciousness. His blend of erudition, wisdom, common sense, and personal experience makes each approach he describes (from Alchemy to Buddhism, Agni Yoga through psychedelics, and more) inviting, understandable, and enlightening. In addition, the practices he presents to open these many gates make this not only an illuminating book, but give each of us a way to investigate, experience, and ultimately decide for ourselves our own best path or paths. The book fulfills Metzner’s intention, ‘to awaken spiritual intelligence and bring about a deeper connection with our essential nature.’” —James Fadiman , author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide “This superb book is an antidote for the alienation, distrust, and fear that threaten our future existence as a viable species on Earth. This book is not only about healing, it is healing. For all our sakes and that of our descendants, it deserves universal readership.” - Larry Dossey, MD , author of One Mind

Entheogens ~ Psychedelics A REALLY GOOD DAY

How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman $34.95, cloth. Penguin. 229 pages

Here’s a revealing, courageous, fascinating, and funny account of the author’s experiment with microdoses of LSD in an effort to treat a debilitating mood disorder, of her quest to understand a misunderstood drug, and of her search for a really good day. When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from “Lewis Carroll,” Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD (doses of 10 micrograms, about one tenth of a typical “dose” —so sub-perceptual one hardly notices it during the day. As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month—bursts of productivity, odd sleep patterns, a newfound sense of equanimity-—she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of four teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, endearingly honest, and a highly engaging combo of solid research and self-experiment. And yet here I am, feeling hopeful and optimistic. Is it microdosing with LSD

that has allowed by newly plastic brain to wiggle its way out from beneath its typical fog of negativity?...

Cannabis & Spirit

CANNABIS & SPIRITUALITY

When I told my children that over the last month I had been experimenting with a medication for my mood, they were not surprised. They had sensed that something was different. To them, the experiment was a resounding success. My younger daughter said, “You’ve been much happier. You’ve been controlling your emotions. Like, when you’re angry you’re super-chill.”… My older son’s response was especially sweet. “I’ve noticed a change, for sure. You’ve been kind of playing around in a way you haven’t before. You’re more funny and lively. There’s been a lot of things we had to deal with that were stressful, but you didn’t scream or yell.”… I have felt different and I have been different. Whether it’s the microdose, or the placebo effect, over the past month I have had many days at the end of which I looked back and thought, That was a really good day.

An Explorer’s Guide to an Ancient Plant Spirit Ally edited by Stephen Gray

$21.50, paper. Inner Traditions. 272 pp.

LISTENING TO AYAHUASCA

New Hope for Depression, Addiction, PTSD, and Anxiety by Rachel Harris $22.50, paper. New World. 376 pages

When National Geographic Adventure published an article in 2006 about the powerful antidepressant effects of ayahuasca, the piece received a phenomenal reader response. That article struck a chord with psychotherapist Rachel Harris, who had encountered many clients unresponsive to traditional therapy and antidepressant protocols. Used for more than 8,000 years in the Amazon rainforest, ayahuasca is a powerful— and illegal—psychedelic that has distressing gastrointestinal side effects. Yet Harris found many willing to try it, so deep was their suffering. Harris here shares her original research (the largest study of ayahuasca use in North America) into its effects on depression, anxiety, and PTSD, along with her own personal experiences. By detailing ayahuasca’s risks and benefits, she aims to help those driven to investigate ayahuasca to do so safely and to give their psychological caregivers a template for skilled caring and healing. “Finally, finally, finally—an ayahuasca book I can recommend without reservation. Rachel Harris focuses not on the journey (giant snakes, dismemberment, insights, purging, etc.) but on what eventually matters far more: the ongoing and robust aftereffects in people’s lives. Harris is a skilled psychotherapist and a serious ayahuasca user, and her credibility in both worlds makes her own story, interwoven with those of the many people she interviewed, informative and discerning.” —James Fadiman, microdose researcher- author, The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide “Rachel Harris has produced a uniquely brave study of ayahuasca use and users, through the experiences of others and, most significantly, her own explorations. She never dodges the big questions (Who or what is the guiding intelligence experienced?) or comes up with static answers. Instead, she moves through the mysterious process of self-encounter, sharing a string of hard-won insights into how ayahuasca can work its magic to relieve human suffering.” —Diana Slattery, cofounder of Women’s Visionary Congress and author of Xenolinguistics. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Truly a medicine for body and soul, one of cannabis’s greatest gifts is its remarkable potential for spiritual healing and awakening. In this authoritative guide, editor Stephen Gray and 17 other influential voices of the modern cannabis movement explore the spiritual benefits of cannabis and offer guidance on how to interact with the intelligence of this plant ally, a companion and supporter of humanity for millennia. Exploring cannabis spirituality in practice, Gray’s chapters examine dosage, strains, and methods of intake; the use of cannabis to open the creative channels; how to conduct group ceremonies with cannabis; and cautions and contraindications for cannabis use. We hear from Chris Bennett on the religious and ritual use of cannabis from pre-biblical times to the present, Joan Bello on marijuana and the body-mind connection, Dee Dussault on ganja yoga, Kathleen Harrison on humanity’s co-evolution with cannabis, and cannabis shaman Hamilton Souther on working with the spirit of cannabis. Contributors explore the spiritual future of this plant ally as well as the ritual use of cannabis by the Rastafarians of Jamaica and the Sadhus of India. The chapters from Brazilian ayahuasca shaman Mariano da Silva and ayahuasca apprentice Francisco present wisdom on comingling the sacramental medicines of cannabis and ayahuasca. Revealing the potential of “the people’s plant” to enhance a wide range of spiritual practices, such as meditation, yoga, chanting, visualization, shamanism, spirit work, and explorations with other entheogens, this guide shows how cannabis can be an effective ally on the awakening journey, unlocking the receptive energy in us all and helping us to feel connected to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. Cannabis can unlock us from our habitual way of doing things, and, more importantly, of thinking about things. It pulls us out of our forward-leaning vector, encouraging us to hang back, wait a bit, and see how things feel before rushing into anything. It puts us in touch with our deepest longings and our truest feelings. It enables contemplation and reflection. —from the foreword by Julie Holland, MD

“Warning: Reading this book will forever change your opinion of cannabis and your relationship with it. Like too many of us, I had underrated cannabis’ spiritual effectiveness. No more! This wonderful, often lyrical, immensely practical book introduces you to its diverse spiritual uses, contemporary practices, and the results possible when you honor and respect the plant, the plant’s spirit, and yourself… From the early chapters invoking the sheer loveliness of the experience to the last chapter’s warning of misuse, this is an important contribution to appreciate the full spectrum of this remarkable plant’s effects.” —James Fadiman. microdose researcher and author of The Psychedelic Explorer‘s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic and Sacred Journeys “The contributors point to its ancient pedigree as a plant substance that assists the work of shamans and spiritual healers and deepens our connecting with the higher dimensions of reality and their creative expressions..” —Ralph Metzner, author of The Ecology of Consciousness “Gray and his co-authors establish cannabis’s important role in the Entheogen Reformation—religion’s current movement from being based on sacred words and texts to being based on personal spiritual experience.” —Thomas Roberts, author, The Psychedelic Future of the Mind

GANJA YOGA

A Practical Guide to Conscious Relaxation, Soothing Pain Relief, and Enlightened Self-Discovery by Dee Dussault $24.99, cloth. HarperCollins. 288 pages, 7x8, b/w illustrations

Yogis have been using cannabis to enhance spiritual practice for millennia. Today, there is a quiet but growing conversation within the Western yoga community about the potential role of cannabis for modern seekers pursuing a spiritual path. Now, certified yoga instructor Dee Dussault takes this ancient practice mainstream. Ganja Yoga isn’t just mixing cannabis and exercise; it is a ceremony that makes conscious relaxation an intentional ritual that can be enhanced with practice—a lifestyle to help us make a more harmonious and stress-free world. For some contemporary yoga adherents, marijuana can deepen awareness, acceptance, connection, and relaxation during practice. As laws loosen and the stigma surrounding marijuana dissipates, cannabis is increasingly seen as a legitimate supplement to increased health and wellbeing. Ganja Yoga explains how to set up a sacred space that allows you to use this relaxing substance with yoga for enlightenment (or at least some awesome stretching and meditation). Dee walks you through the considerations and best practices for introducing cannabis into your yoga practice, or infusing yoga into your imbibing routine. But it’s not about being stoned out of your head—as Dee says, its like adding spice to your food. In Ganja Yoga, she explains how to: u Reap the benefits of profound relaxation u Assume an altered state in a safe, energizing way u Deepen the spiritual practice of yoga u Reconnect with the body using ancient techniques u Select the best setting, time, method of consumption, strains, poses, and breathing techniques to ensure an excellent experience. Whether you want to practice in a class or in the privacy of home, Ganja Yoga can be your key to a new, high dimension of spiritual practice.

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Shamanism & Ritual HEALING LIGHT

An Apprenticeship in Peruvian Shamanism by Don Oscar Miro-Quesada

New on CD

$93.50, 6 CDs. Sounds True. 7.5 hours

There’s a growing hunger for shamanic wisdom—particularly for authentic teachings from the South American tradition. Healing Light brings us over 7 hours with acclaimed shamanic teacher and healer don Oscar Miro-Quesada. Listeners will join don Oscar to explore the fine arts of northern coastal Peruvian shamanism; guided journeys for transformation and healing; rituals of the Pachakuti Mesa tradition; and many teachings shared with a Western audience for the very first time. How does one begin upon the shamanic path of healing and wisdom? By doing, we learn. With study, we refine. Through dreaming, we create. And in loving, we fulfill.

More than 30 years ago, don Oscar Miro-Quesada was privileged to acquire, practice, and share the teachings of two revered shamanic wisdom holders from the northern coast and southeastern Andes of Peru, don Celso Rojas Palomino and don Benito Corihuaman Vargas. In this full-length audio curriculum, we have the opportunity to honor and partake in this legacy, directly and in the original way, through the spoken word. With don Oscar’s personal guidance, listeners are offered singular apprenticeship in: the principles and methods of Peruvian curanderismo; guided shamanic journeys of transformation and healing; empowering rituals; and a treasury of other insights. If you’ve ever been compelled by the root spirituality of South America, “the Heart Island”— or simply wish to experience more deeply our primordial connection with the natural world—Healing Light offers a rare and welcoming invitation to this perennial path of soul wisdom.

SACRED ECSTATICS

The Recipe for Setting Your Soul on Fire by The Keeneys $16.95, paper. Keeney Institute. 266 pp.

Sacred Ecstatics, by Hillary and Bradford Keeney, offers a trailblazing orientation that leads you straight to a direct experience of divine ecstasy. As your body trembles, quakes, and shakes with ultimate bliss, you are filled with an extraordinary vibration that initiates incredible transformation and rebirth. Based on the best of ancient and contemporary ecstatic traditions, Sacred Ecstatics offers a powerful means of bringing forth this pinnacle spiritual experience. Principally rooted in the mystical, shamanic, and healing lineages of the Kalahari Bushmen, Caribbean Shakers, and the Japanese tradition of seiki jutsu, Sacred Ecstatics specifies the practical know-how underlying the reception and nurturance of Spirit. A three-step recipe for action leads you to the ineffable ecstatic rapture that is missing from most spiritual ways.

WAYS OF THE SHAMAN

It is time for the return of this most precious ecstatic firepower that gives rise to mystical illumination, universal love, and ecstatic joy… This book is a guide to the basics of Sacred Ecstatics—setting your soul on fire, becoming spiritually cooked, receiving your rope to God, and hosting the sacred vibration… The sacred recipe for setting your soul on fire… is depicted as moving along this trajectory: 1. Building sacred ground vast enough to host an ecstatic fire 2. Getting spiritually cooked; and 3. Reentering the everyday with spiritually charged and mystically inspired creative action…

Shamanic Guides

THE RE-ENCHANTMENT

A Shamanic Path to a Life of Wonder by Hank Wesselman $22.95, paper. Sounds True. 198 pages

In a time when our scientific understanding of the universe has never been greater, why do so many people feel unhappy and alienated? As Dr. Hank Wesselman explains, our search for objective knowledge has come at the cost of a deeper, intuitive rapport with nature and our spiritual selves. The result is a profound disenchantment, one that affects us individually and collectively. What we need now is a “re-enchantment,” a way to renew our relationship with nature, reawaken to spiritual reality, and reclaim the sense of connection and hope that gives meaning to our lives. This re-enchantment through nature, in my opinion, is predictable, even inevitable, because nature is where the juice is. I’m talking about the life force that breathes essence and wonder into our world and into our selves.

We welcome you to discover the oldest and most reliable way of resuscitating your spiritual life through the sacred vibrations that move body, mind, heart, and soul. Get ready to be rocked and rolled, trembled and tumbled, flung and sung as you are thrown into the ecstatic triumvirate of fire, light, and vibratory power. Step toward the infinite room of mystery and allow its mighty force to pull you in.

Bradford and Hillary Keeney are authorized teachers of several lineages including that of the Kalahari Ju/’hoan Bushmen (Way of the Bushman as Told by the Tribal Elders), the Japanese practice of seiki jutsu (Seiki Jutsu: The Practice of Non-Subtle Energy Medicine), and other traditions of “shaking medicine” (Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement). The Keeneys teach and conduct sessions throughout the world. www.keeneyinstitute.org

The Re-Enchantment offers a compelling blueprint for the emerging transformational spirituality—not a return to the superstition and ignorance of old beliefs, but a “modern upgrade of the path of the shaman” that reconnects us to our inner sources of intuition, power, and healing. Here he explores: u Challenging the cultural mythos—why a new story is arising about who we are and where we fit in to the greater whole u The role of the shaman as a mediator between the material and spiritual worlds u Guides, helping spirits, oversouls, and masters of deception—unseen spiritual forces that influence our lives u Empowering ourselves to be agents of change through the shamanic path of “direct revelation.” There is new spiritual complex coming into being in our world. This mystical mosaic draws from many traditions and many cultures, and has the potential to refresh and perhaps replace our current mainstream religions with new perceptions and new insights. In The Re-Enchantment, this teacher presents a provocative call to action—to engage the world with a newborn’s eyes, a shaman’s heart, and soul dedicated to a wiser, more compassionate future. Hank Wesselman, a research paleoanthropologist and shamanic teacher with more than 30 years of experience, is also author of Spiritwalker, The Bowl of Light, and Awakening to the Spirit World (with Sandra Ingerman), among others.

ENCOUNTERS WITH POWER

THE TOLTEC ART OF LIFE AND DEATH Living Your Life as a Work of Art by Don Miguel Ruis & Barbara Emrys $19.99, paper. HarperCollins. 304 pages

From the author of The Four Agreements comes a new spiritual journey, The Toltec Art of Life and Death. In 2002, Don Miguel Ruiz suffered a near-fatal heart attack that left him in a coma on the verge of death for nine weeks. His journey while suspended between this world and the next forms the heart of this autobiographical novel, a profound and mystical tale of spiritual struggle. As his body lies unconscious, Ruiz travels in his dreams and encounters the people, ideas, and events that have shaped him, illuminating the eternal struggle between life—unending energy and truth—and death—matter and subjective knowledge—in which we are all called to engage. This book recounts the events of my life. Unlike my previous writings, it merges the power of imagination with the teachings of Toltec wisdom… Our waking lives, like our sleeping dreams, are works of art. This book is an artistic piece of storytelling about very real interaction between me and my mother, dona Sarita, a well-respected healer in San Diego and my teacher and guide through much of my life. From the moment of my heart attack on February 28, 2002, she did everything she could to keep my body from dying. Using all the power of her faith, she gathered her children and apprentices to perform a series of ceremonies on my behalf.

Adventures and Misadventures on the Shamanic Path of Healing by José Stevens

$23.95, paper. Sounds True. 242 pages

When you leave the beaten path of civilization, you enter the world of primal and mysterious forces—and encounter wonders you never thought possible. This is the territory of the shaman. To learn the secrets of shamanism, José Luis Stevens has traveled to the remote and wild places where the oldest human spiritual practice still exists in its purest form. With Encounters with Power, this respected teacher invites you to experience his journeys to meet shamans around the globe—and share in the wisdom he received. Join this master storyteller as he recounts his meetings with Spirit in its many guises, including: u India and the Life-Changing Reading—at a turning point in his life, Jose receives a startlingly accurate prophecy u Lost in Mexico—a humbling education in the difference between “power” and “control” u The Guatemala Test and Initiation—the power of being frugal with judgment and generous with forgiveness u Encounters with the Power of Aborigines and Songlines Down Under—sometimes the teacher appears when the student is not ready u Journeys for Power with Medicine—visions with the plant spirit of ayahuasca u A Magical Andes Wedding—an unforgettable ceremony attended by people, spirits, and the forces of nature u The Dolphin Brujos—nature’s tricksters teach a sharp lesson in responsibility and humility u Encounters with the Dark Shaman—a perilous jungle journey reveals the ferocity of nature and the dangerous side of shamanic practice u Nevado Aconcagua: Pilgrimage to a Sacred Mountain—how a holy place can be both a dangerous trial and a source of limitless support. In my travels to meet these extraordinary healers, I’ve had terrifying, enlightening, and at times hugely entertaining adventures. Power can destroy us or it can raise us up by teaching us and nourishing us. I may not be a master, but I have learned a few things that you may find helpful on your own quest.

