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Brené Brown audio collection from Sounds True

We are excited to be offering a collection of inspiring audio learning programs from our friend Brené Brown, New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed The Gifts of Imperfection and Daring Greatly.

These three programs have quickly become some of our most talked about and bestselling titles and are available in both CD and downloadable formats. They include:

1. The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection, and Courage

2. Men, Women, and Worthiness: The Experience of Shame and the Power of Being Enough

3. The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting: Raising Children with Courage, Compassion, and Connection

We hope you enjoy these programs from Brené and that they are helpful and supportive on your inner journey!

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Brené Brown

Awakening the Body

Tami Simon speaks with Will Johnson, the founder and director of the Institute for Embodied Training. For more than 30 years, Will has taught Buddhist meditation and practiced Rolfing, and has developed a unique blend of these two techniques for having a fully embodied meditation practice. He is the author of the books The Posture of Meditation and The Spiritual Practices of Rumi, and with Sounds True he has created the audio learning course Awakening the Body: The Path of Somatic Surrender. In this episode, Tami speaks with Will about how his work as a Rolfer has shaped his approach to meditation, how we can balance all of our perceptions to open ourselves to a complete experience of life, and how the Sufi practice of gazing can lead us to embodied awakening. (63 minutes)

How to Breathe With Your Whole Body

Blog header - How to Breathe With Your Whole Body Sounds True blog

Spending time in the woods—or shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing”)—has been proven to significantly strengthen our immune system and increase our overall happiness. The forest air triggers our bloodstream to produce 40 percent more natural killer cells, which help fight harmful viruses, bacteria, and other illnesses. The tradition of forest bathing goes back a long time in Japan’s folk medicine, but it has its longest history in China and Taiwan and has been called senlinyu there for centuries.

Ancient knowledge about healing from nature is also found in traditional Chinese medicine. Numerous exercises from qigong are designed to “absorb the chi of nature” and are carried out mainly in forests or green areas with trees. Even the qigong masters of the past apparently knew that nature not only heals in the form of plant- and mineral-based pharmaceutical substances, but also by a person simply being present in a green space and breathing. In qigong, absorbing the chi of nature is always associated with breathing techniques.

Xiaoqiu Li, a two-time Chinese state champion in wushu (traditional Chinese martial arts), taught me the following exercise for “whole-body breathing.” This specific exercise helps you to take in the healthy forest air quite intensely and to release old air and harmful substances very consciously. You will especially feel the purifying effects of this exercise in your body if you are a smoker or live in a polluted city.

Look for a place in the woods that appeals to you and that has an even surface to stand on, and then follow these steps:

  1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and as parallel to each other as possible, with your knees slightly bent and arms relaxed at your sides.
  2. “Open” your chest cavity by lifting your arms up in the air away from your body, in the form of a circle overhead, as if you were a tree revealing its mighty crown to the sky. Take a deep breath in while doing this, starting in your stomach and continuing to fill up your chest with air.
  3. When your arms meet over your head, guide them down in front of your body, holding them together and parallel to each other. Simultaneously begin to breathe out, making fists with your hands while squatting down.
  4. At the end of these movements, slowly press your elbows against your body at stomach level. This pressing of the elbows and curving of your body help your lungs to empty themselves entirely.
  5. Repeat these movements slowly and mindfully and try to make everything as smooth as possible.

Excerpted from The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature by Clemens G. Arvay.

Clemens Arvay - The Whole-Body Breathing Exercise Sounds True BlogBorn in 1980, Clemens G. Arvay is an Austrian engineer and biologist. He studied landscape ecology (BSc) at Graz University and applied plant sciences (MSc) at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Arvay examines the relationship between humans and nature, focusing on the health-promoting effects of contact with plants, animals, and landscapes. He also addresses a second range of topics that includes ecologically produced food along with the economics of large food conglomerates. Clemens G. Arvay has written numerous books, including his bestseller The Biophilia Effect. For more, please visit clemensarvay.com.

 

 

Summer Super Sale - The Biophilia Effect

Buy your copy of The Biophilia Effect at your favorite bookseller!

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Nancy Windheart: The Guru Cat

 

Freddie and I would sit for hours and just hang out, often sitting in a beach chair that I set up in my laundry room. I didn’t multitask; I just sat with Freddie.

 

As we’d sit together each night, Freddie offered me a visceral, embodied experience of dropping deeply into the lake of awareness that was present underneath my constantly running thoughts. Through his example, which included a kind of energetic transmission that I felt with my whole body, I was able to enter into a relaxed and open state of being where there was no me, no cat, no chair. “We” were simply a great pool of vibrant energy, deeply grounded, connected, centered, and resting. Sometimes we’d both sleep, but mostly I’d find myself in a deep place of awareness that had no edges, no boundaries. Often, insight and wisdom would bubble up, and the clutter that was ever present in my mind and life would simply fall away.

