Patrick Hinchcliff

How Self-Compassionate Are You?

Do you have a critical voice? What do you find it saying to you?

This video is a candid, vulnerable and compelling portrait from our own folks here at Sounds True.  We get their take on their own journey with self-compassion.  Discover the power of self-compassion and learn simple practices to transform your moments of moments of suffering into moments of love. 

 

A Guide to Self-Compassion – October 2017

Welcome Dear Friend,

 

We are thrilled and honored to be present with you on this journey!   We’d love for this space to be a map to your highest self and a beacon to creativity and expression. The coming months will be full of guide posts and inviting spaces, awaiting your contemplation’s and discoveries.  We’d love to spark, share and sustain well-being with you.

Self-Compassion is our guide for the month of October!  Self-compassion can be a hard thing to come by these days. Too often than not, we have an inner critic that is bigger than our inner cheerleader. It’s time to notice those thoughts and be kind to them.  Self-compassion is not always innate, but it can indeed be learned.

October will be filled with weekly self-compassion content.  Please check out our content guide for dates!  We look forward to going on this adventure with you!

 

With love on the journey,

 

Your friends at Sounds True

Practice You: A Personal Message from Elena Brower

Dear friends,

 

You’ve been practicing you, your entire life. You have always been the author of your own experience. My new book, Practice You, is a journal, filled with over 150 pages to draw, write, and dream. It’s an invitation to become the author of a sacred text of your own design, an opportunity to write a personal field guide to your highest self.

Practice You contains a series of Explorations, one for each of the nine aspects of your being. Each Exploration begins with a meditation, a chance to contemplate from a new vantage point. Today I’ll share the Embody meditation with you, from the “I Am” Exploration that opens the book.

Begin by taking a moment to sit and get grounded. Place your hands on your thighs, palms down, and begin breathing, deeply and slowly. Sense the weight of your seat, and let your spine rise tall. Feel yourself embodied, present, and steady.

  • How do you define yourself?
  • What are the words you’d use to describe your current attitude about your life right now?
  • What’s the most visceral, urgent need you have right now in order to feel alive, happy, and at home in yourself?

With gratitude,

Elena Brower

P.S. Look for me on Sounds True Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter on Tuesday, September 26—we’ll be giving away copies of Practice You & much more!

Write. Reflect. Dream: Recommended Reads

Content to Soothe the Soul of Your Inner Writer

 

Practice You by Elena Brower

From yoga luminary and artist Elena Brower, Practice You, is a sacred text of your own design.

Practice You is a map to your highest self; a field guide of your own creation. The pages of this Journal are full of potent prompts and inviting spaces, awaiting your contemplation and discoveries.

Within these pages you will find a series of Explorations, one for each of nine aspects of being.  Each exploration offers instructions and inquiries to help you design new attitudes, fresh perspectives, and stay on track with your intentions.

 

 

 

Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer & Living an Awakened Life by Albert Flynn DeSilver

Stories, dynamic meditations, and innovative writing exercises to spark creativity and spiritual awakening.

The best writers say their work comes from a source beyond the thinking mind. But how do we access that source? “We must first look inside ourselves and be willing to touch that raw emotional core at the heart of a deeper creativity,” Writes Albert Flynn DeSilver. In Writing as a Path to Awakening, this renowned poet, writer, and teacher shows you how to use meditation to cultivate true depth in your writing—so your words reveal layers of profound emotional insight and revelation that inspire and move your readers.

 

 

 

 

The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte

Your bucket list. Quarterly objectives. Strategic plans. Big dreams. Goals. Lots of goals and plans to achieve those goals—no matter what. Except …

You’re not chasing the goal itself, you’re actually chasing the feeling that you hope achieving that goal will give you.

Which means we have the procedures of achievement upside down. We go after the stuff we want to have, get, or accomplish, and we hope that we’ll be fulfilled when we get there. It’s backwards. And it’s burning us out.