“There is great wisdom in José’s stories; they bring us into connection with our inner chief, the leader within each of us.” —Hank Wesselman, author of The Bowl of Light Also by José Stevens is Awaken the Inner Shaman.

In this culmination of a lifetime’s learning, ten years in the making, Ruiz shares with readers the innermost workings of his singular heart and mind. Those excursions into my dream state are the basis for this book. When my mother BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

confronts me there, I send her to talk to the main character of my story, which is my own knowledge. In this fantasy, knowledge is depicted as a mysterious creature called Lala. You could say she is the embodiment of everything I believe and everything that gives shape to my story—just as your knowledge F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

helps you create the story of your life.

“In the tradition of Castaneda, Ruiz distills essential Toltec wisdom, expressing with clarity and impeccability what it means for men and women to live as peaceful warriors in the modern world. “ —Dan Millman, author of Way of the Peaceful Warrior

NATIVE, WICCA, MAGICK, FAERY

Native American Medicine Ways EMBERS

One Ojibway’s Meditations by Richard Wagamese

$18.95, paper. Douglas & Macinyre. 176 pages, colour photos

In this carefully curated selection of everyday reflections with awesome nature photos, Richard Wagamese (one of Canada’s foremost First Nations storytellers) finds lessons in both the mundane and sublime as he muses on the universe, drawing inspiration from working in the bush—sawing and cutting and stacking wood for winter as well as the smudge ceremony to bring him closer to the Creator. We carry the embers of all the things that burned and raged in us. Pains and sorrows, to be sure, but also triumphs, joys, victories and moments of clear-eyed vision. People give us those. People cause flames to rise in our hearts and minds and spirits, and life would not be life without them. My journey has been blessed by folks who stuck around until the miracle happened and I could begin to become the person I was created to be.

Embers is perhaps Richard Wagamese’s most personal volume. Honest, evocative and articulate, he explores the various manifestations of grief, joy, recovery, beauty, gratitude, physicality and spirituality—concepts many find hard to express. But for Wagamese, spirituality is multifaceted. Within these pages, readers will find hard-won and concrete wisdom on how to feel the joy in the everyday things. What’s needed are eyes that focus with the soul. What’s needed are spirits open to everything. What’s needed are the belief that wonder is the glue of the universe and the desire to seek more of it. Be filled with wonder.

Wagamese does not seek to be a teacher or guru, but these observations made along his own journey to become, as he says, “a spiritual bad-ass,” make inspiring reading. Life sometimes is hard. There are challenges. There are difficulties. There is pain. As a younger man I sought to avoid them and only ever caused myself more of the same. These days I choose to face life head on—and I have become a comet. I arc across the sky of my life and the harder times are the friction that lets the worn and tired bits drop away. It’s a good way to travel; eventually I will wear away all resistance until all there is left of me is light. I can live towards that end.

THE SHAMANIC POWERS OF ROLLING THUNDER

As Experienced by Alberto Villoldo, John Perry Barlow, Larry Dossey, and Others edited by Sidian Morning Star Jones & Stanley Krippner $19.95, paper. Bear & Company. 206 pages, colour photos

One of the most celebrated and controversial Native American medicine men of the 20th century, Rolling Thunder (19161997) was known for his remarkable healings and for his ability to call on the forces of nature, typically in the form of thunder clouds. He was also a passionate activist who worked to trigger social change on behalf of Native American tribes. Sought after as a lecturer and workshop leader, he used the

money he earned from teaching to construct Meta Tantay, a community in the Nevada desert. In this book, edited by his grandson Sidian Morning Star Jones and longtime friend Stanley Krippner, we hear directly from people profoundly changed by Rolling Thunder, whether through direct experience or through his teachings. We learn of his legendary interactions with animals and the forces of Nature and hear from witnesses to his remarkable healings, including the healing of a young boy where a mist wolf was seen by several people. We learn of Rolling Thunders inspiring impact on men and women now devoted in service to humankind and the Earth and read stories both insightful and humorous from friends that prove his climate change predictions true. Revealing his trickster teachings, his legendary shamanic powers, his devotion to the Earth, and how his impact did not stop with his death, these stories of Rolling Thunder from a variety of sources demonstrate how transformation can come even while walking gently on the Earth. Stories are almost as essential to people’s lives as food, clothing, and shelter. Stories provide meaning. Stories provide direction. And stories provide entertainment… My grandfather loved to tell Thunder Stories and he would have enjoyed knowing that people still remember him and continue to tell stories about the impact he made on their lives.

Faery & Theurgy Traditions

BETWIXT & BETWEEN

Exploring the Faery Tradition of Witchcraft by Storm Faerywolf $25.50, paper. Llewellyn. 318 pages, 7x9

Faery (also known as Feri) is a tradition of great power and beauty. Originating in the West Coast of the United States separately from the Wicca tradition in England, Faery’s appeal is grounded in its focus on power and results. This book provides the tools you need to begin your own Faery-style magical practice. Discover the foundational mythology and rites of the Faery tradition as well as steps and techniques for: Creating an Altar Summoning the Faery Fire Engaging the Shadow Exploring the Personal Trinity Purifying the Primal Soul Working with the Iron Pentacle Aligning Your Life Force Developing Spirit Alliances Journeying Between the Worlds Exploring Air, Fire, Water & Earth, etc. Personal experimentation and creative exploration are the heart and soul of Faery. The rituals, recipes, exercises, and lore within will help you project your consciousness into realms beyond this world, opening you to the experience of spiritual ecstasy. Storm fulfills his oath-bound commitment and respect for his initiatory tradition of Faery/Feri, honoring the folkloric roots of Faery while expressing a stream of teaching that is also as fresh, ever-changing, alive, and vibrant as nature. His development of contemporary processes and techniques to bring the subtle senses out of dormancy and into current and living awareness is commendable… We must unearth these ancient sensory pathways (the roots) and raise them up to the base of humanity’s top-heavy perceptual field. In doing so, Betwixt and Between supports the resacralizing of the underworld. — Orion Foxwood, from the foreword

As Storm writes in his introduction to this book which “is intended for an intermediate audience, someone who has already explored certain basics of the Craft and now is looking for something more than the current public model of modern Witchcraft generally allows for,” This book offers some powerful tools, philosophies, rituals, and lore to help inspire your own magical work… But be warned! Faery is not a fair-weather practice. We must be prepared to examine our deepest fears and insecurities if we are to attempt to travel the astral worlds and return unscathed… We break our senses wide open and then we can see. And then can we join the Faery dance. But only if we see, so only if we break.

Wicca & Magick WOMAN MOST WILD

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS

Three Keys to Liberating the Witch Within by Danielle Dulsky $21.50, paper. New World. 224 pages

After centuries of persecution, witches have gotten super bad press in pop culture. From Macbeth to Snow White, witches have appeared as villains, harming the innocent with black magic. In Woman Most Wild, however, author Danielle Dulsky debunks antiquated myths and reveals the true nature of witchcraft: an ancient spiritual path that rejects religious dogma in favor of female empowerment and reverence for the earth. In her sly yet juicy conversational tone, Dulsky argues that it’s time to reclaim the word witch. More importantly, she shows us that every woman has a potential witch trapped inside, waiting to be freed. Women have been uniquely robbed of their spiritual power, and the reclamation of wild spirituality, that is, practices and understandings that acknowledge the untamed, holy, and spiraling qualities of the natural world as living within all beings, is paramount to pan-gender equality… While this book is primarily for those who identify as women, your wild spirituality does not require a physical womb; it only asks you to honor the fusion of your body and psyche to your feminine spirit. Though ritual is a vital and load-bearing pillar in the Witch’s house, this book is much more of a three-part ode to your inborn wild wisdom than a how-to manual for how to conduct rituals and craft spells.

The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy: Our Pagan Inheritance by Brandy Williams $25.50, paper. Llewellyn. 338 pages

For the Love of the Gods tells the epic story of theurgy, from its roots in ancient Egypt to its modern day practice. The lives and passions of the early Pagan philosophers come alive in these pages, immersing you in the bustling cities and diverse cultures that spawned theurgy as we know it today. Theurgy is best understood when it is deeply experienced. The stories presented here re-create the experience of these ancient practices and show how they were passed down through generations of teachers and students of differing ethnicities, genders, and ages. It’s commonly believed that ancient Pagan theurgy traditions were erased from the earth and replaced by monotheistic religions—but this is a myth. The way to the gods was never lost. For the Love of the Gods shares step-by-step instructions for theurgic rituals. The teachers instruct us how to engage in study, prayer, and ritual to raise our souls to the experience of the gods and of the One. As we learn from them, we realize that our practice keeps the Pagan theurgic tradition alive. Theurgy participates in the project to restore Pagan religion. Together with indigenous peoples, reconstructionists, and those who create new paths, theurgists embody Pagan religion in living practice today.

Discover how to offer devotionals, create living statues, invoke into yourself and others, and achieve personal communion. As our love for the gods draws us, we seek to become like the gods ourselves, suffused with their light, dwelling within the happy presence of the divine.

With imagined dialogues between the most influential Western philosophers and their students, and hands-on instructions for Theurgic practices, this book is a comprehensive guide to god-work past and present. cycles of nature (“Your Wild Rhythm”), understanding the importance of ritual (“Your Wild Ritual”), and bonding with a circle of like-minded seekers (“Your Wild Circle”), they can recover, discover and free up the Witch within and take part in a collective feminine awakening so necessary to our healthy evolution in this earth.

Woman Most Wild gives all women the keys to freedom: by aligning themselves with the BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Your spiritual liberation comes from a craft that ebbs and flows over rough ground, carving out deep trenches in placF SPRING - SUMMER 2017

es where you crave it most often, spilling over its banks in times of loss or fierce need, and finding new rivulets when the high-edged ego begins to crumble to the holy ground. Let all part of you feed this wild river, especially the exotic mud of your sensuality and the many-colored waters of your creativity. The Witch is being re-wilded through the reclamation of the fem-force, or Shakti, and She is being re-wilded through you.

Christian & Jewish Spirituality THE HEART OF CENTERING PRAYER Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice by Cynthia Bourgeault

$22.99, paper. Shambhala. 239 pages

Here’s a book on perceiving nondual awareness through the Christian contemplative method called Centering Prayer by the author of The Wisdom Jesus and The Meaning of Mary Magdalene. Centering Prayer is the path to a wonderful and radical new way of seeing the world. It is not, as sometimes thought, simply an act of devotional piety, nor is it simply a Christianized form of other meditation methods. Cynthia Bourgeault here cuts through the misconceptions to show that Centering Prayer is in fact a pioneering development within the Christian contemplative tradition. She provides a practical, complete course in the practice and then goes deeper to analyze what actually happens in Centering Prayer: the mind effectively switches to a new operating system that makes possible the perception of nonduality. With this understanding in place, she then takes us on a journey through one of the sources of the practice, the Christian contemplative classic The Cloud of Unknowing, revealing it to be among the earliest Christian explorations of the phenomenology of consciousness. I suspect that within the foreseeable future we will see an expanded road map of the journey to nonduality, together with a new way of evaluating and leveraging Christian mystical texts. Even the effusive love mysticism usually typecast in present maps of consciousness as belonging to a personalistic and therefore lower level of consciousness, I suspect actually contains the seeds, metaphorically, of that nonnegotiable Christian affirmation that luminosity is love; the two cannot be separated. And love requires the participation of the heart.

Cynthia Bourgeault’s illumination of the Centering Prayer path provides compelling evidence of how important the practice has become in the half-century since it first arose among American Trappist monks, and of its maturation and refinement over the ensuing years of sincere study and practice. It will resonate with beginners on the Centering Prayer path as well as seasoned practitioners. I continue to be impressed by Centering Prayer’s fidelity to the heart of the Christian tradition and its ability, when explicitly moored in this tradition, to lead its practitioners toward nondual awakening along a pathway that corresponds to authentically Christian and Western reference points.

A HEART AFIRE

Stories and Teachings of the Early Hasidic Masters by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

$33.50, paper. Monkfish. 432 pages

This brilliant anthology of early Hasidic teachings encompasses teachings from Sufism, Buddhism and depth psychology. A Heart Afire is an intimate, guided tour of many of the lesser-known and previously unpublished stories and teachings of the first three generations of Hasidism, especially those of the Ba’al Shem Tov, his heirs (male and female) and the students of his successor, the Maggid of Mezritch.

CHRISTIAN, JEWISH, SUFI

Mary & Jesus

THE QUEST FOR MARY MAGDALENE by Michael Haag

$19.99, paper. HarperCollins. 323 pages, b/w photos

Mary Magdalene is a potent and enigmatic figure. In the gospels she finances Jesus’ mission in Galilee and is the only person with Jesus at his crucifixion, burial and resurrection—the critical moments that define his purpose and give rise to a new religion. Yet in the sixth century Mary Magdalene fell foul of a profound argument in which the established, ritualized and hierarchical Church required that God be worshipped through itself, whereas everything about Mary Magdalene suggests a more immediate and personal experience of the divine. Pope Gregory reduced Mary Magdalene from an independent visionary to a sinner and a prostitute while making Jesus’s mother Mary—who is a nonentity in the gospels—into a creature of the Church, hailing her as the epitome of all things feminine and holy. In The Quest for Mary Magdalene, historian Michael Haag presents Mary Magdalene as the woman at the center of Jesus’s life, a visionary and a radically independent woman. He explores how she has been used and abused and reinterpreted in every age, and he examines what she reveals about woman and man and the divine. Mary Magdalene is a larger figure than any text, larger than the Bible or the Church; she has taken on a life of her own. In medieval times she was called ‘the light-bearer’, recalling her Gnostic epithet ‘inheritor of light’ in her search for the truth. She is the mediator of the divine mystery and she has remained a potent and mysterious figure ever since.

In the manner of a quest, the book follows Mary Magdalene through the centuries, traces her story through the Renaissance when she became a goddess of beauty and love, and looks at Mary Magdalene as the feminist icon she has become today.

TANTRIC JESUS

The Erotic Heart of Early Christianity by James Reho $24.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 364 pages, colour plates

Unbeknownst to many, the original Christian spirituality as practiced in the early church and by Jesus himself was a tantric spirituality. In the West, Tantra often evokes images of arcane rituals or acrobatic sexual positions, while in reality Tantra is a holistic path of life, love, and being—grounded in practice. Offering a new understanding of Jesus as guru and master of left-handed Tantra, James Reho, an Episcopal priest and tantric initiate, reframes the Christian story and restores to modern Christianity the tantric wisdom practices that were edited out of church tradition and forgotten over the centuries. He explains how tantric Christianity views the human body as the primary temple of the Holy, with erotic energy as the signature of Divine Presence within. Rev. Reho reveals the similarities of the earliest Christian practices to the tantric yogas of India and Tibet and explores the role of Kundalini and the chakras. He details how to work with mantras, icons, and pranayama breathing exercises, as well as with gazing as a spiritual practice. Informed by the insights of ancient texts and early masters of Christian spirituality, the author provides step-by-step instructions on how to practice Christian tantric sex with a life-partner of the opposite or same sex. It is refreshing to read the author’s practices that take us beyond words and concepts into silence and transformation—that is, into rewiring. This is why a book like this carries so much hope with it. Human beings can change: that is what metanoia means—a change in consciousness. But we need some methods along the way to assist the process, and this book provides that. —Matthew Fox, from the foreword

Rev. Reho reveals how these heart-opening practices are rooted in eros, the life of deep desire, expressive of God’s grace within us, and are still alive in monastic practices in the Christian East. Integrating his personal spiritual experiences, years of study of ancient Christian mysticism, and an expertise in yoga and tantra, the author shows how we can re-engage the original truths of the early church to affirm the body as a holy vehicle and to utilize the energy of the erotic to achieve ecstatic union with the Divine. In A Heart Afire, the teachings and tales of old-world Hasidism are richly enhanced by the enlightening insights, interpretations, and personal reflections of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a modern-day Hasidic master and founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, and his disciple Netanel Miles-Yepez, a scholar of comparative religion. Together they add a deeply meaningful dimension to these stories and a facile bridge between old and new interpretations of them. Readers get a rare introduction to some of the more radical teachings of these popular Hasidic masters, and insights that connect them to the ecological, ecumenical, and feminist values of the modern world. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Enlightening and spiritually uplifting, A Heart Afire reveals surprising relevancy today in cherished Hasidic wisdom and narrative of the past. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Reb Zalman) was the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement and author of many books. “A tour-de-force that will take its place beside the efforts of Buber and Wiesel [in bringing] the deep spiritual practices, stories and perspective of Hassidic tradition to life.” —Rabbi Goldie Milgram

THE WISDOM OF NOT KNOWING Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty by Estelle Frankel

$22.95, paper. Shambhala. 234 pages

Estelle Frankel, practicing psychotherapist, storyteller, and seasoned teacher of F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Jewish mysticism (ordained by Reb Zalman), here offers us a deeply affirming exploration of the challenges and possibilities of the unknown—with meditations and exercises that can help transform the fear and uncertainty of “not knowing” into a sense of openness, curiosity, and bravery. The unknown is a deep current of mystery that runs through all religions and mystical traditions, and it is also the nexus of contemporary psychotherapeutic thought and practice and a key element in all personal growth and healing. In The Wisdom of Not Knowing, Estelle Frankel shows us that our psychological, emotional, and spiritual health is radically influenced by how comfortable we are at navigating the unknown and uncertain dimensions of our lives. And who among us is not on the edge of the unknown? Drawing on insights from Kabbalah, depth psychology, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and ancient myth, Frankel explores how we can grow our souls by tapping into the wisdom of not knowing. She also includes case studies of individuals who have grappled with their fears of the unknown and, as a result, have come out wiser, stronger, and more resilient. Each chapter includes experiential exercises and/or meditations for befriending the unknown. These exercises help convey how we must be willing to “not know” in order to gain knowledge and be able to bear uncertainty so we can be free to enjoy a healthy sense of adventure and curiosity. Our very human tendency is to foreclose on the present moment by coloring it with fearful overlays from the past. It seems that the anxious mind would rather imagine the worst than wait and be surprised by what life actually presents. The chapter, “Courage in Face of the Unknown” examines these dynamics and explores ways we can overcome our fear of the unknown by developing greater courage. With courage we can face our radical vulnerability and the unpredictable nature of life with greater equanimity.