 

Freddie’s telepathic communication with me was clear and precise. If I popped up into thinking, worry, spinning, or obsessive thoughts, he’d wake up, look at me with intense clarity through his torn and scratched eyes, and send me the clear message: “You’ve left. Come back.” And with that guidance, I could. He’d put his head back down and close his eyes, and I’d drop back into presence and awareness. Through his example, I learned that rather than trying to control or remove my frenetic thoughts, I could simply allow them to exist on the surface and drop “beneath” them into an ocean of awareness that was Freddie’s natural state. 

 

I discovered that the essence of this quiet, open, deep space of pure presence that I shared with Freddie was love. It was not the confusing, complicated human version of what we often know as “love,” but a pure, deep, connected flow of energy, devotion, and presence that I could feel with every cell of my body.  

 

With Freddie’s body in my lap, and our shared experience of deep presence and connection, I discovered that love and awareness were not separate things. I was love, he was love, we were love, love was. We floated together in a lake of love. Everything was love—just love.

 

I didn’t realize at the time that this was what people called “meditation.” I was simply spending time with my cat, my beloved friend, and sharing an experience that helped me to relate to my life and the world in a different way than I’d known. It was years later, when I learned meditation practices from human teachers, that I realized what Freddie had taught me.

 

Freddie became my wise, loving lap-cat guru, but he always hissed at me. It became our little inside joke. He would hiss at me, and I would hiss back at him, in my best imitation of semi-feral street cat. I would laugh, and he would look satisfied and amused.

 

Eventually Freddie’s FIV brought his body down, and he died in the year of my fortieth birthday. My heart cracked wide open—and as I grieved the loss of his physical presence in my life, I knew that our relationship was alive and would continue in a new form. I continued to feel the essence of his spirit surrounding me, and I knew that he was not gone but had shifted into a different state of being. 

 

Two years after his passing, Freddie came to me in a vision on New Year’s Day. He communicated to me, “It’s time. This is the year you step onto your path and begin your training as an animal communicator.” I listened to him. I listened to Freddie because I trusted him more than I had trusted anyone in my life. He knew. He knew everything. I began a period of several years of training and apprenticeship, with Freddie’s wisdom, guidance, and clarity supporting me each step of the way. 

 

My life changed profoundly and dramatically from that time on, leading me in directions I never could have imagined. I left my job teaching music, began my journey as a professional animal communicator, and now have a life I could never have imagined all those years ago, teaching an international community of students and professionals a curriculum that has its roots in the teachings I received from Freddie.

 

I now perceive Freddie as a spirit guide, an energy that is much bigger and vaster than could have been contained in his small cat form. I remain in communication and connection with him daily, and he continues to teach me and guide me. He continually reminds me of the true nature of reality, the web of connection that I perceived in my childhood—the fundamental, universal, creative fire of love. Usually his guidance is gentle, clear, and loving, but when necessary, I hear his unmistakable, kick-in-the-pants hiss.  

 

This is an excerpt from a story written by Nancy Windheart and featured in The Karma of Cats: Spiritual Wisdom from Our Feline Friends, a compilation of original stories by Kelly McGonigal, Alice Walker, Andrew Harvey, and many more!

Nancy Windheart is an internationally respected animal communicator and interspecies communication teacher. Her work has been featured in television, radio, magazine, and online media, and she has written for many digital and print publications. Nancy’s life’s work is to develop deep harmony and understanding between species and on our planet through interspecies communion, connection, and communication, and to facilitate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing and growth for beings of all species through her services, classes, training programs, and retreats. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her animal family of dogs, cats, and chickens. To learn more, visit nancywindheart.com.  

 

 

 

 

 

Read The Karma of Cats today!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | IndieBound

 

Come visit Sounds True Radio!

Come on by and take a listen to Sounds True Radio! – http://www.soundstrue.com/radio/

Our free, 24-hour-a-day, streaming radio station offers music for yoga, meditation, relaxation, and inspiration; audio teachings from bestselling and highly respected authors; and insightful and provocative interviews with spiritual teachers and authors on the cutting edge. We also have a new channel which provides selections from many of our new releases. Sounds True Radio is an easy (and free!) way to connect with our authors and to immerse yourself in heart-opening and life-changing wisdom. Through the station, you can also access our our acclaimed Insights at the Edge podcast.

Whether you’re interested in mindfulness, personal growth, emotional healing, awakening and the spiritual journey, creativity, meditation, mantra, sacred chant, brainwave and other healing music, kirtan, or world music of all kinds, you’ll be sure to find something to inspire and open you to the preciousness of the journey that we share together. We look forward to connecting with you at Sounds True Radio soon!

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What Native American Wisdom Can Offer Modern Medicine

Tami Simon speaks with Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD, who is certified in family practice, geriatrics, and psychiatry, and has worked for years in rural emergency medicine. He is the author of several books, including Narrative Medicine and Coyote Healing. Dr. Mehl-Madrona has worked in collaboration with Sounds True to create two new programs: The Spirit of Healing and Native American Healing Meditations.In this episode of Insights at the Edge Dr. Mehl-Madrona speaks with Tami Simon about what Native American wisdom can offer modern medicine; the value of relational, storied, and ceremonial culture; and the role of spirit beings in the healing process. (57 minutes)

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