With The Desire Map, Danielle LaPorte brings you a holistic life-planning tool that will revolutionize the way you go after what you want in life. Unapologetically passionate and with plenty of warm wit, LaPorte turns the concept of ambition inside out and offers an inspired, refreshingly practical workbook for using the Desire Map process:

 

Art of Attention by Elena Brower and Erica Jago

Yoga begins with physical well-being. But it can also transport us—through meditation, self-awareness, and movement—into a lifelong exploration of presence, elegance, and deeper life purpose. With Art of Attention, Elena Brower and Erica Jago show us the way. Distilled from their acclaimed workshops and training programs, this multifaceted book can be used as:

• A step-by-step workshop for merging movement-based mindfulness with traditional yoga

• A “tool kit” of asanas, meditations, self-inquiry questions, and healing practices for creating your own daily spiritual practice

• An uplifting source of visual beauty and wisdom teachings for inner reflection and elevation

 

 

 

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Experience a modern classic on writing as you’ve never heard it before. With nearly one million copies of Writing Down the Bones in print, Natalie Goldberg has helped change the way writing is practiced in homes, schools, and workshops across America. Through her heartfelt personal reflections and her ingenious Zen-based exercises, Goldberg makes writing available to you as a tool for personal expression, self-exploration, and healing.

Goldberg offers new commentary about the creative, spiritual, and practical dimensions of writing. Join her as she looks back on her life, sharing the story of how her meditation studies with Zen master Katagiri Roshi inspired her to develop practices for “writing down the bones”: the essential, awakened speech of the mind. Here is a treasury of tested ideas, suggestions, and exercises that help new writers get started, and seasoned writers keep going.

 

The Writing Life by Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg

In The Writing Life, Cameron and Goldberg join forces for the first time in this revealing dialogue that speaks to our common search for an everyday spirituality.

Join these two creative giants as they explode cherished misconceptions about who should write, and why they should do it, opening the door to the writer’s world for everybody, not just a chosen few. Goldberg and Cameron take us inside their personal lives as committed writers and spiritual seekers, and explore the following questions: How can writing best be practiced? What is the difference between therapeutic writing and writing for publication? How do we conquer the twin dragons of mood and time? Is it dangerous or inspirational to dabble in different arts such as music, painting, and writing? How is addiction related to the writer’s life?

Edgy, surprising, and useful for its hard-won advice, The Writing Life is an invitation to a life-transforming act that requires no more than a pen, some paper, and the will to get started.

Getting Grief Right

Dear friends,

Only a few months ago, I received word that a dear friend’s child had been tragically killed in a car accident. Although I have worked with hundreds of bereaved people in my 38 years as a grief counselor, I felt worried as I went to be with my friend. “What will I say to this dear man about his loss?”

Then I remembered: “I don’t need to be anxious about the right thing to say. My purpose as his friend is to be present for whatever he might need.”

Supporting someone in their grief is a tall order if ever there was one. How, exactly, do you show true compassion for a grieving person? Here are a few ideas I mention in my new book, Getting Grief Right:

  • Simply and sincerely say: “I’m very sorry.”
    • No more words are necessary. Really.
  • Show up at the house, visitation, or funeral; express simple words of sorrow; and then let the mourning person dictate what happens next.
    • She may open her arms for a hug, or she may clearly want to keep people at a distance. He may want to talk about his loss or about baseball. Be with them wherever they are.
  • Just simply be with that person and be compassionate.
    • Being with a person in grief is a unique, one-way intimacy. Don’t try to fix it or make him or her feel better.
  • Listen with your eyes and respond with nods that convey, “I get it.”
  • Laugh with them when it’s time to laugh. Cry if tears come.

And remember, even after the last casserole dish is picked up, many who mourn feel forgotten.

  • Bring a meal on the two-month anniversary of the death.
  • Take your friend to coffee six months after the death and listen carefully to what they share about their story of loss.
  • Speak the name often of the one who died.
  • Donate to a relevant memorial at the year anniversary of the death or on the birthday of the one who died.

I hope these ideas will help you to create a compassionate community for those who you know are grieving.

Most Sincerely, 

Patrick O’Malley

Writing as a Spiritual Guide – September 2017

Welcome dear friend,

We are thrilled and honored to be present with you on this journey!   We’d love for this space to be a map to your highest self and a beacon to creativity and expression. The coming months will be full of guide posts and inviting spaces, awaiting your contemplation’s and discoveries.  We’d love to spark, share and sustain well-being with you.

Writing is our spiritual guide for the month of September!  Writing and expression can mean so many things, to so many different people. Writing is one of the purest forms of self expression.  No matter the state of mind, I always feel relieved as soon as I put pen to paper.  There is something so therapeutic and magical about this expression.  We all have a distinct voice, handwriting, signature, opinion.

Please stay tuned for our next blog posts where we will feature recommended reads, exercises, inspirational quotes and stories, podcasts and videos, giveaways and a Spotify playlist to get you in the “write” mood.

We look forward to going on this adventure with you!

With love on the journey,

Your friends at Sounds True

 

 

 

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