Frankel offers clear, accessible psychological and spiritual insights and a set of practical tools, including mindfulness exercises, guided meditations, and journaling exercises. “Recasts the ‘unknown’ from a situation of dread to an invitation to ever more liberating awareness.” —Sylvia Boorstein, author of Happiness is an Inside Job

Sufism, Islam & Rumi HOLISTIC ISLAM

Sufism, Transformation, and the Needs of Our Time by Kabir Helminski

$21.50, paper. White Cloud. 168 pages

Islam once gave birth to a great civilization that respected religious diversity, freedom of conscience, and scientific thought, and Islamic knowledge contributed to the birth of humanism in the Renaissance. Today’s world is desperately in need of a spirituality that is free of dogma, based in experiences not beliefs, one that can reconcile the human and spiritual realms.

RUMI, ASTROLOGY & THE TAROT

In his new book, renowned spiritual teacher and Sufi sheikh Kabir Helminski, gives us a compelling interpretation of spiritual or holistic Islam that will hearten contemporary Muslims looking for a faith suited for our times, and providing non-Muslims a brilliant introduction to this rich spiritual tradition. Helminksi’s holistic Islam is an emerging force in the world. It is reflected in the rise of the popularity of the writings of Jalal ad-Din Rumi who is loved by followers of all faiths and none. Helminski shows how it is the great Sufi teachers of the Islamic tradition who show the way to this universal wisdom. Holistic Islam is an expression of the primordial religion of humanity that recognizes a journey through levels of consciousness leading to the transformation of self and the mature human being. While all religions have a tendency to decline into sectarianism, legalism, fundamentalism, and superstition, humanity is never without the presence of realized human beings who have shared the knowledge and practice of communion with Ultimate Reality. Holistic Islam is a spiritual antidote to extremism and fundamentalism, established on a clear Quranic basis. Holistic Islam uses Quranic arguments to establish a spiritually progressive Islam. Also by Kabir Helminski are The Pocket Rumi Reader and The Knowing Heart.

RUMI’S SECRET

The Life of the Sufi Poet of Lovbe by Brad Gooch

$35.99, cloth. HarperCollins. 378 pages

Ecstatic love poems of Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi mystic born over eight centuries ago, are beloved by millions of readers around the world. He has been compared to Shakespeare for his outpouring of creativity and to Saint Francis of Assisi for his spiritual wisdom. Yet his life has long remained the stuff of legend rather than intimate knowledge. In this breakthrough biography, Brad Gooch brilliantly brings to life the man and puts a face to the name Rumi, vividly coloring in his time and place—a world as rife with conflict as our own. The map of Rumi’s life stretched over 2,500 miles. Gooch traces this epic journey from Central Asia, where Rumi was born in 1207, traveling with his family—who were displaced by Mongol terror—to settle in Konya, Turkey. Pivotal was the disruptive appearance of irascible wandereer Shams of Tabriz, who taught him to whirl and transformed him from a respectable middle-aged Muslim preacher into a Whitmanesque poet of radical intimacy and ecstatic oneness. Their vital connection as teacher and pupil, friend and beloved, is one of the world’s greatest spiritual love stories. When Shams disappeared, Rumi coped with the pain of separation by composing joyous poems of reunion, both human and divine. Ambitious, bold, and beautifully written, Rumi’s Secret reveals the unfolding of Rumi’s devotion to a “religion of love,” remarkable in his own time and made even more relevant for the twenty-first century by this compelling account. “An excellent and accessible introduction to the profound and generous mystical vision of Rumi that will give Western readers a much-needed insight into the true spiritu-

ality of Islam.” —Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God “Deftly situating Rumi in the crosscurrents of Persian, Arab, Turkic, and Mongol history, Gooch gives us an indelible portrait of this mystic so crucial to Christians, Muslims, Jews, and modern-day searchers after meaning.” —Fernanda Eberstadt

Astrology, Tarot & Divination MIDLIFE IS NOT A CRISIS Using Astrology to Thrive in the Second Half of Life by Virginia Bell

$27.95, paper. Weiser. 264 pages

Midlife Is Not a Crisis combines astrology, inspiration, and wisdom about aging to empower people to live more fully in the second half of life. It is based on the generational life cycles we all share at certain ages, from the Saturn Return at 29 and Midlife, which peaks at 42, all the way to the Uranus Return at 84. These cycles are the great crossroads of life, and each cycle is a journey in itself. Strung together they offer a road map to lifes most challenging and rewarding passages. In every decade there are trials, lessons, and losses; in this we have no choice. Our freedom lies in how we respond—consciously or unconsciously, awake or asleep. The planet that governs each cycle acts as a wise elder or guide and holds the key to navigating the cycle successfully. This book tells the story of these cycles and provides a guide to living consciously and well.` We are aging differently from the way we did in the past—we are not only living longer, we are staying healthy and vital longer as well. Midlife Is Not a Crisis motivates people to grow and prosper at any age. Ultimately it is a practical guidebook for our later years that shows us what to expect as we age and helps us make the most of our journey to becoming whole. Astrology has taught me many things, but perhaps the most valuable thing I’ve learned is about the power of timing. We all bloom at a different time; a rose is no less than a daffodil because it blooms later in the season. There is no right or wrong; our life is a journey that is constantly unfolding, not a series of events to be graded. What’s essential is to honor and respect our process and to treat ourselves with exquisite care no matter where we are in that journey or how long it takes. Astrology is a valuable tool that can help us understand our individual timing and how best to fulfill it.

Tarot & Celtic Shaman’s Pack

THE WILD UNKNOWN TAROT DECK & GUIDEBOOK by Kim Krans

$49.99, cards. HarperCollins. 208-page guidebook + 78 colour cards, boxed

From Kim Krans, the beloved artist-seeker behind The Wild Unknown, comes the long-awaited box set of her hit tarot deck and guidebook—together for the first time in a beautifully designed box. Kim Krans is a vanguard of the new tarot movement. For a legion of contemporary seekers, The Wild Unknown is more than a tarot deck; it’s become a resonant guide for people all over the world, inspiring them to share countless images of their readings, tattoos, and art prints from the deck. Each of the seventy-eight cards in Krans’s Wild Unknown tarot deck is a work of art that explores the mysteries and archetypes of the natural world and the animal kingdom. Hand drawn in her spare, minimalistic style, the striking images invite deep contemplation. Her Wild Unknown guidebook is also an extraordinary cult art object—a hand-lettered and fully illustrated primer that leads readers through shuffling and cutting the tarot, creating spreads, and interpretations of all seventy-eight individual cards. Kim’s Wild Unknown tarot deck and tarot guidebook are now available together in one beautiful box. Newly designed by Kim herself, and including never-before-published material, this boxed set retains the mystery, glamour, and allure that made her original deck a cult sensation, while introducing a whole new audience to its magic. Before beginning any reading, it’s very important to clarify what your or your querent’s intentions and expectations are. To get the ball rolling, ask: What do you want to Know? Why do you want to know it? After spending a few moments on this, formulate a clear question. Try to avoid yes or no questions. Beginning with the word ‘what” can be especially helpful. For example, “What do I need to know about…?” Once you have your question set, hold it steady in your mind. Repeat it out loud or internally while you shuffle the cards. This step is incredibly important.

THE CELTIC SHAMAN’S PACK Journeys on the Shaman’s Path by John Matthews

$28.95, cards. Connections. 176-page guidebook + 40 colour cards, boxed

John Matthews, elder sage and scholar of the Celtic and Grail mysteries, has done it again. This renewed revision of The Celtic Shaman’s Pack offers direct access to the powerful archetypes in the inner cosmos of the Celts. This pack constitutes your “shaman’s pouch”—your very own collection of items imbued with magical or mystical significance, offering a bridge between the world of the everyday and the world of unseen reality that is a part of every shaman’s training. It offers access to the inner cosmos of the Celts through journeying, and enables the user to perceive some of the ways in which the information thus gained can be worked with shamanically. The pack is therefore not exactly a divinatory system nor a method of determining the direction of your life—though both of these aspects are part of the way in which it can be used.

The cards represent key aspects of the Celtic universe, providing you with a set of shamanic journey coordinates. By working with the images on a daily basis for divination and discovery, you can learn to journey on the visionary path and gain a heightened understanding of yourself as well as insight into your true-life direction. You, the seeker, are the only one who can make the transition between the states of being and consciousness that the cards depict. By studying and working with the images on the cards, you will gradually learn to recognize the powers they represent… You will become aware of the subtle energies that underlie everything, of the webs woven by the Shapers that hold the pattern of our relationship to all life and creation.

Chesca Potter’s powerful images on these cards (the cover image is of ‘The Mound of Wonders’) are astonishing. Also by John Matthews are Taliesin: The Last Celtic Shaman and The Celtic Totem Animals Deck.

Virginia Bell has been a full-time astrologer for over 20 years.

TAROT TRIUMPHS

Using the Marseilles Tarot Trumps for Divination and Inspiration by Cherry Gilchrist $27.95, paper. Weiser. 294 pages, b/w illustrations

Focusing on the major arcana, or trumps, of the classical Marseilles Tarot, Cherry Gilchrist invites the reader to experience the Tarot in a direct, fresh, and uncluttered way. This in-depth examination of the 22 cards of the Major Arcana includes “The BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Fool’s Mirror,” a new method for laying out the cards, as well as hints for using the tarot to gain deeper levels of awareness. Cherry Gilchrist offers ways to approach each card, absorb it, and understand its essence. Readers are encouraged to relate this essence to personal experience as the most enduring and rewarding way to prepare for reading the cards. Echoing the medieval carnival processions of “Triumphs” through the streets of Italy, this engaging book celebrates the Tarot cards as a magical heritage that has been passed down F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

to us today through an unbroken line. This is mature and practical Tarot writing that opens up uncharted areas and throws a revealing light on what we may think is all too familiar to us. Key points: u Focuses on the 22 trumps, or the major arcana of the tarot u Offers advice on how to study each card and find its unique significance u Provides instructions for laying out and reading the cards u Explores the tarot in terms of history, divination, symbolism, and esoteric traditions. “A fresh, bracing, and inspiring look into the Major Arcana. The Fool’s Mirror in particular is the most sophisticated and profound Tarot layout that I have ever seen.” —Richard Smoley, author of Forbidden Faith

PHILOSOPHY & REVELATION

Metaphysics & Philosophy THE AFTERLIFE BIBLE

The Definitive Guide to Otherworldly Experience by Sarah Bartlett

$19.95, paper. Firefly Books. 400 pages, 6x6, colour photos

The Afterlife Bible describes the many beliefs in a before- and afterlife, from ancient myths and religions to contemporary spiritual faiths and practices. Sarah Bartlett explains how the scientific community has taken part in the search for evidence of the afterlife and reveals the role of contemporary spiritual practices. Topics in The Afterlife Bible include: u The Search for Evidence: Gives the history of how the religious, the scientists, the believers and the doubters explain the afterlife in hard evidence u Belief: Describes the world’s many cultural interpretations of an afterlife. These include polytheism, re-incarnation and karma, ancient Egyptian beliefs, the Vedic traditions, Christianity, Ancient Mesoamerican beliefs, Kabbalah, and Wicca u The Nature of the Soul: Describes the Ancient Greek soul, the Ancient Egyptian soul, soul spark, Plato’s chariot, the soul in Taoism, Gnosticism, Islam and many more

u Afterlife Places and Beings: Paints a

picture of the afterlife. Osiris, the Mesopotamian underworld, offended spirits, the afterlife as suffering, an afterlife for heroes, and mythical journeys to the afterlife u Experience and Healing: Gives readers easy exercises and rituals for meditation, channeling, dream work, astral travel, scrying, mediumship, and automatic writing. Throughout history, civilizations have believed in an afterlife. More recently, new parapsychological research, personal reports of near-death experiences, and scientific studies into the nature of energy and matter, have prompted a renewed interest in discovering the truth. The Afterlife Bible is a great start on that journey.

SURVIVING DEATH

A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife by Leslie Kean $34.99, cloth. Crown. 406 pages, colour photos

Leslie Kean’s impeccably researched, page-turning investigation reveals stunning and wide-ranging evidence suggesting that consciousness survives death. Here she continues her examination of unexplained phenomena that began with her provocative and controversial UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record. While exploring the evidence for an afterlife, I witnessed some unbelievable things that are not supposed to be possible in our material world. Yet they were

Becoming Wise with Krista Tippett

Kean explores the most compelling case studies involving young children reporting verifiable details from past lives, contemporary mediums who seem to defy the boundaries of the brain and the material world, apparitions providing information about their lives on earth, and ordinary people who recount some of the most extraordinary near-death experiences ever recorded. Kean’s first book, and her credibility as a seasoned and well-respected journalist, made people take notice of a topic that many considered implausible. This book will do the same— this time enriched by Kean’s reactions to her own perplexing experiences encountered while she probed the universal question concerning all of us: Is there life after death? British psychologist David Fontana studied the evidence for psi for over thirty years. “Psychic abilities are a matter of fact, not of belief,” he writes. “What they are and they mean for our view of reality is another matter, but one cannot dismiss them as fiction and yet retain credibility as an unbiased observer.” The reader will encounter the reality of the most refined psychic functioning throughout this book, and by the end will have no questions as to its existence.

Transmissions & Revelations

BECOMING WISE

An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD BOOK 4

$23.00, paper. Knopf. 288 pages

by Neale Donald Walsch

In Becoming Wise, Krista Tippett, host of the radio program On Being, has created a master class in living for a fractured world. Fracture, she says, is not the whole story of our time. The enduring question of what it means to be human has become inextricable from the challenge of who we are to each other. She insists on the possibility of personal depth and common life for this century, nurtured by science and “spiritual technologies,” with civility and love as muscular public practice. And, accompanied by a cross-disciplinary dream team of a teaching faculty, she shows us how.

$32.25, cloth. Rainbow Ridge. 304 pages

In the middle of the night on August 2, 2016, Neale Donald Walsch found himself drawn into a new and totally unexpected dialogue with God in which he suddenly faced two questions: Is the human race being offered help by Highly Evolved Beings from another dimension? Is there a key role that humans are being invited to play in advancing their own evolution by joining in a mutual mission to assist the planet during the critical times ahead? He was told that the answer to both questions is yes. Then he was given 16 specific examples of how Highly Evolved Beings respond to life differently than humans do—and how adopting even a few of those behaviors could change the course of world history for the better forever. That information makes up the body of this work. A striking invitation to every reader sets the stage for the extraordinary explorations that follow. Picking up where Book 3 in the Conversations with God Trilogy series left off, the revelations about Highly Evolved Beings and about how ordinary humans can answer the call to help awaken the species on Earth will breathtakingly expand your view of both your personal and our collective future. Which is exactly what the dialogue was intended to do.

I’m a person who listens for a living. I listen for wisdom, and beauty, and for voices not shouting to be heard. This book chronicles some of what I’ve learned in what has become a conversation across time and generations, across disciplines and denominations… This book is for people who want to take up the great questions of our time with imagination and courage, to nurture new realities in the spaces we inhabit, and to do so expectantly and with joy.

Krista Tippett’s great gift, in her work and in Becoming Wise, is to avoid reductive simplifications but still find the golden threads that weave people and ideas together into a shimmering braid. Our bodies tell us the truth of life that our minds can deny: that we are in any moment as much about softness as fortitude. Always in need of care and tenderness. Life is fluid, evanescent, evolving in every cell, in every breath. Never perfect. To be alive is by definition messy, always leaning towards disorder and surprise. How we open or close to the reality that we never arrive at safe enduring stasis is the matter, the raw material, of wisdom.

“When President Obama gave Krista Tippett the National Humanities Medal, he praised her for ‘thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.’ This book is yet another piece of evidence of the truth behind those words. Grounded in Tippett’s ‘life of conversation,’ the book offers more, much more than a chronicle of her award-winning public radio program, On Being. In Becoming Wise, Tippett not only gives us the voices of the remarkable people with whom she’s conversed on-air. She speaks her own voice as well, a voice informed by her lifelong search for truth and meaning. Wisdom is a communal creation. Tippett is rare in her ability to host a far-flung community of luminaries, listeners and readers, who together uncover the wisdom that lies within and between us.”—Parker Palmer, author of Let Your Life Speak “Becoming Wise is a tremendously vitalizing read in its totality—a wellspring of nuance and dimension amid our Flatland of artificial polarities, touching on every significant aspect of human life with great gentleness and a firm grasp of human goodness.” —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings Listen to any of her interviews online at onbeing.org. Krista Tippett’s other books are Einstein’s God and Speaking of Faith. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

unavoidably and undeniably real. Despite my initial doubt, I came to realize that there are still aspects of Nature which are neither understood or accepted, even though their reality has profound implications for understanding the true breadth of the human psyche and its possible continuity after death.

