Nourishing Intimacy

According to Dr. Tara Brach, feelings of shame and unworthiness are the source of many problems we experience with our relationships, careers, creative endeavors, and most fundamentally, our spiritual unfolding. On Radical Self-Acceptance, this respected clinical psychologist and Buddhist meditation teacher shows you how to free yourself from the grip of your insecurities about being "good enough."

A profound transformation can occur just by training your attention in awareness - a practice sweeping the country with its capacity to decrease stress, cultivate inner calm, and expand wisdom and creativity. Clinical psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach has been at the forefront of mindfulness-based therapy since its inception, and here offers a traditional loving-kindness meditation with a neurologically-based relaxation technique known as "smiling yoga".

When we seek comfort and relief from stress, Tara Brach teaches, we often unconsciously turn to false refuges such as material wealth, approval from others, or a preoccupation with the past and future. Yet by cultivating true refuge in this moment, not only can we find shelter from the storms of life but we also open ourselves up to fully experiencing joy and fulfillment. Here, Tara Brach guides a meditation using the therapeutic R.A.I.N. process for releasing fear and healing through self-compassion.

When the difficulties and losses of life feel overwhelming, is there someplace we can turn for the safety, nurturing, and peace that we long for? Most of us are strongly conditioned to react with fear and confusion, falling back on strategies of judgment, control, addictive behaviors, and anger. Yet there is another way. “In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love,” teaches Tara Brach.

Despite our best intentions, we often have trouble dealing effectively with strong emotions. What if you had a conscious, skillful way to respond in times of anger, fear, jealousy, shame, and other powerful emotions? Meditations for Emotional Healing gives us a collection of insights and practices for bringing compassion, clarity, and understanding to our emotional lives-instead of expressing or repressing them in unhealthy ways.

In Waking Up, Volume 1, Sounds True publisher and founder Tami Simon speaks with seven teachers about their personal understanding of spiritual awakening - how it takes place, what changes (and what doesn't), and how their experiences can inspire and inform our own realization.

Best-selling author of A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield invites you into a new awareness: how you can free yourself, whomever you are and whatever your circumstances. Renowned for his mindfulness practices and meditations, Jack provides the keys for opening gateways to immediate shifts in perspective and clarity of vision, allowing yourself to change course, take action or simply relax.

Why does it feel so natural to be compassionate and kind to those we care about - yet so hard to treat ourselves the same way? "Our culture teaches us to use self-criticism for motivation and to build self-esteem by constantly measuring ourselves against everyone else," says Dr. Kristin Neff. "We need to re-learn the essential skill of being genuinely nurturing and supportive toward ourselves."

Javier Regueiro not only provides general information about ayahuasca, but he bridges the cultural gap between the native and the current use of ayahuasca by Westerners. This guide offers background about the plant medicine, its history, and how to engage with and learn through its use. It includes stories of Javier's personal experience of transformation as well as stories from those he's guided in ceremonies.

In this culmination of his life's work, Peter A. Levine draws on his broad experience as a clinician, a student of comparative brain research, a stress scientist, and a keen observer of the naturalistic animal world to explain the nature and transformation of trauma in the body, brain and psyche. In an Unspoken Voice is based on the idea that trauma is neither a disease nor a disorder but rather an injury caused by fright, helplessness, and loss that can be healed by engaging our innate capacity to self-regulate high states of arousal and intense emotions.

What is love? Sharon Salzberg believes that love is a powerful healing force for us all and that modern associations with romance and adoration are limiting. By redefining love, she helps us to recognize our desire for happiness and enhance our connections with each other. Real Love is a creative toolkit of mindfulness exercises and meditation techniques that can help you to truly engage with your present experience and create deeper love relationships - with yourself, your partner, friends and family, and life itself.

Are you experiencing physical or emotional symptoms that no one is able to explain? If so, you may be suffering a traumatic reaction to a past event, teaches Levine.

In challenging times, why do so many of us turn to Pema Chödrön for guidance? Many say that it’s her honest and caring way of communicating the core teachings of Buddhism - not just conceptually, but directly from her heart to ours. In these inspiring sessions, she teaches us how to give that compassion to the person we neglect most often - ourselves.

Caution Spiritual Seekers: You Might Just Find What You're Looking For! Underneath the turmoil of thought, emotion, and personal will, there is a flow. If you're reading these words, you've probably felt it - the natural movement of life, the truth that beckons below the surface of things. What would happen if you were to stop avoiding this universal energy, and instead completely embrace it?

On July 1-3, 2011, Marianne Williamson taught a workshop on A Course in Miracles in Los Angeles, California. The topic of the weekend was how miracles - shifts in thinking from fear to love - make all the difference in how we live and how we feel. Learning to think differently - to stand psychologically and emotionally on a different ground of being - is the spiritual journey from anxiety to inner peace.