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

F Among Neale Donald Walsh’s many other books are Conversations with God Books 2 & 3 and Little Soul and the Sun.

THE TABLETS OF LIGHT

The Teachings of Thoth on Unity Consciousness by Danielle Rama Hoffman

$25.00, paper. Bear & Company. 320 pp.

Within each of us resides a diamond light seed of Divine consciousness, waiting to be activated. Transmitted to Danielle Rama Hoffman by Thoth, keeper of the Akashic Records and member of the Council of Light, the teachings of the Emerald Tablets of Light enable each of us to reactivate the Divine consciousness that inhabits our souls and transition from separation consciousness into unity consciousness. Engaging you in a multidimensional conversation directly with Thoth, each tablet transmission in this book includes embedded light codes of high vibrational energy and consciousness, which activate hidden keys to conscious evolution within your soul. Offering the opportunity to leave behind and evolve outdated ways of being, such as acting from fear, being restrained by self-consciousness, and hiding your brilliance, the teachings of the Tablets of Light enable you to awaken oracular vision, re-establish quantum consciousness, become vibrationally autonomous, and activate your Divine Light Body. Including breathing exercises, hologram-inspired visualizations, and unity consciousness practices, the Tablets of Light allow you to create tangible results in your daily life as you move higher on the evolutionary scale of divine awakening and develop a divine partnership with Source. Guided by Thoth and his Tablets of Light, you can rediscover the undiluted version of yourself and your soul’s purpose, accept your Divine Light Mission as a Divine Incarnate, and set the stage to return in the next life as a fully resurrected Being of Light. Also by Hoffman are The Temples of Light and The Council of Light

THE SACRED HISTORY

How Angels, Mystics and Higher Intelligence Made Our World by Mark Booth $22.00, paper. Simon & Schuster. 528 pages, b/w illustrations

Written by the author of The Secret History of the World—an underground bestseller for years—The Sacred History takes us on a captivating journey through the great myths of many ancient civilizations to the astounding discoveries of the modern era. The Sacred History is the epic story of human interaction with angels and other forms of higher intelligence, starting from Creation all the way through to the operations of the supernatural in the modern world. What emerges is an alternative history of great men and women, guided by angels or demons, and the connection between modern-day mystics and their ancient counterparts. This spellbinding narrative brings together great figures— such as Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Elijah, Mary and Jesus and Mohammed—and stories from African, Na-

BUSINESS, SANITY & THE SIMPLE LIFE

tive American and Celtic traditions. Woven into this is an amazing array of mystical connections, including the surprising roots not only of astrology and alternative medicine but also of important literary and artistic movements, aspects of mainstream science and religion and a wide range of cultural references in modern cinema, music and literature. This book of true stories shows how they can tell us things about the deep structure of the human experience. Stories about otherworldly patterns and mystic traces can sensitize us to patterns like these in our own experience. They encourage attentiveness to complex, subtle, inner events which, if idealism provides an accurate picture of the world, are at the same time experiences of the inner workings of the world and evidence for the great forces that weave together to create, maintain and move it. The stories in this book have been chosen to help bring such patterns into focus.

Philosophical, passionate, entertaining, and filled with gorgeous illustrations, The Sacred History is a remarkable repositioning of ancient knowledge in such a way that we see truth through another lens. Let us now gaze into the great vistas opened up by these mystics and visionaries, the panoramas of armies of angels, dynasties of angels, angelic leaders, angelic heroes and, yes, bad angels. In what follows we will see galaxies expanding and collapsing and angelic civilizations rising and falling. Are the battles of angels the product of human fantasy, as the atheists insist? Or are our lives and loves echoes of the lives and loves of angels?

Business, Work & Money LET MY PEOPLE GO SURFING

The Education of a Reluctant Businessman - Completely Revised & Updated by Yvon Chouinard $27.00, paper. Penguin. 272 pages, colour photos

Here’s the updated memoir/manifesto from legendary climber, businessman, and e nv ir onm e n ta l i st Yvon Chouinard, founder and owner of Patagonia, one of the world’s most inspiring companies. As a child, he moved with his father, a French-Canadian blacksmith, and the rest of his family to Southern California in the 1950s with little English and less money. He escaped into mountain climbing as a teenager and by his early twenties was among the best climbers in America, making famous first ascents of a number of notorious faces. When he decided he could make better climbing tools himself for less money and when his fellow climbers agreed and clamored for more, a way of life became a business. Some forty years later, Yvon Chouinard still summits peaks around the world (though he now spends more time surfing). Patagonia still makes exceptionally high quality things, only it now earns more than $250 million a year from worldwide sales, and Chouinard is able to leverage his concern for the natural settings he’s spent a lifetime enjoying. His resolve to minimize Pata-

Joel Solomon on Clean Money

THE CLEAN MONEY REVOLUTION

Reinventing Power, Purpose, and Capitalism by Joel Solomon with Tyee Bridge $29.99, cloth. New Society. 242 pages

By 2050, $50 trillion will pass from elders to youngers in North America alone. From Boomers to Millennials, the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in history is underway and the ramifications will remake the world. The dirty money of “business as usual” is on the brink, wedged between catastrophic climate change and the demographic tidal wave of Millennials pounding the consumer table for real change. These forces are transforming the very nature of capitalism into something different and powerful, towards a clean money revolution. Clean money is money aligned with a purpose beyond self- interest. Money for the commons. Money that makes the world better. Money regenerating ecosystems and engendering a healthy balance between people and planet. Money that builds true security: long- term, safe, fair resilience.

Joel Solomon, pioneering clean money investor and change agent (one of the gardener-visionaries behind Hollyhock), lays it on the line. The revolution is underway, the opportunities are everywhere, and the challenges and rewards are immense. There is enough money to solve global challenges. It must be activated… Your name is on your money. Know what it is going, right now, to people and place. Ask questions. Demand good options… We own slaves, kill other people’s babies, and start wars. We must align our money with our values.

Part memoir of an inspiring thought leader’s journey from presidential campaigner to budding oceanographer to multi-millionaire investor, part insider’s guide to the businesses remaking the world, and part manifesto for a bright new future. The Clean Money Revolution explores this massive economic shift, and how you can ride the $50 trillion wave to create the new, ethical, and sustainable businesses that power local economies, restore ecosystems, and build social and financial equity. Joel urges “a $100 trillion vision to save civilization by 2050: Let’s be billionaires of good deeds and good ancestors who did everything we could.” Our entire society is built around [money]. It is seductive. It is perhaps the dominant religion in the world today. But money has no values of its own. Money doesn’t account for fairness, justice, beauty, consciousness, or love. That’s our role, and it’s ever more crucial that we assume it. We need to start to talk about money in ways that dethrone it and make it subject to human ethics and standards of love and decency… This book is a small attempt, part of an emerging movement, to start making vital distinctions about how wealth is made and used in the world.

The Clean Money Revolution is a must-read for investors, aspiring business leaders, wealth managers, and entrepreneurs looking to align values with assets and chart a unique and profitable life course. It could also be a GPS for the 1%, for those entrusted with wealth for humanity. Joel Solomon is chairman of Renewal Funds, a $98 million mission venture capital firm. He has invested in over 100 early growth-stage companies in North America, delivering above-market returns while catalyzing positive social and environmental change. gonia’s impact on the environment has led the company to make its famous fleeces out of recycled soda bottles; to donate at least 1% of revenues to environmental causes; and to pioneer many other great policies. In Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard relates his and his company’s story and the core philosophies that have sustained Patagonia year in and year out. It’s the story of a man who brought doing good and having grand adventures into the heart of his business model—and who enjoyed even more business success as a result. This 2017 edition includes a new chapter, revisions throughout, some colour photos, is printed on 100% recycled paper, and a preface by Naomi Klein. “This is a wonderful book of truth telling, consciousness raising and ballsy bravery. His company created an awareness of the environmental issues linked to corporate behavior, product development and company action when others were just tinkering at the edges. Every wannabe entrepreneur, every school teaching a course on “business” and every MBA program should buy this book.” —Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

WHO DO WE CHOOSE TO BE?

Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity by Margaret Wheatley

$32.95, paper. Berrett-Koehler. 240 pages

This book seeks to restore leadership as a noble profession, offering a path for leadBRANCHES OF LIGHT F

ers to engage well and sanely with the destructive dynamics of this time. Deepening the insights in her classic Leadership and the New Science, Wheatley uses two lenses to understand where we are and how we got here: the new science of living systems and the pattern of collapse in complex civilizations. Each of them is powerful on its own; together they offer tremendous explanatory power. Wheatley begins each section with “What Science Teaches”— explaining a specific dynamic common to all living systems. The six dynamics explored in separate sections are time, identity, information, self-organization, perception, and interconnectedness. Each section has several short essays. In “Facing Reality,” the two lenses of science and the pattern of collapse are used to describe the causes of many of our most troubling and disturbing personal and social behaviors, especially those of importance to leaders. Subsequent essays are organized under “Claiming Leadership” and “Restoring Sanity.” In these, Wheatley answers the question, In our current reality, what is sane leadership? She uses a combination of commentary, actual practices, quotes, and F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

stories to bring into focus the qualities and actions that support good leadership and create “islands of sanity.” The stories she tells of leaders with whom she’s worked are exceptionally diverse: from nuns to military commanders. But these leaders are deeply unified in how they work with people and partner with life. In the concluding chapters, she brings in her current work, calling on us to develop the qualities of compassion, insight, and presence as “warriors for the human spirit,” creating workplaces and communities where people can still be generous, creative, and kind.

Ecology, Community & Politics THE SWEETNESS OF A SIMPLE LIFE

by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

$22.00, paper. Ballantine. 357 pages

The passionately informed botanist/ scientist/author of The Global Forest-—an international classic beloved by readers around the world— gives us her tips and advice for achieving better health and peace of mind, with frugality, simplicity and pleasure not far behind. In The Sweetness of a Simple Life, Diana Beresford-Kroeger mixes her cleareyed understanding of science and her knowledge of trees and healing plants with storytelling, wonderment, magic, myth and plenty of common sense. Orphaned at an early age, Beresford-Kroeger was tutored by elderly relatives in Ireland in the Druidic tradition, taught the overlap between the arts and sciences, and the triad of body, mind and spirit. After pursuing a Ph.D. in medical biochemistry, Beresford-Kroeger set out on a quest to preserve the world’s forests. In this warm and wise collection of essays, she gives us a guide for living simply and well: which foods to eat and which to avoid; how to clean our homes and look after pets; how we can protect ourselves and our loved ones from illness; and why we need to appreciate nature. She provides an easy dose of healing, practical wisdom, blending modern medicine with aboriginal traditions. This inspiring, accessible book emphasizes back to basics, with the touchstone not an exotic religion or meditation practice, but the natural world around us. This book is full of wisdoms to restore your life and help you connect to the natural world. Most probably, you rarely take time to think about this larger environment, but it is directly connected to your health and welfare. Nature provides the food you eat, so slow down and take a bite. Savour it for its singular simplicity. If you get that far in this collection, I will tell you more about my bigger mission: saving the global forests for your children and your children’s children. We can do it together by simplifying our lives and making our homes healthier. I ask only one thing of you: give me your hand. Hold on tightly. I will not let go. We are on a mission to help nature, our world and our only home. Together, we will succeed.

Among Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s other books are Arboretum America and A Garden for Life. She has also released a potent film, The Call of the Forest, and has created apps for tree planting and tree selection for your place. For more info: Calloftheforest.ca.

COMMUNITY & CLIMATE CHANGE

CHANGE HERE NOW

Permaculture Solutions for Personal and Community Transformation by Adam Brock $28.99, paper. North Atlantic. 376 pages, 50 b/w illustrations

Award-winning social entrepreneur and permaculturalist Adam Brock draws from ecology, sociology, community economics, social justice, and indigenous practices the world over to present more than eighty proven solutions for building more resilient, equitable, and sustainable communities. Outlining strategies for consciously redesigning our social and economic systems to mimic nature’s resilience and abundance, Brock organizes his narrative around the pattern language framework developed by architect Christopher Alexander and his colleagues in the 1970s. Each “pattern” represents an archetype: a flexible solution to a problem encountered again and again in our society. Each strategy is geared toward a fundamental element of a healthy society and can be documented and taught in a manner that makes it easy to replicate. Addressing topics such as interdependent communities, decolonization, self care, economics, community governance, and education, Change Here Now includes how-to guides, case studies, and much more to help anyone looking for meaning in a chaotic world to incorporate these patterns into their lives. “Change Here Now is an excellent contribution to a realm of permaculture desperately needing attention and active development. The social ecosystem patterns Adam Brock lays out are intriguing and relevant. I look forward to testing, living into, and growing through the patterns in this book.” —Dave Jacke, veteran permaculturalist and co-author of Edible Forest Gardens

THE LOCAL FOOD REVOLUTION How Humanity Will Feed Itself in Uncertain Times by Michael Brownlee $33.00, paper. North Atlantic. 456 pages, b/w photos

Demonstrating that humanity faces an imminent and prolonged global food crisis, Michael Brownlee issues a clarion call and manifesto for a revolutionary movement to localize the global food supply. He lays out a practical guide for those who hope to navigate the challenging process of shaping the local or regional food system, providing a roadmap for embarking on the process of righting the profoundly unsustainable and already-failing global industrialized food system. Written to inform, inspire, and empower anyone—farmers or ranchers, community gardeners, aspiring food entrepreneurs, supply chain venturers, commercial food buyers, restaurateurs, investors, community food activists, non-profit agencies, policy makers, or local government leaders—who hopes to be a catalyst for change, this book provides a blueprint for economic action, with specific suggestions that make the process more conscious and deliberate.

Cooling Climate Change DRAWDOWN

The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming edited by Paul Hawken

The subtitle of Drawdown—The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming—may

$29.00, paper. Penguin. 240 pages. 8x11, colour photos

Here are the 100 most substantive solutions to roll back climate change, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world. In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and activists (including Michael Pollan and Elizabeth Kolbert) have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change. Techniques and methods described here—some well known, some you have never heard of—range from clean energy to educating girls in the developing world to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path toward not just slowing the earth’s warming, but actually reaching drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to seize our planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world. Drawdown maps, measures, models, and describes the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming. For each solution, we describe its history, the carbon impact it provides, the relative cost and savings, the path to adoption, and how it works. The goal of the research that informs Drawdown is to determine if we can reverse the buildup of atmospheric carbon within thirty years. All solutions modeled are already in place, well understood, analyzed based on peer-reviewed science, and are expanding around the world.

JUST COOL IT!

$24.95, paper. Greystone. 312 pages

Read Just Cool It by David Suzuki and Ian Hanington. You will be convinced beyond a doubt that climate change is real. And “if we can put a man on the moon,” Suzuki says, “we can change the outcome of the dire crisis that is upon us.” Just Cool It! is a demanding book, structured like a university course. First, we must understand what global warming is. What is meant by calling carbon dioxide a “greenhouse gas”? Why is methane a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2? What is a “positive feedback” mechanism? What is the “albedo effect” that should keep the Arctic Ocean cold but doesn’t? We learn why this particular geological epoch is called the Anthropocene. Human activity is profoundly altering the biosphere and, by extension, the very geology of the planet. What particular human activities affect climate? Just Cool It gives exhaustive details about the effect of our addiction to fossil fuels, our profligate use of fertilizers, deforestation, overfishing, the “massive swirling islands of plastic waste in the oceans.” Everything is connected. The book gives vivid accounts of desertification of grasslands, massive insect invasion of forests, catastrophic storms and floods, and migrations of people escaping starvation when droughts cause crops to fail. With growing human populations and profit-driven consumer based economics, more land is being eaten up by development, habitat is being destroyed and degraded, and resources are being exploited at unsustainable levels. Natural capital is disappearing.

So what is to be done? The bulk of the book is taken up with solutions — things we can do individually and collectively.

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

“At this point in time, the Drawdown book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, author of What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming u As individuals we can resist an economic system that

The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do by David Suzuki & Ian Hanington

Brownlee, cofounder of the nonprofit Local Food Shift Group, maps out the underlying process of food localization and outlines the route that communities, regions, and foodsheds often follow in their efforts to take control of food production and distribution. By sharing the strategies that have proven successful, he charts a practical path forward while indicating approaches that otherwise might be invisible and unexplored. Stories and interviews illustrate how food localization is happen-

sound brash. We chose that description because no detailed plan to reverse warming has been proposed. There have been agreements and proposals on how to slow, cap, and arrest emissions, and there are international commitments to prevent global temperature increases from exceeding two degrees centigrade over pre-industrial levels. 195 nations have made extraordinary progress in coming together to acknowledge that we have a momentous civilizational crisis on our earthly doorstep and have created national plans of action. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has accomplished the most significant scientific study in the history of humankind, and continues to refine the science, expand the research, and extend our grasp of one of the most complex systems imaginable—climate. However, there is as yet no roadmap that goes beyond slowing or stopping emissions. To be clear, our organization did not create or devise a plan. We do not have that capability or self-appointed mandate. In conducting our research, we found a plan, a blueprint that already exists in the world in the form of humanity’s collective wisdom, made manifest in applied, hands-on practices and technologies. Individuals, communities, farmers, cities, companies, and governments have shown that they care about this planet, its people, and its places. Engaged citizens the world over are doing something extraordinary. This is their story.

encourages waste and consumption and the careless use of fossil fuels. u We can divest from the fossil fuel industry and invest in renewable. u We can cultivate habits of bicycling, walking, and using public transportation instead of cars. u We can resist anti-transit campaigns. u We can use fuel-efficient cars or electric cars. u We can insulate our homes and use energy-efficient lighting. u We can install solar panels on our houses. u We can buy less “stuff” and waste less. u We can eat less meat and, by composting, waste less food. In our agriculture, we can get away from factory farming and monocultures that use GMO seeds requiring chemicals. We can “design an agroecosystem that mimics the structure and function of local ecosystems and replace GMOs with evolutionary plant breeding.” The authors praise the urban agriculture movement which uses space within cities to grow food and keep livestock. Technological solutions are most important. We must revolutionize the way we produce electricity. Etc.! Climate change is the most important crisis humanity has faced, but we still confront huge barriers to resolving it. Just Cool It! is scientist David Suzuki at his most passionate. In this book, he offers a comprehensive look at the current state of climate science and knowledge and the many ways to resolve the climate crisis, imploring us to do what’s necessary to live in a better, cleaner future. When enough people demand action, change starts happening—and this time, it needs all of us doing our best— and the political will to commit ourselves to challenging the system where deregulated capitalism seems to dominate government.

ing on the ground and in the field. Essays and thought-pieces explore some of the challenging ethical, moral, economic, and social dilemmas and thresholds that might arise as the local food shift develops. For anyone who wants to understand, in concrete terms, the unique challenges and extraordinary opportunities that present themselves as we address one of the most urgent issues of our time, The Local Food Revolution is an indispensable resource. F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

GREAT TIDE RISING

SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY & ECO-DESIGN These are (but for a few) between 400–1200 square feet of floor area — less than half the size of the typical new American home. (By way of comparison, homes in our book, Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter, averaged 200–300 sq. ft.)

Eco-Philosophy

Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change by Kathleen Dean Moore $24.50, paper. Counterpoint. 272 pages

The homes here — some 65 of them — vary from unique and artistic to simple and low-cost. Some are plain, ordinary buildings that provide owners shelter at a reasonable cost — and some are inspiring examples of design, carpentry, craftsmanship, imagination, creativity, and homemaking.

New in Paperback

Even as seas—and sea levels—rise against the shores, another great tide is beginning to rise: a tide of outrage against the pillage of the planet, a tide of commitment to justice and human rights, a swelling affirmation of moral responsibility to the future and to Earth’s fullness of life. Philosopher and nature essayist Kathleen Dean Moore takes on the essential questions: Why is it wrong to wreck the world? What is our obligation to the future? What is the transformative power of moral resolve? How can clear thinking stand against the lies and illogic that batter the chances for positive change? What are useful answers to the recurring questions of a storm-threatened time? What can anyone do? Is there any hope? And always this: What stories and ideas will lift people who deeply care, inspiring them to move forward with clarity and moral courage? (Moore provides many.) Mary Evelyn Tucker writes in her intro:

This is the seventh in a series of highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The series, The Shelter Library of Building Books, includes Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Each of these books has over 1,000 photos, and each 2-page spread is carefully laid out with respect to balance of graphics and clarity of information. The underlying theme with Shelter’s books, which has continued for over 40 years (he was shelter editor for The Whole Earth Catalog), is that it’s possible for you to create your own home with your own hands, using natural materials. Some of these homes are in the country, some in small towns, and some in large cities.

Clearly, the nourishing of the human spirit and imagination is what is at stake in our present moment—a spirit and imagination that is shriveling before our very eyes with an anguish and confusion that is heart rending. Kathleen bears witness… We are groping, we are limping, we are struggling. But in this groping, in this dark night we are seeking to return to who we are. We are beings of Earth, she writes, who feel the mysterious rhythms of life unfolding… Rediscovering who we are. Finding our purpose as humans to enhance life, not diminish it. This is her endless prayer.

Beautifully written, Great Tide Rising speaks to and for us humans, now. The Earth is filled, it is populated, it is shivering, with lives of beauty and astonishment—what a child’s hand holds, and the hand itself, and the reverence in the hand’s careful holding. The fate of these lives is not a matter of indifference or of economic expediency alone. These lives are the irreplaceable, priceless consequence of the creativity of the universe over fourteen billion years. Now that humans have taken on the role of Earth-changer, we take on as well the responsibilities of celebration, protection, and ferocious love.

Gardening & Self-Reliance GREYWATER, GREEN LANDSCAPE

SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY

by Laura Allen

10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Hart

$24.95, paper. Storey. 176 pages, 7x9, colour photos

$16.95, paper. Golden Sufi. 112 pages

This book offers inspiring and practical guidance for reconnecting to the sacred in everyday life and transforming our relationship with the Earth. Describing the power of simple, daily practices such as Walking, Gardening, Cooking with Love, and Prayer, this small book supports profound changes in how we think about and respond to the ecological crisis of our times. Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life follows our groundbreaking Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, now in its second edition, which included spiritual perspectives on climate change, species loss, deforestation, and other aspects of our present environmental crises from renowned spiritual teachers, scientists, and indigenous leaders. That book drew an overwhelmingly positive reaction from readers, many of whom are asking: What can I do?

Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life answers that question with inspiring, personal anecdotes from the author Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and simple practices we all can do. Rooted in the mystical foundation of the worldès great spiritual traditions, with a particular connection to Sufism, these timeless practices remind readers of our deep connections to life, each other, and the Earth, and invite a return of meaning to our desecrated world. As Rumi says,” there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground,” and it is this sacred ground that is calling to us, that needs our living presence, our attentiveness. This small book offers simple ways to reconnect so that we can once again feel the music, the song of our living connection with the Earth.

Among Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s other books are Darkening of the Light and For Love of the Real.

Earth Energies & Eco-Design SMALL HOMES The Right Size by Lloyd Kahn

$41.95, paper. Shelter. 232 pages, 9x12, colour photos throughout

From Lloyd Kahn, the creator/publisher of a popular series of building books comes Small Homes, which is highly relevant for these times. Getting smaller, rather than larger. Some 65 builders share their knowledge of building and design, with artistic, practical, and/or economical homes in the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Spain, New

Zealand and Lithuania. This book is about homes that are larger than “tiny,” but smaller than the national average. It’s a logical step for Shelter Publications after our two books on tiny homes. Compared to the average American home, small homes are less expensive, use less resources, are more efficient to heat and cool, and cheaper to maintain and repair. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Keep your lawn and garden lush without wasting resources by capturing and recycling the greywater that drains from your sink, shower, and washing machine. This accessible and detailed guide walks you through each step of planning for and installing a variety of greywater systems, including laundry-to-landscape and branched drain gravity-fed. After identifying greywater sources in your home and estimating flow rate, you’ll learn to pinpoint where to redirect the wastewater for the greatest benefit. No matter which system you decide to build, doing so is quick and inexpensive and uses only basic tools and materials readily available at home supply stores. “Simple, affordable projects and strategies to conserve water and reuse it for household food gardens, groundwater recharge, and soil regeneration. These solutions are a win for the household and for the environment.” — Gemma Bulos, director of Global Women’s Water Initiative Laura Allen is the author of The Water-Wise Home and cofounder of Greywater Action, a collaborative of educators who teach residents and tradespeople about affordable and simple household water systems that dramatically reduce water use and foster sustainable cultures of water.

HOMEGROWN & HANDMADE

A Practical Guide to More Self-Reliant Living - Revised 2nd edition by Deborah Niemann $24.99, paper. New Society. 320 pages, 7x9, b/w photos

Food recalls, dubious health claims, scary

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

and shocking ingredients in health and beauty products. Our increasingly industrialized supply system is becoming more difficult to navigate, more frightening, and more frustrating, leaving us feeling stuck choosing in many cases between the lesser of several evils. Author Deborah Niemann offers healthier, more empowering choices, by showing us how to reclaim links in our food and purchasing chains, to make choices that are healthier for our families, ourselves, and our planet. In this fully updated and revised edition of Homegrown and Handmade, Deborah shows how making things from scratch and growing some of your own food can help you eliminate artificial ingredients from your diet, reduce your carbon footprint, and create a more authentic life. Whether your goal is increasing your self-reliance or becoming a full-fledged homesteader, this book is packed with answers and solutions to help you rediscover traditional skills, take control of your food from seed to plate, and much more. This comprehensive guide to food and fiber from scratch proves that attitude and knowledge is more important than acreage. Written from the perspective of a successful, self-taught modern homesteader, this well-illustrated, practical, and accessible manual will appeal to anyone who dreams of a more empowered life. Whether you have 40 acres and a mule or a condo with a balcony, you can do more than you think to safeguard your health, your money and the planet. And… you can rediscover traditional skills to meet more of your family’s needs than you ever thought possible.

THE BIO-INTEGRATED FARM

A Revolutionary Permaculture-Based System Using Greenhouses, Ponds, Compost Piles, Aquaponics, Chickens, and More by Shawn Jadrnicek, with Stephanie Jadrnicek $55.95, paper. Chelsea Green. 372 pages, 8x10, colour photos

The Bio-Integrated Farm is a twenty-first-century manual for managing nature’s resources. This groundbreaking book brings system farming and permaculture to a whole new level. Author Shawn Jadrnicek presents new insights into permaculture, moving beyond the philosophical foundation to practical advanced designs based on a functional analysis. Holding his designs to a higher standard, Jadrnicek’s components serve at least seven functions (classical permaculture theory only seeks at least two functions). With every additional function a component performs, the design becomes more advanced and saves more energy. A bio-integrated greenhouse, for example, doesn’t just extend the season for growing vegetables; it also serves as a rainwater collector, a pond site, an aquaponics system, and a heat generator. Jadrnicek’s preva-

GARDENING & PERMACULTURE

Fungi & Forest Gardening

Mr. Green Gene

LETTER TO A YOUNG FARMER

MYCORRHIZAL PLANET

How to Live Richly without Wealth on the New Garden Farm by Gene Logsdon

How Symbiotic Fungi Work with Roots to Support Plant Health and Build Soil Fertility by Michael Phillips

$31.95, cloth. Chelsea Green. 210 pages

$55.95, cloth. Chelsea Green. 244 pages, 8x11, colour photos

For decades, the self-described contrary farmer Gene Logsdon has commented on the state of North American agriculture. In Letter to a Young Farmer, his final book of essays, Logsdon addresses the next generation—young people moving back to the land to enjoy a better way of life as small-scale garden farmers. It’s a lifestyle that recognizes the beauty of nature, cherishes the land, respects our fellow creatures, and values rural traditions. It’s one that also looks forward and embraces right technologies, including new and innovative ways of working smarter and avoiding premature burnout. Completed only a few weeks before the author’s death, Letter to a Young Farmer is a remarkable testament to the life and wisdom of one of the greatest rural philosophers and writers of our time. Gene’s earthy wit and sometimes irreverent humor combines with his valuable perspectives on many wide-ranging subjects—everything from how to show a ram who’s boss to enjoying the almost churchlike calmness of a well-built livestock barn.

Mycorrhizal fungi have been waiting a long time for people to recognize just how important they are to the making of dynamic soils. These microscopic organisms partner with the root systems of approximately 95 percent of the plants on Earth, and they sequester carbon in much more meaningful ways than human carbon offsets will ever achieve. Pick up a handful of old-growth forest soil and you are holding 26 miles of threadlike fungal mycelia, if it could be stretched it out in a straight line. Most of these soil fungi are mycorrhizal, supporting plant health in elegant and sophisticated ways. The boost to green immune function in plants and community-wide networking turns out to be the true basis of ecosystem resiliency. A profound intelligence exists in the underground nutrient exchange between fungi and plant roots, which in turn determines the nutrient density of the foods we grow and eat. Exploring the science of symbiotic fungi in laymans terms, holistic farmer Michael Phillips (author of The Holistic Orchard and The Apple Grower) sets the stage for practical applications across the landscape. The real impetus behind no-till farming, gardening with mulches, cover cropping, digging with broadforks, shallow cultivation, forest-edge orcharding, and everything related to permaculture is to help the plants and fungi to prosper… which means we prosper as well. Building soil structure and fertility that lasts for ages results only once we comprehend the nondisturbance principle. As the author says, “What a grower understands, a grower will do.” Mycorrhizal Planet abounds with insights into fungal consciousness and offers practical, regenerative techniques that are pertinent to gardeners, landscapers, orchardists, foresters, and farmers. Michael’s fungal acumen will resonate with everyone who is fascinated with the unseen workings of nature and concerned about maintaining and restoring the health of our soils, our climate, and the quality of life on Earth for generations to come.

Can you imagine what a sea of change would take place in the mad world of money if so many people produced their food in the same spirit with which they now play golf, producing maybe a little more to keep the philosophers well fed?

Reading this book is like sitting down on the porch with a neighbor who has learned the ways of farming through years of long observation and practice. Someone, in short, who has seen it all and has much to say, and much to teach us, if we only take the time to listen and learn. And Gene Logsdon was the best kind of teacher: equal parts storyteller, idealist, and rabble-rouser. His vision of a nation filled with garden farmers, based in cities, towns, and countrysides, will resonate with many people, both young and old, who long to create a more sustainable, meaningful life for themselves and a better world for all of us. Our ways of degrading the climate are in no way distinguishable from our ways of abusing the land. Because he knows this, he speaks exactly at the intersection of economy and ecology, where the world will or will not be made better. —Wendell Berry, from the foreword

FOREST GARDENING IN PRACTICE

An Illustrated Practical Guide for Homes, Communities and Enterprises by Toma Remiarz

GENE EVERLASTING

A Contrary Farmer’s Thoughts on Living Forever by Gene Logsdon

$48.95, paper. Chelsea Green. 240 pages, 8x10, colour photos

$25.95, paper. Chelsea Green. 177 pages, b/w illustrations

A forest garden is a place where nature and people meet halfway—between the canopy of trees and the soil underfoot. It doesn’t have to look like a forest: what’s important is that natural processes are allowed to unfold, to the benefit of plants, people and other creatures. The result is an edible ecosystem. For three decades experimental forest gardens have been planted in temperate cities and rural sites, in households, neighborhoods, community gardens, parks, market gardens and plant nurseries. Forest Gardening In Practice offers an in-depth review of forest gardening with living, best practice examples. It highlights the four core skills of forest gardeners: ecology, horticulture, design, and cooperation. It is for hobby gardeners, smallholders, community gardeners and landscape professionals. Tomas Remiarz has been involved in creating and maintaining forest gardens across the UK and Europe for nearly twenty years.

Author Gene Logsdon—whom Wendell Berry once called “the most experienced and best observer of agriculture we have”—has a notion: That it is a little easier for gardeners and farmers to accept death than the rest of the populace. Why? Because every day, farmers and gardeners help plants and animals begin life and help plants and animals end life. They are intimately attuned to the food chain. They understand how all living things are seated around a dining table, eating while being eaten. They realize that all of nature is in flux. Gene Everlasting contains Logsdon’s reflections, by turns both humorous and heart-wrenching, on nature, death, and eternity, all from a contrary farmer’s perspective. He recounts joys and tragedies from his childhood in the 1930s and 40s spent on an Ohio farm, through adulthood and child-raising, all the way up to his recent bout with cancer, always with an eye toward the lessons that farming has taught him about life and its mysteries. Whether his subject is parsnips, pigweed, immortality, irises, green burial, buzzards, or compound interest, Logsdon generously applies as much heart and wit to his words as he does care and expertise to his fields.

PERMACULTURE AND CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION

Inspiring Ecological, Social, Economic and Cultural Responses for Resilience and Transformation by Thomas Henfrey & Gil Penha-Lopes

I can promise you, dear reader, that with my way, or rather nature’s way, if you are a gardener or farmer, when your heart stops beating and you have to stop weeding, you can keep on feeding the soil indefinitely, no Twitter about it. As your body decomposes and folds back into the eternal garden of the food chain, your loved ones will think all the more kindly of you…

$22.50, paper. Chelsea Green. 110 pages, 7x9, colour photos

Among Gene Logsdon’s other books are Holy Shit and Small-Scale Grain Raising. lent theme is using water to do the work. Although applicable in many climates, his designs are particularly important for areas coping with water scarcity. Jadrnicek focuses on his experience as farm manager at the Clemson University Student Organic Farm and at his residence in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. These locations lie at the cooler northern edge of a humid subtropical climate that extends west to the middle of Texas and north along the coast to New Jersey. He has created permaculture patterns ranging from raising transplants and field design to freshwater prawn production and composting. These patterns have simplified the operation of the 125-share CSA farm while reducing reliance on outside resources. In less time than it takes to mow his two-acre homestead, Jadrnicek is building a you-pick

fruit farm using permaculture patterns. His landscape requires only the labor of harvesting, and the only outside input he buys is a small amount of chicken feed. By carefully engaging the free forces of nature—water, wind, sunlight, convection, gravity, and decomposition—Jadrnicek creates sustenance without maintenance and transforms waste into valuable farm resources. The Bio-Integrated Farm offers indepth information about designing and building a wide range of bio-integrated projects including reflecting ponds, water-storage ponds, multipurpose basins, greenhouses, compost heat extraction, pastured chicken systems, aquaculture, hydroponics, hydronic heating, water filtration and aeration, cover cropping, and innovative rainwater-harvesting systems that supply water for drip irrigation and flushing toilets. BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

Permaculture is a design system for sustainable human habitats and the basis of a worldwide citizen-led movement present in over 100 countries. For decades, permaculture practitioners have devised creative responses to changes in local climatic conditions. In doing so, they have developed a collective knowledge and experience invaluable to global efforts to address climate change. This book seeks to bring this expertise from the margins into the centre of policy debates and mainstream action. It describes in broad terms how permaculture’s underlying phiF SPRING - SUMMER 2017

losophy and perspective on climate change complements those of formal science and indigenous knowledge, provides detailed descriptions of practical applications drawing on case studies from around the world, and considers how global responses can most effectively draw upon the unique contributions permaculture has to make. Strategies outlined—with excellent photos and stories—include: u water regulation and management u soil protection and restoration u revegetation u agrodiversity u agroecology u creation and use of microclimates u bioclimatic building u energy descent u bioregionalism, economic localization u regenerative enterprise u commons-based governance u social technologies u conflict transformation u personal resilience u changing worldviews u indigenous and local knowledge and popular education.

NATURE, EVOLUTION & SCIENCE Nature as Teacher & Healer

Conscious Evolution THE POWER OF OFF

The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World by Nancy Colier

THE SOUND OF A WILD SNAIL EATING

Our reliance on technology is rapidly changing how each of us experiences life. We’re facing new issues and difficulties, we’re encountering new emotional triggers, and we’re relating to each other in new ways. As therapist Nancy Colier writes, “How we spend our time, what motivates us, and what we want are all are on a radical course of transformation.” The promise of technology is that it will make our lives easier; yet to realize that promise, we cannot be passive users—we must bring awareness and mindfulness to our relationships with our devices.

Elisabeth Tova Bailey demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature in this inspiring and intimate story of her encounter with a Neohelix albolabris—a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence in a potted plant on her nightstand. Intrigued by the snail’s molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, she becomes an astute observer, providing a witty and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal.

by Elizabeth Bailey

$19.95, paper. Algonquin. 190 pages, French flaps

$22.95, paper. Sounds True. 226 pages

The compulsion to constantly check our devices plays on primal instincts. Even people with strong spiritual practices or those who have never had other addiction issues now find themselves caught in the subtle trap of these miraculous tools we’ve created.

Through The Power of Off, she offers us a path for making use of the virtual world while still feeling good, having healthy relationships, and staying connected with what is genuinely meaningful in life. You’ll explore: u How and why today’s devices push our buttons so effectively, and what you can do to take back control of your life u Tips for navigating the increasingly complex ways in which technology is affecting our relationships—with ourselves, others, and our devices themselves u Self-evaluation tools for bringing greater awareness to your use of technology u Mindfulness practices for helping you interact with your devices in more conscious ways u A 30-day digital detox program to kick-start a new healthier relationship with technology.

The snail and its offspring were wild creatures. They represented half a billion years of gastropod evolution. I wanted to understand their place in such a venerable lineage… While illness keeps me always aware of my mortality, I realize that what matters most is not that I survive, nor even that my species survives, but that life itself continues to evolve. As the Holocene mass extinction rushes on, which species will be left? And what new creatures will evolve that we cannot now imagine—for what creature could ever have imagined us? At the moment, we humans are lucky to coinhabit the earth with mollusks, even if we are a recent presence in their much longer history. I hope the terrestrial snails, secreted away in their burrows by day across the earth’s vast landscapes, will continue their mysterious lives, gliding slowly and gracefully through the night, million of years into the future.

You’ll find that paying attention to your senses in the simplest of ways can instantly land you back in your body and re-establish you where you are—in a grounded reality, out of the ether and in this here and now, where your body actually lives.

With The Power of Off, Colier sounds the call for wakefulness, reminding us that we can use technology in a way that promotes, rather than detracts from, our well-being. This book provides an essential resource for anyone wanting to create a more empowered relationship with technology in the digital age. Addressing startling Internet and smartphone use statistics, Colier offers a path toward peace of mind and genuine human connection. “A wise and loving remedy, a lucid invitation to mindful living, a re-inhabiting of the heart of life itself. Colier showed me the off button, and I am grateful.” —Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair

HOW SOON IS NOW?

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world can illuminate our own human existence, while providing an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive. “An exquisite meditation on the restorative connection between nature and humans… As richly layered as the soil she lays down in the snail’s terrarium: loamy, potent, and regenerative.” —The Huffington Post

From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation by Daniel Pinchbeck

$26.95, cloth. Watkins. 300 pages

Here’s a bracing “big-vision” book from Daniel Pinchbeck, who wrote Breaking Open the Head and co-edited What Comes After Money? and Exploring the Edge-Realms of Consciousness. Beyond denial, cynicism, despair, and grief, we have the option to embrace our role as agents of planetary regeneration, helping to redeem and restore our world—to find joy in surrendering limited forms of self-interest for planetary communion. Undergoing metamorphosis means letting go of everything we thought we knew. When we shed the skin of the past, we create the potential for rebirth into a new condition of being, beyond anything we might imagine or conceive. Until it happens, we can never know if an alternative exists that we can realize. Once we free the butterfly from the chrysalis, there is no going back.

BE MORE TREE

A journey of wisdom, symbols, healing, and renewal by Alice Peck

We are on the brink of an ecological mega-crisis, threatening the future of life on earth, and our actions over the next few years may well determine the destiny of our descendants. Between a manifesto and a tactical plan of action, How Soon is Now? by radical futurist and philosopher Daniel Pinchbeck, outlines a vision for a mass social movement that will address this crisis. Drawing on extensive research, Daniel Pinchbeck presents a compelling argument for the need for change on a global basis. The central thesis is that humanity has unconsciously self-willed ecological catastrophe to bring about a transcendence of our current condition. We are facing an initiatory ordeal on a planetary scale. We can understand that this initiation is necessary for us to evolve from one state of being our current level of consciousness to the next. Overcoming outmoded ideologies, we will realize ourselves as one unified being, a planetary super-organism in a symbiotic relationship with the Earth’s ecology and the entire web of life. Covering everything from energy and agriculture, to culture, politics, media and ideology, How Soon Is Now? is ultimately about the nature of the human soul and the future of our current world. Pinchbeck calls for an intentional redesign of our current systems, transforming unjust and elitist structures into participatory, democratic, and inclusive ones. His viewpoint integrates indigenous design principles and Eastern metaphysics with social ecology and radical political thought in a new synthesis.

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

$29.95, paper. Cico. 144 pages, 7x9, colour illustrations

Discover how all trees can mirror us, teach us, and heal us. As Alice Peck reflected on the maple tree in her backyard, she began to notice and then study its intricacies and changes. This became her regular meditation and inspiration. In Be More Tree, Alice shares what she has learned from that maple tree, and from the trees all around us. Every tree tells a complete and ongoing story—from its powerful taproots to the birds that alight on its fragile high branches. Trees reflect our lives through their perseverance and seasonal rhythms—always

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

changing yet consistent. They evolve along a much more protracted timetable than humans. Like us, trees feel and react to their environment, and communicate with us in subtle but distinct ways. Here readers are invited to explore trees from four perspectives: their roots—wisdom and understanding; their branches—symbols and rituals; their leaves—healing and science; and their seeds—transformation and spirituality. All of these elements show us how, although they live outside us, trees offer a path to our inner selves. From the Bodhi Tree to the Garden of Eden, the Druids to forest monks, medicines to tire swings—people have always received physical, psychological, and spiritual sustenance from trees. Filled with insights from botany to poetry, ecology to mythology, and herbalism to sacraments, Be More Tree explores the ways these grounded yet soaring beings can steady and move us, teach and transform us, inspire and comfort us. What is forest bathing, and how can it help us heal ourselves?

Beautiful colour paintings also make the book great for young and old.

Science & Cosmology THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD—SO FAR

Why Are We Here? by Laurence Krauss

$36.00, cloth. Simon & Schuster. 332 pp.

Here the renowned physicist-author of A Universe from Nothing, passionate advocate for reason Lawrence Krauss tells the dramatic story of the discovery of the hidden world of reality—a grand poetic vision of nature—and how we find our place within it. In the beginning there was light. But more than this, there was gravity. After that, all hell broke loose.

In A Universe from Nothing, Krauss revealed how our entire universe could arise from nothing. Now, he reveals what that something—reality—is. And, reality is not what we think or sense—it’s weird, wild, and counterintuitive; it’s hidden beneath everyday experience; and its inner workings seem even stranger than the idea that something can come from nothing. In an unprecedented work of scientific history, Krauss leads us to the furthest reaches of space and time, to scales so small they are invisible to microscopes, to the birth and rebirth of light, and into the natural forces that govern our existence. His unique blend of rigorous research and engaging storytelling invites us into the lives and minds of the remarkable, creative scientists who have helped to unravel the unexpected fabric of reality—with reason rather than superstition and dogma. Krauss has himself been an active participant in this effort, and he knows many of them well. The Greatest Story challenges us to re-envision ourselves and our place within the universe, as it appears that God does play dice with the universe. In the incisive style of his scintillating essays for The New Yorker, Krauss celebrates the greatest intellectual adventure ever undertaken—to understand why we are here in a universe where fact is stranger than fiction.

GENE/BRAIN/MIND/BODY/SELF

Brain/Mind/Happiness

Deepak Chopra: Genes & Science YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE

HARDWIRING HAPPINESS

Discovering Your Cosmic Self and Why It Matters by Deepak Chopra & Menas Kafatos

The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence by Rick Hanson

$35.00, cloth. Crown. 276 pages

Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of feeling loved? Your brain was wired in such a way when it evolved, primed to learn quickly from bad experiences, but not so much from the good ones. It’s an ancient survival mechanism that turned the brain into Velcro for the negative, but Teflon for the positive. Being brain-wired to take in the bad and ignore the good makes us worried, irritated, and stressed, instead of confident, secure, and happy. Each day is filled with opportunities to build inner strengths, but the brain is designed to ignore and waste them. This makes you come down harder on yourself than you do on others, feel inadequate even when you get a hundred things done, and feel lonely even when support is all around. Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson here lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures that attract happiness, love, confidence, and peace. Dr. Hanson’s four steps build a brain strong enough to withstand its ancient negativity bias, allowing contentment and a sense of well-being to become the new normal. We can hardwire in happiness. Your brain has separate systems for liking and wanting. Consequently, it is possible to like something without wanting it. If you let yourself have positive experiences without trying to hold on to them, you’ll enjoy them more and won’t get carried away by the drivenness and pressure of wanting them. Noticing good experiences gives you many opportunities to take in the good each day. Even noticing your own awareness is an opportunity for a good experience, since awareness is inherently peaceful and never tainted or harmed by what passes through it.

The shift into a new paradigm is happening. The answers offered in this book are not our invention or eccentric flights of fancy. All of us live in a participatory universe. Once you decide that you want to participate fully with mind, body, and soul, the paradigm shift becomes personal. The reality you inhabit will be yours either to embrace or to change.

“Learning to take in the good is like fully and mindfully breathing in life…it allows us to access our inner strengths, creativity, vitality and love… Hanson gives us the fascinating science behind attending to positive experiences, and offers powerful and doable ways to awaken the deep and lasting wellbeing we yearn for.” —Tara Brach, author of True Refuge Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and is also the author of Buddha’s Brain and Just One Thing as well as several audio programs.

What these great minds offer is a new understanding of who we are and how we can transform the world for the better while reaching our higher potential. Cosmic consciousness has the urge to build upon the old to create the new. This behavior is called evolution. Confining evolution to life on Earth is a narrow perspective. The entire cosmos exhibits evolution as a basic trait… Cosmic consciousness mirrors the observer’s state of being. There is no privileged point of view, even though in the past religion claimed to have a privileged point of view while today science does the same. But each story is provided with evidence to support it. Because our state of being interacts so intimately with reality that observer, observed, and the process of observation are inseparable.

MIND

A Journey to the Heart of Being Human by Daniel Siegel $35.95, cloth. Norton. 378 pages, illus.

SUPER GENES

What is the mind? What is the experience of the self truly made of? How does the mind differ from the brain? Though the mind’s contents—its emotions, thoughts, and memories—are often described, the essence of mind is rarely, if ever, defined. In this book, noted neuropsychiatrist and New York Times best-selling author Daniel Siegel uses his characteristic sensitivity and interdisciplinary background to offer a definition of the mind that illuminates the how, what, when, where, and even why of who we are, of what the mind is, and what the mind’s self has the potential to become.

Unlock the Astonishing Power of Your DNA for Optimum Health and Well-Being by Deepak Chopra & Rudolph Tanzi $23.00, paper. Harmony. 325 pages

Here the authors of Super Brain present a bold new understanding of our genes and how changes in lifestyle can boost genetic activity. This leap into “radical well-being” is a promise waiting to be fulfilled.

Mind is the essence of our fundamental nature, our deepest sense of being alive, here, right now, in this moment… This internally felt subjective phenomenon of living, and the ways we can feel our connections to one another and the world, are subjective phenomena that are real. These non-measurable facets of the reality of life have many names. Some call this our essence. Some call this our core, soul, spirit, or true nature. I simply call this mind.

You are not simply the sum total of the genes you were born with. You are the user and controller of your genes, the author of your biological story. No prospect in self-care is more exciting.

Learning how to shape your gene activity is at the heart of this exciting and eagerly-anticipated book from Deepak Chopra and Rudolph Tanzi. For decades medical science has believed that genes determined our biological destiny. Now the new genetics has changed that assumption forever. You will always have the genes you were born with, but genes are dynamic, responding to everything we think, say, and do. Suddenly they’ve become our strongest allies for personal transformation. When you make lifestyle choices that optimize how your genes behave, you can reach for a state of health and fulfillment undreamed of even a decade ago. The impact on prevention, immunity, diet, aging, and chronic disorders is unparalleled.

MIND takes the reader on a deep personal and scientific journey into consciousness, subjective experience, and information processing, uncovering the mind’s self-organizational properties that emerge from both the body and the relationships we have with one another, and with the world around us. While making a wide range of sciences accessible and exciting—from neurobiology to quantum physics, anthropology to psychology—this book offers an experience that addresses some of our most pressing personal and global questions about identity, connection, and the cultivation of well-being in our lives. My deepest hope is to join with you to elucidate the nature of our minds, illuminate our beliefs and uncover our disbeliefs, demonstrate the mind’s central importance in our lives, and offer some basic ways to define the mind so we can then explore what a healthy mind might actually be. The natural next step, once we’ve explored these issues, is to suggest the various ways we might choose to empower ourselves to cultivate a healthy mind, personally and in others.

If the new genetics is teaching us anything, it’s about nature cooperating with nurture. Your genes can predispose you to obesity or depression or type 2 diabetes, but this is like saying that a piano predisposes you to play wrong notes. The possibility exists, yet far more important is all the good music a piano—and a gene—are capable of.

“A paradigm-shattering synthesis of epigenetic science that offers an easy-to-understand explanation of the mechanisms by which consciousness and environment control our genetic activity.” —Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief “Super Genes is an important book. It will empower anyone who reads it, because it expands our view of what it means to be human.” —Larry Dossey, author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters

Among Daniel Siegel’s other books are The Mindful Therapist and The Whole-Brain Child.

THE MINDBODY SELF

How Longevity is Culturally Learned and the Causes of Health are Inherited by Mario Martinez

of experience and to search for some sense of order beneath… How lucky to have our brief moment in the Sun. Every day that we discover something new and surprising, the story gets even better.

$24.99, cloth. Hay House. 295 pages

“Accessible, illuminating, and surprising— an ideal guide for anyone interested in understanding our accidental universe.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

New in Paperback

$22.00, paper. Doubleday. 304 pages

Here Deepak Chopra joins forces with physicist Menas Kafatos to explore some of the most important and baffling questions about our place in the world—and the world itself. What happens when modern science reaches a crucial turning point that challenges what we think we know about reality? In this brilliant and practical work, Chopra and Kafatos tell us that we’ve reached just such a point. In the coming era, the universe will be completely redefined as a “human universe” radically unlike the cold, empty void where human life is barely a speck in the cosmos. You Are the Universe literally means what it says—each of us is a co-creator of reality extending to the vastest reaches of time and space. This seemingly impossible proposition follows from the current state of science, where outside the public eye, some key mysteries cannot be solved, even though they are the very issues that define reality itself: u What Came Before the Big Ban u Why Does the Universe Fit Together So Perfectly? u Where Did Time Come From? u What Is the Universe Made Of? u Is the Quantum World Linked to Everyday Life? u Do We Live in a Conscious Universe? u How Did Life First Begin?

A universe without purpose, which is the way it is as far as I can tell, is far more exciting than one designed just for us because it means that the possibilities of existence are so much more diverse and far ranging. How invigorating it is to find ourselves with an exotic menagerie to explore, with laws and phenomena that previously seemed beyond our wildest dreams, and to attempt to untangle the knotted confusion

From the author of the very successful MindBody Code comes a new book that examines the impact our cultural beliefs have on our health and longevity. Drawing on extensive scientific research and his years of experience as a clinical neuropsycholoF SPRING - SUMMER 2017

gist, Mario Martinez explores the cultural conditions that influence our sense of self and explains how this affects the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of disease as well as the way we think about aging. He lays out the theory

F and practice of his own mindbody cultural science and offers contemplative exercises and experiential processes to help us translate our minds’ intentions into sustainable actions that support well-being. Topics include: u The pathology of disease and the anthropology of illness u Growing older vs. “cultural aging” u Navigating adversity using uncertainty as a guide u Biocognitive tools for a healthy life, “Biocognitive Koans for Western Minds.” The MindBody Self presents groundbreaking discoveries derived from deep insight and impeccable scholarship—but you don’t need a background in science to benefit from this book. Each chapter concludes with a practical exercise that makes complex scientific discoveries not only accessible but applicable for all readers. And the glossary is brilliant and useful to understanding the book. The Mindbody Self takes you on a new journey that shows you how the science of hope is overwhelming the myths of doom. How you have inherited the resilience to handle adversity in ways that may appear magical, although they are based on credible scientific evidence. But like any new journey, this one requires courage to challenge old ways of doing things, and patience to let your cultural brain assimilate the new ways… The good news is that we are designed to choose meaning over survival of the fittest, and love over fear… Enjoy your paradigm shift.

“There is genius at work in these pages. Dr. Martinez presents ideas and techniques that are so startlingly original and innovative that they actually expand the reader’s capacity for astonishment… A must-read book for therapists, physicians, and transformational change agents of every kind.” —Gay Hendricks, coauthor of Conscious Loving Ever After

Family, Parenting & Education THE AWAKENED FAMILY

How to Raise Empowered, Resilient, and Conscious Children by Shefali Tsabary $23.00, paper. Putnam. 368 pages

Oprah called Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s first book “the most profound book on parenting I’ve ever encountered,” making it a bestseller in 2014. Now, Dr. Shefali offers readers a radically transformative plan that shows parents how to raise children to be their unique, truest selves. Letting go of control over our children is probably the hardest spiritual task we face as parents.

Parents need to recognize their children for who they actually are, and in The Awakened Family, Tsabary challenges the modern myths of parenting that define how a child is “supposed to be.” Instead of holding our children to society’s impossible ideals, Shefali teaches us how to control our expectations, embrace the present moment, and let go of the anxiety surrounding how best to parent our children. Written in the style of her The

FAMILY & PARENTING

Conscious Parent, The Awakened Family draws from Eastern philosophy as well as Western psychology to offer enlightened advice and a clear program for raising confident, conscious children who are true to themselves. In an awakened family, parents are aware that every relationship in their family exists to help each person grow. Parents view their children as mirrors through which they are able to see how they themselves need to mature and develop. Instead of fixing what they see as faults in their children, these parents seek to work on themselves, raising their own levels of maturity and presence. The focus is always on the parent’s awareness rather than the child’s behavior. This is the core insight of the book.

Pregnancy and Birth

SHAMANIC WISDOM FOR PREGNANCY AND PARENTHOOD Practices to Embrace the Transformative Power of Becoming a Parent by Anna Cariad-Barrett $22.50, paper. Bear & Company. 274 pp.

“Tsabary’s invaluable book shows how the challenges of parenting can become a great opportunity for spiritual awakening. Becoming a fully conscious parent is the greatest gift you can give to your child.” —Eckhart Tolle, author, The Power of Now “In this book, Dr. Shefali Tsabary describes the importance of compassion in simple, secular terms, discussing how we can learn to develop it from our relationship with our children.” —His Holiness the Dalai Lama

The journey into parenthood transforms us, whether our children are biological, adopted, in spirit, or not yet conceived. As we give birth through heart or body, we not only shape-shift into mothers and fathers, but also gain access to the deep inner well of spiritual wisdom that opens with initiation into parenthood. In this guide to consciously exploring the shamanic journey of pregnancy and parenthood, Anna Cariad-Barrett offers techniques and ceremonies to honor the transformation of becoming a parent and engage the sacred wisdom-keeper within. She provides tools and meditations to create personal shamanic medicine to support you and your family on this journey as well as connect with the wisdom of nature, expand your intuition, and explore altered states of consciousness. Restoring honor to the shadow side of parenthood, the author discusses the shamanic perspective on miscarriage, fertility, sexuality, postpartum stress and depression, blended families, and adoption as a form of birthing through the heart. She explains how to heal any deep psychic wounds from your birth family and transform negative beliefs you may hold about parenthood. She provides chapters on each trimester of pregnancy, offering specific teachings and techniques appropriate to each stage as well as conception, birth, and the postpartum period. My training as a minister and psycho-spiritual counselor as well as my background in marriage and family therapy and family social science assist me in facilitating and teaching about varied experiences within the family system… I have also included a number of stories in addition to my own, from parents with diverse backgrounds and experiences. These personal stories connect directly with the heart, helping us to open to healing, learning, and discovery in a very powerful way.

HO’OPONOPONO AND FAMILY CONSTELLATIONS

Whether you are preparing to welcome your first child or seeking spiritual support for the multidimensional experience of being a parent, the author shows how to reclaim and reconnect all the experiences of parenthood and how, through this rite of passage, we give birth to our most authentic selves.

$24.50, paper. Findhorn. 158 pages, colour photos

YOUR BABY’S MICROBIOME

A traditional Hawaiian healing method for relationships, forgiveness and love by Ulrich Dupreé Take a moment to think hard about your relationships. The first one to come to mind may be with your partner or parents but there are many others in your life: relationships with your colleagues at work, your body, your past and future, your finances, even with the clutter still left in your closets. Many problems are relationship-related, and the good news is that you can heal all your relationship issues! With his best-selling title Ho’oponopono, Ulrich Dupree revealed a healing method for solving problems and conflicts by using the Hawaiian reconciliation ritual to forgive both ourselves and others. This is given even greater power when combined with the family constellations method. A constellation allows underlying conflicts to be aired and resolved. It helps us to experience love and inner peace through the feeling, deep in our hearts, that we are all interconnected. The very terms ‘family constellations’ and ‘family conference’ offer a clue to the way both approaches view a person and the challenges that face them—not in isolation, but within the context of their circumstances. At the same time, you will be using practical exercises to learn how you can combine these two approaches—for your own benefit and for the good of the world you live in… So let’s get practical!

$27.95, paper. Chelsea Green. 194 pages

At least two amazing events happen during childbirth. There’s the obvious main event, which is the emergence of a new human into the world. But there’s another event taking place simultaneously, a crucial event that is not visible to the naked eye, an event that could determine the lifelong health of the baby. This is the seeding of the baby’s microbiome, the community of good bacteria that we carry with us throughout our lives. The seeding of the microbiome, along with breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact, kick-starts the baby’s immune system and helps protect the infant from disease across a lifetime. Researchers are discovering, however, that interventions such as the use of synthetic oxytocin, antibiotics, C-sections, and formula feeding interfere with, or bypass completely, the microbial transfer from mother to baby. These bacteria are vital for human health, and science has linked an imbalance in the human microbiome with multiple chronic diseases. We can have prevention. We can make a difference. And we can do it in early life. We know what to do, and we should do it. It’s so simple. The solution starts with birth. —Dr. Rodney Dietert

Drawing on the extensive research they carried out for their documentary film Microbirth—the book has links to videos of the researchers and clear summaries of each chapter—authors Toni Harman and Alex Wakeford reveal a fascinating new view of birth and how microscopic happenings can have lifelong consequences, for ourselves, our children, and our species as a whole. “Our expanding understanding of the roles of the microbiome and epigenetics in health and disease is profoundly changing maternity care and public health for the better. The conversational style and clear explanations in Your Baby’s Microbiome by some of the world’s leading scientists and maternity care providers make this new and complex information accessible and inspiring to the general public. We now know ways to support the role of healthy microbes in our bodies and in our environment to improve our lifelong health and well-being.” —Penny Simkin, author, doula, and

birth educator

DUMBING US DOWN

Beautiful photographs, very practical exercises (such as “An exercise in acknowledging your parents and thereby attaining your own strength”), and illuminating case studies fill this book. And the book ends with appendices on “The Hawaiian family conference in detail” and two useful lists: “Feelings and emotions with negative connotations” and “Feelings and emotions with positive connotations.” BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

The Critical Role of Vaginal Birth and Breastfeding for Lifelong Health by Toni Harman & Alex Wakeford

The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling - 25th Anniversary Edition by John Taylor Gatto $14.99, paper. New Society. 144 pages

After over 100 years of mandatory schooling in the U.S., literacy rates have dropped, families are fragmented, learning “disabilities” are skyrocketing, and children and youth are increasingly disaffected. Thirty years of teaching in the public school system led John Taylor Gatto to the sad conclusion that compulsory governmental schooling is to blame, F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

accomplishing little but to teach young people to follow orders like cogs in an industrial machine. He became a fierce advocate of families and young people taking back education and learning, arguing that “genius is as common as dirt,” but that conventional school-

F ing is driving out the natural curiosity and problem-solving skills we’re born with, replacing it with rule-following, fragmented time, and disillusionment. Gatto’s radical treatise on public education, a New Society bestseller for 25 years, continues to bang the drum for an unshackling of children and learning from formal schooling. Now, in an ever-more-rapidly changing world with an explosion of alternative routes to learning, it’s poised to continue to shake the world of institutional education for many more years. Featuring a new foreword from Zachary Slayback, an Ivy League dropout and cofounder of tech start-up career foundry Praxis, this 25th anniversary edition will inspire new generations of parents and students to take control of learning and kickstart an empowered society of self-directed lifetime-learners. Highly relevant in setting the agenda for a complete overhaul of how we educate our children—and for what—Dumbing Us Down is a gutsy, forthright presentation of the “hidden curriculum” which takes the public discussion of education skillfully beyond where it usually gets stuck. What I do that is right is simple to understand: I get out of kids’ way, I give them space and time and respect. What I do that is wrong, however, is strange, complex, and frightening. Let me begin to show you what that is… I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down?

Also by teacher John Gatto is Weapons of Mass Instruction.

Relationships & Sex SACRED RELATIONSHIPS The Practice of Intimate Erotic Love by Anaiya Sophia & Padma Aon Prakasha

$23.95, paper. Inner Traditions. 295 pp.

Here’s a workbook on divine sexual expression, sacred relationship, and uniting the Divine Feminine and Masculine. Sexuality is one of our core soul qualities, best evidenced by the design of our physical and spiritual bodies and their inherent propensity for sexual expression. By embracing your sexual power in a loving union, you can enact a sacred trinity between your two souls and the Divine, transforming your relationship into an initiatory temple of spiritual development and awakening yourselves to divine gnosis, direct knowing of God, through sacred body rites. In this workbook, Anaiya Sophia and Padma Aon Prakasha explain how to reactivate your primal sexual expression in harmony with the Divine, navigate the waters of Divine Relationship with a partner, and ignite the alchemical process of Sacred Marriage or Hieros Gamos—union with God. Integrating shamanic, gnostic, tantric, and alchemical traditions with sacred sexual practices, including teachings from the Temples of Isis, they explore how to unite the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine energies within each of us and experience the Great Work of sexual alchemy. They explain how, when two lovers come together and abandon them-

RELATIONSHIPS

selves to loving each other, they re-enact the primal union of the Cosmic Couple, Shiva and Shakti, that created the universe. To bring human love from the depths of your soul and divine love from Mother-Father God into the sexual act is one of the most powerful transformations and healings any human can ever experience… Yab-yum is a series of movements, breaths, and infinite loops that merge the great depths of love, sex, soul, and God all together—within two hours!... This bonding at all levels transcends physical, sexual, and spiritual programming about what we feel relationships are and should be.

Love, Sex & Awakening LOVE, SEX AND AWAKENING

An Erotic Journey from Tantra to Spiritual Ecstasy by Margo Anand $20.95, paper. Llewellyn. 336 pages

Weaving together mystical feminine wisdom, transcendent masculine consciousness, and sexual psychology, the authors offer practical tools to balance your masculine and feminine energies, help with relationship obstacles, and bring about sexual healing, emotional clearing, spiritual growth, and physical release. Offering female specific, male specific, and couples exercises, they detail practices for self-awakening, womb pulsing, yoni-lingam evolution, and a series of sacred body rites—heart-opening practices. Also by Anaiya Sophia is Sacred Sexual Union, and with Padma, Womb Wisdom.

BEYOND MARS AND VENUS Relationship Skills for Today’s Complex World by John Gray

A true virtuoso of Tantra and a brilliant star in the universe of erotic delights, bestselling author Margot Anand (The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, etc.) has led a life of sexual ecstasy and spiritual bliss—from Millbrook to Woodstock to Esalen to Poona and far beyond. This book recounts her fascinating adventures far, wide, and deep, and provides techniques and exercises to help you connect to the spiritual potential of sex and cultivate a deeper, more fulfilling love life. I offer these stories as part of a calling to eradicate sexual ignorance and to alleviate the suffering that this ignorance has created for so many people around the world… Sharing the teachings of my Tantric path with thousands of people around the world has given me firsthand experience of our common human purpose. I hope you will recognize that my concerns, my pitfalls, my difficulties, and my search are not very different from your own.

One of the first teachers to bring Tantra to the West, Margot has explored the connection between sex, body, mind, and spirit with yogis and teachers around the world, including Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, Osho, and many more. Love, Sex, and Awakening shares her amazing stories and explores the answers to profound questions: What is Tantra? What does a woman need to realize her multi-orgasmic nature? What does it mean for a man to be a Tantric lover? What is awakening? After awakening, I find I can relax, let go, and invite the good, the bad, and the ugly to the same party. It is no longer a matter of moral judgment, but rather of discrimination. Most of our problems are due to the fact that we say no to reality as it presents itself. We say, “No, not like this. Not that. I want something else.” In this way, we write off the possibility of loving what is.

Also by Margo Anand is Sexual Ecstasy: The Art of the Orgasm.

SEX THAT WORKS

$34.50, cloth. Benbella. 345 pages

For more than twenty years, John Gray’s Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus has helped couples deepen their intimacy and rejuvenate their love lives. Men and women, it revealed, communicate so differently we might as well be from different planets. By learning to speak each other’s language, millions of people dramatically improved their relationships. But the world has changed. Today, what it means to be a man or a woman is more nuanced and complex than ever. In Beyond Mars and Venus, Gray, (with kudos to his friend Warren Farrell) provides a deeper, more current look at keys to true intimacy. Neuroscience research has widened our knowledge of male-female differences and made clear that we have the power to embrace the Mars and Venus qualities we all possess. We are not solely Martians or Venusians, but unique individuals, each with a distinct blend of feminine and masculine qualities. Both men and women require a new kind of emotional support that embraces greater authenticity, intimacy, and personal expression… Both men and women in relationships need to find their own happiness first without depending on their partner changing.

The key to being happy and successful, alone or with someone else, is to embrace your specific masculine-feminine blend— to, in effect, move beyond Mars and Venus. Through real-life examples and simple exercises, Beyond Mars and Venus shows you how to enrich your self-understanding and improve your communication in every area of life, from relationships, to parenting, to business, to sex. Each copy of the book comes with exclusive access to an in-depth online self-assessment, which will reveal your score on a 10-point Mars-Venus spectrum. Your results let you better interpret the specific advice throughout the book, tailoring its guidance to your unique situation. “Here you get the real deal: from a man who walks his talk and uses every day to live as BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

An Intimate Guide to Awakening Your Erotic Life by Wendy Strgar $22.75, paper. Sounds True. 200 pages

Millions of couples report sexual dissatisfaction as the number one reason for ending their relationship—even after years together. So if we’ve lost that special spark, depth of connection, or sense of confidence in our sex lives, how do we rediscover passion and pleasure? Or if were embarking on a new adventure with someone, how can we overcome the challenges we had the last time? Sex That Works is a practical guide for women (and anyone who loves a woman) looking to reclaim intimacy, renew curiosity, and embrace our full potential for erotic freedom (which can be significantly healing). Having good sex, sex that works, depends on learning to feel. I’ve arranged Sex that Works to highlight the themes of the journey while still allowing you the space to make your own observations and discoveries. In each chapter, I’ve also included some exercises related to the theme, to help you in this work of observing and discovering. I invite you to return to these exercises as often as you like… Learning to feel is a practice, no different than learning a musical instrument. Some days you hit the right notes; other days there is no melody at all. But just by agreeing to the practice, you open yourself up to an intimacy that deepens your connection with yourself, your partner, and your life. It is an intimate journey that makes sex work.

Drawing on her marriage of over 30 years and her work with thousands of people, Wendy Strgar invites readers to experience a new level of liberation and feeling in their sexuality. Nine core topics include Freedom, Pleasure, Finding Your Normal, Courage, Curiosity, Sensation, Fantasy, Attention, and Gratitude—along with stories, skill-building activities, and wisdom gleaned from her own journey. Strgar offers healing insights and the guidance of a trusted friend to encourage the full awakening and expression of our erotic selves. She also provides excellent resources (books, organizations, tools) for further help, study and exploration.

love. If you want to understand yourself better and sweeten your relationship, this book will take you to the next level.” —Arjuna Ardagh, author of The Translucent Revolution

LOVING BRAVELY

20 Lessons of self-Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want by Alexandra Solomon

$23.95, paper. New Harbinger. 230 pages

Real love starts with you . In order to attract a life partner and build a healthy intimate relationship, you must first become a good partner to yourself. This book offers twenty invaluable lessons that will help you explore and commit to your own emotional and psychological well-being so you can be ready, resilient, and confident in love. F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

Many of us enter into romantic relationships full of expectation and hope, only to be sorely disappointed by the realization that the partner we’ve selected is a flawed human being with their own neuroses, history, and desires. Most relationships end because one or both people haven’t done the internal work necessary to develop self-awareness and take responsibility for their own experiences. We’ve all heard “You can’t love anyone unless you love yourself,” but amid life’s distractions and the myth of perfect, romantic love, how exactly do you do that? In Loving Bravely, psychologist, professor

F and relationship expert Alexandra Solomon introduces the idea of relational self-awareness, encouraging you to explore your personal history to gain an understanding of your own relational patterns, as well as your strengths and weaknesses in relationships. By doing so, you’ll learn what relationships actually require, beyond the fairytale notions of romance. And by maintaining a steady but gentle focus on yourself, you’ll build the best possible foundation for making a loving connection. By understanding your past relationship experiences, cultivating a strong sense of self-awareness, and determining what it is you really want in a romantic partner, you’ll be ready to find the healthy, lasting love your heart desires.

“A godsend to anyone searching for, but struggling to find, true love in their lives.” —Kristin Neff, author of Self-Compassion

Women & Men RISE SISTER RISE

A Guide to Unleashing the Wise, Wild Woman Within by Rebecca Campbell

$15.99, paper. Hay House. 302 pages

Rise Sister Rise, from Aussie inspiratrix Rebecca Campbell, radiant author of Light is the New Black, is a sparkling gift for the women who agreed at soul level to be here at this stage in history to lead this global shift that the mystics of all of the ages have predicted: the return of the mother and the rise of the feminine. It is essentially a call to arms for women to rise up, tell their truth, and lead. Most women have spent much of their working lives “making it” in a man’s world, leaning on patriarchal methods

THE WOMEN AND THE MEN

of survival in order to succeed, dulling down their intuition, and ignoring the fierce power of their feminine. They have ignored the cycles of the feminine in order to survive in a patriarchal linear system—but now the world has changed. Rise Sister Rise is a transmission that calls the innate feminine wisdom to rise. It is about healing the insecurities, the fears, and the inherited patterns that stop women trusting the Shakti (power) and wisdom (intuition) that naturally flows through them. It’s about recognizing all of the ways we have been keeping ourselves contained and restrained in effort to fit into a certain archetype of woman. It’s about co-creating a whole new archetype of woman—a woman who does not keep herself small in order to make others feel more comfortable. A woman who knows like she knows like she knows that she is not her body weight, her sexual partners, or her career. A woman who deeply respects the wise woman in her life and cultivates her own wisdom every single day. Full of tools, calls to action, contemplative questions, rituals, and confrontational exercises, this book teaches women that it is safe to let Shakti rise, safe to trust their intuition, and safe to take leaps of faith—because in healing ourselves we are healing the world.

GIRL TIME

A Mother-Daughter Activity Book for Sharing, Bonding, and Really Talking by Nuanprang Snitbhan $21.95, paper. Shambhala. 142 pages, 2-colour illustrations

This lovely workbook of bonding exercises and activities for preteen girls and their moms will help promote communication about emotions and the tricky issues that tweens have to navigate. Sometimes it’s hard to talk with your mom about feelings and situations that tween girls these days

have to deal with—like stress, frustration, feeling in control, and being bored. Girl Time is full of fun activities that you can do with your mom that will also show you great ways to calm down, chill out, express yourself, feel positive, and become really confident!

This book includes: u Games, mazes, and fill-in-the-blank ac-

tivities to help you learn more about yourself—and your mom u Tips and strategies for getting yourself motivated, relaxed, or out of a funk u Simple breathing exercises to calm your mind u Great advice on what to eat to power up, boost your mood, and activate your mind u And much more! “Girl Time is a lovely and very heart-full mindfulness workbook for mothers and daughters. It will plant seeds of awareness and compassion, and will invite every girl to be curious and connected. Connectedness—to ourselves and to others—opens windows to really see, hear, feel, and touch each other’s heart. May this book benefit many mothers and daughters.” —Eline Snel, author of Sitting Still like a Frog “A treasure trove of activities that will inspire, educate and connect mothers and daughters across the generational divide, and build happiness and emotional awareness for all.” —Dr. Christopher Willard, author of Growing up Mindful

THE WAY OF THE SUPERIOR MAN A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire by David Deida $25.50, paper. Sounds True. 224 pages

This 20th anniversary edition, with an allnew introduction by the author, invites a new generation of men to participate in the full expression of consciousness and love in the infinite openness of the present moment. With grit and considerable insight into the deeper desires of the masculine, this powerful

journey into the heart of the contemporary masculine experience explores the most challenging issues in men’s lives—covering everything from work and career, to dealing with sex, women, and love, to finding purpose in an increasingly superficial and mechanical world. The Way of the Superior Man reveals how a man can live a life of fulfillment without compromise by relaxing into the truth of his very being, discovering his deepest vision, and giving his gifts without holding anything back. What emerges is an incredible revelation for men—which explains the heart and soul of a woman to men—as well as an astonishingly practical book to living a masculine life of integrity, authenticity, and freedom. PRACTICE DISSOLVING Like dissolving in the intensity of orgasm, a man’s greatest desire is to be utterly released Moment by moment, practice loving your woman and the world, allowing the force of your surrender to transform every moment into an orgasm of divine dissolution. Embrace every moment of your experience as a lover, and trust whatever direction love moves you. Die in the giving of your gift, so you don’t even notice you have stopped holding onto yourself. Fear is your final excuse. Don’t fight it. Love through it.

“Finally, a guide for the noncastrated male… To transcend the bodymind means to transcend and include its sexuality, not transcend and evaporate it. Few are the books that discuss strong sexuality within strong spirituality, instead of tepid sexuality diluted by a mediocre spiritual stance. This book steps straightforwardly into the challenge. Love it or loathe it, it is a shout from the heart of one perspective of the eternal masculine.” —Ken Wilber, author of The Simple Feeling of Being Among David Deida’s other books are Blue Truth and The Enlightened Sex Manual.

A FEW MORE UNUSUAL NEW BOOKS

THE GARDEN AWAKENING:

Designs to Nurture Our Land & Ourselves by Mary Reynolds, $34.95 hc.

THE UNTETHERED RELATIONSHIP: Experience Your Unimaginable Capacity for Love by Chris G. Moon, $19.95 pb.

THE FIVE LONGINGS:

THE WORLD IS GREAT AND I AM SMALL:

What We’ve Always Wanted —and Already Have by David Richo, $21.95 pb.

A Bug’s Prayer for Mindfulness by Bradley Grieve, $11.99, hc.

THE COSMIC HOLOGRAM:

EVOLUTIONARY PARENTING

In-formation at the Center of Creation by Jude Currivan, $21.50 pb.

by David Marshak, $19.95 pb.

Look ’em up banyen.com for more details! BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

EVOLUTIONARY LOVE RELATIONSHIPS: Passion, Authenticity, and Activism by Andrew Harvey & Chris Saade, $23.95 pb.

BODYWISE:

Discovering Your Body’s Intelligence for Lifelong Health and Healing by Rachel Carlton Abrams, $28.99, hc.

INDEX OF AUTHORS & THEIR TITLES

Allen, Laura

Clippinger, David

Gunaratana, Ghante

Logsdon, Gene

Shunya, Acharya

Greywater, Green Landscape . . . . . . 36

Cultivating Qi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Loving-Kindness in Plain English. . . 12

• Gene Everlasting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom. . . . . . . . 17

Almaas, A.H.

Colier, Nancy

Haag, Michael.

• Letter to a Young Farmer. . . . . . . . 37

Siegel, Daniel

The Power of Off. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The Quest for Mary Magdalene . . . . 31

Mackenzie, Vicki

Mind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Cope, Stephen

Hamilton, Diane Musho

Silver, Tosha Singh, Kathleen Dowling

The Alchemy of Freedom. . . . . . . . . 23

Anand, Margo Love, Sex and Awakening. . . . . . . . . 41

Angelo, Jack

Soul Friends. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The Zen of You & Me. . . . . . . . . . . . 13

The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi. . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Dalai Lama, The

Haner, Jean

Madison, Deborah

• Buddhism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Clear Home, Clear Heart . . . . . . . . . 18

In My Kitchen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Bailey, E.

• The Heart of Meditation . . . . . . . . 15

Marinella, Sandra

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. . . 38

Hanh, Thich Nhat

Daniels, Victor & Kooch

• The Art of Living. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The Story You Need to Tell. . . . . . . . 10

Awakening the Chakras. . . . . . . . . . . 18

• The Other Shore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Martinez, Mario

Daulter, Anni

Hanson, Rick

The Mindbody Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Love Has Seven Colors . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Bartlett, Sarah The Afterlife Bible. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Batchelor, Stephen • After Buddhism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 • Secular Buddhism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Bell, Virginia Midlife Is Not a Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Bellebuono, Holly Women Healers of the World. . . . . . 18

Bercholz, Samuel A Guided Tour of Hell. . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Beresford-Kroeger, Diana The Sweetness of a Simple Life. . . . . 34

Berry, Wendell A Small Porch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

The Sacred Medicine Cupboard. . . . 16

Hardwiring Happiness. . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Matthews, John

Davis, Louanne

Harman, Toni

The Celtic Shaman’s Pack . . . . . . . . . 2

Meditations for Healing Trauma . . . 21

Your Baby’s Microbiome. . . . . . . . . . 40

McAthy, Karen

Deida, David

Harris, Michael

The Art of Plant-Based Cheesemaking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

The Way of the Superior Man. . . . . . 42

• Solitude. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Dhompa, Ttsering Wangmo

• Listening to Ayahuasca. . . . . . . . . . 28

Coming Home To Tibet . . . . . . . . . . 13

Hart, Francene

Doka, Kennth

• Sacred Geometry Coloring Book. . . 8

Grief Is a Journey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

• Sacred Geometry of Nature. . . . . . . 8

Dulsky, Danielle

Hawken, Paul

Woman Most Wild. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Dupreé, Ulrich

Drawdown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Helminski, Kabir

Besserman, Perle

Ho’oponopono and Family Constellations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Grassroots Zen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Dussault, Dee

Blackburn, Elizabeth

Ganja Yoga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Permaculture and Climate Change Adaptation. . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Telomere Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Edelstein, Scott

Booth, Mark The Sacred History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

The User’s Guide to Spiritual Teachers. . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Hinton, David

Bourgeault, Cynthia

Enders, Giulia

The Heart of Centering Prayer. . . . . 31

Gut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Brach, Tara

Faerywolf, Storm

Nourishing Intimacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Betwixt & Between. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Brilliant, Larry

Feldman, Christina

Sometimes Brilliant 9

Boundless Heart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Brock, Adam

Foster, Jeff

Change Here Now. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

• Sacred As You Are. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Brower, Elena

• The Courage to Love . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Holistic Islam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Henfrey, Thomas

• Existence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 • I Ching. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

• The Four Chinese Classics . . . 16 Hirshfield, Jane

McGee, Kristin Chair Yoga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

McMakin, Carolyn Resonance Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Meade, Michael Touching the Soul of the World. . . . 23

Metzner, Ralph The Ecology of Consciousness . . . . . 27

Miro-Quesada, Don Oscar Healing Light. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Mooji Vaster Than Sky, Greater Than Space . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Moore, Kathleen Dean Great Tide Rising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Myers, Thomas

Ten Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Fascial Release for Structural Balance. . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Hoffman, Danielle Rama

Niemann, Deborah

The Tablets of Light. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Holden, Anthony & Ben Poems That Make Grown Women Cry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Horne, Steven

Milarepa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Walsch, Neale Donald Conversations with God Book 4. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Watson, Lee

Campbell, T. Colin

The Science of Planetary Signatures in Medicine. . . . . . . . . 16

Small Homes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

The China Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Ray, Reginald

Cardoza, Steven

Gilchrist, Cherry

Kaufman, Scott Barry Wired to Create. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

• Somatic Descent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Peace & Parsnips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

• The Awakening Body. . . . . . . . . . . 13

Watts, Alan

Reho, James

• Just So. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Tantric Jesus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

• Out of Your Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Remiarz, Toma

• Psychotherapy East and West . . . . . 26

Forest Gardening in Practice . . . . . . 37

Wesselman, Hank

Rinzler, Lodro

The Re-Enchantment . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

• The Unfindable Inquiry. . . . . . . . . 25

Love Hurts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Wheatley, Margaret

Kirkwood, John

Robertson, Fiona

Who Do We Choose To Be?. . . . . . . . 34

The Way of the 5 Seasons . . . . . . . . . 17

The Art of Finding Yourself. . . . . . . . 25

Wilber, Ken

Kornfield, Jack

Rosen, Richard

• A Brief Hist of Everything. . . . . . . . 27

Kiloby, Scott • Natural Rest for Addiction. . . . . . . 25

No Time Like the Present. . . . . . . . . 11

Yoga FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

• The Religion of Tomorrow. . . . . . . 27

Krans, Kim

Ruis, Don Miguel

Williams, Brandy

The Toltec Art of Life and Death. . . 29

For the Love of the Gods. . . . . . . . . . 30

Schachter-Shalomi, Zalman

Williamson, Marianne

A Heart Afire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Tears to Triumph. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Chodron, Thubten

Gray, Stephen

Good Karma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Cannabis & Spirituality. . . . . . . . . . . 28

Chopra, Deepak

Grayson, Henry.

The Wild Unknown Tarot Deck & Guidebook. . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Your Power to Heal 17

Krauss, Laurence

• Super Genes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Trungpa, Chogyam

Puett, Michael The Path. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Beyond Mars and Venus . . . . . . . . . . 41

Becoming Wise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

A Really Good Day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Kahn, Lloyd

Gray, John

Tippett, Krista

Emotional Rescue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Gehl, Jennifer

The Compassion Book. . . . . . . . . . . 14

The Leap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Waldman, Ayelet

Dumbing Us Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Chodron, Pema

Taylor, Steve

Ponlop, Dzogchen

Rise Sister Rise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Rumi’s Secret. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Joy on Demand. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Embers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Campbell, Rebecca

Gooch, Brad

Tan, Chade-Meng

How Soon Is Now?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The Shamanic Powers of Rolling Thunder. . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Just Being at the Piano . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Just Cool It!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Wagamese, Richard

Jones, Sidian Morning Star

Chase, Mildred Portney

Suzuki, David

Pinchbeck, Daniel

Gatto, John Taylor

The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing. . . . . 9

Sex that Works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Essential Kundalini Yoga. . . . . . . . . . 10

The Buddha Before Buddhism. . . . . 11

Goldman, Jonathan

Strgar, Wendy

Mycorrhizal Planet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Local Food Revolution. . . . . . . . 35

The Great Spring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Encounters with Power. . . . . . . . . . . 29

Virginia, Karena

Brownlee, Michael

and Parenthood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Stevens, José

Phillips, Michael

Some Useful Wild Plants. . . . . . . . . . 19

Sacred Ecstatics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

The Transparency of Things. . . . . . . 25

Be More Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Fronsdal, Gil

Goldberg, Natalie

Spira, Rupert Spira, Rupert

Spiritual Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Jason, Dan

Shamanic Wisdom for Pregnancy

Dreamworking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn

The Art of Vinyasa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Cariad-Barrett, Anna

Sowton, Christopher

Peck, Alice

Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Keeneys, The

Sacred Relationships. . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Let the Elephants Run. . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Freeman, Richard

Surviving Death. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Sophia, Anaiya

The 5 Invitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

The Bio-Integrated Farm. . . . . . . . . . 36

Words Without Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

The Clean Money Revolution. . . . . . 34

Usher, David

Jadrnicek, Shawn

Glass, Philip

Solomon, Joel

Ostaseski, Frank

The Wisdom of Not Knowing. . . . . . 31

in Your Daily Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Loving Bravely. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

The Awakened Family. . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Frankel, Estelle

Kean, Leslie

Solomon, Alexandra

The Empath’s Survival Guide. . . . . . 22

Brown, Brené

Tarot Triumphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Girl Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Tsabary, Shefali

The Modern Herbal Medicine Reference Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Chinese Holistic Medicine

Snitbhan, Nuanprang

Orloff, Judith

• The Deepest Acceptance . . . . . . . . 24

Brown, Brené

The Grace in Living. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Homegrown & Handmade. . . . . . . . 36

Grounded and Free. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Rising Strong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Change Me Prayers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far. . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Schwartz-Salant, Nathan

Wolynn, Mark

The Mythic Journey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

The Order-Disorder Paradox . . . . . . 22

It Didn’t Start With You. . . . . . . . . . . 21

Chouinard, Yvon

Greer, Carl

Lerner, Harriet

Sears, JP

Zander, Rosamund

Let My People Go Surfing. . . . . . . . . 34

Change the Story of Your Health. . . 22

Why Won’t You Apologize?. . . . . . . . 22

How to Be Ultra Spiritual . . . . . . . . . 26

Pathways to Possibility. . . . . . . . . . . . 21

• You Are the Universe . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Greene, Liz

BRANCHES OF LIGHT F

F SPRING - SUMMER 2017

BANYEN BOOKS & SOUND 3608 West 4th Avenue Vancouver, BC V6R 1P1 Canada Publications Mail Agreement # 1494872